RESPONSES FROM READERS
To : Prof N.S.Ramaswamy
Director, CARTMAN
Dear Prof. Ramaswamy,
The Heritage -Cartman’s May 2010 publication, “Some Seers and Sages of India” is an excellent work.
2. I hope that this finds a place in the libraries of every engineering college for, most students in them are coming from corporate Intermediate colleges where education has been “poultry –fied”. That is, just as hens feed day and night just to lay eggs in cages, so the students are prepared for exams, not enthused in learning and discovering and gaining knowledge. This publication may be a spark for some of them to discover the great heritage of India. Science without spirituality is lame, and religion without science is blind said Einstein.
3. I thank you and Prof. KMP Menon for this excellent publication. May both of you live long in the service of Bharat.
With Regards,
Yours Sincerely,
(Dr T.H.Chowdary)
* Chairman : Pragna Bharati, Andhra Pradesh
Director : Center for Telecom Management & Studies
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Extract from the letter of May 27th, 2010, from Shri M.V. Rajasekharan, Former Union Minister of State for Planning addressed to Prof. N.S. Ramaswamy
“I am very much delighted to see that you are keeping as vibrant as ever. There are very few people of your eminence and knowledge in the country who have contributed a great deal for the Nation’s progress. But it is unfortunate that we are not able to take full advantage of your long experience and intellect in building our great country”.
Some Seers And Sages Of India – An Appreciation
T.N.K. Kurup – CARTMAN
As a member of the editorial group of Heritage-Cartman journal, I have been one way or the other associated with its publication from the inception. However, due to the exigencies of a Project work I could read the May journal only after its printing and publication. On reading the same, I would like to express my congratulations to Prof. K.M.P. Menon on the selection of sages and the excellent coverage of their life and teachings.
Every country has its own uniqueness. Britain and the European countries like France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, etc were sea-faring nations and they colonized many countries in Asia and America for their own benefit and prosperity. China as a nation had many achievements to her credit, notable among them were their constructional and ship building activities. They had the biggest Navy in the world during the fifteenth century. Our country, Bharat, is known for her knowledge and spirituality throughout the ages. It was mentioned that when Alexander, the Great, invaded India, he enquired from the learned Brahmins whether they have studied Man. They countered the Emperor with the question whether he has studied God and added further that without the study of God, study of man would not be complete. The journal is a reflection of the engrossing study by the great seers and sages of India during the last two millennia.
The selection of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa as the first in the series is apt, as his divinity, godliness and universal approach to religions inspired many great disciples, notable among them being Swami Vivekananda, who led the resurgence of our thought and wisdom and broadcasted them to the world at large, the reverberations of which continue to this day. The following extract from his speech delivered in Chicago on 19th September,1893, reflects the true sprit of Hinduism:
“The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma but in realising – not in believing, but in being and becoming.
Thus the whole object of the system is by constant struggle to become perfect, to reach God and to see God and thus reaching God, seeing God, becoming perfect ever as the Father in Heaven is perfect, constitute the religion of Hindus”.
Sri Ramana Maharshi’s teachings were his own spiritual experience – self realization. He did not learn the fundamental truth from the sacred books first and then realize it; in his case, the realization was earlier and later on, when the books were read out to him or brought to his notice they were collaboration of that earlier realization.
Sri Aurobindo saw the universe as manifestation of God. All men are portions of God and they are not conscious of it. To make them conscious and live as Gods is the object of his teachings.
The epoch making saints – Sri Sankaracharya, Sri Ramanujacharya and Sri Madhvacharya have millions of followers and their respective spiritual approaches, viz., Advaita, Vishistadvaita and Dvaita are well known and practiced by their learned followers. The Mutts set up by them and later by their followers preach their lofty messages to inspire the learned and mundane. Their life, achievements and teachings are well documented in the journal.
Many other great saints mentioned in the journal are well known exponents of Bhakti and Bhakti Marga for realization of the Supreme truth. Notable among them are Tulsi Das, Sur Das, Sri Jaganath Dasa, Sri Jaya Teertha, Sri Basavesvara, Meera Bai and other great souls.
Sri Narayana Guru, hailing from the southern most State of Kerala, is not only a realized soul but a social reformer as well who strived all the way to bridge the dividing casteism and preached the study of self for collective happiness.
The inclusion of the names of Saint Bhagat Kabir Das and that of Sri Guru Nanak is noteworthy for their universal approach and creation of harmony at the troubled times for the benefit of the society and people in general.
I would like to conclude with an extract from Sri Osho’s talk:
“Ordinary people, the majority, live in unconsciousness, so they can’t see even a few steps ahead. If we can create a great momentum for Meditation, for the inward journey, for tranquility, stillness and love, humanity will be reborn anew”.
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PREFACE PHOTO
The 7th booklet in the ICM series was on “Glimpses of Indian Civilization”, and the 8th was on “Some Seers and Sages of India”. This is the 9th on “Indian Life & Thought & Some Western Exponents”.
The main content of this booklet is ‘Hindu Philosophy’, which is of profound value for man’s day-to-day life. Hindu Philosophy is not a mere subject for academic debates and speculation, but is for practical application to enjoy life in this world and to endure suffering and failures. Philosophy is described theoretically in the Upanishads and is illustrated in story form in mythologies.
The other theme is on Indian Life, where we have given views on “our dreams, fight for freedom, British rule for two centuries”, etc.
The third theme is to give Tributes to some Western Exponents, who had done great service to India by not only appreciating India’s ancient thought and wisdom but also sympathizing with us for the suffering we have undergone under various foreign conquerors who humbled and humiliated Indians. Fortunately, in spite of the attempts of foreign conquerors and modernists to wipe out Indian Culture, it has sustained for 5,000 years, and is still living and vibrant in spite of 69 invations and 1000 years of foreign rule. There are thousands of Westerners who had appreciated our thoughts. We have paid tributes to some of them in this booklet as a token of appreciation and gratitude to hundreds who were our wellwishers.
We are happy that after two millennia, India’s Century has dawned and thousands of western scholars are looking to India for solving various problems afflicting mankind.
N.S. Ramaswamy
FOREWORD
Philosophy is usually a subject for academic pursuit. But in India, philosophy, that is the Upanishads, is the main subject for discourses by Swamis and Gurus. Philosphy is a guide for life in India. Two atheists were giving their cynical view of theology and philosophy. The Theologist said “Philosophy was like a blind man looking for a black cat in a dark room”, to which the philosopher replied “Theology was like a blind man looking in a dark room for a black cat which was not there”. Hindu philosophy is an integral part of Hindu religion, while in the West, philosophy and religion are treated separately and not depended on each other. In our earlier issues, we had pointed out that Hinduism is not a religion, since it has no prophet or a single book. It is more ‘a way of life and view of life’, given by hundreds of saints and sages over 5000 years. They wrote one million pages of religious, spiritual, philosophical and mythological literature, which were more revelations from unknown sources, known as higher knowledge or Para Vidya. In our earlier issue, we have described the life and work of Sri SARPV Chaturvedi Swami, who, at the age of 37, has delivered innumerable speeches on hundreds of subjects in not only religion-related subjects but also in technology, which he has done without going through any academic education from books or teachers.
In one issue, we had given the opinion of eminent philosophers and scholars in the world, who had opined that human mind of Indians had gone far beyond that of anybody else in the world. In another issue, we had described that Indian seers and sages had discovered the mysteries of the universe. Without any equipment, they calculated speed of light, age of the Earth, movement of Planets, etc. They had also discovered theory of numbers, concept of zero, decimals and infinity, etc. Many of the modern discoveries, including Pythagoras theorem, gravitation, evolution, relativity, etc were the pronouncements of seers and sages, who lived hundreds of years before the western scientists, in whose names these discoveries are now known. Since modern Indians have not cared to understand them or to popularize them, they are considered to be the output of western scholars and scientists. In the case of Indian philosophy, it has been acclaimed by eminent scholars all over the world that it is the most rational, scientific, logical and useful learning meant for the welfare of all mankind, and not Indians only.
Hindu philosophy is known as Vedanta, which means teching appearing at the end of Vedas kown as Upanishads. About 108 are extant now, of which 11 are more popular, on which Sri Sankaracharaya had written Commentaries. The Upanishads, the Bhagawat Gita and the Brahmasutras are known as the three authorities, or ‘Prasthanathraya’. Over the last 5000 years, many commentaries have been written by sages like Madhvacharya, Ramanujacharya and hundreds of others.
The very purpose of religion, spirituality and philosophy is to remove sorrow and suffering and to attain happiness and peace. The ultimate aim of religion is God realization, which is described by Hanuman to Rama in the following words: “When I consider myself as the body, you and me are different; when I consider myself as the mind, I am part of you; when I consider myself as a soul or spirit or atman, I am you”. In order to illustrate the principles of philosophy to the masses, Valmiki wrote Ramayana and Vyasa wrote the Mahabharata as well as 18 Puranas and 18 Upapuranas, which are mythologies. Dr. Joseph Campbel, of Cornnel University has described the significance and utility of mythology to understand philosophy. Dr. George Gammow and Frank Capra, of United States, have written extensively on the significance of Indian philosophy for mankind. Dr. Deepak Chopra, of Indian origin, now living in the US, has tried to popularize Indian philosophy to westerners through his unique books and audio visual presentations. Dr David Frawley has written 36 books on Hinduism and associated subjects. Even 100,000 pages of printed matter cannot adequately describe Indian philosophy in its entirety. So much is its vastness and coverage of all aspects of creation, life and death.
In this booklet, we are only concerned with those concepts and principles which have practical value for maintaining physical and mental health, reducing sorrow and suffering, succeeding in life and to endure failures and tragedies.
Even the most profound and erudite scholars and scientists have not been able to explain the rationale and the logic behind the inequities and injustice found in life. Some are born as subhuman beings, while some are lucky to be born as human beings. Some are born in the West, while others are born in India. Some are born healthy, while others are born blind or paralised. Some succeed in life, while others fail. Some are miserable in the midst of affluence, while some poor who are able to endure their privation. Good people suffer, while scoundrels enjoy life in spite of their crimes. Some die young, while others live long. We see no correlation between the way they lead their lives and values they follow. Sankaracharya died at the age of 32. During his brief period, he wrote commentaries on the popular “Upanishads” and travelled all over India four times on foot. Swami Vivekananda died, when he was 40. Hitler killed 7 million Jews, who considered themselves as the chosen children of God. Stalin killed millions. Yet the descendents of Hitler and Stalin are enjoying lives. Many evangelists tortured people in the name of religion, essence of which is love. Jealous religious fanatics killed millions. Millions were forced to convert their religion. Many most pious people were subjected to torture and humiliation. For instance, India was attacked 69 times, though India did not attack any other country and 300 m of Indians are suffering today. Buddha was the first person who protested against killing of animals. He was known as the Compassion Incarnate. But most Buddhists take non-vegetarian food and eat even snakes and dogs.
All these inequities and injustices cannot be easily explained. The popular concept of God is that he/she is a good person. Why did he create the devil and bad people? Why does he/she tolerate such cruelty and injustice? Has he to do anything for with what is going on in this world? Or is he a silent witness, with no role to play? Scholars all over the world have given their own interpretations on “why” of such phenomena. Hindus also have given their own postulations, hypotheses, theories and concepts. In the case of Semitic religions and Zoroastrianism, they have Prophets and a holy book giving the teachings of the Prophets. Their adherents believe what is given in these books. In their religions, they cannot believe in what is given in other religion. What is written in other holy books are superstitious. In the case of Hindu philosophy, each sage has given his own views and interpretation. Though there are differences in details, particularly in the peripherals, on the whole, there is unanimous agreement in the main principles and concepts. That is the beauty of the Hindu philosophy, which even accepts atheists. Charvaka, an atheist like Epicurus, was considered to be a sage. Though there were differences throughout the 5000 years, nobody has been persecuted for holding an opinion different from those in power. In the West, in the past, anybody who opposed the doctrine of the priests as given in their holy books, were persecuted. Therefore, the first thing to be appreciated in Hindu philosophy is the freedom given to individuals to express their views. Tolerance is to be shown to not only Hindus but also of other religions. In fact, it is the only Hindu philosophy which accepts that God is one known in different names and that God can be realized by different paths and beliefs. Bhagawan Ramakrishna lived like a Christian for one year and as a Muslim for another year, and he declared that he realized God by practicing other religions also. India is the only country which gave refuge to the Jews and Parsis, who were persecuted and driven out of their home lands.
The second beautiful and unique feature of Hindu philosophy is that it encouraged debate of views and counter views and respected all views. They were in search of the Truth and knowledge, knowing which everything else can be known. Further, they also conceded what they did not know and what were not able to explain. The third beautiful aspect of Hindu philosophy is that it insists that nothing should be accepted without verification and actual experience. While Hinduism accesses the power of faith, it does not accept blind beliefs or superstitions or doctrines, which cannot be proved or experienced practically. In fact, philosophy is knowledge, while spirituality is actual experience of the knowledge achieved through meditation, prayer and silencing the mind.
Yet another unique feature of Hindu philosophy is that people, particularly the masses, are unequal in terms of knowledge, understanding, comprehension, etc. Therefore, it prescribes different paths towards achieving God realization at one end and practical living at the other. Thus, the knowledge path is for the very few, while temple going and prayer and observance of rituals are for the masses. While theoretical and abstract debate about God and creation are for the few scholars, the masses are to understand theories through the Itihasas and mythologies. Thus, Hinduism recognizes that human beings are at different levels of intellectual understanding and competence.
Hindu philosophy does not encourage conversion from other religions. Those who belong to other religions are free to choose and adopt those aspects of Hinduism, which are agreeable to their inherent inclination, or which appeals to their intellect. Thus Dr David Frawley, son of a priest, now living in US, got converted himself into Hinduism. One organization in US undertakes the job of conversion to Hinduism, but it insists that the person concerned should obtain a certificate from their priest that he was voluntarily relinquishing his religion and entering into Hinduism. Christians and Muslims insist that followers of Hinduism should get converted to their religion after marriage.
In spite of such openness and liberal traditions or tolerance and acceptance, Hindus were humiliated for 2000 years by foreigners. The only redeeming feature is that Swami Vivekananda declared in 1895, while in the US “Those barbarians, who conquered, humbled and conquered us, will one day come to India to seek solutions for problems afflicting mankind”. That is the rationale for the Indian Heritage Academy to undertake the India Century Mission, which is already showing evidence of acceptance even by Indians, most of whom are ignorant about Hinduism. We have already described, in earlier issues, how Hindu thought and wisdom are spreading all over the world without any propaganda machinery or financial resources and organisation to back such movements.
Unique features of Hinduism
Hinduism and the three religions born in India have been following unique concepts and beliefs, which distinguish them, from the Semitic religions and Zoroastrianism.
(a) Law of Order or Natural Law, which states that everything that goes on in the world is as per a law.
(b) Law of Cause-Effect : Every cause has an effect, and every effect has a cause which is in keeping with the law of physics.
(c) Law of Rebirth: The soul or spirit or Atman or Jeevatman is never born and never died. Only the body, consisting of the five basic elements, is born and dies. The soul migrates from body to body, according to its desires and inclinations.
(d) Nothing can be created nor destroyed. Only change in form takes place. There has been no creation. It is only a cycle of becoming, sustenance and dissolution. The cycle continues for ever.
(e) Man is potentially divine and not a sinner. Nobody is condemned to eternal hell. Everybody is given millions of chances to rise from being a devil to become a divine being, i.e. realize that he is God.
The concept of God is “with attributes or without attributes”. Without attributes, it is the universal energy, or consciousness or awareness or intelligence or force, or chaithanya, that pervades the whole universe. It is that force which moves the subatomic particles to go around the nucleus. It is the same force that moves the billions of galaxies and billions of stars in each galaxy. It energizes the atoms in metals and minerals, plant life, animal species and mankind. If the scene of a hand, holding a live plant and an animal, is magnified a billion times, we would find first “molecules, then atoms, then protons, electrons and neutrons, then particles, then quarks, then quanta and then nothing”. George Gammow says that our planet Earth, if compressed without any void between the quanta, would not be larger than a football field. The above is called Nirguna Brahman, or Father in heaven or Allah in other religions.
The Saguna Brahman or Easwara is the manifestation of Nirguna Brahman in different forms and shapes, with powers. Brahman is a witness and does not interfere in any of the activities that go on in the universe. Man is the arbiter of his own destiny. His present life is based on his actions in earlier years in this birth and/or in previous births, which is often referred to as “destiny, fate, luck, karma, taqdeer, etc”.
Destiny can be changed, at least partially, by prayer, good actions, knowledge and meditation/contemplation. Paths to self realization and happiness have been classified as four paths – knowledge, desireless action (Nishkama Karma), prayer/devotion and meditation/contemplation. Wt can adopt a combination of all these in varying degrees.
Modern scholars believe that, prior to Christian era, such an understanding was prevalent in many parts of the world. Only the onslaught of Semitic Religions erased such ideas, along with destruction of local culture after conversion. Plato believed in the Law of Reincarnation. Some scholars believe that Christianity also had this belief in its doctrines. But it was removed by the Church in 200 AD or so. But Jesus is reported to have said “As you sow so you reap”. Similarly, Shakespeare had written “We are the arbiters of our own destiny”. All western scholars believe in these postulations of Hindus, which was formulated 5,000 years prior to the birth of Christ.
The Law of Nature or Natural Law (NL) : As per NL, everything observes the Law of Order. The speed of light, Movement of planets and stars, Movement of electrons, Gravitation, Boiling point of water – in fact every natural phenomena – observe NL. In plant life, a coconut tree will not give arecanut. An Orange tree will not give apple. There also NL is applied. In the animal kingdom also, the lower species observe NL 100 per cent. Mosquito or scorpion will bite. A dog will tag the tail. A cow will not eat meat. Animal species are instinct driven. In the upper species, such as an elephant or a dog, they have a certain amount of discrimination to love their master and not a stranger.
In the case of man, he has the discriminating ability or the power to distinguish between what is right and wrong, good and bad, proper and improper etc. Hr is bestowed with intelligence and has the freedom to choose.
These concepts try to explain the inequities, injustices, cruelty, suffering, etc in the world. These concepts have been accepted by great Western scholars and is now getting increasing acceptance among the new generation of western scholars. The inter-religious movement all over the world is trying to reconcile and accept these concepts. The India Century Mission attempts to bring all religions together under its banner of philosophy.
These concepts have tremendous and substantial practical value. We cannot blame God or destiny or any other extraneous being for our misery and suffering. We have ourselves designed our life’s successes and failures. We can change destiny, with efforts or prayer to endure and suffer failures and humiliation, with equanimity and a sense of acceptance and submission. We cannot blame anybody else for such suffering. Further, these concepts give us the motivation and incentive to lead a good life, helping others and hurting none. Satya Sai Baba and Amritanandamayi teach us such simple principles, such as, “Love all, Help all, Hurt none”. In fact, one definition of culture is ‘concern for others’, including all entities in the world – animate and inanimate. There is a saying “God sleeps in the mineral world, wakes up in plant life, walks in the animal and thinks and talks in man”, which means we have been evolving from inanimate matter to human being. In fact, the theory of evolution had been succinctly described by our sages, which has been explained in the previous issues of our booklets.
When we get luck and succeed in life, we should not think that we are responsible for our success, that is, it is not our cleverness and smartness that was responsible for our success. Destiny must have played an important role in our successes and failures. Therefore, in Bhagavad Gita, Krishna advises us that we should do our duty or actions without a “doership concept or Karthruthwa Bhava”. We should submit ourselves to the divine and act as an instrument or vehicle, thus getting empowered by God’s grace or the result of our destiny. Some scholars had described the teachings of Bhagavad Gita as social psychology, rather than a religious scripture.
Life has ups and downs, successes and failures, happiness and sorrow, which is called ‘Theory of dwandwa or duelty’. The world is full of sets of opposites – “good-bad, truth-lie, etc.” Nobody can escape this duality. But, one can be equanimous and serene by accepting successes and failures as the nature of life and take both without reacting to the extremes, which means that one should not jump with joy when we succeed or cry incessantly when we fail. They are two sides of the same coin. Whatever be the outcome of our effort, we should accept it as “Prasada” from God.
Our scriptures also tell us that we can change our destiny and our inclinations. Valmiki was a robber, who became later on a Rishi, who wrote the Ramayana. Even in modern times, some of our monks, like Chinmayananda, changed their life when the time came i.e when the destiny exhausted its evil part and ushered in the good part. Thus, all of us, who try, can progress towards divinity. Success will be achieved in several births. Thus life becomes a voyage of many births and deaths, giving us the hope each time that we are progressing towards divinity or godhood. But there are many who are not aware of the possibility, and hence neglect such teachings and lead a reckless life of indulgence, indifference, callousness and cruelty. They punish the body and dirty the mind. One million pages of Hindu literature gives us this in the form of knowledge as well as in stories, by which we can lead a happy and contented life, irrespective of whether being rich or poor, ill or healthy. Hindu thoughts give opportunities and techniques, suitable to one’s competence and inclination. That is the beauty of Hindu philosophy which takes care of all situations from childhood to old age. Life is divided into four stages – childhood, adulthood (Grihastha), Vanaprashtha and Sanyasa. Full scope is given for enjoyment of all our faculties. As the Grihastha, we can enjoy our family. When one grows old, one should withdraw from ordinary pleasures based on senses and adopt a detached life. It does not mean going to the forest. In fact, Krishna advises that we should live in the world taking active part in all duties and chosen vocations and profession. But we should not be attached to them, lest we get affected by the vagaries of circumstances, successes and failures.
Buddha did not reply to nine questions, which included some of the above beliefs of Hinduism. He did not even reply to questions as to whether there is God or not, who created, etc. Buddhism is believed to be an agnostic religion. Mahavira also did not reply to such questions. Jainism is considered to be an atheist religion. Yet Hindus consider that these religions are part of Hinduism, but with distinct identities and differences in concepts and principles. There is a lot of misunderstanding that Hinduism consists of millions of Gods of different forms and shapes. Really speaking, Hinduism teaches that God is within us. God cannot be seen nor known. God is unknowable. But God can be experienced, as was done by Bhagwan Ramakrishna, who asserted that he saw God or experienced God as he saw other human beings. In some sense, Jesus said the same thing, when he stated “Kingdom of God is within you”. Even in Tamil, one word for God is “Kadavul” which only means ‘enter within’. Four Mahavakyas, given in the four Vedas, are “Thath thwam asi, Aham brahmasmi, Ayam Atma Brahma, Prajnanam Brahma”. These mean that ‘we are god’.
As already stated in our earlier issues of our booklets, Indian civilization is 10,000 years old. In every century and in every part of the country, great seers and saints were born, who gave their views based on ‘revelation and cosmic knowledge’, which they accessed by meditation and contemplation. Vyasa Maharshi classified the Vedas into four – Rig, Yajur, Sama and Adharva. At the end of each Veda, the Upanishads were the knowledge path, i.e. philosophy. The principles contained in the 108 Upanishads is condensed in the Bhagavad Gita, which was part of the epic, called Mahabharatham of Vyasa, consisting of 701 slokas, believed to have been delivered in Kurukshetra in 3138 BC.
Another beauty of the Hindu philosophy is that it is open to rational and scientific scrutiny, and not a blind doctrine or creed to be blindly followed without questioning. All our sages encouraged debates on every issue. There is a famous case of Sankaracharya going round India calling for discussions, debates, arguments and confrontation of vital issues of philosophy. There is a famous instance of his debate with Mandana Mishra in Banaras. Mandana Mishra’s wife, Ubhay Bharati was the arbitrator to decide on who wins the debate. Sankaracharya won and Mandana Mishra and his wife became his followers. It may be noted that there was no inquisition or torture of those who did not believe in Hindu concepts. But what is written in the holy books of Semitic Religions has to be believed. In mideaval times dissenters were tortured or burnt to death.
There is no definite proof of reincarnation, except that hundreds of persons all over the world remember their previous birth, which have been documented after investigation. Like Lord Krishna, Sai Baba also remembers his previous births and has even predicted his next birth would be in Mandya of Mysore District. Some experts have shown that the dreams, where we find hundreds of new people and places, cannot be created by the mind without previous experience, which could be of previous births. One kind of knowledge is ‘Prathyaksha’ or what can be perceived by the five senses. The other kind of knowledge is what is inferred or ‘Anumana’.
Scientific analysis shows that there is no other explanation possible for the inequality and vagaries of life. The third kind of knowledge is ‘Pramana’ or Authority. Thousands of sages have asserted that the ‘Karana Sareera’ migrates body to body, carrying with it the results of actions done in this birth, unfulfilled desires, prejudices, aspirations, etc. Thoughts cannot be destroyed. In spite of all this, one cannot be 100 percent sure of the theory of reincarnation. But Indians are looking forward to progress of science, which would help them to solve this mystery. There are many things our sages had conceived, which cannot be proved or on which one can be hundred percent certain. There is a story of a group of sages going to Brahma to ask him as to why he created the world and why in this particular way. On the way, Sage Narada stopped them and told them “Brahma himself does not know”. However, it is much safer to assume that our actions will have reactions in this birth or in the next birth.
The roles of destiny and the Law of Cause and Effect have been illustrated in thousands of cases in the Itihasas and 36 Puranas. Dasaradha killed the only son of a blind couple, who cursed him that he would die of Putra Dukha, i.e. sorrow caused by the departure of his son. Srirama killed Vaali, hiding behind a tree, for which he paid a price in his incarnation as Krishna who was killed by an arrow from a hunter, who mistook him for an animal. Thus, Hindus believe in these Natural Laws and Law of Karma, because the illustrations given in the mythology and the assertions done by sages and saints.
But rest of the world goes without caring for the effect of their actions. Hitler and Stalin killed millions of innocent people. But Germans and Soviets are enjoying life. US put the atom bomb on innocent Japanese people, and yet they are enjoying life in the conventional sense.
Yet another feature, worth noting about Indian philosophy is that it is not depended upon the personality, who is believed to have written the scriptures. We don’t know actually who had written the Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmasutras and Puranas. They remained anonymous. Their only goal was welfare of mankind and planet Earth and its inhabitants. If, in future, we are able to get evidence that Rama and Krishna, Valmiki and Vyasa and hundreds of others did not exist at all, even then what is believed to have been written by them will remain still valid, since they stand on own merit. The scriptures don’t depend upon authors, which is unlike in the case of other religions. Sometime in future, if it is found that the lives of the Prophets and Saints are not socially acceptable to the coming generations, what they have reported to have written will lose their authenticity and credibility. For instance, a number of books have come out giving different versions of the life of Jesus, including one which has tried to prove that there was no person called Jesus and another one which has elaborately documented in a book. One version has tried to prove that Jesus was in India for the unknown period of 16 years, that he was in Tibet and learnt Tibetan language, that he did not die on the Cross and that he spent about 40 years in Kashmir and Tibet teaching with the name ‘Easo’, that he died in Srinagar, and that his tomb still exists which has been kept closed without allowing people to go inside. There are other versions saying that Christianity really is what was founded by St. Paul and not Jesus. In the case of India, though the Vedas and Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Brahmasutra, Viduraneeti, the two Itihasas and Hindu philosophy were written in theoretical and story forms by people who are fictitious, their validity will remain.
This essentially means that the scriptures are to be accepted based on its logic, rationality, scientific validity and verifiability, experience, provability, etc. However, it should be noted that the third kind of knowledge is Pramana that is, authority, which means that we accept the views and experiences of those whom we respect, such as Sankaracharya, Bhagwan Ramakrishna, Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi, Sri Satya Sai Baba, and others, who had experienced divinity and who accessed knowledge through revelations from unknown sources. Prophet Mohammed is reported to have received “Kuran” from the cosmos.
The concept of destiny gives us the ability to accept the reality, and that we cannot blame anybody else for our misfortunes and our failures. Many happenings are for the welfare of individuals, nations and mankind, while others are unfavourable. In history, there is the instance of Abraham Lincoln writing a letter to Gen Lee for having disobeyed him. But Lincoln did not post that letter that day and kept it for a couple of days. Later on, he read it and thought thus : “ Who knows why Gen Lee disobeyed me and in what circumstances”. Therefore, Lincoln did not post that letter. Later on, it turned out that US became a single nation because of what Gen Lee did. Similarly, Hitler took three days off and cut off telephone lines and enjoyed with his mistress. Gen Rommel desparately tried to contact Hitler to get his orders for moving troops from location A to location B, which he could not do since he could not contact Hitler. According to some experts, Hitler lost the war because of that single incident.
There is a wrong understanding that India’s religious and philosophic literature is meant for another-world. On the contrary, the whole lot of religious and spiritual literature is entirely meant for meeting situations found in real life and to enable mankind to lead a reasonably comfortable life while alive within the limitations in which man is placed. Therefore, Indian philosophy is directly applicable to ‘avoiding sorrow and enjoying life at various stages in one’s progression from childhood till old age and also has to promote happiness and peace”.
The body or Sareera is gross or Sthoola. It is also called Kshetra, which means ‘that which decays’. Then comes the Prana Sareera, which energises the fifty billion cells in the body to grow, multiply and take intelligent decisions to protect the body, and that which ticks the heart. When Prana leaves the body, life comes to an end. Then comes the Manonmaya Kosa or mental sheath, which consists of memory, emotions, will and ego. Within that comes the Jnanamaya Kosa or Intellect sheath, which enables a person to analyze and take decisions. Within that is the Karana Sareera, in which is imprinted our thoughts, actions, etc. It is the Karana Sareera which migrates from body to body. Within that resides the soul, spirit, consciousness, awareness, or Chaitanya, which is free from the actions of the five Jnanendriyas, five Karmendriyas and the mind. The latter get their power from the Chaitanya. An analogy will be the reflection of the sun in hundreds of buckets, each containing different coloured liquids. The image of the sun will be different according to the colour and its intensity. Pure water will reflect the sun properly and as in a mirror. Thus the whole concept behind all rituals, prayer, yoga, ethical conduct, etc is to purify the mind from all undesirable and negative tendencies and to take them to positive directions. Thus ways by which unfavourable destiny can be purifed through the mind are by prayer, ethical conduct, selfless action, positive thinking, etc.
What one does in a number of lives get collected in a huge basket, called Sanjitha. A part of it is allotted to the present birth, whose effects have to be enjoyed and endured. What one does in this birth get added to the Sanjitha and becomes Agami, which has to be enjoyed and endured in future births. One purpose of life is to avoid the cycle of birth and death. However, as long as one does things, which leave a result, another birth cannot be avoided.
A human birth is rare. How did we become eligible for a human birth. Hindus believe that it is the outcome of good deeds done in previous births. There is a school of thought which says that if one does bad things in this birth, the next birth may be as a subhuman being. Having been born as a human being, to get birth in India is another privilege which one obtains only after doing millions of meritorious actions. That is why in India, you will find a large number of saints and sages are born in every century and in every part of the country. That is why India is called a spiritual country, where all civilisations took birth and spread worldwide.
Uniqueness of India’s cultural and spiritual heritage has been described in earlier booklets. The India Century Mission hopes that in next fifty years, the whole world would recognize India’s uniqueness and would accept India as the spiritual capital of the world bringing down Adharma and upholding Dharma.
Prof. N.S. Ramaswamy
THE CALL OF INDIA
First comes the vision, then follows the fulfillment. Swami Vivekananda as a prophet and teacher foreshadowed a new awakening for India, a quickening of her pulses, a new light. He held aloft the banner of Truth and Action, and the battle cry of his life was given out in unfaltering tones. Work! It was an inciting call, and his enthusiasm was, and still should be, a source of strength to us all, encouraging us to bring about great results. From the seed sown by him is springing up a plant, which the youth of India should vigilantly foster, and endeavour carefully to mature. Let us show our selves to be in accord with his leadings, and help to continue the work bequeathed by him to us, being quick to recognize the needs of our beloved India, and ever ready to lend a helping hand. We must see that no ground is lost by his death: that we in nothing go back; we must feel that religious freedom broadens and not narrows, and strive to maintain the highest ideals of the Indian race.
The Swami came in the great line of march of many heroic souls, in the footprints of Rishis and Saints. Every age brings forth philosophers with new attempts to explain the problem of existence, and he embodies the spirit of his age. ..
The Swami was particularly addressing himself to the youth of India. He urged them to extricate themselves from the meshes of indolence; to find out the meaning and significance of life; to arouse themselves to the realization of their great possibilities, and see that a progressive future lay before them. He warned them that the world was an enchantress ever seeking to charm them into forgetfulness of the spiritual and eternal realities. As time passes, the pace of progress quickens; everywhere in India new ides are fermenting.
Then what is there for you to do, you ask? Young men! India wants you! Zealous workers are needed everywhere. Action, is the imperative cry! Strong, resolute, loyal, unswerving help in ameliorating the condition of our people and promoting the betterment of our country. A blight seems to have fallen over our land, which has caused it physically to wither, approaching a state closely allied to suspended animation. Peculiar conditions of the people and country have concurred to cause the malady, but this weakness of constitution and want of vigour must be remedied, without loss of time.
The main requisite is work, knowledge and enthusiasm, land a tremendous confidence in the self.
The soul is a sacred storehouse of heavenly wisdom and truth, and at the centre of every heart Truth lives. Many of us are in a state of spiritual etiolation, but can be restored to our true nature by exposure to divine light. Concentrate your best efforts to the cause of uplifting humanity by your thoughts and deeds, and let all of us who cling with undying affection to the glorious memorials of the ancient times, and the principles of the noble Vedanta, do our utmost to infuse new vitality and strength into our present apathetic condition, having an indomitable faith in an ideal future. Rise up to the latent potentialities of your nature, display the capacities that shall serve the ends you have in view, for human possibilities are of exalted character In spiritual unfoldment and power.
How rich in promise and opportunity is the period of youth! Standing on the threshold of life, making light of all obstacles on the road, they see years before them, like a country ripe for conquest. What a sense of infinite wealth do the intrepid spirits of youth possess in the gifts of inherent energy and strength, and in the outlook of an unexpended future! Reservoirs of knowledge are within you, and vistas of light, that are yet undreamt of, will stream forth. All living truths must be characterized by intensity of purpose and singleness of mind. Much depends upon yourselves. Who can question that the spirituality of India in the future will greatly depend upon the opinions formed and the work accomplished by the men who are now in their youth? At all hazards, work! Be given to action rather than contemplation; be practical, instead of merely theoretical; execute, not merely discuss! It is by interior concentration on a desired object, the persistent ability to seize occasions, that the highest achievements become possible.
OVERVIEW
There is something compellingly attractive about Indian Thought.Thought is another word for Philosophy .Which has come to mean "search for Wisdom".Not only the conquerer Alexander in the remote past but men of power in the recent past have been allured by it. For insance Radhakrishnan when he was our ambassador in Moscow had an advantage over other diplomats there for Stalin would seek him out to discuss the Brahma sutra or the Gita! After all he had had many years of training in a seminary to become a priest before his Life changed direction.Sardar K M Panikkar says that while serving in Beijing, he was amazed by Mao Tze Tungs regard for Indian Philosophy.
The story of Indian Philosophy is a romantic tale. It is the story of early man’s love affair with learning. Philosophy means love of learning. This happened in India. Success in love is not for the timid. Early Indian man was do daring that we are reminded of the Latin Proverb: ‘Sapaere aude’ which means: ‘Date to know!’
It is from the Vedas that we get to know the sweep of their minds and their thirst for knowledge. ‘Vedas’ are so called from ‘Vid” the root form-meaning knowledge. The oldest of them the Rig Veda is surprisingly sophisticated. Delighted with the harmony of the world, Man expresses his awe and wonder to the spirit that pervades it. This spirit has no gender. Thus the Sun who is clearly Mankind’s benefactor is sometimes the powerful Savitur the source of all power; sometimes the most beautiful Ushas, Goddess of the Dawn. The verses that describe her bring to my mind Gindo Renis famous Renaissance painting of the same subject.
How did the world begin? Perhaps the Gods themselves do not know. For, there is a Power beyond everything that is beyond Human understanding.
