Pope Leo on the Fallacy of Collective Justice: The Case of Israel in Gaza

One of the many pitfalls in the doctrine of absolute sovereignty, whereby government officials acting as government can literally get away with murder domestically given the lack of credible de jure and de facto enforcement of international “law,” is the ability to inflict collective punishment based on group-identity, including the ideologies that hinge on identity politics. Going the actual culprits of a crime or even a revolt, collective punishment inflicts harm and even mass murder on an entire group, including individuals thereof who are not at all culpable. Unlike “collateral damage,” the ideology of collective justice includes intentionally harming such individuals. It is an ideology because it is based on beliefs about a group rather than an ethic that would justify normatively the infliction of pain and suffering on the innocent. Furthermore, collective justice is an ideology because it includes the artificial elevation of a group (i.e., the collective) over the individual even though members of a group are arguably foremost individuals, who typically belong to more than one group or organization. To put the collective abstraction first ontologically is thus tenuous at best. A person may be a Texan, a Democrat, a Catholic, and a member of a football team, for example, so the claim that that person is essentially any one of these would be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. In privileging a part over a whole, thus being partisan, an ideology is in a sense arbitrary, even in claiming that a state of affairs that is favored or desired is the present state of affairs, as if the statement were a fact of reason rather than a counter-factual statement.

The full essay is at "Pope Leo on the Fallacy of Collective Justice."

Hypocrisy in Institutional Religion

Religion plays a prominent role in the film, Lykke-Per, or A Fortunate Man (2018). On the surface, Peter Sidenius, a young engineer, must navigate around an old, entrenched government bureaucrat to secure approval for his ambitious renewable-energy project. The two men clash, which reflects more general tension that exists everywhere between progressives and conservatives regarding economic, social, religious, and political change. Although pride may be the ruin of Peter and his project, the role played by religion is much greater than pride manifesting as arrogance, if indeed it is arrogant to stand up to abuse of power, whether by a government bureaucrat or one’s own father.

The full essay is at "A Fortunate Man."

On Kindness to Detractors: Compassion Beyond Universal Benevolence

In late April, 2025, Richard Slavin, whose Hindu name and title are Radhanath Swami, spoke on the essence of bhukti at the conclusion of the Bhukti Yoga Conference at Harvard University. Ultimately, the concept bhukti, which translates as devotionalism directed to a deity, such as Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, refers to the nature of the human soul. The immediate context is selfless love, which is directed to a deity, and this context immediately involves extending universal benevolence to other people (and other species), and even to nature (i.e., the environment). After Radhanath’s talk, he walked directly to me. I thanked him for his talk and went on to suggest refinement to compassion being extended universally, as in universal benevolence even to other species. To my great surprise, he touched my head with his, which I learned afterward was his way of blessing people, while he whispered, “I think I want to follow you” or “You make me want to follow you.” A Hindu from Bangladesh later translated the swami’s statement for me. “He was telling you that he considers you to be his equal,” the taxi driver said. I replied that being regarded as that swami’s equal felt a lot better than had he regarded me as his superior, for in my view, we are all spiritually-compromised finite, time-limited beings learning from each other.

The full essay is at "On Kindness to Detractors."

Selfishness and Damnation on a Subway

Imagine, if you will, a crowded, standing-room only subway car during rush hour. Even though people are standing, a seated passenger keeps his backpack on the seat next to his. It would be difficult upon seeing such a sordid display of selfishness not to reflect on the person’s values and character. The flipside of selfishness would be obvious: an indifference towards other people, including that which might benefit them. Instead, selfishness, which is self-love that is oriented teleologically to the person’s own benefit (i.e., private benefit) at the expense of benefits to other people and even a society as a whole. The shift from the ethical domain to that of religion may seem easily done—people of bad character are likely to go to hell rather than heaven—but not so fast, lest we presume to be omniscient (i.e., all-knowing) and capable of promulgating divine justice. It is indeed very tempting to relegate selfish people to hell.

John Calvin, a Protestant reformer in the sixteenth century, held that by absolute sovereignty, God has predestined an elect who are saved. Although he viewed wealth as a sign of God’s approval of the elect, it was not until the next century that Calvinists considered industriousness to be a Christian virtue.[1] All this contradicts Jesus’s statement in the Gospels to the rich man that unless he gives up his fortune, he would not enter the kingdom of God; it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. Furthermore, wealth as a sign of divine favor leaves out the divine favor that could be supposed to be lavished on monks such as Cuthbert and Godric of Finchale, who lived intentionally impoverished lives so to be worthy of being saved. Wealth as a sign of divine favor also flies in the face of the preachments of such religious notables as St. Francis of Assisi and Luther, both of whom can be interpreted as attempting to apply brakes to the emerging and maturating Christian pro-wealth paradigm of their respective times.[2]

Much less problematic is the attribution by observing selfishness of someone not being among the elect saved by the shedding of blood by the Son of God, for, as Paul and Augustine both claimed, God is love and it emanates not only in a person’s love directed to God, but also to one’s neighbors in benevolentia universalis. Intentionally depriving another subway passenger on a crowded train of a seat by taking one up with one’s backpack is antipodal to benevolence, which manifests divine love according to Christianity.

In fact, Samuel Hopkins, who was a protégé of the New England theologian and philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, claims in his book on holiness that the essence of the kingdom of God is kindness and acts of compassion oriented to the humanity of people who dislike one or whom one dislikes.[3] Literally “rubbing shoulders” with another passenger on a subway car is much less inconvenient than being charitable towards adversaries. The root of the word charity is love rather than philanthropy.

In his book on virtue, Edwards himself distinguishes selfishness from “compounded self-love,” which differs from simple self-love because benefits are intentionally extended to other people rather than limited to oneself.[4] Similarly, Pierre Nicole, a seventeenth-century Jansenist Catholic priest and theologian, claims that the inherently sinful self-love can nonetheless be cleverly manifested as courtesy—but not interior kindness!—to other people because more can be gotten from laying out honey than from the stinginess of selfishness. Had the subway passenger moved his backpack, who knows, perhaps a person who might have been useful might have sat in the suddenly empty seat? 

Nevertheless, Hopkins, Edwards, and Nicole were all very clear in that even if self-love can have intentional beneficial consequences, which are in a person's self-interest, the root is still a sin. Needless to say, this point applies to the naked underlying narrow selfishness of the baker and the consumer in Adam Smith's theory of a competitive market, where not even moral sentiments can be assumed to be in the calculus of either participant. In relying on market-level unintended beneficial consequences of selfish economic pursuits by the crucially price-based impersonal mechanism of the proverbial "invisible hand," Smith does not even acknowledge or rely on intentional benefits for others from the enlightened or "compound" self-interest of market participants. Smith's view of human nature in the economic domain is thus relatively pessimistic. I submit that the business world empirically bears this out, as evinced, for example, by how corporations market their marketing under the subterfuge of "corporate social responsibility." Even attempts to reconcile organizational and societal norms are not ethical in nature, given Hume's notion of the naturalistic fallacy, which states that ethical principles are necessary to get from "is" to "ought." I submit that still another fallacy is instantiated by conflating the ethical and theological domains. In short, God transcends and thus is not limited to "ought." The profane world of business greed is oceans of time from the realm of godliness. 

As preferable as damning selfishness is to reckoning a rich person as being favored by God, distinguishing the ethical domain from that of salvation is important because the two domains are, I submit, qualitatively different even though they do interrelate. Hence Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling distinguishes the universally-accessible moral domain from that of the divine command that only Abraham receives.  What is attempted murder (of Abraham’s son, Isaac) in moral (and legal) terms is a sacrifice in religious terms. Both domains are valid in themselves and their respective meanings, and they relate to each other, as in the story of Abraham, but attempted murder and religious sacrifice are qualitatively different. This point is also clear in the Book of Job, as Job is a righteous man and thus does not deserve to be made to suffer by the devil even as a test sanctioned by the Old Testament deity. Abstractly stated, divine omnipotence (i.e., all-powerful) means that divine command cannot be constrained by human ethical principles. Regarding the five Commandments that have ethical conduct, it is explicitly based on divine command, and thus on divine will, and thus is not a constraint on the deity. This does not mean that the ethical itself is theological in nature.

