Renunciation vs. Dutiful Action in Hinduism

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.

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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.

Sikh Ethics on Netanyahu

Israeli state officials met on August 7, 2025 to debate Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan to expand the presence of the IDF, Israel’s military, to include all of the territory in Gaza, which had been under Israeli occupation anyway for many decades. With Gaza already under Israeli occupation, characterizing Netanyahu’s plan as being “to conquer all or parts of Gaza not yet under Israeli control” is strange.[1] Similarly, mischaracterizing the E.U. as a bloc even though that union has the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial is odd. The media’s artful way of reporting is without doubt superficial relative to Netanyahu’s unvirtuous decisions and their respective consequences to which the labels of genocide and holocaust have justifiably been applied around the world. Behind the relevant vice lies an extreme egocentricity that the ethical theory of Sikhism describes quite well, even to the level of ontology or metaphysics.

Netanyahu’s office released a statement claiming that the prime minister’s plan to station armed Israeli troops throughout the occupied territory is a way to “further achieve Israel’s goals in Gaza.”[2] Excluded was any compassion or even thought for the well-being of the residents of Gaza, as if no such responsibilities are entailed in being an occupier. I contend that the vice of wrath lies behind the egocentricity of the statement, and that this vice in turn is predicated on the supposition that anyone opposing one’s self-interest or that of one’s side is merely an object and thus can be used to further one’s own aims. This duality flies in the face of a metaphysic of Oneness, wherein everyone is connected rather than separate. This is none other than the Sikh theory of the five vices being sourced in haumai.

That Netanyahu’s wrath is egocentric can be gleaned even from how he treated opposition within the IDF as being easily expendable, as if the Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir were merely a puppet for the prime minister to toss away the moment Zamir showed pushed back publicly on Netanyahu’s plan. Zamir suggested “that the plan would endanger the lives of the [Israeli] hostages and further stretch Israel’s military.”[3] “That prompted Netanyahu to say in a post on X that if [Zamir] objected to the plans, he could resign.”[4] Ouch! Zamir stated that the IDF would “continue to express our positions without fear, in a substantive, independent, and professional manner,” and puppets, which are mere objects, do not behave as such. In other words, Netanyahu’s hasty reaction evinces or points back to an egocentric perspective in which other people are objects rather than other human beings, whom, Kant wrote, should, as rational beings, be treated as ends in themselves rather than merely as means. This applies even to the starving, emaciated 2 million humans still alive in Gaza, whom the Israelis are puppeteering to fight like dogs over scant food-drops.

Kant’s ethic against treating other rational beings as mere objects is also in the Sikh religious ethic, which is useful here in describing Netanyahu’s mentality and what it implies metaphysically. The Sikh ethic actually focuses on five vices, each of which is sourced in haumai. “Fundamentally,” according to Keshav Singh, “haumai is a kind of false conception of oneself as singularly important, and correspondingly, a false conception of the world as revolving around oneself, as a world of objects there for one’s use.[5] At its extreme, haumai is “a kind of ethical solipsism: an inability to conceive of anyone or anything but oneself as an ethical subject.”[6] In other words, Haumai “is a kind of false conception of oneself as singularly important, and correspondingly, a false conception of the world as revolving around oneself, as a world of objects there for one’s use. Vice, then, comes down to the failure to recognize the importance of others. The corresponding picture of virtue is that virtue consists in a recognition of the importance of others.”[7] Whereas virtue is related to the “recognition of an ultimate reality on which all are One,”[8] haumai, and thus each of the five vices that are sourced in it, involve the illusion (maia) of separateness wherein only oneself (or one’s group) counts as significant.

Sikhism makes the leap from ethics and ontology/metaphysics to theology in viewing the One as divinity and not just as real. “The Divine, in Sikhism, is conceived of as absolute and all-encompassing, and is often referred to as literally (the) One. . . . the Divine as a kind of all-encompassing unity.”[9] A unity that grounds everything, rather than everything being divine (i.e., pantheism), is not reality per se, but pertains to what is ultimately real. It is important, I submit, to distinguish ontology and metaphysics from the sui generis, or unique, domain of theology. In Sikhism, “enlightenment consists in experiencing ultimate reality, thereby merging with the Divine,” whereas “haumai creates a duality between self and other, cutting one off from ultimate reality and preventing enlightenment.”[10]

So if it seems like in going to such an extreme as committing a genocide and even a holocaust, Netanyahu and his cadre have lost touch with reality, Sikhist ethics would say yes because viewing and treating people as objects is inconsistent with the Oneness whose unity makes duality wherein only oneself is significant (and a human being) an illusion. In this regard, Sikhism is in line with Shakara’s non-dualist Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism wherein the soul of every people is in essence Brahman, which is infinite being.

It only remains for us to identify the specific Sikh vice that pertains to Netanyahu, for once known, it can be related back to raumai, which is predicated on the metaphysical illusion (or delusion) of duality between oneself and everyone else. That vice that is most salient in the dogmatic mentality and actions of Israel’s prime minister and his cadre of high officials is krodh, which, as appetitive wrath, is “a kind of vengeful, consuming anger” that is not righteous anger at injustice.[11] In the Sikh scripture, SGGS, is written, “O wrath, you are the root of strife; compassion never rises up in you.”[12] This definitely applies to the Israeli troops going ultimately from orders from Netanyahu. Instead, of any mercy and compassion, krodh is a“vengeful appetite that controls people like puppets.”[13] This can be seen even in how Netanyahu lashed out at Zamir when he resisted being merely a puppet. As for Netanyahu’s underlying motivation, meaning being even more motivating that his desire to make the Palestinians in Gaza suffer and even die, it is worth observing that krodh “manifests haumai” in that “the wrathful person wants to hurt others to improve his own status or make himself feel better. In this way, he views others as mere objects, and considers only the importance of his own inward-facing desires.”[14] 

Singh’s comment that self-interest is one way of understanding haumai is in my view too generous; selfishness, wherein benefits are intentionally excluded from other people (unless, as a byproduct, oneself benefits) is more apt. But even selfishness does not account for using other people as objects absent any compassion or mercy. Maimonides’ point that the Abrahamic deity, or “God,” can judge a mentality so bad in terms of sin that God removes even the possibility of such a person asking God for forgiveness. Hence Yahweh hardens Pharaoh’s heart in the Book of Exodus. So too, it seems, that deity has hardened Netanyahu’s heart. Divine wrath can be understood to be a reaction to krodh sourced in haumai and evinced so horrifically as by government officials persecuting a genocide or holocaust on millions of other human beings.

