I think there are some interesting points in your last post, but continue to have reservations about the underlying tone. I should explain what I mean about that.
The aim of this blog is to "Free the Teaching" ... ie elucidate what the teaching actually is, discriminate between that and extraneous elements in the School as it is, and re-imagine how the School could be, now and in the future. That requires an approach of steady, clear-eyed optimism.
In your post “Winning or losing the argument” you gave some useful definitions of three kinds of argument, and I think these could well be applied to your most recent post, and to other remarks you’ve made. “Proving your opponent is unfit to be discoursed with” might be a good description of what you’ve just done here, with your demonstration that the School is not concerned with philosophy at all, but with economics. Or take your comment on the "Society or Sect" posting, in which you alleged that the School is not a school because it has 'members' not students. I don't happen to think that's a very strong argument, but more importantly than that I would observe that it doesn’t take us anywhere new.
So, you think there are inconsistencies in the way the School is organized? You think its principles are unclear, its practices confused? You’re not really making headlines here.
You speak – so far – with bitterness. I would ask you to look at your motivation here – is it care for the welfare of the School and its members? Or annoyance at what you perceive to be mistreatment received by you and others? If the latter, there is as you know a web site where you can air your views, maybe cathartically. Having said that, some people from that site have found their way here and in my view they have acquitted themselves admirably.
I am sorry to rebut what you are saying so robustly, but it seems to me that if we proceed as you're doing, we won't go forward. We are not here to defend the status quo, or to attack it. If this blog becomes a point-scoring exercise I will close it down.
The criticisms you offer so far are – rather like those of the lovely Goldschmied circa 1996 – just the other side of the Old Skool coin. For my part, I still think you have more to offer than that.
In recent weeks I've begun to feel that this blog is developing a great deal, with strong contributions from a number of voices. That means that it doesn't depend on any one person, and that we're going to have to find the direction together. This is part of the conversation.
But what do others think of what's been said here by me, and by Gitalover?
Sunday, July 23, 2006
In Response to Gitalover
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
What gitalover says is of great interest and is also revealing.
I recognise - as we all will - the three types of discussion. There have been numerous comments on this blog about harsh and overbearing treatment and they all point to a lack of commitment to vada.
If there had been this commitment - from all sides in the Fellowship meeting - the discussion would have followed a rather different course.
So you see where I'm going? There's a link between your two posts that's more than incidental.
This blog has the capacity to step away from the School culture - using the word advisedly - and in the process it may offer an unusual freedom. Its discussion among equals is so valuable that I invite you to join it on those terms.
All you have to do is leave your coat and hat at the door.
Not to pre-empt what others may say, I'm personally a lot happier with this response than what has gone before. So, thank you.
I don't know very much about most of the "explanatory texts by Adi Shankara" you mention, but I think that the idea of a group of set texts for Advaita is probably a mirage. Vivekachudamani is, I am reliably informed, written in medieval Sanskrit - that is, several centuries after Adi Shankara. That's not to say it isn't a valuable text, but I am suspicious of treating Adi Shankara, or anyone else, as an enlightened founder figure who guarantees the quality of what is said. That, to me, sounds like religion.
Shantananda, for me, is a living and human voice. What he has to say resonates deep within ... which means that it belongs to the listener as much as it does to him. He's not an absolute authority, I think he gets some minor things wrong; but he seems to show the way forward. As to 'systematic' ... I'm not entirely sure that's getting the best from him.
But I don't believe the School has really heard him as yet. Until we have heard him without prejudice, until we've tried it out, and exhausted what he taught, we don't know its limits. Maybe it isn't the final word. But I think that we can go a lot further than we have with his help.
As you say, who knows what's possible?
I agree wholeheartedly with what you say about the social agenda. My reason for that seems to be a little different, but perhaps it comes to the same thing. I don't believe in manipulating the detail of people's lives, but in creating a place where they can explore things for themselves.
In so far as preserving the School as a vehicle goes, I suppose that is a matter of instinct. For my part, I think it's perfectly possible. I joined the School full of idealism and, despite all, that remains. I recognise that same idealism in many of my peers. The School awakened something in me, and the only way that I can repay that is to pass on what I gained to others. Of course, one would only pass on what was found to be valuable. The rest has to be left to one side.
V said:
"I don't believe in manipulating the detail of people's lives, but in creating a place where they can explore things for themselves."
I couldn't possibly agree more. Sure there are laws, there is sanatana dharma and we will hurt ourselves and others if we don't conform to it. But I find the more micro-managing of the details there is, the more I lose connection with the centre and get dragged back onto the surface of things. Then I've really lost the plot!