So while it is tempting to relegate a selfish person to hell as a sordid reprobate, especially as selfishness is antithetical to benevolentia universalis, which is a manifestation of “God is love” in Christianity, both our own finite nature as judges and the distinction between acting unethically and being saved or damned mitigate against making such a hasty and wholly convenient category mistake as superimposes stuff of our realm onto God. It could be, for example, that the man on the subway suffers from PTSD and thus God has mercy on such a trifling thing as the man taking up an extra seat. Furthermore, it could be that the man was on his way to care for his sick grandmother and triggering his social anxiety on the train would compromise the care he could give.

---

1. Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth. See also the author’s related academic treatise, Godliness and Greed: Shifting Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010). The first text is of the non-fiction genre for the general educated reader, whereas the second text is of the academic genre. Ironically, God’s Gold not only contains additional chapters, but is also an ideational improvement on God’s Gold, especially concerning the concluding chapter of both books. A Christian apologist, for instance, would prefer the conclusion of God’s Gold, which hinges on the Logos in answering a critique of anthropomorphism from David Hume’s Natural History of Religion. Sometimes better ideas reach a general readership rather than cloistered, over-specialized academia.

2. Ibid.

3. Samuel Hopkins, An Eenquiry into the Nature of Holiness (New York: William Durell, 1710).

4. Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1960).

Pope Leo: Poised against Plutocracy?

Poised as the “new Leonine era,” worded as if gilding the proverbial lily as if a golden ring, the installation of Pope Leo XIV reinvigorated Pope Francis’s preachments on the poor and economic inequality because Robert Prevost chose Leo in large part because of Pope Leo XIII of the late nineteenth century, whose “historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”[1] Due to “his choice of pontifical name and his mathematical and legal training, Pope Leo XIV has awakened hope and curiosity among the faithful and the more secular world about the influence the Catholic Church could exert on the economic world during his pontificate.”[2] In the exuberance of a new pontificate, it is easy to get carried away with excitement as to possibilities. Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s crime against humanity in Gaza, no one could be blamed for seeking out hope wherever it could be found. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind just how marginal the calls of conscience can be, given the onslaught of greed not only in the present day represented by powerful corporate (and related) governmental interests, but also in greed’s institutional accretions built up over time that have a force of their own in protecting the economic (and political) status quo.

The practical impact of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, promulgated in 1891, should not be overstated. To be sure, it “laid the foundations of the social doctrine of the Church that inspired Catholic trade unionism, and, some 30 years later, the creation of the Christian Democratic parties that contributed decisively to the civil and material reconstruction of Europe after World War II.”[3] Calling “for workers’ rights without resorting to the class struggle promoted by Marxist doctrine” by instead focusing on “the balance of fair wages and equal economic relations,” Rerum Novarum can be said to have been prudent and eminently practical.[4] Even so, a focus on microeconomics can only do so much when the macro political-economy structure is left intact, and that structure, specifically in its huge concentrations of private capital in modern corporations and their economic-turned-political power in the halls of government amid elected representatives seeking campaign-reelection donations and lucrative jobs in the future, plays a crucial role in perpetuating and even aggravating huge economic disparities and the corruption of democracy by plutocracy.

“Pope Leo XIII questioned the concentrations of economic industrial power and was immediately attacked,” says Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, a banker and former president of the Institute for Religious Works, the corrupt Vatican financial institution.[5] Tedeschi attributed the anti-trust legislation in the United States to the encyclical, but he left out the ensuing fecklessness with which the U.S. Justice Department has used the Sherman Act to break up oligopolies and monopolies (e.g., Facebook, Amazon, General Motors, etc) undoubtedly because of “political pressure.” Even though the Sherman Act was passed “to curb the power of cartels that had created a near-monopoly regime with serious social repercussions” does not mean that much curbing actually took place.[6] Because “serious social repercussions” stem from anti-competitive economic industries, the staying power of the latter even decades into the twenty-first century means that even prior efforts to fortify labor unions fell short of the aims of Rerum Novarum. The proof, in order words, is in the pudding.

That Pope Leo XIV sought to build on established Catholic social teaching such as Rerum Novarum “to respond to another industrial revolution and to developments in artificial intelligence that bring new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and work” may have been putting the cart before the horse, given the social repercussions still occurring in 2025 from the gigantic economic and political power of the mega multinational corporations.[7] Indeed, “economic data” showed “growing crises and imbalances between average incomes and the cost of living” in the E.U. and U.S., which a focus on AI would not address.[8]

In the U.S., the pope’s home country, for example, the federal House of Representatives was in the midst of cutting the budget of Medicaid, which funds healthcare for the poor and disabled. Just days before the inaugural Mass of the new pope, a group of conservative Republican lawmakers blocked a bill with cuts to the program because they were not large enough, given the president’s proposed tax-cut (amid a federal budget debt at the time of $36.21 trillion). That any tax cut would even be proposed amid such a debt (with Moody’s recently having reduced the U.S.’s credit rating) defies fiscal logic and prudence. Cutting health-care for the poor without cutting military spending conjures up “social repercussions” in terms of values that presumably violate those of Rerum Novarum and thus Popes Leo XIII and XIV.

I submit that the Roman Catholic Church still had work to do on the question of human dignity, well-being, and justice in the context of human nature’s incompatibility with holding so much economic and political power in such concentrations that human nature itself may be warped as in the case of an addiction. The incarnation of billionaires who could not possibly spend such wealth in their respective lifetimes (and their survival from want is virtually assured) is something that Pope Leo XIII could not have dealt with, as businessmen such as JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were the millionaire “titans” of the Gilded Age. Having broken up Standard Oil in 1913 (without changing the ownership) does not mean much as the U.S. Justice Department stood by through the rest of the twentieth century as more and more American industries turned into oligopolies and even de facto monopolies. The practical impact of Rerum Novarum hardly justifies moving on the AI without taking another stab at the political-economic regime that has perpetuated and even extenuated massive economic inequality and price-setting “inflation” by companies.

Just days before Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate officially began, Walmart’s chief financial manager told the media that the company “had no choice” in raising prices due to new tariffs. Were Walmart’s industry competitive rather than oligopolistic, Walmart would be a price-taker, such that market discipline (i.e., choices by consumers) could mean that Walmart would “have no choice” but to accept lower profit by absorbing some of the supply-cost increases rather than passing them all on to the consumers. As U.S. President Trump said, Walmart had made billions of dollars in 2024, and thus could afford to absorb some of the impact of the tariffs. Put another way, we have no choice but pass on the increases onto the consumer is itself not only a lie, but also an indication of the company’s perception of its industry as less than subject to competitive forces wherein consumers can vote with their wallets and purses by buying elsewhere rather than being forced to pay more at Walmart.

If anything, the economic (and related political) regime that supports excessive economic rents being paid by consumers as large corporations continue to profit greatly has endured and even prospered as the status quo since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891. Oligopolies came to populate even the high-tech industry, including social media, at the expense of competitive markets and thus consumers as well as workers. Restructuring the underlying political-economic regime lies beyond the purview of labor unions; even the voice of Catholic conscience may be insufficient, given how the regime is fed by and feeds greed. In shifting from a strict anti-wealth paradigm to a pro-wealth paradigm wherein wealth is decoupled from greed (i.e., liberality and munificence vindicating even fortunes as camels slip through narrow places), Christianity had arguably compromised itself with respect to being a normative obstacle to greed.[9]

---

1. Sergio Cantone, “How the Pontificate of Pope Leo XIV Could Influence the World Economy,” Euronews.com, May 18, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. See Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth, available at Amazon.