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1. Gavin Blackburn, “Israel’s Security Cabinet Debates Expanding Gaza Operation Despite Opposition,” Euronews.com, August 7, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Keshav Singh, “Vice and Virtue in Sikh Ethics,” The Monist, Vol. 104 (2021): 319-36, p. 320.
6. Ibid, p. 321.
7. Ibid, p. 319.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 321.
10. Ibid., p. 322.
11. Ibid., p. 326.
12. Ibid., p. 326 (1358 in SGGS).
13. Ibid. p. 326.
14. Ibid., p. 326.

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." 

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.

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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.

Transcendence in Action in the Bhagavad-gita

Chaitanya Charan spoke at Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025 about action and transcendence in the Bhagavad-gita. Arjuna faces adversity even though he is a good. That life is suffering is a Noble Truth in Buddhism. Why noble? Even suffering can be ennobling. That life can be unfair is a given in the Gita. Getting less than we think we deserve can be from our bad karma in a previous life. So, we can’t really know what we actually deserve, so it is important to accept results. They aren’t in our control anyway, whereas our present karma is. So, the advice is to be committed to doing your best in acting, but with detachment on whatever results from the action. I contend that detachment from pride and especially arrogance goes automatically with the transcendence of detachment from not only the results of one’s actions, but also from the created realm itself, which by analogy looks smaller and smaller as the planet Earth does from a spacecraft on the way to the Moon.

Acceptance and commitment to acting lead to transcendence, spirituality goes from being an anchor to being an airplane. In terms of bhukti devotion, Krishna is the higher reality. As a person grows spiritually, the deity becomes more important and the world’s importance becomes less. Transcendence is a matter of being more oriented to “another reality” than to the world, and thus such a person might seem to be not fully “here” in conversations with other people. Differing somewhat from Charan’s interpretation of the Gita, I contend that the higher “reality” in the Gita can be understood to be a deity itself, as in bhukti devotionalism, or, as Shankara claims in his commentary on the Gita, reaching the higher reality can be thought of as an ongoing realization that a person can have that one’s self (atman) is really the very same as brahman, which is conscious, limitless, powerful, and blissful being. In bhukti (i.e., devotion to a deity), according to Charan, a deity as a higher reality that is to be the primary focus even while the person is committed to actions in the world.  Charan pointed out that bhukti devotion does not mean that a person should not be fixed on a goal, for a goal is held before acting whereas results are afterward.

In the Gita, according to Charan, Arjuna is initially perplexed. If he does not fight, disaster on the battlefield would be likely because the other side, which has unjustly cast out Arjuna and his brothers from a share in rulership, would win. If Arjuna does fight, he might kill his teachers and even one of his grandfathers. The Gita is essentially a call to action; the philosophical basis for acting is not the point in the Gita. Act, but with detachment from whatever results. Act with wisdom; act with a higher consciousness, which, means transcending attachment to things of the world to a higher realization.

Whether in being oriented to Charan’s bhukti higher reality personified as Krishna or Shankara’s impersonal brahman, that the process of transcending the world shifts a person’s orientation such that the world looks smaller and the higher reality looks larger is decisive in Charan’s view of spirituality gained from having studied and meditated on the Gita text. He did not mention, however, the compatible idea that a natural or automatic sense of humility is an important inherent byproduct of shifting (and then holding) one’s primary focus to a reference-point that is by definition, according to the Christian theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius, beyond the limits of human thoughts, perception, and emotions. Even in the realization that one’s atman is identical to brahman, a person’s ego cannot be front and center if the reference point (i.e., brahman) is not sourced in and thus limited to the world in which we live (i.e., the created realm, whether it is created by brahman or Krishna). Being limitless is a quality of brahman. 

Human beings are so steeped in pride (i.e., the presumptions of ego, as if deserving to be on stilts during a flood) that the byproduct of having a qualitatively unique kind of orientation (i.e., in terms of religious transcendence) is crucial not only to being able to be at peace, but also for interpersonal relations to be so as well. A focus on Jesus or the kingdom of God can serve the same purpose for a Christian even without taking into account the leitmotif of humility in the Gospels. In fact, that humility is a byproduct of maintaining a transcendental orientation even while performing actions in the world and relating to other people is especially valuable precisely because intending to be humble can be such a weak motive in human nature. I suppose that relying more on a natural byproduct of a distinct kind of orientation than on an intention to have the byproduct itself as a quality may be Taoist in nature. In other words, it may be more natural to human nature to assume an orientation to a transcendent referent point or entity than it is to try to be humble, given the gravitas of the human ego.  This is not to say that valuing humility highly as a virtue is not another means by which a person can be naturally humble.

Integrating Our Humanity and Divinity

Dayal Gauranga spoke at Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga conference in 2025 on how spirituality can complement psychology in the healing of past traumas. He explicitly related religion/spirituality and psychology; my question is whether he succeeded, and if so, what put him past the finishing line. I contend that even though at times his use of spirituality lapsed into psychology (i.e., conflating the two domains by psychologizing spirituality), at the end of his talk he related spirituality to truth, which is not within the purview of psychology. By truth, I mean religious truth, rather than, for example, 2+2=4.  I contend, moreover, that disentangling religion from other domains by plucking out weeds from other gardens so to be able to uncover and thereby recognize the native fauna in the religious garden, as well as pulling the religious weeds that have been allowed to spread other gardens is much needed, especially in a secular context. It is with this in mind that I turn to analyzing Gauranga’s spiritual-psychological theory of healing oneself of traumatic wounds.

Gauranga began his lecture by discussing two patterns that inhibit spiritual development. One is struggling with everyday human experience because of childhood conditioning, ego, and unresolved wounds.  The second is engaging in spiritual bypassing by using spiritual practice to avoid pain rather than transform it. Transforming hurt into a sense of wholeness requires a person to integrate one’s spiritual dimension with one’s embodied (i.e.,, materialist) daily experience.

