Dr.
James Cone is one of the formative personalities in the living
history of liberation
theology,
the spiritual/religious framework of knowledge and practice based
around the ideal that God, and those who are devotees of God, should
be primarily concerned with the social/political/spiritual freedom of
the oppressed, of those who are marginalized due to their race, sex,
class, nationality, or gender. Through such courageous and
groundbreaking works such as A
Black Theology of Liberation, The God of the Oppressed
and The
Cross and The Lynching Tree,
Cone has resounded a daring truth which says that God is intimately
and particularly concerned and active in securing the freedom of
black people in America from the shackles of bondage which have kept
them and held them over much of the last five hundred years. While
Cone did not invent the idea of Black
Theology,
he is considered one of its “founding fathers,” as it were, and
is a historically important and vital figure in the field of
contemporary Christian theology
Dr. Cone's work has
inspired many other liberation theologians across the spectrum of
race, sex, and gender to apply this ideal of God's care and love for
the oppressed to their own particular situations of
oppression/marginalization. He has been teaching at Union Theological
Seminary, the oldest independent progressive Christian seminary in
America, for much of the last four decades. Union, where I am
currently working towards a master's degree in religion and
ecological ethics, is where I had the good fortune of participating
in Cone's Systematic Theology course this past Fall.
From the very first
class, Cone was encouraging us to find our own personal theological
voice, but he was also clear that there was an objective difference
between good theology and bad theology. I came to understand that
good theology, a working theology, must include understanding and
realization of the transcendent reality of God, who speaks to us and
acts within us beyond the boundaries of the material world, helping
us to transcend our own limitations. Good theology must balance this
understanding of the transcendent element with a clear acknowledgment
and commitment to confronting, within the material world, the
structures and expressions of injustice, discrimination, and
oppression which deny people their material and spiritual freedom and
dignity.
Bad
theology is removed from this balance. A theology which doesn't work
gives a framework which compels a community to think itself above the
problems of the world. Bad theology commits the “sin of silence”
towards the injustice of the world, either by outright ignoring the
pain and suffering of oppression, or by misinterpreting how to deal
with this oppression with antiquated and insensitive forms of praxis.
Theology will also not work when it is too concerned with justice
work at the expense of the transcendent element. Our link to the
transcendent reality of God allows us, as expressed in the thought of
one of Union's most influential teachers and philosophers Reinhold
Niebuhr,
to understand the original freedom of our own spiritual nature in
relationship with God, while also making clear to us the finite
nature of our material existence and our limitations within that
nature to express that original freedom. Any theology, or any kind of
justice work, which does not keep the transcendent relation of God at
its center, will not be able to comprehend or transcend its own
limitations and the multifarious flaws of human nature.
Dr. Cone was also very
clear that all theology, and that our own theological voice, comes
out of the element of contradiction. A major part of this element of
contradiction comes from the the understanding that if we have the
conviction, courage, and intelligence to wrestle with and examine how
our faith tradition is expressing itself in relation to the world, we
will be able to confront ideas and frameworks in that expression
which do not work, which are not relevant. From the confrontation of
that contradiction we will be able to shape new ideas and frameworks
which insure that our faith, our theology, speaks of the reality and
love of God in a way that is meaningful, powerful, compassionate, and
effective to the actual time, place, and circumstance which surrounds
it. The element of contradiction, when processed in a healthy,
intelligent, sincere, and surrendered fashion, helps to insure the
proper theological balance between faith and knowledge of God's
transcendent reality with a commitment towards the active work and
service that can bring the just love of God into reality to break the
bonds of injustice and oppression in our world.
I
am beginning to understand, as my own theological voice begins to
form, as a devotee who serves within ISKCON and identifies, more or
less, as a member of ISKCON, who identifies as a servant of
Prabhupada's mission, that I am also dealing with a serious
contradiction. This contradiction begins as I understand that while I
accept the fundamental and essential tenets of sastra
as given to us by Prabhupada, I have many problems with how this
essential spiritual understanding is expressed culturally and
socially by our society of devotees. Let us recall the words of
Yogesvara Dasa, a long-standing and well-esteemed disciple of Srila
Prabhupada, who in our previous piece expressed his feelings that the
Hare Krishna movement is largely invisible and irrelevant to society
today:
“The
most candid comment I can give about public perception of Hare
Krishna in North
America
is that I don’t think there is one anymore. The worst possible
thing has happened,
namely
indifference. There was a time going back 20 years perhaps when there
was a public perception
of the Hare Krishna movement in the sense that people felt accosted
in airports or read
reports of abuses or saw devotees chanting in public. Devotees were a
more visible part of
the landscape of American culture previously.