Bob Prevost as Pope Leo: The First American Pope

Referring to the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as “Bob Provost” reflects my Midwestern roots, which Pope Leo XIV (or “Pope Leo” amongst friends) has as well, even though the media missed this vital point as to the new pope’s native culture. As if a knee-jerk reaction, the international media almost immediately sought to circumscribe the new pope’s “Americanness” by referring to “the Chicago-born Augustinian missionary” as “history’s first U.S.-born pope” as if he had left the U.S. as a young boy and had become just as South American as “American.”[1] Perhaps this is what prompted U.S. President Trump to jump on social media to so profusely congratulate the first American pope even though as Cardinal, Bob Prevost had publicly criticized Trump’s immigration policies. The contest was on to define the new pope! Of course, never to be outdone by anything American, the very British BBC referred to the “first North American pope,” just as the BBC had stated many years earlier that Prince Harry and Magen were moving to North America (rather than to California after a visit in Canada).[2] The games people play. I contend that the bias behind portraying Bob Prevost erroneously as only originally from the U.S. represents something more than mere political and ideological resentment of one of the most powerful countries on Earth.

To be clear, the new pope was from the United States—in fact, from its heartland—and thus he can indeed be said to be the first American pope, even though he spent two decades in South America serving the Church. That he gained citizenship in Peru and the Vatican does not mean that he revoked or renounced his American citizenship or that he can be relegated as having been merely born in Illinois. In fact, in 1999, when he was 44 years-old, he returned to Chicago for fourteen years to lead the Augustinian Order, so even being characterized as “born and raised” in the United States is misleading.

At 69 years-old when he was elected, Pope Leo had lived about 40 years in the United States, and all of those years but four were in Chicagoland, which covers 200 square miles and includes the city of Chicago as well as the suburbs. He lived there for fourteen years well after he had graduated from seminary there, so it is incorrect to say that he was merely born and raised in Chicago. He served the Church in Peru for only 20 years, with only eight of which being when he had dual citizenship.[3] His church service in Peru occasioned (but did not condition) his citizenship there, rather than vice versa. Therefore, it is as misleading to characterize him as “U.S.-born,” as it is to say that he is the first Peruvian pope, or even that he is the first pope from both Illinois and Peru. The false-equivalence narrative, especially in Europe, was no accident. There had been an unwritten rule in the Vatican hierarchy that no American could be elected pope.

Leading involves the use of symbol, and words are symbols. Upon being announced to the world, it was no accident that Pope Leo spoke in Spanish (as well as Latin and Italian) and gave a “shout out” to Peru and did not speak a word of English or refer to people in his homeland. Speculating, I submit that he may have been sending a message to the Church hierarchy that he would not be coddling up to the Trump Administration or, moreover, doing the bidding of the country with perhaps the most geopolitical power in the world. Both theologically and ethically, religion should act on a check on the earthly powerful. The days of the Borgia popes were long gone, and the Roman Catholic Church had shifted to a role of speaking truth to power. That speaking Spanish and explicitly mentioning Peru can be construed as misleading, the pope may have judged that this cost was worth establishing himself as independent of the United States in terms of power.

Secondly, Pope Leo may have been sending the message that he would not be in the corner of the arch-conservative American Catholic hierarchy. Even though a few American bishops held a press conference on the next morning, differences from that ideologically-oriented moralistic enclave and the moderate pope could be anticipated. Cardinal Prevost had been instrumental, for example, in Pope Francis’s addition of three women in the Vatican office that the cardinal ran from 2023 that vets prospective bishops. That Pope Leo had two women serve as lectionaries reading scripture during his first mass as pope can be read as yet another use of symbol to send a message. That is, his choice was “perhaps an indication of Leo’s intention to follow Francis’ priority to expand women’s role in the church.”[4] If Pope Francis had groomed Prevost, the former may have taught the latter how to use symbols effectively in leadership. If so, symbolic actions in social justice, especially for the poor, could be a part of Pope Leo’s pontificate. That as a Cardinal Prevost had been “critical of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration” could also rankle some American bishops.[5] Lastly, he reportedly had a role in Pope Francis’s push-back against the ideologically-conservative orientation of the American clerical hierarchy in vetting clergy for possible bishoprics in the United States. Therefore, the American expression, “Be careful what you wish for; you might get it,” could come around to bite the American Catholic hierarchy in the proverbial “behind.”

There is, however, a “but.” Revisiting the intentional use of symbol, that Pope Leo wore full papal regalia for his first address to the world after being elected whereas Francis had not done so for his first address may signal that Leo was coming into the job with some conservative leanings that would keep him from being a full-blown progressive pope, if indeed Francis could be said to have been progressive. Whereas Francis had famously said, “Who am I to judge?” regarding a gay couple who are monogamous and love each other and God, and added that it is no crime to be gay, Robert Prevost had previously said in 2012 that a “homosexual lifestyle” evinces “beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel.”[vi] As a Cardinal, Prevost abstained from assenting or dissenting from Francis’s optional blessing on gay civil unions. Bob’s brother back in Illinois told journalists after the papal election had been announced that his brother is a “middle of the road” kind of guy.

Even being a moderate could be enough to annoy the most conservative ideologues in the American church on occasion, and Pope Leo may have wanted to make clear that he would be independent of that hierarchy rather than rubber-stamping its obsession on homosexuality and abortion. He may also have been wanting to tell the European church-hierarchy by not using his native tongue in his first address that he would not be biased in favor of the United States. That he could speak Italian and that his father had significant Italian ancestry were probably more vital than we know in swinging E.U. cardinals in favor of voting for an American cardinal. Both of Pope Francis’s parents had emigrated from Italy.

In short, the bias against having an American as pope can be viewed as superficial. Just as Americans exist who oppose the values supporting the excesses of American capitalism and those undergirding the Trump Administration even in matters of foreign policy, so too have there been Catholic priests who were (or are) American and yet have resisted (or resist) the ideological reductionism of the American Council of Catholic Bishops. Superficial, prejudicial assumptions can enjoy sustained unfounded legitimacy and longevity.  Such assumptions gloss over significant cultural differences between Americans.

The most important influence on Bob Prevost, culturally speaking, was utterly missed by both American and international journalists because the intra-American culture of which I am referring does not easily fit into the E.U.-U.S. basis of comparison. Like Bob Prevost, I was born and raised in northern Illinois, though his hometown is closer to the city-proper of Chicago than mine is. Whereas he doubtlessly identifies himself as a Chicagoan, I grew up beyond the farthest suburbs. He is a Chicago Sox fan whereas I am a Cubs fan. Yet I submit that we both identify primarily as Midwesterners. The Midwest includes, roughly speaking, fifteen U.S. member-states whose combined population is around 80 million and for which Chicago is the de facto capital, at least as far as commerce is concerned. The Midwest spans from Ohio to Nebraska, and up around Lake Michigan (or, Lake Illinois, which, I say in jest, is far north of the Gulf of America). Illinois is so diverse economically and culturally, such that the southern region, Egypt, has attempted five times to “IL-exit” (which is European-speak for “secede”) from Illinois (really from Chicagoland), that were the pope and I to chat informally, we would quickly and easily nod affirmatively that we are both Midwesterners at heart even though he picked the wrong baseball team (can a layperson absolve a pope?). Such informality may seem strange or even scandalous outside of the Midwest, but I submit that the distinctive culture resonates well with Christ’s emphasis on neighbor-love as benevolentia universalis, including speaking to the poor and other marginalized people in public without talking down to them or as if they were a special case. I submit that a Midwesterner would make an excellent pope, and that the superficial bias has thus impeded the historically European-centered Church.  

---

1. AP News, “Live Updates: Pope Leo XIV Calls His Election Both a Cross and a Blessing, Offers First Homily,” May 9, 2025.
2. Frances Mao, “Pope Leo XIV Calls Church ‘A Beacon to Illuminate Dark Nights’ in First Mass, BBC.com, May 9, 2025.
3. Stacy Meichtry et al, “First Pope from U.S. Elected,” The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2025.
4. AP News, “Live Updates: Pope Leo XIV Calls His Election Both a Cross and a Blessing, Offers First Homily,” May 9, 2025.
5. Stacy Meichtry et al, “First Pope from U.S. Elected,” The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2025.
6. Li Zhou, “The New Pope Faces Scrutiny on LGBTQ+ Rights,” The Huffington Post, May 8, 2025.

