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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The premise, like many games today, is that you get guns and kill your foes. Such games are colloquially called shooters, with an adjective prepended to describe the camera’s vantage point, such as first-person shooter, for when you “are” the in-game character, or third-person shooter, for when you are behind the in-game character and separate from her. The game creator’s choice of vantage point, a choice that is generally fixed within a given game, has a significant impact on the player’s experience.

Bioshock is a first-person shooter, so while playing, one identifies visually with the in-game character. This, together with the careful artistic design of the game, leads to an immersive experience that has one feeling like a part of the in-game world. Whether it’s the campy vending machines, the zombie-like inhabitants of an underwater city, or the collectible audio diaries of a tragic past, the different aspects of the environment entice the player more strongly than in other games, where the emphasis is simply on killing things instead of on emotional depth. In this way, the carefully crafted world of Bioshock achieves an unnerving level of realism.

This unnerving realism shocks most when the game forces the player to make a moral judgment. As an example — the example that inspired me to write this post — the Bioshock world is populated with endearing young girls called “Little Sisters,” whose function it is to collect useful genetic material called ADAM that the player desperately needs in order to survive. While these Little Sisters are actually no longer human, deformed into zombie-like collectors through some strange biological procedure, the procedure that transformed them is reversible, and the player can perform the reverse procedure on them in order to rescue them from their status as zombies and make them girls once again.

When one encounters a Little Sister, which one is forced to do in order to obtain ADAM and survive, one has to kill her mechanized guardian (amusingly called a “Big Daddy”), which prompts the Little Sister to start weeping over her lost companion. In this emotional scenario, with silence but for the sobs of the Little Sister, one is told that one has the choice to either harvest the Little Sister, giving one 160 ADAM but killing the creature, or rescue it, giving one only 80 ADAM but earning a voiced thank-you and look of gratitude from the resulting girl.

Logically, one wants to harvest all of the Little Sisters in order to maximize one’s ADAM. But something feels wrong about killing a child-like creature for one’s own satisfaction. Even though it’s sensible from the perspective of pure self-interest, there’s an aspect of our humanity that appeals to the player, asking the player to consider rescuing the Little Sister.

In my first encounter with a Little Sister, after sitting for a few minutes with the moral choice on display (picture), I decided to rescue it. While this did put me 80 ADAM short, which was frustrating for advancing in the game, I felt like I had done the right thing. Looking back though, that sounds silly. I might have done the right thing, but what does morality in a video game even mean? When the game presents the player with this phenomenally constructed moral quandary, it feels like more than just a game — but it’s still just a game. Why not just harvest all the Little Sisters? The arguments in favor of rescuing are weak — unlike in a Disney movie, the gratitude of the rescued girls doesn’t miraculously help the player defeat foes — yet I chose to rescue.

The Little Sister problem is interesting in itself, but it also raises the larger question of morality in the digital world. Many video games, movies, and television shows today celebrate violence to a ridiculous degree, making gruesome digital death commonplace, and yet a core principle of Hinduism is ahimsa, or non-violence. Is chainsawing your video game opponent to bloody chunks consistent with ahimsa because it’s just a game, or is there something wrong with it? On the one hand, it’s clearly inconsistent with ahimsa when it has clear influence on violent actions in the real world — for example, the killers at the Columbine High School massacre videotaped themselves paying homage to the popular violent video game Doom before the shootings (source). On the other hand, it seems justifiable in some way when it serves righteous warfare as described by Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita — for example, the same violent video game Doom served as the basis for military simulations for soldiers in the United States military.

It’s hard to tell — why did I choose to rescue the Little Sister? Is ahimsa consistent with violent video games and other cultural celebrations of violence? What are the moral consequences of saying that a video game is “just a game”? What do you think? What does ahimsa mean in the digital world?

PS: Perhaps if the Mahabharata had video games, Duryodhana would have been satisfied with the Pandavas and Kauravas logging in for an epic Team Slayer match in Halo 3 on Xbox Live and giving the kingdom to the victor…

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Many of us Hindus, as children, were told (or read ourselves) the basic story of the Mahabharata over and over.  I have taken so much from it, and it has truly affected my perspective on life.  That being said, I cannot truly give the epic that responsibility without studying it more thoroughly.  Before this, I had never read more than a children’s version!  I am sure many of you readers may feel similarly, and so one reason why I have chosen to write about my experiences reading these versions is for you to find one that appeals to you.  I hope that all of you will someday (if you haven’t already) pick up a more thorough version of Vyasa’s story.

Having finished Rajaji’s version, I thought I might share with you all a few memorable passages from it.  (If you’d like to read it yourself, here is an online version, which is only 217 pages!)  What I particularly like about this version (who knows, it may be true with others as well) is Rajaji’s delicate commentary throughout the story.  Sometimes it gets to be a bit too much.  Here is a passage from when the Pandavas are attempting to make peace with the Kauravas while simultaneously preparing for battle:

In December 1941, the Japanese were carrying on negotiations with the Americans and, immediately on the breakdown of those talks, took them unawares and attacked Pearl Harbour destroying their naval forces there.  Drupada’s instructions to the brahmana would show that this was no new technique and that, even in the old days, the same method was followed of carrying on negotiations and even sincerely working for peace, but simultaneously preparing, with unremitting vigour, for outbreak of war and carrying on peace talks with the object of creating dissensions in the enemy’s ranks.  There is nothing new under the sun!

