Yesterday, I found myself lamenting the disappearance of Hinduism’s heroes, such as the venerable Bhishma, the motherly Sharada Devi, the wise king Janaka, the devoted Shabhari, or the inspiring Swami Vivekananda — people whose character and energy are timeless.

It seems like Hinduism has nowhere to turn, and that all of its modern representatives are either weak, market-oriented, or fraudulent. I don’t think Deepak Chopra and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar are anywhere close to Swami Vivekananda in terms of “heroism”, and I am yet to meet a Hindu spiritual leader who qualifies as anything more than well-read and traditional. Certainly, there is no shortage of charitable people in the world today, but for many of them, their attachment to the objects of their charity strips them of the quiet power we find in Hinduism’s most revered heroes. Not that these people are bad (except the dishonest ones), but they’re hardly inspiring — nothing like Mother Teresa or Gandhi, for example.

Then I remembered a scene from one of my favorite movies, V for Vendetta, in which the main character says (watch it here):

Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.

That concept of living for an ideal is what I find to be missing — people who burn in pursuit of their principles every second of every day, who nurture an ideal to immortality through their brief existence. It’s, of course, understandable — such intensity resembles idiocy and insanity. But to the individual in question, no other way of life would be truthful.

I realized, then, that every day I have a choice: either to live for an ideal or to live for comfort. (Not that living for an ideal wouldn’t be comfortable, just that it’s more likely to lead to uncomfortable situations.) The lack of heroes in Hinduism can be fixed through my actions, by my deciding to be such a hero. And by that, I don’t mean acts of courage or securing wealth and fame, or even affecting others’ opinions in any way, but just the fundamentally heroic act of adhering to an ideal for its own sake — like the many people who work quietly and inspire those around them.

There are three principles I adhere to, for my own satisfaction, which are grounded in Hinduism:

1. Integrity. The continuous pursuit of truth in how I think, talk, and act.
2. Helping people. If someone asks me for help, I help them.
3. Creativity. To build and invent all the useful objects, ideas, and institutions that it is possible for me to create in my lifetime, and to always do it better than I think is possible.

It brings me immense satisfaction to lead a life which prioritizes honesty and productivity, and equally immense pain when I violate these principles. Nonetheless, the point is that I want to live this ideal for its own sake.

This resolution reminds me of Gandhi’s aphorism: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” After all, our commitment to our personal ideals is not an accident, but a choice. If you’re the type who wants to live for something beyond yourself, think of yourself as one of the very heroes you admire, hold yourself to the same standards, and see what happens.

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In other words, if we assume that the world is an illusion, it becomes really easy to do all sorts of terrible things; if the world isn’t real, then it doesn’t really matter if we pollute it, or brings species to extinction, or exhaust our natural resources, or wage wars; thinking that the world is an illusion may give some people license to damage the earth.

I wasn’t sure how to respond, other than that people who honestly believe that there is something beyond this world would naturally act in ways that help others and in ways that don’t damage the earth…But I thought she had a really important point, that it is really easy to misinterpret this idea of freedom.
How would you guys respond to this? How can we know the correct way to interpret our religion, assuming that my earlier explanation is “correct”?

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We grow up hearing stories, myths, biographies, slokhas, and inspiring quotes about what we should consider the ideal; and at least for me, these sources of moral guidance have heavily influenced what I consider to be the ideal state of existence. And, I suppose as a result of constantly thinking about it, I often have a pretty good idea of what will take me towards that goal and what will not.

Yet, despite knowing what my eventual goal is, I often find that my current desires conflict with my long-term goals.

