Swami has the last word

At the Audie Awards in New York this June, FIVE of the awards were won by Audio Connoisseur! This is the label for Charlton Griffin, voice-over artist, winner of numerous awards in the past. It’s Charlton who has produced our own "Waking Up", the CD of the booklet introducing Vedanta.

Congratulations, Charlton!

 

Daizetz Suzuki, the well-known Zen authority, said that if he had known what Ginsburg, Alan Watts and so on were going to do with what he had written, he would never have written the books.

At the Vedanta Monastery at Trabuco Canyon he gave the opinion that probably Buddhism has been deficient in the path of devotion.

Would you like to know what a prominent monk of the Ramakrishna Order has to say about stem-cell research? You’d better, because such opinions are difficult to come by! Our monks don’t generally take stands on specific questions of ethics or public policy, especially “hot topics.”

Here is one who has dared to do so: he is Swami Tyagananda, Head of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society of Massachusetts in Boston, and a chaplain at MIT:

Everything "new" that appears on the canvas of human consciousness has to make peace with everything "old" that is already there. While science can take care of the "what" and the "how" of everything, religious traditions have typically dealt with the thorny questions regarding the "why"--why is something right or acceptable and why is something wrong or not acceptable. Typically, again, religious traditions tend to express their views by referring to a transcendent reality and by depending on the insights from one or more sacred texts that embody the wisdom of that tradition.

There is no single authoritative voice that can speak for the entire tradition or community. Just as there can be inter-faith differences in perspective, there are as many, sometimes more, intra-faith differences as well. I am offering a Hindu perspective--not "the" Hindu perspective--on the issues related to stem cell research. One of the reasons for the presence of a wide spectrum of views even within a single tradition is that many of the postmodern researches deal with possibilities that were not even thought of in the ancient sacred texts of religious traditions. So giving a religious perspective involves interpretation--and that usually means a wide variety of viewpoints.

There are several aspects that need to be considered regarding stem cell research, the most basic being the concepts of life and consciousness. When does a tree become a "tree"? Can the embryo be considered a "fellow human being"? According to Hinduism, the human soul--the true Self (or atman)--is the spiritual component of our personality, and is distinct from both the mind as well as the body. Death is defined as destruction of the body; birth is the acquiring of a new body. The soul is not really "born"; it is the body that is born. The soul does not "die"--it is the body that dies.

According to the Hindus, life begins at conception and they respect the sanctity of life. They also recognize that life and death go together, and cannot be separated from each other. If we study the food-chain, it becomes obvious how the survival of one living organism is often at the expense of another living organism. When a hungry lion eats a deer, it is not an ethically wrong act. It is not bad karma. However, consciously destroying life--one’s own or somebody else’s--is bad karma unless it is done in extraordinary, unavoidable circumstances, and always for greater good.

In Hindu mythology, there is the story of Dadhichi, the sage whose bones were sought by the gods to eliminate a demon. The sage gladly agreed, for the demon had to be destroyed for the good of the world. Far from characterizing Dadhichi’s act as suicide and condemning it, the Hindu tradition glorifies him and holds his sacrifice for greater good as a model for people everywhere.

So the question that Hindus may ask is: can the destruction of the embryos in stem cell research be considered as an "extraordinary, unavoidable circumstance" and an act "done for greater good"? If it is, the Hindu tradition will accept the research as ethically justified.

There can be other problems, though, that may test the limits of an ethical consideration. For instance, what would be the source for getting a fresh supply of stem cells? From the Hindu perspective, it will be acceptable if the donation is voluntary and for scientific knowledge, not if it is a transaction with commercial potential. Although there are religious ceremonies and rituals involved while cremating the dead, the donation of the body for medical research has been accepted by the Hindu tradition as ethical, even praiseworthy.

Another question that can be asked is: who would be the beneficiaries of this research? If the benefits of the research are distributed equally to all--and not only to those who have enough wealth to afford the enormous cost of high-tech medicine--then the enterprise may look ethically less problematic. And this will probably be tough, if our experience is anything to go by with regard to the gross lack of availability and accessibility of drugs for the economically backward AIDS patients all over the world. Taxpayers’ money spent in research, unfortunately, does not bring equal benefits to all taxpayers.

These are a few of the questions--there are certainly more--that come to my mind, and I hope that the discussions today will help us think more clearly about the issues involved.

Monastic life is one of the human phenomena least understood by the public at large. Even some of those who have actually tried it out-and left it-must have missed essential elements which one would have expected them to discover. Firstly it is necessary to make clear the distinctions between the life of the professed monk and the celibate life of the Roman Catholic priest. Perhaps there are priests who can live basically in retreat; i.e., spend long hours in solitude, closing their doors, meeting parishioners only when necessary, devoting much time to prayer and meditation. I think they are few; most priests face a barrage of socializing activity: conversation, consultation, demand for sympathy, for a listening ear, even for money. They must live in the world and of the world as well.

Now how can a man or a woman be expected to maintain a celibate life under the whirl of such a society and environment as today's? It is a nigh-impossible demand.