Maybe
then one could say there was a public perception because Hare Krishna
was in the news, it was on television, it was in the papers for good
or for bad...I believe that Vaishnavism as it has been historically
will not be the same in the future for the simple reason that the
world it lives in is not the same. There is a compulsion within
Vaishnava faith to move into the larger society and to become
relevant, and the Vaishnava community has yet to demonstrate its
relevance. For 99.99 percent of the world we don’t matter. Krishna
Consciousness is irrelevant to most of the world.”
I
feel, and I am not alone in this feeling, that there is something
wrong in how ISKCON, as the standard-bearer of Prabhupada's mission,
relates to the world at large. Srila Prabhupada has given us the gift
of a profound spiritual revolutionary movement which is to meant to
strike at the very status quo of the oppression of material nature,
yet our tendency is to speak in a overtly transcendent manner to the
problems and complexities of the world, as if we are speaking down to
people who are trying to spiritually work through these problems and
complexities. It is difficult for us to speak to, to speak with, to
speak along-side these sincere-minded and sincere-hearted people
working for peace, justice, love, and meaning. As I wrote in my
previous piece, this contradiction crystallizes for me when we
communicate to people that “they are not their body” in such a
way as to completely ignore or devalue their particular bodily or
human existence in the world. Telling someone “they are not the
body” when they are looking for spiritual shelter to help them work
through and transcend their bodily situation of oppression is a
particularly insensitive and irrelevant form of communication. This
is compounded by the fact that when we consider the history and
concurrent living experience of ISKCON in terms of how we relate to
vulnerable and marginalized people, such as our women, our children,
or devotees in our community in racial and sexual bodily constructs
which are considered to be the “minority” or the “alternative”
to the norm, we have a long and painful reckoning to deal with.
Let
us consider two statements that Srila Prabhupada makes to us in one
purport from the Madhya-lila
of Sri
Caitanya-Caritamrta:
“ ‘As
far as religious principles are concerned, there is a consideration
of the person, the country, the time and the circumstance. In
devotional service, however, there are no such considerations.
Devotional service is transcendental to all such considerations.
Madhya 25.121
The
transcendental service of the Lord (sādhana-bhakti) is above these
principles. The world is anxious for religious unity, and that common
platform can be achieved in transcendental devotional service. This
is the verdict of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. When one becomes a
Vaiṣṇava, he becomes transcendental to all these limited
considerations. Madhya 25.121
Prabhupada
is quite clearly expressing here that devotees should never define
the essential values of Krishna consciousness, of bhakti-yoga,
by the limitations of material consideration. The color of someone's
skin or the nature of one's sexuality ultimately has nothing to do
with anyone's eligibility to become a devotee. Therefore no one
claiming to be a devotee should ever discriminate or prevent someone
from approaching devotional service because of material or bodily
considerations.
As
Prabhupada mentions in the first passage, devotional service is
transcendental to all such considerations, but the cultural
principles which surround, express, and communicate the eternal,
absolute values at the core of Krishna consciousness have to take
time, place, and circumstance into account. Prabhupada did this
himself actively in the grand spiritual/sociological “experiment”
of bringing the tradition of bhakti-yoga
from its original cultural context in India to the cultural context
of the West. We know many of the alterations he made, such as
allowing men and women to live together in the temple environment or
initiating very young men into the sannyasa
asrama, and we know the kind of push-back he received from his more
conservatively oriented God-brothers. We know that every
consideration he made around altering certain religious/cultural
symbols was done with the exact and sincere motivation to maintain
and enhance the free potential for everyone to properly encounter the
eternal, absolute, and transcendental principles of Krishna
consciousness.
To
follow his calling for us, we need to understand that as devotees we
are not to limit or define ourselves by material considerations in
how we grow and maintain our communities and our society as a whole.
Does this mean that we shouldn't be conscious of the material
diversity of psychophysical situations we encounter in growing and
maintaining our communities? Absolutely not. Prabhupada was also a
tremendous genius at giving the reality of Krishna consciousness to
each person as he consciously and compassionately understood the
location of their being in this world, in the actual ground that they
stood on. To have the capacity in our preaching, in our outreach, in
our advocacy of the values and principles of Krishna consciousness,
to learn and practice the art of revealing devotional service in the
unique and palatable way that each person may desire it, is
completely essential for us if we are to properly follow Prabhupada's
calling for us.