Spirituality in the Workplace: Hindu and Christian Strategies

Mohan Vilas, a Hindu monk at Govardha Ecovillage, spoke at Harvard’s Bhakti Yoga Conference in 2025. He had gone from the world of financial derivatives to worshipping Krishna. Once he had fulfilled his “lower needs,” he looked for more. After obtaining a M.B.A. and while working in finance, he was hungry for knowledge beyond the world of business. So he studied ancient Vedic culture. His talk at the conference was on being an idealist surrounded by strategists. He addressed the question of whether the world allows individuals to practice virtue. Even when a person is not in a dysfunctional workplace or in a hostile society, the human mind struggles, Vilas said, to apply ethical virtues. Plato’s dictum that to know the good is enough do the good, and thus to be good, may be wildly optimistic, considering the instinctual force of urges in our nature to act immorally, even though other people are harmed as a result. It is even more difficult to get into a habit of doing good while “swimming upstream” in an ethically compromised workplace or an aggressive societal culture. An ethical Russian or Israeli soldier in the mid-2020s, for example, would have a lot of trouble refusing to bomb hospitals in Ukraine and Gaza, respectively, and, moreover, invading another country and withholding food so to starve an occupied group. Such a soldier would be intolerable to both Putin and Netanyahu, respectively. Vilas’s question is the following: What happens when a person who is good is put into a selfish society? Must an ethical person finally inevitably exit a culture that rewards narrow selfishness, passive-aggression and deception?

Dostoevsky wrote when Russia was in crisis. In The Idiot, Prince Myshkin is an idealist who refuses to corrupt himself. It comes with a price: isolation.  If a society rejects moral purity, then what is valued? Myshkin is surrounded by schemers, but he is good nonetheless. His mere existence exposes the hypocrisy of those who are around him. He is identified as a problem by the corrupt. He is upsetting the balance in the social setting. He is viewed an active disturbance to be destroyed. If this sounds familiar, Jesus in the Gospel narratives is in the same dynamic. The very presence of an idealist is intolerable to sordid people who are used to manipulating other people. Being good is not beneficial in a dysfunctional societal (or organizational) culture in which cunningness is valued. Those who play fairly have a disadvantage relative to the corrupt manipulators because the latter have made the rules.

So, an idealist may be tempted to be a savvy Machiavellian strategist. Machiavelli wrote The Prince for rulers in a harsh international context. Not many people realize that his History of Florence includes the element of morality. Similarly, Adam Smith wrote not only The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the latter in which the professor of moral philosophy based his ethical theory founded on impartial sentiments in making moral judgments. However, Smith does not maintain that participants in a marketplace should be expected to act according to how others impartially feel about business conduct. Instead, the amoral and impersonal mechanism of “the invisible hand” gives aggregated self-interests of participants the unintended societal benefit of people working and obtaining goods and services. Smith accepts that market participants are self-seeking economic agents engaged in buying and selling rather than in being concerned for the economic welfare of others. That the invisible hand efficiently allocates goods and services in a competitive marketplace, which is a benefit of self-interests interacting, does not institute ethical business conduct by participants. In spite of the empirical studies claiming that acting ethically in business pays off financially, imperfect information can enable the unscrupulous to thrive.

Historically, Quakers in Europe and North America were known to be honest in business, and so they enjoyed trustworthy reputations.  This is not something that Smith counted on in writing about market competition in Wealth of Nations.

Even if Christianity had to some extend fostered ethical conduct, I submit that the advent of secularity in the West meant that the voluntary adoption of religious ethics in business could be less and less relied on. In India, I doubt that many Hindu merchants mimic the lack of concern for consequences in doing one’s caste’s duties that Krishna advocates to Arjuna concerning fighting in a military battle in the Bhagavad-Gita. A merchant could well protest that ignoring consequences in managing a business is a recipe for how to go out of business, in which case no one could get the goods or services provided by the business. It is more realistic to urge that the compassion enjoined by Krishna be practiced in the workplace, even if the workplace culture is toxic, and towards customers. Similarly, compassion to one’s detractors, as preached by Jesus in the Gospels, could gradually detoxify a dysfunctional organizational culture. Much stronger medicine, however, is expounded by Samuel Hopkins, who was a protégé of the Christian theologian of New England, Jonathan Edwards, in a book on holiness. Whereas Edwards, in his sermon, “The Portion of the Righteous,” maintains that the elect are to enter the kingdom of God only after the Last Judgment (i.e., Christ’s Second Coming), Hopkins interprets the kingdom of God as being accessible to a person before physical death in so far as one is kind and compassionately helpful to people who dislike one and whom one dislikes.  This version goes beyond the benevolentia universalis of generalized “neighbor-love,” and can be much more powerful spiritually in turning around a passive-aggressive organizational culture. Inconvenient compassion issuing out in acts of kindness takes much more effort, as the internal resistance is more, but, if done, the spiritual and psychological dynamic between two or more people can be utterly transformed.

Realistically, however, good-hearted idealists can be all-too-easily “eaten up” by sharks that thrive in hostile, back-stabbing organizational cultures. Sometimes it is best to vote with one’s feet kick off the dirt from one’s sandals, and find another workplace in which to work. Life is too short to stay where one is hated and otherwise where too many people are hateful. In this regard, I found Yale and New Haven, Connecticut to be beyond repair in 2025. That the university’s police chief, who was Christian minister and alumnus of Yale’s divinity school, had accepted the invitation of the FBI to show Yale’s private police unit how to use counter-terrorism tactics on students, post-doctoral researchers, faculty and presumably even alumni back auditing a course, and that security guards were regularly spying on students on campus was enough for me to pull the plug. I even asked if it was possible to refuse a degree already granted. This was greeted with a passive-aggressive refusal to reply to my email. So, I voted with my feet and returned to Harvard. Better to vote on principle than stay and be inflicted with passive-aggression sans organizational accountability.

Regarding employees of organizations, whether private, governmental, or non-profit, walking away, if done by more people in dysfunctional organizations, could have an “Adam Smith” kind of impact whereby organizations having toxic workplaces go under while healthy organizations prosper. Voting with one’s feet in employment is utilized too seldomly because of the financial uncertainty involved, especially in cases in which an employee quits one job before having secured another. Even if doing one’s duty by performing functions of one’s caste, including that of merchants, is valued, this does not mean that a Hindu is duty-bound to remain working in a dysfunctional company. A person need not choose between Shankara’s method of total renunciation and staying in a toxic organization. A person can both remain employed and exercise enough initiative to get out of a bad working situation and into a healthy organization.

Peacemaking and Hierarchy at Pope Francis’s Funeral

Sitting hunched forward, facing an also-hunched-forwardUkand very intense President Zelensky of Ukraine, both men’s unadorned chairs being surrounded by bald yet beautiful marble-floor in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican just before the funeral of Pope Francis, U.S. President Trump sought to close a deal that would end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Pope Francis would have been proud. Perhaps the pope, who had tirelessly preached an end to the militarized aggression not only in Ukraine, but also in Gaza, would have been even more proud had Russian President Putin been there too, hunched forward with his rivals to make peace, but that president was wanted by the International Criminal Court on allegations of having committed war crimes in Ukraine. Enemies making peace, and even extending in acts of compassion are necessary to gaining access into the kingdom of God, as preached by Jesus Christ in the Gospel faith-narratives.

The fact that both Trump and Zelensky were staring eye-ball to eye-ball, finally getting down to real business rather than insults and even talking points, is itself progress. That U.S. President Trump subsequently formally shook hands with E.U. President Von der Leyen is also something the dead pope would have liked, though he would likely have preferred the E.U. leader to have been sitting with the two other presidents when they had been discussing a deal for 15 minutes just before the funeral.

