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SHORT POEMS BY NARAYANA GURU
TRANSLATED BY NATARAJA GURU, WITH COMMENTARY
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR'S FOREWORD P 269
A CRITIQUE OF CASTE P273
PRENATAL GRATITUDE P 293
KINDNESS TO LIFE P 314
SONG OF THE KUNDALINI SNAKE P 321
THOUGHT AND INERTIA P339
SCRIPTURES OF MERCY P 355
THE SCIENCE OF THE ABSOLUTE P373
POEMS BY NARAYANA GURU
TRANSLATED BY NATARAJA GURU
P269
TRANSLATOR'S FOREWORD
Our main object in this volume has been to introduce both the life and teachings of the Guru Narayana in a general way. Now that we have covered the personal ways and attitudes of the Guru and elaborated the background and the general mythological, ethnic, religious, social, historical and philosophical setting in which his teachings and the method used have to be viewed, we proceed here to select a few typical samples from his writings, mainly from his early compositions, where much of the imagery is that of the 'stone-language' that we have dealt with in Chapter XV.
We need hardly say why he used such imagery, or why these early writings were clothed in a language of their own, since we have already shown the inevitability of such a language as part of the socio-religious necessary world in which the Guru lived. Such mythology and iconography with all their own idioms, as it were, have been alive in the daily life and mentality of the common people of South India from the earliest times, and for everyday use constituted the readiest means available to the Guru for the communication of his own high thoughts.
Essentially, such thoughts were the same as those of his later, more positive and less iconological works and, needless to say, the mystical, philosophical, contemplative or dialectical doctrines contained in all his compositions have remained the same throughout; but there will be many readers outside India, not to speak of those in India who have lost touch with the old mystical-cultural language, who may be puzzled by the two modes of literary expression found in the Guru's writings: the
mainly figurative Indian-contextual earlier poetry, and the more openly universally-fronted later productions; and
therefore
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it may be puzzling on the surface to see how both modes of writing are really identical in wisdom-values. This is the
background problem which we have tried to clear up.
Shorn of the difference of linguistic or stylistic mode, both kinds deal with the same subject, breathing the same spirit; always indicating by this or that mode some central human value or good as viewed in the light of pure contemplation. No means of communication or tradition is rejected if it can serve the purpose of indicating such values of help to all. Some of these approaches have academic form and finish; some are in classical Sanskrit - while others view reality from the point of view of the Indian peasant, using popular everyday Tamil and Malayalam. In his earlier verses he spoke as one South Indian peasant to another, using the familiar idiom of a common environment. In his later writings he opened out and became universal, just as he did with his personality. He then took a more positive or definitely universal stand, treating his subject in a correctly academic or contemplative manner which was not only valid for India but global, applicable in any context anywhere.
The compositions we have selected here are just samples of some of these various styles, and, mainly because of space, but also because the more serious works are reserved for future treatment, we have kept to the Guru's miscellaneous and shorter writings. The longer works, The Atmopadesha Satakam (Centiloquy to Self) and the Darshana Mala (Garland of Visions), each consisting of one hundred verses, since they require extensive comment on account of their profoundly rich philosophical content, require volumes to themselves. In them the Guru's mature and finalized wisdom is contained in a fully developed form. His supreme crowning achievement is the Darshana Mala, in which the Guru rises far above what superficially might be esteemed as even his 'own special note', a statement which lifts philosophy above the philosophical, above the systems; pure and noble, treating of all systematized thought and philosophies in the light of wisdom itself. But these must wait for future treatment. The last sample selection given in this volume is a foretaste of this kind of wisdom-writing.
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We have graded the present selections in a certain order. The first poem, the 'Critique of Caste', has a bearing on an actual problem acutely felt in India, to which the Guru Narayana finds a simple solution, without swerving from his own position as a contemplative philosopher. Then in later selections we have the theme centred round essentially real and human values such as 'Prenatal Gratitude' and 'Kindness to Life'.
We pass on to samples in which doctrines of contemplative mysticism, covering the psychological or cosmological fields, are
introduced. Many of the Guru's poems are constructed around the Shiva myth, which has a language all its own, surviving in
revalued terms from the earliest times, prehistorically at least as ancient as Mohenjo-Daro. The distinctive Indian approaches of Samkhya and Yoga philosophy with their specialized features and vocabularies are also covered in our selections. Finally we arrive at the concluding sample, representative of the most sublime form of contemplative writing extant in India or in the world. This conforms to the strict discipline of Brahma Vidya or the Science of the Absolute, as finalized in the long history of the Guru-Word. Thus through 'politics' in the Aristotelian sense, ascending a ladder of human values contemplatively reviewed and determined, we reach the end of the ladder where there is suspended the glorious crown of Word-Wisdom.
In conclusion a word might be added to point out that in the following translations I have adhered closely to the original Malayalam or Sanskrit text, perhaps in fact too closely and literally for the comfort of the reader, and thus marring their
readability as 'poetry' in the living English language, or even verging into what may seem like doggerel. While conscious of this, it must be explained that this is due to a desire to adhere loyally to the original without adding any flourishes of my own, as these might detract from the value of the Guru's own words. However, in some rare instances I have taken what seemed to be an inescapable liberty with the original and employed a slightly different turn of expression. But here too, in order that the reader may not mix up what is mine with what belongs to the Guru's own words in the original, I have taken care to
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explain all deflections of this kind from the original in the word notes. On the whole, therefore, the reader can rest assured and can verify for himself, where necessary, the authenticity of the original words of the Guru.
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A CRITIQUE OF CASTE
(JATI MIMAMSA)
(The first verse is translated from Sanskrit, the four other
verses from Malayalam).
I
Man's humanity marks out the human kind
Even as bovinity proclaims a cow.
Brahminhood and such are not thus-wise;
None do see this truth, alas!
II
One of kind, one of faith, and one in God is man;
Of one womb, of one form; difference herein none.
III
Within a species, is it not, that offspring truly breed?
The community of man thus viewed, to a single caste belongs.
IV
Of the human species is even a Brahmin born, as is the Pariah too,
Where is difference then in caste as between man and man?
V
In bygone days of a Pariah woman the great sage Parasara was born,
As even he of Vedic-aphorism fame of a virgin of the fisher-folk.
A CRITIQUE OF CASTE
INTRODUCTORY
This short composition has been selected as an instance where the Guru Narayana, who was essentially a contemplative mystical philosopher dedicated to wisdom (jnana), treats critically a subject which at first sight seems to belong merely to the social world, to the domain of obligation or necessity.
Normally, according to the strict methodology of the Vedanta, the Dharma Shastras or Smritis (scriptural commandments or codes) are expected to deal with such questions involving social duties. A closer examination of the contents of these verses, however, will reveal the fact that the Guru here does not treat any aspect of contemplative wisdom other than what reason should confront normally. Although he deals with a question bearing upon or implying social justice or equality, his critique is not conceived or composed as a code.
The final distinction between wisdom and action (jnana and karma) should be sought in the obligatory and necessary character of action and the permissive, contingent or commendatory nature of wisdom. When a critique strictly stops short of a programme of necessary action, it is still contemplative, and should be considered as belonging to the subject-context of wisdom. A clarified intelligence awake to reality cannot avoid any aspect of reality.
After the Buddhist period the strictly neutral position of wisdom relative to social matters was violated and the necessary aspects of social obligations were stressed by way of a reaction against the 'heterodoxy' implied in Buddhism. Here, in reviewing the whole matter critically, the Guru Narayana brings characteristics of reality, hitherto uncritically treated, within the full scrutiny of contemplative criticism.
Sankara treated the subject of caste as part of the vyavavaharika (the world of relative, everyday life), a necessary and given aspect of social obligation taken for granted as something natural. For various historical reasons the critical revaluation of the subject of caste in the light of the full implications of
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contemplative, non-dual Self-knowledge was avoided in India. In our own times, as we know, this neglect has led to extreme
forms of social inequality and discrimination, known today as caste, exclusive and segregatory, leading to the extremism of
untouchablity. It is Brahmin versus Pariah dialectics.
But in the Guru Way and Word, contemplation and common sense come together again without distinction and distortion. Under one discipline, existence and reality meet. Everything is brought under the scrutiny of reason in these verses, but at the same time pure reason never degenerates into any kind of injunction or mandate. Here, essentially, the plea is that man should realise his true humanity and unitive solidarity, and realise also that terms like 'Brahmin' and 'Pariah' are ideas superimposed on the reality that is human nature which is essentially one, and fundamentally of one single sameness.
In the West the idea of equality became accepted publicly and forcefully after the French Revolution. The Age of Reason, with its dialectics between Voltaire and Rousseau, brought this fundamental idea into popularity for the regulation of human relations. Man respected himself and attained a status with a new value never so clearly recognized before. While it is true that, since the time of its pre-Platonic formulation in Greece, democracy had been there, it had hitherto always been qualified by theoretical considerations which complicated the issue, or limited it to a special social group.
This idea of equality is perhaps the greatest single contribution brought by Western culture to the East, where the stress on the individual and the subjective had yielded its full fruition of benefit and had turned toxic to life. As we have seen, during the days of Buddhist decadence free spiritual life had been smothered by an overpowering weight of grammar-like abstractions; hence the breath of overt reason, a common-sense outlook and the revival of a living mystical contemplation were all necessary for the strengthening and emancipation of the life of the common man.
By his status in contemplative Word-wisdom the Guru Narayana had the right to revalue and restate the position. He
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fulfilled this role with that characteristically wistful touch of mysticism which is revealed at the end of the first verse of the poem : 'None do see this truth, alas!' They do not see the truth because the truth can only be known by the contemplative, by the one who knows it and sees it in terms of a Self-realized certitude, from the still centre where such truth resides. That certitude is unlike other kinds of knowledge which can be obtained in the market for the asking, like purchasing a set of volumes of an encyclopaedia. As we have explained elsewhere such contemplative knowledge requires the Guru-Sishya bi-polar or mutual relationship, with the necessary corollary of a wholehearted intellectual sympathy by which the intuitive understanding becomes firmly established.
COMMENTARY
I
Brahminhood and such are not thus-wise;
Man's humanity marks out the human kind
Even as bovinity proclaims a cow.
None do see this truth, alas!
