ISKCON & Ethics 3, The self as the basis of moral philosophy, Monk’s Podcast 133 with Rasamandala Prabhu

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Hare Krishna Welcome back to the monk’s podcast thank you for having me it’s a pleasure to be here as always yes it’s my you could say intellectual and spiritual pleasure to have you here and of course we are having a lot of ethical edification so our two podcasts build up the subject and I thought today we could take it further so we’ll talk about what if we as a movement are to have a moral philosophy what would it look like what would be its broad features so maybe I can just quickly summarise what we discussed in the previous two podcasts okay so broadly we were talking about how there can be either you could say inadvertent moral continence or there can be intentional transgressions especially when those happen not far away outside but within our movement itself and that raises uncomfortable questions and so how do we deal with that do we deny it do we just blame one person or do we actually examine whether there is something within the ethical environment which is leading to these kind of problems so when we talked about some factors which may cause this is we may focus only on spiritual values and not look at Varanaa specific values they make people more vulnerable to either themselves succumbing or letting others exploit whichever way it might work out and then and that connection so you also discussed about morality is specifically generally okay this is moral values this is right this is wrong ethics is more involving deliberation to understand to analyse various situations and come to a more reason understanding of how moral values are to be chosen in what moral choices are to be made in particular situations and of course we discussed briefly about hermeneutics and then so there are moral issues where we know what is right but we are not able to follow it so in that case we discussed that it’s not that we are in we don’t want to go into either complete denial and nonchalance not even want to burden the person down with guilt if we actually understand ethical philosophy then we’ll understand what level a person can practise so say for example you said that not that with respect to say following brahmachari life expecting people to follow it might itself be beyond their their power of agency so there can be a lot of guilt that can come because of that you mentioned that people felt like coming out they were like coming out when they were they had to change their ashram which is unnecessary and then second we talked about ethical issues where we ourselves might not be clear about what our stands would be and say for example milk that is produced through processes that are involving violence toward cows and so for this we need to draw from our tradition but at the same time we have to engage with contemporary issues and then we also discussed about what you said the contemporary thinkers what they say they are they have thought about the world today and if we want to engage with the world today then we do need to engage with those thinkers also and ultimately we can see Krishna we can reach the divine quoted Prabhupada that we can reach Krishna in fact all branches of knowledge are meant to ultimately culminate in knowing realising Krishna and if we can show the world also that devotees can engage in in reasonable or reason moral reflection or discussions in the mainstream discourse then that will increase Shraddha of people so all rather than talking of some preaching as bridge preaching all preaching is bridging just different bridges can be of different forms and when we talk about ethical reflection ethics you talk about three domains based on Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s Namrachi, Jivdaya and Vaishnava Seva that one’s own personal welfare, one’s functioning in the devotee community and one’s contribution in the broader world so in one sense ethics pervades all aspects of our of a devotee’s life and so we came to the point that we need ethics is extremely important and we came to the point that okay broad contours if we can have how do we move forward to discuss ethical philosophy so or what would be ethical philosophy or Kaurya Vaishnav Vedic philosophy moral philosophy look like? Do you want to add something to it? No, that’s fine. You have a good memory I admire the way you remembered what we’ve been discussing. Thank you.
I try to recollect as much as I can. Thank you. I mean I think before moving on to what our moral philosophy may be I mean obviously there’s a question of whether you want a singular moral philosophy or allow some degree of philosophers but my aim is probably first to establish some broad framework under the premise that if we don’t have that framework then we’re not really accountable to very much and it’s easy to fall prey to a certain form of emotivism and emotivism means where it’s that idea that most morality is merely a expression of our subjective opinions so it’s very easy just to select certain philosophical concepts or beliefs certain practises and thirdly certain values and try and explain our moral stances or ascertain our moral stances using those but that is far from having a coherent moral philosophy to which we’re accountable.
It might give us more rigour in our addressing moral issues and applying them in life. So I think it’s important to have one. There are a few criteria I have and I could read some of those.
I’ve listed here four. So if we use the word moral philosophy say we can talk about say Gaurav Vaishnav philosophy or we talk about say Vedic philosophy so when we use the word moral philosophy in what sense are we using the word philosophy? I mean one could use the word moral theology if one wanted and I don’t think we have time to discuss the kind of complex relationship between theology and philosophy I tend to use the word philosophy because I’m a great believer in the ability to be an independent critical thinker and still come to the conclusion that Krishna consciousness is a suitable or viable philosophy to live by in other words to be a critical thinker and to make that commitment which is necessary when you’re part of a tradition in other words between personal autonomy and received wisdom what the ISKCON standards are and what I personally think so what you’re saying is we can in one sense realisation not just received knowledge so we can come by our own reasoned inferences to the teachings that are given in scripture absolutely oh thoughtful men oh so you’re saying that could mean that thoughtful men by their thinking could actually see themselves the truth of truth given in Srimad Bhagavatam and then they would release it absolutely I mean unless one has some kind of ability or propensity towards reflection and critical thought and introspection how does one accept Krishna consciousness or indeed any religion or philosophy in life and the danger is and by the way there’s a lot of discussion about in ethics about religious ethics and non-religious ethics or religious values and non-religious values I actually think that that classification has limited use and it actually often conceals more useful categories and tensions which we need to solve or resolve particularly the tension let me give you an example and I’ll come to this later because I think this is central to the human condition is the tension between sentiment and reason okay now that tension despite the claims of the enlightenment thinkers and those who followed them is there everywhere it’s not that just religious people are prone to sentimentalism yeah politicians they operate on sentiment they galvanise people through sentiments absolutely so I think actually the religious non-religious conversation well being somewhat important can often be used to overshadow some more foundational concerns which is central to the human condition and detract this from coming to some more useful conclusions beautiful so just to articulate what you said is that philosophy generally the conventional understanding of philosophy means you focus on reasoning and try to arrive at conclusion of truths whereas theology often involves beginning with revelation and then doing some kind of reasoning based on the revelations so what you said is that you prefer to use the word moral philosophy instead of moral theology in the sense that we can use our own as you said