That the E.U.’s president had deferred to the governors of some large states, such as France, to take the lead for the entire E.U. left the U.S. president without the balance that the E.U. president could have supplied concerning the value in holding onto the principle of territorial sovereignty applied to Ukraine, lest otherwise invading another country unprovoked could be rewarded de facto. Fortunately, Trump furnished some balance himself in observing on the trip back to Washington, D.C., “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”[1] To be sure, that Zelensky was willing to sign an exclusive mineral-rights contract with the United States was not lost on the business-oriented American president, mais sans doute, c’est la vie en les États-Unis. In spite of the American pecuniary interest, Pope Francis would have been pleased with President Trump for sticking up for Ukrainian civilians.

Ironically, the pope would perhaps have been less pleased with the way the Vatican arranged the viewing of his corpse and his funeral because of the extent of hierarchy terms of proximity of viewership. During the three days of public viewing in St. Peter’s Basilica, ushers wearing suits kept the ordinary people moving, while ushers wearing tuxedos greeted the line of people inside the temporary barrier as they passed through and maybe sat on chairs for a while. By the later folks, I am not referring to heads of state or Catholic clergy primarily, for most of the “very important persons” were rather ordinarily dressed, and this made the suit versus tuxedo distinction look pretentious and fake, and thus as an artifact from a desire to put some groups of people above others beyond what merit would legitimate. Were the deceased pope’s spirit watching and able to speak to the living there, the recommendation would likely have been that if there has to be a hierarchy, then give the poor parishioners of the Rome diocese the best view, and the most connected people the worst view, with the people who had known the pope being situated somewhere in the middle. So too at the funeral, sections spanned out from those seating the most important people—the Cardinals and visiting heads of state and prime ministers—to those sections seating priests and then finally the general public in the very back. I hope some of those people had binoculars.

During the funeral, the most important people sat in the two squares at far-right, while the general public sat in the eclipse at far-left, many of whom did not even have a direct view of the altar, which was under the small white square, far-right, between the Cardinals and the government dignataries. There is even a slight color difference between the two squares (center) opposite the two light-colored priest-squares. Visually, all this was hierarchy to the maximus, contra benevolentia universalis. 

That the value behind Jesus’s preachment that (most of) the first are last and the last are first, is worthy of being put into practice even by a pope was not lost on Pope Francis, who spoke truth to power and on behalf of the poor and marginalized. It is unfortunate, therefore, that power and prestige, connections and wealth, had the best seats at that pope’s funeral and the closest viewing of the open coffin during the three days of viewing. I think the pope would have been surprised and pleased were the most well-dressed ushers tasked with greeting the general public passing in front of the barricades, while other ushers, wearing mere suits, tasked with directing the insiders.

Perhaps the fact that that having the general public behind the smaller area of viewing better suits the larger number of people in the public group in terms of space. This in turn indicates that hierarchy is to some extent, absent the distinction of suits and tuxedos, natural, for fewer people could be accommodated inside of the barriers, whereas more people would not fit there. Also, perhaps people who had known the pope in person deserved a chair and a longer look than, say, a tourist passing through Rome. Nietzsche considered hierarchy to be natural for human beings. But it can also be argued that human organizations can take the matter of differential preferences too far. The tuxedo/suit dichotomy is a clear example of artificial rather than natural hierarchy.

That a small number of people representing marginalized groups, such as transsexuals, had been set up in front of the burial church to “greet” the arriving coffin is not enough to evince Jesus’s teaching. In fact, situating officially marginal groups at such a marginal part of the day’s events actually cements the groups’ marginal status in the public consciousness. Bringing marginalized groups, including victims of military aggression in Ukraine and Gaza, that had been particularly dear to Pope Francis to view the casket at the Vatican in front of the temporary barriers would have sent a very different message. In the case of transexuals, the Cardinal-in-charge could have practiced kindness to one's enemy and that the last are first. The combination of these two principles lies at the core of Jesus's preaching on the kingdom of God, which Jesus emphasizes in the Gospels. Faith in Jesus as God is for naught, Paul wrote, if there is not love, and he and Augustine insisted that God itself is love. I would add that agape (self-emptying) love is evinced not only metaphysically, but also in the practice of the two spiritual principles. Come on, guys, be bold; turn the world on its head; it may finally see itself for what it is, and even that an alternative paradigm is possible. In the Gospels, Jesus dies for that paradigm, and yet you still don't get it. The blind following the blind gets nowhere.

Perhaps it is to compensate for an innate human instinct to extenuate hierarchy that the Roman Catholic religious organization should attempt to apply Jesus’s teaching that recognizes the last, including the marginalized, as first, and the first as last. With compassion and peacemaking with one’s enemies, putting the last first can be said to be an excellent means to indwelling the spirit of the kingdom of God, which does not operate in the ways of the world, but as God would analogously would like to see the world. Reflecting the worldly excessiveness of hierarchy rather than instantiating a counter-example, the high-ranking Vatican clergy-officials can legitimately be accused of failing as disciples and even of hypocrisy. At least they were willing to give space for two political leaders to try to get to a deal that would end a long war that had already been so destructive of civilians in Ukraine. The deceased pope would have been proud.

---

1. Darlene Superville and Aamer Madhani, “Trump Expresses Doubts Putin Is Willing to End the Ukraine War, A Day After Saying a Deal Was Close,” AP News.com, April 26, 2025.

Liberation in Hinduism: Transcending Delight in Knowledge

Study of scripture and worshipful devotion to a deity are germane to religion, but so too is transcendence, which I submit transcends learning about, and even being devoted to a deity. That transcendence goes beyond devotionalism depends on there being a distinction, such as between bhukti devotion to Krishna and liberation in Hinduism. In contrast, a religion in which God itself is love, which both Paul and Augustine insist regarding Christianity, and union with God is the ultimate goal, may carry devotionalism all the way in a process of transcendence. It may be tempting to read the Bhagavad-Gita as a monotheist story centered on Lord Krishna, and thus maintain that delight should not be transcended in genuine knowledge and that in being liberated, a devotee does not transcend loving Krishna. I contend that just such an approach artificially thwarts transcendence at a vital juncture, and thus inhibits final liberation. In other words, assuming that means are the ends risks losing sight of the ends that go beyond the means to those ends.

A supplement to the Gita (between 11.44 and 11.45) has Arjuna say to Lord Krishna, “. . . You are the one (who is) the originator, dispenser, almighty, and becoming (i.e., the unfolding universe).”[1] Krishna is “becoming,” and yet, in the Isha Upanishad can be found, “And into still blinder darkness” than is the case for people who worship ignorance, are “people who delight in learning,” and this is so because they “delight in becoming.”[2] Krishna is becoming in creating the cosmos, so perhaps this is why we are not to delight in our own becoming in learning knowledge. How are we to interpret this?

One way follows from the fact that we mere mortals are subject to both becoming and destruction; to ignore one would be rather one-sided. Therefore, a person who knows knowledge and ignorance together “(p)asses beyond death by destruction, and by the becoming attains immorality.”[3] So, the becoming that is Krishna as creator is good whereas the becoming that is in learning is bad. The becoming basis of growing in knowledge by learning is one-sided perhaps because this basis alone does not include destroying antiquated knowledge or acquiring knowledge that is destructive. A cup that is already full cannot be filled, or you can’t fill only half a cup vertically. Knowledge that is not “of ‘field’ and the ‘field-knower’” is not real knowledge and thus should be destroyed rather than delighted-in.[4] Genuine knowledge, which includes “the knowledge of the basis-of-self and insight into the purpose of knowledge of Reality, can be a delight according to this interpretation, though such knowledge may have to be balanced with destroying the pretentions of superficial knowledge or illusion.[5]

Alternatively, the point in not delighting in learning could be that a person should be meditating rather than learning knowledge at all. “For better than (ritual) practice is knowledge. Superior to knowledge is meditation. From meditation (comes) the relinquishment of actions’ fruit.”[6] This presumably includes even real, or genuine, knowledge because learning itself does not include extra-textual religious experience whereas meditation does.[7]

As a third interpretation, attachment to knowledge, even if that knowledge is of reality, is what leaves a person in an even darker darkness than one is in from worshipping ignorance. Perhaps real knowledge is more tempting to clutch onto than is ignorance known to be false. “Although sattva, the highest, most luminous power of nature, brings the embodied self close to realizing its true identity, it is still characterized by attachment to happiness (sukha-sanga) and to knowledge (jnanasanga; [Gita] 14.6).”[8] Sattva is, after all, one of the three gunas that stem from prakriti. It follows that delighting in learning does not bring peace; in fact, and paradoxically, there is darkness in being attached to delight in learning. That real knowledge itself is not the problem is clear from Gita 13.12, which states that “what-is-to-be-known,” which includes knowledge of brahman, the “beginningless supreme world-ground” that “is called neither existence nor nonexistence,” allows a yogin to attain “immortality.”[9] In this view, it is not knowledge or learning that is the problem; rather, attachment, as in delighting in learning, staves off liberation (moksha).