For example, Hinduism extols self-control as an important virtue, yet at this age, many of us like the idea of letting go and dabbling in everything, saying that it is the only chance we’ll get to “experiment.” Hinduism advises us to be unselfish; yet without some selfishness, we’re very likely to be walked all over — and after experiencing the pain of being taken advantage of, we tend towards selfishness even though scripture tells us the opposite. Detachment is a fundamental concept in Hinduism; yet, if we hope to live as householders, attachment to those around us seems to be the most satisfying way of forming human relationships…

I believe strongly in the long-term goals — that practicing self-control, selflessness, and detachment will bring me much more internal peace and satisfaction in the long run — but for now, I sometimes find myself seeking to break away from those goals to see what it is like to not be ‘bound’ by a higher goal.

What is the right path in this case? Does the existence of lower desires indicate that I’m not ready to follow my higher goals — that I should perhaps fulfill those desires and (if the scriptures are right) upon seeing that they do not give me the fulfillment I crave, then move on to my higher goals? Or should I continue to deny those lower desires, focusing only on my long-term goals…

Have any of you dealt with this type of conflict before? Do you have any suggestions for how to resolve such conflicts?

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First, two points:

1) I think asking what Hinduism considers “moral” is a more interesting question than what it considers “legal”. I see every religion as providing an objective (some kind of divinity) and a decision rule to achieve that objective (some kind of moral code), so to really determine what a religion “means”, focusing on the moral rather than the legal is more useful. Furthermore, I think the answer to this particular question is quite different depending on whether you take “prohibition” to be a moral or legal one.

2) I’ve noticed that in interpreting Hindu texts to determine what Hinduism says about a moral issue, people often commit three logical fallacies:

• Divinity implies morality: We are used to assuming that if a divine being performs an act, that act must be moral, or at least acceptable. For example, if Krishna has premarital sex we assume that Hinduism cannot prohibit it. (Please note that what I mean by divinity here is “divinity as a position”, whereas I mean “divinity as a state of being” in my definition of religion above.)
• Morality must be fully expressed in a single individual: We are used to being able to find a single individual who is moral in every way and conversely, if we cannot find a single individual who follows a moral code in its entirety, we assume that a strict moral code, if it even exists, must be weak. For example, if we cannot find a single perfectly moral person in the Mahabharata or even the Ramayana, we immediately discount either epic’s ability to describe a moral code or fall into the usual comments about Hinduism’s “diversity” or “openness”.
• The outlining of a path to morality makes acts done along that path moral: This is a particularly prevalent logical fallacy since Hinduism adopts such a gradual approach to spiritual development – see the four stages of life outlined in the Manusmṛti. For example, we see sexually explicit sculptures on the exteriors of the temples at Khajuraho and assume that if Hinduism recognizes that at some stage in life we might feel sexual urges, Hinduism permits us to fulfill those sexual urges.

These logical fallacies are what I think make finding a clear moral code in Hinduism so difficult. We cannot just say something is moral “because God says so”, we cannot find any paragons of moral virtue in the epics (though Bhishma comes close enough for me), and many of those who do come close to moral perfection were not always so (Prabhasa must be born as the mortal Bhishma precisely because of his sin of stealing Nandini). By contrast, in the Abrahamic faiths, divinity does imply morality since God is the source of morality, morality is embodied in individuals like the prophets, and many of these prophets do not show any sort of moral development because they had always been perfect.

This has even stronger implications when you consider formulating a response to our favorite question: “What is Hinduism?”. If you accept my definition of a religion, a philosophy that offers some kind of divine state of being as its objective and some kind of moral code as the decision rule for achieving that objective, then defining Hinduism reduces to explaining how Hinduism defines that divine state of mind and associated moral code. Therefore, if we are unable to articulate what Hinduism’s moral code is, we find ourselves unable to define Hinduism.

One approach to determining Hinduism’s moral code is to approach the question from an Abrahamic perspective. However, the three logical fallacies I outlined above are not just valid logical inferences for the most part in Abrahamic faiths: they permeate discussions of Abrahamic morality. In other words, the Abrahamic approach is the wrong set of logical tools to apply in interpreting Hinduism. Nonetheless, there is still value to be gained from comparing the Abrahamic faiths with Hinduism, so long as we take care to use the interpretive techniques uniquely appropriate to each belief system.

