"It is the duty of every member of the School to imagine how the School should be".
- Mr Jaiswal, Language Lecture 2005.
"And stop asking the Indians!"
- Ditto.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Reminder
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"It is the duty of every member of the School to imagine how the School should be".
- Mr Jaiswal, Language Lecture 2005.
"And stop asking the Indians!"
- Ditto.
6 comments:
I agree.
I had a moment of revelation on Tuesday night. Whereas those who formed the School did so out of a genuine desire to find Truth, and to discover a path that would lead them there, that is a mindset that I have never fully engaged with myself.
Instead I have found myself to be a member of an organisation that teaches something I find intellectually interesting, and occasionally emotionally (and even spiritually) fulfilling. It is a comfortable place to be in. I have always known and been around the School, so it poses little challenge to follow the path it sets out. That said, because of the familiarity, there is little impetus to take the practices fully on board. Also, certain aspects of the School can cause great agitation, because there is a sense that they are very stale and followed only because 'things have always been done this way'.
I think that many of those who are leaving the School at present are doing so because they too have realised this (or something similar). In many ways I think it can be a courageous move to leave School in these circumstances, because it represents an independent choice to take responsibility for yourself and begin to discover your own path to Truth.
But I don't feel that it is necessary to leave School to take this choice or adopt this mindset of search and discovery. The School has the potential to be of great help in our individual journeys to Truth - but we have to be prepared to avail ourselves of this help. That means, I think, asking challenging questions, disregarding habit and stale practices, having no fear about the consequences of this approach, and most importantly, taking responsibility for our own spiritual development.
So that's the approach I'm now adopting. All in a Tuesday night revelation, really...
I look forward to hearing more from you.
Thanks for that, James. I think you put it very well: people go along in sleepy habit, then one day wake up, think "what the hell am I doing here?" and off they go.
I think that this is a result of the thought that it's better to "let sleeping students lie", so long as they keep turning up. Not that there is an intention to keep people asleep, but I've noticed that certain forms of ignorance are more acceptable than others. For example if I believe that I am nothing without the School, that's a point of view that goes unchallenged, even though it's blatantly opposed to the Teaching.
I wonder if it might be that in the future we take the view that it's better to have two committed students than ten vague fellow-travellers.
The point is not that we have an elite hard core and a load of passengers; but that the passengers might really be fantastic drivers if we took the trouble to enquire.
Gitalover
Hello. It's good to hear from you once again. I'm going to disagree with you, but I think what you say has as ever thrown very interesting light on this area, for me at least.
I have to say that I think you're unclear about 'duty'. To say that "it's the duty of every individual ... to be the Self" is meaningless. I don't have a duty to be myself; I AM myself. Then you go on to say that it's the duty of the mind to imagine, but you don't take that seriously.
Duties are mundane things that nevertheless make a huge difference at a worldly level. They are vital at their level ... though not at the level you're talking about.
(Also I don't understand why you're questioning James. Why don't you just accept his own evaluation of his experience? Who are you to run the rule over it and say what is imagination and what's real?)
With regard to duty, I recently heard an account of Dr Roles when he first went to India. The Maharishi was trying to persuade him to stay several more days so that he could meet Shantananda, but he had promised to go back home the next day. He said, "A promise kept is worth any amount of spiritual experiences".
If I had to put my finger on why I remain a member of the School, it's not for any 'benefit', imagined or otherwise, but because there is something that rings true. What Dr Roles said does it for me.
I think there is a danger of getting lost in the upper mists of the Himalayas here.
Just as Arjuna had a duty as a kshatriya, members of the School have duties as well. One of these, as Mr Jaiswal reminds us, is to imagine how the School should be. This is not an invitation to get lost in the mind; but a reminder that there is more to duty than "doing what you're told". What his words reveal is that we are apt to have a limited conception of duty as equal to obedience, which is not right for a school of philosophy. Maybe this is what you mean by a distorted concept of duty; if so then his statement is illuminating.
When you say that duties are born of nature, that is easy to refute. If I work as a bus-driver, I have duties in that role that are quite distinct from my nature. If I am born in Spain, again I have duties to my nation that have nothing to do with essential nature. If I play the role of a philosopher, I have a duty to question where there is a lack of real knowledge, and not merely to accept what I am told by authority.
That is all that is being said.
All this stuff about mind and capitalised self is a distraction. If duties seem to conflict with self-realisation, then either the concept of duty or that of self-realisation is wrong. So keep your word.
We are engaged, here, in thinking and speaking about concepts. Your concepts are to do with Self - but they're just concepts. It doesn't make what you're saying somehow more elevated. You are currently a human being, so keep your feet on the ground.
Well, sorry to be a blockage to one's self-realization. This seriously needs lightening up.
Time for a joke ... this one is from my friend Vamana.
A Buddhist goes up to a hot dog stall and says, Make Me One With Everything.
The hot dog vendor lays on the onions, mayo, ketchup etc and the Buddhist gives him a £20 note. The vendor smiles back at him seraphically, until finally the Buddhist says, disconcerted, 'What about my change?'
The vendor replies, The Change Must Come From Within.
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