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.

The full essay is at "Renunciation vs. Dutiful Action in Hinduism."

COP30: Is Symbolism Enough Amid Climate-Change?

With the U.S. fed up and only 100 governments left willing to attend COP30 in Brazil on combatting carbon-emissions and the related global warming, the question of whether the basis of the annual conference, voluntary compliance, is sufficient and thus should be enabled by the staged meetings. Even to continue to have the conferences annually can be viewed as part of a broader state of denial, given that the 1.5C degree maximum for the planet’s warming set at the Paris conference a decade earlier was by 2025 universally acknowledged by scientists to no longer be realistic; the target would almost certainly be surpassed. It is in this context that any progress from COP30 should be placed.

The full essay is at "COP30." 

On Arjuna's Vision of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita

In chapter 11 of the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna reveals his real form to Arjuna. The chapter seems like a departure from the surrounding chapters, which focus on bhukti (i.e., devotion to Krishna). For example, in chapter 9, Krishna gives Arjuna the following imperative: “Always think of Me and become my devotee.” Unlike seeing the deity as he really is, sincere devotion to that which is based beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion is possible without being given “divine eyes.” The metaphysically, ontologically real is an attention-getter in the text, but it is the devotion, or bhukti, that is more important from a practical standpoint. Even theologically, the experience of transcendence, of which the human brain is capable, can be said to be more important than “seeing” divinity as it really is because the latter, unlike the former, lies beyond our grasp. In fact, seeing Krishna as he really exists is not necessary, for in chapter 10, Krishna says, “Here are some ways you can recognize and think of Me in the things around you [in the world].” This is yet another reason why the devotion rather than seeing Krishna as he really is, ontologically, should be the attention-getter in the Gita.

The full essay is at "On Arjuna's Vision of Krishna."

On Kindness to Detractors: Compassion Beyond Universal Benevolence

In late April, 2025, Richard Slavin, whose Hindu name and title are Radhanath Swami, spoke on the essence of bhukti at the conclusion of the Bhukti Yoga Conference at Harvard University. Ultimately, the concept bhukti, which translates as devotionalism directed to a deity, such as Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, refers to the nature of the human soul. The immediate context is selfless love, which is directed to a deity, and this context immediately involves extending universal benevolence to other people (and other species), and even to nature (i.e., the environment). After Radhanath’s talk, he walked directly to me. I thanked him for his talk and went on to suggest refinement to compassion being extended universally, as in universal benevolence even to other species. To my great surprise, he touched my head with his, which I learned afterward was his way of blessing people, while he whispered, “I think I want to follow you” or “You make me want to follow you.” A Hindu from Bangladesh later translated the swami’s statement for me. “He was telling you that he considers you to be his equal,” the taxi driver said. I replied that being regarded as that swami’s equal felt a lot better than had he regarded me as his superior, for in my view, we are all spiritually-compromised finite, time-limited beings learning from each other.

The full essay is at "On Kindness to Detractors."

Spirituality in the Workplace: Hindu and Christian Strategies

Mohan Vilas, a Hindu monk at Govardha Ecovillage, spoke at Harvard’s Bhakti Yoga Conference in 2025. He had gone from the world of financial derivatives to worshipping Krishna. Once he had fulfilled his “lower needs,” he looked for more. After obtaining a M.B.A. and while working in finance, he was hungry for knowledge beyond the world of business. So he studied ancient Vedic culture. His talk at the conference was on being an idealist surrounded by strategists. He addressed the question of whether the world allows individuals to practice virtue. Even when a person is not in a dysfunctional workplace or in a hostile society, the human mind struggles, Vilas said, to apply ethical virtues. Plato’s dictum that to know the good is enough do the good, and thus to be good, may be wildly optimistic, considering the instinctual force of urges in our nature to act immorally, even though other people are harmed as a result. It is even more difficult to get into a habit of doing good while “swimming upstream” in an ethically compromised workplace or an aggressive societal culture. An ethical Russian or Israeli soldier in the mid-2020s, for example, would have a lot of trouble refusing to bomb hospitals in Ukraine and Gaza, respectively, and, moreover, invading another country and withholding food so to starve an occupied group. Such a soldier would be intolerable to both Putin and Netanyahu, respectively. Vilas’s question is the following: What happens when a person who is good is put into a selfish society? Must an ethical person finally inevitably exit a culture that rewards narrow selfishness, passive-aggression and deception?

