Friday, June 23, 2006
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A place to meet for honest and positive dialogue about the School, and about the Teaching it exists to offer. Stop, listen, respond and participate. A principal reference point is the words of His Holiness Sri Shantananda Sarasvati.
4 comments:
Just as a starter - religion is bhakti, worship to a supreme being to whom one surrenders. Philosophy is love of wisdom and, in the word itself, there seems to be no suggestion of worship, supreme being or surrender.
That seems like a good opening gambit to me. Is philosophy then partly or wholly identified with Jnana-Yoga (the Way of Knowledge)?
It seems to me that the School speaks of philosophy in a different way. "Our" philosophy has a great emphasis on Karma-Yoga (the Way of Action), which is performing actions without claim on the result.
There is hardly any devotion in the pure sense (when we say someone is "devoted" it usually means they will uncomplainingly make tea for the next 20 years, not that they wake up in the morning praising God and forget to get out of bed - Shantananda's description. Anyone who didn't get out of bed would in the School be regarded probably as a useless dreamer).
It could also be said that there is not that much Jnana in our philosophy. Jnana is the via negativa - "not this, not this". It can often seem that our method is full of "this, this" - ideas, words, beliefs to which we all assent.
I was once listening to a talk on Chartres Cathedral by one of the Senior figs. He was getting comfortable in the context of Waterperry ballroom and said something like, "Of course, you couldn't say this kind of thing in The World". A friend of mine leaned over and whispered, much to my surprise and delight, "In other words, this is SES folklore".
Knowledge and devotion.... as applied to Sanscrit. Some of us can't get our heads round the Sanscrit grammar.
Honestly, I've tried and there's a big block in the way.
Now, if we were to chant it (forget the grammar for the moment, maybe a lifetime)we'd get the sound alright and rather more fortissimo and powerfully.
More bhaki too.
Leaving the grammar for the Sanscrit eggheads on the jnana way.
I would agree with that ... there should be a rapprochement between adherents of the several Ways, an acknowledgement of the Indian spirit of "each to his own". There is no need to castigate people for what they know or don't know, any more than for their devotion or lack thereof, or for the amount of work they do. There's no virtue in castigating anyone.
We seem to have forgotten (or never to have learned) that the point is to liberate people so that they can be themselves.
In re. of Sanskrit, we could get rid of the Devanagari script, which is quite a recent development, and use a simple system of transliteration. It's another barrier to entry, much beloved of the pandits.
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