It is helpful to continue our metaphor of Indian Philosophy being a love story. Man is the lover and this world and life itself is the beloved. Any tale of romance has its moment of suspense and elation. There is an intense desire sometimes to be one with the beloved. This is heightened because at other times there is a feeling of intense dislike and hatred especially if one is spurned. We can see such moved-swings in the sonnets of Shakespeare. Such moved-swings provide the piquancy to the story. In the story of Indian Philosophy we find that sometimes there is a great mood of life affirmation. At such times people joyously accept the world and what life has to offer them. At other times, there is a strong feeling of life negation. At such times there is a strong tendency to reject the world and to become hermits in the forest. The question is whether Indian thinking is an acceptance of the world or a rejection of it?
From the 15th to the 19th century, European scholars thought that Indian philosophy was essentially one of rejecting the world. In the early 20th century, Albert Schweitzer was one of the first European Savants to point out the life affirming nature of Indian thought. He pointed out right from the Vedic times there was a strong Indian tendency to accept life and the world. He admits that there were times when it was fashionable to reject the world. In fact, he is surprised that despite several misfortunes for 500 centuries Indian Spirit continues to be mainly a celebration of life.
It is the unresolved question of whether to accept the world or to reject it that provides the tension in the story of Indian philosophy. It is similar to the question of whether the lovers will succeed in being with each other that provides the interest in a love story.
One of the great aims of human life is Moksha. It comes from the root ‘muk’ which means a loosening of the bonds and thus becoming free. It is variously interpreted; one interpretation is gaining salvation. It is more than just freedom. It means becoming close to or being one with the Almighty. The southern idea anlyses salvation. Probably the same idea was in the north of India also, but having been lost there like several other ideas, continues to flourish in the south. Being close to God, Sameepiam, becoming similar to God, Saroopiam, and finally becoming one with God, Sayoojiam, are all part of liberation - Mukti or Moksha.
Incidentally, one of the main points of derision of Indian thinking, mainly that it denies Life and The World is refuted by Schweitzer.
Another important charge against Indian thought was that it was devoid of Ethics. Here again Schweitzer points out that the Indian concept of Ethics is much vaster and stronger than that of Europe. European ethical idea confines its horizon to one’s fellowman. In India, on the other hand, right from the times of Vedas being ethical meant not only being good to other men. It required humanity to behave correctly towards not only all living creatures but also to the forests, the earth and the environment. In other words, the concept of Ethics had a much wider compass. The ancient Rishis had a truly impressive world view and a vision which included much more than their immediate horizon. Hence, the much quoted words “Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavanthu” and “Vasudaiva Kudumbakam”.
Schweitzer and other European commentators do not however say that everything is perfect in Indian thought. Indeed they do not endorse the perfection of western thought either. They point out how Indian and Western thought were practically identical right upto the 15th Century. The European renaissance which started then and especially the advent of Francis Bacon, started a new trend in European philosophy. All dogma was thrown out. All knowledge was to be based on experimental certainty. It is this which enabled Europe to gain supremacy. It was this which Indians, such as Rajaram Mohan Roy, wanted to take root and flourish in India. Macaulay’s Education system helped India to make a mark in the modern world.
The modern world has itself receded from the certainty of European knowledge. Its foundation based on experiment is itself found to be shaky. This happens when it is proved that the result of scientific experiments beyond a point will depend upon the experimental. Thus European “modernity” began to view ancient Indian wisdom with a new respect. Einstein’s theory of Relativity was a turning point in the previous cocksureness with which the physical sciences were accepted. Other branches of learning were quick to follow suit. Especially in medicine, psychology, spirituality, music, art as well as ethics, the East is a treasure house of practical knowledge. Only the tip of the iceberg has been revealed so far. It is in this context that Swami Vivekananda predicted that the India Century is about to dawn very soon.
It is towards the end of the 19th century that the European mystics coined the phrase “The new age”. The two World Wars and subsequently the Vietnam War gave a great impetus to hundreds of youngsters in Europe looking to the East for a deep meaning in their life. Earlier, artists and the intellectuals had shown them the way. But it became a popular movement only in the 70s of the 19th Century. The youngsters of Europe and America took as their motto, the ancient phrase, earlier adopted by Emerson, ex oriente lux (That is, From the East; Light).
One of the features which westerners find most attractive in Indian thought is its ancient quality of Mysticism.
K.M.P. Menon
HINDU PHILOSOPHY
Indian Philosophy
The term Indian philosophy may refer to any of several traditions of philosophical thought that originated in India. Indian philosophy has a longer history of continuous development than any other philosophical tradition, and philosophy encompasses a wide variety of schools and systems. Almost every school of Indian philosophy is associated with a religious sect, including the six orthodox (astika) schools (darshanas) of Hinduism, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva Mimamsa, and Vedanta; and the heterodox schools (nastika) which include Buddhism, Jainism and the materialistic Carvaka school.
All the schools of Indian philosophy are characterized by some common themes. Indian philosophy conceives of man as spiritual in nature, and relates him to a spiritual or metaphysical concept of the universe. Indian philosophy is intimately associated with practice in everyday life. It takes an introspective approach to reality, concerning itself with knowledge of the inner life and self of man (atmavidya), rather than with the nature and structure of the physical world. Indian philosophy is predominantly idealistic. Intuition is often accepted as the only method for knowing the ultimate truth; truth is generally not “known” intellectually, but must be “realized.” Indian philosophy accepts the authority of ancient philosophers and innovations are represented as extensions of older systems of thought. Flexibility and the tendency to synthesize are also characteristic of Indian philosophy. Indian schools generally embody the doctrines of karma and rebirth; man must be perfected before he can achieve salvation. Except for the Carvaka school, all accept the moral order of the universe, and justice as the law of moral life.
During the twentieth century, Indian philosophical emphasis on intuitive understanding and self-cultivation has made an impact on Western thought.
Common Themes
Indian philosophy has a longer history of continuous development than any other philosophical tradition, and until the arrival of Islam in the sixteenth century, was practically unaffected by outside influences.[1] It is difficult to pinpoint an exact chronology or to find detailed information about a particular philosopher, because these details were always secondary to the philosophical systems themselves. Some of the famous names to which philosophical systems are attributed are known to be legends. In other cases, the author is well known but none of his original works are extant.[2]
Indian philosophy encompasses a wide variety of schools and systems, but they are all characterized by some common themes. Indian philosophy has been intensely spiritual, conceiving of man as spiritual in nature, and relating him to a spiritual or essential universe. It is concerned with the spiritual destiny of man; except for the materialistic Carvaka school, material welfare is not the goal of life. Most Indian philosophical literature is directed towards the promotion of spiritual life or reform.[3] Almost all schools of Indian philosophy are also religious sects.
In every school of Indian thought, philosophy is intimately associated with practical life. Theory does not exist without a practical application. Philosophy is pursued, not as an academic discipline, but as a necessary guide for man’s life. A knowledge of the truth needs to be cultivated in order to understand how life can best be led. It became customary for an Indian writer to explain at the beginning of a philosophical work how it served human ends (puruṣārtha).[4]
Indian philosophy takes an introspective approach to reality, concerning itself with the inner life and self of man rather than with the nature and structure of the physical world. Philosophy pursues knowledge of the self (atmavidya); the keynote of all schools of Indian philosophy is, “See the Self.”[5] Ethics and psychology are the main fields of philosophical exploration. Indian scholars made great advances in mathematics and the study of natural science, but these studies were considered outside the field of philosophy.
Indian philosophy is predominantly idealistic. Reality is ultimately one and ultimately spiritual, though this tendency towards monistic idealism takes many forms. Even the systems that espouse dualism or pluralism have an underlying monistic character[6].
Though Indian philosophy makes extensive use of reason and logic, intuition is accepted as the only method for knowing the ultimate truth. Truth is not “known” intellectually, but must be “realized.” The word “darshana” means “vision” and “instrument of vision.” It represents the direct, immediate and intuitive vision of Reality, the actual perception of Truth, and also includes the means which lead to this realization.[7]Reason is used to create systematic formulations, to demonstrate the truth, and to engage in polemics, but ultimately direct perception and a deeply personal realization beyond words is the highest knowledge of truth. [8]
All schools of Indian philosophy accept the authority of ancient philosophers. Truth is not viewed as the possession or achievement of a few learned men, but as something which has existed eternally, in its entirety, sometimes forgotten and sometimes grasped by a sage or teacher who was able to direct mankind toward a greater understanding of it. Many great Indian philosophers are regarded by tradition as incarnations of Vishnu, born on earth to educate men in the knowledge of truth. The Vedas were, therefore, considered to be without authorship, an expression of eternal truth to be understood and expounded on. The philosophers who built the great systems of Indian thought chose to represent themselves as commentators on ancient traditions, though they were introducing radical innovations. This respect for ancient sages as people who realized the truth did not make Indian philosophy dogmatic, however, as demonstrated in the widely varying concepts and treatment of God among the different schools[9].
Flexibility and the tendency to synthesize are another characteristic of Indian philosophy. Many philosophers included explanations of all the other existing schools of thought in their own commentaries. The Sanskrit term for "philosopher" is dārśanika, one who is familiar with the systems of philosophy, or darśanas.[10] A famous concept is that God is one, but men call Him by many names. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, religion, psychology, facts and values are not treated as separate disciplines, but as aspects of one life and experience. Except for the Carvaka school, all Indian philosophical systems culminate in a final vision of liberation, though they differ in how it is defined and the means of achieving it.[11]
All the schools agree on the definition of a “good life” on earth: one in which the individual lives a normal life and fulfills his social and familial responsibilities, but does not become emotionally entangled in the results of his actions. The individual lives in the world, but achieves a mental and spiritual superiority to worldly values and is not enslaved by them. All embody the doctrines of karma and rebirth; man must be perfected before he can achieve salvation. Except for the Carvaka school, all accept the moral order of the universe, and justice (ṛta, "righteousness" or "the cosmic and social order"[12]) plays a pervasive role as the law of moral life.[13]
All the Hindu schools have a further common element, acceptance of the four-fold division of society (the four castes of priests, kings, merchants and laborers) four stages of life (student, householder, forest-dweller, and wandering monk); and the four basic values (obedience to the moral law, wealth or material welfare, pleasure, and liberation or emancipation from the cycle of rebirth).
Indian philosophy is marked… by a striking breadth of outlook which only testifies to its unflinching devotion to the search for truth. Though there were many different schools and their views differed sometimes very widely, yet each school took care to learn the views of all the others and did not come to any conclusions before considering thoroughly what others had to say and how their points could be met…. If the openness of mind—the willingness to listen to what others have to say—has been one of the chief causes of the wealth and greatness of Indian philosophy in the past, it has a definite moral for the future."[14]
Periods
Ancient Indian philosophy has been divided into broad divisions:[15][16] -
1. The Vedic Period (1500 B.C.E. – 600 B.C.E.) The expansion and development of the Aryan culture and civilization took place during this period. The literature of this period, though it was not captured in writing until centuries later, consist of the four Vedas (Rg Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda), each of which has four parts: Mantras, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads. The Mantras (hymns), especially those of the Rg Veda, constitute the beginnings of Indian philosophy.[17]. The Aranyakas and Upanishads contain discussions of philosophical problems.
1. The Epic period (600 B.C.E. – 200 C.E.) This period is characterized by the informal presentation of philosophical doctrines through nonsystematic literature, such as the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. This period includes the rise of Buddhism, Jainism, Saivism and Vaisnavism, and the concurrent beginnings of the orthodox schools of Hinduism. During this period, many of the Dharmasastras, treatises on ethical and social philosophy, were compiled.[18]
1. The Sutra Period (after 200 C.E.; "the first centuries of the Christian era") During this period, the systematic treatises of each of the various schools were written, and the systems took their basic forms. The doctrines were presented in brief, aphoristic sutras, which some scholars believed were simple aids to memory, intended to evoke the substance of much more elaborate philosophical discussions with which the initiated were already familiar through oral tradition. The sutras contain polemics against other systems as well as positive developments of their own systems. The Sutra Period marks the definite beginning of systematic philosophical thinking.[19] A sutra-work consists of a collection of brief statements, aphorisms, or problems, with answers, objections, and possible replies. The Brahma-sūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, for example, sums up and systematizes the philosophical teachings of various Vedic works, chiefly the Upanishads, and also mentions and answers both actual and possible objections to those views. It is the first systematic treatise on the Vedanta literature.[20] Similarly we have for the Mimamsa the sutras of Jaimini, for the Nyaya the sutras of Gotama, for the Vaisheshika the sutras of Kanada, and for the Yoga the sutras of Patanjali.
1. The Scholastic Period (from the Sutra Period to the seventeenth century C.E.) Because the sutra form is by nature brief, their meanings were not always clear. During the Scholastic Period this gave rise to interpretive commentaries (bhāṣyas), which play a major role in philosophical literature. In some cases, different authors wrote major commentaries on the same sutra-work, but with very different interpretations reflecting their own philosophical positions, and resulting in complete and elaborate philosophical systems of their own.[21] In time, commentaries arose upon commentaries, and additional independent works were written in defense of particular views. The Scholastic Period produced a quantity of relatively worthless, unphilosophical debates, but it also produced the works of some of the greatest Indian philosophers, including Samkara, Kumarila, Sridhara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Vacaspati, Udayana, Bhaskara, Jayanta, Vijnabhiksu, and Raghunatha.[22]
In the sense that the study of Indian philosophy is ongoing, and commentary continues to be produced, the Scholastic Period is still in progress. However, Indian philosophy lost its dynamic spirit in the sixteenth century, when the Muslims, and then the British, took control of the country. The Muslims undermined Aryan culture and thought, and the British sought to belittle Indian thought and impose European culture and values on the Indian people. The revival of education by the British, however, eventually gave rise to a revival of interest in Indian religion and philosophy. Nationalism and the re-establishment of India as an independent state brought about a renewed appreciation of the greatness of Indian philosophical heritage. During the twentieth century, Indian philosophers were influenced by Western thought, and Indian philosophy had a significant impact on the West through the works of contemporary thinkers.
Schools
Classical Indian philosophy can be roughly categorized into "orthodox" (astika) schools of Hindu philosophy, and "heterodox" (nāstika) schools that do not accept the authorities of the Vedas.[23]
Orthodox schools (Astika)
Many Hindu intellectual traditions were codified during the medieval period of Brahmanic-Sanskritic scholasticism into a standard list of six orthodox (astika) schools (darshanas), the "Six Philosophies" (ṣad-darśana), all of which cite Vedic authority as their source:[24][25][26]
• Nyaya, the school of logic
• Vaisheshika, the atomist school
• Samkhya, the enumeration school
• Yoga, the school of Patanjali (which assumes the metaphysics of Samkhya)
• Purva Mimamsa (or simply Mimamsa), the tradition of Vedic exegesis, with emphasis on Vedic ritual, and
• Vedanta (also called Uttara Mimamsa), the Upanishadic tradition, with emphasis on Vedic philosophy.
These are often coupled into three groups for both historical and conceptual reasons: Nyaya-Vaishesika, Samkhya-Yoga, and Mimamsa-Vedanta.
The six systems mentioned here are not the only orthodox systems, they are the chief ones, and there are other orthodox schools such as the "Grammarian" school.[27]
The Vedanta school is further divided into six sub-schools: Advaita (monism/nondualism), Visishtadvaita (monism of the qualified whole), Dvaita (dualism), Dvaitadvaita (dualism-nondualism), Suddhadvaita, and Achintya Bheda Abheda schools.
The shramana schools, including Jainism and Buddhism, also developed.
Heterodox schools (Nastika)
Schools that do not accept the authority of the Vedas are by definition unorthodox (nastika) systems.[28]
Carvaka
Main article: Carvaka
Carvaka is characterized as a materialistic and atheistic school of thought. While this branch of Indian philosophy is not considered to be part of the six orthodox schools of Hinduism, it is noteworthy as evidence of an atheistic and materialistic movement within Hinduism.[29]
Buddhist Philosophy
Buddhist philosophy is a system of beliefs based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, an Indian prince later known as the Buddha. Buddhism is a non-theistic philosophy, one whose tenets are not especially concerned with the existence or nonexistence of a God or gods. The question of God is largely irrelevant in Buddhism, though some sects (notably Tibetan Buddhism) do venerate a number of gods drawn in from local indigenous belief systems.
From its inception, Buddhism has had a strong philosophical component. Buddhism is founded on the rejection of certain orthodox Hindu philosophical concepts. The Buddha criticized all concepts of metaphysical being and non-being, and this critique is inextricable from the founding of Buddhism.
Buddhism shares many philosophical views with Hinduism, such as belief in karma, a cause-and-effect relationship between all that has been done and all that will be done, and in reincarnation. Events that occur are held to be the direct result of previous events. The ultimate goal for both Hindu and Buddhist practitioners is to eliminate karma (both good and bad), end the cycle of rebirth and suffering, and attain freedom (Moksha or Nirvana).
Jain Philosophy
Main article: Jainism
Jaina philosophy, was founded by Mahavira (599–527 B.C.E.). Anekantavada is a basic principle of Jainism positing that reality is perceived differently from different points of view, and that no single point of view is completely true. Jain doctrine states that only Kevalis, those who have achieved infinite knowledge, can know the complete truth, and that all others can only know a part of the truth. Anekantavada is related to the Western philosophical doctrine of Subjectivism.
Political Philosophy
The Arthashastra, attributed to the Mauryan minister Chanakya, is one of the early Indian texts devoted to political philosophy. It is dated to fourth century B.C.E. and discusses ideas of statecraft and economic policy.
The political philosophy most closely associated with India is the one of ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha, popularized by Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian struggle for independence. It was influenced by the Indian Dharmic philosophy (particularly the Bhagvata Gita) and Jesus, as well as, secular writings of authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau and John Ruskin.[30] In turn it influenced the later movements for independence and civil rights led by Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mysticism
Much of what is known as “Para Vidya” may be called “mysticism” in todays language. It is knowledge gained by a sudden flash of enlightenment after much seeking sometimes, but sometimes without attempt.
‘Apara Vidya’ on the other hand is objective knowledge which can be learned from others. Such can be proved by tests in l labs.
Mysticism is a teauture in Hinduism and in Indian
Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism are different Pathways to God. Philosophy literally means love of wisdom through sense of perception. Religion has a social value more than that of a spiritual value. In its conventional forms it fosters plenty but fails to express the divinity in man. In this sense it is less than a direct encounter with reality. Mysticism denotes that attitude of mind which involves a direct immediate intuitive apprehension of God. It signifies the highest attitude of which man is capable, viz., a beatific contemplation of God and its dissemination in society and world. It is a fruition of man’s highest aspiration as an integral personality satisfying the eternal values of life like truth, goodness, beauty and love.
A man who aspires after the mystical life must have an unfaltering and penetrating intellect, he must also have a powerful philosophic imagination. Accurate intellectual thought is a sure accompaniment of mystical experience. Not all mystics need be philosophers, not all mystics lead a life of emotion; but wherever true mysticism is, one of these faculties must predominate.
A true life of mysticism teaches a full-fledged morality in the individual and a life of general good in the world. A mystic is of supreme service to humanity by calling their attention from moment to moment to the perfection and greatness of God. No mystical experience is possible unless we have a plenitude of finer emotions all turned to the experience of God.
Mysticism is a body of eternal truth—spiritual or religious truths which were verified by ancient Rishis. It transcends the artificial distinctions between the individual and society. It is a quest of atman for the immediate or ultimate knowledge of God.
The only proof for the existence of God is the experience of God; Reality is realizable and completely real and can be completely known. Upanishads call this reality as Brahman. He can be directly known as realised. He is the ultimate ground of all existence. He is the home of eternal values of Truth, Goodnees, Beauty and Bliss. He is Sat, Chit, Ananda. He satisfies the highest quest of science and metaphysics. He satisfies the ideals of Philosophy of art, or aesthetics. He is the supra-personal. He is Vasudeva.
Every child has a right to know his father. The child recognises its mother first. It is mother who introduces its father to it. God is the father of the entire world. We are part of Him. We know He exists but we will not have come into contact with Him direct. We see His manifestations. We daily experience that He is protecting us. Yet we will not have seen that supreme being. One of the modern Kannada poets “Srinivasa” has said as under:
“I have noticed your footprints along with mine on the sand, but I was so engrossed while walking, I did not recognize you though you were behind me. I was imagining that I am alone doing everything by myself. I felt exhausted but I realize that you are all the while walking with me and protecting me.”
We know Him, we have fest Him, but we have not come into contact with Him directly. We can see Him face to face. The divine spirit which shines within the man is made to manifest and the soul sees light realizable beyond sight. This seeing is by intuition. It is Darshana.
In order to get at Him and see Him face to face one should prepare himself. Our ancient Rishis have shown the path . It is Guru like the mother who introduces the Lord. He shows the path. He leads the aspirant in the correct path, until he meets the Lord face to face.
What is the preparation one has to make? One has to purify himself. He must have a fervour to meet Him. He must crave. He has to ascend three ladders. They are the laders of Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga. The ultimate is the Bhakti yoga. No man can escape his past and he is the slave of destiny. In a higher or moral sense, Karma is the action of a karta and the karta is morally free; he has the will to shape his future, according to his conviction. But when once the action is done, he cannot escape its consequences. What a man sows he reaps and the moral law of retribution works with mathematical precision. Good deeds are never lost, so also bad deeds, and it is the deeds that determine the man’s character. But if karma is done by him as Nishkama Karma, he is free as he does not care for the fruits. Virtue has its own reward. It has its own intrinsic value and character shines by itself.
In Karma Yoga all sensuality is removed. The process of self-pruification takes place. The mind is purified by freeing it from all animal inclinations and the pairs of opposites like success and failure and pleasure and pain.
In Jnana Yoga, one realizes the self, self-contemplation and self-renouncement are the chief factors. Here he undergoes the philosophic method of enquiry into the nature of atman and its relation to Brahman. It is not merely an intellectual but also spiritual enquiry based on Viveka, Vairagya and Abhyasa. He can now distinguish which is which. Therefore, Jnana is essential to get Bhakti. Of course, we have some across great Bhaktas without the knowledge of scriptures. To cite an exmple, Kabirdas had not read Upanishads. But the study of Upanishads, Brahma Sutra, Geeta will give the aspirant a true knowledge of Brahman whom he aspires to realise.
Then the aspirant has to climb the ladder of Bhakti Yoga. It is here that he trains himself to surrender to God completely. The love invoked may be bridal or devotional (seva). It is a complete surrender to Him when the aspirant beholds Him face to face. Unless one has faith, he cannot surrender. Doubts must be cleared. That process should be while climbing the ladder Jnana.
Bhakti breaks into spirit, melts it down and becomes an infinite longing for the infinite. The Divine spirit which shines within man is made manifest and the soul sees the light realizable beyond sight.
There is another path—the Raja Yoga. It is rather difficult for an ordinary man to pursue. It is mind control and royal path to realise God. The mind is ordinarily fleeting and frittered and it is the aim of the Yoga to collect and centre it in God. It is, therefore, a psychological method as different from the moral method of Karma Yoga. This yoga consists of eight stages—Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi. Purity of mind and body are essential to the practice of this yoga. The first four stages refer to the cleansing of the body and breath control. The next four stages refer to mind control. At last the mind expands, attains Samadhi and Shanti or Peace. This is the ascent of spiritual energy in the centres of body from muladhara in the lower part of the spinal cord to sahasrara in the brain. From the mental point of view there is expansion of consciousness from the lowest stage to the highest state. There is the expansion from the unconscious to the sub-conscious and the conscious to the super-conscious state of Samadhi.
The chief value of this yoga that is it teaches us the way to self-knowledge and self-sovereignty.
When a man rises into spiritual stage, intellect expands into intuition and the spiritual man becomes a mystic, who no longer thinks of God, but has a direct knowledge of Him.
Intuition is different from sensuous visions and voices which are after all subjective and self-induced. It is Jnana chakshu or Divya chakshu. Intuition illumines the intellect and transforms confused knowledge into clear thought and clear thought into Purnanubhava or integral intuition of the Infinite.
Intuition is immediate knowledge of reality by insight or inspiration for which no rules or procedure can be laid down.
The mystic is not a visionary or a dreamer indulging in psychiatrics and auto-suggestion, but is a specialist in godliness, which is higher than scientific experimentation and philosophical specialization, which will give fixity and finality to feeling and makes it purposive and practical.
The mystics of all ages and countries have spoken the same language as they are denizens of the same spiritual world. There are no racial, no communal, no national prejudices among them. Time and space have nothing to do with the eternal and infinite character of their mystical experience. Those together constitute a band of divine musicians, each contributing his own note altogether producing a harmony.
The true mystic is one who holds his tongue, shuts his ears, closes his eyes and enjoys God in his heart. The mystic has the ineffable spiritual experience of direct contact with Reality. If he speaks at all, it is to edify the few, who are fit to hear his message. A mystic may also be one who enters into the affairs of humanity and finds God. Mysticism is not opposed to reason, and the claims of mystical experience are not contradicted by the verdict of philosophy . Mystical experience is an affair of the heart to which, the intellect might contribute its quota. Mystic feeling can be had by intuition and not by instinct. The function of philosophy is to put a ring fence around mysticism to prevent the inroads of stray cattle. When philosophy join hands, there are many torch-berers but there are few mystics.
There were mystics in Ancient Greece. There were mystics among Christians, Mohammedans (Sufis) and among Hindus.
Hinduism is a perennial source of spiritual truths. It is one of the most important of the living religions in the world. It is the oldest of all and is called Sanathana Dharma.
It is not a historical religion, but, is a religion without any historical founders and it has eternal foundation. Historical religions base their doctrines and dogmas on the revelations of their prophets. Hinduism is based on the Vedas, the eternal scriptures revealed to the seers and sages and testified to by the Smriti and transmitted in an unbroken tradition. It deals with eternal spiritual truths adopted to changing conditions and is, therefore, fixed in essentials and flexible in non-essentials like rites and rituals.
Hinduism is not a personal religion as it insists on the unity of life as a whole and the duties of each person to the other members of the society. But it does not accept the western view that God needs man’s cooperation in the furtherance of His purpose. Man does his work as worship of God in the spirit of humility. Every act of social service is really the adoration of God as the inner self in all beings. There is no spiritual barrier between one jeeva and the other.
Hinduism is thus coherent, synthetic and universal. It is coherent because it satisfies every pramana and sees no dividing line between reason and revelations. It is synthetic because it gives a place to every system of thought and every school of Vedanta. It is also tolerant because it recognises sects though it rejects sectarianism. It is universal because it affirms the truth that every man is a son of God and he can intuit Him directly. Every one is atman or spiritual and there is one atman in and beyond all; and every one can realise Him. Hinduism is divided by historians into three periods, ancient, imdieval and the modern.
The Ancient period commences from the Vedic period and extends upto the 8th century. The Upanishads, Brahma Sutra and Gita form together a single integral unity on Vedanta (Prasthana-traya) whether it is monism (Advaitha), Theism (Dvaitha) or Theistic monism (Vishistadvaitha) which form the basis of all future mystic developments. The Ithihasas and Puranas are, according to tradition popular expositions of the way in which the transcendental and immanent Brahman, of the Upanishads manifests Himself in the historic incarnations as the God of love, who is easily accessible to all mystics.
Upanishads. – Mystic wisdom in its perfect form is enthroned in the Upanishads. The upanishadic doctrines, totally unknown in the Rig Veda, can be divided under the following headings:
1. The Atman
2. The Karma
3. The transmigration of souls
4. The revelation of God to man
5. The practice of asceticism
The Upanishads were translated for the first time into Persian language by Dara Shukoh the enlightened son of Shah Jahan in 1569. The object of Dara’s translation was the harmonisation of Hinduism and Islam as Sufism. Upanishads were later translated into other European languages. The fundamental principles and precepts of the Upanishads and their mystic trends may be stated briefly under the heads metaphysics, morality and mysticism.
Metaphycically, Brahman is knowable and by knowing Him everything is known. He existed when nothing existed. He is the creator of the world. He is immortal.He is absolute. He is self-subsistent. He is the supreme God. He is the home of all beings and all beings are the modes animated and sustained by Him. He is the innerruler. Immortal of all beings.
As regards the moral aspect, He is the giver of the Sreyas and Preyas—Self-love and God-love.
Mystical aspect:--In Mundaka Upanishad it is stated that “Whom the self chooses unto him He reveals him-self”—Seek Him earnestly; He reveals Himself.
The Upanishads insist on the existence, eternity and plurality of Purushas, the social solidarity of all jives, the absolute as the supra-personal god and unity of the universe. When a mukta is freed from worldliness and egoism, and attains Brahman, the Being of the being, he is divinized or brahmanised and becomes perfect. He goes from mortality to eternity, from darkness to light and from misery to everlasting bliss.
Brahma Sutra:--Badarayana is the author of the Sutra. In the Sutra he discusses apparent contradictions and inconsistencies found in the texts of Upanishads as the philosophy of religion and shows how they form connected and coherent system of philosophic and religious thought free from contradictions and discrepancies.
The Gita expounds the mystic path more clearly and consistently on Mysticism which speaks of purgation, contemplation and unio mystico.
The way of union is fully expounded in Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti leads to an irrepressible longing for God and is answered by the soul hunger of God. To the Bhakta or devotional mystic, God alone is his life, his very food and drink and to God such Bhakta is dear as his very self or Atma. The mystic yearning for union with God is answered by His longing for the union with the mystic and finally the two are united for ever—Nara-Narayana.
The Bhagavatha Purana: The Bhagavatha may just be called a motherland of mysticism. Bhagavatha mysticism is free from the errors and evils or emotionalism and asceticism. The mystic way to God is here universalized. Every jiva, sub-human, human or celestial has in him a spark of divinity and when kindled, it shines as divine light itself and fulfilled in the bliss of union. The lives of Bhaktas and puranic mystics are described at length in Bhagavatha. It is a store-house of mysticism. The Puranic mystics are Dhruva, prahlada, Akrura, Markandeya, Narada and Suka. Bhagavatha religion is Bhakti. Bhakti is single-minded devotion to God, and is as old as Vedic hymns, Bhakti is open to all irrespective of their birth, status or station in life and is, therefore, universal and democratic. Bhakti is well defined and explained in the sutras of Narada and Sandilya.
The Medieval Period: The Medieval period extends from the 9th century to the 18th century. In this period, the spread of Bhakti is witnessed in India in different aspects, the hymns of Alwars and Nayanars in the South, the teachings of the Great Acharyas, Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhwa, the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva and the Haridas’s movement and Shivasharanas in Karnataka.
Alwars; As the name itself implies the Alwars were expert divers in divinity and were deeply immersed in love. Their poetic utterances were spontaneous. The three Alwars Poigai, Bhutan and Pei, once stood at a narrow space at Tirukoilur and felt a stranger squeezing Himself in between them. When the inner light was lit, they had a beautiful vision of the Lord. Each sang in praise of him.
Poigai sang thus:- “With the earth as bowl, the sea as ghee, and the shining Sun as the Lamp. I make a a garland of Hymns and place at thy feet.” Bhutan sang “I kindle the light of Jnana with Bhakti as ghee, love as bowl and mind as wick.” Pei was God-intoxicated. By their yogic insight God as light.
Tirumazhisai Alwar worked ceaselessly for the spread of Vishnu Bhakti.
Nammalwar –the greatest of Alwars is a typical mystic. His composition is Tiruvomozhi.
Kulasekhara Alwar’s life is a life of Bhakti and Prapatti.
Periyaalwar’s love of Sri Krishna is something grand. He sang Tirumazhi. His daughter is Andal. She is a mystic, Lyrical in devotion. Her spiritual songs are Tiruppavai.
Tondaradippodi Alwar sang Tirumalai.
Tiruppani Alwar is an outcaste like Nanda, but a great Bhakta of Sri Ranganatha. His songs are highly devotional.
Tirumangai Alwar , a thief by profession, realised and became a saint when he stole the jewels of the bride and bridegroom, who are no other than Lord Vishnu and his consort. His songs are also highly devotional.
Acharyas; 1. Shankara (788-820) is the founder of Monism (Advaitha). His Bhashyas on the Upanishads, Brahma Sutra and Gita re profound. His songs Bhaja Govindam and Karavalambam are highly devotional. His religion is summed up in the following verse.
Though difference be none I am of Thee
Not thou, O Lord, of Me;
For of the Sea is Verily the Wave
Not of the Wave the Sea.
2. Bhaskara and Yadava Prakasha: Their philosophy is Bhedaabheda.
3. Ramanuja (1017-1137): Ramanuja built up the Vaishnava thought already in existence. He composed Sri Bhasya. His commentary on Vishnu Sahasranama is unique. His Vedantic definition of Brahman is Satya, Jnana and Ananda. The chief value of Vishishtadvaitha lies in its removal of error, evil, ugliness and other imperfectrions of Jiva and of all perfections like truth, goodness, beauty and bliss of Brahman.
4. Srikantacharya: He propounded the Shivadvaitha. To him Jiva is self-conscious, morally free and monadic. Siva transforms Jiva into Shivatva. The individual soul is deified.
5. Madhwacharya: He is the founder of Dwaitha Vedanta. His philosophy is monotheistic and pluralistic. Taratamya Jnana is the key note of his philososhy.Dwaitha is Sad-Vaishnavism as distinguished from Sri Vaishnavism of Ramanuja.
6. Chaitanya (1485-1533): He is the founder of Achintya Bhedaabheda school of Vedanta. He was influenced by Eshwara, a follower of Madhwacharya. He became god-intoxicated. His field of activity lay in Bengal.
7. Vallabhacharya (1479-1531d): He is the founder of Suddha-adwaita Vedantha. His ancestors came from Andhra Desa. His is Bridal Love, Pushti Bhakti. His followers are chiefly found in Gujarat and Kutch.
Ramananda, who was born in Prayag was deeply influenced by Ramanujacharya and became a religious reformer in North India. His vehicle was Hindi. He preached the Bhakti cult. Ravidas, Kabir, and Ramaullah came under his influence.
Kabirdas is one of the great mystics. He had never read scriptures. He was a weaver by caste. His songs are melodious; they are highly mystical. To Him Rama is Reality, his panth is called the Nath panth.
Mira Bai who was born as a princess in Rajputana and married a chieftain, became a disciple of Ravidas. She went in search of Giridhar. Her songs are mystical in quality.
Tulasidas: Tulasidas is the author of Ramayana in Hindi. He is also a great mystic.
Guru Nanak who founded the Sikh religion is a mystic. He hails from Punjab. To him contentment (Tripti) is the father, Forgiveness (Kshama) is the mother and God Love (Divyaprema) is the husband. Divine Love is Dharmakhand, realm of beauty is Jnanakhand, realm of ecstacy is Sharankhand, realm of power is Kharankhand and in Sachkhand becomes one with God.
Mysticism is as understood of Hindu seers and saints a religion not merely rationalised but realised. The sadhanas are 1. Self-purification, 2. Contemplation, and 3. Yearning for the union with the Lord, Sri Krishna.
Side by side with the Hindi saints, Maharashtrian saints have contributed much to mysticism. Gnaneshwar, a great commentator on Bhagavadgita is a great mystic.
Namadev (1270-1350) son of a tailor, is a mystic by nature.
Ekanath (1533-1599) is a great Bhagavatha.
Tukaram was the son of a grain merchant. His abhangs are reputed.
Ramadas was not only a mystic but he is responsible for the birth of Maharashtra power. He was the Guru of Chatrapati Shivaji.
Karnataka mystics occupy a very high place among the Great God realisers over the world. These mystics divide themselves into two schools, Vaishnavite and Saivite. The Vaishnavite school commences from Madhwacharya. His disciple Narasimhathirtha commenced composing songs in Kannada. Sripadaraya is the Adya of Haridasas. Sri Vyasaraja his disciple started Vyasakuta and Dasakkuta. Those who belonged to Dasakuta brought the Vedic religion and philosophy into Kannada poetry. Among them the name of Purandaradas stands high. He is the disciple of Vyasaraja. His contemporaries are Vadiraja and Kanakadasa, who is a kuruba by birth, but a great mystic. There are a number of Haridasas who have contributed much to mysticism. Among them are Vijayadasa, Mohanadasa, Gopaladasa, Jagannathadasa, Mahipathiraya and others.
