Hindu Mysticism: On Ramakrishna’s Transcendent Devotionalism

In his religiosity, Ramakrishna (1836-1885), a Hindu mystic and priest at temple of the goddess Kali, the goddess of death, drew on the Bhakti (devotee), (Advaita) Vedanta, and Tantra aspects of Hinduism, as well as on Islam and Christianity to a much lesser extent, toward his goal of realizing God, which can also be put in terms of achieving self-knowledge of one’s true nature (atman). In the Bhavagad-Gita, Arjuna demands to see the god Krishna as he really is, but Krishna has to hold himself back, showing himself in (human) bodily form, albeit with a myriad of heads. Even a distended form such as this is too much for Arjuna. Moreover, ignorance cannot take in reality or awareness itself without it being adorned in anthropomorphic (i.e., having human characteristics) ornaments that Hume discusses in his Natural History of Religion. Krishna’s promise in the Gita is relevant, in “that, through His Maya, He will assume a human body and manifest His powers whenever religion declines, and will help [people] to obtain peace.”[1] It is through illusion that a deity assumes the likeness of a human form because seeing a deity’s essence in Brahman is simply too much for mere mortals.

The full essay is at "Hindu Mysticism: Ramakrishna."

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1.  Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna: The Great Master, Jagadananda, trans. (Madras, IN: Sri Ramakrishna Math Mylapore, 1952), p. 16.

Taoist Climate Change on Halloween

In the midst of the intensification of the very polarized and thus divisive U.S. presidential campaign “season” (i.e., year) during its last week, Halloween of 2024 occurred in Boston, Massachusetts not only without the need of trick-or-treaters and their parents to wear winter coats, but also with the option of wearing shorts and short-sleeve shirts without even having to wear a light jacket. That this was so as late as 8pm was nothing short of surreal not only to New Englanders, but also to any transplants from the northern-tier Midwestern and Plains states.  It being around 70F degrees well into the dark hours was nothing short of unprecedented, and so much so that the negative impact of the cold climate in detracting from the holiday in prior years could finally be grasped. I had realized this more than a decade earlier when I was in Miami during Halloween. There is indeed a silver lining to global warming for people living in places that are cold during the late fall, winter, and early spring seasons, even as contrary to political correctness it is to admit this even to friends. The proclivity of the human mind/brain to divide up the world in terms of dichotomies of mutually-exclusive, antagonistic poles does not necessarily fit with empirically with the real world. Taoism speaks to this.

The full essay is at "Climate Change on Halloween."

The E.U.’s Parliament and the U.S.’s House of Representatives in Dialogue

On November 1, 2024, “All Saints Day” in Roman Catholic Christianity, the E.U. announced that a peaceful delegation of the elected representatives of the EU’s Parliament would be travelling to Texas during the following week to “meet American counterparts,” which is to say, a delegation of the elected representatives of the US’s House of Representatives.[1] The key word here is counterparts, for the European Parliament is indeed of the same type of legislative body and at the same level in its federal system as is the American House of Representatives.

The full essay is at "The E.U.'s Parliament and the U.S.'s House."

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1, Peggy Corlin, “MEPs Seek First Contact with Trump or Harris Regimes in Texas Next Week,” Euronews.com, November 1, 2024.

Be Fruitful and Multiply

John Locke claimed that “the main intention of nature” is “the increase of mankind and the continuation of the species,” the “preservation of all mankind” being a “law of nature.”[1] Centuries later, Locke’s assumption that an increased population necessarily makes the preservation of the species more likely could be challenged in a way that he could hardly have imagined. The human population reached 8.16 billion at the end of 2023, as compared with only 2 billion of our species having been alive in 1900. The exponential increase of energy-consuming organic hominoids has undoubtedly been a cause of the increased carbon emissions arising from human sources, and therefore of climate change in the Anthropocene. The biblical permission to be fruitful and multiply may have come from an eternal source (i.e., Yahweh), but that the divine decree is to be applied regardless of the size of the population as well as the impact that the human imprint is having on the environment, including the climate, is, I submit, a faulty and foolhardy assumption to make in the twenty-first century. The decree in the biblical narrative could be interpreted as a mandate that the Hebrews, freed from slavery in Egypt, follow to fully occupy the promised land.  Empirically, it may even be time for humanity to take stock of its increased numbers globally.