Immortality can be attained from real knowledge, which includes (and may ultimately be) knowledge of brahman, even though delighting in learning leaves a person in “still blinder darkness” than is the case from worshipping ignorance.”[10] Because the “(world-ground) is also called Light of lights beyond darkness”—meaning that brahman “is knowledge, what-is-to-be-known, accessible to knowledge, seated in the heart of all (beings)”[11]–-genuine knowledge itself cannot be, or bring about, darkness. In fact, a devotee having such knowledge “approaches My state-of-being,” which, in going beyond existence and nonexistence, is arguably identical to the Self, which is brahman. Being impartial, as is enjoined by the Isha Upanishad, and thus ultimately being unattached even to genuine knowledge, rather than taking delight in it, as well as in sattva, which “binds . . . by (subtle) attachment to joy and by attachment to knowledge,”[12] may be the point in delight in learning leaving a person in blinder darkness than is the case in worshipping ignorance.

Transcending cognition may be that arduous yet necessary last step before being liberated from samsara. Rather than delighting in even genuine knowledge, a devotee’s delight may ultimately be none other than the bliss that is inherent in the very being of consciousness. Liberation transcends learning, which, rightly understood, is a means rather than the end. A person’s favorite mask of eternity, Joseph Campbell once said, can be the final obstruction to experiencing eternity.

---

1. Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), 141.
2. Isha Upanishad 9, 12 in Upanishads, Trans. Patrick Olivelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 249-50.
3. Ibid., 14 in Upanishads, 250.
4. Gita 13.2 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, 253.
5. Gita 13.11 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, 257.
6. Gita 12.12 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, 249.
7. Here, Hume’s contention that it is difficult for the human mind to hold onto the notion of divine simplicity for long without putting on anthropomorphic ornaments is relevant.
8. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 200.
9. Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, 257. That Krishna extends “beyond” existence and nonexistence is to say that the Supreme Person is ultimately the Self, which is brahman.
10. Isha Upanishad 9 in Upanishads, 249.
11. Gita 13.17 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, 259.
12. Gita 14.6 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, 265.

Secularized Religion in Nazi Ideology

In 2025 at Harvard, Madeline Levy presented her dissertation in progress in a graduate-student research workshop, which I was privileged to attend in my capacity as a research scholar at Harvard. She was presenting how the Hitler Youth program in Nazi Germany appropriated from religion politically, thus in a secular context yet with the aura of a religious cult. Interestingly, most of the kids in the program had been in church groups. Almost two decades earlier, I had audited a course on Nazi Cinema at another university; the course was taught by an 81-year-old German man who had been forced into Hitler Youth. Unlike Stalin’s cinema, which was blatant Soviet propaganda, Nazi cinema was escapist (not counting the anti-Jew propaganda “documentaries”). In contrast, Hitler Youth was hardly escapist, as the program was steeped in Nazi ideology. Although that ideology was secular, casting even Catholic Europe as an enemy, Levy was making the case that religious paraphernalia was incorporated in the program nonetheless. She brought up the element on ontology, or being, which in turn led me to draw on philosophy to explain the kids as becoming moral agents in a Kantian sense. Although philosophy and theology are distinct, both can be applied to political theory in a historical context.

The full essay is at "Political Religion."

Hindu Dharmic Leadership

At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025, Ed Anobah spoke on dharma (right-acting) leadership as a means of making progress in solving societal problems using Hinduism’s spiritual tradition of bhukti (devotionalism).  Anobah based his talk on the book, Leadership for an Age of Higher Consciousness by D. T. Swami. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says that what great people do, other people follow. What constitutes healthy, impactful leadership? The ideal leader in Hinduism is also a great sage, like Plato’s notion of a philosopher king. Leadership that deals wholistically with the human condition by exemplifies the character of a leader, which does not mean that only highly educated persons can or should be leaders. Rather, “everyone is a leader,” potentially, and “we are all leading our own life.” Each of us is a leader potentially for other people on the interpersonal level. Each of us can inspire other people. Anobah claimed that certain universal principles of leadership can apply across the board. I submit that this view is vulnerable to being too utopian when it is applied in the business world. Being realistic as to possible practical difficulties and even limitations in applying dharmic leadership in business (and government) is advisable. Even there being different metaphysical assumptions can get in the way, practically speaking, as compassionate leadership runs up against the profit-motive in business. 

The full essay is at "Hindu Dharmic Leadership." 

Acting Morally: Bhukti Yoga and Kant Beyond Duty

At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025, a Hindu religious artist whose Hindu name is Srimati Syamarani, spoke on the art of spiritual life. A person is like the hand of Krishna. The hand puts food in Krishna’s body, so the entire body is nourished. The hand serving the body is a duty. So too is following the type of bhukti that is following rules and regulations out of duty. At some point, it will no longer be felt as a duty. In Kantian terms, this means not acting ethically by being compelled by reason—the necessity of the moral law that reason presents to us; rather, going beyond moral duty is to approximate the holy will, but not because it is the nature of finite rational beings to be good; rather, it is out of love of the moral law, including its necessitating us to act ethically. In bhukti devotion, however, it is not love of the form of moral law (i.e., it being an imperative, or command, of reason) that obviates the sense of duty to serve Krishna and other people, as in being a hand of Krishna serves Krishna’s body; rather, it is love directed to Krishna (and ensuing compassion to people) that transcends ethical obligation per se. This is not to say that bhukti practice can go beyond feeling obligated due to a feeling, whereas it is by the use of reason that Kantian gets beyond duty, for it is the feeling of respect that empirically motivates a person to treat people as not only means to one’s own goals, but also as ends in themselves. As rational beings, we partake in reasoning, albeit in a finite way, and reason itself has absolute value because it is by reason that value is assigned to things. Even so, it cannot be said that a devotee of Krishna in Hinduism can go beyond acting out of duty due to an emotion (i.e.., love or compassion) whereas for Kant it is just by reasoning that a person can go beyond acting because one is duty-bound.

To Kant, acting out of a maxim, which is simply a reason for doing something, that includes a desire for an empirical object is lower than having as a reason, acting out of the moral law. Material principles presuppose an object of desire. Getting that object is a condition of having the subjective, material principle. Kant didn’t want a material maxim, such as the desire for one’s own happiness, not to mention wealth, to have anything to do with the moral law. A material maxim cannot furnish the content of a moral law. “All practical principles that presuppose an object (matter) of the faculty of desire as the determining ground of the will are, without exception, empirical and can furnish no practical laws.”[1] A moral law, which is practical in that it relates to actions rather than, say, metaphysics, cannot be oriented to getting something that is desired. Not even the desire to be happy can be admitted to a moral law. “All material practical principles as such are, without exception, of one and the same kind and come under the general principle of self-love or one’s own happiness.”[2] Even though self-love, unlike self-conceit, is constrained by moral law, self-love is sordid in that it can be the basis of a reason for doing something (i.e., a maxim) that is connected with a desire for something. Additionally, Kant maintains that “(t)he maxim of self-love (prudence) merely advises,” whereas “the law of morality commands. . . . there is a great difference between which we are advised to do and that to which we are obliged.”[3] In short, being motivated by self-love is not strong enough to get us to act morally. It is the form of a moral law, specifically as a command by reason, that turns out to be crucial in us, who have other inclinations, to be moral agents.  

