Just as cloud formations, arising from the suns rays, obscure the sun and fill the sky, so the sense of self-identity, arising from ones true nature, obscures the existence of the true self and itself fills experience.

Moreover, Shankaracharya adds that

When he has lost sight of his true self, immaculate and resplendent, a man identifies himself with his body out of ignorance. Then the great so-called dispersive power of desire torments him with fetters derived from desire and hatred.

These quotes are from Shankaracharya’s famous Vivekachudamani, meaning “The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination.” The work is composed of 580 verses in Sanskrit and is structured as a dialogue in which a master tells his disciple about the nature of atman and how to realize the self.

So how does one go about achieving self-realization? Curious to see what Shankaracharya had to say on the subject, I found the following interesting passage (verses 10-13, Vivekachudamani):

Abandoning all actions and breaking free from the bonds of achievements, the wise and intelligent should apply themselves to self-knowledge. After giving up all karma for the purpose of removing the bonds of conditioned existence, those wise men with resolute minds should endeavor to gain a knowledge of their own atman.

Action is for the purification of the mind, not for the understanding of reality. The recognition of reality is through discrimination, and not by even tens of millions of actions. Actions are for the purification of the heart, not for the attainment of the real substance. The substance can be attained by right discrimination, but not by any amount of karma.

Proper analysis leads to the realisation of the reality of the rope, and this is the end of the pain of the fear of the great snake caused by delusion. A perception of the fact that the object seen is a rope will remove the fear and sorrow which result from the illusory idea that it is a serpent.

The realisation of the truth is seen to depend on meditation on statements about what is good, not on bathing or donations or by hundreds of yogic breathing exercises. The knowledge of an object is only gained by perception, by investigation, or by instruction, but not by bathing or giving of alms, or by a hundred retentions of the breath.

What Shankaracharya seems to be suggesting is that it is viveka, or the faculty of discrimination, which leads to the recognition of reality. In other words, introspection/investigation alone is responsible for attaining self-realization. In light of this observation, the above passage raises some interesting questions about the role of action and karma yoga in a person’s life. If neither action nor good deeds such as giving of alms can lead to self-realization, what is the role of karma yoga, which prescribes achieving unity and perfection through action?

My interpretation is that karma yoga is a stepping stone toward self-realization, though it alone cannot be an end in itself. Shankaracharya maintains that action is for the purification of the mind and heart. Thus, perhaps the role of action is to bring purification, and it is only with such purification that one can continue onwards on the path of self-realization by engaging in introspective inquiry.

What are your thoughts?

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This is my first Swadharma post, so I’ll keep it a bit short. On Saturday, we had an Intercollegiate Hindu students’ retreat at Harvard. In attendance were people from MIT, Harvard, Tufts, Wellesley, Northeastern and the New England College of Optometry. Several interesting topics relevant to modern American Hindus were discussed — one topic that particularly interested me was whether the values of Hinduism conflict with the values of liberal college campuses.

To be able to answer that question, we first need to define what a “liberal college campus” is. We all agreed that a liberal college campus is one that is accepting, has a great deal of diversity with regards to cultures, ethnicities and opinions. It is a place where individuals can be exposed to the interests and ideas of others without feeling any compulsion to accept them. It is a place where being a minority has no negative consequences, and every individual is free to pursue his/her own interests, acquire new ones and discard old ones. Defined in that broad and general way, Hinduism is perfectly in accordance with the values of a liberal campus. Within Hinduism, you can worship one God, many Gods, one of many Gods, be vegetarian or not, go to temple or not, meditate or not, and so on.

However, once we get past the generalities and start talking about specific details, the picture becomes a little murkier. First, there are the two issues that define the liberal movement in America in our time — gay marriage and abortion. Does Hinduism sanction gay marriage? Does it sanction abortion? Traditional Indian society has frowned upon both, but that might be more a cultural phenomenon than religious. I cannot think of any specific examples in the texts where they are explicitly allowed or prohibited. So Hinduism seems to be silent on both issues. Unlike the monotheistic religions, Hinduism does not provide a rigid set of rules to follow, but rather a set of principles that must inform our decisions. It provides some guidelines, but does not – and nor does it claim to – provide specific answers to every question that might arise. Thus to demand to find every answer we seek in scripture – as we are used to hearing from the followers of Abrahamic religions – does not make sense in the Hindu context, since Hinduism does not seek to be that kind of a religion.

