Chapter I
Hinduism
ENGLAND
Chapter I
Hinduism
ENGLAND
This chronicle begins with assignment to the Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre in London, where the work was to help with producing the journal, “Vedanta for East and West” and to give some of the scheduled discourses. Very soon a wider work fell to my lot. There are many "public schools" in England, and they are not public at all, in the American sense. Like our private schools they are independently owned and operated. As explained below, I often had to visit these, to speak on Hinduism—it was always "Hinduism," because the word Vedanta was hardly better known in that country than it is in America. One might wonder why the teachers would ask for a talk on Hinduism. British law required them to teach Religion. After the breakup of the Empire and the formation of what was called the Commonwealth, all residents of former colonies had the right to immigrate to Britain. Many came. From the West Indies to Hong Kong, a flood of new faces was found on the streets of Bromley and Southampton, and children of foreign faiths entered schoolrooms even in the countryside. Now, where Anglican Christianity had been so long taught, it became necessary (out of policy or sheer decency) not to foist this onto Muslims and Hindus. The Religious Studies teachers all over the country suddenly had a new syllabus: they would have to teach about many religions instead of one. It was one of the best things that happened in that period and it put Great Britain far ahead of the United States in the spread of knowledge of the world's religions and their adherents.
Responding to the need, a publisher of school textbooks [1] put out a series of little books: The Way of the Jew, The Way of the Sikh, and so on. The Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Centre was asked to do The Way of the Hindu, and our abbot assigned the project to me. In a very short time I had to produce, with the help of an excellent illustrator, The Way of the Hindu for students of what we would call junior high school. It was subsequently widely used. I would go off, then, by British Rail, to these outlying public schools all around London and the central part of England, with my briefcase, carrying essentially the very same summary of Hinduism, with visual materials, to each captive audience. Often, of course, the message was absorbed and appreciated more by the teachers than by the students. On one such occasion I went to a girls’ school in suburban London. The girls were of high school level, and also on quite a high level otherwise, because they sat on high stools at large flat tables. We had met in a laboratory. I had decided to present my material in the form of a dialogue on "Frequently Asked Questions," wherein I posed the questions rhetorically and answered them.
Where is mankind headed, what is our purpose and the meaning of life?
We
are going toward freedom—or better, Freedom, with a capital
F. Freedom is the simplest, broadest way to describe the goal of
life. We all want to be free—to feel that we are unlimited, unconfined.
Some of you may say, "I don't want freedom so much as I want to find
truth!” Vedanta replies, all right, but when you find Truth you will
discover that it is Freedom, so either word is valid. The purpose of
our life is not only to find Truth, however, but to become identified
with it. Truth, or freedom, is not something which, having once found,
one can remain apart from; it is all-absorbing, demanding our total
commitment.
Is this the purpose of every life, then? Are you claiming it is universal?
Yes,
from the least complicated virus to the most exalted human being, god
or angel, all without exception are seeking this Freedom, aware of it
or not. All are in search of Knowledge, Wisdom, Truth, Joy, Reality,
for these, in the last analysis, are synonyms. The whole creation is
going through this intricate process of evolution for but one purpose:
to get out of it and be free. Only the ways in which we try to find the
goal, differ, which is why nature is so varied in its expression.
The bacterium expects to realize its freedom by escaping the
clutches of the predatory virus; the giraffe extends its freedom by
reaching the higher leaves with a longer neck; the politician
seeks office because to him freedom means power—power to act in
the ways he chooses. But all are reading the same basic message in
these different languages.
Put another way, all growth is from inside out; there is That in the heart of life—call it God, the Atman, soul, Brahman, Truth, Freedom—what you will, there is That lying latent within each of us which cannot rest until it has completely manifested itself. In order to do so it takes life after life, century upon century, age after age, wearing now the garb of inorganic matter, tomorrow the garb of the amphibian, next dressed as man and woman, again shining as a Christ, a Buddha, until finally it wakes up and laughs at the whole thing as a wondrous dream.