Even enjoying doing your duty is a material practical principle because such a motive is empirical in nature, whereas being motivated to act because of the form of the moral law is not a material principle. The holy will of an infinite being can only be approximated by finite rational beings by trying to extirpate material desires (i.e., trying to rid oneself of all inclinations). But we can’t do that completely. Even so, we can be morally good agents because we can feel obligated to do something out of duty; we know we can be ethical because we are obligated. That is to say, we can be moved to do something just because it is our duty. Moral goodness is only possible for finite rational beings; if we were infinite, we wouldn’t be morally good—we would be good because that would be our nature. A fully rational agent would just do as a matter of its nature what it ought to do, so doing so would not even be thought of or felt as a duty. In bhukti, Krishna does not feel obliged to act ethically; rather, the deity does so out of compassion, which is the deity’s nature.

To Kant, Love and benevolence are a matter of duty to for finite beings such as us. In contrast, pathological love is from an inclination and thus cannot be a duty.  Practical love is the duty to make the following maxim: acting for others’ state rather than one’s own as a reason for doing something. Even though for Kant self-love is subject to the moral law (whereas self-conceit is not), it seems to me that the maxim of love and benevolence is difficult to reconcile with the idea that self-love is confined by the moral law. I think Kant’s desire to distinguish self-love from self-conceit is responsible for his over-estimation of self-love normatively (i.e., as a good thing).

Also, whereas love and benevolence are salient in bhukti devotion and the devotee’s interpersonal relations, for Kant, practical love can’t be the sole motive in acting on a moral duty because but there cannot be a duty to have a feeling. “If a rational being is to think of his maxims as practical universal laws, he can think of them only as principles that contain the determining ground of the will not by their matter but only by their form.”[4] The moral law has the form of an imperative by the nature of law itself, as necessitated by reason. Necessitation is the process by which a finite rational being brings oneself to do what one ought to do by what one takes as a command of reason to do. Necessitation is a psyche process in the phenomenal realm (i.e., of appearances) that is empirically motivated by means of the feeling of respect. But this is only empirically so; a priori (i.e., apart from experience), it is the duty itself that motivates us. Think of reason as commanding you. A person follows the command by being motivated by a feeling of respect for the moral law itself. It is precisely that feeling that can obviate the sense of duty itself; even though our nature, unlike Krishna’s or God’s, is not goodness itself (omnibenevolence), we can get beyond feeling obligated to act according to the duty required by reason and motivated by respect for other people as ends in themselves (because they too are rational beings). With sufficient respect for the form (i.e., imperative) of moral law itself, a person can act morally not out of a sense of duty.

In her talk, Srimati Syamarani spoke of following the rules and regulations first as her duty, but then out of love for Krishna. In contrast, Kant claims that love cannot be the sole motive for acting morally, whether out of duty or not. Respect for the imperative of reason itself in its capacity as a moral law-giver is very different than the love that a devotee directs to a deity, and yet these two ways can get finite moral agents acting morally and yet not out of a sense of duty.

---

1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 5:36.
4. Ibid., 5:27.

On Embodied Souls in Business: Hinduism and Christianity

A man whose chosen Hindu name is Vridavanath spoke at Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025 on the plight and ultimate aim of an embodied soul as described in the Bhagavad-Gita. A conditioned soul/self (atman) that has entered the material realm and is thus subject to karmic consequences can come back to the divine source of all: the One that is in all. As material, embodied beings while alive, that is, as both biological and spiritual, we are prone to getting locked into dualities of attachment and aversion, which in turn play right into suffering. We forget that we are wearing material masks, and that our real identity (atman) is greater than our material roles that we assume in our daily lives. Through our actions, we bind ourselves by the law of karma. Before being born into the material realm, a person’s unembodied soul (atman) knew Krishna, but as embodied, the soul/self relates to other corporeal bodies rather than to other people as spiritual beings and thus in compassion. Why does Brahman or Krishna—the respective impersonal or personal notions of Absolute Truth—create the world with separateness from the divine included?  Furthermore, how is a devotee of Krishna to navigate working in business, given the separateness woven into the very fabric of our daily existence as material and spiritual beings?

Body, soul, and matter are the three fundamental elements in the created realm. Fundamentally, we are free beings but we are subject to attachments in the created realm. Honoring the free will of the soul, Brahman or Krishna creates separateness in Creation; it is not that conscious being or the supreme deity wants us to be in a condition of separation from the divine. Rather, the embodied soul is guided in part out of its inclination to live separately from the divine, and Brahman or Krishna use creative energy to accommodate the inclination and thus human free-will. It follows that not only goodness, but also passion and ignorance are the fundamental elements of the soul’s material (embodied) existence in the material world.

As the Supreme Soul, according to Vridavanath, Krishna leads embodied souls to goodness even though Krishna (and Brahman) transcends goodness. Similarly, liberation (moksha) is achieved when there is no longer any residue from good and bad karma. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard makes the same point: that the divine command that Abraham gets to sacrifice his son Isaac trumps the ethical verdict of murder (and even attempted murder, as Abraham is commanded by Yahweh to put down his knife at the last minute). From the standpoint of the (ethical) good, Abraham is guilty of attempted murder. Yet from a theological standpoint, the divine command is to sacrifice rather than murder Isaac. This can only be viewed as absurd to other characters in the story, for they do not have access to the divine command that is given exclusively to Abraham. The ultimate goal in a faith narrative is theological rather than ethical, for such a narrative lies squarely in the sui generis domain of religion, even if that of ethics is related.

In his talk, Vridavanath said that the ultimate goal of the embodied soul/self in the Bhagavad-Gita is to know Krishna, by using the faculty of buddhi, which is the enlightened use of the reasoning faculty of the mind to know the source of the created realm. However, does knowledge exhaust devotion? It seems that the former is better suited to Absolute Truth being impersonal than to it being assumed to be personal, as a Supreme Person. In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, "Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you sacrifice, whatever you give, whatever austerities-you-perform—do that . . . (as) an offering to Me. Thus you will be freed from the bonds of action (whose) fruits are auspicious (or) inauspicious. Released, (with) the self-yoked by the Yoga of renunciation, you will come to Me."[1] The goal thus surpasses good as well as bad karma, and thus ethics, as the world itself must be renounced in terms of being attached to it for a person to be liberated. This does not mean non-action, according to the Gita; rather, renunciation means non-attachment to consequences of actions. The embodied soul/self is to do one’s duty in actions without being concerned about the results. Krishna also advocates meditation, as well as bhakti-yoga, the path of offering love by infusing each activity with love of Krishna and all creatures.

The inclusion of "whatever you give" includes offering in devotion to Krishna the fruits of one's labor (i.e., monetary compensation) yet without being attached to the consequences of our actions, including whether there will be a monetary bonus. Rather than desiring wealth, being duty-bound to perform one’s job and giving of one’s compensation to charity in devotion to Krishna and compassion to other people is the way to avoid accumulating bad karma from being greedy and ultimately to return to Krishna, and thus be liberated from any future rebirth (samsara).

The approach corresponds to the Christian social-ethic paradigm whose dominance replaced that of the one wherein having wealth is tightly coupled to greed, regardless of how the wealth is used.[1] That other paradigm is epitomized by Jesus’s saying that a rich person getting into the kingdom of God is like a camel getting through the eye of a needle (I have trouble even putting a thread through a needle’s eye). 

In the Gita, a devotee of Krishna can and in fact should fight in battle, and by implication, be a highly paid CEO of a company, but without being attached to the resulting fame and wealth, respectively. As in the “pro-wealth” (i.e., uncoupled) paradigm of Christianity, a devotee of Krishna does not have to renounce accumulating wealth, as long as at least some of it is given away in charity, in order to avoid serving two masters—Krishna and mammon. That Christian paradigm is, however, less strict because the Jesus-devotee does not have to be detached from the consequences of one’s work, including the prospect of getting a bonus. 

I submit, therefore, that the Christian “pro-wealth” paradigm is more suspectable to the onslaught of greed. This may be why Jesus in the Gospels is firm in demanding that the rich man give away all of his wealth to follow Jesus. It can be concluded that the susceptibility to succumb to greed is treated as higher in the “pro-wealth” Christian paradigm that in the Bhagavad-Gita.