independent critical thinking ability and then come to the truths of Krishna consciousness absolutely otherwise what use is one’s conviction a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still now that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be some um exercise of that ability to put aside one’s own convictions and to sometimes submit submissively to authority as one must do even if one goes to school um or when one has a parent it has to be there but ultimately unless one’s convictions become one’s own one never becomes Shastri Chakshus Shastri Chakshus doesn’t mean one who actually simply quotes Shastra although that’s important it means one’s whose vision is the same as Shastra now what is Shastra? Shastra is nothing but the realisation realisations of the pure devotees so it is also what they have seen as a Chakshu I think Yugoslavia also says this that he uses the word called Divya Pratyaksha divine perception Divya Pratyaksha is the highest it’s the highest one has to be so I mean if one tries to expunge experience from the whole educational process or scholarly process one really is killing the self because the self is the source of experience of course in modern discourse there’s a lot of probably less credible pleas to acknowledge my personal experience as if my personal experience is automatically correct it isn’t certainly one should discern whether one’s experience is valid or to some degree is due to a form of illusion or whatever but at the same time one cannot by privileging Shastra Chakshus one cannot thereby marginalise or minimise the other two main sources of evidence for those who follow the path of Vedanta those two other two sources of evidence of course are Pratyaksha and Anuman rather the process of perceiving sorry the processes of perceiving and rationalising have to be purified so the senses are purified the mind and intelligence are purified so that one’s perceptions are in accord with those great philosophers and devotees who helped compile the cumulative knowledge and wisdom embedded in our scriptures and passed down through the parampara which is a scholarly tradition true yeah and when you are saying perceiving and reasoning has to be purified that you are saying it doesn’t just mean top-down acceptance by saying purification means that by our conscious conscious experience conscious assimilation our perception and our reasoning naturally aligns with scripture it is not that it is it is by force of diktat it is more by assimilation absolutely and we will come to the Bhagavad Gita in a minute and the question may arise when studying the Bhagavad Gita or Hindu or Vedic ethics or Vaishnav ethics more broadly the question may rise how does it relate to western approaches and one of the predominant ones is called divine command theory and later on I’ll discuss this and say it doesn’t fit very well into the idea of divine command theory although there may be elements of that and those elements may be appropriate at certain stages of one’s ethical progress but let’s come to that later actually could I just go through a few of these I think the first criterion I’ve got is that it must help address some of those internal challenges we’ve listed falling in those categories of moral issues, ethical issues and what I term loosely hermeneutical issues which are those controversial statements in Shiva Prabhupada’s books which are being highlighted more because of a change in the moral environment secondly in order to address those and to be fit for purpose it must have some autonomy it has to be somewhat separate codified and articulated separately from the rest of our theology thirdly and this is obvious to many but I’ll state it it must be true to our own heritage we have to ensure that whatever principles rules, practises meta-ethical concepts or whatever or virtues we derive sorry we encompass within our moral philosophy it must be true to our heritage but number four and this balances this out a little bit, it must be capable of authentic dialogue with others and if we’re going to enter into dialogue with people who are from another culture we have to be able to express it in their language and by expressing it in terms of their language we’re looking at some of the concepts that are inevitably associated with that language in other words you’re talking about a somewhat different world view is it possible or is it not possible to have such exchange on some issues which are very much to do with the private domain probably some like Wittgenstein would say it’s not really that feasible but I think our tradition says it is that of course is epitomised if you like by the ability of Sheila to attract and nurture devotees who have previously had nothing to do with the Vedic, Vaishnava or Indic traditions beautiful so but at the same time while valuing the idea of a common or Sanatan wisdom Sanatan Karma or what perhaps Aldous Huxley would call a perennial wisdom we do have to take account of context and particularities and therefore it has to be capable of dialogue and my thesis is that not only is there moral insight within traditions outside the Anglo-American academic traditions specifically within the Indian or Vedic traditions but that the thinkers in that tradition are capable of engaging with that rigorously and answering some of the key questions and indeed capable of making some positive contributions and perhaps bringing in some alternative viewpoints that may be helpful to those conversations those ethical philosophical conversations so I’ve got I’ve got four criteria there it should help address truth to our heritage capable of authentic dialogue what are the first and second it’s how it’s really fit for purpose in addressing our own internal challenges okay second it’s somewhat autonomous it has to be distilled out of our broad theology while accepting you know that there may be a relationship between our meta-ethical concepts and sensibilities and our ontology or our epistemology and so on third one it’s true to our own heritage before it must also be capable of authentic dialogue with others yes so can you explain the need for it being autonomous in the sense that it has to be based on as you said based on truth to our heritage the third point so yeah autonomous means it’s self-reliance it’s not dependent or self-governing if you like personal autonomy is the phrase often used in much values these days in other words perhaps there’s a better term but in other words we have to codify what is essentially a Krishna conscious moral philosophy rather than something else and we need to be careful about when we’re discussing any issue bringing in truths and values that are somewhere external or superfluous to the particular topic we’re discussing and this is natural in life I think there’s a kind of pedagogical approach here when we learn at school we have subjects and there’s a systematic education but when we go into the outside world and we want to do something practical such as building a house for example then we draw from a wide range of disciplines so if we’re addressing moral of course maybe that metaphor is a bit counterproductive thinking about it but the point I’m trying to make is that actually in this case it would be best to have somewhat of a singular moral philosophy that helps us address those issues we’ve discussed. So when you’re saying it’s autonomous you’re not saying that it does not depend on scripture, what you’re saying is autonomous in the sense that it is a field of study.
It’s a branch of knowledge if you like to put it simply, a branch of Vedic and Vaishnav knowledge and of course our tradition already has a propensity for dividing up its knowledge into compartments, into categories at least. So it makes sense, that’s perfect. So in one sense when the first and the fourth point so you could say the first is more for personal application and the fourth is more for outreach application is it something like that? To a degree yes but that’s not entirely true because actually if we’re like I’m from a British background I’ll never become an Indian what I’ve called previously my internal architecture will always be structured according to my place of birth, my upbringing and so on and therefore inevitably I’m going to engage with Krishna consciousness and the various branches of knowledge that are contained within Srila Prabhupada’s books through that identity, through that perception.