The full essay is at "Spirituality in the Workplace."

Hindu Dharmic Leadership

At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025, Ed Anobah spoke on dharma (right-acting) leadership as a means of making progress in solving societal problems using Hinduism’s spiritual tradition of bhukti (devotionalism).  Anobah based his talk on the book, Leadership for an Age of Higher Consciousness by D. T. Swami. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says that what great people do, other people follow. What constitutes healthy, impactful leadership? The ideal leader in Hinduism is also a great sage, like Plato’s notion of a philosopher king. Leadership that deals wholistically with the human condition by exemplifies the character of a leader, which does not mean that only highly educated persons can or should be leaders. Rather, “everyone is a leader,” potentially, and “we are all leading our own life.” Each of us is a leader potentially for other people on the interpersonal level. Each of us can inspire other people. Anobah claimed that certain universal principles of leadership can apply across the board. I submit that this view is vulnerable to being too utopian when it is applied in the business world. Being realistic as to possible practical difficulties and even limitations in applying dharmic leadership in business (and government) is advisable. Even there being different metaphysical assumptions can get in the way, practically speaking, as compassionate leadership runs up against the profit-motive in business. 

The full essay is at "Hindu Dharmic Leadership." 

Acting Morally: Bhukti Yoga and Kant Beyond Duty

At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025, a Hindu religious artist whose Hindu name is Srimati Syamarani, spoke on the art of spiritual life. A person is like the hand of Krishna. The hand puts food in Krishna’s body, so the entire body is nourished. The hand serving the body is a duty. So too is following the type of bhukti that is following rules and regulations out of duty. At some point, it will no longer be felt as a duty. In Kantian terms, this means not acting ethically by being compelled by reason—the necessity of the moral law that reason presents to us; rather, going beyond moral duty is to approximate the holy will, but not because it is the nature of finite rational beings to be good; rather, it is out of love of the moral law, including its necessitating us to act ethically. In bhukti devotion, however, it is not love of the form of moral law (i.e., it being an imperative, or command, of reason) that obviates the sense of duty to serve Krishna and other people, as in being a hand of Krishna serves Krishna’s body; rather, it is love directed to Krishna (and ensuing compassion to people) that transcends ethical obligation per se. This is not to say that bhukti practice can go beyond feeling obligated due to a feeling, whereas it is by the use of reason that Kantian gets beyond duty, for it is the feeling of respect that empirically motivates a person to treat people as not only means to one’s own goals, but also as ends in themselves. As rational beings, we partake in reasoning, albeit in a finite way, and reason itself has absolute value because it is by reason that value is assigned to things. Even so, it cannot be said that a devotee of Krishna in Hinduism can go beyond acting out of duty due to an emotion (i.e.., love or compassion) whereas for Kant it is just by reasoning that a person can go beyond acting because one is duty-bound.

The full essay is at "Acting Morally: Bhukti Yoga and Kant Beyond Duty."

On Embodied Souls in Business: Hinduism and Christianity

A man whose chosen Hindu name is Vridavanath spoke at Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025 on the plight and ultimate aim of an embodied soul as described in the Bhagavad-Gita. A conditioned soul/self (atman) that has entered the material realm and is thus subject to karmic consequences can come back to the divine source of all: the One that is in all. As material, embodied beings while alive, that is, as both biological and spiritual, we are prone to getting locked into dualities of attachment and aversion, which in turn play right into suffering. We forget that we are wearing material masks, and that our real identity (atman) is greater than our material roles that we assume in our daily lives. Through our actions, we bind ourselves by the law of karma. Before being born into the material realm, a person’s unembodied soul (atman) knew Krishna, but as embodied, the soul/self relates to other corporeal bodies rather than to other people as spiritual beings and thus in compassion. Why does Brahman or Krishna—the respective impersonal or personal notions of Absolute Truth—create the world with separateness from the divine included?  Furthermore, how is a devotee of Krishna to navigate working in business, given the separateness woven into the very fabric of our daily existence as material and spiritual beings?

The full essay is at "On Embodied Souls in Business."

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)?

The full essay is at "On Absolute Truth in Hinduism."

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.

The full essay is at "Transcendence in Action in the Bhagavad-gita."

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.

The full essay is at "Integrating Our Humanity and Divinity."

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.