In the Indian monastic tradition it is laid down that the candidate will practice continence in thought, word and deed; well understood that only having begun in this way will he or she be invulnerable to the "pull" of the world. When the surroundings are filled with sexual advertisements and lures, is it any wonder that the unprotected priest falls victim to heedless moments of weakness? In India, monks generally are not priests; priests are professional, married men who are paid, either by the temple or similar institution or hired by other laymen to perform functions in the home etc. It is only in recent times, beginning with the Ramakrishna Order founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1894, that certain monks have been deputed to do some of the things priests do, and more. The Sankarite and other monastic orders in India have taken up the example and ideal inaugurated by Swami Vivekananda (whether they credit him or not). There, in India, where society's standard is understood, the life-vows are less at risk than in the West, where Swamis of the Ramakrishna Order doing public work are truly put to the test.

The question is: how can monks or priests, who are vowed to continence, secure their ideal in the face of the constant contrary stimuli from the surroundings.

I should like to suggest that the method must be a positive one.

As monastics, we are not turning our backs on love, affection or intimacy with the hearts of others; not at all. We are turning from the limited, "short-circuited" mode of experiencing that, to an unlimited, universal mode of experiencing the oneness of two, of many, and of all. Using the language of the path of devotion, one could say love and devotion find their end and fulfillment only when the Beloved is the absolute and universal Being, reflecting in all of existence. Attaining that, the aspirant reaches the acme of divine love. This is the true struggle of the spiritual life. Monasticism is one of the ways: many find it convenient and helpful; for some it seems completely necessary.

It hardly needs to be said that the striving more easily succeeds where a group of like-minded persons are the aspirant's "family." Many have testified to the advantage of monastery life over the solitary struggle.

I once had a conversation with a brother about the problem of control of the senses, especially sexual desire. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of his reply: "Ever since I learned to really meditate, that has no longer been a problem for me." That's the thing! It will nag and nag at us unless we find that higher expression of "the libido" in mystical awareness and experience. That is what so many would-be celibates fail to find. Why? Generally because they have inadequate teachers. Sometimes the novice-master or the spiritual director is advanced and able enough to move the candidate into the world of true contemplation, but that is all too rare. Men and women therefore miss the goal of "the life" through no fault of their own. That must be especially so for the Catholic priests, who have even less training in spiritual techniques. No doubt one of the greatest factors in the success of monasticism in India is the Guru-disciple relationship and practice. But that is a subject for another day.

But what has disturbed and puzzled me lately--actually over a period of many years--is the defection of brother monks who have had association and instruction from highly advanced teachers, and who have "lived the life" for a number of years, then abruptly given it up at a relatively mature age. These would seem to give evidence against the thesis proposed above. Or did they never really penetrate to the joy of contemplation and its fruits in one's life? Or perhaps self-control was not the problem at all: they found some other aspect of monastery life intolerable or undesirable. In that case it may be they plan to remain celibate, continent, as they move into "the world." Very difficult. With all the best will in the world, in case after case they "come-a-cropper."

Is there something defective at the very heart of the monastic pattern? Swami Vivekananda said in a lecture in California: "I am not a very great believer in monastic systems. They have great merits and also great defects." The one that concerned him was the social power the monk wielded in India, and of course he designed an organization to harness that. But there are others, such as possible misogyny and over-introversion.

I am tempted to say that if one "falls in love with God," persisting in the monastic ideal is much more likely. But then, what about Buddhist monks in those orders where there is no tradition of divine personality? Many of them have lived the life continuously to the end. Hindu and Buddhist traditions differ, of course, in the respect that in the former, "going back to the world" is a fall, a disgrace, whereas in most Buddhist orders one can go back and forth between monastic and non-monastic life without censure.

The long-term goal of Vedantic monastic life is, of course, the "realization of God", or Enlightenment or Self-Realization--all referring to the same thing. As everyone knows, this may take not only a lifetime, but perhaps more than one; or, if the teacher is powerful and the student prepared, as in the case of Narendranath Datta, it can be a matter of months or a few years. In any case, if there are still to be monks and nuns, they need short-term goals as well; they need to have targets closer within reach which they may have some reasonable hope of striking. At least for Westerners, it does not seem to me feasible to expect young people of today to "put on ice" all their ambitions for ego-expression, "self-fulfillment' (in the relative sense} no matter how idealistic or spiritual those may be. It is true that Swami Ashokananda and Swami Prabhavananda, the two most prominent abbots of recent times in the West, expected and demanded just that. This was the ideal of absolute renunciation put before us. We, however, the young of the 40's and 50's, were a different kind of animal: some had had military or draft experience; some came from a strong church habit and culture; such are rarely found today. Swami Ashokananda said to me, "If you just want enlightenment for yourself, you can get that, and then go off and live as you like. But if you wish to bring others to the same state, you have to renounce and be monastic."

It is well known that the scientific community, anatomists and physiologists, find the yoga explanation of the need for continence (the transformation of the human seed into ojas in the brain) naïve, amusing and nonsense. Let them be true scientists and pronounce on what they have experimented with; explanations aside, something of the kind occurs in a longtime continent individual, as thousands through the ages can testify.