That isn’t to say that I don’t need to change in some ways but there may be some aspects of my character and my psychology and so on which cannot be changed. Okay. So in one sense this is talking more about the individual’s personal context Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah well even for our own development and then also for reaching out to others yeah.
True, makes sense. So these are what you said are the basic features of the modern philosophy or how do you refer to these? Yeah the basic features or some of the criteria that help us formulate such a philosophy. So I’m suggesting the use of some bridging language and bridging concepts and a central theme I’m going to mention here because it just came to my mind and I think it’s suitable is that I think we’ll get a lot of commonality perhaps in two ways.
The first is to acknowledge that the questions we ask will probably bear more similarity than the answers we give. Yeah. Although we have to acknowledge that different cultures may ask different questions that’s the point as well.
But I think we have to acknowledge that and the second is I want to stress the importance of acknowledging the need to understand what I would call the human condition. I guess there’s somewhat of a psychological perspective there. What is it that we all go through irrespective of whether we’re born in a particular country or follow a particular religion or whatever.
And I think we’ll find a lot of commonality there also. True. Yeah.
I read this book on world religions when I studied world religions about 10 years ago quite in detail. So one book I read. So this author he started by saying that before you study any religion just start with two assumptions.
That people everywhere are similar to you. And people everywhere want resources to get on with the business of life and they turn to religion because it serves as a resource for them. So I think that in one sense describes the human condition that we all there are significant level of similarities.
Yeah precisely. So I think it was Ernest Hemingway who was a novelist who said if any story goes on long enough someone’s going to die. Oh God.
Or the story will end in death. I forget exactly the words he used. But I think that’s something we can all acknowledge that the kind of life’s narrative if it goes on long enough will end in death.
And it doesn’t matter whether we’re English or Indian. I think we can say with some certainty that that’s true. And so those questions those important questions, life’s ultimate questions are often related to morality and ethics or to aspects of it such as human fulfilment.
So we all want to live you could say a meaningful life. We all interact with each other in a way that is mutually beneficial. Some people may want to be exploitative.
Ultimately, we are social creatures. So we want relationships that are sustainable we could say. That’s one element of life.
Yeah. The social elements of life. You know, the hermit and the renouncer may try to separate himself from others.
And that raises the question of whether that social intercourse is something which is essential to our nature. Or something external to it, yeah. It’s a pertinent question.
Yes. Could I run through some of the kind of metaethical or even metaphysical concepts that are there? I’m basing these largely on the Bhagavad Gita, which although it contains many of the ontological concepts and some strong allusions to epistemology is a response to an ethical dilemma that Arjuna was agonising over on the battlefield. The first one, I think, is the idea of the Atman, the eternal self.
And the perception that wrong ideas of who we are, our identity, are the root cause of all strife and immorality. Okay, so you are saying this is an ethical value or what exactly is it? Well, is it ethical or is it ontological? And this is an important discussion because this is an ongoing debate. It’s often accredited to David Hume, who suggested there was a divide between values and facts.
It’s often called Hume’s guillotine. And there’s been ongoing discourse between what they call the non-naturalists, who suggest there’s a difference, and the naturalists. It’s complex, not an easy subject to discuss, but my own thesis, and I’m working on this, is that when our knowledge is based on external objects, or the subject of our knowledge, sorry, the object of our knowledge is the correct term, actually, is matter, then we tend to exacerbate the divide between value and fact.
And when we actually focus alternatively on the self, then this brings together those sources of sense and sensibility, namely the ethical and the more cognitive. You’ll need to unpack that a little bit. I’m trying to unpack it myself.
In other words, what’s the relationship between facts and values? And in the modern world, there is very much an idea that there are facts that exist independent of our subjective experience, or our judgement. And that is challenged by quite a few philosophers of science and other people. Do facts exist independent of theories? But that is the mainstream idea.
Well, I mean, it’s often accredited to logical positivism, which has been to a large degree discredited in academic circles, but there is a huge residue of belief in some of those ideas within popular society. I think we need to really question the idea of a fact existing separate of any type of evaluation. And specifically the idea that facts exist separate from those who propound the facts, or those who advocate them.
Or to put it another way, that knowledge exists separate from the knower. That’s the way the Bhagavad Gita would perhaps phrase it. And I think that there’s a misconception there.
It may be tied up with the separation of knowledge and the knower may have been fostered by the printing press. Really? Okay. In other words, the modern idea that we now have written knowledge rather than oral transmission.
Because when there’s oral transmission, one is always aware that the speaker is there. When one has a book, the speaker’s or writer’s name may be on the book. And one may to different degrees, you know, feel the voice of the author.
But there is a degree of separation that’s not there in an oral transmission. And what to speak of when we get to the contemporary world and we have virtual reality and one can go to a website that’s advertising some type of slimming pill. And there’s all pictures of men and women looking down microscopes and wearing clinically white coats.
But perhaps the website is run by someone with a garage up in Bolton near Manchester with a bank account in Cyprus. Perhaps it’s a scam. So what is the point you’re making by this? The point is that the identity of the speaker is not evident.
So the information we’re getting or the knowledge we’re getting is disconnected from the person. Okay. Makes sense.
And this has consequences for how we receive knowledge. And some of the modern phenomenon like fake news for example, what to speak of internet scams where one pretends to be a pretty young girl and is suggesting a liaison with a 60 year old Englishman who gets taken in and then his girlfriend requests him to send some money. But really there’s no pretty girl at the other end.
There’s a scammer. So what I’m suggesting has happened through this evolution is that the knower has been separated from the knowledge. Knowledge has become a commodity which we buy and sell.
That’s a whole other subject of course. So the broad thesis is that when our knowledge is directed scientifically we could say towards matter then there is a tendency to separate value from knowledge. And when we focus on the self and we’re more concerned perhaps for wisdom than what we now call knowledge then it tends to bring the two together.
