Abstract
This study explores how devotional engagement with samādhis—tomb-shrines of saints in the Vaiṣṇava tradition—embodies a relational ontology mediated through rasa and bhāva. Drawing on ethnographic observation and practitioner accounts, it argues that devotional affects are not private emotions but relational forces linking devotees to saints, lineages, landscapes, and deities. Practices such as touching or ingesting sanctified dust, prostration, and singing cultivate bhāva as an embodied disposition and generate rasa as a shared affective atmosphere, constituting devotees as members of a living community. Framing these practices through Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, devotees’ actions at samādhis are interpreted as instances of prehension—concrete, affective relations in which subjects actively engage with objects and their wider contexts. These acts exemplify the vector character of prehensions, encompassing emotion, purposeful intent, and causal efficacy, and connect the devotee to a broader nexus of related entities, including the saint’s teachings, the material structure of the samādhi, and the collective memory and ritual practices of previous devotees. In dialogue with Indigenous spiritualities, this study shows how affect, memory, and materiality converge to sustain devotional worlds as ongoing processes of relational becoming, demonstrating how individual and communal experience are dynamically co-constituted in living religious practice.
Presenters
Leena TanejaAssociate Professor, Social Sciences, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Religious Community and Socialization
KEYWORDS
Memory, Materiality, Ritual practices
