At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga
Conference in 2025, Ed Anobah spoke on dharma (right-acting) leadership
as a means of making progress in solving societal problems using Hinduism’s
spiritual tradition of bhukti (devotionalism). Anobah based his talk on the book, Leadership
for an Age of Higher Consciousness by D. T. Swami. In the Bhagavad-Gita,
Krishna says that what great people do, other people follow. What constitutes healthy,
impactful leadership? The ideal leader in Hinduism is also a great sage, like
Plato’s notion of a philosopher king. Leadership that deals wholistically with
the human condition by exemplifies the character of a leader, which does not
mean that only highly educated persons can or should be leaders. Rather, “everyone
is a leader,” potentially, and “we are all leading our own life.” Each of us is
a leader potentially for other people on the interpersonal level. Each of us
can inspire other people. Anobah claimed that certain universal principles of
leadership can apply across the board. I submit that this view is vulnerable to being too utopian when it is applied in the business world. Being
realistic as to possible practical difficulties and even limitations in applying dharmic leadership in business (and government) is advisable. Even there being different metaphysical assumptions can get in the way, practically speaking, as compassionate leadership runs up against the profit-motive in business.
Dharmic leadership begins from the inside out: leading oneself by “working on oneself.” This can result in “random acts of kindness.” A leader is someone who understands that real leadership is by being lived, hence by example. People see the effects of the example of a leader. Bhukti yoga, whether meditation on Krishna or other ways of devotion to the deity, is a practice of inner-discipline that can bring out a person’s better nature, by which a person can lead by example in random acts of kindness. Our better nature is not desire, and thus not greed: the desire for more. Practice of inner-discipline, as for example by chanting the many names of a deity, can not only bracket or strengthen mental control of desires, but also give a person a clearer “lens of reality.” Perception with clarity (and compassion) is an asset in terms of inner-led leadership. Therefore, finding some way to nourish the best within us is vital to being able to exemplify compassion, as per that of Krishna and the devotee thereof. That is, by loving devotion to a deity, especially if compassion is in its nature, a person is better able to instantiate dharmic (right-acting) leadership.
As per Krishna’s teachings to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, a leader is a person of action, but without worrying about whether one’s leadership is successful or not. Even encountering detractors can be useful in strengthening a leader’s self-discipline, similar to a butterfly’s struggle to get out of its cocoon strengthens the wing muscles. In Christian terms, encountering hateful people can be an important means of exercising selfless benevolence, which Samuel Hopkins argued is the essence of the kingdom of God.[1] The metaphysical basis of such compassion is agape, which is divine love as self-emptying (in God being incarnate in the world in Jesus Christ). In Advaita Vedanta, by contrast, the metaphysical basis of compassion is that each person’s realization that each person’s true or underlying self is identical with brahman, which is infinite being. In the Bhukti Yoga tradition, the metaphysical basis is reality being ultimately in the form of a Supreme Person, which is Krishna in the Gita.
I submit that being aware of whatever metaphysical basis supports even very practical exercises of leadership not only in religion, but also in the worlds of business and government, and grounds a person’s notion of leadership. Even in exercising fiduciary duty to stockholders as an example for managers within a corporation, a CEO’s underlying metaphysical assumption is that of materialism. Profit-seeking as an end in itself presupposes a reality of materialism, which can be contrasted with a reality that is deity that is known as the Supreme Person, whether that be Jesus or Krishna. Such different metaphysics can account for why the sort of leadership that is oriented to profit-seeking does not exemplify compassion as an end in itself, whereas dharmic leadership does. To superimpose the latter sort of leadership on the metaphysic of materialism is like throwing seeds on rock rather than soil. Put in practical terms, a CEO, such as that of Ben & Jerry’s in 2025, could legitimately be fired for putting the stockholders’ wealth in the company to use in the company promoting certain political activist stances that do not directly contribute to profit. The same can be said of programs of corporate “social responsibility,” which do not generate profit and thus dividends in the short- or medium-term. Therefore if “consciousness-raising” leadership based on dharma is to be applied in the business world, limitations should be acknowledged because that world is founded on a very different metaphysic. “Keep your feet on the ground and reach for the stars” is preferrable to drifting off into a utopia that really only exists in the mind’s eye.
