He was a proud man, with that peculiar pride, not of achievement, not the pride of the well-born or of the rich, but the pride of an ancient race, of the representative of an ancient tradition and system of thought and morality which, actually, had nothing whatever to do with what he really was.
-J Krishnamurti, in The only revolution
Jiddu Krishnamurti was brought up as a prophet but he gave up the position thus created for him and became a freelance philosopher and a very good one. Much of his teachings are agreeable almost to their last part where he, magically, and unfortunately like most other spiritual leaders, connects it all to something supernatural making a mess of it.
He was very perceptive and understood the human condition and predicament very well. In his book The Only Revolution he takes up case studies of his visitors, their thoughts, intentions and questions. It is about one such person that the quote above appears. One can immediately envisage such a person. Though this happened in India, there are many civilizations around the globe which harbor such people. India is likely to have the most because our tradition IS ancient, and because we love harping on it, often at the expense of the current and future and irrespective of our worth in the scheme of things, exactly as stated here.
Rather than being content on what our ancestors did under the prevalent models and conditions, we need to reexamine all traditions and values and keep only those which are still relevant. Then we can afford to be proud of those. It will be even better if we add to the past developments. Many of us are already doing that. In the least we should recognize their contribution in helping make India modern - not necessarily in the sense of making it Western which many seem to loathe, but just making it so that the latest technology can be used by all and the minimum needs for most can be satisfied in a straightforward manner. A healthy skepticism combined with a faith in the bold ways of the current generation will go a long way in doing that.
Rather than just being proud of whence we came, we should try to make our ancestors proud of being our ancestors. That is unlikely to be achieved by blindly trying to imitate them.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
on minding your openness
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
-Terry Pratchett
Discworld fame Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. Not all his books are equally funny, but some are amazing with insights and humour thoroughly mixed to great effect. "Truth" is by far one of the best I like.
This tongue in cheek remark of his is much more subtle, and very true. It is not an argument against having an open mind but just showing the pitfalls. Nature gives us our genes, but it is nurture (i.e. people around us feeding our open or in-the-process-of-forming minds with their biases and prejudices and likings and theories and what not) that determines our nature. This includes your parents, siblings, teachers, friends, politicians, spiritual gurus, cartoon heroes, sports idols, filmstars and filmstaresses and who ever you care to listen to. That is the reason people who listen more than they speak end up learning more (junk) [people who lurk on sites like maayboli without ever writing, please take note]. That does not of course mean that it is better to be a chatterbox [people insisting on making their opinion on everything known, please take note]. No, definitely not. The middle ground of digesting the sermons is better. One should create a set of filters (a very personal one by selectively choosing only those biases which make personal sense). One should then verify all incoming garbage with existing checks and measures and only separate the useful stuff thereof. If everyone did that, many strifes about such subjects as religions, historical figures etc. will not arise and people will be free to stay in the present and do what is best for themselves as well as for those around them.
One simply cannot help being biased due to the essentially selective "nurturing" one gets, but one should try to ensure that one's biases are very unique.
-Terry Pratchett
Discworld fame Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. Not all his books are equally funny, but some are amazing with insights and humour thoroughly mixed to great effect. "Truth" is by far one of the best I like.
This tongue in cheek remark of his is much more subtle, and very true. It is not an argument against having an open mind but just showing the pitfalls. Nature gives us our genes, but it is nurture (i.e. people around us feeding our open or in-the-process-of-forming minds with their biases and prejudices and likings and theories and what not) that determines our nature. This includes your parents, siblings, teachers, friends, politicians, spiritual gurus, cartoon heroes, sports idols, filmstars and filmstaresses and who ever you care to listen to. That is the reason people who listen more than they speak end up learning more (junk) [people who lurk on sites like maayboli without ever writing, please take note]. That does not of course mean that it is better to be a chatterbox [people insisting on making their opinion on everything known, please take note]. No, definitely not. The middle ground of digesting the sermons is better. One should create a set of filters (a very personal one by selectively choosing only those biases which make personal sense). One should then verify all incoming garbage with existing checks and measures and only separate the useful stuff thereof. If everyone did that, many strifes about such subjects as religions, historical figures etc. will not arise and people will be free to stay in the present and do what is best for themselves as well as for those around them.
