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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Perhaps April is the month of freedom. It certainly is for at least some major swaths of the population: Jews celebrated Passover during April, commemorating their deliverance from slavery in Egypt at the hand of God. Republicans like me hoped for the freedom to pay fewer taxes on April 15. Even stoners thought about freedom on 420, at least until their buzz hit.

Freedom is generally defined as the right to do something without anybody interfering in it. The Jews wanted the freedom to work, live, move, and worship as they pleased. Tea Party protesters wanted the freedom to spend their money as they pleased. Stoners want the freedom to get stoned as they please. The U.S. Constitution generally defines freedom this way: you have the right to say whatever you want, carry guns without anybody stopping you, and keep your personal belongings out of the sight of others.

For a religious person, though, is freedom really all about doing whatever you want? In a world with meaning, governed by a moral order, can freedom be a simple indifference about things?

This definition seems problematic. While freedom of speech, for instance, seems appealing to us, our religious sensibilities generally tell us that spreading hurtful rumors, being sexually explicit, and lying are all wrong, detrimental to ourselves and to the community. The same goes for the free choices we make as consumers: without wanting anyone to sign-off on our book purchases, we still rightly feel disappointment and even anger when people squander money on the new KFC Double Down (two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken fillets Original Recipe or Grilled, two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel’s Sauce) in a world where people are starving. Freedom is fine, but we still believe very much that it can be abused.

Is it a useless concept, then? Gandhi was once asked to contribute to a campaign to establish a world charter of human rights, in the days before the UN created one. According to Eknath Easwaran, his response was, “In my experience, it is far more important to have a charter for human duties.” Gandhi’s quote is useful for considering what the real basis for freedom is.

Freedom must be understood in the context of responsibility, and our duties as human beings. As religious people, we believe that we have a duty to love one another, and to live in a manner befitting human dignity. We believe that we have to support one another’s spiritual flourishing, and ensure that everyone, especially the poor, has the ability to live the life that God wants us to live. Those responsibilities begin at home, among our families and neighbors, and extend out to the world.

Freedom has to be the freedom to do our duties, not simply a blind relativism towards our actions and those of others. Freedom of speech is most alive when it is used to defend the vulnerable, as seen in the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Archbishop Oscar Romero. They gave their lives and their voices for the sake of the downtrodden, so that the latter might live in a world where they could flourish and love as they are meant to. Freedom of assembly is most alive when it is used to bring together people for the common good, as seen by the amazing charitable work done by free groups of people, like the Grameen Bank and Lions Club International, groups that take an active concern in the welfare of humanity. Freedom of business is most alive when it is used to find innovative ways to help people get the things they need in the highest quality at the lowest prices, thereby meeting people’s material needs and freeing them up for higher pursuits.

Every freedom has to be oriented towards the good, and towards the well-being of the vulnerable. So many of our debates about rights could be conducted quite differently if we paid attention to what is really human and good. Of course people have the right to criticize the government, because criticism keeps government accountable and communicates the needs that people have. Of course no one has the right to advocate violence; the right to speak is dependent on not causing harm to the good of others, and it is founded in the duty of doing good.

Duties play an important role in figuring out what freedom is ultimately ordered towards, and it is religion and moral philosophy that teach us our natural duties. Learning how to bring our religious understanding of human responsibility into dialogue with politics is one of the great tasks that lies ahead for religious people in the next several years; the world is very thoroughly confused about freedom, and very ready to listen once more to the insights religion can offer.

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To start off what will hopefully be a fruitful experience of blogging across religious lines, let me explain a little bit about why I am interested in Hinduism, which is, after all, why I’m here at all. My conversion to orthodox Catholicism was (or rather, has been – formulating belief is a wonderfully dynamic thing) a long, slow process that took me on a little world tour of religions, or at least as much of a tour as I could get from the confines of public-schooled Connecticut suburbia in middle school and high school. I had tried to live my life as a universalistic-relativist-pluralist-absurdist with only a very strong belief in a very vague God. As with many efforts at making your own morality, it failed miserably and left me pretty disillusioned with my own ability to just do what felt right. And, I discovered that different religions made different claims about the universe (gasp).

So I set out to find a code of morality and a metaphysical worldview that made sense. Along the way, I found that religions have a lot that they hold in common: a belief that our actions matter, both for ourselves and for the cosmos; a conviction that there is a moral code embedded in nature that we ought to try to conform to, rather than a need to do morality your own way a lá Burger King; and an awareness that there is more to life than the senses can perceive. Religions find it far more fascinating to look at what we know of human existence as humans ourselves and try to figure out the world from there than to try to reduce people to consequences of conditions and impersonal “forces;” of history, of society, of the universe. I agreed, not least because it seemed absurd to limit the possibilities of humans to conform themselves to a higher standard and way of living in a world with Gandhi and Mother Theresa, the Buddha and Pope John Paul II.

Eventually, I came to consider the differences between religions, and found that the Catholic belief in a universe created by a personal, Trinitarian God, which saw humans as naturally good but fallen into pride and sin, and which placed its trust in God Himself coming as a human to bridge the gap we created through sin, to be more compelling than any other religion’s worldview. And unlike many Protestant sects, the Catholic Church believes that natural reason can know God and discover natural morality, which helped me to find a place for all of the good, true, insightful things I had seen in my forays into Hinduism, Zen, Islam, Baha’i, and other religions.

I have become more orthodox as time has gone by, and I still find great value in seeing the beauty, truth, and goodness in different religious traditions. That is why I have taken three classes on Hinduism so far, two that have explicitly compared the theological arguments set out in Hinduism and Catholicism. That is why I have worked with the Interfaith Council, and why I have written an argument in favor of interreligious study for the Harvard Salient, the right-wing rag where I love to rant against socialism and progressivism on the weekends.

To bring us back to the theme/self-justification of this article, I am here because I believe firmly in beauty, truth, and goodness, and as St. Augustine quoted an earlier writer as saying, “I am a human being, so nothing human is strange to me.” I am eager to see the human spirituality and longings that are such a big part of my life in light of the human spirituality and longings that have defined much of India’s life, particularly in Hinduism.

I hope that we will discuss our views and beliefs, and not merely read each other’s posts. Please do comment. Please do question. Please do disagree, or criticize me should that ever be in order (and it is my hope that it will be on more than a few occasions). Dialogue, meaning “two words,” has to be about more than just offering up platitudes on the things that we agree on. Words, after all, have the power to change the world. They deserve to be shared critically and respectfully, in order that we can all seek out veritas together.

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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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