Put another way, all growth is from inside out; there is That in the heart of life—call it God, the Atman, soul, Brahman, Truth, Freedom—what you will, there is That lying latent within each of us which cannot rest until it has completely manifested itself. In order to do so it takes life after life, century upon century, age after age, wearing now the garb of inorganic matter, tomorrow the garb of the amphibian, next dressed as man and woman, again shining as a Christ, a Buddha, until finally it wakes up and laughs at the whole thing as a wondrous dream.
How is it we do not know that this is our goal? Why wouldn't intelligent human beings be aware of it?
This
requires a two-stage reply. First, some are aware of it: we call them
sages. Where we blindly struggle, they consciously strive toward
freedom. Secondly, for the rest of us, Vedanta offers an explanation
which you may think peculiar: it explains away the problem. There is a
principle, which we call māyā,
a kind of universal ignorance. This principle is not something which
can be fully understood; we cannot, for example, trace its origin. It
is like darkness, in that when you wish to examine it, light is
required, which destroys it. So, we say, Knowledge is that powerful
corrosive in the presence of which ignorance cannot endure, and
dissolves. We do not know how we have come under the sway of this maya,
because even to raise that question is a sign of our ignorance; but we
do know that we can get out of it. Sages have told us so, and have
demonstrated it in their lives.
If this total freedom is the goal, is each of us on our own separate track? Or does the race or society, as such, have a role to play?
Probably both.
Certainly as individuals we are on the move. And here is an important
difference between evolution as understood in Darwinism and as
understood in Vedanta. To the latter it is a "vertical" process. That
which is called the soul, having identified itself for the time being,
because of ignorance, with names and forms, is struggling as it were to
tear off the veils between itself and Reality. That is why, through
coming to birth and dying again and again, it tries to realize itself
in one kind of body after another, moving to forms that are more thinly
veiled, until it reaches the human plane. There, through the light of
intelligence the soul's ultimate awakening can take place. This is an
individual process; like the bubbles at the bottom of a kettle of
boiling water: each bubble rises to its own liberation at the surface.
Of course there is the influence of one individual upon others, a
nudging as it were; and given sufficient time, all the water will boil
off—everyone will be liberated. Darwinism or Neo-Darwinism has a
conception of evolution as a horizontal or rising incline:
evolution of the physical form, and by implication, of intelligence,
but not the soul; and it is of the species, rather than of an
individual. Nothing in Vedanta is contrary to such an outlook, but that
is not its primary orientation.
It is a mistake to think that the Indian proponents of Vedanta cared only for the development of the seeker and nothing for the well-being of the society. That is an erroneous idea which has come to the West partly from persons who never penetrated to the basic concepts of Indian thinking. Either they have not cared to do so, having interests of their own, or for some reason they have been unable. What is important is that Indian society does not make the sovereign, independent individual its basic unit, as do we in the West. There the freedom of the human being, of which we have spoken so much here, is conceived as spiritual, not social. It is the person of self-control, of self-restraint, who is truly free, not the libertine. It is the person of righteousness, dispassion, calmness, compassion and service, who is the product coveted by the body social; hence the vast admiration in India for a Mother Teresa. It is for the emergence of the brahmin and the monk, that the whole of society was supposed to be organized. Social structure was a ladder by which one might climb to the heights of spiritual excellence. It was organized to produce scholars, sages, saints. Social, horizontal movement, was to be much restricted so that movement of the life-force would be upward, so far as possible. And the higher-born the person, the greater the restriction.
The phenomena of the Indian social organization can be understood only as we remember this basic driving motivation: the spiritual evolution of the individual, bringing with it the spiritual development of the society. Ancient India was thus a kind of incubator for the production of men and women of illumination, persons of paramount character, conduct, and courtesy, free from the limitations of ignorance and desire and firmly grounded in Self-knowledge. This is true even today. Under the caste system as originally developed (though not in its present state of corruption), if one person somehow got the means, through wealth or learning or "luck," to raise him or herself to the level of a higher caste, then it was incumbent upon them to work for the upliftment of their entire group to the same level.