Haridasa sahitya is a mine of mystic gold. The Haridasas being the great masters of mystic experience have analysed every shade of human experience from different aspects and angles of vision and recorded their results in the form of songs or suladis. Outwardly the song may refer to any immediate incident or episode, but the reflections arising out of the analysis of the occurrences are of permanent character and add support to the edifice of the Dvaita philosophy of Sri Anandatirtha on which the movement stands.
The Haridasas boldly cut away additions to sound philosophical thought of the Vedic seers and laid bare the brilliant philosophy of love (bhakti), which is the sure means of salvation.
The everyday life of a commoner is spiritualised and ennobled by the opening of the mental eye in him, which the Haridasas preached for seeing the nectar-yielding Hand of All-powerful God—Vishnu in every action expressed orlatent. The sonorous, melodious musical tunes of the Dasas, are an unparalleled gloss on the harmony of the universe which the God ordained to maintain against all inequalities and discordant elements that are to gross eye. Love, harmony, goodwill and limitations of individual souls, human effortism and the greatness of God Vishnu are sung with special emphasis to ensure correct understanding and right action.
The mystics of Saiva cult in Karnataka have contributed to Kannada world, the vachanas which are unparalleled in any Indian literature. Basaveshwara started the Shakti Vishistadwaita in 12th century. He was the organizer of the Anubhava Mantap at Kalyan. The Veerashaiva saints like Channabasava, Allama Prabhu, Akka Mahadevi, joined in discourse and worte Vachanas containing mystic utterances. They have contributed a good deal to the world’s mystic thought.
The Shaivite mystics of the South are the source of inspiration to the Veerashaiva saints of Karnataka. They are the 63 Nayanars including Tirumalur and Meikandar, who are the great Saivite saints of South India. Among them are Appar, Sundarar, Tirugnana Sambanda, Manikka Vacagar, Kannappa, Tiruneelakanta Nayanar, Tayamanavar, Pattinadu Pillaiyar, Ramalinga Swamigal.
Among the Telugu mystics Vemana stands like a beacon light. We must not forget to mention the name of Kshetrajna and Annamacharya, who have composed melodious songs in praise of Sri Venkateshwara.
Modern period: Coming to the modern age, we come across great men like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Vivekananda, Thyagaraja, Ramana Maharshi, Aravinda Ghosh, Sawan Sing, Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. Each one of them is a great mystic besides being religious, social, literary or political reformer.
The institutions like Theosophical Society, Arya Samaj, Brahma Samaj, Ramakrishna Ashrama, Ramana Ashrama, Aravindshrama, Radhaswami Satsang have played a wonderful part in nourishing Hindu culture and spreading mysticism all over India.
No two persons are alike in temperament or station in life. Hinduism provides for every kind of adhikarin or aspirant and he is allowed to choose the path that is suited to his spiritual growth. A man may worship God in whatever form; He reveals Himself to him in that form. But he should seek Him with pure heart. Though Hinduism thus aims at unity in variety it still follows an ancient tradition bequeathed from father to son and from Guru to Sishya and insists on Satsanga.
Hinduism And Organization
HINDUISM is one of the finest and most coherent growths in the world. Its disadvantages arise out of the fact that it is a growth, not an organization; a tree, not a machine. In an age in which the whole world worships the machine, for its exactness, its calculableness, and its dirigibility, this fact, while it makes for a greater permanence, also involves a certain number of desiderata. The fruits of the tree of Hinduism are of an excellence unparalleled; but it is not easy to reach by its means those benefits that do not occur spontaneously, ends that have to be foreseen and deliberately planned and arranged for. For instance, alone amongst the world’s faiths perhaps, ours has no quarrel of any sort with truth. Under its sway, the scientific mind is absolutely free to pursue to the uttermost its researches into the Infinite Nescience of things, the philosopher is encouraged to elucidate his conclusions, and simple piety does not dream of passing judgment on things admittedly too high for it. All this is true of Hinduism. At the same time, what has it done to grasp the highest scientific education for its children, or to impel its people forward upon the pursuit of mastery in learning or in ministering to social service? (The author was far ahead of her time in envisaging a ‘knowledge based society’ – Editor).
There is nothing in Hinduism to forbid an attempt on our part to compass these things, and the only thing that could drive us to make the effort, - namely a vigilant and energetic sense of affairs, a public spirit that took account of things as a whole, - was undoubtedly indicated by the Swami Vivekananda, as part of what he meant by Aggressive Hinduism. We ought to make our faith aggressive, not only internationally, by sending out missionaries, but also socially, by self-improvement; not only doctrinally, by accepting converts, but also spiritually, by intensifying its activity. What we need is to supplement religion by public spirit, - an enlightened self-sense in which every member of the community has a part. Class-preference is obsolete in matters of education. The career of the intellect is now for him who has the talent. By us, this principle has to be boldly and enthusiastically accepted. Even as the school is open to all, so must every form of social ministration be made. The college, the orphanage, the hospital, the women’s refuge, these must be opened by such as…………… have the devotion and energy for the task, and nothing must be said of the birth of the servant of humanity. By virtue of his consecration, he becomes a saint, even as, by his jnanam, the philosopher makes himself a rishi.
Activity is eased and heightened if it is socialized: that is to say, if it is the work of a body, espousing a common conviction, and not of a solitary individual, wandering the world, and divided between his idea itself and the question of its support. This common conviction, driving into work, is the reason why small religious sects are so often the source of vast movements of human amelioration. Many of these outstanding problems of Hinduism have been attacked, for instance, by the Brahmo Samaj, with considerable success. The little church forms a background and home for the worker. It sends him out to his task, rejoices over his success, and welcomes him back with laurels, or with ministration, when he turns home to die. Without some such city of the heart, it is difficult to see how the worker is to keep up his energy and courage. The praise and pleasure of our own little group of beloved ones is very sweet to all of us, and quite properly spurs us on to surmount many an obstacle that we should not otherwise attempt. Let the soul grow, by saying “not this!” “not this!” to what height it will; but let it have the occasion for practicing this discrimination.
We must take up our problems, then, as social groups. Let no man enter on the apostolate that is to shake the world, alone. Everything done, every discovery made, even every poem written, and every dream dreamed, is a social achievement. Society has contributed to it, and will receive its benefits. Let the missionary, then, on whom the effort seems to rest, not reckon himself to be the chief actor. There must be some two or three, knit together by some well-wrought bond, in every undertaking that is to benefit humanity. Perhaps they were comrades at school and college. Perhaps they are disciples of a single master. Possibly they belong to the same village. Maybe they are fellow-workmen in some common employment. Whatever be the shaping force, there must be association of aim and co-operation of effort, if there is to be success, and there must be a strong bond of love amongst those few ardent souls, who form the central core.
Voluntary association, the desire of a body to take on corporate individuality, is thus the point of departure within Hinduism for civic activity. But we must not forget how much every activity owes to the general movement of society around it. Work must be done by the few as the servants, not as the enemies, of the many. Every single movement needs other counter-movements to supplement it, if it is to maintain itself in vigour. Thus, the difficulty about technical education in India is not want of funds, which have been poured in in abundance; but want of general industrial development, in the society around. ( Nowadays it is accepted that a minimum of 6% of gross domestic product should be invested in education. But his is yet to be achieved in India (Edit). There is a fixed ratio between education and development which cannot be passed, hence only by definite and alternating increments to the one and to the other can progress take place. Again, there is a fixed proportion between the total of these and the community’s need of the highest scientific research, which cannot be contravened. And all these alike must find themselves inhering in an inclusive social energy, which takes account of its own needs, its own problems and its own organs. The vivifying of this general social sense is the first of all our problems. We have to awaken it, to refresh it, and to keep it constantly informed. What this social sense has now first and foremost to realize, is our want of education, the need of a real ploughing of the mind. For this, high and low, we ought to be content to starve and slave and bear the utmost pinch of poverty. And not for our own sons alone. This is a matter in which the interest of all should be the interest of each one, the necessity of one the interest of all. We have to energize our culture. We have to learn to think of things in their wholeness, and to see them from new points of view. We have to possess ourselves of all that is known by humanity, not to continue in contentment with a mere corner of its knowledge, well fenced off. Are we mentally capable of science, of sanity, of comprehensiveness? If so, we have now to prove our capacity.
And where shall we find the starting-point for this new assault on the citadel of our own ignorance? Let us find it boldly amongst religious forces. In Buddhist countries, the monastery is the centre round which are grouped schools, libraries, museums, and efforts at technical education. Why should we not, in our Southern cities expect the temple, similarly, to take the lead, in the fostering of the new and higher education? Why should we dread the Brahmin’s tendency to exclusiveness and reaction? If it be really true that we are capable of sanity, is the Brahmin to remain an exception to that sanity? Let is expect of our own country and of our own people, the highest and noblest and most progressive outlook that any people in the world might take. And in doing this, let us look to become Hindus, in a true sense, for the first time. For it is a question whether so grand a word ought to be borne by us unless we have first earned and approved our right to it. Ought not the name of our country and our faith to be to us as a sort of order of merit, a guerdon of loyal love, the token of accepted toil?
Six Viewpoints - Sixdarshans
Vedas and Upanishads, protected by the parapet of symbolism, have to the present day kept the veritable source of Hindu philosophic thought and life unadulterated.
The six ‘darshanas’ are, as the name indicates (drish = to see), six ‘ visions’ obtained by observing ‘reality’ from six different angles of view.
These viewpoints, therefore, do not exclude or oppose each other; they are rather complementary methods of ‘looking at things’, aware of the limitation of their respective ‘fields of vision’.
Each darshana is based upon a homonymous ‘sutra’ (‘string’ of elliptic enunciations), for instance the Nyaya-darshana upon the Nyaya-sutra, the Vedanta-darshana upon the Vedanta-sutra, etc; each of them is ascribed to a more or less legendary ‘first teacher’, followed by a long succession of commentators who by personal experience and meditation have extended and detailed the same ‘view’.
Although the later commentaries have become more and more intellectualistic, the darshanas as a rule presuppose simultaneous education of character: all of them, though using divergent terminologies, agree that the ultimate goal of philosophy is liberation (moksha, mukti) from all misconceptions and prejudices, illusions and desires that trouble the mind of man, making his life a restless, sorrowful existence (samsara).
“longing and striving for liberation’ (moksheccha, mumuksha) in the midst of active life has from the very beginning imbued the whole civilization of India, its sciences, techniques and arts (vidyas, vedangas, upavedas) , with ‘philosophic knowledge’ (veda-vidya).
From the remotest past up till now innumerable heroes, teachers, rulers, warriors and statesmen are mentioned as having been or being ‘sages’ (jnani = knower).
In India even the most ‘speculative’ philosophy never lost contact with the art of living; the present more or less ‘scholastical’ treatises of the darshanas must be considered to be ‘theoretical crystallizations’ from a homogeneous attitude of life such as…………… is to be found in Vedas and Upanishads.
Many more recent texts, however, rest equally upon that same unity of conception and practice of life that does not bother about scholastical formulation and systematic delimitation of different ‘ viewpoints’.
We are, in this short introduction, concerned with the darshanas only in so far as they are significant for contemporary Hindu views of life. Some of the darshanas are actually considered to be out of date, while others are nowadays principally taught in old-fashioned institutions, such as the still very numerous Sanskrit colleges and vidyalayas (abodes of science) that prepare for traditional professions.
A few universities, however, besides modern facilities of Arts where the texts are explained by up-to-date scientific methods, also include Faculties or Oriental Learning which, using Sanskrit as the medium of instruction, follow traditional methods of higher education and prepare for academical degrees such as ‘ shastri’ and ‘shastracarya’ (master and teacher of the scriptures), or ‘vidvans’ (knowing = scholar), or for degrees in the respective darshanas such as ‘Nyaya-shiromani’, ‘Vedanta-shiromani’ (shiromani = crest-jewel),
Each of which requires at least four years of specialized studies.
The matter of scholastic philosophy has in the course of time become so intricate that one and the same person can specialize in only one, or at most two, darshanas. For the rest scholars have to be content with a general knowledge of the universal principles underlying the whole of the darshanas.
The fact that some darshanas have fallen into disuse does not prevent several portions of them from having remained alive; though the Vaisheshika and the Samkhya are no longer studies except by specialists, nevertheless for all cultured Hindus having a smattering of their traditional philosophy the ‘five elements’ and the ‘three gunas’ are familiar conceptions; just as the distinction of ‘purusha’ and ‘prakriti’, systematically developed in the Samkhya, represents a general Hindu conception accepted even in the Vedanta-darshana, the viewpoint which is today the most popular, as a provisional stage of thought, to be transcended ultimately.
The tradional order of the six darshanas is the following:
(1) Nyaya (entrance to), propaedeutic training in critical thinking.
(2) Vaisheshika (discrimination), distinction of the characteristics ( vishesha) of the psychophysical world;
(3) Samkhya (samkhya = enumeration), systematic classification of the principles of substantial and essential being;
(4) Yoga (union, exertion), methodical development and mastery of the physical, psychical and spiritual powers and faculties of man;
(5) Mimamsa (reflection), study of the Veda in connection with general rules of conduct in life (inquiry into righteousness: dharma-jijnasa);
(6) Vedanda (end of knowledge). The study of the last Veda is inquiry into reality (brahnma-jijnasa); it is also called ‘uttara-mimamsa’ (final reflection) in order to indicate its relation to the preceding darshana, which is then called purva-mimamsa’ (initial reflection).
These six darshanas are often grouped in three pairs on account of mutual relationship, historical connecttion of common basis. Thus, the first pair ( Nyaya and Vaishehika) treats ‘logical’ and ‘cosmological’ aspects of the ‘world’ (jagat); the second pair (Samkhya and Yoga) deals with ‘ontological’ and ‘ psychological’ approaches, Samkhya being considered a theoretical preparation of the more pragmatical Yoga ; the third pair consists of the two Mimamsas, pointing to ‘ritualistic’ and ‘metaphysical’ ways indicated to the basic Vedic texts.
(1) Nyaya
This ‘introduction to philosophic thinking’ (nyaya) starts from the conviction that true knowledge (sat-vidya) does not possess an exclusively rational character but is dependent upon self purification (sattva-shuddhi), the first condition for attaining self knowledge ( atmavidya), i.e. knowledge of reality (brahmavidya) in and through oneself.
This ethical preparation consists in liberating oneself from all feeling of desire (raga) and aversion (dvesha) by the practice of yoga (see 4 below). For the beginner this has negative as well as positive aspects (such as, for example, simultaneous liberation from individual egoism and development of universal sympathy).
Only absence of egoism (nir-aham-kara) and friendly feelings (maitri) for all living beings enable us to establish ‘direct contact’ with men and things, i.e. immediate perception (pratyaksha) that is not trouble by pre-possessions of any kind: the unique source of all real knowledge (sadvidya).
Pratyaksha (aksha = eye, vision) is a symbol of possibility-of-direct-knowledge on different levels of consciousness, such as perception of the senses, intellectual insight, spiritual vision and ‘that which goes beyond’, that is ‘arsha-jnana’ (the knowledge of seers or rishis), which Nyaya recognizes expressly to be the most direct contact with reality, i.e. the purest example of pratyakssha.
The result of such intuitive perception is rendered comprehensible by means of logical deduction and conclusion (anumana) and thus made ready for our practical needs, in the first place the need of mental understanding.
Besides such models of knowledge (pramanas = measures) as the two varieties mentioned above (pratyaksha and anumana), the Nyaya-darshana distinguishes the ‘knowing subject’ (pramatr = measurer), the ‘object known’ (prameya = measurable) and the ‘knowledge’ as their mutual relation.
This logical subject-object relation is considered a rational variety of a universal relation-modus that is equally manifest in analogous aspects of other planes of consciousness (for instance, instinctively-organic or intuitively-intellectual).
For this very reason knowledge is represented symbolically either as an ‘identification’ of the subject with the object, or as on ‘assimilation’ of the object by the subject (the ‘eating of food’ in the Upanishads), and further analogically transposed to other fields of human experience.
The Nyaya thus points beyond itself to a reality that cannot be logically comprehended: at the same time the Nyaya suggests larger possibilities for human intelligence when enabled to interpret (anumana) the direct experience of reality pratyaksha).
In short, the Nyaya-darshana renders the human mind (manas) conscious of its ‘ narrowing’ in the service of sensible observation, of its ‘limitation’ as an instrument of logical discussion, and of this ‘enlarging’ as an interpreter of spiritual experience (buddhi).
(2) Vaisheshika
Nyaya and Vaisheshika both occupy themselves with the ‘things’ of ‘this’ word (idam), the Nyaya in connection with the human faculty of understanding, the Vaisheshika with the things ‘as such’. A characteristic specimen of the method used by the Vaisheshika for analyzing our physical surrounding is provided by the scheme of the five ‘bhutas’. These five ‘elements’ are:
Akasha (ether),
Vayu (air), tejas (fire), ap(water),prithivi (earth) .
These elements, of which all ‘material things’ are considered to be composed, are in no way comparable to the so-called chemical elements since they are supposed to be always present together at the same time in all things, being the common symbol of our fivefold sensible experience of the outer world.
Man normally enters into relation with this world by means of the five bodily faculties-hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell; this relation has five aspects (sound, form, colour, etc,) corresponding to the qualities ascribed to the elements (audibility to akasha, visibility to tejas, etc.), qualities by means of which the physical world is ‘known’.
These five modalities of our sensible activity, ‘translating’ five modalities of the physical world, suggest various degrees of differentiation.
For this reason the range of vibratory frequencies or wavelengths would provide an expensive symbol of the ‘succession’ of the bhutas.
Akasha (ether), the ‘first’ element, is considered the undifferentiated origin of the ‘following four’, i.e. the central symbol of the relation between ‘bodily man’ and his ‘corporeal surrounding’,. When akasha is transposed from this level of sensible experience to ever higher levels, it finally becomes the symbol of ‘central reality’ (Brahma) that revels itself not only in the world of the senses, but in the ‘three worlds’ (tribhuvana, bhuvanatraya), in the universum.
(3) Samkhya
While the Vaisheshika-darshana pays attention principally to the physical world and its differentiations, the Smkhya views these same differentiations as parts of a complete series extending from the state of total undifferentiation ( prakriti) to the most differentiated elements of the material world (the five bhutas); in the Samkhya-darshana the later are envisaged as the five ‘lowest’ ones of a hierarchically descending sequence of 24 elementary principles (tattavs) , originating from the ‘root’ (mula) of the whole cosmos, called ‘mula-prakriti’, and also ‘pradhana’, literally the ‘sub-stance’ or ‘underground’ of all existence.
The unique antipole of the 24 tattvas ‘enclosed’ in prakriti is ‘purusha’ (person, personality), really unique though seemingly divided in all individual beings.
The opposition of purusha to prakriti represents the complementarity of two universal aspects of reality: ‘essense’ and ‘substance’ (or less properly’ ‘essence’ and ‘existence’ ). Prakriti, indeed, does not ‘exist’ in the sense in which jivatma, the living-self, exists, because in jivatma, as in all that ‘exists’, both aspects prakriti and purusha, are always present together.
Purusha and Prakriti are ‘ the lame and the blind’ , who by means of their mutual association are capable of advancing: the lame one with the seeing eyes mounted upon the shoulders of the blind one with good legs: ‘inactive and active’ (akartr + kartr), ‘without and with qualities’ (nirguna + saguna).
The relation between both ‘poles of manifestation’ is not only symbolized by such abstract terms but also in a more imaginative way:
Just like a pure crystal which appears to be red on account of the proximity of a flower, so is the height purusha (parama-purusha).
All qualities without exception belong to prakriti; they are numberless but schematically represented a ‘three gunas’ (guna = taut cord, tension, tendency, quality).
The three tendencies are:
(1) sattva, ‘conformity to essence of being (sat)’ =
tendency of ascension towards the illuminating
knowledge of reality (symbolical colour radiant
white);
(2) Rajas, ‘energy’ = tendency of expansion on a single
Level of existence (flert red);
(3)tamas, ‘inertia’ = tendency of descent towards the obscurity of ignorance (smoky black)
The three gunas are jointly the symbol of all ‘modifications’ of ‘original nature’ (mula-prakriti), wherein the gunas are still in equilibrium but which ‘unfolds itself’ as a result of rupture of this primordial harmony.
Thus ‘mother-nature’ (prakriti) brings forth not only the physical elements: the five bhutas with their ‘subtle prototypes’ the five ‘bhutamatras’ or ‘tan-mantras’, but also the psychical faculties, senses and organs: the ‘indriyas’, i.e the ten ‘outer’ ones (=5 ‘ karmendriyas’ (faculties of action) + 5 ‘jnanedriyas’ (faculties of knowledge) besides the threefold ‘inner organ’ (antahkarana), ‘means’ (mind)’ ‘aham-kara’ (consciousness of individuality) and ‘buddhi’ (universal intellect), all of which together with prakriti itself make up the total, already mentioned, of 24 tattvas.
The whole evolution ‘beginning’ with buddhi and ‘ending’ with the bhutas is symbolically the result of the incessant interaction of the three general tendencies (triguna) belonging to primordial nature (mula-prakriti) .
And it is only by means of the fundamental distinction (viveka) between the ‘unqualified’ (nirguna purusha) and the ‘qualified’
(saguna prakriti) that the way is opened for insight into the universal polarity of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ that manifests itself in the ‘offspring’ of mother-nature, beginning with ‘Mahat’ (the ‘great’), firstborn from the platonic intercourse between purusha and prakkriti, this great principle that manifests itself in man and ‘buddhi’, the ‘awakening’ to intellectual intuition, to consciousness of universal unity.
(4) Yoga
‘Yoga’ means literally the coupling (yuj) under a single yoke (yuga) of a pair (yujma) of draught-animals (yugya); and symbolically the coupling of two mutually complementary elements yoked (yukta) together with a view to obtaining unity in being and in action, i.e. the ‘unification’ of the respective individual and universal aspects of human being; of jivatma + paramatma (see above), the ‘united couple’ (yugma) that draws man up to his ‘inner ruler’ (antar-yami), enthroned in his own heart.
In other worlds Yoga is the disciplined effort that draws the ‘individuality’ of man, united with his ‘personality’, to the ‘Lord’ (ishvara} residing ‘beyond and within’ both purusha and prakriti to the ‘all-knower’ (sarvajna), who comprehends all of our self in so far as ‘ this very self’ (ayam atman) can be comprehended at all.
The term ‘yoga’ points simultaneously to the way, the methods and the means of this ‘self-effort’ (atma-yoga) and to the attainment of the final goal. He who reaches this end is a ‘yogi’.
Yoga cannot be ‘understood’ by a person who does not practice yoga: ‘yoga can be known only by yoga’.
Everyone needs a discipline in accordance with his mental and moral temperament; every disciple, therefore, has to undergo a special training adapted to his character: the jana -yoga (method of knowledge) is fit for the intellectual type of man, the Bhakti-yoga (method of ‘participation’) for the more emotional type, the karma yoga (method of action) for the predominantly pragmatical type; hatha-yoga serves a psycho-physical preparation for the more introspective raja-yoga (royal method) and so on.
In practice, none of these theoretically distinguished methods of yoga is to be found separately: Bhakti is unthinkable without a certain degree of ‘knowledge’ (jnana), meditation presupposes inner ‘activity’ (karma). In reality the different yoga methods schematize the gradual universalization of the innumerable individual starting-points, culminating in ultimate ‘non-duality’ (a-dvaita), wherein ‘yoga’ (unification) transcends itself.
Every methgod, adjusted to the needs of a certain individual, thus manifests the very character of the novice and in the course of his yoga practice loses this ‘singularity’ in proportion as the disciple ‘grows’ inwardly, i.e. ‘enlarges’ his individuality; in other words, as the disciple joins’ his real personality.
For this every reason the same general ethical precepts, such as friendliness (maitri) towards all living beings, apply to every type of aspirant.
A theoretical summary of some aspects of Yoga is given by the classic manual of the Yoga-darshana (the Sutras of Patanjali) which in spite of the existence of voluminous commentaries requires oral elucidation by an experienced teacher in order to be practiced without failure or psychical danger.
Here follows a short symposis of the ‘eightfold (ashtanga) yoga’, consisting of five ‘outer’ limbs (bahiranga) and three ‘inner’ limbs (antar-anga).
(1) yama, ‘domination,’ the fivefold abstention from (i) violence (himsa); (ii) lies, falsehood: (iii) theft; (iv) intemperance: (v) avarice; the first one, non-violence (ahimsa), implying more or less the four collowing qualities (love of truth, sincere ness, etc.).
(2) niyama: the fivefold observation of : (i) purity (bodily and spiritual): (ii) joy of mind ; (iii) indifference towards privation and hardship; (iv) study; (v) faith in a higher power.
(3) asana, the ‘sitting-pose’ that relaxes body and mind an enables them to undergo the successive psychical experiences without fatigue and in a harmonious way, as a support for ‘spiritual practice’.
(4) Pranayama, ‘domination of respiration’ (prana = breath of life ), intended especially for aspirants who cannot in another manner bring their mind to rest. (For other types of aspirants there exist more direct ‘spiritual’ methods of ‘pacifying the mind’ bringing about, as it were automatically, ‘mastery of breath’.)
(5) Pathahara. ‘retirement’ from our one=-sided exclusive attention to things of the ‘outer world’ towards our ‘inner self’.
(6) Dharana, ‘concentration’ of our commonly restless thoughts on a definite ‘point’ (mental point) in order to ‘steady the mind’.
(7) Dhyana, ‘medication’ leading from the foregoing concentration to an even ‘flow of thought’ that quite naturally leads to ‘open contemplation’.
(8) Samadhi, ‘self-identification’ with the ‘object of contemplation’, a model of gradual absorption of all differentiation into ‘essential unity’.
Samadhi is thus the last stage of ashtanga-yoga before attaining the final goal of kaivalya, ‘ultimate oneness’, wherein man is ‘united in unification’ (yoga-yukta).
(5) Mimamsa
This ‘reflection’, like the following darshana, is based upon the conviction that the authority of the Veda is infallible. This infallibility is inherent in the traditional doctrine on account of its character of ‘ revealed truth’, of ‘shruti’, i.e. truth ‘heard’ by the sages of old (rishis) who have ‘seen reality’ (drishti), as can be verified today by anyone who is like them qualified for such ‘metaphysical experience’ (anubhuti).
In the above sense the Vedic text is declared to be ‘a-paurusheya’ (non-human). Being the result of a direct reflection of reality in human minds purified from all individual idiosyncrasy, its intrinsic character guarantees its universal truthfulness, which cannot be affected by the individual fallibility of unqualified reciters, copyists or commentators.
Its intrinsically righteous meaning, therefore, does not even depend upon its linguistic formulation, which is evidently ‘human’ (paurusheya), although the traditionally transmitted symbolic formulation. If rightly understood, may in a sense be said to be equally infallible.
Hence the necessity of ‘reflection’ (mimamsa) on this ‘language of symbols’ and its apparent logical contradictions, the understanding of which presupposes an uncompromising ethical and spiritual discipline, for ‘the Vedas do not purify those who behave themselves badly.’
The Mimamsa-darshana thus first of all teaches reflection on the principles of interpreting the text of the Veda starting from the letter and progressing to the spirit, from symbol to reality.
Only those who have assimilated the spirit of the Veda in its integrality, i.e. those who possess the required ‘spiritual greatness,’ are qualified to compose trustworthy and authentic works, which participate in the authority of the Vedic tradition, such as the sutras of the different philosophic darshanas. The latter works, of which the authority is thus derived from the primordial authority of the Veda, are called ‘smriti’, ‘remembrance.’ Being the result of reflection upon the intellectual principles of the Vedic ‘shruti’. Which is the fruit of purely spiritual intuition. Consequently the smriti can never be in conflict with the shruti; thus the Mimamasa-darshana can never be in conflict with the Veda.
This ‘first’ (purva) mimamsa is a karma-mimamsa, reflecting upon ‘that which has to be done’ (karya) in accordance with the ‘norm’ (dharma) that obtains for all human activity; the first words of the Mimamsa-sutra are: ‘athato dharma-jijnasa’ (now therefore the inquiry into dharma).
Dharma (dhri = to sustan) is the principle of universal stability and the symbol of the ‘unchanging’ within the ‘changing’ in all orders, cosmic as well as human, spiritual as well as physical.
Although the sway of dharma is not limited to humanity but extends to all worlds (lokas), every man has his own norm (sva-dharma): when one’s actions (karma) are in harmony with one’s very nature (dharma), and thus with the world –order (rita) , the term ‘dharma’ may be rendered by ‘virtue’ (state of balance, equilibrium) contributing to the maintenance of cosmic stability (dhruva). When there is an attempt to bring human society into harmony with cosmic stability (as for instance, by the Hindu division into castes) ‘dharma ‘may be translated by the ‘law’ or ‘legislation’: ‘Manava-dharma-shastra’ is the name of the classic ‘Handbook of the Laws of Manu’. Manu being the symbolical forefather (prototype) of the human race (manava = manushya).
In connexion with the social application of dharma as ‘law-giving order,’ Hindu justice and jurisprudence has to a large extent been dependent upon the rules prescribed by this Mimamsa-darshana.
(6) Vedhantha
While the preceding darshana (purva-mimamsa), treating of the ‘deed-to-be-done’ (karya), is based upon the ‘karma-kanda’ of the Veda, this ‘uttara-mimamsa (last reflextion) starts from its ‘jnana-kanda’ , i.e. chiefly from the Upanishads; the latter, together with a Vedanta-sutra (also called Brahma-sutra) and with the Bhagvadgita, from the threefold basis (prasthana-traya) of Vedanta-darshana. The first and principal source is and remains of course the whole of the Upanishads.
The Vedanta-sutra is an attempt to harmonize the different upanishadic teachings; like all the other sutras it is incomprehensible without further elucidation. Among the commentaries (bhashyas) composed by vedantic philosophers the commentary of Shankara is, philosophically, the most consistent one; its ‘way of thought’ is called ‘ advaitavada’ or ‘brahma-vivartaveda’ (the doctrine of ‘non-duality’, the doctrine that the ‘world’ is an apparent transformation of reality’).
Shankara’s master (guru) was the disciple of Gaudapada, who was (as far as we know) the first to give a comprehensive view of advaita-vedanta in his Mandukya-karika, i.e. in the form of a commentary on the Mandukyopanishad, from which an extract was quoted in the second chapter.
The scheme of the four sthanas is analogically based on general experience: every man wakes, dreams, sleeps, be it in his own way.
As a rule ‘sleep’ and ‘dream’ are considered an ‘explained’ from the point of view of ‘walking consciousness’ (as bodily relaxation, etc.).
The Vedanta-darshana is critical of such explanations that do not take into account the characteristic difference, existing between the states of waking, dreaming, sleeping. Questions like: ‘When did I fall asleep?’ or ‘How long have I been sleeping?’ appear absurd when they are viewed from the sleeping state itself, wherein no ‘time’ or ‘I’ exists.
First of all it must be stated that the three states do not ‘succeed’ one another in the ordinary sense (waking sense’) of the world; this would indeed mean a succession in ‘waking time’ everyone, however, knows from personal experience that during dreams another kind of ‘time’ than waking time prevails, and as with ‘time’, so it is with ‘space’ and with ‘causation’. Just so with consciousness of one’s identity’: between our ‘dreaming ego’ and our ‘waking ego’ no logical relation can be discovered.
While dreaming, dream events are ‘real’; after awakening they prove to be ‘illusory’. But the events of our waking life ‘survive’ our waking state no more than dream events ‘outlive’ our dreaming state. (No more, or possibly as much?) In the dream state we regard the most fantastic dreams as being as ‘common’ and as ‘natural’ as we feel the events of our ‘daily life’ to be in the waking state.
How then do we declare the waking state to be ‘real’ and the dream state ‘illusory’, when we cannot locate the ‘limit’ between both: the moment when we start to dream, the moment when we ‘fall asleep’?
Dreaming an waking worlds are equally ‘objects of experience’; both are thus ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ to the extend of our identification with them; their mutual relation is unknown; there is a mysterious transition from one to the other; as long as we are dreaming ‘dream time’ is real, and so is ‘waking time’ as long as we are awake; between waking and dreaming, what then is the connexion? And may we even speak of ‘interval’ between the two
The only link between waking and dreaming is that both, are sthanas of our self (atma), the one and only reality that we are able to assume as a basis for all modalities of our existence. The consciousness of being ourselves does not leave us during dreams, any more than in the waking condition. But what about deep dreamless sleep?
Usually a description of ‘deep sleep’ (sushupti) limits itself to describing the outer reactions of a sleeping individual; how can, however, sleep be known but from sleeping experience itself?
Everyone knows that during sleep our ‘thought life’ seems to have ceased altogether, or at least to have come to a standstill; when we awaken, we do not feel, however, that while sleeping we were entirely unconscious, like a stone.
When ‘after’ sleep consciousness returns’ we realize that ‘during sleep’ our ego that plays so great a part in waking and dreaming ‘did not exist’.
Remembrance of ‘delight of sleeping’ testifies, however, to a ‘state of being fully oneself’ (ananda), undisturbed by ‘things’ or ‘thoughts.’ ‘Without a second’ (a-davita)’, ‘in ignorance’ (a-vidya) as it were.
The general congenital ‘ignorance’ is obvious from the fact that in waking and in dreaming we identify ourselves with the body and with our thoughts (‘I’ am fat or thin; “I’ am clever, stupid.) instead of with our real self; this ‘ignorance’ seems equally obvious from the fact that in deep sleep (sthana 3) , wherein the fat or thin, the clever or stupid egos (sthanas 1 and 3) exists, no longer’, but the true self (sthana 4) ‘not yet’ exists we are contented with this drowsy, ‘unconscious’ peace of mind.
Questions about the cause of this constitutional ignorance (a-vidya), about the origin of this illusion (maya) to which the human being is subjected, are answered symbolically as follows:
When in darkness a rope lying on the ground is taken to be a snake, then on a ‘reality’ is ‘projected’ (adhyasa) and ‘artificiality’ (maya) which ceases to be as soon as its reality is ‘recognized’.
The ‘snake’ may thus be called either real or unreal according to the way reality has been defined; logical definitions do not, however, alter facts: thus man thinks constantly that he is seeing things, which afterwards he states to be either non-existing or existing-otherwise; sensible, mental and emotional experiments thus prove to have been sensible, mental, emotional ‘delusions’ (moha)
This universal phantasmagoria, this ‘moving’ veil of ‘maya’, suggesting the reality of ‘brahma’, this snake that conceals yet indicates the rope; the snake that cannot ‘exist’ without (nor together with) the rope, that ‘comes out from and disappears into’ the rope; this snake is the symbol of the limitations of individual man (jivatma), as long as he has not succeeded in realizing his personality, his real self (atma) ,which comprehends much more than his own senses or his mind can grasp.
Knowledge of self (atma-jnana, atma-vidya) is knowledge of reality (brahma-jnana, brahma-vidya) . The explanation of the terms ;jnana’ and ‘vidya’ by ‘ knowledge’ or ‘science’ is misleading, since it is not a question of an ‘object being known by a subject’, but of direct, living ‘self becoming’ (atma-bhava), ‘reality becoming’ (brahma-bhava), ‘self identification with reality’ (brahma-atmabhava).
Just as the self (atma) remains itself in all states (sthanas), in waking, in dreaming, in sleeping, so reality remains itself in all ‘appearance’: the rope appearing as a snake remains a rope.
The self is unescapable reality: ‘atma is brahma’.
The self that does not exclude anything, but comprehends all of our self, including our /’bodily-self’, is therefore ‘veritable’ (satya); our ego that is fascinated by the sensible and rational aspects of our individual being, and practically negates our universal powers, is, therefore, ‘untruthful’ (mithya) , for it denies our complete selfhood , of which it is only a part. Ego and self are mentally (manasa) distinct (dvaita), really (brahmavat), however, they are not distinct (a-dvaita).
Reality alone can liberate us from illusion (the rope from the snake), because illusion is dependent on reality.
‘Know yourself’ (atmanam viddhi); that which in ignorance you are seeking outside yourself, ‘that you yourself are’ (tattvamasi); repeat: ‘I myself am reality’ aham brahmasi), and one day you may be able to understand its meaning. Vedanta thus uses concise so called ‘great saying’ (mahavakya), which, when considered logically, seem rather paradoxical assimilations of relativity with absoluteness, but which in fact are active exhortations to ‘realize reality’ within one’s own but real self.
