Who Are All These People? And What Kind of Monotheism Is This Anyway?

Do you sometimes come to the temple and wonder about who are all these figures on the altar? Is this some kind of idol worship? Are we not supposed to ask? And we hear that Bhakti is a monotheistic tradition: How is that, when there are eight different figures on the altar? If you were raised in a tradition different from Bhakti, (and most of us were…) this kind of worship is likely to feel a bit foreign or even uncomfortable to you. Rukmini Walker will try to unpack how the Bhakti tradition itself explains this important core practice, as given by our line of teachers.