A bit much, right? At other times, Rajaji’s words precisely capture the idea of the story.  He details a side story of a brahmana and a dutiful wife with the following end remarks:

The moral of this striking story of Dharmavyadha so skilfully woven by Vedavyasa into the Mahabharata, is the same as the teaching of the Gita, that man reaches perfection by the honest pursuit of whatever calling falls to his lot in life, and that this is really worship of God Who created and pervades all (Bhagavad Gita XVIII: 45-46).  The occupation may be one he is born to in society or it may have been forced on him by circumstances or he may have taken it up by choice but what really matters is the spirit of sincerity and faithfulness with which he does his life’s work.

There are too many times in the Mahabharata where people clearly make the wrong decision.  Rajaji comments thus:

The Puranas wherein right conduct is always preached, sometimes set out stories in which conduct, not in conformity with Dharma, seems condoned.  Is it right, one may ask, for religious books thus to seem to justify wrong?

A little reflection will enable one to see the matter in proper light.  It is necessary to bring home the fact that even wise, good and great men are liable to fall into error.  That is why the Puranas, although ever seeking to instill Dharma, contain narratives to show how in this world even good people sometimes sin against Dharma, as though irresistibly driven to do so.  This is to press home the truth that howsoever learned one may be, humility and constant vigilance are absolutely necessary if one wishes to avoid evil.

Why indeed, did the great authors of our epics write about the lapses of Rama in the Ramayana and Yudhisthira in the Mahabharata? Where was the need to make mention of them and then labour arguments to explain them away, thereby disturbing men’s minds? It was not as though other had discovered the lapses and Vyasa and Valmiki had to defend their heroes.  The stories are artistic creations in which lapses themselves impress the desired moral.  The parts dealing with the lapses deeply distress the reader’s mind and serve as solemn warnings of pitfalls which wait to engulf the careless.  They dispose the mind to humility and watchfulness and make it realise the need for divine guidance.

The modern cinema also projects on the screen much that is bad and immoral.  Whatever may be the explanation offered by the protagonists of the cinema, evil is presented on the screen in an attractive fashion that grips people’s minds and tempts them into the path of wickedness.  Not so in the Puranas.  Although they do point out that even great now and again fell into error and committed wrong, the presentation is such as to warn the reader and not to allure him into evil ways.  This is the striking difference between our epics and the modern talkies, which arises from the difference in the character of the people who produced them.

Ok, he again goes a little too far in the last paragraph (or sentence).  Rajaji is clearly not of our generation!  But I find the rest of his discussion illuminating.

Rajaji presents an interest view of choices in a chapter on Balarama’s lack of involvement in battle (Krishna’s elder brother is torn between sides and loses all interest in the world):

This episode of Balarama’s keeping out of the Mahabharata war is illustrative of the perplexing situations in which good and honest men often find themselves.  Compelled to choose between two equally justifiable, but contrary, courses of action, the unhappy individual is caught on the horns of a dilemma.

It is only honest men that find themselves in this predicament.  The dishonest ones of the earth have no such problems, guided as they are solely by their own attachments and desires, that is, by self-interest.  Not so the great men who have renounced all desire.  Witness the great trials to which, in the Mahabharata, Bhishma, Vidura, Yudhisthira and Karna were put.  We read in that epic how they solved their several difficulties.  Their solutions did not conform to a single moral pattern but reflected their several individualities.  The conduct of each was the reaction of his personality and character to the impact of circumstances. Modern critics and expositors sometimes forget this underlying basic factor and seek to weigh all in the same scales, which is quite wrong.  We may profit by the way in which, in the Ramayana, Dasaratha, Kumbhakarana, Maricha, Bharata, and Lakshmana reacted to the difficulties with which each of them was faced.  Likewise, Balarama’s neutrality in the Mahabharata war was a lesson.

Perhaps I include these specific passages because I agree with them, but I cannot avoid that bias.  One of the reasons I feel compelled to read the epic in so many different ways is because the story itself appeals to me in so many ways.  For me, the Mahabharata is the truth of life: that we humans are all faced with difficult decisions and we navigate these decisions by following our moral compass, our Swadharma.  That is all we can do to make peace with, and in, the universe.

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More importantly, are the answers to these questions even relevant spiritually? Sonali wrote an excellent post about different ways to interpret these epic texts. The three categories she posits are: history, literature, and scripture. There are certain aspects of these epics that may seem unrealistic, and cause us to doubt their historical veracity. But does that matter, if we primarily view these epics as scripture, or even solely as literature?

While there is plenty to discuss just considering the Ramayana & Mahabharata as literary works, I want to focus on the spiritual interpretation of these texts – this is, after all, Swadharma. To consider these texts as scriptures is to draw, or attempt to draw, moral lessons from them. Did Yudhisthira act appropriately when gambling with Shakuni and putting Draupadi’s honor at stake? Was Bharata’s decision to try to disobey his mother and put Rama on Ayodhya’s throne the right one? By answering these questions, one is creating, or perhaps simply applying, certain rules about the proper way to act. So if we consider that the true value of these scriptures is that they provide a source for a moral code, does it even matter whether these events are hypothetical or actual?

I don’t think so. Fables & exaggerations are used all the time for teaching moral lessons. So clearly, the historical inaccuracy of a set of events doesn’t preclude them from being used as a source of morality. What is essential is posing a question about what is “right”, and then answering it, or at least prompting the reader to answer it. For example, the events of the Mahabharata set the context for the discourse of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most well-known sources of moral guidance in Hinduism. To connect this back to Sonali’s original post (and to disagree with my own comment on that article eight months ago!), I think that you can indeed consider the Ramayana & Mahabharata as scripture without considering them as history.

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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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