I
n being with you this morning, I have once again the happy feeling of returning home—not that I had ever left. In the three decades of my career as a civil servant I never ceased to be a student, never ceased to know the excitement and joy of knowledge unfolding. Blessed are the students who learn the joy of knowing. Blessed are the teachers who, in teaching, know the joy of learning about knowing quite as much. Blessed is their togetherness in seeking to know, the saha of knowledge celebrated in the Upanishad, when together they also learn that knowing alone is not sufficient for living in the full worth of being human.
In every journey Indian philosophy made towards understanding man and the world, self-knowledge, atma-jnana, was the first destination. That reached, self-knowledge was the way to human freedom; indeed, self-knowledge was seen as already the freedom of the self. The knowing of the self was prized highly, and sought most earnestly. It was repeatedly being said, in different voices, through different circumstances of life, but with a common emphasis:
Self-knowledge is the highest knowledge, and there is nothing greater than truth.1
‘Pleasure’ and ‘pain’; the workings of desire; self-interest; the attitudes towards having and not-having; sexual impulse; the appetites and their range; the relation among the body and the mind and the will, feelings and emotions, health and sickness; the logic of acts and their recompense; the life-in-family or the life-alone; the dilemmas that arise when there is a straight conflict between right and what is also right and both inviolable; social arrangements; foundations of law and governance; the questions concerning memory and the past, and freedom from history; the question of truth and untruth; the question of causality; the foundations of life, dharma, and their uprooting, adharma; the relation between the transient and the abiding, and hidden somewhere between them the meaning of life and the meaning of death: in the knowing of all these is the knowing of the self and the knowing of the other, both inseparable. It is so today as well, in the times in which we live our lives, and see the drama of life unfold for us.
But what is this ‘Self’, atman, the knowledge of which is being sought so very earnestly? On this, there are among the Indian thinkers huge differences, and quarrels no less, that became increasingly bitter. ‘There is no Self’; ‘nowhere is a permanent Self to be found’, the Buddha concludes; giving reasons why he thinks the way he does: hence his famous doctrine of anatta, ‘no-Self’. What is believed to be the entity called ‘Self’, atman, which is believed, moreover, to be eternal and beyond change, is in actual reality only a conglomerate of five distinct physical and psychological attributes, skandha-s, of which the human person is composed. He lists them as rupa, the body and the sense organs; vedana, feelings of pain and pleasure or neither, just indifference; sanna, conceptual knowledge; sankhara, compound of sensations, feelings and concepts; and vijnana, consciousness, as the fifth. In their composition countless, they are changing each moment besides, in a constant flux, arising in one moment, and gone in the next. However, because of the seeming coherence and the semblance of continuity in experience, they produce the mistaken notion of the ‘Self’. But apart from them, the Buddha maintained, there is no ‘Self’ that is unchanging, permanent, eternal.
Giving reasons why, the Buddha is rejecting the prevalent view of the Self, being put forth in the Upanishad-s and in the Samkhya and the Yoga schools of philosophy. The Buddha is perfectly familiar with what they are saying the Self is, and also with their reasoning. They all hold, in common, that there is an eternal substance, distinct both from the body and the mind, indeed from everything phenomenal. This conclusion has been reached in the Upanishad-s by identifying the self, in stages, first wholly with the gross physical body, then with vital life-force, then with will, then with mind, then with ego: and since each of these steps lead to a view of the Self which further reflection shows to be false, finally concluding that there is something else besides, distinct from them all, the atman. It is neither born nor does it die; is eternal; is complete in itself: pure existence, pure consciousness, and pure bliss.