The full essay is at "Be Fruitful and Multiply."

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1. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, P. Laslett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), First Treatise, sec. 59 and Second Treatise, sec. 7.

Faith Seeking Understanding: On Religious Experience beyond Divine Marriage

On October 24, 2024, Pope Francis released his encyclical, Dilexit Nos (“He Loved Us), on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the letter, he recounts “Saint Gertrude of Helfta, a Cisterian nun, tells of a time in prayer when she reclined her head on the heart of Christ and heard it beating.”[1] She wondered why the Gospel of John does not describe a similar spiritual experience, and concluded that “the sweet sound of those heartbeats has been reserved for modern times, so that, hearing them, our aging and lukewarm world may be renewed in the love of Christ.”[2] The pope concludes in the letter that this might hold for our times too. I contend that Gertrud’s spirituality can speak to the current modern age, in which that of Gertrud—the thirteenth century—hardly seems modern, but not in terms of focusing on Jesus’ resurrected heart; instead, Gertrud can point us beyond the limits of marital-union imagery with Jesus to experience that transcends the use of imagery that may say more about us and our world than that which transcends even the limits of the human imagination. Turning to the criticisms of Gertrud’s spirituality (and intelligence) by Thomas Merton and William James, I intend to salvage Gertrud in order to uncover her spiritual maturity.

The full essay is at "Faith Seeking Understanding."

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1. Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos, October 24, 2024, para. 98.
2. Ibid.

China Castigates the E.U. on Taiwan

“Act prudently.” This was the warning addressed to the E.U. by China’s president Xi after the European Parliament voted 432 to 60 on October 24, 2024 on a resolution urging China to immediately cease its “continued military operations,” “economic coercion,” and “hostile disinformation” directed at Taiwan.[1] Whereas in the West, warning by shouting and slamming a fisted hand on a tabletop may be viewed as signaling vehement protest, the relative soft-spoken, be prudent connotes a very serious threat. The early twentieth-century U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt, would likely miss the force of Xi’s intent to retaliate against the E.U. should it interfere with China on Taiwan. If my reading of Xi is correct, (and this may seem a leap), then the world coming to grips with constructing a global order commensurate to address global risks, such as climate change, starvation, and war in a nuclear age will face entrenched resistance in departing from the noxious principle of absolutist national sovereignty that has stymied collective, multilateral action. How dare you even hint that you will encroach on China’s sovereignty! This is essentially what President Xi was saying. Even in the post World War II global order of sovereign nation states, China’s claim that its sovereignty includes Taiwan is dubious, which in turn can be taken as evidence that resting the global order on the sovereignty of nation-states is problematic. In short, that principle allows for over-reaching without accountability.

The full essay is at "China Castigates the E.U. on Taiwan."

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “’Act Prudently’: China Slams E.U. Parliament over Taiwan Resolution, Warns of Red Lines,” Euronews.com, October 25, 2024.

Facing a Hot and Hostile Planet

On October 24, 2024, Tjada McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, and formerly in the Obama administration working on global hunger, spoke at Harvard on wars, hunger, and climate change then going on around the world. The pandemic had been a setback. In a world of pandemics, climate change, war, and hunger, there is no us and them. Lest this utopia be taken too realistically, 200,000 more people worldwide were hungry after the pandemic than before it. Since 1946, the highest number of state conflicts was in 2023. It was then that Russia invaded Ukraine and Israel decimated much of Gaza. In 2024, the UN’s high court found both aggressors to be violating international law, but they continued undeterred and with impunity. In the context of an epic crisis of displacement of civilians, with 339 million people globally having to rely on humanitarian assistance in 2024, the impacts of climate change exacerbated hunger and conflict in several states, especially in Africa. I contend that a serious obstacle was systemic, specifically in an antiquated global order relying on an absolutist interpretation of the sovereignty of the nation-state. Even the E.U. was not immune.

