Sunday, February 16, 2014
Disinterested action
The lord in the celestial song (Bhagavad Gita) said "Your only right is action, never in their fruits. Let not fruits be the aim of your actions and don't associate with inaction".
This is a very famous, often quoted verse of the Gita (कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन|
मा कर्म फलहेतुर्भूः मा ते सङ्गोस्त्वकर्मणि||) from the second chapter.
This was familiar to me from school days and for a long time, I always thought it was a lofty ideal to follow. Now with going past five decades, I realized that this is not an ideal or the lord is trying to preach us anything. It is a hard fact of life and he is pointing the same thing out (except may be only the last part asking not to get associated with inaction).
Take a number of examples of life. You put in your best foot forward and try to get tickets for some premium show only to learn that the last ticket was sold to the guy just ahead of you. Your right was only for the effort not for the ticket.
Many more non-trivial examples can be given in life, work, sports, entertainment, school etc. But the message you get is always the same. You have only control over the action and not the fruits.
So, the intent of verse is to change your attitude to meet the reality. It is not a lofty ideal which can be considered as "nice to have"!
This is a very famous, often quoted verse of the Gita (कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन|
मा कर्म फलहेतुर्भूः मा ते सङ्गोस्त्वकर्मणि||) from the second chapter.
This was familiar to me from school days and for a long time, I always thought it was a lofty ideal to follow. Now with going past five decades, I realized that this is not an ideal or the lord is trying to preach us anything. It is a hard fact of life and he is pointing the same thing out (except may be only the last part asking not to get associated with inaction).
Take a number of examples of life. You put in your best foot forward and try to get tickets for some premium show only to learn that the last ticket was sold to the guy just ahead of you. Your right was only for the effort not for the ticket.
Many more non-trivial examples can be given in life, work, sports, entertainment, school etc. But the message you get is always the same. You have only control over the action and not the fruits.
So, the intent of verse is to change your attitude to meet the reality. It is not a lofty ideal which can be considered as "nice to have"!
Thursday, February 13, 2014
An attempt to explain Sanatana Dharma to the Westerner
As I was trying to explain our dharma to an American who was visiting India for the first time, I wrote this synopsis. I would rather say that some force made me write. It was just a fit of inspiration. Later, when I saw what I had sent, I felt it was quite OK as a synopsis.
To understand us, you have to imagine a land which was ancient and quite isolated from west. Like anywhere else, here also, man could not understand frightening phenomena of nature and started wishing for some protector and attributed all sorts of power to it. But that is where the similarity ends.
When people elsewhere were most probably still wearing animal skin and hunting, we had reached the level of predicting eclipses. Even today the method of calculating remains essentially same and is used by almanac creators.
But somewhere along this kind of progress, wise people started questioning the approach of trying to understand the external world and adopting it for pleasures of body. They rightly realized that the pleasures (and pains) are temporary and the real happiness lies in understanding oneself. So, the entire direction of learning changed to meet one objective: to attain true and permanent happiness.
Literally hundreds of seers contributed their insights into the one thing all of us revere: Vedas. In the contemporary terminology Vedas can be classified as "open source" knowledge. That leads us to other peculiar features of our way of life. There is nothing like "authoritative word of god". There is no one prophet or one book which is the ultimate. There is no concept of conversion and there is only individual's faith. We don't even have a name for our way of life. We simply referred to it as "Sanatana Dharma" which can be roughly translated as "ancient way of life". It is the invaders who gave our way of life a name and thus Hindu religion ("religion" is about the closest that could describe "Dharma").
The fallacy of this translation can be easily seen from the fact that even atheists (called "Charvakas") were part of us! Their philosophy was "today is real. Enjoy. Don't think of tomorrow".
Another thing which is strikingly different in our approach is the different paths for realisation. The seers realized that not everyone can contemplate on questions like "Who am I?" which is the fundamental question of Sanatana Dharma. This path is called path of knowledge. For lesser mortals, since this world seems so real, the path suggested is path of devotion. Here one surrenders to the great power which creates, sustains and destroys the universe. Since it is much easier to imagine forms & shapes, various devotees, in their deep devotion saw various aspects of lord - some saw the motherly aspect -so beautifully nurturing us and disciplining us when necessary (thus goddesses - Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati etc.). Some saw father, some saw mischievous child, some saw and added symbolism into the ordinary human form -like Ganesha, the elephant headed god for example.
So there is one god for every one of your need. The god who takes care of your dynasty is "Kuladevata" and the god who takes care of the village is "Gramadevata". This is the maximum face of the Dharma, you see from outside.
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Now since I know a little bit about your interest in our "religion", let me give you some background. Given the culture, distance, time zone etc, which separate us, there is bound to be a gap, but smile is a single bridge that can overcome any gap!
Those who come from background of Semitic religions (Jews, Christians & Muslims) will find it hard to exactly follow our path. Many of them equate us with pagan religions of middle east and Greece, but they are quite mistaken.
But for the sincere, it starts from here. But somewhere along the path, you stop in your tracks and ask "I surrender. But how can I? What is mine can be surrendered. But nothing here belongs to me. It belongs to lord. Where is the question of surrender? As a matter of fact I myself belong to god. Going further he realizes that there is only god and nothing else and everything is one!". The same truth is realised by the Jnani (the one who knows) by contemplation on the nature of "I".
There is another path - path of karma or action. In this, you do everything the ordinary man does, but with total detachment but not without interest. You are aware that you don't know who you are, where from you come from, where you are going to. You know that some force is making you do things and like the sun who shines in fields of both the devout and the atheist, you keep working. If you are a soldier, you kill because this is the duty ordained and you bear no ill-will towards your enemy. You love everyone because all are created as part of creation and there are reasons beyond your comprehension, because of which things and people are the way they are..