This verse in aphoristic Sanskrit, while the remaining four verses are in Malayalam, conveys its own meaning, which can only be appreciated in the light of the Word-dialectics and the interplay between the two main Word-formulations as we have described them. Sanskrit is the language in which the idea of caste in the hereditary social sense came about; hence there is a kind of poetic justice in crowning this set of verses with a summary in the classical language. Malayalam itself has a large proportion of Sanskrit in its composition, grafted on to an early Tamil framework, but Malayalam belongs structurally to the non-Vedic Dravidian context. So here in this poem there is an implied ambivalence in putting the inquiry in the two languages which belong, as it were, to the group representing the Brahmin and the group representing the Pariah, respectively, out of whose interactions the false notion of caste has arisen.
Here the opening line provides the key to the main
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approach and method of dealing with the subject. First it is essential to know the truth about caste, and then whatever
sociological system there is to be can have a sure foundation. Caste distinctions have no basis in actuality. Subjected to the most drastic of scientific tests, homo sapiens falls within the human species. Racial distinctions do not amount to distinctions in the species in any strict terms. Like languages and customs, these may give an appearance of variety to the species, but they are only superficial factors of no importance intrinsically to biology.
The writer remembers once having put the following question directly to the Guru : 'If people can develop a healthy rivalry in the name of groups, imaginary or real, within the human species, would it not be good to give recognition to such groups since it would promote human welfare?' To this the Guru had a simple answer. He replied there was actually no difference between man and man. Hence whatever sociological theory or system is erected must rest on sound premises of truth or fact.
In this 'Critique of Caste' all that the Guru denies is that castes such as Brahmin and Pariah have reality. While historical, sociological, economic, or even dialectical circumstances may have caused the complex configurations of caste, this does not mean that it has a raison d'être of its own. Any number of sociological experiments for the improvement of man are possible, but this is another matter, like the dream of Utopia or some closed religious doctrine, each experiment requiring examination on its own merits. Whatever the system or theory practised or proposed, the simple fact remains that mankind is one.
Contemplation cannot be erected on a non-factual basis. The higher human values which contemplation incidentally brings to light as its obvious mark cannot ignore truth or fact without being absurd; for truth or fact is indeed the pedestal upon which wisdom of the highest kind rests. Therefore the denial of the non-factual or the non-existent or the superimposed (Sanskrit adhyasa) is the correlative and anterior aspect of contemplation, necessary before the reasonings and conclusions
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of contemplative wisdom can be made. Differences are not seen by the contemplative in any case, and all the more so when
actuality or even empirical science denies the difference. Caste therefore, from both points of view, becomes absurd.
The argument based on bovinity etc., it will be noticed, never loses its contact with actuality in the usual, factual, rational or scientific sense. Contemplation is not divorced from common sense. On the contrary, contemplative wisdom seeks erection on the strictest foundation of a realistic, existential common basis. The discipline of contemplation complements the discipline of science. In the name of the transcendental there is no foisting of any ideological doctrine on the reader, but rather the testing of the ontological, here and now put forward as a corrective to all myth-making tendencies that might arise from either the contemplative or the day-to-day practical approach. Thus exaggeration and distortion in thinking is eliminated. Hysteria is the pathological term for such distortion; and when the factual method is not strictly adhered to, there arise the pseudo-sciences which, based on non-factual premises, cause human conduct in society to go astray and awry, resulting in terrible confusion, injustice and suffering in the human world.
The history of the European Middle Ages is sufficient proof of this; while in Indian history the domain of social privileges has been a sacrosanct no-man's-land. Thus in both cases the clever ones got away with many theories whose irrationality was never, or rarely or weakly challenged - all of which worked to the advantage of the power-seekers, to the detriment of the trusting and inarticulate masses who were finally segregated to the uttermost fringes of social life without even primary human, let alone civic, rights.
If pure contemplation has nothing to do with reformist programmes, at least those who stand for it must refrain from the
semblance of support for wrong causes, so that at least there should be no possibility of any confusion regarding true human values. When such values are not clearly stated, or unclarified, there is a state of confusion, a kind of smoke-screen, wherein injustice and all manner of human wrongs begin to
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thrive. Contemplation in its 'pure' disciplines must therefore conform to actuality, and if unrighteousness is to disappear
it is equally important that the disciplines of the actual world of scientific facts must also be kept pure and in keeping with the universal front presented by contemplation. Only then can the dialectical relation between the two polarities result in a normal recognition of human values, without any extraneous considerations or diversions creeping into the process.
The Brahmin needs equating with the Pariah so that a central human reality may emerge to view as a simple truth which is both actual and real, both existing and subsisting. Brahminism is based on a racial distinction which arose from the Vedic penetration into Dravidian or pre-Vedic India. It implies such rules as the ban on marriage of Brahmin with non-Brahmin, and a refusal to dine with non-Brahmins. Two sets of considerations, some actual and some theoretical, have been confused and mixed up, resulting in the strange irrational absurdity which distinguishes caste prejudices in India from similar class-snobberies common elsewhere in the world. These absurdities are held up by the Guru for re-examination and revaluation, in accordance with the standards emerging from a science of contemplation. When intermarriage or inter-dining between castes in India are prohibited and the false theory therefore made into a dogma of practice, it is on this ground that the Guru steps in to say this is a mistake which must be abolished from the reasoning mind.
'None do see this truth, alas': In knowing that, even in a contemplative sense, Brahmin-hood, Paria-hood and all the
intermediary classified postulates are neither actual nor rational, there is a need for the Word-wisdom to bring back the true value of life at each level of social complexity. But those who have this Word-wisdom are rare, and it becomes, as the Bhagavad Gita points out, of the nature of a secret which the genuine Advaita Vedantin alone possesses. (1) The Bhagavad Gita also says that contemplatively the notion of Brahmin-hood does not
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exist even theoretically, any more than does the distinction between an elephant, cow, dog or one who eats dog-flesh.(2)
Thus, both existentially and subsistentially, the distinctions of caste become meaningless. This question is reminiscent of the relation of genus and species which puzzled theologians throughout the Middle Ages. A paradox is involved here as in the case of the interdependence of the concepts of the One and the Many in Platonic dialectics (e.g., Parmenides), and hence this apparently sweeping generalization becomes justified. Genuine Brahmin-hood, to have any meaning at all, must be a subtle personal value revealed to non-dual dialectics; something which has nothing to do with social status, biological heredity or holiness in the ordinary religious sense at all. Where there is the absence of recognition or understanding of this sole possible meaning of Brahmin-hood, the consequences are so full of ill-portent for man that the Guru deplores the situation by an apt interjection 'ha!' which we have rendered 'Alas!'
WORD NOTES:
Jati is rendered here as 'caste.' Although it is the nearest usual equivalent, 'caste' is inadequate. The English word is derived from the Portuguese 'casta', meaning 'unmixed race; breed, race, strain', and came from the Latin 'castus', 'pure, clean, unpolluted'. Jati has its own complexion on the Indian soil, where ideas of tradition, custom, culture, colour, ethnical groups and ideas of the sacred all
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fuse together and blend to form this phenomenon of 'caste', and throw up the two extreme types called the Brahmin and the Untouchable. Class enters only feebly into the general concept, and although economic repercussions are inevitable, they are not directly related to the main notion of jati. The dialectical revaluations that have been made throughout history between the Vedic and non-Vedic concepts, as two sets of values or refinements, may be considered to be at the bottom of the whole question of caste. The sonorous title which is sometimes given to caste, namely varna-ashrama-dharma (colour-status-duty) fails to make any definite meaning. It is a confusing compound term consisting of divergent theoretical elements; Varna meaning just colour; Ashrama normal or stable type of livelihood; and Dharma incorporating all notions of right living, whether spiritual or social. All these ideas put together produce an opiating black liquid called caste-prejudice, without any sense being left of the original meanings of the separate factors making up the compound term. The result is not only irrational but detrimental to well-being from every point of view. Innumerable people, in particular the religious-minded peasantry and illiterate women generally, tend to treat the difference implied in jati almost like a difference in species; for the word, etymologically meaning 'kind', means that to speak of this or that jati as of one man or another man, is to separate mankind into different kinds; and hence in this short composition the Guru's aim is to make this position clear.
Manushyatvam: 'humanity', means the assemblage of all specific qualities that distinguish man from other beings, including those higher values which are essentially human.
Gotvam: 'bovinity' or 'cow-nature'. In Vedanta this is a favourite example for illustrating the specific qualities of an animal.
Brahmanadi: meaning here 'the state of Brahminhood'. This appellation and others of a similar kind, it is pointed out, are not determined or fixed like the specific qualities of a species or kind of living being. They are honorific titles, like the English words 'Lord' and 'commoner': sometimes based on a certain social status, sometimes on a pattern of belief or
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behaviour which, at a certain period in history, may once have been valid and distinct. The Brahmin exists because he is not a Pariah; thus only doctrinal and not actual difference is involved here.
The word 'pariah' is left to stand by itself, but it should not be at all supposed that it has any derogatory significance in the present context. It is merely the existential counterpart of the existence of the Brahmin. The English word pariah is derived from the Tamil 'paraiyar', the plural of paraiyan, or 'drummer', the beater of the 'parai' or large drum. Thus we are transferred linguistically to the prehistoric age beyond Mohenjo-Daro times by this simple derivation. Drumming is pre-Vedic, even proto-Dravidian - the drums that have been thumping 'for ever', as the Guru graphically described it once, as we have noted elsewhere. The Vedic victors had no drummers of their own, and so employed the indigenous drummers, the Pariahs, who specialized in this art which was novel to the invaders, for their festivals, marriages, funerals and other ceremonies, particularly in their penetration into the depths of South India. Thus originally, as 'drummer', the word only meant those who were clearly outside the Vedic fold. Much later it became synonymous with its present meaning of social ostracism.
Tatvam: 'truth', implies that Brahmin-hood appertains to the subsistential aspect of reality and not to the existential.
Brahmin-hood belongs to another order of reality altogether. When this distinction is not recognized the entirely false notion of caste arises; a mystical fact with a psychological implication is given an entirely wrong legalistic and social meaning. In view of the fact that even moderns like Gandhi accepted this confused interpretation of caste, the question gains an importance all its own. (3)
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II
One of kind, one of faith, and one in God is man;
Of one womb, of one form; difference herein none.
III
Within a species, is it not, that offspring truly breed?
The community of man thus viewed, to a single caste belongs.
