Beware of becoming delimited by a specific knotting and disbelieving in everything else, lest great good escape you … Be in yourself a matter for the forms of all beliefs, for God is wider and more tremendous than that He should be constricted by one knotting rather than another. (Fuṣūṣ 113)

A “knotting” is a literal translation of the Arabic word Ibn `Arabī uses here, which can be translated more conventionally as “belief system” or “ideology”.

He who counsels his own soul should investigate, during his life in this world, all doctrines concerning God. He should learn from whence each possessor of a doctrine affirms the validity of his doctrine. Once its validity has been affirmed for him in the specific mode in which it is correct for him who holds it, then he should support it in the case of him who believes in it. (II 85.11)

I don’t want to give the impression that these two passages exhaust Ibn `Arabī’s vision of “religious diversity,” or even that this English translation is an accurate representation of his original work, for he is a tremendously complicated thinker and highly verbose writer. Many great, spiritually inclined thinkers from very different backgrounds have spent many, many years over the centuries trying to understand his work, both in its grand design and in its many details. It is always terribly easy to read into someone’s work our own “knotting” (to speak Ibn `Arabī’s language), which is unfair to both them and to us.

However, these passages did speak to me, and for that reason alone I wish to share them (un-analytically!) with everyone.

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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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“There are some who are really the salt of the earth in every country and who work for work’s sake, who do not care for name, or fame, or even to go to heaven. They work just because good will come of it. There are others who do good to the poor and help mankind from still higher motives, because they believe in doing good and love good. The motive for name and fame seldom brings immediate results, as a rule; they come to us when we are old and have almost done with life.

If a man works without any selfish motive in view, does he not gain anything? Yes, he gains the highest. Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not patience to practise it. It is more paying from the point of view of health also. Love, truth, and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power.”

This is Swami Vivekananda’s most powerful insight — work done selflessly is more rewarding than work done selfishly. But is it a valid insight? As with any text, these are merely words on a page, words that could have been perverted, intentionally or not, through the hands of scribes over the years. For that reason, we have to carefully examine the claims through our own experience. Is unselfishness something that we can confidently apply to our lives, or is it something that we should live more carefully, testing its truth?

In order to answer that question, we have to answer an even simpler question — what is unselfishness? At first glance, the synonym altruism comes to mind, but that doesn’t help much. Turning to the zoological definition of altruism, we find: “Instinctive behavior that is detrimental to the individual but favors the survival or spread of that individual’s genes, as by benefiting its relatives.” This is a bad definition for spiritual seekers, since unselfishness is not always constrained to one’s kin. The philosophical definition of altruism is more promising: “[An] ethical theory that regards the good of others as the end of moral action; by extension, the disposition to take the good of others as an end in itself.” This is a good working definition of unselfishness — regarding the good of others as the end of moral action.

Now, if that unselfishness is the ideal to which Swami Vivekananda inspires us, the question of why be unselfish still remains. It’s an important question to ask — unselfishness, together with love, is Vivekananda’s choice ammunition in bombarding readers with moral inspiration. Be unselfish, he says, give unto others, and pray before the Lord and the strength to continue serving will fill you. Enchanting words — but are they true? What if praying before the Lord fails to give us the strength to serve others? What if being unselfish is just self-abuse by another name? What if unselfishness is God’s illusion on humanity, testing us to see if we blindly believe what we are told by self-styled prophets?

These are important questions to ask, but not to answer — the answers to these questions are irrelevant because the value of unselfishness is self-evident. My most satisfying moments were not when I have obtained something I wanted, but when I have assisted someone successfully. This is not to say that selfish action is bad — simply that I find unselfish action more rewarding. If you are the type of person who can’t think about the welfare of others, then you are not a bad person — you are simply missing out on a more rewarding course of action. On the other end of the spectrum, if you are the type of person who is always there for other people, and you feel stretched to the limit, it is not bad to take time for yourself to recuperate. Unselfishness is desirable because it is a satisfying principle by which to live one’s life, but it need not dominate our lives. To be attached to unselfishness is dangerous — it is important that you are able to detach yourself from unselfishness.

That said, ultimately the validity of Swami Vivekananda’s insight is left to your personal experience. Even if you receive no gratitude in return, be unselfish, because you feel it is the right thing to do.

I leave you with a quote from Dr. Albert Schweitzer:

“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

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Is it okay to undertake our journey to perfection alone? Or is the right thing to do to uplift those we meet along the journey?

I constantly struggle with this dilemma because it represents an apparent conflict in my philosophy — for some reason (a post on what these reasons might be can be found here) I hold sincere selflessness as my highest ideal, and for that reason, it seems that the latter choice is the one consistent with my philosophy.

But is it? Are the two really different choices? Or is it that by actually practicing true unselfishness, I’d automatically be able to be of some use to those around me… I truly hope that is the resolution of this conflict; that perhaps, as concluded in another post, I’ll be able to help others by helping mySelf.

So perhaps I’ve resolved that issue (for now) — but here is the other roadblock I recently discovered: in my quest for selflessness, I inadvertently end up using others as my guinea pigs. My friends, my family, my acquaintances — everyone becomes a person whom I can try to love selflessly, to whom I can try to give my time and care to unselfishly, trying as hard as I can to not expect anything in return. If I was the only one to get hurt when I don’t succeed, there wouldn’t be a problem; but when I fail to give someone the attention he/she deserve, when my ego gets in the way of legitimately caring about a person, when I aggressively try to give, give, and give without thinking about whether it is even helping the unfortunate person that I am mindlessly giving to…it is often someone else that gets hurt.

And that’s not okay.

But how can I change it? Is there a way to go about perfecting ourselves without harming anyone else in the process? Is there a way to set an ideal and achieve it in a self-contained manner, without needing to experiment on anyone else?

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One interpretation is that being religious is equivalent to being a practicing Hindu — being aware of and following the many rich traditions and rituals our culture has to offer. I’ve learned much about this aspect of Hinduism since coming to Harvard, but I still know little, so it is not what I had in mind.

Another interpretation is that being religious is believing in God. My belief in God wavers because I do not consider it central to my beliefs. This, too, is not what I had in mind.

The most reasonable interpretation is that, for me, being religious is having faith. Defining faith as “belief that is not based on proof” (Dictionary.com), I see that this is what I had in mind when I answered my friend. Religion and conviction are inseparable in my mind, and because conviction is the firm belief that point A will lead to point B, this naturally expands into a faith in destiny. Conviction is at its most effective when it is operating in an environment where proofs are impossible — an environment where one has to take things on faith.

Life is an example of such an environment — after all, life does not furnish us with any meaning, any purpose. It is up to us to create meaning from the nothingness, a nothingness in which proofs of meaning are impossible. Religion — specifically, the conviction that comes from faith in a transcendent destiny — is my way of creating meaning from this nothingness.

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