---

1. Gita 9.27-28 in Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), p. 199.
2. Skip Worden, Godliness and Greed: Shifting Christian Thought on Profit and Wealth and God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.

On Absolute Truth in Hinduism: Impersonal Energy or a Supreme Person?

At Harvard’s Bhakti Yoga Conference in 2025, a man whose Hindu name is Kaustubha spoke on the three phases of ultimate truth: Brahman, Paramatma, and Bhagavan. Is the absolute truth an energy or a person? Is God a non-personal energy or a person. In Vedanta Hinduism, this is a salient question. According to Kaustubha, absolute truth is that which is not dependent on anything else; a truth from which everything else comes. Kaustubha defined Brahman as being impersonal energy, which is that from which everything else manifests. The Upanishads emphasize the realization by a person that one’s true self is identical to the impersonal energy of being itself that is infinite, aware, powerful, and blissful.  Although the Bhagavad-Gita can be interpreted thusly, as per Shankara’s commentary, but also as Krishna being the Supreme Person, which is more ultimate than Brahman. What gives? Who, or what, is on top in terms of ontological ultimacy (i.e., ultimately real)?

Vyasdeva wrote Srimad Bhagavatam, in which divine love is emphasized. He was trying to clarify the Hindu scriptures. For him, devotion includes knowledge of renunciation (i.e., Brahman realization). Also, devotion is not oriented to getting earthly things, such as wealth. Life should be used for enquiring into the nature of absolute truth. Vyasdeva’s answer: “Learned transcendentalists who know the absolute Truth call this nondual substance Brahman, Paramatma or Bhagavan.” These are three features of the one absolute truth, which is the source of all existence. We can know that truth in three ways. They are “qualitatively one and the same. The same substance is realized as impersonal Brahman by the students of the Upanisads, as localized Pramatma by the Hiranyagabhas or the yogi, and as Bhagavan by the devotees.”[1]

Paramatma is a manifestation of Vishnu in the human proverbial heart.  Bhagavan is in a personal form as the Supreme Person. Vyasdeva claims that “Bhagavan, or the Personality of the Godhead, and impersonal Brahman is the glowing effulgence of the Personality of Godhead. . . . (T)hose who are perfect seers of the Absolute truth know well that the above three features of the one Absolute Truth are different perspective views seen from different angles of vision.” Yet Vyasdeva contends in his text that Bhagavan is superior to Paramatma and Brahman. To be sure, he nestles realization of Brahman and Paramatma within the realization of Bhagavan. A person does not have realization of the Supreme Person (Bhagavan) without realizing Paramatma in one’s heart and without Brahman being realized at identical to one’s innermost self (atman).

Kaustubha interpreted Brahman realization as a person realizing that one is made of spiritual energy, and thus is in reality eternal, immutable, and one with the universe. In saying, “I am beyond desire,” a person has an evenness of mind. “I am spirit.” Paramatma realization too can be achieved by a yogi in meditation.  In this realization, a person might say, “I am in constant contact with, and under the shelter of the supreme consciousness, the cosmic intelligence, the soul of the universe.” That Supreme Soul exists within a person because it exists in one’s own heart. This divine Being is controlling the material universe, and is the dear friend of everyone. Brahman realization is included within this realization. In Bhagavan realization, a person might say, “I realize and love the supreme form of Vishnu, which has all-attractive names, forms, qualities and pastimes, and expands ultimately through its various energies and reciprocates with my love.” The material realm consists of three gunas; each one of these modes of energy, illumination, detachment, and destruction, has an influence on a person.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna’s recipe for not being attached to these gunas is devotion to the deity, Krishna.[2] But aren’t forms the opposite of Brahman realization, such that seeing beyond forms is necessary? Krishna answers that Brahman is one of that deity’s energies, so if a person is lovingly devoted to Krishna as the Supreme Person (i.e., Bhagavan), a person has Brahman realization too, so viewing Absolute Truth as personified in a form does not violate the non-dual quality of Brahman as impersonal energy. In fact, Kaustubha implied that devotion to Absolute Truth as Krishna, the Supreme Person (and thus the highest deity in the Hindu polytheistic pantheon), is better in resulting in a person being compassionate to other people than is Brahman realization, wherein a person’s true self (atman) is known to be identical to the infinite impersonal energy that pervades (and is) reality.

In Srimad Bhagavatam, Vyasdeva asserts, “The most advanced devotee sees within everything the soul of all souls, the Supreme Person. Consequently, he sees everything in relation to the Supreme Lord and understands that everything that exists is eternally situated within the Lord.”[3] So, a “devotee who faithfully engages in the worship of the Deity in the temple but does not behave properly toward other devotees or people in general is called a prakrta-bhakta, a materialistic devotee, and is considered to be in the lowest position.”[4] Such devotees, Kaustubha claimed, are not devotees because they do not recognize the divine apart from the Supreme Person.  Hypocrisy comes with this. In contrast, a sincere devotee “shows mercy to ignorant people who are innocent and disregards the enmity of those who are inimical towards them.”[5] Compassion toward all naturally emanates from having loving compassion in devotion to the Supreme Person. That is, regular religious experience that is sincere automatically renders one more compassionate to other finite beings. I submit that such a mechanism is more efficacious than is intention to put a religious teaching into practice by being compassionate to other people because we have various inclinations that can eclipse any intention.

Is it the case, however, that Bhagavan realization, in which the devotee’s love is directed to Krishna as the Supreme Person qua ultimate reality, is better than Brahman realization in resulting in people being compassionate to other people? I contend that Bhagavan realization is indeed superior because the currency of compassion is in a person’s bhakti relation to the deity already. In contrast, knowing Brahman—that a person’s self is really the same as the impersonal being that supports the created realm as a floor of sorts—does not in itself include compassion. Rather, it is by realizing that we are all the same because we are all basically the same “substance” as Brahman that the implication is reached cognitively and through meditation that we should be compassionate to other people. In other words, an experiential, extratextual realization of the identity of individual and infinite being is not itself compassion; rather, the exercise of compassion should follow from the realization. Even if this happens automatically rather than by intention, which is admittedly possible, compassion is not in the realization itself, whereas compassion is in bhakti devotion to Absolute Truth in a personified form. This is the idea.

Such a conclusion is not necessarily generalizable to reach Kaustubha’s claim that Bhagavan realization is superior to Brahman realization, for it has not been shown that Absolute Truth reduces to (or is epitomized by) compassion. For example, Brahman realization may be superior to bhakti yoga in terms of not suffering from being attached to the desire for objects in this world. Furthermore, Kaustubha’s hierarchy of realizations flies in the face of his preachment on religious toleration. A person who values compassion most may prefer Bhagavan realization, whereas another person who is primarily concerned with not suffering may prefer identifying intellectually and experientially with Brahman. Even if the latter is considered to be one of Krishna’s energies (and thus that the Supreme Person is more real than even Brahman), encapsulating the divine in a human form is, as David Hume points out, highly anthropomorphic (i.e., positing human characteristics onto non-human things or animals). As Nietzsche might say, it is human, all too human, to view Absolute Truth in our own terms. It is much more difficult, Hume maintains, to grasp divine simplicity without hanging recognizable forms on the transcendent. Furthermore, that Brahman is one of Krishna’s energies may defy the nature of Brahman itself as that which even the creation of the gods comes, as Brahman is out of which everything that exists comes, is sustained, and ends. It may be asked nonetheless if a better means of showing compassion as caritas seu benevolentia universalis to everyone isn’t worth some anthropomorphism if that is necessary to get compassion “up front” in the process of realization itself such that compassion may more automatically flow out, with other people, fellow devotees or not, as the referents.

---

1. A.C. Bhaktivedenta, Purport to Srimad Bhagavatam 1.2.11.
2. See the Bhagavad-gita, 14.21-27.
3. Vyasdeva, Srimad Bhagavatam (11.2.45-47).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.