The solidarity and equality of mankind, both in its existential and subsistential personality-aspects, is reviewed here again in the proper scheme of a contemplative science. Self-knowledge is part of this science and the deeper human values have a place in the conception of the human personality, when examined in connection with this Self-knowledge. Here we touch the very essence of wisdom. The archetype or the phenotype of genetics to which man or homo sapiens belongs by the natural background of necessity is also valid as a general fact which has to be related to all matters involving ideals or wherever problems of a teleological nature arise.
Whether we conceive these ideals or goals by names such as 'Nirvana', 'dwelling in the presence of God', or 'attaining eternal life,' the position remains the same. In fact, as the Guru Narayana admitted in reply to a question, one can substitute some other set of values which omit the theological content or implications. Such for example, would be the case with Buddhist terminology, where the word 'Dharma' could be substituted for the terms 'one caste', 'one religion', or 'one God'. Dharma, considered in relation to necessity, equates with the idea of one human kind or caste; related or conceived as a means to Nirvana, it equates with the idea of a single faith or religion; while when it is conceived as a goal, as for example when the Buddha is referred to as the Dharma-Kaya (the embodiment of righteousness), the idea tallies essentially with the idea of a God. In such a context, prospective idealism's teleology gives us God or Dharma, a purposeful absolute righteousness. The immanent aspects of reality, when formulated, give us
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general values such as brotherhood or religion. Conceived in universal terms such values become unitive at each level, retrospective, prospective or immediate, as a series of corresponding ontological excellences.
'Of one womb, of one form' etc.
Here we come close to problems such as are dealt with by modern genetics, eugenics and allied subjects. In the West,
heredity is studied in relation to freaks in nature rather than in relation to the 'eternal' law of heredity. Freaks are the exceptions, while the law they prove is the rule. A cat which has had one of its tail bones crushed by something falling on it, may of course have kittens with variously twisted tails reappearing, according to observed laws of heredity, such as those of Mendelism. This however, does not disprove anything with regard to the main rule or law that father and offspring bear resemblances through generations.
In the search for 'objective' evidence the tendency in the modern laboratory has been to forget the laws that require no experiment. These being given to human experience by common observation and inferred without doubt, they are, for that very reason, taken for granted and forgotten. They are valid outside the laboratory, while the specialist shut up against this sunlight-like evidence, forgets it in his too-keen love for his own field of specialist research. This is a tendency needing to be countered by the new science of contemplation. As soon as this kind of 'scientific superstition', as Swami Vivekananda put it, or 'the learned ignorance' that Ramana Maharshi called it, is abolished, we have once more contemplation and common sense coming together to support the fundamental findings of perennial wisdom or Advaita Vedanta.
Homo sapiens is of the single same phenotype, whatever the dominant or recessive variations may be that enter here and there. The evolution of the species, whether through sudden mutational steps or by slow degrees, never goes beyond the essentially specific characteristics of homo sapiens as a prevalent single species or kind. Although some modern thinkers hold
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that the emergence of a new type or 'race' of human beings is possible, such fancies are far from being strictly scientific.(4)
Nothing has so far shown the existence of more than one species within mankind, and the possibility must therefore be ruled out for the present.
'Within a species, is it not, that offspring truly breed? '
The allusion here is to the law of inter-specific sterility. A mare can have offspring (the mule) when crossed with a jackass, but the mule is sterile. This is proof of the specific limits existing between the horse and the donkey. Without being a biologist in any modern sense, the Guru is as able as any scientist to state the rule of inter-specific sterility, just as he was equally competent to deal with other questions such as evolution, etc. We have here therefore a striking example of the strictly objective and scientific method of reasoning he followed. By the aid of that science of contemplation which we have referred to, the Guru Narayana establishes the undoubted fact of human solidarity, whatever may be the approach - of one kind genetically, of one fundamental faith religiously, and of one supreme value considered under the many synonyms of God or the Grand Dharma.
WORD NOTES:
Matam: 'faith', means formulated religion, which is essentially a value regulating human conduct and relations in society. As we have seen, Dharma or righteousness, social or personal obligations or duties, are all the same everywhere when they are shorn of historical or incidental stresses given by each particular expression of religion, and they can then be equated to one or other of the various aspects of wisdom. Thus, in the light of contemplative Self- knowledge or neutral Word-wisdom, as understood in revalued dialectical terms, all variations become included under one religion, common to humanity as realized in norms of universal,
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unitive and simple values which remain the same for all men, irrespective of time or clime.
Akaram: 'form', refers to the typical contours or outline of the body of man in its species-aspects; the phenotype, deducting those appearances that are incidentally due to variations in climate and food, such as sunburn, skin-colour, thickness or thinness of lips etc. The Negro's skin is part of his environment, as the eyelids of a Mongolian are regulated by hormones coming from other environmental conditions.
Within certain human limits, skin colours can change when stimulated by secretions produced by long years under special environments, as the study of the ductless glands reveals. The subsoil can also have a similar effect in the absorption or deficiency of certain elements through the food and water of particular localities.
A novel written in one language is appreciated when translated into another language because of the essentially human interest it evokes. Similarly, love between different races is common and gives healthier and more virile offspring. Beauty and refinement follow in the footsteps of good economic or educational conditions. A 'Pariah' boy taken by the Guru Narayana and educated in the Ashram at Varkala was easily mistaken for an orthodox 'Brahmin', as the Guru very often demonstrated. In any district in India, in any school, when Scouts in their uniforms are reviewed in line, the fact is again objectively demonstrated how difficult it is to sort out castes based on purely physical features. It is only by the aid of external and easily-imitated marks, such as dialects, styles in hairdressing or appropriate 'caste marks,' that any possible caste-groupings can be made under such circumstances. Objectively there is no difference, unless the term 'objectively' applies also inclusively to the incidental, superficial or extraneous accretional circumstances, which from a rational point of view are strictly irrelevant to the judgement of the subject.
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IV
Of the human species is even a Brahmin born, as is the Pariah too.
Where is difference then in caste as between man and man?
Here the Guru brings together the inevitable dialectical counterparts of the problem. For without the Brahmin the concept of Pariah as a concept would lose its meaning, and without the Pariah as a background factor, Brahmin-hood, at least in the Indian context, would lose its present import because in the dialectics of history, as we have shown in a previous chapter, the one rises up in response to the other. But both the Brahmin and the Pariah, in the pure light of reason or ontemplation, although they may be historical counterparts, are essentially one in human content. Whatever asymmetry
there may be in the 'typical' personality of one or the other is fictitious, they are social vestiges, out of place and incidental to the changed world situation, and quite irrelevant to spirituality. Patterned after the prehistoric Shiva-who is worshipped as a God even by the Brahmin - the Pariah-drummer (synonymous terms as we have noted) is holy in his own way; while the Brahmin again embodies as a 'type' certain revalued refinements which are called Aryan virtues, more socialized than the prehistoric ones, and holy in another socialized context. These virtues held up as 'Brahmin-hood' consist of certain publicly-workable qualities, such as a clean diet, monogamy, improved housing conditions, dress and elaborated personal, social charms.
A dominant group always has this advantage, which justice seeks to abolish in favour of the common masses, the peasants and plebeians. The dominated are the 'have-nots' and 'underdogs' because of human injustice, and it is here that contemplation can help in bringing order, balance and equalization between the two opposites. Fundamentally, as Robert Burns touchingly and poetically summed it up in his grand verses, 'A man's a man for a' that'. It is the good heart and kindliness that unites all classes as 'man' and neither the wealth and extravagance of the strutting 'Lord'
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or 'Earl' or the grovelling poverty and drunken illiteracy of the 'peasant' or 'worker'. Both Brahmin and Pariah belong to
one and the same essentially human context.
Although this statement is simple enough to understand and even banal when harped upon, yet it is one around which many polemical battles and revolutions have been long and vainly waged. Even Sankara, otherwise so rational and critical a philosopher, and in spite of the strict distinction which he made between the Vyavaharika (everyday practical) and Paramarthika (ultimate or final idealistic) values in life, left much alone that was irrational in the former, without comment, such as those matters of Vedic ritual and caste obligations which he treated as if they belonged to the Vyavaharika as necessities. But even the necessary need not be irrational; and this is the whole point that the Guru Narayana here brings out. Although much of what comes under the necessary has to be taken for granted as inevitable, like geographical and climatic variations; all that comes under the necessary need not be treated irrationally. If it is necessary that we should breathe and communicate, this does not mean that it is necessary to tell a lie. Reason can penetrate into the domain of the necessary in order to regulate and rearrange it, after critical scientific scrutiny based on common sense or contemplation.
Contemplation is not intended to condone absurdities, nor to confuse factual issues, but is rather a support and aid to common sense. Common sense and contemplation should be regarded properly as complementary parts of the same discipline, and should be conceived as under a strict common methodology and epistemology of wisdom.
In an interesting composition called 'Manishi Panchakam' (Five Stanzas about Man), attributed to Sankara, probably correctly, each verse concludes with the statement that whoever represents unitive wisdom, whether he is an outcaste or a Brahmin, is Sankara's Guru. According to legend the poem was written following an incident in Benares: Sankara and his followers were returning from their bath in the Ganges when they were confronted by a Pariah who not only refused to get
out of the way, but with poignant pertinacy questioned
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Sankara's caste-scruples and orthodoxy. The Pariah did so, not only on ordinary human grounds, as the story goes, but on the basis of Sankara's own Advaitic approach. From the nature of the poem, Sankara is supposed to have learnt from the Pariah counterpart the lesson of the neutral wisdom of this matter of caste and outcaste. But whether he did or not is doubtful, for a close examination of the various Bhashyas (commentaries) of Sankara on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras reveals to anyone that he still treated caste-distinctions based on Vedic ritualist gradations as something taken for granted. At the most, he is very mildly expostulatory. (5)
Perhaps he was anxious, after the Buddhist decline, to catch up with the pre-Buddhist orthodoxy of the Vedas, which
included the social distinctions of caste, and history perhaps justified his lukewarm attitude. The right of the Sudra or lowest caste to have Vedic wisdom is questioned implicitly and even explicitly. The right of a Pariah to such wisdom does not arise at all, and the inference is that he is to be eliminated rather than made even to serve the Vedic pyramidal superstructure erected on the broad base of the Indian social masses.
Further, as Sankara must have known, the Pariah represented a valid Word-wisdom belonging to his own historical context, which Word-wisdom was, as in Tiruvalluvar, even better than the later revalued Vedic-based Word. The anterior Veda
typified in the Kural was as good at least as the posterior Aryan Veda which latterly became too critically defective and esoteric. For a fuller examination of this we refer the reader to what we have said already concerning Aryan and proto-Dravidian dialectics in our discussion of Blast and Counterblast.