According to Vedanta-darshana this reality is present in all human action, thought, experience. Just as the sun, hidden behind the clouds, reveals its presence by the very daylight, so hidden behind our superficial thoughts and actions, the ever present ‘luminosity of our real self’, our ‘self-enlightenment’ (svayam-prakashatva), reveals itself. The sudden revelation of this ‘self-illuminating insight’, which in rare moments (just as the sun ‘breaks’ through the clouds) does overtake us unexpectedly and leaves us quite as suddenly, can (by means of self-purification and self-exercise) consciously be ‘’ ‘recalled’, retained’ , ‘transformed’ into a permanent enlargement of our personality; this method consists in ‘hearing’ (shavana) the knowledge of an experienced teacher, in content reflection (manana) on the matters learned and finally in meditation (nididhyasana) whereby reality ceases to be the ‘object’ of thought.
For ‘knowable’ (jneya) reality is only an ‘appearance’, or a ‘form’, (murti), of That which is ‘unknowable’ (a-neya). But when ‘threefold manifestation’ (trimurti) of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, has entered into the Lord Himself (ishvara), ie. When the apparently ‘describable’ proves to be really ‘undescribale’ (when Brahma proves to be ‘ not-other-than’ brahma). Then only the ‘many-coloured’ spectrum of human existence becomes re-integrated in the stainless ‘light of self’ (sva-prakasha), when it henceforth, transfigured’, subsists intrinsically.
Vedanta is the ‘ultimate’, most universal darshana and regards the five preceding ones as propacedeutic ‘ways of looking’, similarly advaita-vedanta regards other vedantic ways of looking as more or less advanced approximations of its own ‘point of view’, which ultimately transcends itself in non-duality.
Such is ‘the truth of truth’, ‘ reality of reality’: satyasya satyam.
Mukti : Freedom
OF all the questions that a wakeful and fresh intellect will constantly ask, there is none, perhaps, more sure to recur than, What is Freedom? Many of us are born struggling for actual freedom, for our own freedom. All of us are born to struggle for something. Nothing more terrible could be imagined than a human being put into circumstances so artificial that all motive for struggle was eliminated, and he was deprived of the natural human right of something to desire and strive for. We can imagine a man in prison for life realizing such hopelessness, though, if so, it must be because his whole conception of activity is social or muscular, and therefore, can be thwarted. Or a cage made of riches, or rank, - such a cage as that of royal birth, for instance, - might produce this effect on a nature too good to lose itself in fleshly delights, and too stupid to find paths of self-development. But if so, the man who never struggled would grow up an idiot. That at least is certain. All our vivacity, all our intelligence, is developed by struggle. Only shapeless incapacity could result from its lack.
It has been said that the great may be distinguished from the little by whether or not they are struggling for freedom. This may be true. For there is no doubt that we may struggle for, and even realize, a thing which we would not possibly define intellectually. Most of us win our own freedom in this thing and that thing, and thus gradually build up a more or less perfect freedom. Many struggle for freedom under the name of the Right. “God and my Right” - Dieu et mon droit - is a formula that refers to some such contest of the soul. It is only Hinduism that has been subtle enough to recognize that beyond the thing itself which seems to be the object of our strife, the real thirst of the soul is for freedom - and that this freedom is the essential condition of self-development. The man who is free, says Dharma, is the only man who is himself. The man who is really and fully himself is free - free in all directions, free of all bonds.
One essential characteristic of freedom is that it has always to be realized in opposition to something. The struggle of every individuality - whether a simple or a compound - is to define itself, by attaining self-direction, by repudiating the control of its fellow-organisms. Freedom from the pressure of his social surroundings is an absolute necessity of manly men. The manly man may choose to act precisely as his society would desire, but he must believe that he does this because he himself chooses, and not because society compels. And yet any great anxiety on this point is crude enough, since manly men are too accustomed to their own freedom, and their own power of defending their freedom, to be uneasy about it, or suspicious of invasions upon it. It is only a child, who has never yet felt himself grown-up, who finds it necessary to refuse whatever is asked of him, in order that he may hug to himself his own liberty of refusal. And here we note the vanity, the selfishness, the pre-occupation with self, and indifference to the needs of others, that make such natures, at such a stage, unfit for high and arduous forms of co-operation. The really great are born with such assurance of their own freedom to withhold, that they are full of eagerness to give, and welcome every opportunity of serving as a privilege. Such natures we see every day. Unselfishness is not rate amongst human beings. On the contrary, it is the mortar that joins the bricks of the whole edifice.
Society, them, is one of the forces against which the individual has to realize his own freedom - one of the powers from which he has to wrest it. But the question again occurs, what is that freedom for which the individual is struggling? And here arises one of the supreme fallacies. Some take it that freedom is identified with slavery to their own impulses. This is the freedom that makes drunkards, gluttons, and libertines.
At first, all our activity, all our development of faculty, depends upon desire : afterwards, desire is seen as a form of disease, of which we must be cured! Is this the truth? The momentum of desire, that impels us to yield inevitably to our own caprices, is not freedom. It is the last and subtlest form of bondage, the more dangerous and deadly for the fact that we are liable to mistake its nature. Liberty to realize what is our own will may be an essential condition of freedom, but until we are as free from that will, and the desires suggested by that body and mind, as from those of all the other hundreds of millions of human beings, we do not know what real freedom is.
How large, how clam, how full of exquisite joy and graciousness, never dimmed, is the heritage of life that awaits the individual in those elysian fields of the soul, where this freedom has been won! It may be manifested is any way, by any means. For only the free can apprehend what freedom is. Only the free can determine how freedom shall be shown. Only the actions of the free are potent, unhampered by feebleness of their own or aggression of others - free ! free ! Freedom is indeed the supreme good of the soul. So far from being “a night in which all cows are black,” it is, as every Hindu knows, the perfect access of daylight, neither too much nor too little, into every nook and cranny of our universe. But even so, when we seek to define it, we are met by an eternal impossibility, and can only ejaculate “Neti ! neti! Not this ! Not this !
The soldier has to learn that obedience is his form of prayer. To be doing japam when one ought to be resting, and consequently to be sleepy when one ought to be at work, is not a meritorious condition. No punya that way ! The sunny-heartedness of the child, on the other hand, ready to forget all about his mother, if its mother tells it to run away and play, is true bhakti, and better than many pranams.
Manliness may often prove to be the whole of piety! Some races have practiced such virtue out of sheer instinct, but never before was a survey of life so comprehensive, so far-reaching, added to the treasury of authoritative pronouncements on religious truth. This manliness-which-is-righteousness involves, it will be noticed, a kind of Mukti, for the manly man has no time to be conscious of his own manliness. Heroism in great moments is the natural blossom of a life that in its little moments is fine and fearless.
In Truth And Reality
The Spherical Standing Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) in pace
Site Introduction (2010): Despite several thousand years of failure to correctly understand physical reality (hence the current postmodern view that this is impossible) there is an obvious solution.
Simply unite Science (Occam's Razor / Simplicity) with Metaphysics (Dynamic Unity of Reality) and describe reality from only one substance existing, as Leibniz wrote;
'Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another'.
Given we all experience many minds and many material things, but always in one common Space, we are thus required to describe physical reality in terms of Space. We then find there is only one solution, a Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) where the electron is a spherical standing wave. See Wave Diagrams.
In hindsight the error was obvious, to try and describe an interconnected reality with discrete 'particles', which then required forces / fields to connect them in space and time. This was always just a mathematical solution which never explained how matter was connected across the universe.
I realise that there are a lot of 'crackpot' theories about truth and reality on the internet, but it is easy to show that the Wave Structure of Matter is the correct solution as it deduces the laws of Nature (the fundamentals of Physics & Philosophy) perfectly (there are no opinions). While the Wave Structure of Matter is obvious once known, to begin it will seem strange simply because it takes time for our minds to adjust to new knowledge.
For those who are religious / spiritual, I think Albert Einstein expresses the enlightened view of God. He writes 'I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.' This harmony arises from a Wave Structure of Matter in Space (we are all interconnected in this space that we all commonly experience). This unity of reality (God, Brahman, Tao, Spirit, Energy, Light, Vibration) is central to all major world religions, thus their common moral foundation of 'Do unto others as to thyself' as the other is part of the self.
Please help our world (human society / life on earth) by sharing this knowledge. Clearly our world is in great trouble due to human overpopulation and the resultant destruction of Nature, climate change and the pollution of air, land and water. The best solution to these problems is to found our societies on truth and reality rather than past myths and customs (which invariably cause harm).
We are listed as one of the Top Philosophy Websites on the Internet with around 600,000 page views each week, and rank in the top 20 in Google for many academic search terms - so we just need a bit of help to get in the top five. Given the Censorship in Physics / Philosophy of Science Journals (founded on the standard model / particle physics) the internet is clearly the best way to get new knowledge visible to the world.
A world now in great need of wisdom from truth and reality.
Sincerely, Geoff Haselhurst - Karene Howie - Full Introduction - Email - Nice Letters - Share this Knowledge.
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Mohandas Gandhi)
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. (Edmund Burke)
Hell is Truth Seen Too Late. (Thomas Hobbes)
The Dynamic Unity of Reality Both ancient and modern philosophers have deduced that reality is a dynamic unity. Ancient Indian Philosophy and Greek Philosophy, and later western philosophers used the logic of philosophy and metaphysics (i.e. understanding necessary connection) to assert that all matter and motion (the entire universe) was derived from one substance.
The Wave Structure of Matter confirms their deductions that one substance (Space) must exist to explain how matter is interconnected across the universe.
The following quotes from Heraclitus, Aristotle, Gottfried Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, F. H. Bradley, Franz Brentano, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, John Archibald Wheeler, Fritjof Capra and David Bohm are important in this foundation of Metaphysics / Physical Reality;
(Heraclitus, 500 B.C.) 'All things come out of the One and the One out of all things. ... I see nothing but Becoming. Be not deceived! It is the fault of your limited outlook and not the fault of the essence of things if you believe that you see firm land anywhere in the ocean of Becoming and Passing. You need names for things, just as if they had a rigid permanence, but the very river in which you bathe a second time is no longer the same one which you entered before.'
(Aristotle, Metaphysics, 340BC) 'Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance. And here we will have the science to study that which is, both in its essence and in the properties which, just as a thing that is, it has. ... That among entities there must be some cause which moves and combines things. ... There must then be a principle of such a kind that its substance is activity.'
(Gottfried Leibniz, Philosophical Writings, 1670) 'Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. ... I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity. ... I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general. ... It follows from what we have just said, that the natural changes of monads come from an internal principle, and that change is continual in each one. ... Now this connection of all created things with each, and of each with all the rest, means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, each created monad represents the whole universe.'
(Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 1781) 'Natural science (physics) contains in itself synthetical judgments a priori, as principles. … Space then is a necessary representation a priori, which serves for the foundation of all external intuitions.'
(Francis Herbert Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 1893) 'We may agree, perhaps, to understand by Metaphysics an attempt to know reality as against mere appearance, or the study of first principles or ultimate truths, or again the effort to comprehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by fragments, but somehow as a whole.'
(Brentano) 'The judgment, for instance, that there is a three-dimensional (spatial) world is, Brentano believed, so widely confirmed as to be infinitely more likely than any of its alternatives.' (One Hundred Twentieth-Century Philosophers, Brown et al, 1998)
(Michael Faraday, 1830) 'I cannot conceive curved lines of force without the conditions of a physical existence in that intermediate space.'
(James Clerk Maxwell, 1890) 'In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. All energy is the same as mechanical energy, whether it exists in the form of motion or in that of elasticity, or in any other form. The energy in electromagnetic phenomena is mechanical energy.'
(Friedrich Nietzsche, The Greeks) 'Greek philosophy seems to begin with a preposterous fancy, with the proposition that water is the origin and mother-womb of all things. Is it really necessary to stop there and become serious? Yes, and for three reasons: firstly, because the preposition does enunciate something about the origin of things; secondly, because it does so without figure and fable; thirdly and lastly, because it contained, although only in the chrysalis state, the idea :everything is one. ..That which drove him (Thales) to this generalization was a metaphysical dogma, which had its origin in a mystic intuition and which together with the ever renewed endeavors to express it better, we find in all philosophies- the proposition: everything is one!'
(Hendrik Lorentz, Theory of the Electron, 1900) 'I cannot but regard the ether, which can be the seat of an electromagnetic field with its energy and its vibrations, as endowed with a certain degree of substantiality, however different it may be from all ordinary matter.'
(Albert Einstein, 1928, Leiden Lecture) 'According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of matter, as consisting of parts ('particles') which may be tracked through time.'
(Albert Einstein, Relativity, 1950) 'Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended (as fields). In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning. ... The field thus becomes an irreducible element of physical description, irreducible in the same sense as the concept of matter (particles) in the theory of Newton. ... The physical reality of space is represented by a field whose components are continuous functions of four independent variables - the co-ordinates of space and time. Since the theory of general relativity implies the representation of physical reality by a continuous field, the concept of particles or material points cannot play a fundamental part, nor can the concept of motion. The particle can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high.'
(Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 1954) 'When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter.'
(Erwin Schrödinger, Life and Thought, 1989) 'What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). ... The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. ... Let me say at the outset, that in this discourse, I am opposing not a few special statements of quantum mechanics held today (1950s), I am opposing as it were the whole of it, I am opposing its basic views that have been shaped 25 years ago, when Max Born put forward his probability interpretation, which was accepted by almost everybody. ... I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.'
The fundamental element of the cosmos is Space. Space is the all-embracing principle of higher unity. Nothing can exist without Space. ... According to ancient Indian tradition the Universe reveals itself in two fundamental properties: as Motion and as that in which motion takes place, namely Space. This Space is called Akasa .. derived from the root kas, 'to radiate, to shine', and has therefore the meaning of ether which is conceived as the medium of movement. The principle of movement, however, is Prana, the breath of life, the all-powerful, all-pervading rhythm of the universe, (Lama Anagarika Govinda, 1969)
(Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, 1972) 'In Indian philosophy, the main terms used by Hindus and Buddhists have dynamic connotations. The word Brahman is derived from the Sanskrit root brih - to grow- and thus suggests a reality which is dynamic and alive. The Upanishads refer to Brahman as 'this unformed, immortal, moving', thus associating it with motion even though it transcends all forms.' The Rig Veda uses another term to express the dynamic character of the universe, the term Rita. This word comes from the root ri- to move. In its phenomenal aspect, the cosmic One is thus intrinsically dynamic, and the apprehension of its dynamic nature is basic to all schools of Eastern mysticism. They all emphasize that the universe has to be grasped dynamically, as it moves, vibrates and dances. ... The Eastern mystics see the universe as an inseparable web, whose interconnections are dynamic and not static. The cosmic web is alive; it moves and grows and changes continually.'
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980) 'The notion that all these fragments is separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it.'
(John Archibald Wheeler) 'Someday we'll understand the whole thing as one single marvelous vision that will seem so overwhelmingly simple and beautiful that we may say to each other; 'Oh, how could be have been so stupid for so long? How could it have been otherwise!'
The Past And The Future
SOME people strive to be truly Indian by looking back, and some aim at the same goal by looking forward. It is quite evident that we need both, yet that of the two the second is still the more important. We need the two, because the future must be created out of the strength of the past. None of us can be educated by rebuke alone. The teacher who really forms us, is he who sees better than we did ourselves what we really longed and strove for, how far our effort was right, and in what points we might make it still finer and better. He who interprets us to ourselves, and at the same time gives us hope, is the true educator.
In the same way a nation cannot be aided by contempt or abuse. The future cannot be founded on a past, admitted to be a failure. Also, one might add considered to be perfect! He who attempts to do this will never understand his own defeat. Before we can teach, we must first worship the Divine that expresses itself through the taught. Service is really worship. Charity is worship. And even education is worship. Because I see in you the infinite Atman, - pure, free, irresistible and eternal, - I may help you to remove some of the barriers to Its free expression. If the whole of humanity were not in you, what would be the use of our efforts? They could bring forth no fruit.
It follows that the advance of communities, like that of individuals, depends in the first place upon a clear conception of the goal before them, and a reverent appreciation of the work they have done in the past towards that end. Hence there must be a certain element of conservation in all great social upheavals.
But it would be better to be confined to the future than to be confined to the past! After all, whether we know it or not, we cannot help carrying a certain amount of our inherited strength with us. And we must be hewing out the path for the advance of others. It is this tendency to limitation, to refuse full freedom to others, that is apt to make the young so impatient of what they take to be blind reaction. But the fault is not in conservatism itself, as our youth themselves will one day come to see, but rather in its denial of freedom to advance. All religions are true, as Sri Ramakrishna taught us, and practically everything in them is true, save and except those points in which they declare other faiths to be false. Similarly, our conservatives are right enough, except when they say that the youngsters are wrong, and the youngsters are true, except when they fret against the back-looking elders.
Each has need to love and pray for the success of the other. Do we want to see India turned into a pale copy of America? God forbid! How precious, as a bulwark against our own impatience then, are these staunch old believers who hold the national treasure, and guard the national colour, against all innovation! But do we want to see India with her wings clipped, chained to the roosting-perch, unable to do or to be or to soar where she will? If not, let our love and benediction go everywhere with our wayward children, in their sublime assault upon the future. On, on, strong souls, with your experiments in progress, your fiery hopes, and your fearless forward march! We know the love that burns in your hearts for the village home, and the father and grandfather. Better, we hold, could the land do without us than without you! The time will yet come when you will return to the old home, tired of wandering, weary of the fight, and leaving your own children to man the breach you leave, will turn your hearts to the ancient wisdom, and seek the final release. How grateful will you then be to the grey heads that preserved the national home! No other refuge could have seemed so cool as this old house. No music could have been so sweet as these temple bells. It is for the future that the past lives on. The past has no bhakta to compare with that future!
Sanskrit Language
Sanskrit language is the key to understanding India.
The Sanskrit Language as the name shows is a highly refined system remarkably suitable for today’s computer age. It is a tool as well as a product of Indian Culture and Civilization.
Sanskrit served as a tool in the following ways. It was the one language used in liturgy and ritual throughout the country and unified the people emotionally and culturally.
The Sanskrit language is at first awesome rather than attractive. Lawerence af Arabia found it for bidding. Long acquaintance is needed to acquire a taste for it
The Sanskrit language was a perfect medium for memorizing and transmitting essential knowledge at a time when the printing machine had not been invented and literacy was not very wide spread.
It was a tool invented refined and perfected keeping in mind the nature of the human speech organs. Various dialects contributed to it. Among these Dravidian forms a large part
The Philosophy Of Buddhism
• The Four Noble Truths
• Dependant Origination
• The Eightfold Path
• The Three Characteristics of Existence
• The Three Jewels and the Five Precepts
• Karma and Intention
• Rebirth and Nirvana
Four Noble Truths
After the Enlightenment, the Buddha walked over one hundred miles to India’s holy city of Benares. In a deer park near the city, he preached his first sermon to the five followers who had previously renounced him. This sermon formed the basis of his teaching from then on. He spoke about The Four Noble Truths.
The Four Noble Truths which came to the Buddha at the enlightenment, revolves around the logical process of seeing life, seeing all actions, not as we wish to see them, but as they really are.
The first truth is that life always incorporates suffering or Dukkha as it was called then. Dukkha has a broader meaning than suffering. It can be the feeling you experience, when you encounter pain, old age, sickness, loss, or separation from loved ones, but it can also represent a general unsatisfied feeling. If you feel that your life is like pushing a supermarket trolley, which always wants to go in a different direction, then that’s dukkha.
In "The Vision of the Buddha" by Tom Lowenstein, the Buddha says:
"What, monks, is the truth of suffering? Birth is suffering, decay, sickness and death are suffering. To be separated from what you like is suffering. To want something and not get it is suffering. In short, the human personality, liable as it is to clinging and attachment brings suffering."
The second noble truth is that suffering in its broad sense, comes from desire, and specifically, desire for meeting our expectations and for self fulfilment as we see it. By desiring for ourselves rather than the whole, we will always have suffering.
In the same way that a child wants a new toy and then, having achieved that, will long for yet another, we seek fulfilment of our desire, to then move on to another. All the time, our lives are only temporarily satisfied.
So far, that’s the bad news. In the language of many teenagers "Life Sucks".
But Buddhism is a positive philosophy, and the next two noble truths give us an optimistic message.
The third noble truth tells us that if our attachment to desire ends, so too will the suffering. Specifically, if we change our perception and reduce our attachment to desire, suffering will also reduce. This is not intended to lead to a cancellation of the zest for life, but to an understanding of the nature of life and to controlling those desires which come from that lack of understanding.
The fourth noble truth shows the way to the ending of suffering. The Buddha said that the way to cease suffering is to follow the middle way, the Noble Eightfold path. This provides the guidelines for day to day living. There is some analogy here with the Ten Commandments in Christianity, but the eightfold path is meant as a guideline rather than a strict rule.
The Buddha reached this middle way after himself living the extremes of life. In his early years, he was surrounded by luxury, given access to all pleasures available at that time. In his search, he lived the opposite life, one where he deprived himself of even the essentials, and faced death. The Noble Eightfold path leads to a way, which embraces life and is neither indulgent nor austere.
The Noble Eightfold path is Right Understanding, Right Intent, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. These guidelines are covered in a different section.
When the Buddha gave this first sermon to the world, he is said to have set in motion the Wheel of the Law. And the wheel as a Buddhist symbol appears over and over again in Buddhist art, symbolising the cyclic nature of existence.
Dependant Origination
The topic of Dependant Origination sounds complex, and it is one of the most important concepts of the Buddhist teaching. However, in essence, it is quite simple.
The Buddha said that to become enlightened, you need only to understand The Four Noble Truths and Dependant Origination.
Dependant Origination is also called the law of causality and was the other main revelation which came to Buddha at his enlightenment. In this teaching, he says that nothing exists on its own, but always has come from earlier circumstances.
A piece of paper does not come into existence spontaneously. It is made from wood pulp and water. The wood comes from trees, which comes from seeds from earlier trees. If you burn paper, it becomes smoke and ash, so it has not disappeared but transformed. The essential components of that piece of paper were always there, and will always be there. A pot is made because once a potter took clay and formed it on a wheel and then fired the pot. Many circumstances and components were needed for the process.
In the same way, we did not spontaneously come into existence at birth, we are the result of our parents, of the circumstances of their meeting, and of all that happened before. You are alive today because you were once born, as a result of your parents meeting at an earlier time. Every thing is always a consequence of something before, that is, the origin of everything is not unique, it is dependent on a particular set of circumstances having happened.
Dependant origination is similar to cause and effect, and closely links to the Four Noble Truths. Desire causes suffering, one is dependent on the other. Following the path causes desire to reduce and so causes suffering to be reduced.
If you begin to see everything as dependant on everything else, then you will need to look to the larger picture, where everything we think and do affects the future. As in the writing of Thich Nhat Hanh "the world is woven of interconnected threads".
In essence, the Buddha did not see a separate and benevolent creator who could act on our behalf. He saw the interdependence of all life and the cause and effect of actions which create their own future.
This is why Buddhism, at its inception, was more of a way of life than a religion. Certainly, now it is accepted as a religion by many followers who seek divine guidance from the Buddha nature.
The Eightfold Path
The eightfold path, although referred to as steps on a path, is not meant as a sequential learning process, but as eight aspects of life, all of which are to be integrated in every day life. Thus the environment is created to move closer to the Buddhist path.
The eightfold path is at the heart of the middle way, which turns from extremes, and encourages us to seek the simple approach.
The eightfold path is Right Understanding, Right Intent, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.
No doubt all of you are aware of the moral codes in other religious groups such as Christianity, the Jews, and Muslims. While there is a degree of correspondence across these groups, the interpretation of the code in each philosophy is different. In the example of the Ten Commandments, there is an authoritarian feeling of decree, of a direct order that these be fulfilled.
In Buddhism, the eightfold path is meant as a guideline, to be considered, to be contemplated, and to be taken on when, and only when each step is fully accepted as part of the life you seek. Buddhism never asks for blind faith, it seeks to promote learning and a process of self-discovery.
The meaning of Right has several aspects, and includes an ethical, and a balanced, or middle way. When things go "right", we often experience a special feeling inside which confirms that this is the correct decision or action.
Right Understanding:
The first step of the eightfold path is Right Understanding or Right View.
This is a significant step on the path as it relates to seeing the world and everything in it as it really is, not as we believe it to be or want it to be. Just as you may read the directions on a map, and then make the journey, studying, reading and examining the information is important, but only the preparation for the journey. At a deeper level, direct personal experience will then lead us to Right Understanding.
In his book "Old Path, White Clouds", Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story of the Buddha. The Buddha says "my teaching is not a dogma or a doctrine, but no doubt some people will take it as such." The Buddha goes on to say "I must state clearly that my teaching is a method to experience reality and not reality itself, just as a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself. A thinking person makes use of the finger to see the moon. A person who only looks at the finger and mistakes it for the moon will never see the real moon."
Knowing reality is of very little value if we don’t put it to personal use in our lives.
Right Intent:
The second step on the Eightfold Path is Right Intent. This is the step where we become committed to the path. Right Understanding shows us what life really is and what life’s problems are composed of, Right Intent urges us to decide what our heart wants.
Right Intent must come from the heart and involves recognising the equality of all life and compassion for all that life, beginning with yourself.
Right Intent means persistence and a passion for the journey. Setting out to climb a high mountain means you must understand the lay of the land and the pitfalls, the other team members, and the equipment you need. This is similar to Right Understanding. But you will only climb the mountain if you really want to and have a passion for the climb. This is Right Intent. The mountain we climb here is our journey though life.
To summarise, Right Understanding will eliminate ignorance. With Right Intent and correct understanding, we then remove desire, which in turn causes the suffering defined in the Four Noble Truths.
Right Speech:
Right Speech is the next step of the Path. We tend to underestimate the power of the spoken word, and often regret words said in haste. Each of us has experienced the disappointment associated with harsh criticism, whether justified or not, and we also are likely to have felt good when kind words encouraged us.
Right speech involves recognition of the truth, and also an awareness of the impact of idle gossip and of repeating rumours. Communicating thoughtfully helps to unite others, and can heal dissention. By resolving never to speak unkindly, or in anger, a spirit of consideration evolves which moves us closer to everyday compassionate living.
Right Action:
Right Action recognises the need to take the ethical approach in life, to consider others and the world we live in. This includes not taking what is not given to us, and having respect for the agreements we make both in our private and business lives.
Right Action also encompasses the five precepts which were given by the Buddha, not to kill, steal, lie, to avoid sexual misconduct, and not to take drugs or other intoxicants.
This step on the path also includes a whole approach to the environment, with Right Action being taken whenever possible to safeguard the world for future generations.
Right Livelihood:
The next on the Eightfold Path follows on from Right Action, and this is Right Livelihood. If your work has a lack of respect for life, then it will be a barrier to progress on the spiritual path. Buddhism promotes the principle of equality of all living beings and respect for all life.
Certain types of work were discouraged by the Buddha, in particular those where you deal in harmful drugs and intoxicants, those dealing in weapons, and those harmful to animal or human life. So a dedicated Buddhist would not be recommended to have a liquor store, own a gun shop, or be a butcher. In his time, he also discouraged the slave trade, which dealt in human workers. And he was also against the practice of fortune telling as this made assumptions about a fixed future, where his teaching stresses that the future is created by what we do today.
Right Livelihood also implies that a Buddhist who is able, will undertake some work, either as part of a Buddhist community, or in the workplace, or, alternatively, do home based or community service. Many communities of monks ensure that each member has daily chores, which remind him of this step on the Eightfold Path.
Right Effort:
Right Effort means cultivating an enthusiasm, a positive attitude in a balanced way. Like the strings of a musical instrument, the amount of effort should not be too tense or too impatient, as well as not too slack or too laid back. Right Effort should produce an attitude of steady and cheerful determination.
In order to produce Right Effort, clear and honest thoughts should be welcomed, and feelings of jealousy and anger left behind. Right Effort equates to positive thinking, followed by focused action.
The Buddha was well ahead of his time on this one, and many books have been written about the power of the right attitude.
Right Mindfulness:
While Right Effort is a very easy concept for most of us, Right Mindfulness is somewhat trickier to grasp, and may involve quite a change of thinking.
I suggest that you take a short break, stand up and walk (or cruise if you are mobile) around the room or house, and then come back here before reading on.
Right Mindfulness means being aware of the moment, and being focused in that moment. When we travel somewhere, we are hearing noises, seeing buildings, trees, advertising, feeling the movement, thinking of those we left behind, thinking of our destination. So it is with most moments of our lives.
Right Mindfulness asks us to be aware of the journey at that moment, and to be clear and undistracted at that moment. Right Mindfulness is closely linked with meditation and forms the basis of meditation.
Right Mindfulness is not an attempt to exclude the world, in fact, the opposite. Right Mindfulness asks us to be aware of the moment, and of our actions at that moment. By being aware, we are able to see how old patterns and habits control us. In this awareness, we may see how fears of possible futures limit our present actions.
Now, having read this, try the same walk as before but with a focused mind, which now concentrates only on the action of the walking. Observe your thoughts before reading on.
Sometimes you may be absorbed in what you are doing. Music, art, sport can trigger these moments. Have you ever done anything where your mind is only with that activity. At that moment, you are mindful, and the Buddha showed how to integrate that awareness into our everyday lives.
Right Concentration:
Once the mind is uncluttered, it may then be concentrated to achieve whatever is desired. Right Concentration is turning the mind to focus on an object, such as a flower, or a lit candle, or a concept such as loving compassion. This forms the next part of the meditation process.
Right concentration implies that we select worthy directions for the concentration of the mind, although everything in nature, beautiful and ugly, may be useful for concentration. At deeper levels, no object or concept may be necessary for further development.
The benefits of Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration are significant as they teach the mind to see things, not as we are conditioned to seeing them, but as they really are. At the same time, they also lead to a feeling of calm and peace with the world. By being in the moment and being able to concentrate effectively, a sense of joy is the moment is felt. Release from the control of past pains and future mind games takes us closer to freedom from suffering.
The Three Characteristics of Existence
We have previously discussed suffering and its pivotal position in the teaching of Buddhism.
The Buddha in fact defined three main characteristics of existence, which include suffering, impermanence and the concept of no unique self.
Suffering, as defined before, comes from life, as sickness, loneliness, old age, or just a general feeling of life not being what it should. Part of the problem is, that we wish life to be permanent when all existence is impermanent, everything is subject to continuous change. Birth and death are part of that process of change.
All life, yours, mine, your family and friends, is like a flowing river. While it may appear the same when you look at a river, each moment is different and every view of the river is different. Nothing in nature is what it was the moment before. Every living thing is in a continuous state of flux.
In our lives, our bodies grow when we are young, and change as we age. Relationships come and go, often because personalities, interests and attitudes change.
As we live, we take on both positive and negative habits and we cling to ideas which we associate with "our permanent selves". But our permanent self is a myth, and once we learn that, we can look beyond the need to have life stay the same.
The most challenging concept for those brought up in a Christian community is the concept of "no self". I haven’t used the term "soul" as Buddhism puts a different emphasis on this.
While the Buddha saw life continuing after death, he described it more as the lighting of one candle by another, the flame originates at the first flame, but the second is a consequence of the first, and not a unique reproduction of it.
Essentially, however, he saw us as a collection of body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
While he saw no separate self or ego, he did emphasize the interdependence of all life as well as dependence on what had gone before.
The concept of no eternal self was also radical in the era in which the Buddha lived. Hinduism, the main religion of India at that time, generally accepted the idea of the eternal self. The body is destroyed but the self lives on. And that was an unchanging identity which was locked in by fate to a particular way of life and determined which caste system you belonged to.
The Buddha rejected this Hindu concept and taught instead the interconnectedness of life. Each self has no fixed reality, but is a constantly changing self and dependant on changing conditions.
So each person has a physical body which is dependant on food and warmth, and develops in response to those inputs and to the ageing process. Our feelings change with our mood and our time in life, and as a direct result of perceptions which comes from what we see and hear around us. We make decisions based on our feelings and perceptions and these constitute our mental formations.
From these four, body, feelings, perceptions, and mental formations comes consciousness which is dependant on the other four. And the sum of these is what we refer to as self, so therefore, according to the Buddha, there is no fixed definable self. You are still there, with a personality and feelings, and with tremendous possibility for change, and not locked in to some rigid fate, because your nature is built on change.
In fact, the Buddha took a middle way on the definition of self. He saw the self as dependant on everything that had gone before, and constantly changing in response to an interconnecting and changing reality. While we are not permanent and fixed entities, we are certainly part on the on-going reality.
Once this is understood, once interconnectedness becomes part of the way of seeing the world, then suffering arises from the personal concept of an independent self.
The Three Jewels and Five Precepts
Three Jewels:
Despite the differences in the varieties of Buddhism, there are always the same three cornerstones which are called the Three Jewels. These are the Buddha, the Dharma which is the teaching of the Buddha, and the Sangha, which is the community who follow the teaching.
When a person accepts the Buddhist philosophy and wants to make it part of their life, the traditional way is to say "I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha."
The Dharma, the teaching of the Buddha is based on the Four Noble Truths and this is symbolised by the wheel. Originally, the Sangha was the monastic community and this was later to include all those following the Buddhist path.
The first jewel is the Buddha. To take refuge in the Buddha is not to hide in the safety of a powerful being. Refuge in this situation is more like moving to a new perspective, to a new awareness of the possibility within us all. By taking refuge in the Buddha, we align ourselves with the ability to become a Buddha ourselves, to seek the capacity to be awakened to what the Buddha experienced. This precious jewel reminds us to find our own Buddha nature.
The Dharma is the path which follows the teaching of the Buddha, and which will ultimately lead to awakening. The Dharma teaches us compassion for ourselves and others through an understanding of The Four Noble Truths and leads to a release from fear and ignorance. The path involves embracing the teaching of the Buddha and applying that understanding to everyday life. The Dharma is called the second jewel.
The Sangha comprises those who come together in any size group to study, discuss, practice meditation with a desire to help and be helped by that group. The Buddha saw that the interaction with others who are on the path as being essential for practice. He saw this as being important for ordained monks as well as those of the general community. The Sangha is the third precious jewel.
In the original teaching and in current Theravada communities, the Sangha refers only to the monks, nuns and other ordained teachers. The concept of Sangha is more broadly interpreted in many Mahayana and Western groups to include all those who embrace the Dharma as a community.
Five Precepts
Just as the Three Jewels forms the simple framework for the transmission of the Buddhist philosophy, the Five Precepts are the basic ethical guidelines for the followers of the philosophy.
The Five Precepts are not an absolute rigid set of rules, but provide a practical basis for good, ethical living which will produce the right environment in which to seek out our own truths.
The first precept is that of not intentionally killing living beings. We step on ants every day, and this isn’t really with any lack of care, and I doubt if its possible to avoid occasionally beating the odd cockroach to oblivion, however, the premeditated killing of other human and senseless killing of animals for sport certainly is not desirable for Buddhists. The primary goal of this precept is to develop concern for the safety and welfare of others and to have compassion for all living things.
The second precept is to take only what has been given. This is broader than not stealing, as it means returning borrowed items, and not taking unfair advantage even when it is still within the laws of the country. This means that you develop a sense of fair play, and generosity towards others.
The third precept often talks about sexual misconduct, but may also be interpreted as not misusing the senses. As the strongest drive after the survival instinct, the sexual drive will dominate our lives and cause much suffering unless directed wisely and skilfully. Living to excess, and in particular excessive eating, also causes grief. This precept encourages us to be content with more simple lives.
In the fourth precept we are encouraged not to speak falsely, not to lie, slander, misrepresent or to gossip maliciously. This teaches us to speak truthfully and kindly and to have positive motives when we approach a discussion.
The fifth precept is most important for today’s affluent Western society, and that is to avoid intoxicants. This includes alcohol, unnecessary drugs, and stimulants such as tobacco and caffeine. This precept is important to develop rational thinking and will allow the development of inner clarity needed for mindfulness.
As always, the Buddha was compassionate and pragmatic, and recommended these rather than dogmatically insisting that these five precepts were essential. But there is considerable good sense in each precept and by living with them every day, the way is then clear to be able to focus on the personal search for enlightened understanding.