But the agreement stops there. As to the nature of the atman as the Self, there have been such divergent views among them that they do not seem to be talking of the same Self. The divergence became pronounced on the question as to how the entity that is beyond birth and death then gets encased, trapped as it were, in a body which is born and which decays and dies. That is, the relation between the unmanifest Self and the manifest self. The differences among the believers in an abiding eternal atman became even more pronounced on the question of the relation between the atman–the purusha of the Samkhya philosophy—and the physical apparatus of perception on the one hand, and between the atman and the will on the other. The Samkhya concept of the purusha as the Self is radically different from the rest, and has been adopted by the Yoga school of philosophy, too. Those who believe in the existence of a permanent eternal Self, have quite as many quarrels with each other as they have with the doctrine of ‘no-self’. The Jaina philosophers, with their characteristic method of perceiving truth as ‘many-sided’, anekanta-vada, are saying that there is some truth in the respective teachings concerning the Self of both these groups, but in making such absolute assertions about the Self as they do, both are equally wrong.
The Upanishad-s and the Buddha are equally wrong in yet another way, which is even more important to know. Surendranath Dasgupta points out that the reason why the Upanishad thought the Self to be bliss, ananda, is because it is eternal. “But the converse statement that what was not eternal was sorrow does not appear to be emphasized clearly in the Upanishad-s. The important postulate of the Buddha is that that which is changing is sorrow, and whatever is sorrow is not self.”2 Quoting from Samyutta Nikaya, Dasgupta further says: “the early Pali scriptures hold that we could nowhere find out such a permanent essence, any constant self, in our changing experiences. All were but changing phenomena and therefore sorrow and therefore non-self, and what was non-self was not mine, neither I belonged to it, nor did it belong to me as my self.”3 Both, the thinkers of the Upanishad-s and the Buddha, are together in assuming that bliss and sorrow, ananda and duhkha, are causally connected with duration. They completely part company when the Upanishad-s assume ananda, ‘bliss’, to be the essence of man, and the Buddha assumes its very opposite, that duhkha, ‘sorrow’, is that essence, and both proceed to build their respective worldviews, their philosophies of the self, on two entirely different foundations. The later developments in Indian philosophy could not but take into account the reality of duhkha that enfolds the human self, and therefore shared the concerns of the Buddha, but aspired for ananda and its unfolding in the self, and therefore spoke in the language of the Upanishad. The two languages are spoken side by side, with shifting emphasis now on pain and suffering and then on joy and bliss.
If the self in self-knowledge, atma-jnana, got enfolded and encased in the conflicting perceptions of self, the knowledge in self-knowledge did not remain untouched either, and got enfolded and encased in the equally conflicting perceptions of knowledge. Both, self and knowledge, are being interpreted for most part in the particular framework a philosophical school has adopted. This is not to be interpreted, though, to mean that for that reason they had value limited only to the adherents of that particular school. However, while the questions concerning knowledge became increasingly more sophisticated and technical, touching every aspect of human cognition, the fundamental questions as regards knowing have remained urgent concerns not just of philosophers but of ordinary men and women everywhere. How do we know? What are the means to knowledge? How do we know that what we know is free from error? What is the nature of error in knowing and how is one led to it? What is truth and what are its criteria? And these questions relate in the first place to the knowing of the self and the knowing of the other in their mutual relationship in living one’s life.
That bliss and sorrow are dependent upon duration seems to have been a prevalent view even before the Buddha, as in the Upanishad-s for example. It is not different today either. It seems to be one of the most durable human notions. From a lover’s cry of wanting to know if he, or she, would be loved always, to the philosopher’s search beyond the phenomenal for what is not subject to change, runs the enduring human need for the abiding and its certainty. And this need is accompanied invariably by anxiety and fear that it might not be. In a radical shift, the Mahabharata teaches that because something is transitory and changing, it does not necessarily follow that therefore it is also sorrow. Nor does it necessarily follow that because a thing is permanent, therefore it is also bliss. As we will see presently, this is of great importance in freeing our self from being enfolded in a false logic even before the journey of self-knowledge begins.
Also Read: Dharma: Hinduism and Religions in India. Chaturvedi Badrinath. An Excerpt
There have been in the history of human thought two revolutions of continuing meaning to human life: that of the Upanishad, and the other of the Mahabharata. And they were not far apart in time. The revolution of the Upanishad-s is known; that of the Mahabharata, almost unknown.
