On Rashmi and Sayan's recent reflections

Enough of shooing off primates, let’s get back to civilized discourse again. The sewer stinks: not good to stay in it for too long…

This post is inspired by the latest thing, Ashtavakra’s story, that Sayan and Rashmi have jointly written on their blog. It is one of the innumerable little anecdotes in the Mahabharata, and epitomizes what has traditionally been respected – and enormously devalued without understanding of late – as wisdom in this country, wisdom itself being considered as the highest desideratum of being born human. By the way, the best definition of wisdom, to my mind, was given by Bertrand Russell: ‘desires coordinated in the light of knowledge’. It takes half a lifetime of reflection to understand fully just what that means and why it is supremely important – for most people, alas, it is by then far too late!

Three things to be noted about Ashtavakra’s story: a) India has always known that wisdom can come even from the very young, and being physically handicapped does not prevent anyone from acquiring it; it is only recently that we have started forgetting such basic stuff b) gunagraahita – appreciation of merit – is itself a great and rare virtue; the king in the story exalts and not demeans himself by bowing before the young sage. It is a rare parent or teacher who passes this realization on to children these days; ‘boroder shroddha korte hoy’ – respect your elders – is right, but ‘boro’ is to be measured by wisdom, not by bloodline and physical age! c) my own views on the subject of what is happening now that the country’s idea of education has lost sight of the pursuit of wisdom has been adequately adumbrated elsewhere on this blog (see, for example, the posts titled Ministers flying cattle class, Counterculture, Counterculture postscript, Juvenilia, Living Selfishly parts one and two, Look, for heaven’s sake look, The Sense of Wonder, What is eternal… besides the several musings on education itself), so I shall not repeat myself here, but this much I shall underscore – this search for wisdom is what I have found to be the work of my life, and the fact that society has allowed me a comfortable living pursuing this ideal singlemindedly means, I think, that there is some appreciation and even demand for it, even in this demented and deluded age. Therein lies some hope…

Of course, the greatest minds have not always agreed over what constitutes wisdom. Ashtavakra himself is pushing towards one idealistic extreme, namely that the phenomenal and material world is a distracting and harmful illusion (brahma satya, jagat mithya, ‘This world is not my home, I’m just passing through/ the treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue’) – the sooner and the more people realize this and concentrate on what lasts and what matters, to wit the powers of the mind and the longings of the soul, the better it will be for everybody. Personally, I have some problems with this philosophy. To put them categorically,

1)                  Either  because I have not personally attained such spiritual heights or met too many men who can talk of spiritual stuff when they are suffering from acute toothache or an inflamed appendix about to burst, I cannot entirely and honestly endorse the view that ‘everything happens in the mind’, and that all things external and material in this world are illusory. Also, no one has yet convinced me of what if anything lies beyond this life and this world, though I have read aplenty about such things. Besides, if life is wisely controlled, the material and phenomenal world accessible to the five senses can and does indeed offer myriad pleasures to be savoured while we last in good health, that is as undeniable a fact as that nothing lasts forever (would it be a good thing anyway if anything, including ourselves, lasted forever? A horrid thought – look up the poem Tithonus by Tennyson if you are interested), so it’s only a very dyspeptic and disgruntled philosopher who finds nothing in this world that does not deserve to be rejected outright as undesirable and silly. The same Tagore who has so often and so eloquently sung paeans to the highest spiritual yearnings of Man has also spoken again and again, in equally joyous and reverential tones, of the wonders of this world of here and now.

2)                  It follows that the scientific-technological mindset that has worked so tirelessly and so fruitfully over the last few centuries to make men’s lives more colourful, more enjoyable, longer, safer and easier in a million different materialistic ways is not, I insist again and again, something to be disparaged and condemned wholesale. There is much that is wrong with the way most people are living their lives today, and an obsession with finding technical fixes and indulging non-stop in all kinds of brute pleasures aided by ever more powerful technology has certainly much to be blamed for, but to put the whole blame for all the sickness of contemporary life at the door of science and urge a return to some form of atavistic back-to-basics mysticism would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The vast mass of mankind, used to all the ease and fun of life as they have known it lately would never endorse such a turnaround anyway…

Therefore what I would suggest is that we should not, driven by exasperation, hurry and ennui, be tempted to call for one kind of extremism to replace another. It shouldn’t be that children of the next generation should be taught to despise money, or avoid a scientific education, or forget all the forms of rational socio-political organization and legal frameworks we have set up painstakingly over the centuries to make the world as it is today – the most civilized parts of it at least. What I would urge, instead, is that we think of making parenting and education a fuller, more well-rounded, more adequate effort to make wiser individual citizens of the future; people who will not only have the technical wherewithal to make a living (as I said, that can include everything from carpentry to writing software to surgery), but people who have been taught to be more observant, more logical, more critical, more independent minded, more sensitive, more balanced, and more capable of deciding and choosing what is really essential to live a good life. They will be people who will know technology but not be overawed and enthralled by it; they will make money but only to live safely and comfortably, not to show off; they will understand that life is to be enjoyed, and enjoyment comes from many things, but we can actually reduce our enjoyment foolishly and unnecessarily in many ways also – by never doing charity, by comparing our own situations with others’ in a way that merely increases our frustration with ourselves and our dislike of others, by forgetting that one’s enjoyment of good music or good cinema does not really depend on how big and expensive and up-to-date one’s computer is, by imagining that more marks in exams or more money at the workplace or more cosmetics and jewellery and fancy clothes is the sine qua non for happiness, by eating so much that we make ourselves ill, by partying night and day to dull the aching tooth of boredom and loneliness within simply because one has never learnt to cultivate quiet private pleasures… the list could go on and on.

And I think that the likes of Sayan and Rashmi are right in saying that a renewed respect for, and a good grounding in the best of our ancient texts and traditions can go a long way to fill in the yawning deficiencies of modern parenting and schooling. So I find it cheery news that a lot of things are actually happening to nudge us in that direction, right from TV cartoon channels ‘rediscovering’ our mythological treasures to writers and directors dealing with older audiences turning more and more often to the past for inspiration to create a better future. I do not want to make this too long a post, so I shall instead look forward to questions and suggestions from my readers which can trigger off an interesting discussion. I hope sympathetic readers will be as eager to join the debate here as they were to show solidarity with me in response to the previous post.