Our discussion touched on slokas 1, 3, 5, 10, 13-17, and 32 of the sixth chapter.  The first sloka begins, “He who does the task / Dictated by duty, / Caring for nothing / For fruit of the action, / He is a yogi, / A true sannyasin.”  These lines evoke the idea of detachment which, as Swami Tyagananda reminded us, does not mean a neglect of work, but, as the lines state, a detachment from the results of work.  Swami Tyagananda emphasized that the ideal of detachment does not mean that we should never be attached to anything.   For example, when working, we should be attached to the task at hand in the sense that the task has our full concentration, but when we have finished the task we should be able to detach our mind from that task and move on to the next.  Thus, we should strive to have control over our mind in both attachment and detachment.  This same idea reappears in slokas 10, 13-15 which describe a yogi’s meditation: “…He must exercise control over his mind and body.  He must free himself from the hopes and possessions of this world.  He should meditate on the Atman unceasingly.”

The fifth sloka of chapter 6 reads:

What is man’s will

And how shall he use it?

Let him put forth its power

To uncover the Atman

Not hide the Atman:

Man’s will is the only

Friend of the Atman:

His will is also

The Atman’s enemy.

Swami Tyagananda explained the apparent contradiction in this sloka by diagram.  He showed us that the state of the spiritual seeker could be represented by the relationships between the mind and body with each other and with the rest of the world and the divine spirit.  All of these relationships are fraught with tensions which keep us away from our ultimate goal of realizing the Self.  The will is our enemy (and Atman’s enemy) in the sense that it creates and perpetuates these tensions.  For example, it may be the will of the body that urges us to overeat, but this may be in tension with our mind’s desire to eat moderately.  In the same way that it may reinforce tensions, the will is also a source of strength which can help us to resolve our tensions and, in that way, the will is our friend.  It is only after we have resolved our tensions with the world around us and the tensions between our mind and body that we can more clearly see the divine spirit and make progress in that direction.  Thus, it is valuable to be reflective and to try to identify the various tensions in our lives so that we may have a chance to utilize our will as a friend to resolve these tensions.

During the discussion, we also discussed other ideas regarding meditation, love, and monastic life.  I encourage anyone else who attended this week’s reading group to add any thoughts they may have and to correct any points where I have misinterpreted Swami Tyagananda or the text of the Gita.

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But it is his remarks about the future that I found most interesting and applicable. Swamiji framed the problem of the future as a question: How can we develop confidence? He then said that there are three sources of confidence:

1. Morality. A steadfast life based on truthfulness and selflessness is a source of great inner strength. As Swamiji puts it, “Even if I should suffer, I will stand for what is right.”
2. Faith in God. With a calm belief that there is a purpose to life’s trajectory, we can deal with life’s surprises, suffused with the conviction that things are in the hands of the Almighty.
3. Accepting one’s divinity. Swami Vivekananda exhorts us to be aware of our own divinity, to feel that we are, in fact, the Spirit, or Atman. A firm belief in this internal divinity also affords the confidence to meet the future.

Swamiji remarked that these three methods of developing confidence are not mutually exclusive. One can be moral and pious, confident in one’s own actions and calmly accepting the future. (As a side note, I would also add competence to the list — for example, a licensed driver is confident on the road, and a well-prepared student is confident on the relevant exam. When it comes to technical knowledge, spirituality is no substitute for preparation.)

To me, holiness lies in confidence. I have respect for the confident — it is confident, brave action that pushes humanity forward. I only put a “ji” at the end of someone’s name once I am convinced of their confidence, their certainty, their decisiveness in meeting the future. No matter what degree of technical skill we may have as doctors, teachers, or gymnasts, we may still feel constricted by a lack of confidence. That is where spirituality is useful. Spirituality has the unique ability to free our minds, calm our nerves, and inspire us to meet life every day with conviction.

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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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The discussion reminded me of a lecture Swami Tyagananda had given on “What Vedanta is Not.” Below, I have summarized the main ideas I got from the lecture.

Swami Vivekananda, once gave a lecture about the three things necessary to make a religion. Here was his analysis:

1. A book — and an identity through the book: In Swamiji’s words, perhaps this identity, conferred on those practicing Judaism, through their reliance on the Torah and Old Testament, is how Jews were able to preserve themselves despite so much persecution over the course of history.
2.A teacher: Most religions derive some authority from human figures through whom truth is revealed. Most religions (except “tribal” religions) have a founder around whom they base their identities- i.e. Buddha for Buddhists, Christ for Christians, Abraham and Moses for Jews, Muhammad for Muslims; they seem to all tie their new ideas back to that founder
3. Sense of Exclusivity: Based on Swami Vivekananda’s lecture, it seems as though most religions either have a clause claiming that “we are right,” (or, in more liberal traditions, the idea that their ideas are right for them, and that regardless of what others do, at least they can rejoice in the fact that they are doing the right thing) or a reliance ethnic exclusivity (i.e. China as the middle kingdowm), or a reliance on teaching exclusivity (based on the idea that “we’ve got possession of the truth.”)