The upanishadic revolution consisted in lifting the human mind from ritual acts to understanding, from the sound of mantra to the sound of inquiry. The self is the subject of inquiry. Life is the subject of meditation.
The revolution of the Mahabharata consists in showing, as the Upanishad-s had done, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual attributes of the Self as a unity, in their relatedness with each other, in which nothing could be understood if fragmented from the rest. The Self is a being in relation with itself. At the same time the Self is a being in relation with the other. The two are inseparable. The revolution of the Mahabharata consists in uniting self-awareness with the awareness of the other, in uniting self-knowledge with the knowledge of the other. And with both these, uniting one’s life with the life of the other. It is even a deeper revolution than that of the Upanishad-s in so far as it is rooted in the concrete empirical realties of human experience, and therefore in the questions that invariably arise from their complexities.
What I most want to do this morning is to place before you a very brief outline of the three main features of the revolution of the Mahabharata; for in the historical conditions of the modern times, they are even of more special relevance than ever before.4 In the knowing of the self and the other they liberate us first from the enfolding of concepts and theories—from the concepts of enfolding, parigraha, itself most of all.
(i)
‘Self-knowledge’ in the Mahabharata is not limited to the knowledge of the atman being the eternal reality of all living beings. Neither is the knowledge of the atman, the big Self, considered sufficient to enable us to live in the full worth of being human. If it were, then nothing more would really be left ‘to know’, ‘to understand’, ‘to unfold’. Through every human story it narrates, the Mahabharata shows how much is still left to know and to understand and to unfold, to know one’s self above all, through the complexities of situations and contexts. In the story of the humbling of an arrogant scholar and ascetic, the ordinary unnamed woman was not reminding him that he was the atman that is eternal, but curing him of his notion that because he had mastered knowledge he had mastered also his self, which he had not. The knowledge of being the eternal atman is still no prevention of arrogance and bad manners. Nor has it ever been any prevention of injustice and violence.
Self-knowledge is not a solitary exercise. Nor is the eternal atman a first and fundamental requisite in the knowing of the self. Self-knowledge is through contexts and situations in which one finds oneself, and also which one creates for oneself. It is through the given and the self-created that, understanding one’s self in the distinctive character of one’s self as a person, one begins to have also the knowledge of one’s self as a fragment of a common human reality. That is the journey—of understanding the self and the world, on which the Mahabharata takes us. And in that journey, it first whispers into our ears, without making a metaphysic of it: belief in the atman is of no particular help, nor is disbelief in any such entity any particular hindrance.
(ii)
By that radical shift in the knowing of the self, the Mahabharata demonstrates the commonly experienced truth that the whole conscious creation, and thus also the self, is a complex field of energy. That is first stated as an essential part of the Samkhya metaphysics, which the Mahabharata generally adopts. Then in its own radical shift, it quietly disconnects the two. Set aside as ‘fanciful’, which the Nyaya-Vaisheshika metaphysics would, the Samkhya doctrine of Purusha and Prakriti, the Self and the Nature, as two absolutely distinct and separate entities, Purusha somehow getting entangled in the games of Prakriti, and is to liberate its own self from them. But the Samkhya view of the three forms of energy flowing through life will remain experientially true. There is the energy in the self that brings love and joy and clarity and inner peace, sattva. There is the energy that brings dissatisfaction, discontent, aggression and greed, rajas. And there is the energy that depresses, disturbs, suffocates, chokes, tamas. All these three energies, acting upon each other, in different proportions, at different times, are the natural elements of being human. Even without its elaborate metaphysics, it will remain experientially true that the self is a field of these three energies. Independent of the Samkhya ontology of the Self as purusha, which is what one has to know that one is, it will remain experientially true that, with self-knowledge and self-discipline, the self can channel the energies that flow within. That is what the Mahabharata is mainly concerned with—not the knowledge whether there is, or there is not, the eternal atman, but with the living of our lives in dharma. The one is not a pre-requisite for the other. But neither is the knowledge of anatta, that there is no such entity as the eternal Self, any pre-requisite for creating the energies of love and its togetherness, and not the energies of hatred and its isolation.