It is a mistake to think that the Indian proponents of Vedanta cared only for the development of the seeker and nothing for the well-being of the society. That is an erroneous idea which has come to the West partly from persons who never penetrated to the basic concepts of Indian thinking. Either they have not cared to do so, having interests of their own, or for some reason they have been unable. What is important is that Indian society does not make the sovereign, independent individual its basic unit, as do we in the West. There the freedom of the human being, of which we have spoken so much here, is conceived as spiritual, not social. It is the person of self-control, of self-restraint, who is truly free, not the libertine. It is the person of righteousness, dispassion, calmness, compassion and service, who is the product coveted by the body social; hence the vast admiration in India for a Mother Teresa. It is for the emergence of the brahmin and the monk, that the whole of society was supposed to be organized. Social structure was a ladder by which one might climb to the heights of spiritual excellence. It was organized to produce scholars, sages, saints. Social, horizontal movement, was to be much restricted so that movement of the life-force would be upward, so far as possible. And the higher-born the person, the greater the restriction.
The phenomena of the Indian social organization can be understood only as we remember this basic driving motivation: the spiritual evolution of the individual, bringing with it the spiritual development of the society. Ancient India was thus a kind of incubator for the production of men and women of illumination, persons of paramount character, conduct, and courtesy, free from the limitations of ignorance and desire and firmly grounded in Self-knowledge. This is true even today. Under the caste system as originally developed (though not in its present state of corruption), if one person somehow got the means, through wealth or learning or "luck," to raise him or herself to the level of a higher caste, then it was incumbent upon them to work for the upliftment of their entire group to the same level.
But isn't it a fact that all our external activity in the West has brought us far ahead, developmentally?
Yes,
here in the West there is a deep-seated conviction of the inevitability
of progress. We think that when our cars and airplanes run
faster, our houses are better heated, our computers upgraded, our
housework minimized by labor-saving machines, when minimum levels of
housing, health and purchasing power are guaranteed by the state or
nation, then we are making progress. (What do we do, by the way, with
the time saved by speed and machines?) There are now critics among us,
who are seeing through the glitter of all this tinsel, and asking, with
the Hindu, if there is really any net gain in all that. It is not that
such things do not betoken progress and no one today can be a Luddite.
Indian civilization too, has its critics, who feel it would be better
off if it paid more attention to ideals of material welfare. But we
have to understand that the basic ideal of Vedanta is different:
progress must show itself in the fruits of the inner life as well. How
peaceful has our mind become? How little of the world's resources can
we live on? How few are our demands upon others? How much care have we
taken to bring up our children as ideal persons? Have we set them the
example for it? Is our mind moving daily toward greater
renunciation—renunciation of possessions, desires, power,
ego-claims—all the things which Death will one day take away anyway?
These are tests of progress in the Indian mind. Truth, says the Hindu,
does not pay homage to society, ancient or modern, primitive or
technological.
Society must pay homage to Truth, or die. It is with some historical justification that the Hindu claims his society has endured because in it the highest truths were made practicable. That is what makes a people great—the corporate ability to produce men and women who have realized the highest truth.
Hot ice
The philosophic basis of such a view should be understood. "Social progress" may be an oxymoron because in the last analysis there is no such thing. If progress is demonstrated in the body social, just look around the corner and you find regression somewhere else. The world is the world because it is a mixture of the pairs of opposites: ignorance and knowledge, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, health and disease and so on. We can push the "evil" around, but we cannot push it "out" and leave only the good. We must go beyond this world as we know it now, for that is the only real progress. Swami Vivekananda used to tell the story of a man who wanted a ghost to help him, like the genie of Aladdin's lamp. He heard of a hermit well practiced in magic, and went to him with a request. "I have a great many things to accomplish, and no one to help me. Please conjure up for me a ghost who will obey my commands." "Very well," said the hermit, "but I warn you of one thing: he must be kept busy, or he will eat you up!" "Oh," promised the man "I can give him plenty to do."