The second and much bigger conflict with liberal values is the caste system. Core to liberalism is the idea that all people are equal, and that with equal effort under equal circumstances, all will achieve the same amount and are entitled to the same reward. Caste as it is practiced in India clearly stands in direct contradiction to this ideal. So does the existence of caste mean that Hinduism is an illiberal religion? There are 3 ways to answer this charge.

1) Caste is a social phenomenon, not a religious one: Caste is found among Jains, Sikhs, Christians and Muslims throughout the subcontinent. Some would counter this argument by saying that Hinduism is the “originator” of caste, and what is found among followers of other religions is just a leftover from a time when their ancestors were Hindu. I personally think that’s not true – Hinduism itself became infected with caste, but the origin lies in Indian society and not Hinduism.

2) Caste as originally conceived was not a discriminatory system: A passage in the Rig Veda stating that the Brahmins emerged from the mouth of the Purusha, the Kshatriyas from the arms, the Vaishyas from the thighs and the Shudras from the feet is widely cited as the “source” of caste discrimination. To me that argument sounds unconvincing, since nowhere is it implied that the feet are less important to the body than the mouth. On the other hand, it seems to suggest that the various castes are all essential for society to function as a coherent system.

3) Caste was not always so rigid: I’m not an expert at this topic, but M. S. Srinivasan’s work on “Sanskritization” whereby entire castes could move up and down the ladder by the acquisition wealth, education and the mannerisms of upper castes shows that this in fact was the case. Furthermore, caste has become more important in India since the 1990s, since belonging to the right caste can mean getting political favors and largesse. Prior to the politicization of caste, it was not quite the explosive issue it is now.

Overall, I think the question is hard to answer because Hinduism and Indian society have always been inseparable. The principles of Hinduism have mostly been interpreted through the prism of Indian society, and Indian society has been far from perfect. As I said previously, Hinduism does not provide a rigid set of rules to follow, but rather a set of principles that must inform our decisions. It provides some guidelines, but does not – and nor does it claim to - provide specific answers to every question that might arise. But a religion that gives some interpretive freedom to its followers will always stand the risk of being interpreted incorrectly. That interpretive freedom in the hands of illiberal people with their own agendas (whether it be landowners in Bihar or semi-literate villagers competing for the same resources) naturally leads the religion to be interpreted in an illiberal way. This places an especially great burden on those of us who seek to make Hinduism a positive force in the world to make informed interpretations and challenge those who seek to use our religion as a justification for their own narrow-mindedness.

Ultimately, we have to realize that our Creator might have given us scripture — but we have also been given the power to think rationally. If He had intended to provide us with all the answers in scripture, He would not have bothered with bestowing us with rationality. The key to addressing these complex issues is to use the principles provided by scripture to inform our rational thinking, and use our rational thinking to interpret scripture. In other words, use both of Gods gifts instead of entirely substituting one for the other.

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Despite growing up in a community with a relatively sizeable Hindu minority, I rarely discussed issues of faith outside my immediate family. Religion was mostly a cultural phenomenon. Becoming a part of Harvard Dharma marked the first time that I engaged in a discussion of philosophical issues surrounding my faith with Hindu peers. Both the Hindu community, and the Harvard community at large, have affected my conception of faith, and my perspective on the world around me.

I can think of at least two ways that the Harvard experience has influenced my perspective on spirituality. I feel the atmosphere at the college impels one, perceptively or imperceptively, to develop more rigorous intellectual foundations for one’s beliefs than society in general expects. As a result, I’ve thought not only about what I believe, but also the reasons for that belief. Of course, my beliefs are in an inchoate state, and I’d love to hear not just what you believe, but especially why you believe it.