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V
In bygone days of a Pariah woman the great sage Parasara was born,
As even he of Vedic-aphorism fame of a virgin of the fisher-folk.
After treating the matter empirically and dialectically in its various aspects, the Guru finally supports the whole with
reference to historical fact. He selects as instances sages of unquestionable status in the authentic dialectical context of the Vedanta, which is the same as that of the Vedas, where this phenomenon of caste has to be placed if it is to be understood.
Parasara was the father of Vyasa, who was also called the Veda Vyasa (Arranger of the Vedas), said to be the author of
the Maha-Bharata and of the Bhagavad Gita contained or inserted in it, which is one of the canonical texts of Vedanta, held in high authority. Parasara must have been of the prehistoric dialectical context whose characteristics we have already indicated in earlier chapters. Vyasa and Vedanta are linked-up inseparably for ever; so in the very context of the Vedas we find nullifying evidence against caste. Orthodoxy and heterodoxy meet and revaluate themselves in terms of pure wisdom, without heredity or tradition playing any part in the revaluation, which takes place more in spite of than because of heredity. Even if some people hold that Brahminhood emerges as the culmination of a hereditary selection of aptitudes, such a theory or notion is not borne out by historical facts.
The other sage referred to is Vyasa himself, also mentioned in the Genesis-chapters of the Puranas as being born of a fisher-maiden. If, as may be, he is also the author of the Brahma-Sutras, the great stringer-together of the wisdom-aphorisms, then here at the heart of what is called roughly 'Hinduism', we have evidence that blows the false notion of caste to smithereens; for Vyasa or Badarayana - whatever he may be called, sometimes known as 'Vyasa the Dark-skinned Sage' is a recognized Brahma-Rishi, taken into the fold as a Brahmin of the Brahmins, although not of that line at all.
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The Guru's aim here is to reveal to all that these saintly characters, Parasara and Vyasa, who are recognized everywhere
as ancestors of holy cherished memory, and worshipped as such by all castes in every home in the Hindu world, are themselvesoutstanding reminders that mere prejudice lingers round the notion of caste, since they come from the much-abused and misunderstood Pariah line and not from the Brahmin stock at all; hence here to be faced is the ultimate contradiction of the Brahmin, not only accepting and adopting the Pariah Guru, but putting him on the topmost pedestal as a sage of supreme value from the Vedic point of view. In the contradictory absurdity thus proved, all caste prejudices based on heredity, dynasty and blind tradition must be dispelled, and the social atmosphere of the present ultimately and finally cleared of this major caste-impediment.
Here it might be permissible to add some concluding remarks on caste, having dealt with it more or less completely in the
form of actual textual comments. The Upanishads speak of Brahman (Brahminhood) and Kshatram (Kshattriyahood or
the warrior-pattern) as attitudes of the personality which are superimposed as secondary conditionings on the Self. The
Katha Upanishad (6) treats of these as rice or food, to which the final consummation of specialization is the dead-end fixed sauce or pickles added on to the rice base of food, as it were, which is called 'death', the cul-de-sac terminus of artificial specialization. The basic ego is characterless and neutral, but becomes specialized with character as Brahmin and Kshatriya, which finally attains culmination in the extinction of death. The numinous Self is the neutral basis for all the secondary conditionings, social, psychological or religious, added on to it. Such is the attitude of the highest Upanishads with regard to Brahminhood.
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If this attitude is vague, we find in the Bhagavad Gita (7)further indications regarding the four castes:
'The four castes were created by me (i.e., Krishna, the
Guru, God, or Acharya) in order to divide innate nature and
(aptitudes to) action. Know me to be the author thereof as
also its undoer ever the same. '
The innate contradiction in this verse, where God creates caste and undoes it himself, can be explained only in the light
of the dialectical revaluation of caste as it prevailed at the epoch when the verse was composed. The four castes, based on
vocations and corresponding aptitudes, being necessary and inevitable in any human society (even as in the Greek society of
Plato), had elements of universal validity which were attributable to the Creator of nature. Wisdom, however, transcends nature, and in transcending the practical domain of relative, historical or sociological necessities, seeks pure reason and dissolves what has been built up by prior necessities, by means of new or revalued terms of contingent freedom. In the light of the revival of orthodoxy after the decline of Buddhism, at the time when the above verse was written, such an ambiguous revaluation was all that was possible for the author.
The Guru Narayana, however, has no need for this ambiguity and indeed his clarity restates the whole position. He has in these five verses brought about distinct conclusions. Humanity is one and indivisible in kind (jati). There is no room for any multiplicity at any level of human nature, socially, religiously or contemplatively. Neither actuality, empirically examined, let alone contemplative verities, admit of a raison d'être for caste; nor does history lend the idea any valid support.
NOTES
(l)
Manushyanam sahasreshu kashchid yatati siddhaye
Yatatam api siddhanam kashchin mam vetti tattvatah
(Bhagavad Gita, VII, 3.)
'Among thousands of men scarcely one strives for perfection; and even among those who strive and are perfect, scarcely one knows Me in truth '.
(2)
Vidyavinayasampanne brahmane gavi hastini
Shuni chai 'va shvapake cha panditah samadarshinah
(ibid., V. 18.)
'In a Brahmin who is learned and mild, in a cow, in an elephant, even in a dog and in a dog-eater, the wise see the same'.
(3)
Cf., articles on caste in 'Young India' by Mahatma Gandhi.
(4)
This possibility was alluded to by Bertrand Russell in a speech at Columbia University, New York, on 16 November 1950. The New York Times reporting him as saying that the armaments race is a genetic competition 'to breed a race stronger, more intelligent, and more resistant to disease than any race of man that has hitherto existed'.
(5)
See e.g., Sankara's introduction to the Bhagavad Gita Bhashya and his ambiguous comments on such passages as IV, 13; and XVIII, 41; and also Mundaka-Upanishad Bhashya, II, 12; also Vedanta-Sutras Bhashya, I, iii, 25;I, iii, 34-38.
(6)
Yasya brahma cha kshatram cha ubhe bhavata odanah,
Mrityuryasyopasechanam ka ittha veda yatra sah.
Katha Upanishad, II, 25.
'He for whom Brahminhood and Kshatriyahood are as food, and
death but the sauce, how can one know where that Self is?'
(7) chaturvarnyam maya shrishtam gunakarmavibhagashah
tasya kartaram-api mam viddhy-akartviram-avyayam.
Bhagavad Gita, IV, 13.
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PRENATAL GRATITUDE
( PINDA-NANDI)
( Translated from the Malayalam )
I
Within the womb, 0 Lord of Good,
Was that lump in hand - this humble self.
With what exceeding love,
Who but Thou, kind One, nurtured it into life!
Ordered by Thee, all comes about.
Thus knowing, this Thy servant
To Thee now surrenders all.
II
Of earth, water, fire, air and ether too,
From each gathered, and firmly shaping in the palm,
Who confines me within a cell with blazing fire alit
Even from the oppression great of such a feminine divinity,
Protect and nourish me in Thy nectarine Immortality.
III
Thy Grace it is that even now proclaims
This never remained a mere stone-confined creature, impotent.
The very Indra of high heaven,
Who within a vase-like lotus dwells
And all heaven's host besides,
From such a Source do all grow out.
IV
Having no kinsmen, strength or wealth -
How could this ever grow? 0 marvel picturesque!
My Master's sport is this!
No darkness is possible in thus knowing.
So to see, do grant Thy Grace, good Master!
V
For months full four or five,
Growing, becoming, by slow degrees,
Even Thou it was who eyes formed one after one,
Ever warding off Death's hand.
All that is now past,
But to my recollective weeping of that prime foetal time,
Listen, 0 Lord of Good!
VI
Yea, semen it was that mixed with blood;
And thus, by sound matured and taking form, I lay mediate.
Then for me there was no mother or father;
So by Thee alone raised, sole parent mine,
All that I am is here today.
VII
If all that now-forgotten suffering should be revived within,
I would this very day fall and perish in flames, alas!
Alone Thou didst then provide those outlets five of sense,
0 Father mine of gold.
Even thus to know, Thou, 0 Lord, permits.
VIII
That mother of mine who, as a burden bore me within,
With a tender melting heart, vainly breathing many a sigh,
Fuming hot, in pain she brought me forth,
To lie here, howling on like a jackal.
For once deign to tell me, Lord, what all this can be about.
IX
Full well aware art Thou, good Lord of all,
Hence what need is there for humble me to tell?
Do banish, pray, all agony!
Thy servant has no one here, and if Thou me disown
Then all is lost,
0 Saviour coming mounted on a bull (1)
INTRODUCTORY
Prayer, piety and questions of the hereafter are matters that are generally given an apocalyptic or liturgical form. But here, in this striking composition bearing on the subject of spiritual progress, and covering the same contemplative field, the Guru Narayana follows a new line, an unusual departure from the normal.
Consistent with the modern spirit of a scientific biologist,he takes the human foetus as his normal starting point and follows up its history, very much in the same way as an investigator in experimental science. Continuing this method in terms of Self-knowledge, the Guru is able to traverse a region hitherto overcovered with guesses and rife with age-old speculation. In Europe the hair-splitting of the theologians and scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages made all thinking minds turn in revolt from their methods of approach, and after the eighteenth century, the age of Voltaire and the full flood of rationalism, the whole subject of piety and devotion was left far behind. Materialism then became the only firm ground upon which human beings could collectively build monuments of common human value, such as in the form of what is called civilization. Considering that civilization is a matter for which man is willing to
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lay down his life, the finding again of real values which suffer from no asymmetry of vision as between the present and the
future, the here or the hereafter, and so on, gains ever-renewed importance.
It was Bergson who broke away from the highly theoretical academic idealism of German philosophers like Hegel, and in his own direct and graphic way brought some elements of contemplative metaphysics into the philosophical world. Influenced by Plotinus in his approach, the 'élan vital' (vital spirit or force) of Bergson came nearest to a biological concept of the
'soul' of man which had gone into disrepute with the rise of scientific materialism. Biology, as conceived by Bergson in
'creative' terms of flux and 'pure becoming', gave a living and breathing reality to the whole problem of spiritual life. He saved metaphysics from being lost in the mere grammar of abstractions, and his rhetoric came as a saving factor, making
the dry winds of the desert humid and life-giving.
