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.
Throughout his talk, Radhanath
emphasized the innate nature of the soul to love God, whether that be Krishna,
Jesus, or Allah. Such love directed to a divine person, rather than an
impersonal ultimate (e.g., brahman), should not be for something.
Just as God’s love for us is unconditional, so too should a person’s love be so
towards God. This is the first of the Ten Commandments, and, the swami, whose
parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe to Illinois, charitably said, “Jesus
adds a second, like unto it,” that of neighbor-love. Simply put, love your
neighbor as you love yourself. Like the giant red-wood trees that survive
earthquakes and fires in California by interlocking their roots, we too can
reach out and embrace each other, rather than fight over insignificant
transient earthly gain. The swami stressed that we simply don’t devote enough
love to God and thus act in service to God by being compassionate to one
another.
Rather than taking issue with
any of that, I suggested to the swami that his teachings could go further, and
in a way that would transform the world. “Rather than just universal
benevolence spread out like butter on a piece of toast,” I said, “kindness and
compassion directed specifically to people that a person doesn’t like or who
don’t like the person should be emphasized; if it were to take hold, the world
would be transformed. Peace might even break out.” I pointed out that it would
be easy for me to be kind to him, but much more difficult, and spiritually
richer, for me to feel compassion and act in kindness to the Christian student
at Yale’s divinity school who had recently called me a heretic while I was
visiting my alma mater to audit a seminar on Jonathan Edwards—an academic seminar
and thus not the same as a litany of personal beliefs.
For that seminar on Jonathan
Edwards, which was brilliantly taught by the director of Yale’s Jonathan
Edwards Center (which is distinct from Jonathan Edwards College at Yale), I had
read Samuel Hopkins’ book on Christian holiness. Hopkins was a protégé of
Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century in New England. Whereas Edwards
preached love thy neighbor (i.e., universal benevolence) with an addendum that
it is good to return evil with good, Hopkins contends in his book on holiness that
the essence of the Kingdom of God is a person’s compassion or kindness to other
people whom the person doesn’t like or don’t like the person. Because
detractors are emphasized, the flatness of universal benevolence is
subordinated. I briefly preached this to Radhanath, who, rather than viewing me
as a heretic, told me in his way that he regarded me as his equal in religious
terms precisely because I was urging him to go beyond universal benevolence in
a way that would be more difficult and more likely to transform the world. For
“love thy neighbor” can be glossed over, whereas helping out someone you don’t
like or who doesn’t like you is relatively specific and concrete; after all, a
person doesn’t need much urging to talk on and on about one’s detractors and
other dislikeable folks so we know them and thus do not have to spend much
effort determining to whom kindness should be directed.
Being able to dispense
religious insight does not require having achieved any sort of sainthood, and
indeed grace fuels the urge to preach. Nevertheless, a compliment is a
compliment, but much more important than compliments is the difficult, and thus
spiritually rich, way in which compassionate service not just overall blandly
to everyone, or to the proverbially needy, or so easily to people whom a person
likes or like the person, but especially to people whom the person dislikes or
dislike the person. Universal benevolence pales in comparison, both in terms of
spiritual worth and the possible impact both interpersonally and in terms of
peace on earth. I told the swami that it was easy for me to give this helpful
message to him because he had been so nice to everyone at Harvard. “So I am
giving something to you,” I told him as we waved in parting. Lest I be a complete hypocrite, I made it a
point the next time I saw the young theology student at Yale who had called me
a heretic to respond in a kind, generous way should that student speak to me.
Rather than ignoring him when he did in fact subsequently approach me on that
campus, I responded in kindness and was authentic in sharing knowledge with him.
I even admired the value he put on his studies as a graduate student and sought
to feed his thirst for knowledge. We did the same during the final day of the
seminar, at Jonathan Edwards College at Yale. Crucially, my kindness and
generosity did not depend on him apologizing for having decided that I am a religious
heretic, and I would not have applied Hopkins’ notion of the Kingdom of God,
which of course comes from Jesus in the New Testament, were the student to have
continued to insult me. Too often people demand forgiveness and open themselves
up to verbal or even physical abuse in turning the other cheek. Returning good
for insult inflicted is unconditional and yet it should not put someone at risk
of being attacked psychologically or physically. Lest contrition be held to be requisite
to kindness and helpfulness to a detractor, Jesus’s famous statement, “They
know not what they do” ought not be forgotten.
Both Paul and Augustine wrote
that the Christian notion of the divine is love. Such love, as agape, is unlike
other kinds of loves that do not instantiate holiness. I contend that a sense
of holiness is more salient in returning good for evil done than in universal
benevolence because the former turns the ways of the word more upside down more
than the latter does. Being compassionate to everyone one meets is laudatory,
but a different, one might even say holy, dynamic is in responding to the
humanity of a detractor. For one thing, self-love and its interests are out of
the picture in love that is inconvenient. I told the Swami that if enough
people got a taste for that sort of holy compassion, the world could really
change.
Imagine hungry Palestinians
voluntarily serving Israeli settlers in compassion for the latter’s humanity as
unconditional as God loves us, and homeless Ukrainians volunteering to repair
buildings in Russia that have been damaged by Ukrainian drones. Imagine
Republican members of Congress volunteering at homeless shelters once a week.
Imagine Democratic members of Congress volunteering to bring water to people in
line on a hot day to a “town hall” or Republican rally. It does not mean that
the residents of Gaza need to become Zionists politically, that Ukrainians
would have to support giving up territory to Russia, and that Republicans and
Democrats in the U.S. must give up their respective political ideologies;
rather, compassion is geared to relieving suffering on a human level,
responding to our common humanity, which goes beyond religious, economic, and
political differences. In a plane crash, for example, people who can walk do
not check for party ID cards in deciding who among the injured to help. Getting
into the habit of actually helping people who have been assholes is the point,
for the spiritual dynamic that is unleased between the two people turns the
world’s ways on their head, and thus is utterly transformative spiritually. To
say that the world could benefit were enough people to work to transform
themselves by making such instantiations of human kindness a habit would be an
understatement.
