Hegel looked at human history
as developing through dialectics resolved at a more advanced point in a
trajectory of expanding human freedom. It may be in the history of religion
that less superstition evinces an evolution of a different sort. The monotheism
of the Abrahamic religions came out of a polytheistic context, but it is a more
difficult matter to claim that monotheism represents a development of human
religion historically because polytheism has continued. Even though some contemporary
interpreters of Hinduism’s main text, the Bhagavad-Gita, claim erroneously
that the god Krishna being the supreme deity in that text means that it is
monotheist even though in that text, Krishna himself acknowledges that people
pray to other gods and goddesses that exist. Rather than maintain that monotheism
is an advancement on polytheism, I submit that conceptual contradictions
between contending religious claims in any religion can be surmounted, as transcended,
though with the caveat that in polytheism, contradictions have a firmer
grounding even though they too are to be transcended if religion itself is permitted
to evolve.
In chapter 5 of the Gita,
Krishna tells Arjuna that dispassionate action is superior to renunciation:
“the Karma-Yoga is better than (mere) renunciation of action.”[1]
In the next chapter, Krishna essentially redefines renunciation as the action
of a person “who performs the action to be done, regardless of action’s fruit.”
Such a person is “a renouncer and a yogin.” In contrast, a person who
“is inactive” is not a renouncer.[2]
In short, action (which is not motivated by its consequences) rather than
inaction is renunciation. This flips the concept on its head. In the Gita, Lord
Krishna wants Arjuna to fight rather than to renounce fighting relatives in the
civil war, so the deity simply redefines renunciation to hinge on motive or
intention rather than conduct (or lack thereof). In the Christian Gospels,
Jesus says something similar regarding lusting itself rather than only actually
having sex outside of marriage. Such an interiorization of religion may be a
step in the evolution of that domain such that intention, not only what a
person does, matters.
Lord Krishna’s
conceptualization of renunciation conflicts with the conception of the word in Advaita
philosophy, in which renunciation means abstaining from as much action as
possible; meditation, rather than performing dutiful action even in battle is
Shankara’s preference. To that famous Advaitan philosopher and theologian,
Brahman, which is infinite being, is more ultimate than is any deity, including
Krishna in the Gita. So, Shankara advocates meditating on Brahman rather than bhukti
devotionalism to Krishna. Both regarding the different conceptions of renunciation
and whether ultimacy is infinite being or a Supreme Person (e.g., Krishna in
the Gita), compromise is elusive and perhaps impossible. That different strains
of thought and even conflicting claims exist in a religion is difficult for us
to accept even if the history of a given religion shows us how the differences
arose. If Brahman is one, as both Shankara and Schopenhauer affirm in their
respective writings, and if the existence of several deities in a polytheistic
religion is possible rather than self-contradictory, then would it not be
appropriate for religious leaders to gather to select one among conflicting claims? In Christianity, this occurred in the Council
of Nicea in 325 CE.
On the other hand, the insistence
on consistency may be premised on the exclusive existence of only one deity,
which applies to the Abrahamic monotheist religions but not to a polytheistic
religion such as Hinduism. Different perspectives, and even contradictory
claims, may be consistent with the existence of several deities, even if one of
them is supreme over all of the others. In the Gita, for instance, Krishna claims
to be the supreme deity, which, by the way, is different than stating that among
gods and goddesses that are worshipped, only Krishna exists. In the Gita,
Krishna does not make this claim, even where he claims to deliver the goods
when people petition other Hindu deities. In ancient Greco-Roman polytheistic
religion, deities fought with each other, so even contradictory beliefs among
the faithful would make sense. In polytheistic Hinduism, however, Advaitan
adherents who follow Shankara’s theology, Brahman as the ultimate one over even
Krishna in the Gita means that contradictions are illusionary rather than real.
Even the deities are not real, according to Shankara.
Even in the Gita, Brahman itself,
including the consciousness (i.e., general awareness) that being itself
has (or is), transcends pairs of opposites. After Krishna asserts that a
person “who does not hate or hanker after (anything) is to be known as a
perpetual renouncer,” that deity states, “For, without (the influence of) the
pairs-of-opposites, [such a person] is easily released from bondage.”[3]
By implication, Brahman transcends pairs-of-opposites too. Indeed, yogins
whose “defilements have dwindled, (whose) dualities are destroyed,
(whose) selves are controlled, (and who) delight in the good of all beings” reach
“extinction in the world-ground.”[4]
Transcending dualities in the world ultimate results in one’s very self (atman)
no longer being a distinct entity in Brahman. Therefore, contradictions even in
scripture are surmountable. Moreover, as the example of the nineteenth-century
Hindu mystic Ramakrishna illustrates, scripture itself can be
transcended by genuine religious experience even in ritual, such as in devotion
intensely directed to a deity. If so, not only cognitive contradictions, but
much more could be transcended if religion on the human side develops further.
1. Gita 5.2 in Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita: A New
Translation (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), p. 149.
2. Gita 6.1. in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita,
p. 157.
3. Gita 5.3 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 149. I have changed
Feuerstein’s use of brackets to parentheses because in quoting Feuerstein’s
text, I use brackets to add words to those which Feuerstein has written. This
is consistent with Feuerstein having used brackets to add words to the text he
was translating. I submit that this is a legitimate exception to the general
rule that that which is quoted should be quoted as is, including the
punctuation marks in the text.
4. Gita
5.25 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 155. Italics added to
certain English words.