The process of overcoming the obstacles begins with identifying unresolved psychological pain, even if it is due to a wound from long ago in childhood. Gauranga’s main point is that spirituality can be used in the healing process; it is not only psychological. What, then, is spirituality? One view is that it is the understanding of, connecting to, and living as our authentic self, which is not material. I believe he had Advaita Vedanta in mind here. A person is not one’ bank balance, one’s insecurities, one’s job title, etc. Rather than leave these things behind, the task is to integrate them with one’s spiritual dimension. In Vedanta meditation, the key lies in getting in touch with one’s self not as ego and definitely not as the id, but, instead, as a one’s seat of consciousness. I contend that the seat goes beyond being conscious of things, including one’s own personality and desires. By a person getting in touch with one’s seat from which one is conscious of even oneself as an embodied creature, Gauranga claims that it is possible to turn inward in compassion to heal the wounded parts of oneself, such that the person can be restored to wholeness, which includes being spiritually connected to other people. Gauranga cleverly brought up the notion of a cybernetic system, such as a thermostat in a house that regulates heating and cooling, that responds to external stimuli and returns to a homeostatic state of equilibrium. If the temperature in a house gets too high, the thermostat is triggered to bring the temperature back down to the temperature-setting. Human beings have such a system internally; we can return from unalignment to spiritual wholeness.

It seems to me that by drawing on the theory of Gregory Bateson in his Steps to an Ecology of Mind, our species can, if it has the will, enable the planet’s carbon dioxide thermostat to function to being the atmosphere and oceans back to equilibrium. Whether that includes our species may depend on how long until, or even if, we will it collectively, as a species, and back up our will with political power. Bateson theorizes the maximizing, schizogenic forces, such as our species is described by Agent Smith in the film, The Matrix, can piece ecologizing forces that are oriented to equilibrium. Perhaps in terms of psychology, the human psyche has both types of forces instinctually. Gauranga’s point can be interpreted as adding that the ecologizing forces that are part of a person’s mind can involve spiritual wholeness, which the schizogenic self-maximizing force of the mind as ego can, unfortunately, knock off kilter, and thus off from equilibrium.

Gauranga applies his notion of spiritual wholeness both to a person and to one’s interpersonal relations. In both respect, compassion plays a key role. It is precisely in being compassionate to one’s wounds from past trauma that one self-heals. I contend that this does no obviate the need for psychoanalysis by a trained psychologist. In fact the defense mechanisms that can even come to be imbedded in one’s personality can become so engrained that therapy is needed for a person to be able to recognize them. A person could then apply compassion to those internal distorted mechanisms too. Once psychologically and spiritually healed, and thus rendered mentally and spiritually whole, a person is freer internally to be compassionate in one’s interpersonal relationships and external spiritual connections.  

In short, we can discover and reconnect to our inherent sense of self, and thus compassionately relate to the parts of us that have been wounded by past traumas. In other words, a person can integrate one’s body, psyche, and spirit and thus be whole. Krishna’s first and final advice to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-gita is to surrender and fear not. From a standpoint of less fear, a person can approach one’s spiritual connections in the world with broader compassion, as in Augustine’s notion of benevolentia universalis.

Recognition of one’s own spirituality and materiality/biology includes reconnecting with one’s body in the present moment, rather than in recalling past trauma. Spirituality does not lie in forgetting that we are embodied, which includes the brain. Then can come recognition of the mentally and spiritually wounded parts of oneself and the related psychologically protective defense mechanisms, relating to those parts of oneself with compassion and curiosity. By this means, a person can release and repair those burdens so to be able to return to the deeper self and free up one’s connection to the sacred. That is, a person’s spirituality can be a means by which recurrent pain from past trauma can be healed. Having sketched Gauranga’s theory of healing, I now turn to the question of whether his theory adequately distinguishes spirituality, and thus religion, from psychology. From the standpoint of the religious “garden,” I want to pluck out weeds from other gardens to be able to find what is distinctly and uniquely religious in the theory.

Inherent spiritual being, which is one’s own self below all the crap, is not reachable by a cognitive process, which, Gauranga claimed, is psychology. This may be a reductionistic claim, however, as psychology involves emotion. The pain from past traumas is itself emotional rather than cognitive. Presumably psychotherapy includes a patient feeling unpleasant emotions rather than merely thinking about or analyzing them. Reducing psychology to cognition is thus problematic. Gauranga’s claim that psychology is limited to the mind is more fitting, if the mind is understood to include the biology of the brain. Cartesian mind-body duality can by the twenty-first century be shown the door thanks to natural science. Gauranga asserted that a person’s authentic self (atman) goes beyond the reach of a person’s mind. Certainly atman lies beyond the stench of ego, but Gauranga was saying something else: using the mind to cognitively know one’s self at its very foundation or ground falls short. To be sure, because the mind (i.e., concentration) is used in meditation, which is oriented in Vedanta Hinduism to realizing one’s ultimate self as identical to brahman, distinguishing psychology from spirituality is not so clear. However, experiencing “pure” consciousness as being itself as a person’s real self can be said to transcend the mind because thoughts are arrested as the person is just aware of one’s being. To be aware does not mean that the mind is aware of anything other than awareness itself. Having focused on a repetitive mantra, prayer, scriptural passage, or divine attribute in a bhukti (i.e., lovingly devotional) way, the human mind can suddenly just stop, and just be aware. A person is then simply part of awareness, which as universalized is brahman. The person is not thinking about lunch, Krishna, Jesus, or even oneself, for thinking itself has stopped. Even the passage of time is not noticed. In this respect, spiritual experience does not reduce to, or even include, psychology because both thoughts and emotions have stopped.

Gauranga is on less firm ground in asserting that compassion towards a person’s own psychological wounds is spiritual in nature. Compassion is a virtue in philosophical ethics. Furthermore, David Hume asserts that sympathy, which can give rise to compassion, is involved in making a moral judgment regarding other people’s motives and acts. Lastly, Freud posits the psychological existence of not only the the id and ego, but also the superego, the latter of which is in a mind saying what the person (or another person) should think, feel or do. Freud’s concept of the superego, which is psychological in classification, is very close to compassion. To wit, I should be compassionate, and you should be compassionate.