Another approach, the one that is far more pernicious in my view, is to completely sidestep these logical fallacies and take refuge under the intellectually flimsy scaffolding of “new age” thought. This sort of thinking typically presents Hinduism as “open”, “diverse”, and “spiritual” rather than “religious”. These people recognize the three logical fallacies as fallacies and often take great pains to emphasize Hinduism’s differences with the Abrahamic faiths – but then instead of searching for a source of morality other than divine beings, instead of putting together a moral code by examining the moral actions of several partially immoral people, instead of recognizing that all stages in a path of moral development are not themselves moral, they talk about the “humanity” or “realism” of characters in Hindu mythology, use this as grounds to justify an extraordinary level of permissiveness, and in the very worst cases take an “anything goes” attitude. I call this pernicious because the inevitable result of this sort of thinking is the dilution of the religion. Not only do these people abandon all rigor, but they elevate theological lassitude to a virtue!

…

If this sounds harsh, please note that I am not criticizing what I do think are valid claims of Hinduism’s tolerance and its rich history of internal debate. Hinduism is a tolerant religion and does have remarkable internal dialogue. However, there is a difference in how Hindu scriptures answer the questions: what do people do (descriptive), what can people do (legal), and what should people do (moral). Too often the answers to these questions are confused.

The reason Hindu texts bother to include the descriptive or legal at all is a reflection of Hinduism’s true strength: Hinduism holds that a moral code must be internalized. Internalization is the process by which you transforms the authority of a moral code from an external source (e.g. “God says so” or “Hinduism says so”) to an internal one, your own conviction that the moral code you have chosen is the decision rule best suited to fulfilling your objective. The descriptive and the legal exist in Hindu texts not as a moral endorsement of any descriptive norms or legal principles but as a means of presenting several possible paths of action and then repeatedly testing your conviction by illustrating how characters might falter along the particular paths they have chosen. Internalization occurs as stories and philosophical debates (and Swadharma discussions) and 1) force you first to first refine your beliefs and articulate them clearly to yourself and then 2) deepen your resolve once you have convinced yourself that your actions are 100% consistent with your goal.

In other words: the burden is yours and yours alone. Because everything is governed by karma, the mechanical, unbreakable law of causality, a supreme moral judge or final moral judgment do not exist – the only things that matter are that we choose our actions, every action has a consequence, and we are solely responsible for those consequences. Some interesting conclusions come from this recognition. First, even if intent aggravates karmic consequences, it is not a necessary condition for those consequences. Even if you unknowingly cause harm to someone, you are still responsible for that harm. Second, repentance is completely meaningless in Hinduism because there is nobody to whom you can repent. Asking for repentance is asking someone to absolve you of the consequences of your actions. This is not just “weak” – it is impossible because repentance is a request for a logical contradiction, a denial of the law of causality. Third, self-punishment is also completely meaningless because it is really nothing more than a form of repentance. You might punish yourself, irrationally hoping that in doing so you might absolve yourself of your perceived sins, but again, you are asking for a logical contradiction, praying that someone will magically suspend the law of causality for you. You might try to convince yourself that you are only trying to understand the pain of those you have harmed, but 1) this so-called understanding is worthless if you already understand the consequences of your harmful act, and 2) if you truly do understand those consequences, you understand that no amount of self-punishment will ever counterbalance what you have done. Self-punishment is one of the clearest acts of weakness, made more dangerous by the irony that so many of its practitioners trick themselves into believing: that it is in fact an act of supreme self-control.