Karma and Intention
An early Buddhist teaching says: "What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind".
Karma means intended action, and is a dynamic concept. It is not fate or predestination, but a consequence of what has gone before. In other words, you are now in circumstances because of your thoughts and decisions, and this is an on-going process. That is, new actions create new Karma.
Intention is a major part of Karma. If you come home and accidentally trip over the dog and hurt the animal, this is not intended and has no effect. However, after a hectic day, you come home and kick the poor dog, then negative Karma is generated. All the combined intended actions add up to what you are now.
The Buddha saw this as an explanation of the different circumstances that all living beings find themselves in.
Karma is closely linked with dependant origination, where it is the consequence of the law of cause and effect. In the Bible, it says that we reap what we sow, and karma has the same impact.
Obviously, we also are subject to non-karmic forces such as the ageing of our bodies. And there are circumstances, which are natural and also affect our lives. But in addition to that, the Buddha said that we are subject to this karmic effect where the ethical actions and thoughts we have will have a positive effect on the future and on our spiritual development.
In the book "Glimpse After Glimpse" by Soygal Rinpoche, the Buddha is quoted as saying:
"Do not overlook negative actions merely because they are small; however small a spark may be, it can burn down a haystack as big as a mountain."
And the Buddha also said
"Do not overlook tiny good actions, thinking they are of no benefit; even tiny drops of water in the end will fill a huge vessel."
In the West, we often associate Karma with fate and it has this idea of a future which is predetermined. In Buddhism, Karma is the reaping of past actions, but also offers the possibility of determining our own future with our actions and thoughts today. This means that no future event is locked in, and what happens today and tomorrow will create the personal and global world of the future.
Rebirth
In the process of becoming enlightened, the Buddha is said to have recognised all his previous lives. At the same time, he also said that nothing from one life goes on to the next. Quite a paradox really!
Buddhists understand life as samsara, meaning perpetual wandering, and describe the transition like a billiard ball hitting another billiard ball. While nothing physical transfers, the speed and direction of the second ball relate directly to the first. So the term most often used is rebirth, rather than reincarnation. Reincarnation implies the transfer of an essence, or a soul, while rebirth follows the law of causality, or dependant origination, where this arises because of circumstances which happened before.
A primary aim of Buddhism is to break free of the wheel of samsara, and to reach a new level called Nirvana.
Nirvana
Nirvana is the most misunderstood term in Buddhism.
Those in the West recognise the term as meaning Heaven, or a Heaven on Earth, or perhaps a famous rock band.
The Buddha described Nirvana as the ultimate goal, and he reached that state during his enlightenment. At this point, he chose to teach others so that they might also experience this realisation, and so when he died, forty-five years later, he then passed through pari nirvana, meaning completed nirvana.
Nirvana literally means extinguishing or unbinding. The implication is that it is freedom from what ever binds you, from the burning passion of desire, jealousy, and ignorance. Once these are totally overcome, a state of bliss is achieved, and there is no longer the need the cycle of birth and death. All karmic debts are settled.
The Buddha refused to be drawn on what occurred then, but implied that it was beyond word and without boundaries. Certainly, he saw it in a much different state than our current existence, and not a simple parallel to the process of individual rebirth.
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Difference between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism
# TOPIC THERAVADA BUDDHISM MAHAYANA BUDDHISM
1 The Buddha Only the historical Gautama (Sakyamuni) Buddha and past buddhas are accepted. Besides Sakyamuni Buddha, other contemporary buddhas like Amitabha and Medicine Buddha are also very popular.
2 Bodhisattvas Only Maitreya bodhisattva is accepted. Avalokitesvara, Mansjuri, Ksitigarbha and Samanthabadra are four very well known bodhisattvas besides Maitreya.
3 Objective of training Arahant or pacceka-buddha. Buddhahood (via bodhisattva path).
4 Organisation of Buddhist scriptures
The Pali Canon is divided into 3 baskets (Tipitaka): Vinaya Pitaka of 5 books, Sutta Pitaka of 5 collections (many suttas) and Abhidhamma Pitaka of 7 books.
The Mahayana Buddhist Canon also consists of Tripitaka of disciplines, discourses (sutras) and dharma analysis. It is usually organised in 12 divisions of topics like Cause and Conditions and Verses. It contains virtually all the Theravada Tipikata and many sutras that the latter does not have.
5 Concept of Bodhicitta Main emphasis is self liberation.
There is total reliance on one-self to eradicate all defilements. Besides self liberation, it is important for Mahayana followers to help other sentient beings.
6 Trikaya concept Very limited emphasis on the 3 bodies of a buddha. References are mainly on nirmana-kaya and dharma-kaya. Very well mentioned in Mahayana buddhism. Samboga-kaya or reward/enjoyment body completes the Trikaya concept.
7 Transmission route Southern transmission: Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia and parts of Southeast Asia. Northern transmission: Tibet, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and parts of Southeast Asia.
8 Language of dharma teaching Tipitaka is strictly in Pali. Dharma teaching in Pali supplemented by local language. Buddhist canon is translated into the local language (except for the 5 untranslatables), e.g. Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese. Original language of transmission is Sanskrit.
9 Nirvana
(Nibbana in Pali) No distinction is made between nirvana attained by a buddha and that of an arahat or pacceka buddha. Also known as 'liberation from Samsara,' there are subtle distinctions in the level of attainment for the three situations.
10 Sakyamuni Buddha's disciples Basically historical disciples, whether arahats or commoners. A lot of bodhisattvas are introduced by Sakyamuni Buddha. Most of these are not historical figures.
11 Rituals and liturgy There are some rituals but not heavily emphasized as in Mahayana schools. Owing to local cultural influences, there is much more emphais on the use of rituals; e.g. Rituals for the deceased, feeding of Petas, tantric formalities (in Vajrayana).
12 Use of Mantras and Mudras Some equivalent in the use of Parittas. Heavily practised in the Vajrayana school of Mahayana Buddhism. Other schools also have included some mantras in their daily lithurgy.
13 Dying and death aspects Very little research and knowledge on the process of dying and death. Usually, the dying persons are advised to meditate on impermanence, suffering and emptiness. The Vajrayana school is particularly meticulous in these areas. There are many inner and external signs manifested by people before they die. There is heavy stress in doing transference of merit practices in the immediate few weeks following death to assist in the deceased's next rebirth.
14 Bardo This in-between stage after death and before rebirth is ignored in Theravada school. All Mahayana schools teach this after death aspect.
15 One meal a day practice This the norm among Theravada sanghas. This is a highly respected practice but it is left to the disposition of each individual in the various sanghas.
16 Vegetarianism This aspect is not necessary. In places like Thailand where daily morning rounds are still practised, it is very difficult to insist on the type of food to be donated Very well observed in all Mahayana schools (except the Tibetans due to the geographical circumstances). However, this aspect is not compulsory.
17 Focus of worship in the temple Simple layout with the image of Sakyamuni Buddha the focus of worship. Can be quite elaborate; with a chamber/hall for Sakyamuni Buddha and two disciples, one hall for the 3 Buddhas (including Amitabha and Medicine Buddha) and one hall for the 3 key bodhisattvas; besides the protectors, etc.
18 Schools/Sects of the tradition One surviving major school following years of attrition reducing the number from as high as 18. 8 major (Chinese) schools based on the partial doctrines (sutras, sastras or vinaya) of the teachings. The four schools inclined towards practices like Pure Land/Amitabha, Ch'an, Vajrayana and Vinaya (not for lay people) are more popular than the philosophy based schools like Tien Tai, Avamtasaka, Yogacara and Madhyamika.
19 Non Buddhist influences Mainly pre-Buddhism Indian/Brahmin influences. Many terms like karma, sangha, etc were prevailing terms during Sakyamuni Buddha's life time. References were made from the Vedas and Upanishads. In the course of integration and adoption by the people in other civilizations, there were heavy mutual influences. In China, both Confucianism and Taoism exerted some influence on Buddhism which in turn had an impact on the indigenous beliefs. This scenario was repeated in Japan and Tibet.
20 Buddha nature
Absent from the teachings of Theravada tradition.
Heavily stressed, particularly by schools inclined practices.
Philosophy Of Jainism
Jainism emphatically asserts that every soul is capable of attaining perfection if it willfully exerts in that direction. But the real situation is that from time eternal the soul is bound with matter and it is the aim of every person to get the soul rid of matter so that soul can assume its true state. This spiritual emancipation requires the knowledge of the beatific condition and of the causes which stand in the way of its attainment. To find out these causes it is necessary to understand what are the existing elements or substances of nature and mode of their interaction. Jainism believes that the whole universe can be divided into two categories, viz., Jiva, i.e., soul and Ajiva, i. e. non-soul. These two - Jiva and Ajiva - exhaust between them all that exists in the universe and Jaina philosophy is based on the nature and interaction of these two elements. It can be said, in short, that the living and the non-living, by coming into contact with each other, forge certain energies which bring about birth, death and various experiences of life; this process could be stopped, and the energies already forged destroyed, by a course of discipline leading to salvation.
A close analysis of this brief statement shows that it involves following seven propositions.
1. Firstly, that there is something called the living.
2. Secondly, that there is something called the nonliving.
3. Thirdly, that the two (i. e. the living and nonliving) come into contact with each other.
4. Fourthly, that the contact leads to the production of some energies.
5. Fifthly, that the process of this contact could be stopped.
6. Sixthly, that the existing energies could also be exhausted; and
7. Lastly, that salvation could be achieved.
These seven propositions are called the seven tattvas or realities in Jainism.
These seven tattvas are termed as follows:
1. Jiva (i. e. Living substance)
2. Ajiva (i. e. matter or non-living substance)
3. Asrava (i. e., the influx of Karmic matter in the soul
4. Bandha (i. e., bondage of soul by Karmic matter)
5. Samvara (i. e., the stopping of Asrava)
6. Nirjara (i. e., the gradual removal of Karmic matter).
7. Moksha (i. e., the attainment of perfect freedom or salvation).
It is clear that the first two of the tattvas deal with the nature and enumeration of the external substances of nature and the remaining five tattvas deal with the interaction between these two substances, viz., Jiva, i. e., spirit and Ajiva, i. e., matter.
Further, much importance has been given to these seven tattvas as every would be aspirant for Moksha has to understand the nature of these tattvas. Again, out of these seven tattvas the substances are really two viz., soul and non-soul, and among these two, the non-soul is all that is not soul, i. e., devoid of sentiency. Therefore, among these two substances, the really sentient object is the Jiva, i.e., the soul. Naturally, the living substance, viz. Jiva, assumes highest importance in the context of Ahimsa.
Jiva:
As regards the characteristics of Jiva, i.e., the soul, it is stated that there is an infinite number of souls; in fact, the whole world is literally filled with them. The souls are substances and as such they are eternal. Again, their characteristic mark is intelligence, which can never be destroyed. Further, the soul is ever all perfect, all powerful; but by ignorance it identifies itself with the matter and hence its degradation and troubles start.
Furthermore, souls are of two kinds, viz.,
1. Samsari, i. e., mundane souls and
2. Siddha or Mukta, i. e. liberated souls.
Out of these, the samsari jivas, i. e. the mundane souls, are the embodied souls of living beings in the world and are still subject to the cycle of Births and Deaths and the Siddha or Mukta Jivas are the liberated souls and as such
1. they will not be embodied in future,
2. they have accomplished absolute purity,
3. they dwell in the state of perfection at the top of the universe,
4. they have no more to do with worldly affairs,
5. they have reached Mukti or Nirvana or Nivrtti, i. e. liberation, and in their condition they have four enjoyments, viz., Ananta-darsana, i.e.,. unlimited perception, Ananta-jnana, i. e., perfect knowledge, Ananta-Virya, i.e., infinite power, and Ananta- sukha, i.e., unbounded happiness.
In addition, from the Metaphysical point of view the difference between the Samsari-Jiva, i.e., the mundane soul, and the Mukta Jiva i.e. the liberated soul, consists in the fact that the former is permeated with subtle matter known as Karma, while the latter is absolutely pure and free from any material alloy.
Moreover, the mundane or embodied souls, i.e. the Samsari Jivas, are further classified in different ways and this classification is a subject not only of theoretical but also of great practical interest to the Jainas. As their highest duty is not to injure any living beings, it becomes incumbent on them to know the various forms which life may assume.
1. Samanska and Amanaska Jivas
2. The mundane souls are divided into two groups, viz., `Sthavara Jivas', i. e. those who have a mind (i.e., the faculty of distinguishing right or wrong) and `Amanaska Jivas' i.e., those who have no mind.
3. Sthavara and Trasa Jivas
The mundane souls are also divided into two groups from another point of view, viz. `Sthavara Jivas' are the immobile or one-sensed souls, that is, having only one sense, i.e. the sense of touch; and `Trasa Jivas' are the mobiles, many- sensed souls, that is, having a body with more than one sense. Again, the mobile souls are those which being in fear have the capacity of moving away from the object of fear, and immobile souls do not have this capacity.
The Sthavara, i.e., the immobile or one-sensed souls are further divided into following five kinds :
1. Prthvikaya, i.e., earth-bodied souls,
2. Apkaya, i.e., water-bodied souls,
3. Tejahkaya, i.e., fire-bodied souls,
4. Vayukaya, i.e., air-bodied souls; and
5. Vanaspatikaya, i.e., vegetable-bodied souls.
The Trasa, i.e., the mobile or many-sensed souls are also further divided into four classes according to the possession of two or more of the five senses of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing :
1. Dvi-indriya Jivas, i.e., those which have the first two senses of touch and taste, for example, worms, etc.,
2. Tri-indriya Jivas, i.e., those which have the first three senses of touch, taste and smell, for example, ants, etc.
3. Chatur-indriya Jivas, i.e., those which have first four senses of touch, taste, smell & sight, e. g. humble-bee
4. Pancha-indriya Jivas, i.e., those which have five senses of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing, for example, man, etc.
Thus, in this classification each class has one sense more than the preceding it.
Ajiva:
Jaina philosophy starts with a perfect division of the universe into living and non-living substances, Jiva and Ajiva. The non-soul substances are of five kinds, viz.,
1. Pudgala, i.e., matter,
2. Dharma, i.e., medium of motion,
3. Adharma, i.e., medium of rest,
4. Akasa, i.e., space, and
5. Kala i.e., time
These six living and non-living substances are called Dravyas in Jaina Philosophy.
A Dravya has got three characteristics. First, Dravya has the quality of existence. Secondly, it has the quality of permanence through origination and destruction. Thirdly, it is the substratum of attributes and modes.
The Dravya is thus un-created and indestructible, its essential qualities remain the same and it is only its Paryaya or mode or condition, that can and does change.
Asrava :
The third principle Asrava signifies the influx of Karmic matter into the constitution of the soul. Combination of Karmic matter with Jiva is due to Yoga. Yoga is the activity of mind, speech and body. Thus Yoga is the channel of Asrava. The physical matter which is actually drawn to the soul cannot be perceived by the senses as it is very fine.
Bandha :
When the Karmic matter enters the soul, both get imperceptibly mixed with each other. Bandha or bondage is the assimilation of matter which is fit to form Karmas by the soul as it is associated with passions. The union of spirit and matter does not imply a complete annihilation of their natural properties, but only a suspension of their function, in varying degree, according to the quality and quantity of the material absorbed.
Thus, the effect of the fusion of the spirit and matter is manifested in the form of a compound personality which partakes of the nature of both, without actually destroying either.
Samvara :
Effective states of desire and aversion, and activity of thought, speech or body are the conditions that attract Karmas, good and bad, towards the soul. When those conditions are removed, there will be no Karmas approaching the Jiva, that is complete Samvara -- a sort of protective wall shutting out all the Karmas is established round the self.
Thus Samvara is the stoppage of inflow of Karmic matter into the soul. There are several ways through which the stoppage could be effected.
Nirjara :
Nirjara means the falling away of Karmic matter from the soul. The soul will be rendered free by the automatic falling out of the Karmas when they become ripe. But this is a lengthy process. The falling away may be deliberately brought through the practice of austerities.
Thus, Nirjara is of two kinds. The natural maturing of a Karma and its separation from the soul is called Savipaka Nirjara and inducing a Karma to leave the soul, before it gets ripened by means of ascetic practices is called Avipaka Nirjara.
Moksha :
Moksha or liberation is the freedom from all Karmic matter, owing to the non-existence of the cause of bondage and the shedding of all the Karmas. Thus complete freedom of the soul from Karmic matter is called Moksha.
Moksha is attained when the soul and matter are separated from each other. The separation is effected when all the Karmas have left the soul, and no more Karmic matter can be attracted towards it.
www.jainworld.com
The Jaina Path Of Ahimsa
DR. VILAS SANGAVE
Philosophy Of Sikhism
Philosophy of Sikhism is characterized by logic, comprehensiveness and its "without frills" approach to spiritual and material world. Its theology is marked by simplicity. In Sikh ethics there is no conflict between individual’s duty to the self and that towards society (sangat).
Sikhism is the youngest world religion. Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak some 500 years ago. It emphasizes the belief in One Supreme Being and the Creator (Waheguru) of the universe. It offers a simple straight path to eternal bliss and spreads a message of love and universal brotherhood. Sikhism is strictly a monotheistic faith and recognizes God as the only One who is not subject to limits of time or space.
Sikhism believes that there is only one God, who is the Creator, Sustainer, Destroyer and does not take human form. The theory of Avtarvad (incarnation) has no place in Sikhism. It does not attach any value to gods and goddesses and other deities.
In Sikhism the ethics and religion go together. One must inculcate moral qualities and practice virtues in everyday life in order to step towards spiritual development. Qualities such as honesty, compassion, generosity, patience and humility can only be built up by efforts and perseverance. The lives of our Great Gurus are a source of inspiration in this direction.
The Sikh religion teaches that the goal of human life is to break the cycle of birth and death and merge with God. This can be accomplished by following the teachings of the Guru, meditation on the Holy Name (Nam) and performance of acts of service and charity.
Nam Marg emphasizes daily devotion to the remembrance of God.
One has to control the five feelings, viz., Kam (lust), Krodh (anger), Lobh (greed), Moh (worldly attachment) and Ahankar (pride) to achieve salvation.
The rituals and routine practices like fasting and pilgrimage, omens and austerities are rejected in Sikh religion. The goal of human life is to merge with God and this is accomplished by following the teachings of Guru Granth Sahib.
Sikhism emphasizes Bhagti Marg or the path of devotion. It does, however, recognize the importance of Gian Marg (Path of Knowledge) and Karam Marg (Path of Action). It lays greatest stress on the need for earning God's Grace in order to reach the spiritual goal.
Sikhism is a modern, logical, and practical religion. It believes that normal family-life (Grahasth) is no barrier to salvation. Celibacy or renunciation of the world is not necessary to achieve salvation.
It is possible to live detached in the midst of worldly ills and temptations. A devotee must live in the world and yet keep his head above the usual tension and turmoil. He must be a scholarly soldier, and saint for God.
Sikhism is a cosmopolitan and a "secular religion" and thus rejects all distinctions based on caste, creed, race or sex.
It believes all human beings are equal in the eyes of God.
The Gurus stressed on equality of women and rejected female infanticide and Sati (widow burning) practice. They also actively propagated widow remarriage and rejected purdah system (women wearing veils).
In order to keep mind focussed on Him one must meditate on the holy Name (Nam) and perform the acts of service and charity.
It is considered honorable to earn one's daily bread through honest labour and work (Kirat Karna) and not by begging or dishonest means.
Vand Chhakna, sharing with others, is also a social responsibility. The individual is expected to help those in need, through the Daswandh (10% of his earnings).
Seva, community service is also an integral part of Sikhism. The free community kitchen (langar) found at every gurdwara and open to people of all religions is one expression of this community service.
Sikh religion advocates optimism and hope. It does not accept the ideology of pessimism.
The Gurus believed that this life has a purpose and a goal. It offers an opportunity for self and God realization. Moreover, man is responsible for his own actions. He cannot claim immunity from the results of his actions. He must, therefore, be very vigilant in what he does.
The Sikh Scripture, Guru Granth Sahib, is the Eternal Guru. This is the only religion which has given the Holy Book the status of a religious preceptor. There is no place for a living human Guru (Dehdhari) in Sikh religion.
INDIAN LIFE
THE INDIA OF MY DREAMS - (Gandhiji wrote about the clear vision he had about the India of the future. It is worth pondering how far the present reality is essentially different from that.)
Everything in India attracts me. It has everything that a human being with the highest possible aspirations can want.
India is essentially karmabhumi (land of duty) in contradistinction to bhogabhumi (land of enjoyment).
I feel that India’s mission is different from that of others. India is fitted for the religious supremacy of the world. There is no parallel in the world for the process of purification that this country has voluntarily undergone. India is less in need of steel weapons, it has fought with divine weapons, it can still do so. Other nations have been votaries of brute force…….. India can win all by soul force. History supplies numerous instances to prove that brute force is as nothing before soul force. Poets have sung about it and seers have described their experiences.
I shall strive for a constitution, which will release India from all thralldom and patronage, and give her, if need be, the right to sin. I shall work for an India, in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country in whose making they have an effective voice; an India in which there shall be no high class and low class of people; an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony. There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability or the curse of the intoxicating drinks and drugs. Women will enjoy the same rights as men. Since we shall be at peace with all the rest of the world, neither exploiting, nor being exploited, we should have the smallest army imaginable. All interests not in conflict with the interests of the dumb millions will be scrupulously respected, whether foreign or indigenous………. This is the India of my dreams ……….. I shall be satisfied with nothing less.
India is one of the few nations on the earth which have retained some of their ancient institutions although they have been overlaid with superstition and error. But she has hitherto shown an inherent capacity for purging herself of error and superstition. My faith in her ability to solve the economic problems that face her millions has never been so bright as it is today.
I would like to see India free and strong so that she may offer herself a willing and pure sacrifice for the betterment of the world. India’s freedom must revolutionize the world’s outlook upon peace and war. Her impotence affects the whole of mankind.
An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope for humanity. An India awakened and free has a message of peace and goodwill to a groaning world.
There is no doubt that if India succeeds in regaining her liberty through non-violent means, she would have delivered her message to the others who are fighting for it, and what is perhaps more, she would have made the largest contribution yet known to the world peace.
I do believe that if India has patience enough to go through the fire of suffering and to resist any unlawful encroachment upon her own civilization which, imperfect though it undoubtedly is, has hitherto stood the ravages of time, she can make a lasting contribution to the peace and progress of the world.
I want the freedom of my country so that other countries may learn something from my free country, so that the resources of my country might be utilized for the benefit of mankind. Just as the cult of patriotism teaches us today that the individual has to die for the family, the family has to die for the village, the village for the district, the district for the province, the province for the country, even so a country has to be free in order that it may die, if necessary, for the benefit of the world. My love, therefore, of nationalism or my idea of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if need be the whole of the country may die, so that the human race may live. There is no room for race hatred there. Let that be our nationalism.
I want India to recognize that she has a soul that cannot perish and that can rise triumphant above every physical weakness and defy the physical combination of a whole world.
If India takes up the doctrine of the sword, she may gain momentary victory. Then India will cease to be the pride of my heart. I am wedded to India because I owe my all to her. I believe absolutely that she has a mission for all the world. She is not to copy Europe blindly. India’s acceptance of the sword will be the hour of my trial. I hope I shall not be found wanting. My religion has no geographical limits. If I have a living faith in it, it will transcend my love for India herself. My life is dedicated to service of India through the religion of non-violence.
I want India’s rise so that the whole world may benefit. I do not want India to rise on the ruin of other nations. If, therefore, India was strong and able, India would send out to the world her treasures of art and health-giving spices, but will refuse to send out opium or intoxicating liquors, although the traffic may bring much material benefit to India.
India’s destiny lies not along the bloody way of the West, of which it shows sings of tiredness, but along the bloodless way of peace that comes from a simple and godly life. India is in danger of losing her soul. She cannot lose it and live. She must not, therefore, lazily and helplessly say : ‘I cannot escape the onrush from the West.’ She must be strong enough to resist it for her own sake and that of the world.
When India become self-supporting, self-reliant, and proof against temptations and exploitation, she will cease to be the object of greedy attraction for any power in the West or the East and will then feel secure without having to carry the burden of expensive armaments. Her internal economy will be the strongest bulwark against aggression.
My ambition is much higher than independence. Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation.
I venture to suggest, in all humility, that if India reaches her destiny through truth and non-violence, she will have made no small contribution to the world peace for which all the nations of the earth are thirsting and she would also have, in that case, made some slight return for the help that those nations have been freely giving to her.
India, when she begins to exploit other nations - as she must do if she becomes industrialized - will be a curse for other nations, a menace to the world.
If India makes violence her creed, and I have survived, I would not care to live in India. She will cease to evoke any pride in me. My patriotism is subservient to my religion. I cling to India like a child to its mother’s breast, because I feel that she gives me the spiritual nourishment I need. She has the environment that responds to my highest aspirations. When that faith is gone, I shall feel like an orphan without hope of ever finding a guardian.
This I know that if India comes to her own demonstrably through non-violent means, India will never want to carry a vast army, an equally grand navy and a grander air force. If her self-consciousness rises to the height necessary to give her a non-violent victory in her fight for freedom, the world values will have changed and most of the paraphernalia of war would be found to be useless. Such an India may be a mere dream, a childish folly. But such in my opinion is undoubtedly the implication of India’s becoming free through non-violence. When that freedom comes…. it will have come through a gentlemanly understanding with Great Britain. But then it will not be an imperialistic haughty Britain manoeuvring for world supremacy, but a Britain humbly trying to serve the common end of humanity.
India will no longer then be helplessly driven into Britain’s wars of exploitation, but hers will be the voice of a powerful nation seeking to keep under restraint all the violent forces of the world.
What policy the National Government will adopt I cannot say. I may not even survive it much as I would love to. If I do, I would advise the adoption of non-violence to the utmost extent possible and that will be India’s great contribution to the peace of the world and the establishment of a new world order. I expect that with the existence of so many martial races in India, all of whom will have a voice in the government of the day, the national policy will incline towards militarism of a modified character. I shall certainly hope that all the efforts…………to show the efficacy of non-violence as a political force will not have gone in vain and a strong party representing true non-violence will exist in the country.
Poorna Swaraj
The word Swaraj is a sacred word, a Vedic word, meaning self-rule and self-restraint, and not freedom from all restraint which “independence” often means.
By Swaraj I mean the government of India by the consent of the people as ascertained by the largest number of the adult population, male or female, native-born or domiciled, who have contributed by manual labour to the service of the State and who have taken the trouble of having registered their names as voters……………. Real Swaraj will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by the acquisition of the capacity by all to resist authority when it is abused. In other words, Swaraj is to be obtained by educating the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority.
Self-government depends entirely upon our internal strength, upon our ability to fight against the heaviest odds. Indeed, self-government which does not require that continuous striving to attain it and to sustain it is not worth the name. I have, therefore, endeavoured to show both in word and deed, that political self-government, that is self-government for a large number of men and women, is no better than individual self-government, and, therefore, it is to be attained by precisely the same means that are required for individual self-government or self-rule.
Swaraj for me means freedom for the meanest of our countrymen. I am not interested in freeing India merely from the English yoke. I am bent on freeing India from any yoke whatsoever. I have no desire to exchange “king log for king stork”.
Swaraj by non-violent means can never mean an interval of chaos and anarchy. Swaraj by non-violence must be a progressively peaceful revolution such that the transference of power from a close corporation to the people’s representatives will be as natural as the dropping of a fully ripe fruit from a well-nurtured tree. I know that nothing less is the implication of non-violence.
Our capacity for Swaraj depends upon our capacity for solving without reference to or intervention of Government, all the varied and complex problems that must arise in the affairs of one of the biggest and the most ancient nations like ours.
My Swaraj is to keep intact the genius of our civilization. I want to write many new things but they must all be written on the Indian slate. I would gladly borrow from the West when I can return the amount with decent interest.
Driving out the English will not by itself establish Swaraj in India. Of course we must fight when our liberty is interfered with. But what next? Do we want the Swaraj of barbarism, freedom to live like pigs in a pigsty without let or hindrance by anybody? Or do we want the Swaraj of orderliness in which every man and everything is in his or its proper place?...... We shall be unfit for Swaraj if we are unconcerned about our neighbour’s insanitation and are content merely to keep our own surroundings clean.
An Act of Parliament might give us constitutional Swaraj. But it will be a mere chimera that will profit us but little, if we are unable to solve these internal problems (village reconstruction, temperance, Hindu-Muslim unity, removal of untouchability). In fact, ability to solve these problems is the alpha and omega of real Swaraj, the Swaraj of the masses that we all want.
Even an Independence constitution is not an end in itself. Independence is wanted in order to remove the grievous defects of the present rule…. Mere withdrawal of the English is not independence. It means the consciousness in the average villager that he is the maker of his own destiny, he is his own legislator through his chosen representatives.
The true meaning of Swaraj is that every member of the commonwealth is capable of defending his liberty against the whole world.
If Swaraj was not meant to civilize us, and to purify and stabilize our civilization, it would be nothing worth. The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.
The Swaraj of my….our….dream recognizes no race or religious distinctions. Nor is it to be the monopoly of the lettered persons nor yet of monied men. Swaraj is to be for all, including the former, but emphatically including the maimed, the blind, the starving toiling millions.
It has been said that Indian Swaraj will be the rule of the majority community, i.e. the Hindus. There could not be a greater mistake than that. If it were to be true, I for one would refuse to call it Swaraj and would fight it with all the strength at my command, for to me Hind Swaraj is the rule of all people, is the rule of justice. Whether under that rule the ministers were Hindus or Musalmans or Sikhs and whether legislatures were exclusively filled by the Hindus or Musalmans or any other community, they would have to do even-handed justice.
Poorna Swaraj…. ‘Poorna’, complete, because it is as much for the prince as for the peasant, as much for the rich landowner as for the landless tiller of the soil, as much for the Hindus as for the Musalmans, as much for Parsis and Christians as for the Jains, Jews and Sikhs, irrespective of any distinction of caste or creed or status in life.
The very connotation of the word and the means of its attainment to which we are pledged - truth and non-violence - precludes all possibility of that Swaraj being more for some one than for the other, being partial to some and prejudicial to others.
The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man’s Swaraj. The necessaries of life should be enjoyed by you in common with those enjoyed by the princes and the monied men. But that does not mean that they should have only for the service of society, never for themselves. Swaraj of a people means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals. And such Swaraj comes only from performance by individuals of their duty as citizens. In it no one thinks of his rights. They come, when they are needed, for better performance of duty.
Under Swaraj based on non-violence nobody is anybody’s enemy, everybody contributes his or her due quota to the common goal, all can read and write, and their knowledge keeps growing from day to day. Sickness and disease are reduced to the minimum. None is a pauper and labour can always find employment. There is no place under such a government for gambling, drinking and immorality or for class hatred. The rich will use their riches wisely and usefully, and not squander them in increasing their pomp and worldly pleasures. It should not happen that a handful of rich people should live in jeweled palaces and the millions in miserable hovels devoid of sunlight or ventilation. In non-violent Swaraj there can be no encroachment upon just rights; contrariwise no one can possess unjust rights. In a well organized State, usurpation should be an impossibility and it should be unnecessary to resort to force for dispossessing an usurper.
Daridranarayan
Daridranarayan is one of the millions of names by which humanity knows God who is unnameable and unfathomable by human understanding and it means God of the poor, God appearing in the hearts of the poor.
I recognize no God except the God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions. They do not recognize His presence; I do. And I worship the God that is Truth or Truth which is God, through the service of these millions.
I dare not take before them the message of God. I may as well place before the dog over there the message of God as before those hungry millions who have no luster in their eyes and whose only God is their bread. I can take before them a message of God only by taking the message of sacred work before them. It is good enough to talk of God whilst we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to a nicer luncheon, but how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day? To them God can only appear as bread and butter. Well, the peasants of India were getting their bread from their soil. I offered them the spinning wheel in order that they may get butter and if I appear today…. In my loin-cloth it is because I come as the sole representative of those half-starved, half-naked dumb millions.
I am able to restrain myself from committing suicide by starvation because I have faith in India’s awakening and her ability to put herself on the way to freedom from this desolating pauperism. Without faith in such a possibility I should cease to take interest in living.
For the poor the economic is the spiritual. You cannot make any other appeal to those starving millions. It will fall flat on them. But you take food to them and they will regard you as their God. They are incapable of any other thought.
With this very hand I have collected soiled pies from them tied tightly in their rags. Talk to them of modern progress. Insult them by taking the name of God before them in vain. They will call you and me fiends if we talk about God to them. They know, if they know God at all, a God of terror, vengeance, a pitiless tyrant.
I suggest that we are thieves in a way. If I take anything that I do not need for my own immediate use and keep it, I thieve it from somebody else. It is the fundamental law of Nature, without exception, that Nature produces enough for our wants from day to day; and if only everybody took enough for himself and nothing more, there would be no pauperism in this world, there would be no man dying of starvation.
In India we have got many millions of people who have to be satisfied with one meal a day and that meal consisting of a chapatti containing no fat in it and a pinch of salt. You and I have no right to anything that we really have until these millions are clothed and fed. You and I ought to know better, must adjust our wants, and even undergo voluntary privation in order that they may be nursed, fed and clothed.
We are either ignorant or negligent of the divine law by virtue of which man has been given only his daily bread and no more, with the result that there arise inequalities with all the misery attendant upon them. The rich have a superfluous store of things which they do not need and which are, therefore, neglected and wasted; while millions starve and are frozen to death for want of them. If each retained possession only of what he needed no one would be in want and all would live in contentment.
We should be ashamed of resting or having a square meal so long as there is one able-bodied man or woman without work or food.
The golden rule…. Is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot. This ability to refuse will not descend upon us all of a sudden. The first thing is to cultivate the mental attitude that will not have possessions or facilities denied to millions and the next immediate thing is to rearrange our lives as fast as possible in accordance with that mentality.
Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, Nanak, Kabir, Chaitanya, Shankara, Dayanand, Ramakrishna were men who exercised an immense influence over and moulded the character of thousands of men. The world is the richer for their having lived in it. And they were all men who deliberately embraced poverty as their lot.
God of himself seeks for his seat the heart of him who serves his fellow-men. Such was Abu Ben Adhem. He served his fellow-men and therefore his name topped the list of those who served God.
But who are the suffering and the woe-begone? The suppressed and the poverty-stricken. He who would be a bhakta, therefore, must serve these by body, soul and mind. He who does not even condescend to exert his body to the extent of spinning for the sake of the poor and trots out lame excuses does not know the meaning of service. He who spins before the poor inviting them to do likewise serves God as no one else does. “He who gives Me even a trifle as a fruit or a flower or even a leaf in the spirit of bhakti is my servant,” says the Lord in the Bhagawadgita. And He hath His footstool where live “the humble, the lowliest and lost”. Spinning, therefore, for such is the greatest prayer, the greatest worship, the greatest sacrifice.
The easiest and the best way of identifying yourselves somewhat with these starving millions is to spread the message of the spinning-wheel in the three-fold manner suggested by me. You can spread it by becoming expert spinners, by wearing khadi, and by pecuniary contributions.
It is not enough that stray lawyers and doctors spin and weave or stray barbers and tailors do national service, but thousands of professional men, artisans and agriculturists should, whilst following their callings render national service by qualifying themselves, the literary professions by realizing the dignity of labour and the labouring professions realizing the dignity of labour and the labouring professions realizing the dignity of literature, and all doing everything to uplift the nation and refraining from doing anything that would degrade it.
Constructive Programme
The constructive programme is a big undertaking including a number of items : (1) Hindu-Muslim or communal unity; (2) Removal of untouchability; (3) Prohibition; (4) Khadi; (5) Other village industries; (6) Village sanitation; (7) New or Basic Education; (8) Adult education; (9) Uplift of women; (10) Education in hygiene and health; (11) Propagation of Rashtrabhasha; (12) Cultivating love of one’s own language; (13) Working for economic equality. The list can be supplemented if necessary, but it is so comprehensive that I think it can be proved to include items appearing to have been omitted. The reader will see that it is the want of all these things that is responsible for our bondage.