Therefore, compassion itself cannot be claimed to be distinctly spiritual even if it is a byproduct of the realization experientially and cognitively that one’s real self is identical to brahman, which is infinite being that is conscious, powerful, and, according to Ramanuja, blissful as well. To be sure, compassion is no stranger to religion, as the personifications as Krishna and Jesus illustrate. Compassion is part of what Gauranga called “spiritual connection.” I’m sure he would agree that such connection is not the same as what is described in social psychology textbooks. In this respect, it is crucial that he brought in the notion of (a) higher being as being foundational to spiritual connection. Whether as one’s real self as being realized as identical to the transcendent, inherently unmanifest brahman, or as a deity such as Krishna, including a transcendent extratextual referent distinguishes spirituality as qualitatively different from psychology, and even as unique, as sui generis.

Interestingly, religions in which religious belief is important have a harder job in claiming that spirituality is distinct from Gauranga’s cognition-delimited notion of psychology. Spirituality can be distinct even from a more expansive definition of psychology. A “straw-man” is not needed for religion to survive the modern onslaught of psychology. Neither must psychology set up a merely “straw” definition of spirituality to resist its encroachments! The saying of politicians that everything is political also gets at the maximizing (schizogenic) nature of human domains. In claiming sovereignty or rights to wholeness, religion too can be understood to schizogenic rather than ecologizing. From the standpoint of other domains, the hyper-extended right of sovereignty that religion claims stops at its borders. This does not invalidate the distinctly religious meaning, which would represent an overreach onto the territory of religion by schizogenic forces in another domain.

The key, I submit, to Gauranga’s claim that spirituality is distinct from psychology lies in the type of referent that anchors a person’s spirituality. In asserting that “any real healing includes the spiritual self as a healing agent” as distinct from the psychological self (i.e., the mind), Gauranga added that “reconnecting to the truth of what we are is spiritual” rather than psychological in nature. Truth. In including that word, Gauranga successfully supported his claim that spirituality is distinct from psychology, for the latter domain does not include making truth claims, just as history too cannot. Faith narratives are not historical accounts, whether in authorial intent or written content, for drawing on historical events (and adapting others rather than merely adopting them) is not the same as writing a historical account.

In being oriented to one’s true self (atman), and as being identical to brahman, or to loving Krishna or Jesus compassionately, especially in extratextual experience that goes beyond thinking over specifical scriptural passages, a person’s yearning for distinctly religious truth is not within the realm of psychology. Crucially, religious truth is based beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (i.e., emotion), according to the sixth-century Christian theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius. In chapter 11 of the Bhagavad-gita, the vision that Krishna provides for Arjuna of Krishna transcends Arjuna’s cognitions of Krishna’s divine attributes. As Gauranga noted in concluding his talk, Krishna’s last advice to Arjuna is not to be afraid. The vision in the Gita overwhelms and perplexes Arjuna’s mind.

Therefore, the incorporation of truth, as in a person’s true self, or as a transcendent being (i.e., a deity) that is believed to be the Supreme Person and thus ultimately real renders spiritual connection distinctly religious and not just the quality of garden-variety compassion. Even revelation must travel into our realm as through a smoky stained-glass window, according to Augustine. Rather than arriving untouched through inert human nature as pristine, Augustine’s view can be put in terms of the recognition that what we know, perceive, and feel regarding religious truth inevitably must pass through our biochemical processes, which include even our use of reason (i.e., ratiocination). Simply put, even though religious truth is eternal, not material, and infallible, no person alive as embodied qualifies (i.e., not counting souls in heaven or liberated individual selves) for these divine attributes. Even so, a human instinctual (even genetic) urge to yearn for a reference-point that is transcendent may exist even though the referent transcends instinct. Rather than bypassing the psychological work that must be done to heal trauma, acting on such an urge by meditation, bhukti, ritual, or prayer can provide a transcendent sense of grounding that can fortify distinctly psychological therapy and self-healing. Spirituality and psychology can work together without falling into each other, or one conquering the other. 

Interpreting Scriptures: On Referential Realities beyond the Text

In Christianity, Paul wrote that if the resurrection of Christ Jesus didn’t really take place, then faith is for naught, but he also wrote that faith without love is for naught. The assumption that if Jesus was killed and raised historically speaking, why be a Christian, has had much greater currency than the assumption that if a person is not kind and compassion in heart and deed to people who have been insulting or have damaged the person, that person is not really a Christian. In short, the value of the religious meaning in the New Testament has typically been assumed to depend on the extratextual (i.e., beyond the text of the Bible) existence of Jesus. Using Vedanta hermeneutics (i.e., method of interpreting a text) in Hinduism, I argue that the assumption is incorrect. This is not to make a historical claim one way or the other regarding Jesus or Krishna; rather, I want to claim that the religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making the assumption that the reality described therein exists beyond the text. Although hermeneutically based, this argument may sway attention back to religious meaning itself as primary, including in regard to engaging in pious actions.

In Hinduism, Mimamsa and Vedanta commentators “’restain’ extra-textual reference within the overarching frame of the text, which is not replaced by knowledge, even if the object of knowledge remains ‘outside the text.’”[1] To be sure, the Brahma-sutras “could lend itself to the idea that the Upanisads communicate various authors’ intentions and point to a reality beyond the text.”[2] This is problematic because “external reference to impermanent realities threatened ultimately to undercut the posited eternity and permanence of the sacred text itself. The system had to be nonreferential, meaningful in itself, and expressive in that meaning, in order to be protected from a changing and unpredictable world.”[3]

What about positing of imperishable, and thus permanent realities as existing outside the text? Doing so would not undercut the posited eternity and permanence of a sacred text itself, but it would mean that such a text is referential and thus not meaningful as a system within itself. Also, is not such a positing of something existent outside of the text necessary for the extra-textual component of the hermeneutic (or else the meditation is just on abstract knowledge)?  Both the Mimamsa and Vedanta schools presuppose that “text and performance—meditational or sacrificial—imply, reflect, and instigate one another.”[4] Perhaps it can be said that the meaning in the text is primary in the textual hermeneutic, whereas the extra-textuality reality is primary in the extratextual portion of the Vedanta hermeneutic. Hans Frei, who wrote in his Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative that neither form nor historical criticism should eclipse the religious meaning of a religious text. In other words, Frei holds that asking about “the historical Jesus” and whether different authors, each having their own agenda, contributed to a text gets in the way of giving the meaning of a religious story enough air to breath in a reader’s heart and mind.

