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.

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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.

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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.

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