The man then told the ghost to balance his accounts, and it was done in a trice. Then he asked him to clean up his whole property which had lain neglected. The ghost whisked about and the place was clean in no time. This is great, thought the man, and told the ghost he wanted a grand new house built, thinking that would take him some time. But in a matter of hours the house appeared on his property, completely furnished. Now he began to be worried. And the ghost said, "Give me something to do; otherwise I will eat you up." But the poor man could think of nothing more, and began to run. At last he ran to the magician, and implored him to save his life.
"Well," said the latter, "perhaps I can help you: here is the curly tail of a dog; give it to him and ask him to straighten it." This was done, and the poor ghost tried again and again but could not keep it straight. "I am an old veteran ghost," said he, "but I never saw the likes of this!"
The Swami tells the tale to show us this world is a dog’s curly tail.
This does not mean that all is hopeless, that we are not to act. You will know if you have read the Bhagavad Gita that Vedanta has a very definite philosophy of action. One of the many views in Indian philosophy is the Advaita, or non-dual view. What it tells us is that all the work we do is really subjective: we are the ones most benefited by it. A church once put up on its bulletin board this sign, "Wanted: reformers—not of others, but of themselves." That is the Vedantic spirit. We are already enmeshed in ignorance, sustained by our own actions. "Do not create further illusion," the teachers say, by "helping" anyone. Does it sound selfish? Think about it this way: every being is really Spirit, is God Himself, in hiding, wearing name and form. Then can you or I help God? We can serve Him. It is the philanthropist who should go down on his knees and thank the destitute for allowing him to serve. It is for his own moral exercise! The same has been said by Mother Teresa herself.
Society must pay homage to Truth, or die. It is with some historical justification that the Hindu claims his society has endured because in it the highest truths were made practicable. That is what makes a people great—the corporate ability to produce men and women who have realized the highest truth.
Hot ice
The philosophic basis of such a view should be understood. "Social progress" may be an oxymoron because in the last analysis there is no such thing. If progress is demonstrated in the body social, just look around the corner and you find regression somewhere else. The world is the world because it is a mixture of the pairs of opposites: ignorance and knowledge, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, health and disease and so on. We can push the "evil" around, but we cannot push it "out" and leave only the good. We must go beyond this world as we know it now, for that is the only real progress. Swami Vivekananda used to tell the story of a man who wanted a ghost to help him, like the genie of Aladdin's lamp. He heard of a hermit well practiced in magic, and went to him with a request. "I have a great many things to accomplish, and no one to help me. Please conjure up for me a ghost who will obey my commands." "Very well," said the hermit, "but I warn you of one thing: he must be kept busy, or he will eat you up!" "Oh," promised the man "I can give him plenty to do."
The man then told the ghost to balance his accounts, and it was done in a trice. Then he asked him to clean up his whole property which had lain neglected. The ghost whisked about and the place was clean in no time. This is great, thought the man, and told the ghost he wanted a grand new house built, thinking that would take him some time. But in a matter of hours the house appeared on his property, completely furnished. Now he began to be worried. And the ghost said, "Give me something to do; otherwise I will eat you up." But the poor man could think of nothing more, and began to run. At last he ran to the magician, and implored him to save his life.
"Well," said the latter, "perhaps I can help you: here is the curly tail of a dog; give it to him and ask him to straighten it." This was done, and the poor ghost tried again and again but could not keep it straight. "I am an old veteran ghost," said he, "but I never saw the likes of this!"
The Swami tells the tale to show us this world is a dog’s curly tail.