 I wonder if questions concerning reality beyond a text and being referred to textually should also be bracketed so not to eclipse the meaning that is in the text. And yet, the Vedanta project “is permanently about the reading and use of texts, and about brahman as an extratextual reality communicated through texts, without either the text or the reality being thereby rendered superfluous.”[v] Perhaps the question is whether a text alone (bracketing extratextual praxis) can only allow for the nominalist rather than a realist assumption as regards the reality being described or discussed textually.

It may be that making the realist assumption—that the reality described in a text really exists outside the text—makes sense, for why would an author claim writing a text that a reality has meaning if that reality doesn’t really exist outside of the text. On the other hand, making a nominalist assumption keeps the focus on the text itself, whose religious meaning is primary in a hermeneutic. Put another way, even if brahman or Krishna do not exist beyond the meaning in a text, the textual religious meaning can still have value. As Victor Frankl discovered, the human need for meaning can be felt in even very dire circumstances. Distinctly theological or religious meaning can sooth a troubled heart or mind even if God doesn’t exist beyond the text. The textual meaning is real in that it is hardly illusory and can have an effect on people without having to approach a text as a realist rather than as a nominalist. This is not to say that the realist assumption is never the correct assumption to make; rather, it is to say that the validity and usefulness of religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making that assumption. If so, and because we mere mortals cannot be certain whether an extratextual reality exists as it extends beyond the limits of our thoughts, perceptions, and emotions, religious meaning gleamed from a religious text ought to be primary in interpreting one and the basis upon which a religious practitioner acts, whether in worship or interpersonally in daily life.

In Christianity, for example, being compassionate to people whom the Christian doesn’t like or who don’t like the Christian should not depend on whether the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus occurred historically and even metaphysically. Even as a textual illustration, the Passion Narrative has meaning and thus value, which can be put into practice regardless of historical and metaphysical questions. Selfless love as to a detractor or even a hated or hateful enemy as a means to entering a different spiritual condition (e.g., the kingdom of God) has its own meaningfulness and value both in itself and as put into practice. Both Paul and Augustine wrote that God is such love. In Vedanta Hinduism, brahman itself can be grasped as identical to an person's self (atman) in experientially meditation, which, though extra-textual, is based on concentrating on the meaning of a scriptural passage. 

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1. Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text: Vedanta as Philosophy and Commentary,” in Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed., Jeffrey R. Timm (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), p. 56.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 58.
5. Ibid., p. 61.

On Hindu Metaphysics

At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025, Anuttama spoke on metaphysics as a spiritual reality. He argued that the nature of that reality is a personality—that of the Hindu god Krishna. I contend that Vaishnavism also contains an alternative depiction of reality, which is impersonal rather than a deity. The difference may come down to whether compassion or being that is conscious, infinite, and blissful is primary.

Anuttama claimed that there are four primary views of reality, his favorite being the fourth. Firstly, there is the view that the universe has a material cause (rather than being created by a deity). This view can accommodate humanitarianism, though also hedonism. Another view holds that there is a deity, but then it can be asked, why is there so much suffering in the world? Thirdly is the view that the world is just an illusion, and we should realize this. The film, The Matrix, is based on this view. Also consistent with this view is the belief, “I am a deity and the universe,” and it is just an illusion that we are mortal, limited creatures.

The fourth view is that of Vaishnavism. There is a supreme reality, and that is the Supreme Person, which is the deity Krishna, and we are immortal. There is no death and ultimately no rebirth. Also, a person can have a relationship with that highest reality, and a person counts in that relationship. The idea is that there is a deity and a person can have a relationship with it, and the divine personality is with the person at every moment. There is reaction (karma), but hell does not exist. Suffering comes from the choice to have pleasure apart from that relationship. Also, suffering serves a purpose: to help us realize the importance of the relationship. The purpose of life is to reawaken that relationship.

Being oriented to a relationship with Krishna can make our relationships with other people less selfish, which means that even interpersonal interactions can be more spiritual than materialistic. Even in business, a proprietor can be less exploitative of labor and even customers by looking at the long-term rather than to make a quick profit. In short, we can spiritualize this world by recognizing how compassionate Krishna is, and in being oriented to that, we can infuse compassion in our relationships with other people.

Turning now to analysis of Anuttama’s theology, Shankara’s (8^th century, CE) Advaita Vedantism can be evoked by way of a contrast ironically to delve more deeply into Anuttama’s Vaishnavism. Whereas bhukti yoga, in being devotional, is based on there being a Supreme Person (i.e., Krishna) as the ultimate reality, Advaita (non-dualist) Vedanta posits the impersonal brahman as the ultimate reality, while Krishna (Vishnu) is a manifestation (i.e., an appearance created by brahman) rather than being itself real. "According to the Upanisads, brahman is the highest reality and reference point for all meaning, and ultimately for salvation as well."[1] Even in reaching liberation from the cycle of rebirths (and heaven), knowing brahman not only cognitively but also as realized experientially as a person focuses one’s consciousness on one’s being, understood to be one’s true self (atman) and also identical with brahman, which is being that is conscious and infinite (and Ramanuja adds “bliss”).

Even Vaishnavism has been characterized in a way that makes brahman seem more real than is Krishna. For example, Britannica describes Vaishnavism as the belief that “absolute reality (brahman) is manifested in Vishnu, who in turn is incarnated in Rama, Krishna, and other avatars.”[2] The verb, manifests, is what implies that Vishnu, and thus Krishna, come out of that reality rather than instantiate it. Putting brahman in parentheses is to state that it is absolute reality.

Anuttama would undoubtedly reject Britannica’s description of the relationship between Krishna and absolute reality (as brahman).  Anuttama would doubtlessly type the word, “Krishna,” in parentheses or even erase the word brahman to convey the idea that a deity, or Supreme Person,” is that which is absolutely real. Similarly, Ramanuja interprets chapter 7 of the Bhagavad-gita as affirming that Krishna is ontologically higher than brahman, whereas Shankara reverses the arrows in his commentary because in non-dualist philosophy (i.e, Advaita Vedanta), only brahman is real whereas both creation and deities are merely manifestations in the realm of appearance.