In like manner, the Guru Narayana here retrieves liturgical, ritualistic or unrealistic piety and gives it an intimately realistic and personal status, so that it yields Self-bliss through the common sentiment of parental gratitude.
COMMENTARY
I
Within the womb, 0 Lord of Good,
Was that lump in hand - this humble self -
Who but Thou, kind One, nurtured it into life!
Ordered by Thee, all comes about.
Thus knowing, this Thy servant
To Thee now surrenders all.
This opening verse sums up the whole position in regard to spiritual progress and the various factors involved. The foetus
represents the personality of the seeker or aspirant, as conceived in his most primal simple form without any of those attributes belonging to the world of expansion or action. In the intimate
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negative recesses of the mother's womb before birth, the self or the ego subsists in direct relation to whatever draws it out into life-manifestation. In this process of life-manifestation there are two poles. There is the self and there is the conception of a providence, an ultimate or God conceived as a light, perceptual or actual.
Kindness or love is a value that fits into this process as its natural counterpart. Kindness is of the same stuff as bliss or Self-knowledge, while piety or devotion are but words which are soaked in the essential content of kindness, mercy or compassion. When viewed without the asymmetry of a bias towards the subjective or the objective; without the prejudices attached to the 'triputi' (the three elements of contemplation), we have a central notion called mercy or kindness which covers an essential human value of a spiritual or contemplative order.
This, regarded as the kind care of Providence, is like the parental concern of a father, and may be called the Father,
as a spiritual factor, the conscious contemplative conceptualisation of the ultimate or supreme pole of the self, immaterial and invisible, subtle or subsisting, rather than merely existing. This kind one marks the principle which presides over or dominates matter, which is merely inert or negative.
It is the touch of this principle or the relation to this pole which enables the whole of life to regulate itself in progressive stages of self-realized self-expression or unfolding. Between these two poles thus marked out, the whole phenomenon of subjective or objective life becomes comprised. Pious surrender is but the recognition of this verity.
'That lump in hand'
'Brahmanda' (the cosmic egg), in Vedantic writing, has for its antinomy its microcosmic material counterpart reciprocally in 'Pindanda'. In this cosmological context, this latter term is not merely the conventional ball of rice that is offered to ancestors in ritualistic Vedic ceremonies, but represents figuratively the substantial material principle of cosmic reality. 'Pinda' has here been rendered as a 'lump in hand', which would then correspond to microcosmic aspects of reality as implied when the human personality is considered ontologically in terms of cosmic relations.
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'With what exceeding love, who but Thou, kind One, nurtured it into life!'
The treatment here of 'what' and 'who' side by side, as if the difference between them was negligible, suggests that the generosity of the Supreme can be treated personally or impersonally. The pronoun does not make any fundamental difference. There is no limit to the implied generosity, and such an absolute and limitless bounty cannot be attributed to anything but what touches the essence of the personality itself.
'Ordered by Thee, all comes about'
This phrase seems to indicate determinism, or a god who directs and designs all according to an inscrutable will. When viewed existentially, there is a law of necessity in nature. This law of determinate necessity of the world of relativity is never abolished as long as the least vestige of duality is supposed to exist between the Supreme and the Self. As this prayer is addressed here to the idea of the Lord of Good (Bhagavan), i.e. with Good as a supreme human value, determinism shifts, in a greatly extended sense, to merge, almost, into the domain of free-will. The law of determinism itself becomes a principle or criterion of pure reason, an imperative will of goodness, culminating in reflection and Self-knowledge. The object here is to present and explain this mode of operation of the free will in relation to the actual, realistic aspects of life. Such a treatment is meant to make extreme idealism realistic at the same time.
WORD NOTES:
'Bhagavan' has been rendered ' Lord of Good ' as the root 'bhag-' would indicate.
'Pindam', as we have said, is applicable also to the ball of rice offered to ancestors in Vedic ritual. In the Upanishads the ball of rice has been further equated to the Self or the Absolute in formulae such as 'Annam Brahmeti', etc.(l)
II
Of earth, water, fire, air and ether too,
From each gathered, and firmly shaping in the palm,
Who confines me within a cell with blazing fire alit
Even from the oppression great of such a feminine divinity,
Protect and nourish me in Thy nectarine immortality.
Here the allusion is to the negative principle which is elsewhere referred to as Maya. As long as positive spiritual progress is conceived we must also postulate for it something as its negative aspect, although in the consciousness of one who is fully established in non-dual wisdom this 'negativität', as Hegel would call it, has no place. If the positive principle of spiritual progress is to be Purushottama, the Most High God, then the negative aspect of the same principle, which is finally to be identified with that positive principle, as wisdom gains ground,is justly to be called Maya, the feminine counterpart of the same.
Like the female Parvati and the male Parameshvara of Kalidasa's opening verse in his 'Raghuvamsa', they are ever united as the word and its meaning. Every god in Indian mythology and iconography has his 'shakti' or counterpart ofmanifestation or becoming. This 'shakti' is the creative urge, which is not merely a supposed abstraction of the intellect but something here on the existential side of truth.
The Guru refers to this aspect as something to be transcended, however great its claim may be to be recognised as subservient to the methodology of the Advaita. Maya is not a reality but an inevitable epistemological and methodological necessity, to be used until Self-realization establishes the full flood of silence in the Absolute beyond words.
Suffering, sin and evil are all correlated, and dependent factors arising out of this concept of the negative side of reality in Maya. They all mean the same when viewed symmetrically, without prejudices arising from our angle of vision as between the cosmological-objective or the psychological-subjective.
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The good is the nectar that nourishes; while evil is the poison that corrodes the spirit as negative attributes in the gross, inert world of bondage or necessity.
Earth, water and the other elements are considered here as stages in the descending gross manifestation of the negative
principle. Although the modern materialistic and scientific view of the elements seeks to arrange them round a scheme of
'periodic' laws, the Guru adheres here to a scheme belonging to the contemplative dialectical outlook of the Vedanta, the aim of which is mainly to resolve a finally-persisting duality in terms of unitive comprehension.
Advaita (non-duality), Vishisht-Advaita (non-duality of the specific) and Dvaita (duality) all imply a recognition of this
double character in various degrees for purposes of methodological or epistemological emphasis or explanation of one or other of the aspects of reality, viewed from the personal level.
A detailed discussion of the Vedantic theory of manifestation of gross inert matter as we see it in nature, which is called 'panchikarana', deserves close attention in the light of this implicit dialectics. This we shall undertake later. In the meantime we shall merely keep in mind that the reference in this verse to the elements being gathered into a lump needs examination for its own proper merits, quite apart from the modern notions of physics. It requires discussion as a part of the contemplative discipline, as Vedantins have always done.
'Who confines me for baking within a cell'
The cell here can be understood from any of the different ways of regarding reality. Biologically, life begins in a cell bounded by cellular walls. Psychologically, the cell represents the limitations of the narrow necessities of conditioned life. Cosmologically the cell is that particular space-time system into which mind and memory are inserted or fitted, in relation to the rest of the universe. An object is subjected to gravity, while gravitation as a principle applies to the universe, which can be conceived in terms of electromagnetic or thermodynamic worlds. Whatever the theory, there is something which can correspond to the cell mentioned here, in the sense of a limiting context of the 'here and now.'
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'With blazing fire alit'
This would naturally correspond to the counterpart of the cell. Energy, described for example as electromagnetism, is like a fire; and this, psychologically, would be the fire of consciousness itself, the consciousness of otherness. The pure consciousness, which is itself unlimited, seems to accommodate at its other pole, so to say, its own limited or conditioned aspect. The duality which is the cause of suffering is compared here to baking. The Upanishads refer to cooking (pachyathi) in a similar context (2). The incubatory process in the foetal state within the womb is actually comparable to subjection to such a slow process of heat as in a baker's oven.
The oppression of the feminine divinity is balanced by the protective nourishment which the positive principle represents.
We suffer and seek happiness, thus involving the same polarized elements indicated here. One yields place to the other in any spiritual progress at whatever level it may be conceived or formulated.
WORD NOTES
Amritu: ' nectarine immortality ' -like Soma, the heavenly juice of Indian myth coveted by the Devas and Asuras (the good and evil spirits), symbolises a common human value. This neutral or central value of Good is like food, saving life from death, which latter is negative, representing suffering. When scientists say that the entropy of the universe is tending to a maximal state, and that food represents a negative entropy, using thermodynamical language, the same positive and negative sides are involved as here.
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III
Thy Grace it is that even now proclaims
This never remained a mere stone-confined creature, impotent.
The very Indra of high heaven
Who within a vase-like lotus dwells -
And all heaven's host besides -
From such a Source do all grow out.
The life-giving principle is like 'the little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump'. It is both potent and small yet expansive and amplificatory in its effect. On this common ground of life-expression which is of the nature of the Self itself, cosmology and psychology meet. Here that transcendental factor called 'Grace' is the positive aspect of the principle. Grace is not material but is like the 'quality of mercy' which 'droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven' to nourish life beneath. This cycle, conceived inclusively both cosmologically and psychologically, is implied in the Bhagavad Gita, which refers to 'evam pravartitam chakram' (such a cylic motion) (3), where recognition is given to this same process, involving positive and negative aspects of reality. Wisdom, within the limits of dialectical method (as well as piety or prayer), implies the postulation, at least for the sake of argument, of a second pole which is sometimes vaguely alluded to as sacrifice. (4)
Whatever the name: Vishnu, Purushottama or the Most High God, this is the factor constituting the second pole. It is with reference to this alone that it becomes possible for us to discuss the Absolute in any methodical manner. Inevitably, for
otherwise the word 'Absolute' itself would fail to have any meaning, and silence on the subject would be the only other
alternative. Here Grace is to be understood in contrast with the negative principle of Maya referred to in the previous verse.
'Thy Grace it is...'
There is ample evidence of what is meant here by Grace. This Grace is not a mere theological term to be considered in a context of piety or prayer. Grace is a fact, inasmuch as, whatever its essential nature may be, it is
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capable of making an embryo develop into a full-fledged personality such as a man. Man appreciates the cosmos and gains
philosophical knowledge through books. He is interested in extra-mundane values, and thus gains a status which is unusual
in nature taken as a whole.
'The very Indra, of high heaven...and all heaven's host besides'.