Let us glance at the various items. Without Hindu-Muslim, i.e. communal, unity we shall always remain crippled. And how can a crippled India win Swaraj? Communal unity means unity between Hindus, Sikhs, Musalmans, Christians, Parsis, Jews. All these go to make Hindustan. He who neglects any of these communities does not know constructive work.
As long as the curse of untouchability pollutes the mind of the Hindu, so long is he himself an untouchable in the eyes of the world, and an untouchable cannot win non-violent Swaraj. The removal of untouchability means treating the so-called untouchables as one’s own kith and kin. He who does treat them so must be free from the sense of high and low, in fact free from all wrong class-sense. He will regard the whole world as one family. Under non-violent Swaraj it will be impossible to conceive of any country as an enemy country.
Poorna Swaraj is impossible of attainment by people who have been or are slaves to intoxicating drinks or drugs. It must never be forgotten that a man in the grip of intoxicants is generally bereft of the moral sense.
Everyone now may be said to believe that without khadi there is no just and immediate solution of the problem of starvation of our millions. I need not therefore dilate upon it. I would only add that in the resuscitation of khadi lies the resuscitation of the ruined village artisans. Khadi requisites (wheels, looms, etc.) have to be made by the village carpenter and blacksmith. For unless these requisites are made in the village it cannot be self-contained and prosperous. The revival of khadi presupposes the revival of all other village industries…. As the solar system will be dark without the sun, even so will the sun be lusterless without the heavenly bodies. All things in the universe are interdependent. The salvation of India is impossible without the salvation of villages.
If rural reconstruction were not to include rural sanitation, our villages would remain the muck-heaps that they are today. Village sanitation is a vital part of village life and is as difficult as it is important. It needs a heroic effort to eradicate age-long insanitation. The village worker who is ignorant of the science of village sanitation, who is not a successful scavenger, cannot fit himself for village service.
It seems to be generally admitted that without the new or Basic Education the education of millions of children in India is well-nigh impossible. The village worker has, therefore, to master it, and become a Basic Education teacher himself.
Adult education will follow in the wake of Basic Education as a matter of course. Where this new education has not taken root, the children themselves become their parents’ teachers. Be that as it may, the village worker has to undertake adult education also.
Woman is described as man’s better half. As long as she has not the same rights in law as man, as long as the birth of a girl does not receive the same welcome as that of a boy, so long we should know that India is suffering from partial paralysis. Suppression of woman is a denial of ahimsa. Every village worker will, therefore, regard every woman as his mother, sister, or daughter as the case may be, and look upon her with respect. Only such a worker will command the confidence of the village people.
It is impossible for an unhealthy people to win Swaraj. Therefore we should no longer be guilty of the neglect of the health of our people. Every village worker must have a knowledge of the general principles of health.
Without a common language no nation can come into being. Instead of worrying himself with the controversy about Hindi-Hindustani and Urdu, the village worker will acquire a knowledge of the Rashtrabhasha, which should be such as can be understood by both Hindus and Muslims.
Our infatuation for English has made us unfaithful to provincial languages. If only as penance for this unfaithfulness the village worker should cultivate in the villagers a love of their own speech. He will have equal regard for all the other languages of India, and will learn the language of the part where he may be working, and thus be able to inspire the villagers there with a regard for their own speech.
The whole of this programme will, however, be a structure on sand if it is not built on the solid foundation of economic equality. Economic equality must never be supposed to mean possession of an equal amount of worldly goods by everyone. It does mean, however, that everyone will have a proper house to live in, sufficient and balanced food to eat, and sufficient khadi with which to cover himself. It also means that the cruel inequality that obtains today will be removed by purely non-violent means.
Back To The Village
I have believed and repeated times without number that India is to be found not in its few cities but in its 7,00,000 villages. But we town-dwellers have believed that India is to be found in its towns and the villages were created to minister to our needs. We have hardly ever paused to inquire if those poor folk get sufficient to eat and clothe themselves with and whether they have roof to shelter themselves from sun and rain.
I have found that the town-dweller has generally exploited the villager, in fact he has lived on the poor villager’s subsistence. Many a British official has written about the conditions of the people of India. No one has, to my knowledge, said that the Indian Villager has enough to keep body and soul together. On the contrary they have admitted that the bulk of the population live on the verge of starvation and ten per cent are semi-starved, and that millions have to rest content with a pinch of dirty salt and chillies and polished rice or parched grain.
You may be sure that if any of us were to be asked to live on that diet, we should not expect to survive it longer than a month or should be afraid of losing our mental faculties. And yet out villagers go through that state from day to day.
Over 75 per cent of the population are agriculturists. But there cannot be much spirit of self-government about us if we take away or allow others to take away from them almost the whole of the result of their labour.
We are guilty of a grievous wrong against the villagers and the only way in which we can expiate is by encouraging them to revive their lost industries and arts by assuring them of a ready market.
We have got to show them that they can grow their vegetables, their greens, without much expense, and keep good health. We have also to show that most of the vitamins are lost when they cook the leaves.
What they need is not a knowledge of the three R’s but a knowledge of their economic life and how they can better it. They are today working as mere automatons, without any responsibility whatsoever to their surroundings and without feeling the joy of work.
We have to teach them how to economize time, health and money. Lionel Curtis described our villages as dung heaps. We have to turn them into model villages. Our village-folk do not get fresh air though they are surrounded by fresh air; they don’t get fresh food though they are surrounded by the freshest foods. I am talking like a missionary in this matter of food, because my mission is to make villages a thing of beauty.
The revival of village industries is but an extension of the khadi effort. Hand-spun cloth, hand-made paper, hand-pounded rice, home-made bread and jam are not uncommon in the West. Only there they do not have one-hundredth of the importance they have in India. With us their revival means life, their extinction means death to the villagers.
If we should have electricity in every village home, I should not mind villages plying their implements and tools, with the help of electricity. But then the village communities or the State would own power-houses just as they have their grazing pastures. But where there is no electricity and no machinery what are idle hands to do?
Villages have suffered long from neglect by those who have had the benefit of education. They have chosen the city life. The village movement is an attempt to establish healthy contact with the villages by inducing those who are fired with the spirit of service to settle in them and find self-expression in the service of villagers.
The village communities should be revived. Indian villages produced and supplied to the Indian towns and cities all their wants. India became impoverished when our cities became foreign markets and began to drain the villages dry by dumping cheap and shoddy goods from foreign lands.
It is only when the cities realize the duty of making an adequate return to the villages for the strength and sustenance which they derive from them, instead of selfishly exploiting them, that a healthy and moral relationship between the two will spring up. And if the city children are to play their part in this great and noble work of social reconstruction, the vocations through which they are to receive their education ought to be directly related to the requirements of the villages.
The village movement is as much as education of the city people as of the villagers. Workers drawn from cities have to develop village mentality and learn the art of living after the manner of villagers. This does not mean that they have to starve like the villagers. But it does mean that there must be a radical change in the old style of life.
We have got to be ideal villagers, not the villagers with their queer ideas about sanitation and giving no thought to how they eat and what they eat. Let us not, like most of them, cook anyhow, eat anyhow, live anyhow. Let us show them the ideal diet. Let us not go by mere likes and dislikes, but get at the root of those likes and dislikes.
We must identify ourselves with the villagers who toil under the hot sun beating on their bent backs and see how we would like to drink water from the pool in which the villagers bathe, wash their clothes and pots, in which their cattle drink and roll. Then and not till then shall we truly represent the masses and they will, as surely as I am writing this, respond to every call.
Since the economic reorganization of the villages has been commended with food reform, it is necessary to find out the simplest and cheapest foods that would enable the villagers to regain the lost health. The addition of green leaves to their meals will enable the villagers to avoid main diseases from which they are now suffering. The villagers’ food is deficient in vitamins; many of them can be supplied by fresh green leaves. A proper use of green leaves was calculated to revolutionize the customary notions of food and much of what was today being supplied by milk might be supplied by green leaves.
The cities are capable of taking care of themselves. It is the village we have to turn to. We have to disabuse them of their prejudices, their superstitions, their narrow outlook and we can do so in no other manner than that of staying amongst them and sharing their joys and sorrows and spreading education and intelligent information among them.
British Rule’s Mixed Blessings
(Courtesy of Hinduism Today)
Understanding Colonialism
The British East India Company came to dominate India through its clever use of political strategy, intrigue and military force. In 1858 India became a colony of the British Empire. Powerful nations, including England, Spain, Portugal, France and Holland, had used their financial and military power to establish colonies in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Many colonies, such as in North America and in Australia, were created by military conquest. The conquerors drove out or killed the native peoples, whom they regarded as subhuman. They then settled the land with immigrants from their own countries. Other places, such as India, were first opened through trade and commerce which eventually led to their foreign economic domination and political control. England’s colonies included India, Burma, Ceylon, Malaysia, Singapore and hundreds of other territories large and small worldwide. The English defended their conquests by claiming that they had a noble mission to spread Western civilization. This sounds very racist today. But it was then a firm belief of most Englishmen.
While England profited from its colonies, the colonies suffered oppression and disease. In the 19th century, the British did bring notable advances of the Industrial Revolution to India. But a century of British rule drove a wealthy and vital India into poverty and weakness.
Britain introduced English education in 1835. Indians excelled in the new education system, with unintended results. They read, in English, how the American colonies banded together in 1776 to free themselves from Britain and establish a democracy. They learned how the French gained freedom from an oppressive system by overthrowing their king in 1789. Indians rightly concluded that their ancient land – Bharat Mata, “Mother India” – had the same right as America and France to be free and independent. But it would take a century to achieve this goal.
The 1857 Revolt
The East India Company dominated India until the 1850s. A huge uprising in 1857 led to the direct and official takeover of India by the British government.
Many Indians were unhappy with the Company. It took over previously independent kingdoms within India. Its economic policies made most people poor. Its British-run police and law courts were inadequate or corrupt. Within their army, the British officers had little respect for their Indian soldiers or sepoys, and in some cases promoted their conversion to Christianity.
A relatively simple incident triggered the massive revolt. A new type of greased cartridge was issued for the sepoys’ Enfield rifles. Word spread that the grease was beef and pork fat. To load a cartridge, one had to bite off the greased tip. The sepoys refused to use them: the Hindus because they considered the cow sacred; the Muslims because they considered the pig unclean. The sepoys mutinied, attacking and killing their British officers.
The revolt spread across North India, as Hindus and Muslims, elites and commoners joined forced against the British. Many landlords, left impoverished, joined the rebellion. Within a year, the British ruthlessly crushed the revolt, killing hundreds of thousands (some say millions) of soldiers and civilians.
Stories (some true, some false) of British women and children being killed by the rebels inflamed public opinion in England.
The British were shocked by the uprising, which recalled the American Revolution. To protect their power, investment and income, they tightened their grip on the subcontinent by transferring rule from the East India Company to the British government.
The British Raj
The new government of India was called the Raj, a Sanskrit word meaning to reign or rule. Its first steps were to ensure that no future rebellion would take place. The ratio of English soldiers in the army was greatly increased. Sepoys of various castes, religions and regions were assigned to separate units to prevent possible conspiracy. The population was disarmed. Ownership of guns was allowed by license only. Generally, Indians had no rights and no voice in their own rule.
The Raj expanded the rail and road system which allowed duty-free British products to be sold all over India. This, unfortunately, caused the collapse of major native industries such as cotton textiles.
Tax revenues from agriculture and industry that should have benefited India instead went to England. Between 1770 and 1857, mismanagement worsened the effects of twelve major famines and many minor ones. According to official figtures, 28 million Indians starved to death between 1854 and 1901. India’s share of world income shrank from 22.6% in 1700 to 3.8% in 1952.
As early as the 1820s, many Indians wrote about the need to end British rule in India. The peaceful demand for freedom by nationalist political organizations continued decade after decade, at times turning into violent but unsuccessful uprisings.
The British improved India’s legal, justice and civil service systems, introduced better military training, built a few universities and created telegraph, postal, rail and road networks. They did so primarily for their own political and economic gain, not to benefit the Indian people.
The Road to Independence
Mohandas K. Gandhi, born in 1869, is honored in India as the “father of the nation”. After becoming a lawyer in England, he moved to South Africa. There he won political rights for Indian immigrants by nonviolent means. In 1915 he returned home to India and joined the freedom struggle.
On April 13,1919, British General Dyer led an attack upon a peaceful political meeting of unarmed men, women and children at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. In ten minutes, 400 people were shot dead and 1,200 seriously injured. Instead of being punished for his crime, Dyer was honored as a hero.
The ruthless massacre in Amritsar convinced Gandhi that only a mass struggle against foreign rule would save India. From 1920 on, he led a national movement for freedom based on his philosophy of nonviolent resistance called satyagraha, “force of truth”. Indian nationalists stopped cooperating with the government, refused to pay taxes and burned English goods in public. Gandhi and his followers were repeatedly beaten and jailed.
During the freedom movement, Hindus and Muslims disagreed about the democratic government they hoped to build. Muslims did not want to be a permanent minority in India and demanded their own country, an idea that Gandhi opposed.
World War II began in 1939 as Germany and Japan sought to add countries to their empires by force, just as Britain had done a century earlier. The war put Britain in the awkward position of defending its own freedom and democracy against Germany while continuing to deprive India of hers.
The Quit India movement was launched in 1942. Soon afterwards, Gandhi and other leaders were arrested. The movement became violent at some places, with hundreds shot and killed by police.
Britain’s military force in India was composed of Indian soldiers and sailors commanded by British officers. By the 1940s, the loyalty of these hired servicemen to their foreign masters diminished as the demand for freedom swept over India. A 1946 mutiny by Indian sailors of the Royal Indian Navy convinced the British that it was only a matter of time before the entire military might revolt.
Crippled by World War II and nearly bankrupt, Britain gave up India and other colonies, including Burma and Ceylon. India’s transition to freedom on August 15, 1947, brought with it a terrible tragedy. Pakistan was partitioned from India on the basis of religion. A huge relocation followed as 7.5 million Muslims moved to Pakistan from India and an equal number of Hindus and Sikhs fled Pakistan. A million died from hardship, attacks and riots. On January 30, 1948, a Hindu, enraged over the partition, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.
The Invasion Centuries
Understanding a Violent Past
We now enter what historians call a “difficult period” of Indian history. The difficulty is not due to any lack of knowledge. The Muslims’ invasions of India were carefully chronicled by their own historians. The British also kept exacting records of their expansion in subcontinent. We have a great deal of information, but of a disturbing nature. Muslim historians recount in detail the destruction of cities, sacking of temples, slaughter of noncombatants and enslavement of captives. British accounts reveal the mismanagement and greed that led to famines that killed tens of millions of people and ruined the local industry during their rule.
Nearly every country on our planet has dark period of history it would like to forget or deny. It is difficult to study such unpleasant pasts in a way that leads to understanding, not hatred. Hindu-Muslim discord has been a fact of Indian history for over a thousand years. At the same time, there have been long periods of friendly relationship, especially at the village level. For Hindus and Muslims, coming to terms with their collective past remains a “work in progress”. True reconciliation comes when people honestly face the past, forgive misdeeds, learn to truly respect each other’s religious beliefs and traditions and promise to move forward in peace.
The Gradual Conquest of India
Muslim Arab attacks upon India began in 636 ce, soon after Islam was founded. The first successful conquest was of the Sindh region in 712, with the fall of the temple town of Debal and Multan. By 870, Arabs conquered the Hindu kingdoms of south-western Afghanistan, then were stopped by the kings of north and northwest India.
There were three types of conquerors during this time. Some simply raided a city, robbed its wealth and left. Others defeated a kingdom, reinstated the defeated king and ordered him to pay regular tribute. The third and most effective conqueror annexed the captured territory to his own kingdom.
The next wave of invasions began around 1000. These attacks were not by Arabs, but by Turks from central Asia who had converted to Islam. One Turkic leader, Mahmud of Ghazni, raided India 17 times between 1001 and 1027. In each city, he looted and destroyed temples, and killed or enslaved inhabitants. Mahmud’s successors periodically raided northern India, but generations of Rajput rulers denied the invaders a permanent foothold.
One of the great historians of India, A.L. Basham, wrote that warfare among Hindus was governed by “a chivalrous and humane ethical code, which discouraged such ruthless aspects of war as the sacking of cities and the slaughter of prisoners and noncombatants.” The Islamic invasions introduced a brutal form of warfare which destroyed, killed and enslaved enemies at will.
In 1192, Muhammad of Ghur, also Turkic, finally succeeded in defeating Hindu rulers of the Delhi-Ajmer region and the Ganga valley. This conquest led to the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in 1206. By 1300, the Sultanate had secured stable rule around their main strongholds of the North,and sent armies to raid as far south as Thanjavur and Madurai. But these regions were not annexed. Hindu rule generally continued in Rajasthan, Gujarat and thrived in the entire South, notably within the Vijayanagar Empire (1336-1665). Areas with natural protective boundaries, such as Kashmir, Nepal, Assam, Orissa and Kerala, were less subject to raids.
By 1220, the Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan had created the largest empire the world had ever seen, conquering Asia from China to Iran. In 1398, a Muslim descendant, Timur, attacked Delhi because he felt its Muslim ruler was too tolerant of Hindus. In just one instance alone, he killed 100,000 Hindu captives. In 1504, Babur, a descendent of both Genghis Khan and Timur, seized Kabul. This gave him base to attack India. He overwhelmed both the sultan of Delhi (in 1526) and the Rajput confederacy (in 1527) to found the Mughal Empire. His army was the first in India to use matchlocks and field cannons.
Babur’s grandson, Akbar, became emperor in 1556. He expanded the Mughal Empire over northern India and part of the Deccan by entering into alliances with Hindu kings, particularly the fierce Rajputs. Akbar’s rule was noted for its religious harmony. Unfortunately, his successors did not inherit his tolerance. Akbar’s great-grandson, Aurangzeb, destroyed temples and reimposed the jizya religious tax on Hindus.
By the mid-eighteenth century, the Mughal Empire had declined. The Sikhs, Jats, Rajputs, Marathas and the Empire’s own provincial governors (called nawabs) had asserted their independence, leaving no strong central government in India. The regional Muslim rulers continued to oppress Hindus, but less harshly than the centralized Muslim governments of Delhi had.
The Colonial Period
In 1600 a group of English merchants set up the East India Company to buy and sell goods between Britain, India and other eastern countries. They arrived in India as businessmen, not conquerors, and built major trading posts at Surat, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. Over time, they fortified their posts and developed private armies for defense, paid for with the immense profits of their trade. They hired Hindus and Muslims as soldiers, called sepoys, who served under British officers.
Emboldened by their strength, the British proceeded to meddle in local politics. They gained power and profit by playing one rival against another. The French, especially in South India, did the same. If one king was supported by the French, the Company would back his rival as a way of weakening the French position. But they wanted still more. Robert Clive, commander of the Company’s army, conspired to overthrow the Nawab of Bengal, which led to the Nawab’s defeat in the Battle of Plassey in 1757.
Mir Jafar, the new Muslim ruler of Bengal rewarded Clive’s support with huge gifts and a promise to favor the Company. But things did not go well, and following the battle of Buxar in 1764 the Company gained control of Bengal’s revenues. A few years later they became the direct rulers and ruined the region with heavy taxes, unfair trade restrictions and corrupt practices.
The Company seldom launched a direct attack to conquer a region of India. Rather, they entered into treaties, alliances and other deals with local rulers, exploiting the divisions among them. Along the way, they defeated several heroic kings, such as the Muslim king Tipu Sultan of Mysore, and eventually conquered the powerful Marathas and Sikhs after many battles. In this manner, by 1857, they achieved direct rule over much of India and controlled the rest through puppet rulers.
Most historians agree that the Hindu kings simply failed to realize the danger they faced and thuss did not mount a common defense. Historians also blame the caste system, saying that people relied solely on the warrior caste to do the fighting. Basham shows this explanation to be inaccurate, as all castes were present in Indian armies. Also, he points out, Muslim kingdoms themselves were overrun by subsequent invaders, such as Timur and Nadir Shah, putting up no better defense than the earlier Hindu kings.
Basham explains that each new invader succeeded by virtue of superior military organization, strategy, training, weapons, horses and mobility. With these they overpowered the large but cumbersome Indian armies, Hindu and Muslim alike, which failed to adapt to new methods of warfare. The British also possessed great military skill and modern weapons, a result of their wars in Europe at the time. The Indian rulers failed to recognize and counter the brilliant British strategy and tactic of conquering a region by exploiting internal divisions among its rulers and only occasionally using its own armed forces in an outright invasion.
Surviving A Time Of Trial
Hinduism Under Non-Hindu Rule
In about 1030, the Muslim scholar Al-Biruni wrote, “The Hindus believe with regard to God that He is eternal, without beginning and end, acting by free will, almighty, all-wise, giving life, ruling, preserving”. He explained, “According to Hindu philosophers, liberation is common to all castes and to the whole human race, if their intention of obtaining it is perfect.” He described Hindu beliefs, scripture and practices that were little different than those of today. He observed that Hindus were not inclined to war with others for religious reasons and praised India’s religious tolerance.
Al-Biruni noted, with approval, that the Muslim raids had “utterly ruined the prosperity of the country.” Historians today estimate that between 1000 and 1100 ce, 20 million Indians – ten percent of the population – perished. By the 16th century, tens of millions more died through war and famine, while tens of thousands of temples had been destroyed. Hindus survived this long period of adversity through devotion to God and continued loyalty to community and tradition.
Responding with Devotion
The Bhakti Movement, was a powerful force throughout this period all over India. It stressed one’s personal relationship with God and offered many spiritual practices individuals could perform on their own. By sitting alone under a tree and chanting thename of Rama, singing bhajana or meditating on God, the common Hindu could find the spiritual strength to endure hardship and persecution.
The great philosophers Madhva (1017-1137) and Ramanuja (1238-1317) were forerunners of popular saints during our period who strengthened Hindus and discouraged conversion. An early Vaishnava saint, Jayadeva (c.1200), wrote the famous Gita Govinda, popular in Orissa and Bengal. Among the Vaishnava saints from Maharashtra were Jnaneshvara (1275-1296), Namdeva (1270-1350), Eknatha (1548-1600), Tukarama (1598-1649) and Samartha Ramdasa ( 1606-1682).
In North India, Swami Ramananda (ca 1400-1470) promoted the worship of Lord Rama, praising him as “Hari”, a name of Vishnu. Ramananda discouraged caste, saying, “Let no one ask about another’s caste or with whom he eats; he who worships Hari is Hari’s own”.
Two traditions arose from Ramananda’s popular teachings. One group, including Nimbarka (13th century), Chaitanya (1486-1534), Surdasa (1483-1563), Mirabai (1503-1573) and Tulsidasa (1532-1623), emphasized worship of the personal God. They were enlightened persons filled with a sense of divine ecstasy. Vaishnavas especially revere Chaitanya and Mirabai as divine beings.
A second tradition began with Ramananda’s disciple Kabir (1398-1518). He was adopted as a child and raised by a low-caste Muslim, a weaver. He wrote hundreds of spiritual poems in Hindi, the language of the people (rather than Sanskrit). His poems are easy to understand, even today, and millions still follow his teachings. Kabir’s philosophy, mostly drawn from Hinduism, was simple and direct. It appealed both to Hindus and Muslims. He rejected the caste system and ridiculed many Hindu and Muslim religious practices. Seeking to promote religious harmony, Kabir taught that there is only one God for all religions.
The Sikh religion was also a powerful force. Its founder, Guru Nanak (1469-1539), taught, “Realization of Truth is higher than all else. Higher still is truthful living”. He emphasized the continuous recitation of God’s name and declared that meditation is the means to see God, who is omnipresent. Like Kabir and Ramananda, Guru Nanak discouraged ritual worship and caste discrimination.
Nine Sikh gurus followed Nanak. The eighth, Tegh Bahadur (1621-1675), was executed by Aurangazeb for defending religious freedom. His son and successor, Gobind Singh, transformed the Sikhs into a warrior community called the Khalsa. Gobind Singh decreed that he was the last Sikh guru and after his death the Guru Granth Sahib, their holy scripture, would be the guide. From that time forward, the Sikhs have been an influential political and military force in North India.
As you have studied, South India largely escaped the oppressive Muslim domination of North and Central India. To this day the South retains the most ancient Hindu culture and has many grand temples. Influential saints of the time include Meykandar, Arunagirinathar, Tayumanavar, Vallabhacharya and Kumaraguruparar.
Other religious movements also flourished during this period such as Kashmir Saivism, Natha saints and the Gorakha Panthi yogis. They all were part of India’s ongoing vibrant religious spirit.
The Conqueror’s Religious Goals
The Arab and Turkic Muslim invaders who swept across the Middle East, Africa, Central and South Asia were intent on religious domination, demanding conversion from those they conquered. They made an exception for “People of the Book,” Christians and Jews, because certain parts of the Torah and the Bible are regarded as revealed scripture by the Muslims as well. They did not force Christians and Jews to convert, but humiliated them and imposed the jizya tax.
The Muslims treated Hindus as kafirs, lowly non-believers. The Christians judged Hindus to be polytheists, and some, as in Goa, used violence to convert them. Muslims and Christians both consider monotheism (the belief that there is only one God) to be the right conviction. As explained in Chapter One, Hindus see no contradiction in believing in One Supreme God while also worshiping the Gods and Goddesses. But this is unacceptable to Muslims and Christians, and resulted in dreadful persecution and killing during this period.
Centuries of Conversion Attempts
Before the Arabs, all foreign invaders, including the Greeks and Huns, were eventually absorbed into mainstream Hindu society. This was also true of many tribal communities within India. The Muslim rulers – with the exceptions of Akbar and some others – made great effort to convert their Hindu subjects. They used persuasion, heavy taxes, legal discrimination and force, but had only limited success.
Christian conversion efforts in India,though sustained and sometimes vigorous, were not very successful. The East India Company found missionary efforts bad for business and did not encourage them.
At their worst, invaders and later rulers destroyed Hindu temples and killed those who would not convert. According to the Muslim accounts of the time, thousands of temples were looted and torn down, including hundreds at major pilgrimage destinations, such as Somnath, Mathura, Vrindavan and Varanasi. Many mosques were built on the same sites from the temple materials.
Among the Muslims, the Sufi preachers were most responsible for making converts. Sufism is a mystical tradition within Islam, with some elements similar to the Bhakti Movement Sufism was much stronger during this period than it is today. Sufis worked closely with Muslim rulers. Many persons captured and enslaved during raids on Hindu towns and villages converted to Islam, knowing they would be treated better or even released.
The caste system was a main obstacle to conversion. It guaranteed to Hindus a secure identity and place in their community, which they would lose by converting. Also, other religions did not appeal to them either philosophically or culturally. Some low-caste Hindus were tempted to convert to improve their social status. But, in fact, converts to both Christianity and Islam retained their caste position.
Even today, Indian Muslims who claim foreign ancestry – the descendants of Arabs, Turks, Afghans, etc. – are called Ashrafs and have a higher status than Hindu converts, who are called Ajlafs. The Ajlafs are divided into occupational castes, just as are Hindus. Likewise, Christian converts retained their caste status. The lowest, such as Untouchables, or Dalits, even have separate churches and graveyards.
The Common Man’s Plight
Altogether, the common Hindu did not fare well during this time. He faced military attacks, discrimination as a kafir, oppressive taxes and sustained pressure to convert. Hindu rulers collected from farmers a tax of one-sixth of their crop. Under Muslim and British rule, taxes soared to as much as one-half, plunging the people of the once wealthy country of India into poverty.
TRIBUTE TO SOME FOREIGN EXPONENTS
It is however some western men of genius who with their mastery of the dominant modes of thought and action as well as dominant idiom of expression who initiated the Indian Renaissance.Some of them are remembered here.
William Jones
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Sir William Jones (28 September 1746 – 27 April 1794) was an English philologist and scholar of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages. He was also the founder of the Asiatic Society.
Biography
Jones was born in London at Beaufort Buildings, Westminster; his father (also named William Jones) was a mathematician from Anglesey in north Wales, noted for devising the use of the symbol pi. The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, learning Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age.[1] By the end of his life he knew thirteen languages thoroughly and another twenty-eight reasonably well, making him a hyperpolyglot.
Though his father died when he was only three, Jones was still able to go to Harrow in September 1753 and on to Oxford University. He graduated from University College, Oxford in 1768 and became M.A. in 1773. Too poor, even with his award, to pay the fees, he gained a job tutoring the seven-year-old Lord Althorp, son of Earl Spencer and as such an ancestor of Princess Diana. He embarked on a career as a tutor and translator for the next six years. During this time he published Histoire de Nader Chah (1770), a French translation of a work originally written in Persian by Mirza Mehdi Khan Astarabadi. This was done at the request of King Christian VII of Denmark who had visited Jones - who by the age of 24 had already acquired a reputation as an orientalist. This would be the first of numerous works on Persia, Turkey, and the Middle East in general.
In 1770, he joined the Middle Temple and studied law for three years, which would eventually lead him to his life-work in India; after a spell as a circuit judge in Wales, and a fruitless attempt to resolve the issues of the American Revolution in concert with Benjamin Franklin in Paris, he was appointed puisne judge to the Supreme Court of Bengal in March 1783. In April 1783 he married Anna Maria Shipley, the eldest daughter of Dr. Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of Landaff and Bishop of St Asaph. On 25 September 1783 he arrived in Calcutta.
In the Subcontinent he was entranced by Indian culture, an as-yet untouched field in European scholarship, and on 15 January 1784 he founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. Over the next ten years he would produce a flood of works on India, launching the modern study of the subcontinent in virtually every social science. He also wrote on the local laws, music, literature, botany, and geography, and made the first English translations of several important works of Indian literature. He died in Calcutta on 27 April 1794 at the age of 47.
Scholarly contributions
Of all his discoveries, Jones is best known today for making and propagating the observation that Sanskrit bore a certain resemblance to classical Greek and Latin. In The Sanscrit Language (1786) he suggested that all three languages had a common root, and that indeed they may all be further related, in turn, to Gothic and the Celtic languages, as well as to Persian.
His third annual discourse before the Asiatic Society on the history and culture of the Hindus (delivered on 2 February 1786 and published in 1788) with the famed "philologer" passage is often cited as the beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies. This is Jones' most quoted passage, establishing his tremendous find in the history of linguistics:
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
This common source came to be known as Proto-Indo-European.
As early as the mid-17th century Dutchman Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn (1612–1653) and others had been aware that Ancient Persian belonged to the same language group as the European languages. Similarly, American colonist Jonathan Edwards Jr. published in 1787 a work where he demonstrated that the Algonquian languages across northeastern North America were related to each other, and so were the Iroquoian languages. Nevertheless, it was Jones' discovery that caught the imagination of later scholars and became the semi-mythical origin of modern historical and comparative linguistics.
In 1789 he was the first to translate the Abhijñānaśākuntalam, an Indian play (written in a mix of Sanskrit and Prakrit) into a Western language under the title of Sacontalá or The Fatal Ring; An Indian Drama by Cálidás (Kalidasa). He encouraged his colleague Charles Wilkins to make the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita into English.
Jones is also indirectly responsible for some of the sensibility of the poetry of the English Romantic movement (particularly that of Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge), as his translations of "eastern" poetical works were a source for that style.
Schopenhauer's citation
On page two of his main work of 1819, Schopenhauer referred to one of Sir William Jones's publications. Schopenhauer was trying to support the doctrine that "everything that exists for knowledge, and hence the whole of this world, is only object in relation to the subject, perception of the perceiver, in a word, representation."[2] He quoted Sir William Jones's original English:
How early this basic truth was recognized by the sages of India, since it appears as the fundamental tenet of the Vedânta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa, is proved by Sir William Jones in the last of his essays: "On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (Asiatic Researches, vol. IV, p. 164): "The fundamental tenet of the Vedânta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms."
Schopenhauer used Jones's authority to relate the basic principle of his philosophy to what was, according to Jones, the most important underlying proposition of Vedânta. He referred to Sir William Jones's writings in a few other places in his works, but this was the most extensive citation.
Edwin Arnold
Edwin Arnold
Born 10 June 1832
Gravesend, Kent
Died 24 March 1904 (aged 71)
Education University College, Oxford
Occupation Journalist, editor, and poet
Sir Edwin Arnold CSI CIE (10 June 1832 – 24 March 1904) was an English poet and journalist, who is most known for his work, The Light of Asia.[1]
Biography
Arnold was born at Gravesend, Kent, the second son of a Sussex magistrate, Robert Coles Arnold. One of his six children was the novelist Edwin Lester Arnold. He was educated at King's School, Rochester; King's College London; and University College, Oxford. He became a schoolmaster, at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and in 1856 went to India as principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona, a post which he held for seven years, which includes a period during the mutiny of 1857, when he was able to render services for which he was publicly thanked by Lord Elphinstone in the Bombay council. Here he received the bias towards, and gathered material for, his future works.
Returning to England in 1861 he worked as a journalist on the staff of the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper with which he continued to be associated as editor for more than forty years, and later became its editor-in-chief [2]. It was he who, on behalf of the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph in conjunction with the New York Herald, arranged the journey of H.M. Stanley to Africa to discover the course of the Congo River, and Stanley named after him a mountain to the north-east of Albert Edward Nyanza.
Arnold must also be credited with the first idea of a great trunk line traversing the entire African continent, for in 1874 he first employed the phrase "Cape to Cairo railway" subsequently popularized by Cecil Rhodes. It was, however, as a poet that he was best known to his contemporaries. The literary task which he set before him was the interpretation in English verse of the life and philosophy of the East. His chief work with this object is The Light of Asia which was translated in various languages like Hindi (tr. by Acharya Ram Chandra Shukla). It appeared in 1879 and was an immediate success, going through numerous editions in England and America, though its permanent place in literature must remain very uncertain. It is an Indian epic, dealing with the life and teaching of the Buddha, which are unfolded with ample local color and comely prosody. The poem contains many lines of unquestionable beauty; and its immediate popularity was rather increased than diminished by the twofold criticism to which it was subjected. On the one hand it was held by Oriental scholars to give false impression of Buddhist doctrine; while, on the other, suggested analogy between Sakyamuni and Jesus offended the taste of some devout Christians.
The latter criticism probably suggested to Arnold the idea of attempting a second narrative poem of which the central figure should be Jesus, the founder of Christianity, as the founder of Buddhism had been that of the first. But though The Light of the World (1891), in which this took shape, had considerable poetic merit, it lacked the novelty of theme and setting which had given the earlier poem much of its attractiveness; and it failed to repeat the success gained by The Light of Asia. Arnold's other principal volumes of poetry were Indian Song of Songs (1875), Pearls of the Faith (1883), The Song Celestial (1885), With Sadi in the Garden (1888), Tiphar's Wife (1892) and Adzuma or, The Japanese Wife (1893).
Sir Edwin was married three times[3]. His first wife was Katherine Elizabeth Biddulph of London who died in 1864. Next he married Jennie Channing of Boston who died in 1889. In his later years Arnold resided for some time in Japan, and his third wife, Tama Kurokawa, was Japanese. In Seas and Lands (1891) and Japonica (1892) he gives an interesting study of Japanese life. He received the CSI on the occasion of the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877, and in 1888 was created CIE He also possessed decorations conferred by the rulers of Japan, Persia, Turkey and Siam.
He was a founder member, together with Anagarika Dharmapala, of the Mahabodhi Society of India.
Joseph Cunningham
Joseph Davey Cunningham, (b. Scotland, 1812, died 1851) was the author of the book History of the Sikhs and an authority in Punjab historiography. His father was the famous Scottish poet and author Allan Cunningham.
At an early age he was reported to have shown such an aptitude for mathematics that his father was advised to send him to Cambridge. However, since he desired to become a soldier, a cadetship in the British East India Company's service was procured for him, through the good offices of Sir Walter Scott. After a reported brilliant career at Addiscombe Military Academy (London Borough of Croydon, England), he sailed for India in 1834.
He was first employed on the staff of the chief engineer of Bengal Presidency in 1834. In 1837, he was appointed assistant to Colonel (afterwards Sir Claude) Wade, the political agent on the Sikh frontier. For the next eight years he held and occupied several political positions in this area under Colonel Wade and his successors until 1845. At time of the outbreak of the first Sikh War (December 1845), he was a political agent in the state of Bahawalpur.
