Does devotion transcend ethics?  – The claim that devotion transcends ethics can strip devotion of all ethical content and strip ethics of all devotional relevance. Let’s consider a more holistic articulation of their relationship. 

Devotion integrates ethics: Devotion is meant to be love in its purest form directed toward the highest reality. In our ordinary dealings, love is often contaminated by impurities that make us self-centered, caring more for ourselves than for those we love. As long as we have such impurities, our love needs to be guarded by ethics, otherwise it can easily degenerate into lust or possessiveness. Just as ethics offer protective support to ordinary love, they offer similar support to devotion that has not yet become pure. Therefore, devotees usually act ethically as an expression of their love for Krishna, as when Arjuna refused the proposition of the celestial damsel Urvashi. 

Ethics culminate in devotion: Ethics without love can become mere moralizing for those who talk about ethics and can seem restrictive for those who are told to abide by ethics. In contrast, when ethics are directed by love, they are seen more positively as guidelines that take us to the desired destination: a deeper connection with our object of love. With this purpose in mind, love may occasionally go beyond the letter of ethical rules to serve the spirit of those rules. 

This principle applies not just to ordinary love but also to devotion. For pleasing Krishna, devotees may sometimes act trans-ethically, as when the gopis left everything on hearing Krishna’s flute-call. Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (18.66) proclaims that devotion is the highest ethic, for whose sake all other ethics can be subordinated or suspended.

Thus, ethics structure devotion while ultimately submitting to it. And devotion energizes ethical conduct while being ready to extend beyond it. 

One-sentence summary:

Devotion integrates ethics — devotees adhere to ethics as an expression of their devotion; ethics culminate in devotion — devotees fulfill the purpose of ethics even when they occasionally act beyond the purview of ethics. 

Think it over:

  • What’s wrong with the claim that devotion transcends ethics?
  • How does devotion integrate ethics?
  • How does ethics culminate in devotion?

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18.66: Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear.

Does devotion transcend ethics?

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