That’s true. So you know in one sense if you consider the historical evolution of the conception of knowledge also. I think it was Socrates and Plato who said that knowledge is virtue.
And that’s what the Bhagavad Gita also says when it talks about 20 characters of knowledge. But Francis Bacon he said knowledge is power. And he was referring more to knowledge as technological power to subjugate nature to human will so that natural calamities and problems caused by nature could be decreased.
So you can see the external focus over the centuries coming up. Yeah, definitely. And I think Michael Sandel from Chicago University has mentioned this how there was this concept that knowledge is equated with power probably through philosophers such as Foucault.
But it’s interesting how in the Bhagavad Gita knowledge is equated with certain values or human virtues. So there is a limited understanding of what knowledge what constitutes knowledge. True.
I mean more broadly. I mean there’s a problem with the word fact and perhaps I could just discuss this very briefly. The trouble with the word there’s an expression that we often use and you’ll see those who are debating perhaps on television or radio or on the internet or wherever or you may see it in real life they’ll use this expression the facts speak for themselves.
Yeah, I do think it’s a good question. It’s an interesting expression because if you take a more let’s say scientific point of view perhaps based on logical positivism I guess, then you would suggest well there’s two alternatives. Are you using that metaphorically? And if you are, you’re endorsing the use of metaphor as a way of conveying knowledge.
So one can obviously say no I’m not using it metaphorically. Now then you’ve got a real problem. Because I want you to bring me an example where a fact has spoken for itself.
Yeah, how can facts don’t speak for themselves at all? Facts don’t speak. There is always I’m not going to completely decry the fact I’ve used the word that there might be objective truths. Although I’d want to qualify my use of the word objective there.
There’s some important questions here actually. I think one aspect of this fact speaking for themselves the problem with that is seen through statistics. Statistics actually one can prove anything.
You can start with a particular agenda and one can line up statistics for proving whatever we want. Precisely, there’s lies, damn lies in statistics as someone famously said. And actually if you study research methods one will understand that there is a kind of professional code of conduct values again that one is expected to follow in order to make one’s research valid.
But there’s also a much more deep, there’s a deeper aspect to that in research and that is asking ourselves how much are some of my tacit philosophies influencing this research? In other words is the way I construct my questions going to determine the response I get to those questions? Do those questions somehow reflect my own mindset and even my own evaluative conclusions? I think Thomas Kuhn talked about this with respect to paradigms and structure of scientific revolutions that scientists do research within a particular framework and facts which challenge that framework, that paradigm are swept aside. So in one sense there is research but it is with a certain amount of framework within a certain framework itself. Precisely.
So is it possible to escape the constraints and conditioning that are context? I use the word context in somewhat of a more Vedic sense. The mind and body that we’re situated in is it possible to escape that? Will our what I often call tacit philosophy and some of the views and values I have which are not necessarily true, will they always influence the process of knowledge? How do I escape those? Is it possible to escape those? Can I actually come to the philosophical table without any assumptions? Of course that’s impossible. The more valid question is how can I escape those assumptions? How can I interrogate those assumptions? And perhaps as I would suggest how can I live a life that helps me become more virtuous which might also help me escape those assumptions and prejudgments? In one sense when you say we come to the mode of goodness that one of the characteristics of goodness is that of illumination.
So one illumination is we become aware of our own assumptions, our own biases. Otherwise they’re so close to us that we just they shape our vision but we never have vision of them. We don’t see them at all.
They shape everything we see. And therefore my perception is with everyone I meet and I get to know a little bit except myself is that I see I see something in them where I think oh I admire them for so many ways but I always see something I say I wish they would change that because if they change that everything else would be so much brighter for them. And of course I was being perhaps a little sarcastic or whatever ironic when I said that I don’t have that’s not applicable to me.
Of course it’s applicable to me but I don’t see my own shortcomings. Hmm. My wife does but I don’t.
So I think it’s a very important question how do I overcome those and therefore one could say or one could conclude that a certain amount of self knowledge is important. Now again this is not a discourse that is exclusive to those who follow the Bhagavad Gita or admire the Bhagavad Gita. There is a whole conversation going on for many years particularly in the social sciences about research methods and the whole idea of reflexivity.
And reflexivity is a challenge kind of more colonial research where the scholars studied the natives somewhere else, someone else and the idea of reflexivity is that I as a researcher am also part of my own research and the object of I’m not only the subject of research who’s conducting it, I’m the object of my research as well. Notice how this reflects on the the dictum from was it Socrates or Plato? Know thyself. Yes.
Know thyself. So therefore the whole concept of Atman is extremely important for us and note how in response to Arjuna’s dilemma verses 211 to 216 six verses there are all extremely important in considering what a moral framework may look like. Very very important.
That’s significant. For example I could draw one conclusion. Carry on.
You are taking this dialogue of sometimes we just make a simple assertion we are not the body we are the soul. And ramifications of that we talk so don’t be attached to worldly pleasures. But it is not just the ramifications are not just sensual they are also cognitive.
And that cognitive dimensions will affect our you could say ethical perceptions or ethical reflections also. this is an astute observation. What is the connection between how we see the world and how we respond to the world including our moral responses.
Hmm. We’ll come to that in a minute. Or I could mention it now.
Let me cross it off the list actually. One of the concepts that I had listed I’ve got about ten. It’s the concept of Maya illusion.
And that means Maya that which is not or accepting something as one object but it’s actually something else. And particularly accepting the self to be the body, the physical body. Hmm.
It’s not difficult to see the ethical ramifications of that if we look at the present stress on identity politics and the quite natural opposition to racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. The challenge is that modern discourse while having that sentiment and expressing that sentiment is in my judgement not sufficiently rooted in a concept of the self that substantiates that equality. And it certainly doesn’t allow us to accommodate and celebrate human diversity.