Upon the commencement of the conflict, he was attached first to the staff of Sir Charles Napier and then to that of Sir Hugh Gough, Commander-in-chief in India. He was present, as political officer, with the division of Sir Harry Smith at the battles of Buddawal (22 January 1846) and Aliwal (28 January 1846). At Sobraon (10 February 1846), he served as an additional aide-de-camp to the Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge. His services earned him a brevet and the appointment of political agent to the state of Bhopal from 1846-1850.
He published History of the Sikhs in 1849, which brought about his dismissal from political service. The views expressed in this work were anything but pleasing to his superiors. As a punishment, he was removed from his political appointment and sent back to regimental duty. The disgrace is reported to have hastened his death, and soon after his appointment to the Meerut Division of Public Works, he died at the city of Ambala, Haryana state, India in 1851
The Sikhs as well, have for the most part dismissed his work as poorly researched. The Englishman, Max Arthur Mccauliffe, who worked with Sikhs in the latter part of the nineteenth century to produce the work "history of the sikhs", is credited to be the first westerner to bring sikh history to worldwide attention.
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller (December 6, 1823 – October 28, 1900), more commonly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist, mythographer, and Orientalist who virtually created the discipline of comparative religion. He was also one of the founders of the Western academic field of Indian studies and wrote both scholarly and popular works on the subject of Indology. The Sacred Books of the East was a massive, 50-volume set of English translations prepared under his direction that stands as an enduring monument to Victorian scholarship.
Müller's use of comparative linguistics in his research methodology and focus on natural phenomena are no longer accepted by mythologists today. Nevertheless, Müller is an early pioneer of mythology and a notable scholar who made non-Christian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and others accessible to scholars in the West.
He was born in Dessau, the son of the Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller, whose verse Franz Schubert had set to music in his song-cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Max Müller's mother, Adelheide Müller, was the eldest daughter of a chief minister of Anhalt-Dessau. Müller knew Felix Mendelssohn and had Carl Maria von Weber as a godfather.
In 1841 he entered Leipzig University, where he left his early interest in music and poetry in favor of philosophy. Müller received his Ph.D. in 1843 for a dissertation on Spinoza's Ethics.[1] He also displayed an aptitude for languages, learning the Classical languages Greek and Latin, as well as Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. In 1844 Müller went to Berlin to study with Friedrich Schelling. He began to translate the Upanishads for Schelling, and continued to research Sanskrit under Franz Bopp, the first systematic scholar of the Indo-European languages. Schelling led Müller to relate the history of language to the history of religion. At this time, Müller published his first book, a German translation of the Hitopadesa, a collection of Indian fables.
In 1845, Müller moved to Paris to study Sanskrit under Eugène Burnouf. It was Burnouf who encouraged him to translate the complete Rig Veda, using manuscripts available in England.
Müller moved to England in 1846 in order to study Sanskrit texts in the collection of the East India Company. He supported himself at first with creative writing, his novel German Love being popular in its day. Müller's connections with the East India Company and with Sanskritists based at Oxford University led to a career in Britain, where he eventually became the leading intellectual commentator on the culture of India, which Britain controlled as part of its Empire. This led to complex exchanges between Indian and British intellectual culture, especially through Müller's links with the Brahmo Samaj. He became a member of Christ Church, Oxford in 1851, when he gave his first series of lectures on comparative philology. He gained appointments as Taylorian Professor of Modern European Languages in 1854 and as Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford. Defeated in the 1860 competition for the tenured Chair of Sanskrit, he later became Oxford's first Professor of Comparative Theology (1868 – 1875), at All Souls College.
Müller attempted to formulate a philosophy of religion that addressed the crisis of faith engendered by the historical and critical study of religion by German scholars on the one hand, and by the Darwinian revolution on the other. Müller was wary of Darwin's work on human evolution, and attacked his view of the development of human faculties. His work was taken up by cultural commentators such as his friend John Ruskin, who saw it as a productive response to the crisis of the age (compare Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"). He analyzed mythologies as rationalizations of natural phenomena, primitive beginnings that we might denominate "protoscience" within a cultural evolution; Müller's "anti-Darwinian" concepts of the evolution of human cultures are among his least lasting achievements.
Müller circa 1898.
Müller shared many of the ideas associated with Romanticism, which colored his account of ancient religions, in particular his emphasis on the formative influence on early religion of emotional communion with natural forces.
Müller's Sanskrit studies came at a time when scholars had started to see language development in relation to cultural development. The recent discovery of the Indo-European (IE) language group had started to lead to much speculation about the relationship between Greco-Roman cultures and those of more ancient peoples. In particular the Vedic culture of India was thought to have been the ancestor of European Classical cultures, and scholars sought to compare the genetically related European and Asian languages in order to reconstruct the earliest form of the root-language. The Vedic language, Sanskrit, was thought to be the oldest of the IE languages. Müller therefore devoted himself to the study of this language, becoming one of the major Sanskrit scholars of his day. Müller believed that the earliest documents of Vedic culture should be studied in order to provide the key to the development of pagan European religions, and of religious belief in general. To this end, Müller sought to understand the most ancient of Vedic scriptures, the Rig-Veda.[2]
Müller was greatly impressed by Ramakrishna Paramhansa, his contemporary and proponent of Vedantic philosophy, and authored several essays and books on him.
An 1907 study of Müller's inaugural Hibbert Lecture of 1878 was made by one of his contemporaries, D. Menant.[3] It argued that a crucial role was played by Müller and social reformer Behramji Malabari in initiating debate on child marriage and widow remarriage questions in India.
For Müller, the study of the language had to relate to the study of the culture in which it had been used. He came to the view that the development of languages should be tied to that of belief-systems. At that time the Vedic scriptures were little-known in the West, though there was increasing interest in the philosophy of the Upanishads. Müller believed that the sophisticated Upanishadic philosophy could be linked to the primitive henotheism of early Vedic Brahmanism from which it evolved. He had to travel to London in order to look at documents held in the collection of the British East India Company. While there he persuaded the company to allow him to undertake a critical edition of the Rig-Veda, a task he pursued doggedly over many years (1849 - 1874), and which resulted in the critical edition for which he is most remembered.
For Müller, the culture of the Vedic peoples represented a form of nature worship, an idea clearly influenced by Romanticism. He saw the gods of the Rig-Veda as active forces of nature, only partly personified as imagined supernatural persons. From this claim Müller derived his theory that mythology is 'a disease of language'. By this he meant that myth transforms concepts into beings and stories. In Müller's view 'gods' began as words constructed in order to express abstract ideas, but were transformed into imagined personalities. Thus the Indo-European father-god appears under various names: Zeus, Jupiter, Dyaus Pita. For Müller all these names can be traced to the word 'Dyaus', which he understands to imply 'shining' or 'radiance'. This leads to the terms 'deva', 'deus', 'theos' as generic terms for a god, and to the names 'Zeus' and 'Jupiter' (derived from deus-pater). In this way a metaphor becomes personified and ossified. This aspect of Müller's thinking closely resembled the later ideas of Nietzsche.
Nevertheless Müller's work contributed to the developing interest in Aryan culture which set Indo-European ('Aryan') traditions in opposition to Semitic religions. He was deeply saddened by the fact that these later came to be expressed in racist terms. This was far from Müller's own intention. For Müller the discovery of a common Indian and European ancestry was a powerful argument against racism.
In 1881, he published a translation of the first edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. He agreed with Schopenhauer that this edition was the most direct and honest expression of Kant's thought. His translation corrected several errors that were committed by previous translators. Müller wrote, "The materials are now accessible, and the English-speaking race, the race of the future, will have in Kant's Critique another Aryan heirloom, as precious as the Veda—a work that may be criticised, but can never be ignored."
His wife, Georgina Adelaide (died 1916) had his papers and correspondence carefully bound; they are at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.[4] The Goethe Institutes in India are named Max Müller Bhavan in his honor. Müller's son Wilhelm Max Müller was also an important scholar.
SISTER NIVEDITA
Born 28 October, 1867
Tyrone, Ireland
Died 13 October, 1911
Darjeeling, West Bengal, India
Sister Nivedita (1867-1911), born Margaret Elizabeth Noble, was an Anglo-Irish social worker, author, teacher and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She met Vivekananda in 1895 in London and travelled to India (Kolkata) in 1898. Swami Vivekananda gave her the name Nivedita (meaning "Dedicated to God") when he initiated her into the vow of Brahmacharya on March 25 1898.
She was born on October 28, 1867. She was born in Ireland to Mary Isabel and Samuel Richmond Noble. Her father gave the valuable lesson that service to mankind is the true service to God. His words made a profound impression on her. She was very fond of music and art. After completing her education, she took up the job of a teacher and worked for a period of ten years from 1884 to 1894. She was gifted as a teacher.
Meeting Swami Vivekananda
She started taking interest in the teachings of Lord Buddha. It is during this time that she met Swami Vivekananda, who stressed that ignorance and selfishness pave the way for our sufferings. His principles and teachings influenced her and this brought about a visible change in her. Seeing the fire and passion in her, he could foresee her future role in India. She became the first Western woman to be received into an Indian monastic order.[1]
House in Baghbazar where Sister Nivedita started her school in 1898
In November 1898 she started a school for girls[2] who were deprived of even basic education. She took part in various altruistic activities. She worked to improve the lives of Indian women of all castes.
Nivedita was a good friend of many intellectuals and artists in the Bengali community, including the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. She was very close to eminent scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose and his wife Abala Bose, Abanindranath Tagore, and Okakura Kakuzo.
In fact, she is one of the inspirations for development of original art and paintings in India. Artist Nandalal Bose reminded this several times.
Later she would take up the cause of Indian independence. Sri Aurobindo was one of her friend as well. This deep relation with the independence movement compelled her to take the decision to break up the "official" linkage with the Ramakrishna Mission monastic order, so that British government cannot unnecessarily disturb the monastic order.
She knew and trusted Sri Anirvan [1] well, leaving many extraordinarily valuable documents with him. When Shankari Prasad Basu Mahashay came to Anirvan asking about her life, he simply handed over these papers, carefully preserved.[citation needed]
Her identity as a western born and being a disciple of Swami Vivekananda enabled her to do several things that might have been difficult for other Indians. She promoted pan-Indian nationalist. She worked tirelessly serving the people and society at large. She died on October 13, 1911 at Darjeeling, India.
CHARLES FREER ANDREWS
Charles Freer Andrews (1871–1940) was an English priest, educator and Indian freedom fighter who is best known as an associate of Mahatma Gandhi. Andrews greatly admired the philosophy of the young Mohandas Gandhi and was instrumental in convincing him to return to India from South Africa, where Gandhi was a leading light in the Indian civil rights struggle there. He was affectionately known as Christ's Faithful Apostle, and also, for his contributions to the Indian Independence Movement the Mahatma and his students at St. Stephen's College, Delhi named him, Deenabandhu, or 'Friend of the Poor'.
Early life
Charles Andrews was born at 14 Brunel Terrace, Newcastle, England. His father was a minister in the Catholic Apostolic Church in Birmingham, but the family had suffered from a financial misfortune due to the duplicity of a friend, and had to work very hard to make ends meet.
Andrews studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham and began studying Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge.[1] During this period he moved away from the views of his family's church and was accepted for ordination in the Church of England. In 1896, Andrews became a deacon, and took over the Pembroke College Mission in South London. A year later he became a priest, and became the Vice Principal of the Westcott House Theological College in Cambridge.
Andrews had been involved in the Christian Social Union since college, and was interested in exploring the relationship between a commitment to the gospel and a commitment to justice, through which he was attracted to struggles for justice throughout the British Empire, especially in India.
In 1904 he joined the Cambridge Brotherhood in Delhi and arrived there to teach philosophy at St. Stephen's College, where he famously grew close to many of his Indian colleagues and students. Increasingly dismayed by the racist behavior and treatment of Indians by British officials and civilians, he supported Indian political aspirations, and wrote a letter in the Civil and Military Gazette in 1906 voicing these sentiments. Andrews soon became involved in the activities of the Indian National Congress and, significantly, helped resolve the 1913 cotton worker's strike in Madras.
Well known for his persuasive ways, intellect and keen sense of moral firmness, he was asked by senior Indian political leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale to visit South Africa and help the Indian community there resolve their political disputes with the Government. He met there a young Gujarati lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi who was attempting to organize the Natal Indian Congress and the Indian community to protest the racial discrimination and police legislation that infringed upon their civil liberties.
Andrews was deeply impressed with Gandhi's knowledge of Christian values, and his espousal of the concept of ahimsa, non-violence - something that Gandhi mixed with inspiration from elements of Christian anarchism. He helped Gandhi organize an Ashram in Natal and publish his famous magazine, The Indian Opinion.
Following the advice of several Indian Congress leaders and, significantly, that of Principal S K Rudra of St. Stephen's College, Andrews was instrumental in persuading Gandhi to return to India with him in 1915.
In 1918 Andrews disagreed with Gandhi's attempts to recruit combatants for World War I, believing this was inconsistent with their views on nonviolence. In Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas Andrews says the following about Gandhi's recruitment campaign, "Personally I have never been able to reconcile this with his own conduct in other respects, and it is one of the points where I have found myself in painful disagreement."[2]
Later Andrews was elected President of the All India Trade Union in 1925 and 1927. He accompanied Gandhi to the first Round Table Conference in London, helping him negotiate with the British government on matters of Indian autonomy and devolution.
While working for Indian independence Andrews developed a dialogue between Christians and Hindus. He spent a lot of time at Santiniketan in conversation with the poet and philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore. He also supported the movement to ban the ‘untouchability of outcastes’. In 1925, he joined the famous Vaikkom Temple protests, and in 1933 assisted B.R. Ambedkar in formulating Dalit demands.
When news reached India, through the writings of Christian missionaries J.W. Burton, Hannah Dudley, and R. Piper and a returned indentured labourer, Totaram Sanadhya, of the mistreatment of Indian indentured labourers in Fiji, the Indian Government, in September 1915, sent Andrews and W.W. Pearson to make inquiries. The two visited numerous plantations and interviewed indentured labourers, overseers and Government officials and on their return to India also interviewed returned labourers. In their report, titled "Report on Indentured Labour in Fiji", Andrews and Pearson highlighted the ills of the indenture system which led to a stop of further transportation of Indian labour to the British colonies.
Andrews made a second visit to Fiji in 1917 and although reported on some improvements, was still appalled at the moral degradation of the indentured labourers. He called for an immediate end to indenture and the system of Indian indentured labour was formally abolished in 1920.
In 1936, while on a visit to Australia and New Zealand, Andrews was invited to and visited Fiji again. The ex-indentured labourers and their descendents wanted him to help them overcome a new type of slavery by which they were bound to the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, which controlled all aspects of their lives. Andrews, however, was delighted with the improvements in conditions since the last visit and asked Fiji Indians to "remember that Fiji belonged to the Fijians and they were there as guests."
About this time, Gandhi reasoned to Andrews aside that it was probably best for sympathetic Britons like himself to leave the freedom struggle to Indians. So, from 1935 onwards, Andrews began to spend more time back in Britain, teaching young people all over the country about Christ’s call to radical discipleship. Gandhi's affectionate nickname for Andrews was Christ’s Faithful Apostle, based on the initials of his name, "C.F.A". He was widely known as Gandhi's closest friend and was perhaps the only major figure to address Gandhi by his first name, Mohan. [3]
Charlie Andrews died on April 5, 1940 during a visit to Calcutta, and is buried there. He is widely commemorated and respected in India, and was a major character portrayed by British actor Ian Charleson in the 1982 film Gandhi by Richard Attenborough.
Andrews is honored with a feast day on the liturgical of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America on February 12.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Rolland with Gandhi in Switzerland, 1931.
The two were friends and regular correspondents.
Born 29 January 1866(1866-01-29)
Clamecy, Nièvre
Died 30 December 1944 (aged 78)
Vézelay
Occupation Dramatist, Essayist, Art historian, Novelist
Nationality French
Period 1902–1944
Notable award(s) Nobel Prize in Literature
1915
Biography
Rolland was born in Clamecy, Nièvre to a family of notaries; he had both peasants and wealthy townspeople in his lineage. Writing introspectively in his Voyage intérieur (1942), he sees himself as a representative of an "antique species". He would cast these ancestors in Colas Breugnon (1919).
Accepted to the École normale supérieure in 1886, he first studied philosophy, but his independence of spirit led him to abandon that so as not to submit to the dominant ideology. He received his degree in history in 1889 and spent two years in Rome, where his encounter with Malwida von Meysenbug–who had been a friend of Nietzsche and of Wagner–and his discovery of Italian masterpieces were decisive for the development of his thought. When he returned to France in 1895, he received his doctoral degree with his thesis The origins of modern lyric theatre and his doctoral dissertation, A History of Opera in Europe before Lully and Scarlatti.
His first book was published in 1902, when he was 36 years old. Through his advocacy for a 'people's theatre', he made a significant contribution towards the democratization of the theatre. As a humanist, he embraced the work of the philosophers of India ("Conversations with Rabindranath Tagore" and Mohandas Gandhi). Rolland was strongly influenced by the Vedanta philosophy of India, primarily through the works of Swami Vivekananda.[2]
People's theatre
Rolland's most significant contribution to the theatre lies in his advocacy for a "popular theatre" in his essay The People's Theatre (Le Théâtre du peuple, 1902).[4] "There is only one necessary condition for the emergence of a new theatre", he wrote, "that the stage and auditorium should be open to the masses, should be able to contain a people and the actions of a people".[5] The book was not published until 1913, but most of its contents had appeared in the Revue d'Art Dramatique between 1900 and 1903. Rolland attempted to put his theory into practice with his melodramatic dramas about the French Revolution, Danton (1900) and The Fourteenth of July (1902), but it was his ideas that formed a major reference point for subsequent practitioners.[4]
Programme sheet for Piscator's 1922 production of Rolland's drama The Time Will Come (1903), at the Central-Theater in Berlin.
The essay is part of a more general movement around the turn of that century towards the democratization of the theatre. The Revue had held a competition and tried to organize a "World Congress on People's Theatre", and a number of People's Theatres had opened across Europe, including the Freie Volksbühne movement ('Free People's Theatre') in Germany and Maurice Pottecher's Théâtre du Peuple in France. Rolland was a disciple of Pottecher and dedicated The People's Theatre to him.
Rolland's approach is more aggressive, though, than Pottecher's poetic vision of theatre as a substitute 'social religion' bringing unity to the nation. Rolland indictes the bourgeoisie for its appropriation of the theatre, causing it to slide into decadence, and the deleterious effects of its ideological dominance. In proposing a suitable repertoire for his people's theatre, Rolland rejects classical drama in the belief that it is either too difficult or too static to be of interest to the masses. Drawing on the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he proposes instead "an epic historical theatre of 'joy, force and intelligence' which will remind the people of its revolutionary heritage and revitalize the forces working for a new society" (in the words of Bradby and McCormick, quoting Rolland).[6] Rolland believed that the people would be improved by seeing heroic images of their past. Rousseau's influence may be detected in Rolland's conception of theatre-as-festivity, an emphasis that reveals a fundamental anti-theatrical prejudice: "Theatre supposes lives that are poor and agitated, a people searching in dreams for a refuge from thought. If we were happier and freer we should not feel hungry for theatre. [...] A people that is happy and free has need of festivities more than of theatres; it will always see in itself the finest spectacle."[7]
Rolland's dramas have been staged by some of the most influential theatre directors of the twentieth century, including Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator.[8] Piscator directed the world première of Rolland's pacifist drama The Time Will Come (Le Temps viendra, written in 1903) at Berlin's Central-Theater, which opened on 17 November 1922 with music by K Pringsheim and scenic design by O Schmalhausen and M Meier.[9] The play addresses the connections between imperialism and capitalism, the treatment of enemy civilians, and the use of concentration camps, all of which are dramatised via an episode in the Boer War.[10] Piscator described his treatment of the play as "thoroughly naturalistic", whereby he sought "to achieve the greatest possible realism in acting and decor."[11] Despite the play's overly-rhetorical style, the production was reviewed positively.[10]
Novels
Rolland's most famous novel is the 10-volume roman-fleuve Jean-Christophe (1903-1912), which brings "together his interests and ideals in the story of a German musical genius who makes France his second home and becomes a vehicle for Rolland's views on music, social matters and understanding between nations".[12] His other novels are Colas Breugnon (1919), Clérambault (1920), Pierre et Luce (1920) and his second roman-fleuve, the 7-volume L'âme enchantée (1922-1933).
Academic career
He became a history teacher at Lycée Henri IV, then at the Lycée Louis le Grand, and member of the École française de Rome, then a professor of the History of Music at the Sorbonne, and History Professor at the École Normale Supérieure.
A demanding, yet timid, young man, he did not like teaching. He was not indifferent to youth: Jean-Christophe, Olivier and their friends, the heroes of his novels, are young people. But with real-life persons, youths as well as adults, Rolland maintained only a distant relationships. He was first and foremost a writer. Assured that literature would provide him with a modest income, he resigned from the university in 1912.
Romain Rolland was a lifelong pacifist. He protested against the first World War in Au-dessus de la Mêlée (1915), Above the Battle (Chicago, 1916). In 1924, his book on Gandhi contributed to the Indian nonviolent leader's reputation and the two men met in 1931.
In 1928 he and Hungarian scholar, philosopher and natural living experimenter Edmund Bordeaux Szekely founded the International Biogenic Society to promote and expand on their ideas of the integration of mind, body and spirit.
He moved to Villeneuve, on the shores of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) to devote himself to writing. His life was interrupted by health problems, and by travels to art exhibitions. His voyage to Moscow (1935), on the invitation of Maxim Gorky, was an opportunity to meet Stalin, whom he considered the greatest man of his time.[citation needed] Rolland served unofficially as ambassador of French artists to the Soviet Union. However, as a pacifist, he was uncomfortable with Stalin’s brutal repression of the opposition. He attempted to discuss his concerns with Stalin, and was involved in the campaign for the release of the Left Opposition activist/writer Victor Serge and wrote to Stalin begging clemency for Nikolai Bukharin. During Serge’s imprisonment (1933-1936), Rolland had agreed to handle the publications of Serge’s writings in France, despite their political disagreements.
In 1937, he came back to live in Vézelay, which, in 1940, was occupied by the Germans. During the occupation, he isolated himself in complete solitude.
Never stopping his work, in 1940, he finished his memoirs. He also placed the finishing touches on his musical research on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven. Shortly before his death, he wrote Péguy (1944), in which he examines religion and socialism through the context of his memories. He died on 30 December 1944 in Vézelay.
In 1921, his close friend, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, wrote his biography: The Man and His Works. Zweig profoundly admired Rolland, of whom he once said to be: "the moral consciousness of Europe" during the years of turmoil and War in Europe.
Herman Hesse dedicated Siddhartha to Romain Rolland "my dear friend".
Correspondence with Freud
1923 saw the beginning of a correspondence between the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and Rolland, who found that the admiration that he showed for Freud was reciprocated in equal measures (Freud proclaiming in a letter to him: "That I have been allowed to exchange a greeting with you will remain a happy memory to the end of my days.").[13] This correspondence introduced Freud to the concept of the "oceanic feeling" that Rolland had developed through his study of Eastern mysticism. Freud opened his next book Civilization and its Discontents (1929) with a debate on the nature of this feeling, which he mentioned had been noted to him by an anonymous "friend". This friend was Rolland. Rolland would remain a major influence on Freud's work, continuing their correspondence right up to Freud's death in 1939.[14]
Quotations
"To one whose mind is free, there is something even more intolerable in the suffering of animals than in the sufferings of humans. For with the latter, it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the person who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any person were to refer to it, they would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime. That alone is the justification of all that humans may suffer. It cries vengeance upon all the human race. If God exists and tolerates it, it cries vengeance upon God." Jean Christophe.
"If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India....For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay." [15] Life of Ramakrishna
"The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.",[16] Life of Vivekananda.
"There are some dead who are more alive than the living."
"No, no! It would be more true to say that there are some who are more dead than the dead." "Maybe. In any case there are old things which are still young."
"Then if they are still young we can find them for ourselves. . . . But I don't believe it. What has been good once never is good again."
Romain Rolland, "Jean-Christophe: Revolt," p. 395
"All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities."[17]
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Born May 25, 1803(1803-05-25)
Boston, Massachusetts
Died April 27, 1882 (aged 78)
Concord, Massachusetts
Era 19th century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School
Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid-1800s.[1] [2] He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground-breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".[3] Considered one of the great orators of the time, Emerson's enthusiasm and respect for his audience enraptured crowds. His support for abolitionism late in life created controversy, and at times he was subject to abuse from crowds while speaking on the topic. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."[4]
Early life, family, and education
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803,[5] son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister who descended from a well-known line of ministers.[6] He was named after his mother's brother Ralph and the father's great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo.[7] Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles.[8] Three other children—Phebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline–died in childhood.[8]
The young Ralph Waldo Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than two weeks before Emerson's eighth birthday.[9] Emerson was raised by his mother as well as other intellectual and spiritual women in his family, including his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, who had a profound impact on the young Emerson.[10] She lived with the family off and on, and maintained a constant correspondence with Emerson until her death in 1863.[11]
Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812 when he was nine.[12] In October 1817, at 14, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president, requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to faculty.[13] Midway through his junior year, Emerson began keeping a list of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks that would be called "Wide World".[14] He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel in Waltham, Massachusetts.[15] By his senior year, Emerson decided to go by his middle name, Waldo.[16] Emerson served as Class Poet; as was custom, he presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821, when he was 18.[17] He did not stand out as a student and graduated in the exact middle of his class of 59 people.[18]
Around 1826, during a winter trip to St. Augustine, Florida, Emerson made the acquaintance of Prince Achille Murat. Murat, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was only two years his senior; the two became extremely good friends and enjoyed one another's company. The two engaged in enlightening discussions on religion, society, philosophy, and government.[19]
Early career
After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother William [20] in a school for young women[21] established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his brother William [22] went to Göttingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School.
Emerson's brother Edward,[23] two years younger than he, entered the office of lawyer Daniel Webster, after graduating Harvard first in his class. Edward's physical health began to deteriorate and he soon suffered a mental collapse as well; he was taken to McLean Asylum in June of 1828 at 23. Although he recovered his mental equilibrium he died in 1834 at 29 from apparently longstanding tuberculosis.[24]
Boston's Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior pastor and he was ordained on March 11, 1829.[25] Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New Hampshire and married her when she was 18.[26] The couple moved to Boston, with Emerson's mother Ruth moving with them to help take care of Ellen, who was already sick with tuberculosis.[27] Less than two years later, Ellen died at the age of 20 on February 8, 1831, after uttering her last words: "I have not forgot the peace and joy".[28] Emerson was heavily affected by her death and often visited her grave.[29] In a journal entry dated March 29, 1831, Emerson wrote, "I visited Ellen's tomb and opened the coffin".[30]
After his wife's death, he began to disagree with the church's methods, writing in his journal in June 1832: "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers".[31] His disagreements with church officials over the administration of the Communion service and misgivings about public prayer eventually led to his resignation in 1832. As he wrote, "This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it".[32]
Emerson toured Europe in 1832 and later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1857).[33] He left aboard the brig Jasper on Christmas Day, sailing first to Malta.[34] During his European trip, he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle in particular was a strong influence on Emerson; Emerson would later serve as an unofficial literary agent in the United States for Carlyle. The two would maintain correspondence until Carlyle's death in 1881.[35]
Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833, and lived with his mother in Newton, Massachusetts, until November 1834 when he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, to live with his step-grandfather Dr. Ezra Ripley at what was later named The Old Manse.[36] In 1835, he bought a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House,[37] and quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He married his second wife Lydia Jackson in her home town of Plymouth, Massachusetts][38] on September 14, 1835.[39] He called her Lidian and she called him Mr. Emerson.[40] Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lidian's suggestion.[41]
Another of Emerson's bright and promising younger brothers, Charles, born in 1808, died in 1836, also of consumption,[42] making him the third young person in Emerson's innermost circle to die in a period of a few years.
Emerson lived a financially conservative lifestyle.[43] He had inherited some wealth after his wife's death, though he brought a lawsuit against the Tucker family in 1836 to get it.[44] He received $11,674.79 in July 1837.[45]
Lifestyle and beliefs
Ralph Waldo Emerson in later years
Emerson's religious views were often considered radical at the time. He believed that all things are connected to God and, therefore, all things are divine.[112] Critics believed that Emerson was removing the central God figure; as Henry Ware, Jr. said, Emerson was in danger of taking away "the Father of the Universe" and leaving "but a company of children in an orphan asylum".[113] Emerson was partly influenced by German philosophy and Biblical criticism.[114] His views, the basis of Transcendentalism, suggested that God does not have to reveal the truth but that the truth could be intuitively experienced directly from nature.[115]
Emerson did not become an ardent abolitionist until later in his life, though his journals show he was concerned with slavery beginning in his youth, even dreaming about helping to free slaves. In June 1856, shortly after Charles Sumner, a United States Senator, was beaten for his staunch abolitionist views, Emerson lamented that he himself was not as committed to the cause. He wrote, "There are men who as soon as they are born take a bee-line to the axe of the inquisitor... Wonderful the way in which we are saved by this unfailing supply of the moral element".[116] After Sumner's attack, Emerson began to speak out about slavery. "I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom", he said at a meeting at Concord that summer.[117] Emerson used slavery as an example of a human injustice, especially in his role as a minister. In early 1838, provoked by the murder of an abolitionist publisher from Alton, Illinois named Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Emerson gave his first public antislavery address. As he said, "It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live".[116] John Quincy Adams said the mob-murder of Lovejoy "sent a shock as of any earthquake throughout this continent".[118] However, Emerson maintained that reform would be achieved through moral agreement rather than by militant action. By August 1, 1844, at a lecture in Concord, he stated more clearly his support for the abolitionist movement. He stated, "We are indebted mainly to this movement, and to the continuers of it, for the popular discussion of every point of practical ethics".[119]
There is evidence suggesting that Emerson may have been bisexual.[120] During his early years at Harvard, he found himself "strangely attracted" to a young freshman named Martin Gay about whom he wrote sexually charged poetry.[121][122] Gay would be only the first of his infatuations and interests, with Nathaniel Hawthorne numbered among them.[123]
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Full name Henry David Thoreau
Born July 12, 1817(1817-07-12)
Concord, Massachusetts
Died May 6, 1862 (aged 44)
Concord, Massachusetts
Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)[1] was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail.[2] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.[2]
He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist.[3] Though Civil Disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government – "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government"[4] – the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."[4]
Early life and education
He was born David Henry Thoreau[5] in Concord, Massachusetts, to John Thoreau (a pencil maker) and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was of French origin and was born in Jersey.[6] His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard's 1766 student "Butter Rebellion",[7] the first recorded student protest in the Colonies.[8] David Henry was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He did not become "Henry David" until after college, although he never petitioned to make a legal name change.[9] He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia.[10] Thoreau's birthplace still exists on Virginia Road in Concord and is currently the focus of preservation efforts. The house is original, but it now stands about 100 yards away from its first site.
Portrait of Thoreau from 1854
Amos Bronson Alcott and Thoreau's aunt each wrote that "Thoreau" is pronounced like the word "thorough", whose standard American pronunciation rhymes with "furrow".[11] In appearance he was homely, with a nose that he called "my most prominent feature."[12] Of his face, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: "[Thoreau] is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty."[13] Thoreau also wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted many women found attractive[14]. However, Louisa May Alcott mentioned to Ralph Waldo Emerson that Thoreau's facial hair "will most assuredly deflect amorous advances and preserve the man's virtue in perpetuity."[15]
Thoreau studied at Harvard University between 1833 and 1837. He lived in Hollis Hall and took courses in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science. A legend proposes that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma. In fact, the master's degree he declined to purchase had no academic merit: Harvard College offered it to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college."[16] His comment was: "Let every sheep keep its own skin",[17] a reference to the tradition of diplomas being written on sheepskin vellum.
[edit] Return to Concord: 1837–1841
The traditional professions open to college graduates: law, the church, business, medicine; failed to interest Thoreau [18]:25 So he took a leave of absence and during that leave of absence from Harvard in 1835, Thoreau taught school in Canton, Massachusetts. After he graduated in 1837, he joined the faculty of the Concord public school, but resigned after a few weeks rather than administer corporal punishment.[18]:25 He and his brother John then opened a grammar school in Concord in 1838 called Concord Academy.[18]:25 They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school ended when John became fatally ill from tetanus in 1842[19] after cutting himself while shaving. He died in his brother Henry's arms.[20]
Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson took a paternal and at times patronizing interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, including Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his son Julian Hawthorne, who was a boy at the time.
Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical, The Dial, and Emerson lobbied editor Margaret Fuller to publish those writings. Thoreau's first essay published there was Aulus Persius Flaccus, an essay on the playwright of the same name, published in The Dial in July 1840.[21] It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emerson's suggestion. The first journal entry on October 22, 1837, reads, "'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry today."
Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followed Transcendentalism, a loose and eclectic idealist philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. They held that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts," as Emerson wrote in Nature (1836).
1967 U.S. postage stamp honoring Thoreau
On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved into the Emerson house.[22] There, from 1841–1844, he served as the children's tutor, editorial assistant, and repair man/gardener. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson on Staten Island,[23] and tutored the family sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representative Horace Greeley.[24]:68
Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's pencil factory, which he continued to do for most of his adult life. He rediscovered the process to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite by using clay as the binder; this invention improved upon graphite found in New Hampshire and bought in 1821 by relative Charles Dunbar. (The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Conté process, was patented by Nicolas-Jacques Conté in 1795). His other source had been Tantiusques, an Indian operated mine in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Later, Thoreau converted the factory to produce plumbago (graphite), which was used to ink typesetting machines.[25]
Once back in Concord, Thoreau went through a restless period. In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed 300 acres (1.2 km2) of Walden Woods.[26] He spoke often of finding a farm to buy or lease, which he felt would give him a means to support himself while also providing enough solitude to write his first book[citation needed].
Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845, when he moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. The house was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from his family home.[citation needed]
On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War and slavery, and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. (The next day Thoreau was freed, against his wishes, when his aunt paid his taxes.[27]) The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government"[28] explaining his tax resistance at the Concord Lyceum. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26:
Heard Thoreau's lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the State– an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. His allusions to the Mexican War, to Mr. Hoar's expulsion from Carolina, his own imprisonment in Concord Jail for refusal to pay his tax, Mr. Hoar's payment of mine when taken to prison for a similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau's.
—Bronson Alcott, Journals (1938)[29]
Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay entitled Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience). In May 1849 it was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the Aesthetic Papers. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley's principle in the political poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819), that Shelley begins with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time – and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action.[30]
At Walden Pond, he completed a first draft of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, an elegy to his brother, John, that described their 1839 trip to the White Mountains. Thoreau did not find a publisher for this book and instead printed 1,000 copies at his own expense, though fewer than 300 were sold.[22]:234 Thoreau self-published on the advice of Emerson, using Emerson's own publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book. Its failure put Thoreau into debt that took years to pay off, and Emerson's flawed advice caused a schism between the friends that never entirely healed.[citation needed]
In August 1846, Thoreau briefly left Walden to make a trip to Mount Katahdin in Maine, a journey later recorded in "Ktaadn," the first part of The Maine Woods.
Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847.[22]:244 Over several years, he worked to pay off his debts and also continuously revised his manuscript for what, in 1854, he would publish as Walden, or Life in the Woods, recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of four seasons to symbolize human development. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, Walden at first won few admirers, but today critics[who?] regard it as a classic American work that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.
Annie Besant
Annie Besant (pronounced /ˈbɛsənt/; née Wood; Clapham, London 1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933 in Adyar, India) was a prominent Theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self rule.
In 1873 she married Frank Besant and moved to London where she became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society and writer and a close friend of Charles Bradlaugh. In 1877 they were prosecuted for publishing a book by birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. The scandal made them famous and Bradlaugh was elected MP for Northampton in 1880.