Consider
two more passages from this purport:
As
far as different faiths are concerned, religions may be of different
types, but on the spiritual platform, everyone has an equal right to
execute devotional service. Madhya 25.121
The
conclusion is that devotional service is open for everyone,
regardless of caste, creed, time and country. This Kṛṣṇa
consciousness movement is functioning according to this principle.
Madhya 25.121
How
can we say our movement is functioning according to these absolute
values when we clearly understand the legacy and ongoing reality
within our movement of discrimination against certain types of body,
nationality, caste, and/or sexuality? There is a contradiction which
exists, which we must confront, between these eternal values of
openness and equality at the heart of
bhakti,
and the way we either share or don't share these values with people
because of the discriminatory lenses we carry with us. This
contradiction is one of the core reasons, if not the core reason, why
we struggle to be as relevant are we are called to be in the world
around us. There
are of course individual devotees and communities of devotees who are
exploring this contradiction and creating outreach which truly speaks
openly and equally to the heart and mind of the contemporary human
being in the 21st
Century.
One powerful example is the Gita
Sutras (gitanyc.com)
program associated with the Bhakti Center community here in New York
City, which is attracting a diverse and dynamic spectrum of spiritual
seekers whose intelligent minds and compassionate hearts are being
enlivened by a presentation of the essential principles of
the Bhagavad-Gita
as given by Prabhupada. It is a presentation which meets them
powerfully and profoundly in their psychophysical locations and which
doesn't discriminate against those locations.
ISKCON
as a whole, as a global body representing Prabhupada's body, must now
courageously and specifically ask whether its cultural presentation
is something that is directly relevant to the world we live in. Do
the elements of the presentation of Krishna consciousness in our
communities and in our society as a whole contribute to the
discrimination that exists in this world, or does it help to liberate
people from that discrimination? What do we need to do to translate
the eternal relevance of bhakti
so that it is practically relevant to the way people feel, think,
live, and suffer? What do we need to do to translate this relevance
so that it is not a scandal to the intellect and experience of the
people we want to reach, touch, and affect?
As
individuals and as communities we have the tendency to participate in
“spiritual
bypassing”,
or to become addicted to “spiritual
heroin”,
in which we consciously/unconsciously ignore the difficulties in our
own hearts, in our own communities, and in the world around us. To
offer a balm to this affliction, I ask this question: do you, do we,
do I, really understand how terrible and how painful the effects of
the Kali-Yuga are to people suffering those effects? In the same way
we can say to ourselves or tell someone else that “you are not the
body” without fully understanding the full spiritual import of that
statement, when we pass off the tumult of our time by saying its just
the “Kali-Yuga”, we are ignoring our sacred responsibility to
understand, confront, and redeem the pain of our age. We have to ask
ourselves: do we want to be confronted by the realities of our age,
perversities of divine nature which most certainly manifest in our
own heart, or do we want to be an insular, provincial, “Hindu”
religious society which has little practical relevance or effect upon
society?
I
know it is my experience, and the experience of a good number of
devotees in our communities, that once one sees and encounters the
vastness of the injustice and suffering which permeates our age,
there is no longer anyway to bypass it or ignore it. It changes one's
entire identity and calling as a devotee. It strengthens that
identity and calling. It deepens that identity and calling. Some of
the most formative influences on the shape of my own spiritual
journey has been books like American
Holocaust
by David Stannard,
which detailed the mass extermination of indigenous Native American
peoples and cultures upon the “discovery” of the “New World”
by European settlers/conquerors. Equally as powerful is
The
New Jim Crow by
Michelle Alexander,
which explores and reveals how the contemporary criminal-justice
system has created a underclass of people, largely Black and Latino
men, whose standing as citizens in American society has been
traumatically torn asunder. I would encourage any devotees to read
these books to gain a better and broader idea of the kinds of
demoniac forces we encounter in this age and on this planet.
Let
me also share some food for thought from my recent participation in
the opening workshop of the 2013 Immersion Experience of the Poverty
Initiative, a clear and committed social justice organization working
out of Union Theological Seminary. The workshop was titled Conditions
and Consciousness: The Current Economic Crisis, and
in the opening session we were presented with a number of facts that
were meant to challenge and motivate us to grasp and understand a
number of elements of exactly why and how so many people face
suffering and exploitation because of certain economic factors that
exist in our societal infrastructure.