So there’s a big tension here. How do we promote equality and how do we celebrate diversity? And how do we explain them rationally? Rigorously? So the concept of Maya is there. Shankaracharya’s metaphor it’s called the snake rope metaphor is very useful.
He gives the example of how walking out at night one may see a rope. It doesn’t happen to us here in England because we don’t have many snakes. But there in India it’s really, I think you may have some stories, I don’t know.
But you’re walking out at night, you see a rope, you think it’s a snake, you feel fear. The fear is real. It’s a real emotion.
And one responds. Of course we’re talking ethics but that’s another subject. What’s the relationship between emotions and ethics? But assuming there is a relationship I think here, we can see that there’s a strong cognition then between the strong relationship between our cognition and how we respond morally.
If our morality is tied to our emotions. But that emotion is real but it’s based on an illusion. It’s based on the wrong perception.
If our eyes were more perfect or we had a better torch we would see immediately this is a rope, not a snake. We wouldn’t feel the fear. So this is important and really in a sense our own moral philosophy may resonate well with Plato who used the cave analogy.
Plato’s cave analogy. So he put a lot quite a lot of emphasis on this cognition in developing moral sense and sensibility. Correct cognition.
So you’re using the word sense and sensibility together. I know that’s a name of a novel also but in what sense are you putting them together here? I’m probably using them not quite correctly but Jane Austen’s novel I think she was comparing two sisters. I’m not familiar with the novel.
One was more rational and the other was more emotional. I’ll come to that in a minute because I think I’m going to propose that that tension between our feelings and our reason is central to the human condition. The problem is that and this is being disputed now much more than perhaps previously the problem is that there is the idea that emotions are bad and reason is good.
Oh that is I think that is being significantly critiqued nowadays but maybe 50 years ago, 70 years ago it was considered like obvious reality. Who will question it? Yeah, that’s true. I mean I think there’s some underlying truth there but particularly coming from a Bhakti tradition which stresses the importance of spiritual emotion we’ve got to interrogate that very very carefully and I suggest that the Bhagavad Gita and we’ll come to this later, it really does try to resolve that tension through the process of Bhakti but I’d like to kind of leave that a little to another time actually because we’ll be coming to that but I think it is actually central to our discussion.
So Prabhu, let me I’ll retrace how you put it if I understood rightly. When we are discussing about ethics you said the foundation should be that there has to be self-understanding and it has to begin with the self rather than the world and the reason for that you said is if you consider these three things there is cognition, there is emotion and there is action so if you consider ethics to be about the way we act often our actions are driven more by emotions or they should be driven by reason and if those emotions are based on false cognition then the ethical actions are unlikely or unsustainable because those emotions will drive us so in one sense we need so that to have right cognition we need to start not with the outer world because the outer world is the domain of maya, it’s changing and as you said, separate the knowledge from the knower when you focus on that so to start with right cognition means to start with self-understanding and when you start with that self-understanding then based on that we can have a you could say a solid footing for reason so and then with that reason of course you are not denying emotion but with that solid footing of reason then we can have ethical action is this how you are do I understand it right or I probably didn’t express myself very well and I’m probably going a little diverting from the way I would have explained this I think what I’m alluding to is one of the big challenges in moral philosophy post often it’s attributed to David Hume what is the relationship between facts and values although I’d like to express that what is the relationship between cognition and values I think what David Hume says from what is we can never come to one what should absolutely yes and he said you know he wrote that it’s amazing how many philosophical writings are expressing what is and they suddenly jump without any substantiation to what should be and I think by the way I’ve got admiration for David Hume I think he raised some very very important questions about what is the role of the emotions in action and we’ll come back to that later because there’s a concept in the Gita which even though it’s in a sense the conclusion of the Gita and many writers have pointed this out it’s also a paradox and that is of detached action what’s the Sanskrit Nishkarma Yoga Nishkarma Nishkarma Yoga Thank you yeah but there’s a paradox there can you have action with complete detachment because generally motion or action is linked to emotion that’s beautifully put and I think I think he’s quite right in saying that you cannot I think the idea of detached action is actually paradoxical and needs resolving and I’m going to suggest that the concept of Bhakti and the ideals of Bhakti resolve that tension but I don’t want to discuss it too much because I think we’re probably jumping ahead now so even though in one sense sentiment is seen as subordinate if you like to reason we must also look at what David Hume said and that really reason is the maidservant of the passions which is a nice way of putting it reason is the maidservant of the passions so we have to look at that and that’s not necessarily a laudable state isn’t it? It’s more of a sad reflection because I think Freud also said something like that reason is like a small canoe on the turbulent ocean of emotion so he spoke in the sense that we made reason but when the waves start coming the reason gets tossed away so is he saying it in a celebratory sense or just a descriptive sense or like a gloomy sense or it’s difficult to know? I need to think a little more about that in some ways I’d say that he’s disparaging ethics and saying or ethical responses or moral responses which are based on the emotions but he’s also raising the question of the fact that that’s an inescapable fact I’ll use the word fact after pulling it apart so he’s setting an interesting tension now I’d like to explore that a little later I mean there’s a lot of recent literature within moral philosophy perhaps in the last I would say 15-20 years on the role of the emotions in morality and obviously that has an affinity with Weishnau thought and those traditions that applaud spiritual emotions and uplifting emotions, positive emotions I think what I am saying is that because the Bhagavad Gita is a response to an ethical dilemma and I’m not in any way marginalising the the ontology of the Bhagavad Gita or its soteriology or its epistemology but it is primarily in a response to an ethical dilemma I will later try and explore if we have time perhaps not in this podcast how Arjuna’s dilemma although it has a context on a battlefield it kind of epitomises the human condition for all of us there is something about his dilemma with which we can all identify as human beings and we need to frame it in a manner that we can identify Hamlet to do or not to do and it is similar to Arjuna’s to some extent I think that is a universal predicament do we get entangled in actions or is that something different I’d have to think a little more about Hamlet but it may be reflecting a similar tension here that afflicts us I’ll come to it later because I’m going to cover that later and I’ll make a note of it but I think what’s important here is how the self is important, the eternal self and keep in mind there’s a dualism here but also keep in mind that this is not a Cartesian dualism which is largely disfavored in philosophy these days, it isn’t the mind-body dualism or perhaps more exactly mind hyphen soul body dualism the differentiation that the Bhagavad Gita based on Sankhya philosophy makes between the self and the mind is a very important one and perhaps the mediating role of the mind between the true self and the physical body will help resolve some of the philosophical problems about the relationship between in Cartesian terms the mind and the body and I think ethically there are some questions for example we often talk you see the problem is discussing this dialogue between representatives of different cultures is that sometimes one tradition may present a concept that is unintelligible to a person from another tradition and I’ll give you an example in the western tradition we’ll talk about human nature but that is largely unintelligible or partly unintelligible to those who are coming to those who are followers of the Bhagavad Gita because the human there isn’t so much a human nature as a spiritual nature that’s not to say that humans may not have some kind of nature that’s different from animals and so on but it does really give us a different perspective I forget who said that we’re not human beings who may sometimes have a spiritual experience but we are spiritual beings who are currently having a human experience. Yeah it’s attributed to Stephen Covey also to Teilhard that Christian thinker Teilhard forget his full name yeah but that’s a very significant quote it’s interesting that even in the western tradition some people have got that insight that our human journey is just a part of our our existence.