As conceived in Indian myth and cosmology, Indra is the ideal of such a consummation of human values, and is shown as having originated in the hollow of a lotus-bud which symbolises creation, from which even Brahma the creator first came, with four heads for the directions. What is cosmologically great is psychologically and potently contained within the span of a hollow lotus, as in a vase. All the mental constructions which are the further elaborations of this creative urge in consciousness, resulting in hypostatic realities such as gods or angels, belong to the same order as Grace. The names are different, but the reality is the same. Such is the implication of these lines.
'From such a Source do all grow out.'
This would seem to point to the fact that the transcendent realities have their source in the immanent. According to the Guru there is no distinction even between the transcendent and the immanent.
With intuition it is possible to link these as belonging to one central reality in which there is no duality, even though its aspects are named 'transcendent' or 'immanent'. The heavenly beings are grounded in the Self here and now, as the Self is implied in all such notions of heavenly values. These and other matters need more explicit determining in the light of the whole of the philosophy of the Guru, as considered in its various applications both here as elsewhere in his works.
WORD NOTES
'Kripa': 'Grace' This could be translated ' kindness', but God's kindness is well-known as 'Grace' in the theologies of the West.
'Alpa Jantu': rendered 'mere stone-confined creature impotent', should be considered as a worm within a stone which itself is helpless and at the end of its resources in gaining power over its environment.
IV
Having no kinsmen, strength or wealth -
How could this ever grow? 0 marvel picturesque!
My Master's sport is this!
No darkness is possible in thus knowing.
So to see, do grant Thy Grace, good Master!
The object of this verse is to draw the distinction between certain secondary factors and the all-important primary factor
of Grace which is involved in the growth and progressive adjustment of an organism to its environment. It is true there
is the father and mother, and nourishment from the mother's body. But these are only partial explanations of the main cause running through them like a vertical chain of cause and effect in time, rather than in the horizontal world of space or action. The potter is secondary to the basic clay of the pot. Clay is the 'prius' in the Aristotelian sense being the basis of the 'entelecheia', the true cause which makes anything what it is, in its own perfection, which touches actuality here. The role of the father, mother, wealth or friends who nourish a human being in a social context after birth, are seen to be non-operative before birth. An invisible numinous cause of an order of the 'thing-in-itself' is then operative, as opposed to the incidental factors in which humanity seems to thrive in a socio-economic framework, as understood in the usual sense. The contemplative environment for the progress of life or of spirituality is quite another thing. Here the mysterious factors, such as Grace, Presence, the numinous Absolute, the other-worldly, the given, a priori reasoning or intuition, have their prime place. This is but in keeping with the methodology of the Vedanta, as we have seen in earlier chapters.
'0 marvel picturesque! My Master's sport is this!'
The numinous aspect of the Absolute or the 'thing-in-itself', as viewed in the light of the non-dual Word-wisdom, is bound
to have the character of a marvel or a mystery. It is part of its essential make-up. A central human value, conceived psychologically and cosmologically at once, leaves behind only a sense of wonder. Insofar as such a wonder fits in with actualities and
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is normal and harmonised in other ways, without disruption of the personality, it is to be accepted as normally falling within the scheme of contemplative thinking. Sport ('lila' in Sanskrit) is that field of elusive 'occasionalism' where psychic and cosmic factors enter into interplay.
'No darkness is possible in thus knowing. So to see, do grant Thy Grace, good Master!' The Guru is aware that these matters lend themselves to various superstitions in the name of religion or spirituality. Followers and teachers of pseudo-sciences, and false, interested or asymmetrically-constructed doctrines have often, in the name of spirituality, erected edifices whose value to human life is often questionable or suspect in various degrees. One religion may condemn the belief of another. But whatever the variety of belief, the compromise of opposites is inevitably bound to be present in one form or another. This makes the whole matter necessarily speculative when concrete details of doctrine or faith are stated. But this does not make the position fundamentally any different. Knowledge of the Supreme must partake of light, and lack of knowledge must be of darkness. Whatever the form by which we come to know of the higher Grace and its sport or mystery; as knowledge it is illuminative and thus belongs to the side of light rather than to darkness. Grace thus seen unitively is the universal positive principle of the Good, the True and the Beautiful which, whatever its form, cannot be a superstition. Unknowing alone, which is negative, would constitute the essence of superstition. The prayer here is for that Grace which can open the eyes of knowledge towards reality, at whatever stage such reality is envisaged.
WORD NOTES:
Aho vichitram: '0 marvel picturesque'. The phenomenal world has been attributed to Maya which projects this empty vision, just as a mirage in the desert is also empty of the water imagined there. Objective reality affords no final satisfaction to the ever-present thirst for knowledge, and such satisfaction comes only when conviction about the real is gained once and for all. In the futile sojourn here, one vision after another tantalises the spirit, which is finally lost in the
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wonder of the Absolute. Such is the goal of non-dual wisdom as known to Vedantins from classical Sanskrit times. The phenomenal world is a mere presentiment of the will to live, and in this sense is an empty picture which allures, without any reality as such. No further settlement of the problem is to be sought. Vedanta ends in the non-dual sense of wonder in the vision of the Absolute.
Andhatvam is 'blindness', or 'superstition', whichever is required by the context, as interpreted philosophically or religiously, as the case may be.
V
For months full four or five,
Growing, becoming, by slow degrees,
Even Thou it was who eyes formed one after one,
Ever warding off Death's hand.
All that is now past,
But to my recollective weeping of that prime foetal time,
Listen, 0 Lord of Good!
The transition of the foetus from a characterless lump of matter to one in which the sense-centres become pronounced
stage by stage takes a period of several months from conception, as physiology knows. During this whole period, one steady direction is maintained towards growth and life, with tendencies urging to light and not to darkness. Plants are geotropic and heliotropic, while ontogeny repeats the memory of the phylum. The steady direction is a certain development towards a mature phenotype and this is maintained continuously. Metabolism goes on through time without interference from external factors, and is protected from their interference. The embryo is thus saved from outside conditionings while innate tendencies are given a chance to assert and strengthen themselves.
In all this process, that principle which was referred to as Grace has its role, which is an important determining factor as against climatic and other adverse factors which, if given scope,could at any moment bring an abrupt end to this unfoldment.
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These are facts well known to biology; but even in an extended sense, reaching beyond the orthodox limits of biology, the same laws hold good, revealing the organic relation existing and underlying both biology and theology, scientifically and correctly conceived in the light of the method and epistemology of the Vedanta which we have already examined.
The conquest of the future is the task of the intelligence. This is the path of bliss. Regrets characterize memories which weigh on the self from an opposite direction, as it were. Retrospection has been recognized as a form of regret by philosophers and psychologists, who see in memory the negative weight of inaction and helplessness. Memory is sometimes consoling when attached to pure forms of subjective quietism; but on the whole memory in actual life is linked up with regrets. The feelings roused in the personality when brooding on the past constitute a familiar element in piety, which is not perhaps the best form that piety can take. Positive piety rejects the past and lives in possible future freedoms in terms of Self-realization.
'Eyes formed one after one'
Here the 'eyes' are meant to cover all the senses, which are directed to take cognisance of whatever is presented to them in the environment. Biologically, the senses, which are situated in close proximity and relation to the higher brain centres anteriorly, constitute together a pole which is opposite to the seat of the emotions, often located posteriorly in the viscera or in the tail of certain animals. Evidence of such an ambivalent polarity of the nervous functional centres could be collected, and this would tend to show that all the cognitive centres such as the eyes form a series, as it were, of concentric rings; the outer and most objective being the eyes, and the most subjective the ears with the sensation of hearing which puts sound and meaning together. Grace may be said to enter into the formation and functioning of the senses and organs, such as sight and the eyes, to the extent that such functioning is independent of memory-aspects but rather dependent upon prospective intelligence. The desire to look at light wills the opening of the sense organs to light. It is in this sense that Grace is to be taken as responsible for the formation of the senses.
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'But to my recollective weeping of that time. Listen, 0 Lord of Good!'
Here we have retrospective, regretful piety turning towards the desire for prospective recognition by the higher positive principle of the supreme Good. This sentence gives us the key to the whole technique of contemplative devotion or spiritual practice. The annihilation of the past in terms of the future, and the arrival at an eternal present in the Self, is the basis of contemplation. When thus examined in detail, this prayer of gratitude adheres to the strict epistemological and methodological fundamentals of Advaita Vedanta. Faith is retrospective; hope is prospective; while the resultant charity is the essence of the bliss of Self-realization. Charity in its widest sense is therefore a contemplative human value.
WORD NOTES:
Kalan: translated here as 'Death', is more than a mythological figure, inasmuch as 'Kala' means 'Time' in Sanskrit. Time, as related to the process of becoming ever new, is a great destroyer of the past. The destructive elements of time which are detrimental to life are here personified in the term 'Kalan', the God of Death.
Karuvinkal has been rendered 'in prime foetal'.
Karu is the soft kernel or essential part of a fruit or nut. It is the
substratum of life at its inception.
VI
Yea, semen it was that mixed with blood;
And thus by sound matured and taking form I lay mediate.
Then for me there was no mother or father;
So by Thee alone raised, sole parent mine,
All that I am is here today.
The intermediate stages of the incubation and formation of the foetal personality are now under reference. The biological picture of fertilisation given here corresponds exactly to that of science. The ovaries and principles connected with them are referred to generally as 'blood', while the spermatozoa
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are referred to as 'semen'. Without going into microscopic details, this corresponds to the biological picture in general
terms, inasmuch as blood would represent the basic aspect and semen the factor which gives character and individuality to the mass fertilised. The two principles that were antinomies are again here referred to side by side.
Beyond and besides the material basis for the proliferation of the cells to form the organs, there is introduced the idea of sound as the factor which makes the whole organism mature in the contemplative sense. Sound, as we have noted, is the meeting point of word and meaning; the outer and inner principles meeting through the common 'sound', conceived as a principle. This theory of the relation of sound to the maturing of matter into organisms finds support vaguely in various Vedantic writings in connection with the theory of Panchikarana, and has been the subject of recent investigation by some Western scholars. This has relationship with the mystery of number itself, which was one of the subjects of Eleatic philosophy, dealing with order and music in regular patterns and scales, expounded by Pythagoras and beginning to be reaffirmed by scientists like Jeans and Eddington.