The full essay is at "Interpreting Scriptures."

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.

The full essay is at "On Hindu Metaphysics."

Transcendence in Hindu Bhakti

Edwin Byrant, a scholar of Hinduism who spoke at the Bhakti Yoga conference based at Harvard in March 2025, discussed the transcendence that is in bhukti devotion to a Hindu deity, such as Krishna. Such transcendence can end a person’s transactional approach in trying to please a deity in exchange from beneficial grace from the deity’s love. Both the steps and definitions of bhakti reveal the salience of transcendence in loving devotion to a deity.

The full essay is at "Transcendence in Hindu Bhakti."

The Hindu Festival of Holi: Polytheism in Practice

On March 14, 2025, “(m)illions of people in South Asia celebrated Holi, the Hindu festival of colors . . . by smearing each other with brightly colored powder, dancing to festive music and feasting on traditional sweets prepared for the occasion.”[1] Lest the various eats and drinks be dismissed for analytical purposes as trivial, a particular kind of drink or food that is traditional can have religious significance by reflecting Hinduism as a polytheistic rather than a monotheist religion. Whereas monotheism allows for only one deity, etymologically mono theos, a polytheist religion has more than one deity, even if one is deemed to be superior over the others.

The full essay is at "The Hindu Festival of Holi."

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1. “Millions of  People Celebrate Holi, the Hindu Festival of Colors,” The Associated Press, March 14, 2025.

Hinduism Applied to Business

Applying a religion such as Hinduism to business is laudatory. Undercutting any benefits of doing so, however, is the advocation of religious principles that are so unrealistic in the business world that they undercut the credibility of the project itself. John D. Rockefeller was a Baptist who taught Sunday school at his church even as he pushed competitors out of business who refused to be bought out by Rockefeller’s refining monopoly, Standard Oil Company. To be sure, after retiring, he gave away about half of his $800 million (1913 dollars), but he did not claim that his personal generosity justified his earlier restraint of trade as a monopolist. Rather, he claimed to be more of a “Christ figure” as a monopolist than he was next as a philanthropist. In my study on Rockefeller, I concluded that he was delusional, yet to some extent well-intended, given the destructive competition that was ravaging small businesses in the refining industry during the 1860s. Rockefeller thought of his giant as saving the otherwise presumably drowning competitors, but Jesus in the Gospels does not drown people who are unwilling to be converted. Clearly, the application of religion to business can be abused, including in being much too idealistic, even utopian, and in being used to justify egregious economic tactics and even greed itself.

The full essay is at "Hinduism Applied to Business."

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.

The full essay is at "Renunciation in Hinduism."

On Brahman Becoming Embodied as Krishna

In the Bhagavad-Gita, the personal deity Krishna explains to Arjuna to process by which Krishna becomes embodied. This raises the question, what is Krishna unembodied? Although one candidate is Brahma, the personal god of creation, I contend that the answer is Brahman, which is being, consciousness, and bliss. Brahman is unmanifest, so how is it that being itself, even if conscious, can have a will and a creative agency, or ability, to manifest as a personal deity? The notion of Brahman is completely foreign to the Abrahamic religions, wherein a personal deity is the creator and has perfect being. So it is worth thinking about how, and even whether, a personal deity like Krishna can manifest by the will and creative force (maya) of Brahman.

The full essay is at "On Brahman Becoming Embodied."

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. 

The full essay is at "Is the Bhagavad-Gita Compromised?"

Religious Vision Beyond Intellect: The Case of Hinduism

Can we think our way to religion, or does religious experience transcend cognition (i.e., thought)? Closely related is the question of whether theology is just a special case of philosophy or another domain altogether. The pivotal chapter 2 of the Bhagavad-Gita saga in Hinduism can be interpreted in favor of the latter: gnostic vision of the divine, such as of Krishna showing his fullness later in the myth to Arjuna, may launch off from the intellect, but without continuing as an intellectual pursuit once the threshold of religious experience is reached. By analogy, we can see the edges of a black hole in space, but we can’t see beyond its threshold, within the hole because light cannot bounce back out given the magnitude of the intense gravity that a black hole has. Similarly, a deity can be thought of as intense being—so dense that we mere mortals can only gasp in wonder when we are presented with something so far beyond the limits of human perception, emotions, and cognitions, hence the intellect too.

The full essay is at "Religious Vision Beyond Intellect."