Yeah but it’s central to the Bhagavad Gita so the idea of the Atman is there I mean I think the first six verses of the Bhagavad Gita is so important I mean even in in text 11 Krishna says one who’s truly in knowledge does not lament so taking the ability to not be overcome by debilitating lamentation I think probably we all experience it but to have some emotional resilience is connected to knowledge because in that first verse Krishna says clearly one who is actually in knowledge does not lament so immediately there’s a link between knowledge and virtues text 12 never was there a time when I did not exist nor you nor all of these kings nor in the future shall any of us cease to be again Lord Krishna is not only in the previous verse Krishna told Arjuna you’re identifying with the body therefore you’re a fool he’s now saying the real identity is that you’re eternal and in this verse he also explains 2.12 although it’s kind of somewhat implicit in there that there’s a plurality of selves it’s interesting he uses the first person the second person and the third person in this verse you, I and all these kings and soldiers so it’s first person, second person third person by the way from a pedagogical point of view how Krishna teaches is very interesting he doesn’t start he says Arjuna I’m God and this is what I’m going to tell you he starts to relate the learning I mean he did actually rebuke Arjuna in verse 11 but then in verse 2 he relates this knowledge this understanding to where they are right at that moment on the battlefield situated on the chariot between two armours so he I mean so there’s a case for saying that Lord Krishna is giving Sanskrit knowledge but he doesn’t separate it from the experiences that we have so I think there’s some pedagogical lessons there also in how Lord Krishna teaches the Bhagavad Gita beautiful so in one sense if we say the first statement is a philosophical assertion but the second statement immediately comes down to the level where but in the battlefield and then same way I think the third statement goes up but the fourth statement comes down to Kaunteya and Bharata yeah we can go through those if you want I mean there’s a sense how can I put it probably in the second verse 2.12 there’s a sense of immediacy there you know here we are on the battlefield and that’s interesting there is a I think in counselling and teaching sometimes one responds to the immediacy of the situation rather than the lesson plan one has so I think there’s some very important pedagogical principles there and then the first third verse is number 13 third of these six is very interesting because it’s something very much one can identify with as the embodied soul continually passes in this body from boyhood to youth to old age the soul simply passes into another body at death a sober person is not bewildered by such a change in other words a sober person can understand this with a little reflection if you just reflect on this for a minute perhaps forget you’re on the battlefield and all of life’s problems you can actually understand this not necessarily very complicated teaching but one which is very profound and affects us all and we can all identify with it I know I was a baby I was a child, I can remember it then I became a youth I can remember that I had the experiences through the body of a youth I experienced them not Chaitanya Charan you didn’t experience those things therefore if I want to share my experiences I’ve got to tell them to you and now as I’m 69 years old I’m having certain experiences I remember when I was 8 or 9 years old, my mother went to the optician, she left me and my brother in the car while she went to the opticians I remember I was looking out and I was thinking how detailed my sight was that which I could see that picture in front of me how detailed it was, I could look at this amount and see a lot of detail I could look at this amount and see a lot of detail I could look a lot smaller and see a lot of detail and of course I had very good vision 20-20 vision as a young person now I have some problems with my eyes however the one thing that’s absolutely clear to us is the person who is feeling some pleasure oh my vision is good, I don’t need to go to the opticians like my mother and feeling some pleasure is exactly the same in essence as that person who is now feeling some discomfort with having to wear glasses and we can challenge people if you don’t believe this then why are you afraid of death? because death if you think that you’re a different person a different entity, a different being then why don’t you jump out of the window right now because the person who hits his or her head on the pavement 2 or 3 seconds afterwards will be a different person we know we know I’m worried will death bring me pleasure will it bring me pain I’m a little concerned why am I concerned? because I’m actually, I know in my heart of hearts that actually the person yeah in modern philosophy there is a lot of a lot of criticism of the idea of a unitary self in a state of flux but this is quite a simple argument actually it’s not necessarily a knockout argument but it’s a very sound argument that it’s not that the self is in a complete sense of flux there is a substantial level of continuity in the self and what you said earlier what you said earlier about differentiating between the body, mind and soul that also helps us make sense of the flux in a way that does not that does not deny the ontological reality of the self, otherwise the flux is used to used to sometimes infer that the self is just like a, what is it a social or psychological creation or a bundle, there’s the bundle theory which was propounded by Hume there may be different versions of the bundle theory but our identity is like the identity of a bundle of objects but actually if you actually analyse a bundle of anything it’s still always changing take anything in the material world analyse it over a short time period, any time period even if you make that time period go to zero in Newtonian terms, you say it should tend towards zero you will always find some change in that bundle which is greater than zero it will never go down to zero so the idea that this identity is a bundle is it’s a fabrication it’s a way to avoid, I think, the natural conclusion, the common sense perception and common sense perception may be sometimes right and sometimes wrong but it’s quite an enduring perception that the self continues that therefore a mother will always look upon her child as my son even if the son is 70 years old, the mother is 90 something she still thinks this is my son so okay, it may not be perfect perception but there is some idea that rests, there is an idea or a perception that rests on a truth somewhere that indicates some truth intimates a truth so the eternality of the self, it’s unchanging otherwise how could you you know, when there’s a crime the police look for the same person, they’ll have an identity parade, but unless the person is essentially the same person how can you hold them accountable morally and criminally for what they’ve done and I think you do I think you have to make a decision here, are you the same or different rather than saying well it’s kind of the same, kind of different I mean, we need to beware of setting a false dilemma but I think in this instance we don’t and the conclusion of these six verses is that there is, that’s not a false dilemma there are two elements … … … … … … yes, thank you yeah, the seers of the truth have concluded that there are just two energies one which is always changing and one which is never changing therefore this idea that actually this whole can be created but then it’s not destroyed it’s at least from a philosophical