The full essay is at "A Hot and Hostile Planet."

Strengthening the E.U.’s Border Competency: Implications for Federalism

In politics, it’s not a bad idea to consider the impact on the system of government in formulating, voting on, and enacting laws and regulations. It is not enough to make sure that relationships with political donors are not impaired. Nor, in a federal system, is it enough to look at the implications regarding either the state or the federal level. I contend that the implications for the federal system itself should be formally and informally considered. In the context of the E.U.’s difficulty with securing its borders even after facing unprecedented migrants entering by boat or even walking in the early 2020s, it is understandable that representatives elected by E.U. citizens and sitting in the European Parliament would try to shore up a federal response, given that in the last quarter of 2024, some state officials took action at state borders in violation of E.U. law. Undercutting federal rule-of-law is a good way to trigger a collapse of a federal system, especially one that had only existed for decades rather than centuries.

The full essay is at "Strengthening the E.U.'s Border."

The Resurrected Body of Jesus: A Viable Launching Pad for Mysticism

Gertrud of Helfta (1256-1301) was a Christian nun whose sensitivity to mystical experience can be characterized as a bridal mysticism within a Christ mysticism. Think of Christ; turn yourself over to Christ. She brings in the related theme of light, which is salient in the Gospel of John, with Christ saying, I am the light of the word. Yet her mystical sensitivity was such that she could transcend even Christ’s resurrected body, which can be said to have been her favorite mask of eternity through which love, which, as Paul and Augustine had claimed, is God. This does not mean that the mask is finally tossed aside as somehow erroneous; rather, it is to say more generally that people who have an enhanced sensitivity to the mystical in a religious, or transcendent, sense, are oriented to going beyond God in our likeness to experience God as wholly other—as radically transcendent—and thus leave oneself behind.

The full essay is at "The Resurrected Body of Jesus: Mysticism."

Russian Vote-Buying: Compromising International Law and Moldova in the E.U.

As if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were not a sufficient reason for Moldovans to vote in a referendum in 2024 to align the country’s constitution with accession into the E.U. as a state, which would entail the government of Moldova giving up some sovereignty, Russia felt the need nonetheless to buy off votes to hinder Moldova from statehood. That the pro-statehood vote won, albeit ever so slightly ahead, given the purchased votes, can be interpreted as an indication that a significant majority of the half of the eligible voters probably wanted Moldova to accede. That the vote tally did not reflect this, whether through vote-buying or disinformation, damaged both Moldova’s accession legitimacy and that of the E.U. itself. Moreover, international law’s lack of enforcement can be inferred from the sheer scale of Russia’s monetary and political invasion of Moldova. The importance of enforcement is precisely because bullies tend to overstep repeatedly rather than just once. They can smell a lack of enforcement from many miles or kilometers away.

The full essay is at "Russian Vote-Buying in Moldova."

Eternal You: AI after Death

The documentary, Eternal You (2024), is one film that zeros in on the use of AI to contact loved ones who have died. As the marketing departments of the tech companies providing these products say, AI can deliver on what religion has only promised: to talk with people beyond the grave. Lest secular potential buyers be left out, AI can provide us with “a new form of transcendence.” Nevermind that the word, transcendence, like divinity and evil, is an inherently religious word. Nevermind, moreover, that the product is actually only a computer simulation of a person, rather than the actual person direct from heaven or hell. The marketing is thus misleading. In the film, a woman asks her dead husband if he is in heaven. “I’m in hell with the other addicts,” he answers. She is hysterical. Even though people who write computer algorithms cannot be expected to anticipate every possible question that AI could be asked and every response that it could give, government regulation keeping the marketing honest and accurate can significantly reduce the risk that is from AI’s use of inference (inductive) and probability that are beyond our control to predict and even understand. 

The full essay is at "Eternal You."