I
hope that by listing below some of these fact/provocations/questions
that like-minded and similarly concerned devotees reading this may be
deepened and challenged in their own motivation and conception of
what it means to serve in this Kali-Yuga. We must understand the
nature of what the term economic means. It is a measuring and a
conceptual understanding of who gets what and why. It is an
examination of the
principle of the quota from the Isopanisad
and how that principle is/is not honored in our current time.
We
must understand and confront in our ourselves and in our society the
gap between the factual reality of certain economic conditions and
our consciousness of these conditions.
To
whit:
-As
recently as 2010, a
home was being foreclosed on every 15 seconds.
-The
number of “Tent
Cities”
continues to rise since the 2008 financial crisis, exacerbated no
doubt by the increase in environmentally related disasters. As
devotees, how do we practically help the people living in these
communities?
-Of
course we tend to notice how machines/robots continue to replace
human service/interactions in such places as the assembly line and
the checkout line. What do we as devotees have to say to people whose
livelihood has been replaced/is threatened by this effect of economic
globalization?
-I
am reminded of the time HH Devamrta Swami, in one of his visits to
the Bhakti Center in NYC, showed all the brahmacaris the
award-winning documentary Inside
Job,
which detailed the 2008 financial meltdown. He never explicitly
explained why he was showing us this film, but the implication was
clear: just down the road from the Bhakti Center, on Wall Street, are
the kind of overt demoniac forces that Krishna spoke of the
in
the Bhagavad-gita,
and that as devotees, we should be very aware of this and very clear
about what they are trying to do.
-How
much are we, as devotees, aware of how debt functions to keep this
unjust economic system working? How do our own experiences of debt,
as individuals and communities, define our viewpoint of how our
society actually works? Do we understand that the current crises of
debt inequality exist not because the system isn't working, but
because that is how the system actually works?
-Through
the combination of our own personal misuse and the ways the
industrial food production systems work, half
the food that is produced is eventually wasted/thrown out.
This adds up to $165 million of food wasted per year, while 800
million hungry go around the world.
-Did
you know that, despite the backlash that came after the 2008 economic
crash, CEOs
earns at least 185 times more on average
that the workers under them at their corporations?
The
main point of this workshop was to help us to begin to understand the
structural and ideological
roots of
why our current economic situation is the way it is, from the most
high corporate boardrooms on down to the people barely scraping by in
slums left behind. As devotees, it is also our challenge to
understand the roots of the way the Kali-Yuga is being expressed in
the world around us. Understanding these roots will allow us to have
a more accurate diagnosis of the problem, and it will compel
us to offer the right prescription to help cure our ills as much as
we possibly can.
What,
according to Srila Prabhupada, is this right prescription?
Because
of the increment in demoniac population, people have lost brahminical
culture. Nor is there a kṣatriya government. Instead, the
government is a democracy in which any śūdra can be voted
into taking up the governmental reigns and capture the power to rule.
Because of the poisonous effects of Kali-yuga,
the śāstra(Bhāg. 12.2.13) says, dasyu-prāyeṣu
rājasu: the government will adopt the policies of dasyus, or
plunderers. Thus there will be no instructions from
the brāhmaṇas, and even if there are brahminical
instructions, there will be no kṣatriya rulers who can follow
them. 7.2.11
Therefore,
through the popularizing of hari-kīrtana, or
the saṅkīrtana movement, the brahminical culture
and kṣatriya government will automatically come back, and
people will be extremely happy. 7.2.11
Having
an effective consciousness and awareness of the suffering in this
world will give us determination and courage to effect the change,
to do what Prabhupada is calling us to do, to overcome this
suffering. As devotees, we have a responsibility to always be asking
ourselves if we are
truly and comprehensively aware as we can be of the suffering in the
world. We must always be critiquing and improving our understanding
of our own responsibility and our own calling to free the world, as
best as we can, from this suffering.
A
few quotes to end, from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of course, and
also from Jon Sobrino, an influential Jesuit activist and liberation
theologian
"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr
“Our
theology has to be rooted in reality”
Jon
Sobrino, S.J
The
relevance of Prabhupada's mission as we move into the 21st
Century depends so very much on standing firmly on the ground of
suffering in this world, in this Kali-Yuga, and in giving effectively
and compassionately the unique loving and spiritual balms and
solutions that we have to give.