perspective it’s untenable I mean, one could resort to such reasons as God can make it happen but that’s somewhat questionable because one could use that for anything and I think from a more philosophical perspective that idea that you can create something and then it remains eternal it is I’d call it philosophically naive actually yeah, actually I was surprised I mean, not just surprised, it’s too mild a word I found it almost absurd, the idea of eternality being defined by some people as having a beginning but no end it’s like saying something is semi-infinity, half-infinity you can’t really have half-infinity infinity is infinity absolutely absolutely going back earlier if you want to discuss this getting into the intricacies of the self you said the role of the mind as mediating between matter and spirit differentiates the Sankhya dualism Sankhya dualism from say the Descartian dualism that is rejected in the West how exactly does that make a significant difference because we do say mind is still matter, although it’s subtle matter so is it that the mind acts as a because one of the main problems of Descartian dualism was that how does a how does a non-material soul or in this case mind as non-material how does that affect the body and then they have the idea that matter is causally complete are you talking about the mind as acting mediating link in that sense or I’ll need to think this through a bit more it’s something I’m thinking about currently I mean I think naturally if you make the mind material it perhaps is easier to establish a link between the mind and physical reality rather than considering it to be immaterial however I don’t think you completely resolve the question of the relationship between the self and the physical body even though it’s mediated through the mind I don’t think that the you know we’ve completely resolved that challenge between the interaction between the self and the physical body Dhrutakaran uses this example and I’ve used it in my reincarnation book he talks about it as a virtual reality that let’s say if somebody is playing a video game then everything that happens in the video game is happening according to the laws of the mechanical arrangement of the video games but still there is the person who is playing the video game and the person is making some choices clicking some buttons, pulling some levers generally it is moving some cursor, whatever and those those don’t you could say break the rules of the game as they have been mechanically designed but they act as a stimuli so he says just as a person can play a virtual game so similarly the soul exists different from matter but the in the gross matter works according to material laws but just as the computer is like the computer system is the interface between the computer software is the interface between the person playing the person and the game so similarly the mind acts like a software interface which is a metaphor I don’t know whether it explains metaphorically but I don’t know whether it resolves conceptually I’m not too sure I need to think about that more I mean certainly the way that the physical laws which we accept as being fixed inviolable if you like interact with the moral law and a human agency or let’s say spiritual agency, how do the two interact and of course there is the notion of the law of karma which is another important concept within our tradition but it does suggest that agency and determination coexist, they’re compatible and obviously you need to further articulate how they exist simultaneously that destiny is something that can be changed and agency is continually being exercised at least in the human form of life for the self and of course there’s the spiritual agency, there’s the agency of the self, there’s the agency of the Supreme Lord and the reciprocity between the two as well as the laws of material nature it’s a complex discussion I think the the Triguna is probably a further useful concept that to some degree helps explain the relationship between free will or agency and determinism or conditioning in the sense that those who living beings the Atman who’s residing in the body of an animal or lower species or creature in the lower species of life has no moral agency of course this has been questioned today when there’s some videos of animals looking after each other and so on but at least according to our tradition they really have no exercise of agency they don’t create karma to put it in our own language the human being who is in the mode of passion and therefore he will have some degree of exercise therefore any human society has some system of morality, some kind of idea, culture of laws, what’s right to do, what’s wrong to do what should be judged positively what should be judged negatively or even punished what we should aspire for, what we should avoid and so on, every society has that and philosophy may be a feature of the mode of passion according to Shillapalpa in the mode of goodness which is really refers to the demigods in the higher planets there’s a great amount of freedom they can even do some things which are not considered as transgression of morality according to the standards we have here so there’s a greater degree of freedom, therefore those who are in the human form of life who always have a good component of passion there but are influenced by the other three gunas their degree of ability to exercise moral choice will be determined by how much that passion is mixed either with Tamas more Rajas or with Sattva therefore when the quality of passion is let’s go up, when the quality of ignorance is predominant it will be very difficult to exercise morality and we may even think that which is immoral is moral and that which is immoral is moral, we get it mixed up in the mode of passion we are confused about what is moral, immoral and very often we’re torn between moments of passion and wanting to enjoy the world and feelings of remorse about where that passion leads us so there’s that kind of, in passion there’s always that ambivalence that going one way and the next passion is typified by movement for example and then when one comes to Sattva there is a degree of sobriety, peacefulness and one is not torn so much by moral dilemmas or between that tension between one’s reason and one’s passions and appetites so I think the whole concept of the Triguna lets us know that actually this dialectic between agency and conditioning is different for different living beings and they both coexist to different degrees at different times That’s beautifully put in one sense, now you’ve articulated it that the tension between say free will and conditioning or determinism in terms of three modes it makes such intuitive sense and then if we say that animals function in the mode of ignorance animal body is in the mode of ignorance and what it means is that the scope of free will is severely limited and that’s why they don’t have moral agency. Now sometimes animals do exhibit moral behaviour but evolutionaries or biologists do say that it’s largely due to their genetically programmed like that it’s their genes doing it but even hardcore biologists they also say that we humans somehow have the capacity to go beyond our genetic imperative that we may have some genetic conditioning but we can go beyond it otherwise there is no potential for transforming in any way that we can’t change our behaviour, we can’t change our belief systems we can’t change our ethics and even hardcore materialists or aggressive atheists they want people to become atheists so if you are completely determined then it would not be a choice whether I am an atheist or a theist so in one sense just reflecting back on your point that actually moral agency itself