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 (8th 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.
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.