Vedanta, and Hinduism in general, has none of these! More specifically:

1.    Book: Upanishads themselves say that it is impossible to get to the inifinite truth solely based on any book. In other words, spiritual knowledge cannot be restricted to a book.
2.    Teacher: Vedanta (and Hinduism) has no one person as the founder. The Vedas and Upanishads seem to have been there since prehistoric times; in fact, many of the sages who recorded the Vedas and Upanishads didn’t even write their names! The reason behind this is quite interesting — the idea seems to be that the truths these sages discovered aren’t conditionally true (they aren’t only true because those sages discovered them, just like gravitation isn’t true just because Newton discovered it). These sages didn’t record their names because they simply wrote about universal truths, based on principles.
3.    Sense of Exclusivity: Vedanta completely denies the exclusivity of truth. Rather, it embraces the idea that truth is universal, and thus, it cannot be denied to others! Of course, there were periods in history where exclusivity was practiced, but that was a distortion of what Vedanta/Hinduism really taught.

Then, is Vedanta (and Hinduism) really a religion?

In the Vedanta center, Swami Tyagananda explained it like this: religion (with a lowercase ‘r’) is one thing, and therefore, there are many ways to practice it (the Christian way, the Buddhist way, the Muslim way etc). Vedanta/Hinduism has this incredible ability to absorb and amalgamate various aspects of these smaller religions, which allows us to see various religions as just different paths to reach the same truth.

In that sense, perhaps Hinduism is more of an overarching Religion (note the capital ‘R’), one that serves as a lens through which we can view the other paths to reach the same truth. As Swami Tyagananda said,

“By its very nature, Vedanta breaks down the limits of religion, and to point of the principles of Religion itself.”

What do you think? Is Hinduism a religion? Is it a symbol of conformity to Western boundaries? Is it an overarching thought that can serve as a way for us to reconcile the differences among the many religions? What is Hinduism?

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As college students, we get to meet people from many different cultures and lifestyles and share with them our own unique way of life. The interaction between the different personalities and traditions can be compared to the ‘Take-A-Penny’ plastic tray found in a typical gas station convenience store. We leave an impression on others and sometimes even affect their personalities, just as they impact ours with their words and actions. Eventually, we are all picking and choosing different parts of personalities from those with whom we associate. Slowly but surely, our new personality becomes somewhat of a conglomeration of our original personality along with the personality traits of others. This could be shown through similar word usage when speaking or similar actions in certain situations. For the most part, this is done subconsciously, so we don’t necessarily notice the minor changes to our own character.

Swami Tyagananda explains in perfectly in his article, ‘I Am Your Daughter’, in which he discusses how each of our personalities affects and is affected by those of others.

Our heart is a garden full of seeds, some good and some bad, some constructive and some destructive. We have seeds of love and also seeds of hatred; seeds of compassion and also of cruelty; of restraint and also of indulgence; of trust and of distrust; of humility and of arrogance; of openness and of pettiness… Which of our identities becomes operative at a given time and which seeds get sprouted depend on the particular situation and the people we are with.

The people we interact with every day water certain seeds in our heart and unknowingly leave imprints on our personalities, resulting in a slight change to our character. These changes happen every day and are so subtle that often, we cannot see the difference in ourselves. What we need to be most careful about is when such subtle changes are for the worse. For instance, if a person that doesn’t curse at all is put into an environment when everyone swears all the time, the person will slowly, and unknowingly, acquire the habit of cursing. Although our garden is open for anyone to water whichever flowers they choose, we need to be the ones to decide which seeds we allow to sprout in our personality.

This is, obviously, a very difficult task, for it requires us to constantly gauge ourselves be aware of the changes in ourselves. In order for us to become the best people we can be, we must always be able to test ourselves to determine if the paths we take will help us achieve our goals. At the same time, we should try to be skillful gardeners and ‘distinguish between good seeds and bad seeds, separate them, and water only those seeds that’ll produce healthy plants’ so that our friends can cultivate beautiful gardens as well.

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