"The Tao never strives, yet nothing is left undone.
If leaders were able to adhere to it
the ten thousand things
would develop of their own accord."
Tao Te Ching - Verse 37
I'm not an expert on Adi Shankara, but from conversations I've had with people who are, it seems that scholars do not regard the majority of "his" works to be by him.
In addition to that, I recently spoke to a rather traditionalist SES scholar who had given up on the attempt to write a lecture on Shankara on the grounds that "everything we know about him is a myth". He is supposed to have packed in a vast body of work into 32 years, to have led armies, rescued religious icons from fast-flowing rivers ... but there is almost no historical evidence.
Yes, there was an Adi Shankara who wrote the commentary on the Brahma Sutras and one or two of the Upanishads, who built on Badarayana and Gaudapada and the Madhyamika Buddhists. But so far as I understand he didn't write the commentary on the Gita, most of the other commentaries and original explanatory texts, and certainly not the devotional hymns etc that are attributed to him.
For me, none of this lessens his stature. I don't agree with your analogy of the Pope and Jesus, because what is important to religion (ie the lineage of succession going back to the source) is exactly what is unimportant to philosophy. It is the greatness of Adi Shankara-acharya that other Shankara-acharyas found his ideas inspiring and spacious, and that they were thus able to enlarge on them as they did.
It's rather as if all of the major works in physics from the Middle Ages up to the 19th Century had been attributed to a single figure, let us say Newton-acharya. Strip away the myth and legend and you don't take away Newton's authority, but you have a magnificent intellect among many magnificent intellects. The removal of demigod status is actually the necessary step towards truth. It makes it so much easier for the magnificence of the human intellect to manifest today, in some bright spark coming through university. Maybe that bright spark is going to have to build on the legacy of Newton by knocking over some of his theories ... but I don't think Newton would wish it any other way.
"Krishna knew everything" - although I would not question such a statement as an utterance of faith and bhakti, I would question whether it is really necessary or valid where philosophy is at issue. 'Krishna', or at least the author of the Bhagavad Gita, whoever it was, pulled together the strands of a vast tradition, edited it, and presented it in a poetic form. We can only work with it if we are prepared to question it, to improve it, and to go further.
The tradition of philosophy is great because of the content of the philosophy, not because of the figureheads. Are the Upanishads and Gita any the less because we don't know the names of their authors? No.
The tradition of the Old Skool is to regard "The Teaching" as a discrete body of past knowledge which is somehow possessed by us. What you seem to be presenting is, I think, a more advanced version of that: you're saying, "The real discrete body of knowledge isn't here in the School at all, it's actually over there". Well, I don't believe that philosophy is about any body of knowledge. The sacred flame is there, but it has no keeper.
As for Shantananda ... I'll come back to you on that. This 'comment' is already too long.
I cannot agree with you V with your take on bhakti and the Gita. Bhakti so often gets a bad press as being unreasonable but I don't accept this is what bhakti is. Sure there can be blind faith but that's something else.
Elsewhere there was a discussion about revelation. I suggest revelation is impossible as long as you think:
- a wise human being wrote this, but no higher agency was involved or
- I (i.e, me the doer) can work this out/improve upon it
The true bhakti IMV is not faith in a person or in a text but a surrender of the being to the Source asking, "Lord, show me". This is what Arjuna did and he was given revelation. He had to get to a point of desperation before he was willing to do this. So if things are too comfortable I think this is unlikely to happen.
Does this negate enquiry? No. Enquiry is 'neti, neti', sifting out the things we think we know and rejecting or refining them. It is constantly discriminating so as not to fall into blind faith, or fixed conclusions or any other number of errors. It is staying vigilant to the things that can trap or mislead us.
I don't equate "being unreasonable" in the sense of "non-intellectual" with "bad press". See HH 1965: "Love can not see reason. And it never will." I don't think he is criticising love, but merely distilling its essential nature. Love is the "positive way"; reason the "negative way". They are complementary, but different. We can choose either and both.
As for revelation ... what is the "higher agency"? Advaita says that there is only one thing - ie, consciousness. Does it belong to an individual? No. Does it manifest without individuals? No. Does any manifested statement about the consciousness encapsulate it? No.
So there is always room for consciousness, now, to improve on consciousness past.
No need for us to revere books and their authors, human or divine. We should revere consciousness alone; which in practice means we revere humanity - 'ordinary' people.