A second, equally powerful influence, has been the dialogue I’ve been able to engage in with other Hindus. Being able to discuss moral issues with people who all share, to a reasonable extent, a common set of values has given helped me learn more about my own sense of faith. An oft-overlooked impact of this community is a certain level of awareness that affords us the luxury of not constantly having people question our beliefs simply because they are unfamiliar with them. However, the social pressures from outside the community are often replaced by pressure from within the community. What are your thoughts on the relative roles of external & internal social pressure?

The event organizers want us to think about ways in which the Harvard experience has either bolstered or challenged our faith. The best answer I can think of is this: Harvard makes you ask more questions about your religious beliefs. Whether this experience strengthens or weakens the foundations of your faith is up to you.

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Reflecting on this question has led me to the conclusion that my reaction to this question is in fact a sign of what I need to work on myself.  I need to work on responding to the questions by looking at them positively as someone actually caring about my thoughts, or simply answer the questions without passing any value judgements on them at all.

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How is any of this relevant to my blog post? I’ve been thinking about two other discussions happening on other posts here, on dharma(s) and on the (non?)necessity of belief in God, and find it darkly illuminating that both of these discussions pivot around the same, fundamentally unexplored, center: what is our source of scriptural/ethical guidance today, and why is whatever our source is in fact our source? I think this really does speak to a transformation/epistemological rupture/whatever-you-call-it in the practice of what we call Hinduism today over the last couple of hundred years, in which traditionally unquestioned, unquestionable sources have been quietly pushed away into a dark corner.

The reason I found the Srivaishnava innovation so thought-provoking was that this particular South Indian movement had managed to deal with a similarly disorienting displacement in religious thought in South India over a millennium ago in such an new-yet-age-old way. The movement appealed to a wide base of Tamil speakers through its adoption of a corpus of beautiful Tamil devotional poems; and yet by maintaining an equally strong affiliation with Sanskrit the movement’s theologians were able to engage in dialogue with intellectuals from other traditions all over South Asia. Furthermore, the movement’s seemingly egalitarian step of declaring the Tamil corpus a “Dravidian Veda” is in fact a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that, in those times at least, only the Vedas had the power of canon, of unquestionable scripture.

This historical example is of value to us modern Hindus in two ways: First, it demonstrates that in the past the notion of a “scriptural canon” has been flexible (if heavily contested), which suggests the lesson that we modern Hindus can potentially coalesce into smaller, more particularized (and dare I say more coherent?) communities around particular scriptural sources of knowledge—whatever these may be.

Second, it demonstrates that there was an “acceptably Hindu” way of investing such a canon with authority (in other words, of canonizing a particular scripture), by establishing an equivalence of the scripture to the Vedas. This is a little trickier to translate into modern terms, because we first have to ask ourselves the question “why the Vedas?” I don’t know the answer, but it strikes me that an answer that has nothing at all to do with the Vedas will end up meaning a religion that is no longer “Hindu” in some deep sense of the word. (Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong in this position, of course — there is no reason why we have to allow ourselves to be bound by historical particularities.)

However, regardless of what text or texts we may regard to be the unquestionable center, I think the existence of such a center and of equivalences with that center is nevertheless valuable. (And it could be argued that a work like the Vedas, whose actual content we are growing less and less attached to over time, is for this precise reason the kind of center that can hold a diverse set of groups together.) This way, a number of more cohesive (and coherent?) religious communities can nevertheless recognize the existence of other Hindu communities and thus recognize their own participation within a broader Hindu religious/cultural framework.

Apologies for what is a not entirely coherent, cohesive post (rather like this tradition!). I guess the questions I’m trying to ask are:

1. Does this framework of innovation in the guise of traditionalism hold true for Hindu movements in the past?
2. Should such a framework hold true for the future? And supposing it should, then:
   1. What (sorts of) texts would be good points around which communities could rise?
   2. Should we continue to rely on the Vedas being the unquestionable, unquestioned center of the framework, or should we consider different texts (at the cost of no longer being Hindu in a sense)?
3. Where could such a framework go wrong if we use it with an eye towards the future? What could possible alternatives be?

These are hard questions, but then where would we be if we stayed away from all the hard questions?

And just to spice things up a little, I’d like to suggest tentatively that this community we have at Swadharma already satisfies the first condition in a matter of speaking: instead of a common textual source we are bound by a common commitment to think our way through these questions.

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