Furthermore, because Anuttama states that Krishna is known to be compassionate, and this is how a person’s relationship with the deity can rub off on interpersonal relations, the metaphysics of Vaishnavism may actually be that it is compassion itself that is ultimately real. In bhukti devotion to Krishna, a person may really be loving compassion itself, which manifests as a deity (i.e., personified). If so, then the disagreement between Vaishnavism theology and Advaita Vedanta philosophy boils down to the precipitate of either compassion or being (which is infinite, conscious, and powerful).[3] Which is more real than the other, and is the winner the ultimate or absolute reality such that no third candidate could possibly usurp the esteemed title?

Brahman is not just infinite being, for Shankara holds that it is conscious and powerful.[4] Can it be that being that is aware is compassion (or compassionate)? Creating the world could then be understood as an act of compassion; certainly, brahman cannot have a desire out of some lack. Rather, the power of unlimited being becomes kinetic in manifesting itself in creating. Differing from the Advaita philosophy, Ramanuja adds bliss as a quality of brahman. Can being itself that is infinite, aware, powerful, and blissful be innately compassion(ate)? We are closer, I think, by adding Ramanuja’s bhukti theology (i.e, that brahman is bliss, which not by accident is conducive to personifying ultimate reality as a deity) to reaching an identity relation between brahman and compassion (similar to how Shankara emphasizes the identity of atman and brahman).

A person who has bliss is more likely to be compassionate than is an unhappy miser. Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol illustrates this point. When Scrooge is blissful on Christmas morning after being visited by three ghosts, he is suddenly compassionate to his employee and his nephew, whose Tiny Tim would die otherwise. By virtue of being blissful, Scrooge has become an avatar or personification of compassion in the story. Jesus in the Gospels is also a personification of compassion, whose root there is love (i.e., agape seu benevolentia universalis). Perhaps in his philosophical theology, Shankara meant to say, Don’t get too carried away with the personification; it’s what’s inside—the essence—that counts. Christians could take a lesson in this respect.

Therefore, by using Ramanuja as a bridge of sorts, Krishna as being essentially compassion itself can be understood be blissful brahman exercising its unmanifest power. This is not to say, however, that being itself is compassion. Rather, in attempting a reconciliation of the metaphysics of bhukti Vaishnavism and Advaita Vedanta, compassion can be reckoned to be implied as a quality of brahman. It is infinite, conscious, powerful, blissful, and compassionate, but this is not to say that the essence of brahman is compassion.

That the Advaita Vedanta philosophy claims that brahman has a few specific positive qualities is crucial to being able to construe brahman as compassion. To put this another way, the essence or “substance” of brahman must be compassion for the reconciliation to be complete. To contend that being itself, which is everywhere that exists, absent the qualities of consciousness, power, and bliss, is essentially compassion is a much more difficult claim to argue; the positive qualities that being has in Advaita Vedanta make the job easier. Also, to want existence to be compassion is not to say that existence is compassion. Thirdly, to claim that brahman compassionately creates the world is not to say that brahman is (in essence) compassion. Even saying that being blissful, brahman is naturally compassionate does not get us to an identity relation between brahman and compassion, but we’re getting closer. The argument needs to be that being that has the Advaitan positive qualities (as well as the negative qualities, such as imperishable) is compassion. I’m not there yet. Perhaps the key is recognizing that the realization of brahman is not only by studying a text such as the Upanisads, but also in an extratextual [i.e., experiential] process of realization, such as by meditation on positive and negative qualities of brahman. It is not so “that brahman can be thought about in general, under a composite form constructed by harmonizing all Upanisadic texts. Rather, it [i.e., the nature of brahman] presumes an irreducible, ongoing act of reading, remembering, and combining texts, in which the extratextual and full nature of brahman modifies how we read texts with their many distinctions.”[5] Translated into Christian terms, the extratextual element can be thought of as praying on a biblical passage rather than just studying it.

For example, in meditating on certain qualities of brahman, a person might feel compassion generally but intensely, meaning not directed to a particular deity or person. Not having directionality, the compassion would be experienced as compassion itself. Because the experiential context is the experience of the identity-relation of one’s own true self (atman) and brahman, the meditator might conclude that compassion naturally falls out from the experiential realization of identity of individual and infinite being, or is integral to it, and thus is the very essence of brahman, or at least quality thereof.

Assuming the relation of identity between brahman and compassion can be established, the two Hindu schools of thought might then want to argue over whether knowing or loving compassion (as brahman) is better, and more particularly, which is more conducive to a person being compassionate. Is being a brahman-knower or a bhukti devotee a better way to instantiate compassion in the very being of an individual self (atman)? Furthermore, perhaps it is in a person being compassionate to the extent that one can know or love one’s own essence/self as compassion that brahman, which is unmanifest, manifests its conscious bliss as power, all this being otherwise known to us as compassion. Maybe the beingness of conscious, empowered bliss is essentially compassion.

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1. Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text: Vedanta as Philosophy and Commentary,” in Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed., Jeffrey R. Timm (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), p. 47.
2. Britannica entry for “Vaishnavism”. Britannica.com (accessed March 21, 2025).
3. That these are primary qualities of brahman can be found at Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text,” p. 54.
4. That the vacuum of outer space can hold energy is one way of conceptualizing the latent power of being itself. Einstein’s famous formula relating energy to mass postulates that energy in space can spontaneously become mass, and possibility revert back to energy. That out of brahman, creation manifests, is sustained, and ends is consistence with the science. To my knowledge, no science backs up the idea that brahman, qua being, is conscious. Besides, positing awareness and a will, such that the creation of the world (and deities) is an act of will of impersonal reality is anthropomorphic; Hume would have a fit.
5. Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text,” p. 54.

Renunciation in Hinduism

The concept of renunciation in Hinduism has been subject to astonishingly different interpretations. Renunciation has been thought to necessitate meditation that one’s self is essentially the same as brahman, which is being itself, which can be realized by focusing on being conscious, or aware, without distracting thoughts and desires. This is Shankara’s position, whereas Ramanuja, who emphasized Bhukti devotion to the god Krishna, saw renunciation as detachment from desires without giving up action. Detached action or meditation. Which is preferred. In the Bhagavad-Gita, the former has the upper hand, but that does not mean that the text does not contain contradicting passages. It may that transcending contradiction lies above knowledge as well as renunciation in either of its meanings.