Vayukesha, I feel we're missing one another here. I don't think I'm saying what you hear me saying. There is more I could say from experience on this, but I don't think this is the place.
Let each follow his approach with integrity. Peace.
Kapila
I'm sorry that you feel there is anything non-peaceable in this. That wasn't how I intended it. I was more concerned in my comment to Gitalover to clear a path to discrimination and reason, than to denigrate bhakti, which is what you seemed to take it as.
I think that there is a line to be drawn between devotion and superstition. But I'm not trying to put you on one side or the other.
Laura's quotation a couple of weeks ago from David Bohm is probably very relevant, highlighting the importance of maintaining the friendship in the dialogue, whatever the stresses.
Kapila - it would be nourishing to hear your experience of this if you feel that you can share it with us.
It's difficult to speak of bhakti, or indeed of revelation, because the experience is so personal, and what was so intense and wonderful to the person concerned - well, words are often inadequate. It may have been life-changing and yet it's so hard to speak of.
To take a case in point: two years ago I experienced a time of great distress. Weeks passed and there was no abatement - I was Boots' best customer for tissues -
until one evening, sitting in the garden at dusk, I saw a flight of geese overhead. I knew then that the tide had turned.
What happened next did surprise me however. With the release of this huge emotional energy I became intensely spiritual. Love possessed me.
It faded over time - otherwise you would all have been sitting at my feet - but once experienced never forgotten.
So - what has this to do with free the teaching?
Reason and bhakti are like brother and sister, perhaps husband and wife. Reason is given pride of place in the School and I have no quarrel with that. But subject bhakti to a system and you choke the life out of her. Bhakti will come when she's ready.
I've never spoken of this experience before in quite such a full way - so you see, there's room here for all.
Vayukesha, I guess I have to take ownership of the non-peaceable then. It's ok though. Let's try to pursue this:
I'm not defending revelation as some past encapsulated statement of truth. I define revelation as something more of the moment than anything else possibly can be. This state is to have surrendered any ideas or preconceptions and be open to what consciousness itself reveals. I believe bhakti is necessary for this to deeply occur.
I think any inspired text began with this kind of revelation, though has had to be expressed within the language and cultural understanding of its day. I think it would be wrong to either:
- reject a past authority because of this or
- reject the possibility that revelation can occur now, or tomorrow in a completely fresh way
I do question when you say:
"So there is always room for consciousness, now, to improve on consciousness past."
I accept fluidity of expression. I think 'improvement' is questionable.
The point about 'higher agency' has unresolved questions for me. I accept this is not technically Advaita, but let me ask this. In Ch 11 of the Gita where Krishna reveals Himself and all the worlds and beings, coarse and subtle, that are contained in Him, is it possible that this experience could be attained by Socratic dialogue? I fundamentally doubt this.
In response to Laura:
It's fascinating on this blog how one question and response can lead to other kinds of questions, particularly questions about the way we do things in the school. I find it extremely difficult, usually, in group to speak of bhakti type experiences. In essence I think this boils down to lack of trust in really opening the heart because of past experience of doing this, and the response. Hence, I think, my reaction to Vayukesha. (This isn't blame, just observation as to how certain buttons are pushed.)
Perhaps it is easier to expose oneself pseudo-anonymously in front of the entire internet...
There have been a few experiences...but the one I was mindful of in the discussion was triggered by something I read. Swami Sivananda's translation and commentary on the Gita begins with a beautiful devotional piece. Essentially, he is calling to the Absolute in the form of Krishna (I paraphrase), "Lord, only You can reveal to me what this means, no-one else can." His words opened something in the heart. For a moment there was the deepest love, impossible to say whether love from me towards something else, or from something else towards me. More Advaita than anything else I have experienced, but there was not any-'body' involved in this, just something very deep within. I think, similar to your case Laura, the state of mind/heart preceding this had been dark, dark to the point of almost feeling incapable of seeing any light in myself or anywhere else. It cannot be said what it was to find this love shining out of this darkness. All the words and discussion are impotent to contain or express this.
Quite so, Kapila, it's the same.
Kapila,
I think we are talking about something different. Mystical experiences such as you and Laura describe are, as she says, "the same". But what I mean by "improve" is that philosophy progresses. We stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, in the same way as scientists do.
Probably I'll get hammered for saying this, but I think philosophy is fluid in expression and in content, even if there is one single unchanging eternal reality.
Not hammered by me - this is what this blog is for. If it cuts the mustard -then cut it!
Can't see what this link has to do with anything here - is this just churning from anonymous?
Great site loved it alot, will come back and visit again.
»
Post a Comment