And what is dharma? In no other philosophical system is dharma described in such clear and straightforward terms as in the Mahabharata. Also, since no other idea has been enfolded more in all kinds of meanings attached to it, and thus obscured, it is necessary to know what it really means. The following give the substance of what the Mahabharata is clearly saying dharma is. And dharma is the manifest foundation upon which life and relationships rest.
All the sayings of dharma are with a view to nurturing, cherishing, providing more amply, enriching, increasing, enhancing, all living beings: that is, securing their prabhava. Therefore, whatever has the characteristic of bringing that about, is dharma. This is certain.5
All the sayings of dharma are with a view to supporting, sustaining, bringing together, and in their togetherness upholding, all living beings: securing their dharana. Therefore whatever has the characteristic of doing that, is dharma. This is certain.6edng
All the sayings of dharma are with a view to securing for all living beings freedom from violence, ahimsa. Therefore, whatever has the characteristic of not doing violence, is dharma. This is certain.7
Conversely, whatever has the characteristic of depriving, starving, diminishing, separating, uprooting, hurting, doing violence, debasing and degrading, is the negation of dharma. Whatever brings those about, is, in one word, adharma. To say it differently:
Whatever has its beginning in justice, that alone is called dharma: whatever is unjust and oppressive, is adharma. This is the rule settled by those who can be respected.8
And both, dharma and adharma, are energy in relation to one’s self and the other.
(iii)
In talking of injustice and oppression, and of their violence, we almost always talk of injustice and violence to the other, and talk of the oppression of the other. That this is plainly so, will become plainly clear by reading the tracts of various political ideologies, or the tracts of social reform, by reading any one of them. They all set out to change the world. And for changing the world, they have violently conflicting prescriptions. In reading any one of them, it also becomes plainly clear that injustice, oppression and violence are attributed primarily to one’s fear and the hatred of the other. At least three millennia ago, the Mahabharata had shown, not in the abstract but in concrete human terms, how one does violence to one’s self also. And there is the fear and the oppression of the self by the self. Self-love often conceals self-hatred.
In this context, the Mahabharata narrates the story of the war the King Alarka had declared on his physical sense organs and faculties.9 He had expanded his kingdom greatly, by bringing under his control new domains. But he was also a deeply reflective person, who now wanted to conquer the inner domain of his self; which he thought he could achieve by means of the same weapons with which he had conquered much else. He said to himself:
“It is with the power of the mind that I have conquered what I have. If I can conquer this mind, I would have a conquest that is abiding. Not shooting my arrows at the enemies outside, I would shoot my arrows at the enemies that are within instead. It is this restless and fickle mind which prompts all human actions: and it is this mind that I will now attack with my deadly arrows, and gain freedom.”10
The Mind laughed mockingly, and said to Alarka:
“These arrows of yours cannot touch me, Alarka. They will only destroy an intimate part of your own self, and it is you who will die. Think of some other weapon with which you can conquer me.”11
Alarka reflected for a while; and, in quick succession, threatened his physical sense organs: his nose, his tongue, his skin, his ears, and his eyes. For, he reckoned,
“It is my nose which, enjoying many fragrances, longs for more”.
It is my tongue which, enjoying many tastes, longs for more.
It is my skin which, enjoying a great many touch, longs for more.
It is my ears which, enjoying many sounds, long for more.
It is my eyes which, enjoying many sights, long for more.”12
And each one of them, in turn, said to him in identical words what the Mind had said:
“These arrows of yours cannot touch me, Alarka. They will only destroy an intimate part of your self, and it is you who will die. Think of some other weapon with which you can conquer me.”