…

So what does Hinduism have to say about premarital sex? Briefly, I think Hinduism is unambiguously negative in a moral sense and weakly permissive from a legal sense. First, none of the arguments involving Krishna and the gopis are acceptable as they fall into the “divinity implies morality” fallacy. (I also question how sexual Krishna’s relationship with the gopis really was – I always read the story as an allegory of bhakti. Of course, hypersexualized interpretations of Hinduism are popular with academics like Wendy Doniger. Second, none of the arguments about Khajuraho and similar depictions of sexuality are valid because they fall into the “moral development” fallacy. Note that the explicit sculptures are on the outsides of the temples: the point is that you have to transcend lust in order to enter. Any reference I have found to sex in Hindu texts falls into this category as well. For example, the Manusmṛti mentions the “Gandharva marriage” as those that “has sexual intercourse for its purpose” (3.32), a reference that is sometimes taken as a permission of premarital sex, but 1) the context is clearly within marriage, 2) the Manusmṛti itself says that the sages do not permit this form of marriage for the members of any caste (3.24), and 3) within the same text, celibacy is described as a precondition for the acquisition of higher knowledge (e.g. 2.96-99). In other words, the texts describe and may even permit premarital sex (though I can’t find anything explicitly permitting it), but the moral ideal of celibacy is quite clear. Note that this ideal is not just premarital but throughout life. Perhaps nobody exemplifies this ideal better than Bhishma, on whom the Devas shower flowers when he takes his vow of celibacy. Notably, Bhishma is the closest we come to complete moral perfection in the Mahabharata.

While we might have to search a little harder for the answer, Hinduism does offer well-defined moral guidelines. Hinduism might recognize more obviously than other religions do that our world is not morally perfect, that we alone choose our actions, and that true moral codes cannot be handed down but must be internalized. All of these are strengths. But none of these mean that Hinduism does not take clear stands. Denial of this conviction is what makes Hinduism weak; affirmation of it is what makes Hinduism strong.

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Before I dive into a new thought for this week, I wanted to reiterate the working definition of “morality” that we tentatively agreed upon, and in doing so quickly summarize what I remember of the discussion. (Please feel free to correct me, and to mention all the other details I’ve forgotten! I would feel terrible if I left someone out.)

• As Aneesh put it, a person’s moral framework is his/her view of the world, a system of determining what is “right” or “wrong” to the person.
• As Madhura expressed it, this view of the world can, may, and perhaps even should change with time.
• As Anjali’s and Sarvagna’s points about Two-Face and his coin of destiny showed, there is a distinction between what a person decides is moral and how that person goes about deciding what is moral. It is perfectly possible to go through life choosing our path at every moral fork by flipping a coin; what matters is the commitment we make to following through with the outcome of the coin flip.
• Indeed, as Sarvagna argued, the choices one makes of what situations to “flip a coin for” are themselves moral, reflecting an underlying “moral compass”, so to speak. (Evolutionary ethics / moral universals, anyone?)
• And finally, as Priya’s question at the beginning of the discussion revealed, what is “moral” here is what each one of us regards, whether consciously or subconsciously, as absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the world itself.

As discussions go, this was a substantial step forward, and I’m glad we got to discuss it in detail. There are two other questions, however, that we did not get enough time to address in the discussion after we discussed this idea of morality:

1. How does this system of morality fit in with our understanding of Dharma?
2. What happens when two different systems of morals clash?

I want to open up discussion on Question 2 in the particular context of an individual’s personal system of morals clashing with what his particular social context agrees is moral. I emphasize this context because it brings up the thorny question of cultural and moral relativism, and I want to see if we can address it in a dharmic context. I present two scenarios, and I’d like to hear your opinions on both of them.

Scenario the First:

A person sincerely believes that all red-headed women over six feet tall are spies trying to engineer a takeover of his country, and mounts a systematic campaign to kill them all. Society, shocked by his obvious insanity, locks him up in a mental asylum forever.

Scenario the Second:

A person sincerely believes that those who support and enforce untouchability are immoral and evil, and mounts a systematic campaign to kill them all. Society, shocked by his obvious insanity, locks him up in a mental asylum forever.

Is there a distinction between these two scenarios? If so, on what philosophical or moral grounds do you distinguish between them? To what extent is your response universalizable (if, that is, you think it should be)? And is there a role for Dharma here?

I look forward to reading your comments.

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