Whatever the final theoretical implications may be, for our present purposes it will be sufficient to know that sound is the medium where the subjective and the objective meet, and where the mind may be said to be inserted in general consciousness. The foetus is no more a mere inert lump, but gains a certain degree of self-consciousness, however low or feebly initiated at this stage. This self, thus integrated, connects positive and negative aspects, and holds them together in unitive knowledge. In this inceptual stage of consciousness, such a self knows nothing of a father or mother. It is innocent of all relations; innocent of the outer world's superimpositions which come only later. Thus by origin, the personality is essentially independent of external human relations. These belong to a social context of a later stage.
'I lay mediate' - can refer to the position of the foetus within the maternal body in an actual sense, or it might be understood in a psychic or symbolic sense. This self, at its
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inception, was neither positive nor negative in its adjustment to the environment. It was a neutral entity, balanced between the two extremes, and thus represented the principle of being in its purest form. The essential nature of the personality pertains to this neutral self, and it is in this sense that the later remark in the verse applies, namely, that the self is to be looked upon as raised solely by the Grace of God, as the child of immortality.
WORD NOTES:
En Thathan: 'Father Mine', is here rendered 'sole parent mine.' 'Thathan' is a word of endearment applied to any parent, including the grandfather, and sometimes even to a child. It has no relevance for the particular generation. Ancestor and heir become interchangeable in its intimately pure connotation. It is representative of the protective principle in the abstract, whether conceived prospectively or retrospectively.
VII
If all that now-forgotten suffering should be revived within,
I would this very day fall and perish in flames, alas!
Alone Thou didst then provide those outlets five of sense,
O Father mine of gold.
Even thus to know, Thou, 0 Lord, permitest.
Retrospection, when overladen with regretful memories of suffering, must be detrimental to progress in the usual sense. It
is of the nature of a self-consuming fire, as the Sanskrit word 'thapam' (regret) sufficiently well recognizes (i.e. thap - to burn). In this negative state of self-immolating memory, the senses have a corrective or balancing role. They hold the interests on newer and ever-newer objects. Life is thus diverted into progressive channels of normal activity. This helps to balance and maintain the metabolism and the life of the tender being in normal consciousness. Integrated and unified consciousness can reflect on its own nature, and thus, through the
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balancing of the senses, the personality is able to attain to full human knowledge. Such Self-knowledge can theoretically imply more. As the Guru Narayana himself points out, lucid retrospection need not be an impediment to wisdom.(5) The
implications here deserve detailed and separate examination which we shall defer for later consideration.
'Alone Thou didst then provide those outlets five of sense... '
The ambivalent aspects of life have to be maintained at a certain equilibrium so that life and Self-realization may be possible. The higher values depend on the more basic ones, as when the Bhagavad Gita says that the Gods are to be propitiated by sacrifice, and they in turn would then shower graces on man.(6) A reciprocity is suggested here between what memory implies and what the senses represent. One cannot exist without the other. Like sin and grace in theological discussions, the relation here is to be understood in both its implications at once. As the Tamil Tiru-Kural puts it, in connection with rain, 'Should the sky run dry, there would be neither festivals nor worship for the gods here.'(7) The circulation of ambivalent factors and values of good and bad goes hand in hand and has to be understood intuitively in its global entirety.
'0 Father mine of gold'
The reference to a father of gold is to indicate that matter itself is not to be thought of as divorced from any idea of the supreme principle. The thinking substance of Spinoza comes near to this way of looking at the reality which is at once immanent and transcendent.
WORD NOTES
Unarnal, rendered 'should be revived within', means more literally, 'waking to the past'. Sleep and dream are like memories in the subconscious. At the conscious level we are awake where another set of tendencies come into operation, more in relation to the objective, empirical or actual.
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Porivathal, rendered 'outlets five of sense,' would be more literally 'doors.' The senses have been compared to windows, and, together with the other bodily orifices, they have been referred to in the Bhagavad Gita as the gates of a city.(8) Reflexive thought is also a higher function involving the positive aspects of the personality.
VIII
That mother of mine who, as a burden bore me within,
With a tender melting heart, vainly breathing many a sigh,
Fuming hot, in pain she brought me forth,
To lie here, howling on like a jackal.
For once deign to tell me, Lord, what all this can be about?
The picture painted here is so realistic that it calls for little comment. There is even a touch of humour in this very realistic form of adoration, especially at its tail-end, like the sting of an epigram.
'With a tender melting heart .... in pain .... howling on like a jackal.'
The painful heat and the tenderness of feelings alternate in the mother, making life a pendulum swinging between two extreme poles. The mother has pain in giving birth, as the child shows pain in being born, by crying. The final question is therefore pertinent and cannot be answered with logic one way or the other. The cyclic rotation of Samsara or the wheel of life is here summed up. It revolves between the ambivalent factors and tendencies at the root of life itself-a continuous cyclic movement. No philosophy or science offers an answer to these questions, which involve an understanding of the numinous Absolute. Only the silence of the Guru can represent an answer.
WORD NOTES
Venthullazinju, literally 'cooked and melted loose within,' has been rendered ' fuming hot . . .with a tender melting heart' and shifted round to give the meaning in English.
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IX
Full well aware art Thou, good Lord of all,
Hence what need is there for humble me to tell?
Do banish, pray, all agony!
Thy servant has no one here, and if Thou me disown,
Then all is lost,
0 Saviour coming mounted on a bull!
In the last lines the Guru links up the whole composition with the prehistoric Shiva-tradition and affiliates the entire theme to the doctrines of the perennial philosophy or mysticism. The duality as between the Supreme Providence and the adoring Self here is the cause of all the agony or suffering referred to above. Mutual recognition of the bi-polar interdependence between the supreme and the ontological self is strikingly restated here by way of conclusion; the two aspects being brought together into close reciprocity for purposes of contemplative understanding of the one in terms of the other.
The allusion in the last line is to Shiva, who rides a bull and saves lives, as against Yama or Kala, the God of Death who is represented symbolically as riding on a black buffalo. This final reference to the Shiva-bull who is the white Nandi, adds that characteristic depth to the composition, reaching back to prehistory and to that virile principle of positive life in the symbology and mythology of Shiva which we have outlined in earlier chapters.
The Markandeya Purana describes the way in which Shiva, mounted on a white bull (the Nandi) appears on the scene at
the very last moment of the death of a young man who was destined to die at the age of sixteen. Death (or Kala) claims the
life at the appointed hour, but the saviour on the white bull comes at last as the youth's final refuge, in his hour of extreme despair. Such is one of the images which this verse revives in the time-honoured context of contemplative Word-wisdom.
NOTES
(1)
Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad, V, xii. 1; Taittiriya Upanishad,
II, ii, 1.
(2)
Anupashya yatha purve pratipashya tathapare
Sasyamiva martyah pachyate sasyamivajayate punaha.
Katha Upanishad, I, 6.
'Viewing restrospectively, as also prospectively, man, like vegetation, is subject to the process of becoming (or cooking) repeatedly (is born again).'
(3)
Bhagavad Gita, III, 16.
(4)
Sahayajnah prajah Srishtva ....
Bhagavad Gita, III, 10.
'Having created the peoples together with sacrifice…' .
(5)
Atmopadesha Satakam, verse 64.
(6)
Bhagavad Gita, III, 11.
(7)
Kural, II, 8.
(8)
Bhagavad Gita, V. 13.
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KINDNESS TO LIFE
(JIVA-KARUNYA-PANCHAKAM)
(Translated from the Malayalam)
I
All are of one Self-fraternity.
Such being the dictum to avow,
In such a light how can we take life,
And devoid of least pity go on to eat?
II
The non-killing vow is great indeed,
And, greater still, not-eating to observe;
All in all, should we not say, 0 men of righteousness,
Even to this amounts the essence of all religions?
III
If killing were applied to oneself,
Who, as a favour, would treat such a dire destiny?
As touching all in equality, 0 ye wise ones,
Should that not be our declaration for a regulated life?
IV
No killer would there be if no other to eat there was-
Perforce, himself must eat!
In eating thus abides the cruder ill
In that it killing makes.
V
Not-killing makes a human good -
Else an animal's equal he becomes.
No refuge has the taker of life,
Although to him all other goods accrue.
INTRODUCTORY
This short composition of five verses shows that ethics arises directly out of the contemplative way of life. In fact we see here how contemplation and matters which primarily concern the commandments of a religion can be brought together under one general principle of wisdom and rational living. The ethic here is dictated by the inner voice of contemplative reasoning, when a man wants to be fully human. Leaving aside on the one hand epicurean, hedonistic or utilitarian views of life which are based upon satisfactions too ordinary for the dignity of man; and on the other hand preventing such commandments from becoming mere dead letters, which might happen if divorced from all human considerations, the Guru here follows a line of contemplative reasoning which is full of true humanity and dignity. The pious man of prayer seeks refuge in God while denying what might give a similar refuge to animals. The contradiction in such a unilateral attitude of prayer, with the subsequent conflict which it brings about, is forthrightly abolished here, with a tenderness that is touching and which even has some humour.
COMMENTARY
I
All are of one Self-fraternity.
Such being the dictum to avow,
In such a light how can we take life,
And devoid of least pity go on to eat?
When piety and kindness are hinged one on the other they together constitute an important article of faith, a law or axiom
of contemplation. In the very first verse, Narayana Guru relates
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it to the axiom of the Advaitic or non-dual reality of the Self. The Self is universal and unitive and therefore cannot
countenance conflict between life and life. This is the first corollary arising out of the pure contemplation of a priori
truth. When it is accepted that killing is wrong, the same holds good a fortiori with the question of eating. Kindness emerges naturally as the argument of the second degree which partakes of the logic of the emotions to at least an equal measure as it is itself based on pure reason. To the Advaitin one is as valid as the other, since the principle involved is the same.
The need to be kind to one's fellow creatures does not require the support of argument. One does not have to look for this justification in any book. It is self-evident and, consciously or unconsciously, humanity treats it as such. All civilised governments provide laws for the protection of wildlife, even though instituted for aesthetic rather than ethical reasons. The promiscuous destruction of nature is beginning to be recognized as at least undignified behaviour for those calling themselves civilised.
However, much vagueness clings to this subject. Some consider kindness as being sentimental, and others as an impractical ideal. Killing in some form being incidental to life, such as that involved, for example, in agriculture, there is a condoning of killing or a conniving of it in various degrees without any real criticism. There is even a popular saying in Malabar that the sin of killing is abolished by eating. Killing a man is murder (except in the case of war), while slaying a beautiful deer in the woods is not. Cannibalism, again, cannot be treated as at the same level as the consumption of microscopic beings in milk or other food. Confusion between the inevitable and the contingent aspects of the question gives rise to the prevalence of an uncritical vagueness, creating a no-man's-land of absurdities.