This does not mean that all is hopeless, that we are not to act. You will know if you have read the Bhagavad Gita that Vedanta has a very definite philosophy of action. One of the many views in Indian philosophy is the Advaita, or non-dual view. What it tells us is that all the work we do is really subjective: we are the ones most benefited by it. A church once put up on its bulletin board this sign, "Wanted: reformers—not of others, but of themselves." That is the Vedantic spirit. We are already enmeshed in ignorance, sustained by our own actions. "Do not create further illusion," the teachers say, by "helping" anyone. Does it sound selfish? Think about it this way: every being is really Spirit, is God Himself, in hiding, wearing name and form. Then can you or I help God? We can serve Him. It is the philanthropist who should go down on his knees and thank the destitute for allowing him to serve. It is for his own moral exercise! The same has been said by Mother Teresa herself.
Who can show us a way out of all this?
I think we have already answered this. The souls we spoke of, who have
learned maya's secret, stand as beacon-lights in the darkness around
us—Buddha, Christ, Socrates, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and the rest.
Only those who have solved their own problem first can help solve the
problems of others, or of humanity. How can ambitious,
self-serving, passion-ridden and presumptuous people propose to lead
humanity to a better condition?
How can a society produce such persons?
It
has and it can, if it is willing to pay the price. The civilization of
India has produced a long series of super-persons, in the highest
sense. For that it has made its own kind of sacrifices. Now, if a
Western society should ask, Can we produce such persons and still go on
living a heedless life, following the one-life theory, "eating,
drinking and making merry", regarding ourselves as mere bodies, as
clever animals who go on building their own superior cages in this
human zoo? then I should have to say, I doubt it very much. Our society
probably has to change its entire conception of itself, of its members,
in order to produce such free souls.
The Vedantic idea is that Divinity, lying dormant in the organism, has to manifest itself. This was accomplished by the guru-system, which propagated an awakening, from teacher to disciple, and the varṇāśrama dharma—a social system so constructed that in the early period of a person's life one fulfills ones basic longings for artha, economic security and kāma, emotional gratification—having a partner, a home and children—all under the ęgis of dharma, righteousness. Apart from righteousness no one had the right to carry on the pursuit of these mundane objectives. When life was half-spent, a man was to withdraw himself from possessions and indulgences, seek out a guru for the practice of spiritual discipline, go into retirement and strive for mokṣa, or freedom, which is his true nature. This was the pattern for individual life and for the society.
The Vedantic idea is that Divinity, lying dormant in the organism, has to manifest itself. This was accomplished by the guru-system, which propagated an awakening, from teacher to disciple, and the varṇāśrama dharma—a social system so constructed that in the early period of a person's life one fulfills ones basic longings for artha, economic security and kāma, emotional gratification—having a partner, a home and children—all under the ęgis of dharma, righteousness. Apart from righteousness no one had the right to carry on the pursuit of these mundane objectives. When life was half-spent, a man was to withdraw himself from possessions and indulgences, seek out a guru for the practice of spiritual discipline, go into retirement and strive for mokṣa, or freedom, which is his true nature. This was the pattern for individual life and for the society.
What would be the Vedantists' solution to the special problems of our time—violence, crime, terrorism, addiction and the slipping standards seen everywhere?
As we have
said, all growth, all real change, has to come from within. No lasting
benefit can be accomplished in a society forcing upon it patterns from
outside or even from on top. All reforms which attempt to operate from
the top down—whether fascistic, communistic, socialist, idealist or
democratic will effect little result unless spiritual awakening becomes
a commonplace of the culture. This is the cardinal principle of
Vedantic thought.
It was a very bright class of students. The girls asked their own good questions and gave a robust applause. At the conclusion of a talk in another school, the final question asked was, “What is it that Vedanta supplied for you, that your own Christian faith could not give?” And I replied, “There is nothing in it that you could not find in your own Christian faith, if only you knew where to look.” This brought forth the loudest and longest applause in my experience in England.
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