It is said that in the area of religion that which
is the truth defies description and that which is
described is never the truth: or as the saying goes in
Tamil - Kandavan Vindilan, Vindavan Kandilan.
There is a story that is related of Bodhirama that
he had once gathered his disciples about him to test
their perception. One of the pupils said, 'In my
opinion truth is beyond affirmation or negation.'.
Bodhirama replied 'You have my skin'. Another disciple
said, 'In my view it is like Ananda's sight of the
Buddha - seen once and forever', and Bodhirama said,
'You have my flesh'. And, then as the story goes, the
third disciple came before Bodhirama and was silent,
and Bodhirama said, 'You have my marrow.'
Discussion and dialogue in the area of religion are
but parts of skin and flesh - not the marrow - a marrow
which is never found in words.
The inquisitive and inquiring mind of man has
through the centuries sought to understand that which
is beyond words. The mind itself represents a stage and
by no means the final stage, in an evolutionary process
which has witnessed a continuing change from inanimate
to animate, from stone to plant to animal to man, and
each stage has
brought with it a greater degree of
consciousness.
It is an
evolutionary process which has resulted in the
formation of the seemingly intricate fore brain of man
today and it is this self conscious mind of man which
seeks to know, which seeks to understand.
How is this understanding brought about? In what way
does an ordinary mind comprehend?
One says ordinary mind because one can neither
reject nor ignore the experience of those extraordinary
beings who have arisen on this earth from time to time
and who appear to have comprehended the total reality
and who were one with it; enlightened beings to whom
time and space dissolved in an eternity which was
boundless.
In some way they appear to have transcended the
limitations of the self conscious mind and their lives
have afforded a living testimony, for those who wish to
see, of what is perhaps an innate capacity in each one
of us to perceive the whole and become holy. Because,
it seems to me that is what holiness is about - the
capacity to perceive the whole, the capacity to
understand the total reality in its entirety, unbounded
by space and unbounded by time.
The ordinary mind does not however comprehend the
whole. It seems to deal effectively only with parts of
the total reality. It directs its attention to discrete
and separate parts of the whole. In order that it may
understand, the mind separates and conceptualises. It
separates that which is connected and the very process
of separation distorts an understanding of the
whole.
The mind thinks in sequence in time. The present is
a fleeting moment and is then gone forever. Thoughts
are so much grist to its mill. Words and concepts are
the instruments of its trade. The mind seeks to clarify
one concept by having recourse to another. It defines
one word with another. There is no end to this process
nor is there a starting point.
The mind
deals in opposites. There is no idealism without
materialism; there are no means without ends; there is
no detachment without attachment; there is no free will
without determinism; there is no good without bad. If
everything was good what would it mean? Presumably, we
would stop using the word. The mind speaks of theses,
antithesis and synthesis and describes this as the
dialectical process. And every synthesis is another
thesis and gives rise to another antithesis and yet
another synthesis - and the process is endless. The
mind then speaks of dialectical idealism and
dialectical materialism.
The need to use opposites is the need of the mind
that lives in the duality of I and not I, and the mind
extends this duality, extends these seeming opposites,
to everything that it deals with. And more often than
not, it
does not stop to ask: who am 'I'? Are there two
'I's - the one who asks the question and the other,
about whom the question is asked?
The inquiring and inquisitive mind - the restless
mind, the monkey mind of man - allows one thought to
play with another and ends up with what it then
triumphantly describes as a rationalisation. The mind
discovers seemingly broader and broader concepts and
seemingly more and more general laws. But what is the
result?
From the vantage point of each new law, the mind
then perceives an increasing area of the unknown and
greater and greater areas of the unknown come within
the vision of man. The search for fundamental laws, the
search for fundamental particles, the search for
absolute truths, inside the trap of duality is in the
nature of an adventure to possess an ever receding
mirage.
"...reason cannot arrive at any final truth
because it can neither get to the root of things nor
embrace their totality. It deals with the finite, the
separate and has no measure for the all and the
infinite." - The Future Evolution of Man - Sri
Aurobindo
But that is not to say that the mind does not have
an important role to fulfil.
" .... reason has a legitimate function to fulfil,
for which it is perfectly adapted; and this is to
justify and illumine for man his various experiences
and to give him faith and conviction in holding on to
the enlarging of his consciousness." -
The Future Evolution of
Man - Sri Aurobindo
In India, which to many of us is the cradle of
civilisation, there were humans who thousands of years
ago used the mind but who were not entrapped in it; who
did not turn away from the mind but who pushed the
frontiers of the mind and transcended it in their quest
to understand - a quest which ended in the realisation
that there was no quest after all. Swami
Chinmayananda is a living descendent of that great
Indian tradition. That which he has said and written
has enabled many to find a new understanding of
themselves - and nobody understands anything if he has
not understood himself.
Those who have heard Swami Chinmayananda on the
Bhavad Gita
have come away with a fresh awareness and some insights
- insights which in the end they themselves will need
to integrate in their being. That which they hear must
relate to that which is within their experience.
Otherwise words only make noise.
That which was said by Lord Krishna to Arujna in the
battlefield was both simple and fundamental - simple to
declare but fundamental in content. It was a call for
action in the battlefield and where else is there a
greater need for action. And Lord Krishna urging Arjuna
to do battle against those whom Arjuna regarded as his
friends, his teachers and his relations, tells Arujna,
"To action you have a
right, but not to the fruits thereof."
This oft repeated statement of the Gita is of very
direct relevance to all of us who are engaged in
activity or action of one kind or another. The
detachment which the Gita speaks about is not the
opposite of attachment. It is not a dead detachment. It
is not a negative detachment. Understanding the Gita is
not a mere intellectual exercise in the trap of
opposites.
There is in each one of us an urge to live without
conflict, without opposites, to understand the
whole and become holy. There is in each one of us a
path of harmony, our dharma, and it is this path of
harmony which the Gita enjoins us to follow. For Arujna that
path was to engage in battle.
Swami
Chinmayananda, who is perceived by many as
one of the great living exponents of the teachings of
the Gita, has made a significant contribution to
further our understanding of ourselves and there is
much that we can learn from that which he has said and
from that which he has written.
