Learning to Love Krishna: A Living Theology of Moral Emotions

This article explores what I describe as a living theology of moral emotions in the context of a multi-national community of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) devotees in Mayapur, West Bengal. Against the backdrop of a rich history of moralisation of emotions, I outline how ISKCON's philosophy has been informed by the context of its cross-cultural transmission to the West and back again to India. In particular, I focus on how devotees manage the seeming impossibility of the central spiritual goal of prema ('pure love for Krishna'). Through a focus on moral narratives that cohere around understandings of emotion, I suggest that the careful aversion to displays, or indeed claims, of overt emotional experience in Mayapur is best understood by treating emotions as sites of moral self-cultivation. Whereas the anthropology of emotions has tended to privilege temporal episodes of rupture, I argue that more attention needs to be paid to how emotions are conceived and managed in the context of broader sustained projects of self-transformation.