Love as God Loves Us: Embodying Inconvenient Compassion

I contend that compassion is an automatic byproduct of having shut out the outside world for a time to experience transcendence in its religious sense (i.e., reaching beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and emotion). Such experience as prayer, for example, or meditation can result in a heightened sensitivity in perceiving the world, including things and other people who are in proximity. Such sensitivity where other people are being perceived can illicit compassion to them. It is the bracketing experience itself, away from our daily life, rather than what is being prayed about or meditated on that triggers the generalized sensitivity and thus the enhanced readiness or inclination to feel compassion where it applies. I submit furthermore that with some beliefs regarding how God in the Abrahamic religions views us creatures in Creation, we mere mortals can assume to some degree the perspective that, given how God is depicted in scriptures, God would or does have in watching us in our own little worlds.

The full essay is at "Love as God Loves Us."

A Hindu Goddess Destroying and Recreating Other Hindu Deities: Contrasting the Christian Trinity

The Saundarya Lahari characterizes the Hindu goddess, Devi, as being the power behind the proverbial throne—meaning the thrones of the three main deities, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Without Devi bestowing her power on those (and all other) gods, they would “return to their primal, dormant state” until revived by the power that Devi wields as signified visually by the weapons that she holds.[1] Are those deities merely dormant, however, or are they destroyed when Devi withholds her power? For there is an appreciable difference between being rendered impotent or inactive, and being zerstört (i.e., destroyed). In Greek mythology, one thing that distinguishes the gods from morals is that of the two, only the gods cannot die. In Christianity, Jesus Christ survives the death of his corporeal body, which is transformed in the bodily resurrection on Easter in a way that would have perplexed Plato. Indeed, it is interesting to compare the Trinity with the relation of the foundational goddess Devi to the three main gods in the Saundarya Lahari, a poem doubtlessly written by a devotee of the goddess.

1. The quoted text is from Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 160.

The full essay is at "A Hindu Goddess vs. the Christian Trinity."

October 12th: Happy Vikings Day!

I contend that the ideological war being waged in the United States by the 2010s over whether October 12^th should be “Indigenous People’s” Day or Columbus Day became real in 2021 when President Biden issued a proclamation commemorating “Indigenous People’s” Day not coincidentally to fall on the same day as Columbus Day. Similarly, though only unofficially, the United American Indians of New England have labeled Thanksgiving Day as “The National Day of Mourning” since 1970. The de facto hegemony of ideology in changing official U.S. holidays, including in the refusal of some people and even businesses to say “Christmas” even on Christmas Eve Day, has proceeded without the premise that ideology should play such a role being debated in public discourse. Instead, the onslaught has been enabled by the vehemence of the conquerors in insisting that their decisions be recognized and not contradicted. Once I went to a Unitarian “church” on a Thanksgiving expecting a spirit of gratefulness, as per President Lincoln’s proclamation establishing the date of the holiday after two years of brutal war between the CSA and USA. The sermon was instead on the need for sorrow instead. I walked out, shaking my head in utter disbelief. Perhaps some Americans might one day insist that a similar mood be preached in churches on Christmas Day. Both the need and insistence come with a tone of passive aggression, and are indeed power-grabs based in resentment, which Nietzsche argued is a major indication of weakness rather than strength, and thus self-confidence. Perhaps the manufactured dialectics, such as the one centered on October 12^th, can be transcended in a Hegelian rather than religious sense at a higher level.

The full essay is at "October 12th: Happy Vikings Day."

Starbucks Bucks Its Workers’ Labor Union

Even though more than 500 Starbucks shops had unionized by the end of 2024, it seems that the company’s management did not respect the new union very much. Unfortunately for the company, one implication that can be drawn is that the company’s management didn’t respect federal labor law very much too. For in not respecting its union enough to negotiate it on reducing employee work hours, the company violated federal law. The “smoking gun,” I submit, was that the management used dissimulation to respond to the government, rather than address the complaint directly.

The full essay is at "Starbucks Bucks Its Workers' Labor Union."