becomes unsustainable if we become locked to too rigid a materialistic world view Absolutely I don’t think there can be any sense of morality unless it’s backed up with the idea or reality of a substantive self there must be a substantive self certain philosophers have called for that how they define that substantive self may be interrogated I think but if something is really going to have substance it must be unchanging substance for a man otherwise it’s not substance real substance so the substantive self so I think there’s a whole conflict between moral relativism and moral absolutism or dogmatism there must be a self there must be a real self somewhere I personally think when we look at the perceived decline in morality whether that’s right or wrong in human society over the centuries and decades and the changes to the kind of moral conversation that’s going on I think we should be careful about saying that any decline in morality is true and some will dispute that and I think we have to look at it carefully if you say it’s due to a lack of religion I think we have to look at other possible causes and I think I’d paint it a little more broadly in saying that actually the lack of a substantive self and the kind of the opposite, the notion of a constructed or even a fragmented self as we have today doesn’t help in our moral discourse I think there are other issues such as etiquette and perhaps the breakdown of etiquette is very significant but that’s another discussion I think this first concept which is really a what you could call a very thick concept, a term used by Bernard Williams which means a concept that is both ontological and evaluative it brings together facts and values because you can’t really consider the self devoid of values or virtues unless you consider the values and virtues come entirely from matter and I think our my own personal take on this is that actually the self is the source of all the virtues but those virtues are covered when we’re embodied and conditioned and they’re reflected dimly through matter in other words the real self not man as he is but man as he could be I’m sorry that’s probably a little gender insensitive for these phrases we use without understanding that what’s our true self and what’s our real potential what can we become factually what is the full manifestation of our potential not just as human beings but as spiritual beings unless we have an understanding of that it’s very difficult to define morality for various reasons I love this the way let me see if I got it clearly you said that facts and values that dichotomy or the lack of a clear connection between them that can be established through the concept of substantive self the substantive self is the you could say the link between the facts that are perceived and the values that are cherished or values that cognition rests in the self and values also rest in the self in that sense the self becomes the union of the two is that what you’re saying yeah it’s something I haven’t fully formulated but the idea that as soon as our knowledge goes exclusively to the outside world then immediately we get that divide between facts and values or we try to divide them let’s put it like that but when we turn our attention when the object of our knowledge is the self whether that be through the Vaishnav tradition and belief in the Atman or whatever or whether there’s just a more self-reflective approach to the self from any culture when we start thinking about who we are then immediately that brings our knowledge in terms of cognition and our values together so we discussed today about mainly normative moral philosophy how we could have it so it will have only some criteria that it has to relate with the self as it is, as its needs are in its contemporary culture it has to have it has to be an autonomous body of knowledge, it has to be faithful to our tradition and then it has to be capable of engaging in authentic moral dialogue and then the key concept that we focused on was the discussion of for the basis of morality, knowledge has to start from not the outer world but the self otherwise there is this big gap between facts and values so how do facts exist themselves independent of theory, that’s a big philosophical question and with the reputational logical positivism that is being problematised but even if we put that aside for the time being, even if we say facts exist in whatever ontological status they have, but from what is to what should be how do we link facts to values so that means that we pursue certain things and then we are driven to respond to those perceptions so if I see a rope and I think it to be a snake, I will want to stick it, hit it with a stick so now if our perception is wrong then our actions will also not be right so in one sense ethics has to be grounded in right perception and to ground ethics in right perception, we need to understand who is it that is perceiving in today’s world especially technology knowledge and knower have been increasingly separated from the from say the printing press where the speaker is not evident as it is in a speech or a conversation to say internet scams where a person can pretend, old person can pretend to be a pretty young girl and cheat people so based on that if we ground our if we ground our cognition in a substantive self that is what the Bhagavad Gita does and the Bhagavad Gita talks about how once we understand that the self is real then that brings a certain amount of emotional resilience you can tolerate the ups and downs of emotions and that enables us to act more ethically so of course how emotions what role emotions play in shaping our actions that needs to be explored more in detail but in general if we say at this stage that emotions interfere with ethical action which is which can be prompted by reason then the regulation of emotions comes by understanding that there is a there is a substantive self and the idea nowadays that there is no such self can be easily refuted by the fact that we are all afraid to die because we don’t think it’s the different self who will die it is we, we will die a mother who sees a child whom she saw as a baby and as the age of 70 still says this is my child, this is the same child so so the substantive self is essential for for also a sense of moral agency because if there is just matter then where is the scope for free will so when you talk about human nature which is very common in western philosophical circles the Vedic understanding is more spiritual nature and we are spiritual beings on a human journey and the difference this makes is that there is a continuity in the spectrum of beings and that continuity can be explored through the three modes so the scope of moral agency is very reduced in the mode of ignorance which is where most animals are and it is there is a constant tension between our cravings and the sense of remorse bhoga and tyaga in the mode of passion and in the mode of goodness we come to the understanding that the tension between emotion and reason gets substantially reduced so that’s how ethical behaviour becomes much easier in the mode of goodness so there are aspects of the self that the mind is changing the body is changing but the self itself is at its core unchanging and to the extent our knowledge is grounded in that unchanging self to that extent ethical behaviour will become easier so that self can act as unchanging self can act as the bridge between between facts and values between our cognition and our ethical action so it is a self if self is free from maya then self will pursue correctly and then the self will act correctly now thank you it was I would say a very deep as well as exploratory discussion today thank you Hare Krishna