Finally, Alarka threatens his Intellect; for he reckoned that it is Intellect, with its power, that makes all kinds of misleading resolutions. If he could destroy his Intellect by his arrows, he would have had a great conquest. And he receives from his Intellect the same reply that he had received from his mind and his physical sense organs.13
After meditating for a long while, he concluded that it is by bringing them in a unity that he will conquer his mind, body, and the intellect. Alarka discovered that he had mistakenly declared war on himself, which was not the way of achieving freedom of the self.14
The Mahabharata shows that to be at war with one’s self is to be at war with everyone else. Therefore it has no prescriptions for changing the world, but many suggestions on how to return to our self in the inherent unity of human attributes, which will soon return the self to the other in that very unity, in joy and freedom.
(iv)
Let us next consider briefly another feature of the revolution of the Mahabharata, which is even of more urgent relevance to our lives today. It consists in the Mahabharata showing us that when concepts and theories about life and relationships encompass, encircle, and engulf us, that enfolding is even greater violence to the self than any other. Therefore, the Mahabharata unfolds the deeper meanings of what had become absolute one-dimensional concepts, such as tyaga, ‘renunciation’, tirtha, ‘pilgrimage’, moksha, ‘liberation’, moha, ‘the confusion of attraction’, anitya, ‘the transitory’, tamas, interpreted as ‘darkness’, and parigraha, ‘to enfold’, ‘to grasp’. They had become words of common vocabulary, as they are today, in which moha and tamas and parigraha are portrayed as enemy. The Mahabharata will give them deeply relational meanings, and show how those meanings will be relative to desha, kala and patra, ‘the context’, ‘the time’, and ‘the person concerned’, and have different levels of meaning besides, which unfold gradually. It will do so, most of all, in the natural context of the life-in-family, grihastha-ashrama. It shows, what was always evident though, that the natural bonds of love and affection, and those not necessarily within the family, are not to be renounced to seek self-knowledge. Rather, it is in being enfolded by love and caring, and in enfolding likewise, that there is the true unfolding of the self in his, or her, distinct person. For us to go into those details will require a different context than this, and certainly very much longer time, even if the patra here, ‘the persons concerned’, remain the same.
Moha and tamas and parigraha are not our enemies, but the natural attributes of our being human. To be in fear of them is to be in fear of our self. To wage war against them is to wage war against our self, only to be followed quickly by waging war against the other. If only we can learn to salute moha and tamas as well, they will be our friends, even the light on our journey through life.
To un-know the self is the way to know the self. To free myself from what I am being told I am, but equally also from what I have told myself I am. The restless engulfing of ‘I want to become this, I want to become that, or both, this and that, simultaneously.’ Or the other demanding that I become this, or I become that. And the range of wanting to become, or being asked to become, is very wide. It is only when we un-become that we know the deepest joy of being. In a suggestion that is overwhelming, the Mahabharata is saying to us:
Leave the polarity of dharma and adharma, truth and untruth: then renounce the faculty with which they were renounced: that done, renounce even the awareness that anything has been renounced at all.15
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[1] Vana-parva, 216.46; Shanti-parva, 329.12 (Gorakhpur edition of the Mahabharata) [2] Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1922), p.110, quoting from Samyutta Nikaya, III, pp. 44-45ff. [3] Ibid, p. 110. [4] My recently completed study of the Mahabharata as a most systematic inquiry in the human condition is awaiting its publication. [5] Shanti-parva, 109.10 [6] Ibid, 109.11 [7] Ibid, 109.12 [8] Vana-parva, 207.77 [9] Asvamedhika-parva, Anu-Gita, ch. 30 [10] Ibid, 30.5-6 [11] Ibid, 30.7 [12] Ibid, 30.9-22 [13] Ibid, 30.24-5 [14] Ibid, 30.27-31 [15] Shanti-parva, 329.40-1; 331.44
Chaturvedi Badrinath was born in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh. a philosopher, he was a member of the Indian Administrative Service, 1957-89, and served in Tamil Nadu for thirty-one years (1958-89). His other published books are Dharma, India and the World Order: Twenty-one Essays (1993), Introduction to the Kama Sutra (1999), finding Jesus in Dharma: Christianity in India (2000), and The Mahabharata-An Inquiry into the Human Condition (2006). He passed away in Pondicherry in February 2010.
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