One simply cannot help being biased due to the essentially selective "nurturing" one gets, but one should try to ensure that one's biases are very unique.
Friday, January 12, 2007
On patriotism and tyranny
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.
-David Hume (1711-1776)
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher with naturalist and skeptical overtones. His famous works include: A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748) and concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as the posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779).
His sentence quoted above is a precise summary of rise and fall of empires over eons, right from the time since humans continued the animal instinct of staking territorial claims, but with external weapons (and followers to boot).
The current non-issue of singing (or not) of Vande Mataram is an excellent example. A song which originated when almost no one alive today was born, suddenly becomes a deciding factor as to weather you love your country or not. People from all walks of life are debating both sides (which in itself is a sign of a healthy democracy). What is interesting is that both sides have people who can not recite the song.
As usual, all kinds of extraneous claims are brought in. Somewhere, someone said to the Indian Americans commenting on the issue: "will you dare to not sing the American anthem in the US"? A fact that not many may know is that in the US burning the US flag as part of a political protest is not a crime. Democracy here, at least so far as such basic issues are concerned, is still alive and doing well. The rhetoric in India, on the other hand, has increased manifold.
What could the causes be? The unsustained growth in public media resulting in unethical oneupmanship, the extreme competitiveness due to increasing population, the plethora of political parties ready to take advantage of this, and the religious underpinnings of a typical persons life concoct a deadly cocktail that sometimes explodes and sometimes gets puked on to everyone around.
If only people understood the following three principles:
(1) one's love for one's nation can simply not be decided by what (s)he says or does not say (or whether (s)he accepts or not what the majority does) [freedom of expression],
(2) the love for humanity should be at least as strong as the love for one's nation (and its people) [freedom of thought allowing one to not do something if it hurts humanity even if it is good for the country], and
(3) in the eyes of the one God all religions ought to be the same and so one can practise any religion [religious freedom].
Democracy will be dead when one has to give up any of the above three. The trouble of course is that everyone wants everyone else to start practicing this first and hence they themselves do not. Be it the temporal interest of the clergy or territorial interest of the standing army, it sows seeds of hatred in the mind of commoners, dividing them unnecessarily. What Blaise Pascal said is a perfect statement to summarize the situation.
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him? (Quoted by Tolstoy in Bethink Yourselves)
-David Hume (1711-1776)
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher with naturalist and skeptical overtones. His famous works include: A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748) and concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as the posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779).
His sentence quoted above is a precise summary of rise and fall of empires over eons, right from the time since humans continued the animal instinct of staking territorial claims, but with external weapons (and followers to boot).
The current non-issue of singing (or not) of Vande Mataram is an excellent example. A song which originated when almost no one alive today was born, suddenly becomes a deciding factor as to weather you love your country or not. People from all walks of life are debating both sides (which in itself is a sign of a healthy democracy). What is interesting is that both sides have people who can not recite the song.
As usual, all kinds of extraneous claims are brought in. Somewhere, someone said to the Indian Americans commenting on the issue: "will you dare to not sing the American anthem in the US"? A fact that not many may know is that in the US burning the US flag as part of a political protest is not a crime. Democracy here, at least so far as such basic issues are concerned, is still alive and doing well. The rhetoric in India, on the other hand, has increased manifold.
What could the causes be? The unsustained growth in public media resulting in unethical oneupmanship, the extreme competitiveness due to increasing population, the plethora of political parties ready to take advantage of this, and the religious underpinnings of a typical persons life concoct a deadly cocktail that sometimes explodes and sometimes gets puked on to everyone around.
If only people understood the following three principles:
(1) one's love for one's nation can simply not be decided by what (s)he says or does not say (or whether (s)he accepts or not what the majority does) [freedom of expression],
(2) the love for humanity should be at least as strong as the love for one's nation (and its people) [freedom of thought allowing one to not do something if it hurts humanity even if it is good for the country], and
(3) in the eyes of the one God all religions ought to be the same and so one can practise any religion [religious freedom].