Annie became involved with Union organisers including the Bloody Sunday riot and the London matchgirls strike of 1888 and a leading speaker for the Fabian Society and the (Marxist) Social Democratic Federation and was elected to the London School Board for Tower Hamlets, topping the poll even though few women were qualified to vote at that time.
In 1890 Annie Besant met Helena Blavatsky and over the next few years her interest in Theosophy grew and her interest in left wing politics waned. She travelled to India and in 1898 helped establish the Central Hindu College in India.
In 1902 she established the International Order of Co-Freemasonry in England and over the next few years established lodges in many parts of the British Empire.
In 1908 Annie Besant became President of the Theosophical Society and began to steer the society away from Buddhism and towards Hinduism. She also became involved in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress. When war broke out in Europe in 1914 she helped launch the Home Rule League to campaign for democracy in India and dominion status within the Empire which culminated in her election as president of the India National Congress in late 1917. After the war she continued to campaign for Indian independence until her death in 1933.
Early life
Annie Wood was born in 1847 in London into a middle-class family of Irish origin. She was always proud of being Irish and supported the cause of Irish self-rule throughout her adult life. Her father died when she was five years old, leaving the family almost penniless. Her mother supported the family by running a boarding house for boys at Harrow. However, she was unable to support Annie and persuaded her friend Ellen Marryat to care for her. Marryat made sure that Annie had a good education. She was given a strong sense of duty to society and an equally strong sense of what independent women could achieve. As a young woman, she was also able to travel widely in Europe. There she acquired a taste for Catholic colour and ceremony that never left her.
In 1867, at age nineteen she married 26-year-old clergyman Frank Besant, younger brother of Walter Besant. He was an evangelical Anglican clergyman who seemed to share many of her concerns. Soon Frank became vicar of Sibsey in Lincolnshire. Annie moved to Sibsey with her husband, and within a few years they had two children: Digby and Mabel. The marriage was, however, a disaster. The first conflict came over money and Annie's independence. Annie wrote short stories, books for children and articles. As married women did not have the legal right to own property, Frank was able to take all the money she earned. Politics further divided the couple. Annie began to support farm workers who were fighting to unionise and to win better conditions. Frank was a Tory and sided with the landlords and farmers. The tension came to a head when Annie refused to attend Communion. She left him and returned to London. They were legally separated and Annie took her daughter with her.
Annie began to question her own faith. She turned to leading churchmen for advice. She even went to see Edward Bouverie Pusey, leader of the Catholic wing of the Church of England. He simply told her she had read too many books. Annie returned to Frank to make one last effort to repair the marriage. It proved useless. She finally left for London. Divorce was unthinkable for Frank, and was not really within the reach of even middle-class people. Annie was to remain Mrs Besant for the rest of her life. At first, she was able to keep contact with both children and to have Mabel live with her. She got a small allowance from Frank. Her husband was given sole custody of their two children.
Birkbeck
For a time she undertook part-time study at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, where her religious and political activities were to cause alarm. At one point the Institution's governors sought to withhold the publication of her exam results.[1]
Reformer and secularist
Annie Besant - 1880s
She fought for the causes she thought were right, starting with freedom of thought, women's rights, secularism (she was a leading member of the National Secular Society alongside Charles Bradlaugh), birth control, Fabian socialism and workers' rights.
Once free of Frank Besant and exposed to new currents of thought, Annie began to question not only her long-held religious beliefs but also the whole of conventional thinking. She began to write attacks on the churches and the way they controlled people's lives. In particular she attacked the status of the Church of England as a state-sponsored faith.
Soon she was earning a small weekly wage by writing a column for the National Reformer, the newspaper of the National Secular Society. The Society stood for a secular state: an end to the special status of Christianity. The Society allowed her to act as one of its public speakers. Public lectures were very popular entertainment in Victorian times. Annie was a brilliant speaker, and was soon in great demand. Using the railway, she criss-crossed the country, speaking on all of the most important issues of the day, always demanding improvement, reform and freedom.
For many years Annie was a friend of the Society's leader, Charles Bradlaugh. It seems that they were never lovers, but their friendship was very close. Bradlaugh, a former seaman, had long been separated from his wife. Annie lived with Bradlaugh and his daughters, and they worked together on many issues.
Theosophist
Besant was a prolific writer and a powerful orator. In 1889, she was asked to write a review for the Pall Mall Gazette [3] on The Secret Doctrine, a book by H.P. Blavatsky. After reading it, she sought an interview with its author, meeting Blavatsky in Paris. In this way she was converted to Theosophy. Annie's intellectual journey had always involved a spiritual dimension, a quest for transformation of the whole person. As her interest in Theosophy deepened, she allowed her membership of the Fabian Society to lapse (1890) and broke her links with the Marxists. When Blavatsky died in 1891, Annie was left as one of the leading figures in Theosophy. Her most important public commitment to the faith came in 1893, when she went to present it at the Chicago World Fair.
Soon after becoming a member of the Theosophical Society she went to India for the first time (in 1893). After a dispute in which William Quan Judge, leader of the American section, was accused of falsifying letters from the Masters, the American section split away. The remainder of the Society was then led by Henry Steel Olcott and Besant and is today based in Chennai, India, and is known as the Theosophical Society Adyar. Thereafter she devoted much of her energy not only to the Society, but also to India's freedom and progress. Besant Nagar, a neighborhood near the Theosophical Society in Chennai, is named in her honor.
President of Theosophical Society
Annie Besant with Henry Olcott (left) and Charles Leadbeater (right) in Adyar in December 1905
She first met clairvoyant theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater in London in April 1894. They became close co-workers in the theosophical movement and would remain so for the rest of their lives. Besant became clairvoyant in the following year. In a letter dated 25 August 1895 to Francisca Arundale, Leadbeater narrates how Besant became clairvoyant.[4] Together they would investigate the universe, matter, thought-forms and the history of mankind through clairvoyance, and would co-author several books. In 1906 Leadbeater suddenly became the centre of controversy when it emerged that he was sleeping with young boys and engaging in mutual masturbation with them — Leadbeater explained that he had been offering them advice and guidance in order to keep them from sleeping with women.[5] He was forced to resign from the Theosophical Society over this in 1906, but the next year Annie Besant became President of the Society and in 1908 he was taken back into the fold on her insistence. Leadbeater went on to face many more accusations of improper relations with boys, but Besant never deserted him.
Up until Besant's presidency, the society had as one of its foci Theravada Buddhism and the island of Ceylon, where Henry Olcott did the majority of his useful work. Under Besant's leadership there was a decisive turn away from this and a refocusing of their activities on "The Aryavarta", as she called central India. Besant actively courted Hindu opinion more than former Theosophical leaders. This was a clear reversal of policy from Blavatsky and Olcott's very public conversion to Buddhism in Ceylon, and their promotion of Buddhist revival activities on the subcontinent (see also: Maha Bodhi Society).
Annie set up a new school for boys at Varanasi: the Central Hindu College. Its aim was to build a new leadership for India. The boys lived like monks. They spent 90 minutes a day in prayer and studied the Hindu scriptures, but they also studied modern science. It took 3 years to raise the money for the CHC. Most of the money came from Indian princes. In April 1911, Annie and Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya met and decided to unite their forces and work for a common Hindu University at Varanasi. Annie and fellow trustees of the Central Hindu College also agreed to Government of India's precondition that the college should become a part of the new University. The Banaras Hindu University started functioning from 1 October 1917 with the Central Hindu College as its first constituent college.
As early as 1889, Blavatsky had told a group of Theosophical students that the real purpose of establishing the Society was to prepare humanity for the reception of the World Teacher when he appeared again on earth. This was repeated again more publicly by Besant in 1896, five years after Blavatsky's death.[6]
Thought-form of the music of Charles Gounod, according to Besant and C.W. Leadbeater in Thought-Forms (1901)
Krishnamurti
Soon after Besant's inheritance of the presidency, in 1909 Leadbeater "discovered" fourteen-year-old Jiddu Krishnamurti on the private beach that was attached to the Theosophical Society's headquarters at Adyar. Krishnamurti had been living next to the headquarters with his father and brothers for a few months prior to this.[7] The "discovery" started years of upheaval in the Theosophical Society, as the boy was proclaimed to be the likely "vehicle" for the expected "World Teacher". Jiddu Krishnamurti and his younger brother Nityananda (Nitya) were brought up by Theosophists from that moment on, and Krishnamurti was extensively groomed for his future "mission" as the new Christ-incarnate. The boys were soon placed under the legal guardianship of Besant, following a protracted legal battle with their father.[8] Early in their relationship, Krishnamurti and Besant had developed a very close bond and he considered her a surrogate mother - a role she happily accepted. (His biological mother had died when he was ten years old).[9]
In 1929, twenty years after his "discovery", Krishnamurti, who had grown disenchanted with the whole "World Teacher Project", repudiated the role that the leadership of the Society and many Theosophists expected him to fulfil. He denounced the concept of saviors, leaders and spiritual teachers and severed his ties with Theosophy.[10] He spent the rest of his life holding dialogues and giving public talks around the world as an unaffiliated individual speaker, becoming in the process widely known as an original, independent thinker on philosophical, psychological, and spiritual subjects. However, his love for Besant never waned, as also was the case with Besant's feelings towards him; concerned for his wellbeing after he declared his independence, she had purchased 6 acres (24,000 m2) of land near the Theosophical Society estate which later became the headquarters of the Krishnamurti Foundation India.
The Home Rule Movement
Along with her theosophical activities, Annie continued to participate in concrete political struggles. She had joined the Indian National Congress. As the name suggested, this was originally a debating body, which met each year to consider resolutions on political issues. Mostly it demanded more of a say for middle-class Indians in British Indian government. It had not yet developed into a permanent mass movement with local organisation. About this time she lost her clairvoyance, and co-worker C.W. Leadbeater felt called to move to Sydney, Australia.
In 1914 war broke out in Europe. Britain needed the support of its empire in the fight against Germany. Annie said: "England's need is India's opportunity," a clear echo of an Irish nationalist slogan. As editor of a newspaper called New India, she attacked the (British) government of India and called for clear and decisive moves towards self-rule. As with Ireland, the government refused to discuss any changes while the war lasted.
Later years
She tried to accommodate Krishnamurti's views into her life, but never really succeeded. The two remained friends, however, until the end of her life. Annie Besant died in 1933 and was survived by her daughter, Mabel. After her death, her colleagues, J. Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, Dr. Guido Ferrando, and Rosalind Rajagopal, built Happy Valley School, now renamed Besant Hill School in her honour.
Ernest Binfield Havell
Ernest Binfield Havell (September 16, 1861 – December 31, 1934), who published under the name E.B. Havell, was a British arts administrator and author of numerous books about Indian art and architecture. He was a member of the Havell family of artists and art educators. He was the principal of the Government School of Art, Calcutta from 1896-1905.
Life
In India, Havell initially served the Madras School of Art as Superintendent for a decade from 1884. He arrived Calcutta on July 5, 1896 and joined as Superiintendent of the Government School of Art, Calcutta next day. In between, he went to England for a year from April, 1902 to March, 1903. While in England, he published two valuable articles on Indian art in the October 1902 and January, 1903 issues of a well known art journal of London, The Studio. In January, 1906 he left for England on long leave and finally in 1908, he was removed from the post.[1]
Havell worked with Abanindranath Tagore to redefine Indian art education. He established the Bengal school of art, which sought to adapt British art education in India so as to reject the previous emphasis placed on European traditions in favour of revivals of native Indian styles of art, in particular the Mughal miniature tradition.
Works
Havell wrote numerous books on Indian art and history, including:
• A Handbook of Indian Art
• The History of Aryan Rule in India
• Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India
• Indian Architecture: Its psychology, structure and history
• Ideals of Indian art
• Indian sculpture and painting
Ananda Coomaraswamy
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy
Portrait of Ananda Coomaraswamy, 1907
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (Tamil: ஆனந்த குமாரசுவாமி, Ānanda Kentiś Kūmaraswāmī) (b. 22 August 1877, Colombo, Ceylon, d. 9 September 1947, Needham, Massachusetts) was a Ceylonese philosopher and metaphysician, as well as a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art, particularly art history and symbolism, and an early interpreter of Indian culture to the West [1].
Life
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was born in Colombo, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to the Ceylonese Tamil legislator and philosopher Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. His father died when Ananda was 2 years old, and Ananda spent much of his childhood and education abroad.
Coomaraswamy moved to England in 1879 and attended Wycliffe College, a preparatory school in Stroud, Gloucestershire, at the age of 12. In 1900, he graduated from University College, London, with a degree in geology and botany. On June 19, 1902, Coomaraswamy married Ethel Mary Partridge, an English photographer, who then traveled with him to Ceylon. Their marriage lasted until 1913. Coomaraswamy's field work between 1902 and 1906 earned him a doctor of science for his study of Ceylonese mineralogy, and prompted the formation of the Geological Survey of Ceylon which he initially directed.[2] While in Ceylon, the couple collaborated on Mediaeval Sinhalese Art; Coomaraswamy wrote the text and Ethel provided the photographs. His work in Ceylon fueled Coomaraswamy's anti-Westernization sentiments.[3] After their divorce, Partridge returned to England, where she later married the writer Philip Mairet.
Coomaraswamy then met and married an Englishwoman who performed Indian song under the stage name Ratan Devi. They had two children, a son, Narada, and daughter, Rohini. He moved to the United States in 1917 to serve as the first Keeper of Indian art in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Narada was killed in a plane crash and an already ailing Ratan died shortly thereafter.[4]
Coomaraswamy married the American artist Stella Bloch, 29 years his junior, in November 1922. Through the 1920s, Coomaraswamy and his wife were part of the bohemian art circles in New York City, Coomaraswamy befriending Alfred Stieglitz and the artists who exhibited at Stieglitz's gallery. At the same time, he was studying Sanskrit and Pali religious literature as well as Western religious works. He wrote catalogues for the Museum of Fine Arts, and published his History of Indian and Indonesian Art in 1927.
After the couple divorced in 1930, they remained friends. Shortly thereafter, on November 18, 1930, Coomaraswamy married Argentine Luisa Runstein, 28 years younger, who was working as a society photographer under the professional name Xlata Llamas. They had a son, Coomaraswamy's third child, Rama Ponnambalam, who became a physician and author of Catholic Traditionalist works.
In 1933 Coomaraswamy's title at the Museum of Fine Arts changed from curator to Fellow for Research in Indian, Persian, and Mohammedan Art.[3]
He served as curator in the Museum of Fine Arts, and was significant in bringing Eastern art to the West, until his death in Needham, Massachusetts in 1947. He also helped with the collection of Persian Art for the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts.
After Coomaraswamy's death, Doña Luisa acted as a guide and resource for students of his work.
Contributions
Coomaraswamy made important contributions to the philosophy of art, literature, and religion. In Ceylon, he applied the lessons of William Morris to Ceylonese culture[citation needed] and produced, with his wife Ethel, a groundbreaking study of Ceylonese craft and culture. While In India, he was part of the literary circle around Rabindranath Tagore, and contributed to the "Swadeshi" movement, an early phase of the struggle for Indian independence[citation needed]. In the 1920s, he made pioneering discoveries in the history of Indian art, particularly distinctions between Rajput and Moghul painting, and his book Rajput Painting. At the same time he amassed an unmatched collection of Rajput and Moghul paintings, which he took with him to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, when he joined its curatorial staff in 1917. Through 1932, from his base in Boston, he produced two kinds of publications: brilliant scholarship in his curatorial field, but also graceful introductions to Indian and Asian art and culture, typified by The Dance of Shiva, a collection of essays that have lost none of their attractiveness and remain in print to this day. From 1932 until his death in 1947, he was yet another man, another mind. Deeply influenced by René Guénon, he became one of the founders of the Traditionalist School. His books and essays on art and culture, symbolism and metaphysics, scripture, folklore and myth, and still other topics, offer a remarkable education to readers who accept the challenges of his resolutely cross-cultural perspective and insistence on tying every point he makes back to sources in multiple traditions. He once remarked, "I actually think in both Eastern and Christian terms—Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Pali, and to some extent Persian and Chinese." [5] Alongside the deep and not infrequently difficult writings of this period, he also delighted in polemical writings created for a larger audience—essays such as "Why exhibit works of art?" (1943).
In his book The Information Society: An Introduction (Sage, 2003, p. 44), Armand Mattelart credits Coomarswamy for coining the term 'post-industrial' in 1913.
Perennial Philosophy
He was described by Heinrich Zimmer as That noble scholar upon whose shoulders we are still standing[6]. While serving as a curator to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the latter part of his life, he devoted his work to the explication of traditional metaphysics and symbolism. His writings of this period are filled with references to Plato, Plotinus, Clement, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, Shankara, Eckhart, and other Rhinish and Asian mystics. He was responsible for creating the collections of oriental art for the Freer Museum, Washington D.C., as well as for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. When asked what he was, foremostly Dr. Coomaraswamy referred to himself as a Metaphysician, referring here to the concept of perennial philosophy, or Sophia Perennis.
Along with René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon, Coomaraswamy is regarded as one of the three founders of Perennialism, also called the Traditionalist School. Several articles by Coomaraswamy on the subject of Hinduism and the Perennial Philosophy were published posthumously in the quarterly journal, Studies in Comparative Religion, alongside articles by Schuon and Guénon (among others).
Although he agrees with Guénon on the universal principles, his works are very different in form from Guénon's. By vocation, he was a scholar, who dedicated the last decades of his life to searching the Scriptures. He offers a perspective on the tradition which complements well that of Guénon. He had a very highly active aesthetic perceptiveness and he wrote dozens of articles on traditional arts and mythology. His works are also intellectually finely balanced. Although born in the Hindu tradition, he had a deep knowledge of the Western tradition as well as a great expertise and love for Greek metaphysics, especially that of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism.
He built a bridge between East and West that was designed to carry a two-way traffic: his metaphysical writings aimed, among other things, at demonstrating the unity of the Vedanta and Platonism. His works also sought to rehabilitate original Buddhism, a tradition that Guénon had for a long time limited to a rebellion of the Kshatriyas against Brahmin authority.
"Alan Antliff documents (...in I Am Not A Man, I Am Dynamite) how the Indian art critic and anti-imperialist Ananda Coomaraswamy combined Nietzsche's individualism and sense of spiritual renewal with both Kropotkin's economics and with Asian idealist religious thought. This combination was offered as a basis for the opposition to British colonization as well as to industrialization."[7]
Edwin Lutyens
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, OM, KCIE, PRA, FRIBA (29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was a leading 20th century British architect who is known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses.
He has been referred to as "the greatest British architect"[1] and is best known for playing an instrumental role in designing and building a section of the metropolis of Delhi, known as New Delhi, which would later on serve as the seat of the Government of India.[2] In recognition of his contribution, New Delhi is also known as "Lutyens' Delhi". In collaboration with Herbert Baker, he was also the main architect of several monuments in New Delhi such as the India Gate, he also designed the Viceroy's House now known as the Rashtrapati Bhavan.[3][4]
Biography
He was born in London and grew up in Thursley, Surrey. He was named after a friend of his father's, the painter and sculptor, Edwin Landseer. For many years he worked from offices at 29 Bloomsbury Square, London. Lutyens studied architecture at South Kensington School of Art, London from 1885 to 1887. After college he joined the Ernest George and Harold Ainsworth Peto architectural practice. It was here that he first met Sir Herbert Baker.
Private practice
He began his own practice in 1888, his first commission being a private house at Crooksbury, Farnham, Surrey. During this work, he met the garden designer and horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll. In 1896 he began work on a house for Jekyll at Munstead Wood, Godalming, Surrey. It was the beginning of a fruitful professional partnership that would define the look of many Lutyens country houses.
The "Lutyens-Jekyll" garden overflowed with hardy shrubery and herbaceous plantings within a firm classicising architecture of stairs and balustraded terraces. This combined style, of the formal with the informal, exemplified by brick paths, softened by billowing herbaceous borders, full of lilies, lupins, delphiniums, and lavender was in direct contrast to the very formal bedding schemes favoured by the previous generation in the Victorian era. This new "natural" style was to define the "English garden" until modern times.
Lutyens' fame grew largely through the popularity of the new lifestyle magazine Country Life created by Edward Hudson, which featured many of his house designs. Hudson was a great admirer of Lutyens' style and commissioned Lutyens for a number of projects, including Lindisfarne Castle and the Country Life headquarters building in London. One of his assistants in the 1890s was Maxwell Ayrton.[5]
His works
Initially, his designs all followed the Arts and Crafts style, but in the early 1900s his work became more classical in style. His commissions were of a varied nature from private houses to two churches for the new Hampstead Garden Suburb in London to Julius Drewe's Castle Drogo near Drewsteignton in Devon and on to his contributions to India's new imperial capital New Delhi (where he worked as chief architect with Herbert Baker and others). Here he added elements of local architectural styles to his classicism, and based his urbanization scheme on Mughal water gardens. He also designed the beautiful, Hyderabad House, for the Last Nizam of Hyderabad, as his Delhi palace.
He also designed a chalk building, Marsh Court, in Hampshire, England. Built between 1901 and 1905, it is the last of his Tudor designs and was based on a variant of ancient rammed earth building techniques. In 1903 the main school building of Amesbury Prep School in Hindhead, Surrey, was designed and built. It is the only school to have been purpose-built by Lutyens.[citation needed] It is now a Grade 2* listed building of National Significance. The building has been extensively renovated in the last five years.
The Cenotaph, Whitehall
Before the end of World War I, he was appointed one of three principal architects for the Imperial War Graves Commission and was involved with the creation of many monuments to commemorate the dead. The best known of these monuments are the Cenotaph, Westminster and the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, Thiepval. The Cenotaph was originally commissioned by David Lloyd George as a temporary structure to be the centrepiece of the Allied Victory Parade in 1919. Lloyd George proposed a Catafalque — a low empty platform but it was Lutyens' idea for the taller monument. The design took less than six hours to complete. Many local war memorials (such as the one at All Saints, Northampton) are Lutyens designs — based on the Cenotaph. He also designed the War Memorial Gardens in Dublin, which were restored in the 1990s. Other works include the Tower Hill memorial, and (to a similar design to his India Gate) a memorial in Victoria Park in Leicester. Lutyens also refurbished Lindisfarne Castle for its wealthy owner.
He was knighted in 1918,[6] and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy in 1921[7]. In 1924, he was appointed a member of the newly created Royal Fine Art Commission,[8] a position he held until his death.
Whilst work continued in New Delhi, Lutyens continued to receive other commissions including several commercial buildings in London and the British Embassy in Washington, DC.
New Delhi
Largely designed by Lutyens over twenty or so years, New Delhi, situated within the metropolis of Delhi, was chosen to replace Calcutta as the seat of the British Indian government in 1912; the project was completed in 1929 and officially inaugurated in 1931. In undertaking this project, Lutyens invented his own new Order of classical architecture, which has become known as the "Delhi Order" and was used by him for several designs in England, such as Campion Hall, Oxford. Unlike the more traditional British architects who came before him, he was both inspired by and incorporated various features from the local and traditional Indian architecture — something most clearly seen in the great drum-mounted Buddhist dome of the Viceregal Lodge, now Rashtrapati Bhavan. This palatial building, containing 340 rooms, is built on an area of some 330 acres (1.3 km²) and incorporates a private garden also designed by Lutyens. The building was designed as the official residence of the Viceroy of India and is now the official residence of the President of India.
Lutyens was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) on 1 January 1930.[11]
The "Delhi Order" columns at the front entrance of the palace have bells carved into them which, it has been suggested, Lutyens had designed with the idea that as the bells were silent the British rule would never come to an end. At one time, more than 2,000 people were required to look after the building and serve the Viceroy's household.
The new city contains both the Parliament buildings and government offices (many designed by Herbert Baker) and was distinctively built of the local red sandstone using the traditional Mughal style.
When drawing up the plans for New Delhi, Lutyens planned for the new city to lie southwest of the walled city of Shahjahanbad. His plans for the city also laid out the street plan for New Delhi consisting of wide tree-lined avenues.
Built in the spirit of British colonial rule, the point where the new imperial city and the older native settlement met was intended to be a market; it was there that Lutyens imagined the Indian traders would participate in "the grand shopping centre for the residents of Shahjahanabad and New Delhi", thus giving rise to the present D-shaped market seen today.
Lutyens' work in New Delhi is the focus of Robert Grant Irving's book Indian Summer.
The bust of Lutyens in the former Viceroy's House is the only statue of a Westerner left in its original position in New Delhi. Many of the garden-ringed villas in the Lutyens Bungalow Zone (LBZ) that were part of Lutyens' original scheme for New Delhi are under threat due to the constant pressure for development in Delhi. The LBZ was placed on the 2002 World Monuments Fund Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. It should be noted that none of the bungalows in the LBZ were designed by Lutyens - he only designed the bungalows in the Presidential Estate surrounding Rashtrapati Bhavan.
SIR GEORGE EVEREST AND SURVEY OF INDIA
by Mary M. Root
The highest mountain in the world is named for a surveyor, Colonel Sir George Everest. It is a fitting tribute to the man who, for more than twenty-five years and despite numerous hardships, prevailed in surveying the longest are-of-the-meridian ever accomplished at the time. The Great Trigonometrical Survey India, begun at Cape Comorin in 1806 by William Lambton, would then run almost 2,400 kilometers north to the Himalayas, extending over 20 along the meridian. During this tremendous undertaking, Everest was relentless in his pursuit of accuracy. To that end, he made countless adaptations to the surveying equipment, methods, and mathematics in order to minimize problems specific to the Great Survey: immense size and scope, the terrain, weather conditions, and the desired accuracy.
When Everest "inherited" the position in 1823, the equipment originally employed by Lambton consisted of one 36" theodolite manufactured by London instrument maker Cary, a zenith sector by Jesse Ramsden, a Ramsden 100 foot steel chain, and a chronometer. The Cary theodolite, weighing over one thousand pounds, had been damaged in two separate mishaps, and was badly in need of repair. The micrometer screw on the zenith sector was worn out, and the steel chain had not been calibrated in twenty-five years. To further complicate matters, Everest became so dangerously ill that he could not carry on with the Survey, and work was suspended.
England was the solution to these problems. In November of 1825, Everest returned to England, bringing with him the mathematical observations and calculations for the Great Arc thus far. For the next five years he worked on improvements for the survey and compiled an account of the work achieved between the parallels of 18 degrees 03' and 24 degrees 07'. Everest spent a great deal of time in the workshop of instrument-makers Troughton and Simms, where an additional 36" theodolite, a new zenith sector, and six small theodolites were under construction. Of the last, Everest wrote: "I have devoted some consideration to the improvement of the common theodolite which is both cumbersome and more expensive than need be and after frequent examination of all the best devices I could meet with in the shape of the various makers in London, Mr. Simms has at my suggestion designed an instrument which contains all the useful parts of the old construction, is quite free from superfluous apparatus and is cheaper by one-fourth...The model has only a 5 inch diameter but the principle is so perfectly applicable to all instruments for secondary triangles that I should respectfully recommend the propriety of adopting this as the Honorable East India Company's form for all small theodolites not exceeding 12 inches diameter and preserving on all future occasions the strictest uniformity."
The next issue Everest addressed was the measuring of distances. He learned of Col. Colby's work with compensating bars on the Irish Survey, and visited him there in 1829. Being very much impressed with Colby's system, he acquired a double set of six bars for the Great Trigonometrical Survey, and practiced with them at Greenwich.
At the same time, Everest produced a clever document which summarized the repair and replacement needs of the Survey, showing that the most cost-effective solution was to have an instrument maker placed in India. His request was granted, and Henry Barrow was appointed to the job. Later, in India, it was Barrow who laboriously repaired the damaged Cary theodolite, earning his praise from Everest: "I must do that artist (Barrow) the justice to say that for excellence of workmanship, accuracy of division, steadiness, regularity, and glibness of motion, and the general neatness, elegance and nice fitting of all its parts, not only were my expectations exceeded but I really think it is as a whole as unrivalled in the world as it is unique."
In June of 1830, George Everest returned to India, this time as Surveyor General, in addition to his post as superintendent of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. During the first year he spent little time on field work, as he organized general mapping surveys. Everest's first work on the Arc was to create a baseline near Dehra Dun using the Colby compensating bars. The 39,183.783 foot baseline was meticulously surveyed, using every precaution to safeguard its accuracy. He then connected the Dehra Dun baseline to the Sironj baseline, a distance of over 400 miles, using a triangulation gridiron. This was across a vast plain, which necessitated the construction of masonry towers, designed by Everest, most of them 50 feet high. The great theodolite was then hoisted to the top, and Everest performed and recorded the observations. By day, heliotropes were placed on distant points, reflecting bright flashes of sunlight towards the survey towers. On days when refraction became a problem, observations were taken at night, using an Indian version of the reverberatory lamp which could be seen for thirty miles, and sometimes by using cylindrical blue lights whose visible range could exceed fifty miles. Transportation was interesting; a typical foray included 4 elephants for the tiger-wary principals, 30 horses for the military officers, and 42 camels for supplies and equipment. The 700 or so laborers traveled on foot. Progress was steady; by May of 1836 half of the gap between Sironj and Dehra Dun had been completed, and the rest was completed the following season.
Everest next turned his attention to astronomical observations throughout the arc of meridian, especially at Kalianpur (24 degrees 07'). Unfortunately, ill health prevented him from completing this task, so it was Andrew Waugh who stepped in to finish the job, including re-measuring the Bidar baseline with the Colby compensating bars. The subsequent error of closure between the observed and computed length of the Bidar base, after 425 miles and 85 triangles from Sironj, was 0.36 feet in a line length of 41,578 feet.
By 1841, twenty-three years had passed from the time Everest had first begun work on the Great Arc. It would take him two more years to complete the computations, and compile the results before he retired and returned to England.
In 1848, he was awarded high honors by the Royal Astronomical Society. In making the presentation, Sir John Herschel said: 'The Great Meridianal Arc of India is a trophy of which any nation, or any government of the world would have reason to be proud, and will be one of the most enduring monuments of their power and enlightened regard for the progress of human knowledge."
POSTSCRIPT:
It is not known whether or not George Everest ever laid his eyes on the great mountain that bears his name, but his triangulation network was extended and used to locate the summit by Andrew Waugh, Everest's successor as Surveyor General in India. Waugh's admiration of Everest's achievements led to the naming of "Peak XV" in the Himalayas. After its discovery by his team, Waugh, wrote: "...here is a mountain most probably the highest in the world without any local name that I can discover...", so he proposed "...to perpetuate the memory of that illustrious master of geographical research...Everest."
WARREN HASTINGS
Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of India, learnt Sanskrit and studied Indian philosophy and literature. He commissioned Charles Wilkins to translate Bhagavad Gita into English and got it printed – both at government expense. Not only that, he wrote a foreword stating that “Long after Britain ceases to be an Empire, Bhagavad Gita will illumine the world for ever. The government of Independent India dared not do what Hastings did. To add insult to injury and to show its ingratitude, Government of India changed the road in Delhi named after Warren Hastings and renamed it as VK Krishna Menon Road.
Railways
Britain laid 56,000 route kilometers of Railway line, covering the whole country, which India inherited. Indians are condemning the British, saying that British did this out of selfishness to carry raw materials to Britain and send back finished goods to markets in India. But British laid Railway lines to Rameswaram and many holy cities, which had no commercial significance. They covered all cities and villages all over India. Not only that, the British knew the culture of our country, and catered to it. They laid wide platforms to facilitate receiving and sending off friends and relatives because of high affiliation. They planned for 100 years. There were only 50 passengers to go from Mumbai to Thane in 1853. Yet they built 18 platforms which now used by millions.
Railways have contributed significantly for unifying the country. After Independence, during last 60 years, we could hardly add 10,000 km, which shows our poor concept of the role of Railways. China had added 60,000 kms during the same period. They run high speed trains, while we have not made any progress.
Britain built magnificent Railway stations, such as the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai. All we could do was to change its name to CST. We could not put up one single Railway Station of that size and beauty. We are only changing the names of the magnificent buildings built by great British people, who did so much for India, particularly Railways.
Hill Stations
Britain developed many Hill Station. Ungrateful Indians condemned them, saying that these Hill Stations were made for the white Baboos. But Independent India could not make one Hill Station compared to Shimla, Darjeeling, Ooty, Connoor, Kodaikanal, etc. We are enjoying the Cities, Universities, Clubs and institutions built by them. Sitting there we are condemning them.
Naming of Streets
In most cities and towns, the names of British people have been removed and renamed them after petty politicians, who have almost done nothing for the country. This shows how ungrateful we are. Our scriptures say: “Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavanthu” Yet our prejudice remains even now. Independent India, while removing British names, dared not remove the names of those who plundered and belittled India. The names of Tuglak, Aurangazeb, Babar, Shahjahan and hundred others still adorn Indian streets. We dare not change the names of cities named after Muslim conquerors who plundered our temples and disfigured our deities. We enjoy kicking the British, while being proud of the Muslim rulers who humiliated us.
Freedom Movement
Our national leaders – Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and hundred others – did fight for freedom. Gandhiji adopted ‘non-cooperation and civil resistance’ as weapons of his movement. Hundreds took to fasting to garner public opinion and to pressurize the British. If it were any nation other than the British, they would have shot Gandhi dead. It was Britain’s magnanimity and observance of the rule of law that made it possible for us to obtain freedom without violence. There was no major lathi charge except the one in Choupathy, which is being telecast on every important occasion to show that British were cruel. But Independent India dared not to show any of the major atrocities of Mulim rulers. Our police are adopting lathi charge or shooting every day. Mr. Dyer who massacred innocent people was condemned by the British including, Churchil, in the Parliament. We resort to shooting every other day. British friends had warned us “not break the law”. Yet we did then, and now lawlessness prevails everywhere. We condemn the British bureaucracy in India. Yet our leaders use the same system to block progress. We have not even changed TA/DA form designed by the British.
British Conquest and Rule
Thought it is not popular and pleasant to say so it has to be admitted that it was the British conquest and rule that enabled the Indian cultural entity to become a Nation State. When the British came, India was divided into 500 and odd princely states. A major part of India was under Muslim rule. What would have happened if British did not come can only be guessed. They introduced rule of law, democratic system, educational institutions and hundreds of modern institutions, which are essential for a Nation State to exist. They built an excellent Armed Force, which is considered to be one of the best in the world. Like that, hundreds of pages can be written on how much we owe to Britain. But so far our leaders and intellectuals are not prepared to admit our indebtedness to India to Britain. Therefore, this humble publication pays a tribute to all the Britishers, who, in spite of being our masters, had a great liking for India and made enormous contributions to transform Indian into a modern state. Let us not forget that we are doing well in technology and international relations because of the English language, through which India’s ancient thought and wisdom are today accessible to the whole world. Our first issue described a few of the comments by eminent historians, like Will Durant, Arnold Toynbee, Thoreau, Emerson ,etc. who popularized Indian philosophy worldwide. Many Britishers helped India by championing India’s cause for freedom. Their Statues have been removed and replaced. 400 institutions are named after members of one family. Aurangazeb destroyed the Saranath temple. A Britisher restored it. Aurangazeb, who made us pay tax to remain as a Hindu, is the most prestigious road. Britain did not help evangelists to convert to Christianity, as the Muslim leaders did.
Since there is so much ingratitude and indifference to British contributions to India, this humble publication wishes to show its deep indebtedness to British for what they did for India for enabling to preserve her ancient thought and wisdom and to become a modern civilized nation.
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Acknowledgement
Albert Schweitzer : Indian Thought & its Development.
Franz Verde : Hindu Philosophy
Hinduism Today : Journal Published in USA
S. Gopalakrishna Rao
Editor, Jeevana, Bangalore: Mysticism in Indian Philosophy
Wikipedia : Internet Resource for Biographies
of Western Exponents
Mythic Society of Idia – Bangalore
We gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to the above from whom we have accessed and adapted some material in this booklet.
Prof. Ramaswamy Padma Bhushan & National Research Professor in Management , Founder Director IIM Bangalore, Director NITIE. Kindly become a Member of INDIAN HERITAGE ACADEMY (IHA) and give donation to IHA and support our Mission in order to protect India’s Unity and Culture Monthly Journal will be sent free. We welcome your Feedback/views/articles and we shall publish them.
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