In chapter 5 of the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that dispassionate action is superior to renunciation. Regarding renunciation and Karma-Yoga, “the Karma-Yoga is better than (mere) renunciation of action.”[1] In the next chapter, Krishna essentially redefines renunciation as pertaining to 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.[2] In short, not only is karma-yoga better than renunciation of action, the latter but not the former is actually renunciation. This is antithetical to Advaita philosophy, so it is difficult for me to conceive of how it and Gita 6.1 can be reconciled, but why must everything be reconciled in a religious text, a faith-narrative, if it contains different paths that lead to the same end even though they jostle for supremacy over the other means? Historical and form criticism pale in comparison to resisting the temptation to eclipse the distinctly religious meaning in a faith-narrative. Hans Frei, in Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative, advocates focusing on the meaning while reading and studying a religious text. This approach was arguably the Yale hermeneutical theology, Brevard Child’s canonical method notwithstanding, during at least the last few decades of the twentieth century.

Even though Frei’s hermeneutic is applicable even to Hinduism, positing one, consistent religious meaning onto the Gita may actually be but a gloss imported from the Abrahamic religions in place of what are actually several distinct, even contradictory religious meanings. Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances may be apt in describing the relations thereof, but even that notion does not account for contradictions. Foisting one consistent religious meaning on a text may also be a projection of the rationalist reader rather than being in the text itself. Lest such a reader be disappointed, liberation (moksa) can be said to be a Hegelian synthesis at a higher level than either interpretation of renunciation. Brahman itself, including the consciousness (raw awareness) that being itself has (or is), transcends pairs of opposites, whereas the Gita itself does not.

To be sure, that text does point beyond its internal contradictions, and thus itself. After having Krishna assert that a person “who does not hate or hanker after (anything) is to be known as a perpetual renouncer,” the author has that deity state: “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, a person’s atman (self) being in reality the same as Brahman. 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, which is being itself. Even the apparent contradiction in that which has been extinguished being in being is transcended by a yogin.

Hence, a scripture itself can imply that the pairs-of-opposites within it can be, and in fact actually are, transcended by enlightened readers. Moreover, as the example of the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Ramakrishna illustrates, scripture itself can be transcended by genuine religious experience, such as in devotion to a deity. It is a pity that literalist religionists hold such people back in what Nietzsche calls the ressentiment of the weak who foist, “Thou shalt not!” to beguile the strong, free-spirits from confidently exercising their innate strength. Breathing in bad air can compromise a person’s vitality. Whether or not to apply philosophical texts in interpreting religious texts is just one instance of the tension, the strong being bold in drawing on what is for others exogenous material.

In Gita 6.8, Krishna lauds the yogin whose “self is satisfied with knowledge and worldly knowledge.”[5] Is he referring respectively to scripture and secular book-knowledge? If so, then the earlier verse in which Krishna states that certain “ascetics of severe vows” offer “material-objects as sacrifice, austerity (tapas) as sacrifice, Yoga as sacrifice, and knowledge (gained from) study as sacrifice” seems to be contradicted.[6] But not everything listed is exogenous to religion, as yoga is included. Furthermore, Feuerstein claims that the compound svadhyaya-jnana “could possibly be translated as ‘book knowledge,’ but the phrase could also mean ‘knowledge and study.”[7] Especially the latter translation does not in itself exclude the study of a scriptural text, such as the Upanishads or the Gita. I may have projected the contradiction that exists in historical Christianity, wherein Paul eschewed the knowledge of Athens and yet Augustine and Aquinas drew copiously on Plato and Aristotle, respectively (though not completely respectively). Drawing on Eliade and Geertz, it may be said that knowing the otherness of the other requires bracketing (époché) one’s own background.  Adding Nietzsche, it can be said that a sufficient strength of will-power is necessary to master the seemingly intractable instinctual (innate) urges of egotism.

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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.
5. Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 159.
6. Gita 4.28 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 143.
7. Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 143n29.

Is the Bhagavad-Gita Compromised?

Compared with Shankara’s non-dualist Advaita Vedanta theology, the Gita can be interpreted as a compromise between Shankara’s view and Vedic practices—essentially, between renunciation and ritual being done to get something. By this I do not mean to imply that the Gita is morally compromised; rather, I am using the word in the sense of reconciling different priorities and even relating seemingly disparate branches of a religion. In the Gita, Lord Krishna advises Arguna to fight in the upcoming military battle with equanimity as to the outcome, for attachment to desire and distancing pain both accrue karma, which in turn delays liberation. Prime facie, to be unconcerned with winning, or gaining economically, is morally superior to egoist pursuits. Superior to detached action may be the option not to fight or get rich at all, but instead to view the created realm as illusory and distance oneself even from being a doer or agent; earn enough to survive and otherwise try to come to know that one’s self is Brahman, which is Being itself, as conscious, bliss, and infinite. In straying from this, the Gita is not without problems.  

Firstly, Malinar describes karmayoga as “self-control through action that allows [a person] to act without experiencing any consequences.”[1] Is experiencing the right word, or is the phrase, being attached to, more accurate? In other words, does experiencing go too far? Malinar quotes from the Gita (3.7): “he who checks the senses with his mind and then practices self-control in action using his faculties of action without any attachment, he stands out.” To check or constrain one’s senses is not sufficient to sever one’s experience of external stimuli, including that which results from one’s actions; rather, the restraint both in mind and actions is enough to keep attachment at bay. Indeed, Malinar claims that the purpose of karmayoga is “acting without attachment.”[2] To be unattached is to experience without desiring precisely that which is experienced, even the consequences of one’s actions.

Secondly, Malinar claims that in chapter 3 of the Gita, “the prakrti concept of Samkhya philosophy is used to explain why ‘doing nothing’ is an illusion.”[3] In contrast, Shankara holds that action is illusory because the world is also illusory, whereas renunciation enables a person to get in touch with the reality that one’s individual atman is Brahman. Malinar appears to reject outright or relegate Shankara’s interpretation, perhaps according it breathing space only in chapter 2 of the Gita (v.s 11-38). In ch. 3, Malinar points out, Krishna demands, “’Carry out the ordained acts, since action is better than non-action,’ and he adds that ‘the journey in the body’ (sarirayatra) does not succeed without action. This extended, Samkhyistic meaning of karman remains the basis of much of the BhG.”[4] It may perhaps be countered that just because we must act while we are embodied in this world of scarcity does not mean that karmayoga is superior to jnanayoga as a means to liberation. Shankara admits that even ascetics must act that their sustenance needs are met, and, moreover, that such limited activity does not compromise the route of renunciation. Furthermore, just because the law of karma presupposes that all of us desire happiness does not mean that we all seek liberation (moksa). In fact, to the extent that seeking liberation (from suffering, karma, and even ontological illusion) is superior to seeking garden-variety happiness, it follows that the preponderance of the Gita is oriented to the inferior path simply because more readers are oriented to it. 