Democracy will be dead when one has to give up any of the above three. The trouble of course is that everyone wants everyone else to start practicing this first and hence they themselves do not. Be it the temporal interest of the clergy or territorial interest of the standing army, it sows seeds of hatred in the mind of commoners, dividing them unnecessarily. What Blaise Pascal said is a perfect statement to summarize the situation.
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him? (Quoted by Tolstoy in Bethink Yourselves)
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
we are the world, we are ...
... tat tvam asi (तत्वमसि ) ...
-Chandogya upanishad, VI.VIII ...
Chandogya Upanishad is also one of the oldest ones and perhaps the best known. It belongs to Saamveda, the veda with metre. It has many very interesting passages in which we learn
- of the knowledge that Kshatriyas had but Brahmins did not,
- of Satyakama's story about how its not your birth that decides if you are a Brahmin,
- of Aruni's statement about the origin of the universe from sat which in the same breath challenges another theory of origin,
- of the extremely ascetic teaching exactly opposite that of the much later Bhagwad-Gita about duty (but the same as what Buddha said just before the rise of Bhagwad-Gita). It is stated that to obtain Moksha one has to give up ordinary life and stay in the forest,
- as to why dead bodies are burnt (rather than, say, buried),
- what and why are the five libations (Agnihotra), etc.
But certainly the most famous part is where uddaalaka aaruNI teaches his son Shvetaketu how he - Shvetaketu - and Brahman are identical. This is where dvaita (a common aspect of most religions) becomes advaita.
VI.VIII: The source of food is water, of water the fire, of fire it is sat (सत or Being or Brahman). That which is the subtle essence, that is True, that is the Self. That art thou (tat tvam asi), Shvetaketu.
VI.IX: Just like bees mix nectar of different flowers and then all the nectar is one, so also all beings are one with the Being. tat tvam asi.
VI.X: Just like rivers become one with the ocean and lose identity, not knowing "I am this river", "I am that river" etc., so also beings can't tell themselves from Being. tat tvam asi.
...
This is Vedic monism at its peak. No external gods needed, not even the One, because you are it. Quiet a few analogies have been used, but so be it.
Just like we are one with the Brahman, we are also one with the problems that surround us. We are also the solutions. Not just charity, but everything begins with ourselves.
-Chandogya upanishad, VI.VIII ...
Chandogya Upanishad is also one of the oldest ones and perhaps the best known. It belongs to Saamveda, the veda with metre. It has many very interesting passages in which we learn
- of the knowledge that Kshatriyas had but Brahmins did not,
- of Satyakama's story about how its not your birth that decides if you are a Brahmin,
- of Aruni's statement about the origin of the universe from sat which in the same breath challenges another theory of origin,
- of the extremely ascetic teaching exactly opposite that of the much later Bhagwad-Gita about duty (but the same as what Buddha said just before the rise of Bhagwad-Gita). It is stated that to obtain Moksha one has to give up ordinary life and stay in the forest,
- as to why dead bodies are burnt (rather than, say, buried),
- what and why are the five libations (Agnihotra), etc.
But certainly the most famous part is where uddaalaka aaruNI teaches his son Shvetaketu how he - Shvetaketu - and Brahman are identical. This is where dvaita (a common aspect of most religions) becomes advaita.
VI.VIII: The source of food is water, of water the fire, of fire it is sat (सत or Being or Brahman). That which is the subtle essence, that is True, that is the Self. That art thou (tat tvam asi), Shvetaketu.
VI.IX: Just like bees mix nectar of different flowers and then all the nectar is one, so also all beings are one with the Being. tat tvam asi.
VI.X: Just like rivers become one with the ocean and lose identity, not knowing "I am this river", "I am that river" etc., so also beings can't tell themselves from Being. tat tvam asi.
...
This is Vedic monism at its peak. No external gods needed, not even the One, because you are it. Quiet a few analogies have been used, but so be it.
Just like we are one with the Brahman, we are also one with the problems that surround us. We are also the solutions. Not just charity, but everything begins with ourselves.
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