But here the Guru marks out the field of rational contemplative norms of conduct in terms of the dignity of man. Man is the measure of all things, as Self-realization in universal terms is his goal, when intellectually conceived. After understanding critically the position in regard to this question of killing and
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eating, it is for each man to make up his mind where he will draw the line of demarcation between what is necessary according to him and what he should avoid in the name of kindness. But the palate here should not be the preponderant consideration.
Duty, piety, righteousness, and religion are matters involved here, more than a merely rational outlook. Here reason is affiliated to a humanitarian outlook. This attitude is of the essence of religion, whatever the verbal form it may assume.
Man is seeking spiritual consolation as a refuge from suffering and sin, or even seeking emancipation in wisdom in ultimate terms of pure reason. The generosity of the absolute principle is always there as an inevitable factor to be dealt with, whatever path of wisdom or piety a particular aspirant may place before himself as his ideal. In times of stress all men pray for mercy of some kind, and that same prayer must bind us all to acts of mercy, as Shakespeare says. A man who was sure that he would never need mercy might perhaps be the only one who could logically escape from being merciful. Only in the context of neutral wisdom is such an indifference to mercy imaginable, and when such a neutrality is really gained, it becomes tantamount to being one with the Absolute. Then the question of mercy does not arise. In all other cases mercy becomes a necessary and inevitable form of obligation, even in the most contemplative of disciplines. Mercy, however, should not be mixed up with sentimental regret or retrospective self-pity. The kindness meant in this poem is that tender feeling of universal sympathy which is based on an open and rational outlook.
In this first verse the doctrine of non-duality as conceived in universal terms is invoked to support the idea of kindness as an obligation to be rightfully recognized by man. Reason makes kindness binding. Otherwise ethics would depend upon necessity and would be left for its support on instinct or animal nature. Non-dual contemplation requires reason to be taken as a corrective to instinct. Instincts must always be subjected to the sublimating purification of reason.
'Self-fraternity': 'atma sahodarar' in the original means the same as that universal brotherhood or equality in the eyes
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of God spoken of by religious people. Such terms as 'created in the image of God ' are sufficiently recognized in the study of comparative theologies of all religions to be clear to the general reader.
II
The non-killing vow is great indeed,
And, greater still, not-eating to observe;
All in all, should we not say, 0 men of righteousness,
Even to this amounts the essence of all religions?
There is no religion which does not stress one form or another of universal brotherhood, and which does not advocate kindness to all living things. The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill', which Christianity and Islam inherited from Hebraic and perhaps from proto-Hebraic sources, confirms this view and, taken side by side with facts in practice such as the prohibitions and injunctions regarding killing on certain days and of certain animals (such as a red or stray cow or bull), we can gather, even in the religions of the non-vegetarian peoples an acceptance, in principle at least, of the non-killing commandment. And there is the general acceptance by the Semitic religions that a form of grace accompanies fasting and abstention from meat-eating on certain days. Buddhism in principle (though not in practice, in Burma for instance) is solidly based on non-hurting (Ahimsa), and Jainism marks the high level of this principle. The universal principle of brotherhood of all life and general equality becomes confined to 'humans only' in those climes where animal food becomes more excusable than say, in the southern latitudes of Asia. Making allowances for local differences due to necessity, non-killing, in principle, is enjoined by all religions.
'0 men of righteousness '
This verse is addressed particularly to those who think in terms of organized and active religions which try to keep the faithful on the path of righteousness and virtue by edict and law. The more contemplative religions accept it in the axiomatic form which does not require legalisation.
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III
If killing were applied to oneself,
Who, as a favour, would treat such a dire destiny?
As touching all in equality, 0 ye wise ones,
Should that not be our declaration for a regulated life?
The appeal in this verse is to those endowed with wisdom or education. Equity leads inevitably to the notion of equality. The argument here is against unilateral attitudes of equity. Reciprocated equity applied to both sides concerned without difference, and based on a uniformly general principle, becomes equality, which the wise are here asked to recognize so that they may lead humanity along such lines.
WORD NOTES
Dharmyam has been rendered 'for a regulated life ', i.e., conducive to a life lived according to the first principles which have been stated already. When Karma (or conduct) is controlled by considerations of first principles, it becomes Dharma or right action, and anything which promotes the prevalence of such activities in group life is Dharmyam - what conduces to a regulated life.
IV
No killer would there be if no other to eat there was-
Perforce, himself must eat!
In eating thus abides the cruder ill
In that it killing makes.
We often hear the argument that someone else has done the killing and therefore one can eat without any qualms of conscience. The hollowness of such an argument is exposed here with a certain touch of humour. The picture arises of a lone huntsman having brought down a deer and being faced with the problem of consuming it all himself. This readily brings home the absurd relation between killer and eater, and in the argument, is not without its humorous side.
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WORD NOTES
Agham: 'evil,' has been translated 'ill'.
V
Not-killing makes a human good -
Else an animal's equal he becomes.
No refuge has the taker of life,
Although to him all other goods accrue.
This last verse appeals to human dignity and in its name puts in its final plea against killing. Even if all the other arguments should be logically unconvincing, here is an appeal to a higher value in man which is reasonable. Man becomes the equal of an animal by wanting to kill it for the pleasure of his palate or for the pleasure of hunting, which are motives of a very ordinary order, common to more uninformed levels of life.
'Although to him all other goods accrue.'
There are values and values. Those in the form of goods which we enjoy here are many and varied and may be had in a unilateral fashion, even when one is undeserving. But the essential good, as a value such as grace or refuge or sanctuary in God, comes from the unitive, presiding principle of Good with which a bilateral and unitive relationship is necessary. One cannot think of bribing God for a partial favour based on no principles. To be loved by God one has to love one's fellow creatures, all in all.
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SONG OF THE KUNDALINI SNAKE
(KUNDALINI-PATTU)
(Translated from the Malayalam)
REFRAIN
Dance, cobra, dance!
Thy burrow seek and witness
The bliss of grace in wild display.
Dance, cobra, dance!
I
Keep close the foot so lotus red
Sacred of the Lord who dons
The crescent moon and cassia bloom, and
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
II
Besmeared with ash and bright His holy form shines.
Thy tears for Him in streams do shed,
And thus steadily
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! ...
III
Upon this burning ground
Where ghost and also corpse are born
United well with what subsists, its counterpart supreme
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
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IV
The tresses of hair so fragrant
Excelling flowers of sweet aroma
In shade they lie within you
Beside this beauteous form, which view, and
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
V
A spotted leopard skin surrounds
His form of tender bloom.
'Within the Self he dances' say, and
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! ...
VI
Upon the silver hill what gleams
As Vedic wisdom's quintessence,
Say 'That in me is dancing too', and
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance!…
VII
He for whom a sportive snake
An ornament becomes
His home it is in us; so
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! ...
VIII
No one has seen, not he of blossom's bloom
Nor even that holy garlanded one,
This flower-form of thine, so
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! ...
IX
Aum and all the rest that form
The essence of ten million charms
We now do know and so keep on, and
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
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X
To the One who conjures down
Who all things here brings out
To His leaf-tender foot adhere, and
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! ...
XI
From lettered charm of Shiva-praise
To every formula of truth -
Even from sound do they come out, so
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
XII
Ten thousand millions
Of that Ananta snake art Thou;
Thy million hoods then open out, and
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! ...
XIII
This body here no truth it has;
Owner another in it resides.
Such wisdom do thou gain, and thus
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
XIV
Uniting body and owner too,
Radiant, who abides as one,
Such there is to know, as well, so
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
XV
What swallows all, with rival none
Such is the omnipresent Word
Which swallow thou, and steadily
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
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XVI
Consuming all the words there are
As the supporting wall for all
Even on such do take thy stand, and
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
XVII
From very name this great expanse
And even earth as well did come
As a presentiment in thought, so
(repeat refrain) Dance, cobra, dance! . . .
INTRODUCTORY
Kundali is the seat of the Kundalini, which is often spoken of in yoga as a snake lying coiled at the base of the vertebral
column. It is supposed to represent a ganglion, plexus or storehouse of nervous energy which irradiates upwards to the
higher centres of the nervous system. Although anatomists have tried to locate this Kundalini Shakti (basic nervous energy)
in histologic, organic or functional terms more precisely in modern scientific language, all such attempts remain unconvincing and resemble the efforts of a pseudo-science, for the very simple reason that this psychic energy is not reflected directly in objective organs or functions.
The subjective and the objective come together here, hand in hand, as the methodology and epistemology of the Vedanta
would necessarily require. Where inner and outer values are spoken of together, a certain vagueness is bound to be present,
at least according to the objective standards of science with its great stress on what is visible. Under suitable attitudes and spiritual disciplines known to yoga, the coiled-up snake at the base of the vertebral column is capable of uncoiling itself. The roused-up serpent power then reaches higher and higher levels, touching or attaining successive plexi, often referred to as lotuses or central points from which nervous energy of a spiritual order radiate.
Of these, the highest ranking is somewhere at the base of the brain, beyond the soft palate, which the tongue's tip, when
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trained, can touch and stimulate. This is the centre of the thousand-petalled lotus (Sahasrara Padma), of the full radiance
of positive wisdom in which all relative knowing becomes absorbed. This is like the burrow of a snake situated on high.
And when the snake reaches this home on high it is lost inside it and all 'becoming' is absorbed finally in 'being'. Such is the imagery underlying this composition.
The cobra charmed by music lifts its hood and swings and sways in response to it like a dance or play. This is a familiar
sight on the Indian scene and affords the author an apt literary device around which to build his mystical doctrines and philosophy of the Self. The whole process is attended with a certain sense of exaltation, joy or bliss which the yogi feels, like a poet or artist who reaches out from one sublime vision of the psycho-physical universe to another one higher or still more superb.
In order to appreciate the suggestive meanings of mystical import in this naive-looking form of poetry, one has to be sufficiently familiar with the dancing Shiva legends. The bronze of Nataraja, now so well known in the West, represents this dance which is both cosmological as well as psychological in symbology, fused into one creative image based on the myth or prehistoric personality of Shiva, such as we have traced in ourearlier chapters.
Snake symbology has been in the tradition of many lands: Crete and Egypt as well as India (where the tradition still lives
on). The snake, cosmologically, is the principle of time, continuity, or eternity. Adi-Ses |
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