Thirdly, Malinar states that the verses (10-13) in chapter 3 of the Gita on the origin of the sacrifice ritual are in contrast with “the interpretation of sacrifice current among the followers of the Veda.”[5] I wonder if the dichotomy is not overdone here, for in the verses that Malinar quotes are the words, “will give you the desired enjoyments.” It is difficult to square such wording with what in the Gita is the exclusive function of religious ritualized sacrifice: “the cosmogonic function of sacrifice as being an integral part of creation.”[6] In other words, it may be difficult to fit with this function the claim that sacrifice “guarantees the prosperity of those who participate in [the ritual] through its retributive, reciprocal structure (parasparam).”[7] So too, the claim that “no mutual profit would be possible” unless “the separated spheres of gods and men meet, but are also kept apart” seems to go beyond ontology to include cattle (i.e., an increase in worldly goods, or wealth).[8] Sustaining “the order and orderliness of creation as a realm of mutual dependence and reciprocal relationships” is arguably more distinctly religious in nature than is the Vedic consequences of increased profit and wealth, for there are also non-religious ways of gaining the latter. Also, that a person should eat “the leftovers of a sacrifice”, according to ManuS as per Malinar, may imply that the intent in ritually sacrificing should not be oriented to personal gain.[9] It is not as with the ancient Greek priests who were allowed to eat the best portions of the cooked sacrificial animal rather than having to leave the best for a god or goddess, such as Zeus, Apollo, or Athena. I suspect, however, that Malinar’s choice of wealth-oriented words is merely unfortunate rather than suggestive of any such earthly consequentialism. Support for this interpretation comes from Malinar’s claim that “the performance of ritual is not primarily regarded as a way to fulfil one’s desires, but is turned into an occasion for proving one’s yogic detachment.”[10] Also, in discussing the word lokasamgraha, Malinar states that “the ultimate purpose of ritual action . . . does not serve primarily to achieve a goal or fulfil desires, but to contribute to the maintenance of cosmic order.”[11] The word primarily allows for some seepage in what otherwise would be a clear dichotomy between the sacrificial ritual as interpreted in the Gita and in the Vedic sources. In the Gita, doing one’s own (or one’s caste’s) social duty, or dharma, is not for the fruits of action, as the proper attitude is one of equanimity concerning pleasure and pain; rather, one is doing one’s part in holding the social order and primarily the cosmos together.

Fourthly, in its description of the wheel of ritual sacrifice, the Gita appears to contradict Brahman being the foundation qua being and consciousness, and even bliss in the sense that Brahman cannot be dependent on anything else, and cannot even be in relation to objects as a subject. As quoted by Milinar, the relevant passage in the Gita is, “and brahman arises from the ‘indestructible’ (aksara [the syllable Om]). Therefore the ubiquitous brahman is forever founded in the sacrifice (yajna).”[12] Prime facie, it is not clear that something that is “forever founded” arises at all. Buitenen’s explanation that the words brahman and aksara both refer to brahman, but can it really be said that being itself has two senses without having to admit that brahman is a composite? Regarding sacrifice as the foundation of brahman, Malinar points to the word, pratistha as “a ‘ground’ on which something established there can unfold and function.” Brahman depends on sacrifice to become “manifest and effective.”[13] Although the dependence is not so as to exist, as being and consciousness, to say that brahman depends on anything deprives it of its bliss and its situs as a foundation that does not even depend on creation, which, according to Shankara, is illusory anyway. It is as if brahman were already the basement floor of a house, and yet somebody would prefer to refer to whatever is below that floor as the real foundation of the house. To say that a house rests on dirt and thus it is the foundation of a house is not at all what construction contractors are referring to when they refer to the house’s foundation; typically, “laying the basement” is considered to be making the foundation. If how brahman manifests is a corruption of being rather than its foundation, then sacrifice depends on brahman, rather than vice versa. In short, to point out as Malinar does that “sacrifice is the cause of brahman” seems to go against the eternal essence of brahman.[14]

Fifthly, in the presumably causal partial series, “Creatures arise from food, food arises from rain, rain arises from sacrifice, sacrifice arises from (ordained) action (karman),”[15] two distinct kinds of relations are present. Creatures do not arise from food, and food from rain, like rain arises from sacrifice. Whereas the first two causal relations are in the domain of science, the third is religious in nature. To treat the entire (partial) series as if the links were qualitatively homogenous is to ignore the sui generis quality of the two domains involved in the series. People may be misled in supposing that rain arises from sacrifice in a scientifically causal sense, and that the role of food-stuffs in the growth of a biological organism is religious in nature. Such category mistakes can be occasioned by such conflations and the over-reaching of one domain onto the turf of another. Such errors have impeded greater human understanding not only of science, but also religion.  For instance, applying an empirically causal mechanism to “rain arises from sacrifice” forestalls progress in uncovering the distinctly religious nature of the relation.

In short, to the extent that chapter 3 of the Gita contradicts the previous chapter with respect to action and knowing Brahman, and thus with Shankara’s Advaita Vedantan emphasis on coming to know that an individual’s self is really Brahman rather than even a doer, the attempt at compromising with the Vedas karmayoga, and even devotion to a deity (bhukti) contains downsides. This is assuming that internal consistency in a religion is something of value. Of course, not attempting to relate disparate aspects of a religion and compromise different priorities has its own downsides. Perhaps in final analysis, we are human, all too human, so we do the best that we can in comprehending the religions that we have been left by people who have long since died. Doing the best we can may not solve every puzzle or reconcile every strand, but demarcating the domain of religion, and thus distinguishing it from other domains, is something that I contend lies within our ken.

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1. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 79.
2. Ibid., p. 81.
3. Ibid., p. 79.
4. Ibid., p. 81.
5. Ibid., p. 82.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 83.
10. Ibid., p. 84.
11. Ibid., p. 87.
12. Ibid., p. 84.
13. Ibid., p. 86.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 84.