Monty Python and Philosophy by Gary Hardcastle (best novels for beginners .TXT) 📗

in cosmic terms, and the harmony of the universe itself was tied to the social harmony of each caste fulfilling its function or destiny. Without the execution of our sacred duties, the world itself slouches toward chaos.

Finally, Krishna attempts to assuage Arjuna’s guilt over murdering his kinsmen by pointing out that it is only the physical body that gets destroyed. The soul, or atman, of his kinsman is divine and eternal and will not perish on Arjuna’s sword. In fact, the atman will only be liberated by the killing of the body. The Gita explains: “This physical body is perishable. But the embodied soul is described as indestructible, eternal and immeasurable. Therefore do fight. Neither the one who thinks it kills nor the one who thinks it is killed knows the truth. The soul neither kills nor gets killed. The soul is never born nor does it die at any time. It has neither past nor future. It is unborn, ever existing, permanent and ancient. . . . Just as a man discards worn out clothes and puts on new clothes, the soul discards worn out bodies and wears new ones” (Bhagavad Gita [Bantam Classics, reissued 1986], pp. 18-22).

What’s So Wrong with Transcendental Thinking?

Under this transcendental override, common sense, human compassion, peaceful diplomacy, and even the evidence of one’s senses are all overridden by Arjuna’s eventual acceptance of a transcendental God whose unfathomable commands require Arjuna to kill the enemy. The transcendental position here actually claims in essence that killing someone is doing them a favor (because it releases their transcendental self). If we put John Cleese in the role of Krishna and Michael Palin in the role of Arjuna, we’d have a classic Python sketch. Instead of trying to convince a fellow that his dead parrot is still alive or that his empty cheese shop really has cheese, we’d have God convincing a warrior to see killing as an act of helpfulness.

The meaning of life for the transcendentalist is hidden from the perceptions of common sense. Sometimes it is not just hidden but seemingly contradictory to life itself. As Monty Python often reminds us, transcendental values and the overrides they require can be comical, dangerous, or both. In the section of the film titled “Death,” the Pythons skewer the traditional idea of a transcendental soul that travels after death to a transcendental place (heaven) to enjoy eternal, transcendental bliss. The sketch shows the absurdity of the idea by simply imagining this heaven in concrete detail. After dying from a bad dish of salmon mousse, a group of souls enter a reception area in paradise. “Welcome to Heaven,” a hostess says as she greets them. “There’s a table for you through there in the restaurant.” She then wishes them “Happy Christmas” and explains that “it’s Christmas every day in Heaven.” For the transcendentalist (of both East and West), the return home of the transcendental soul to its transcendental realm is the very zenith and purpose of all life—it is the true meaning of life. Yet here, the Pythons lampoon it as a nauseating Vegas-style dinner-theater. Soon, an unctuous, overly tanned, sequin-tuxedo-wearing Graham Chapman takes the stage to sing, with hyper-white teeth, an unbearably maudlin song celebrating the good fortune of heaven’s elect. Up here, “it’s nice and warm and everyone looks smart and wears a tie.” But there’s more, including “great films on TV . . . The Sound of Music twice an hour, and Jaws I, II, and III.” All this, every day, over and over.

With this reduction ad absurdum, the Pythons vividly suggest that the ultimate culmination of transcendentalism is ridiculous and hardly worth striving for. Much like Palin’s and Cleese’s heartless school administrators and Palin’s sacred-sperm counting father, the sketch reveals how the appeal of transcendentalism collapses under its own weight. Far from being desirable, the fruits of transcendentalism seem not only cloying (Las Vegas-style) but dangerous and dehumanizing. This was exactly what the historical Buddha said about the reigning Hindu philosophy of his time. Much as the Pythons urge in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, the Buddha argues repeatedly that belief in a soul or a God or anything eternal and otherworldly actually interferes with our more immediate and pressing responsibilities to each other as human beings.

Remember from the Gita (but also see the earlier Upanishads) that Hindu orthodoxy maintained a transcendentally mandated social caste system (wherein a cosmic class hierarchy manifested itself in all subsequent generations of this earthly realm); a transcendental divine soul (atman); and a transcendental God (Brahman) who would be the ultimate blissful repository of enlightened souls. The Buddha (Siddattha Gotama, 563-483 B.C.E.) didn’t like any of these standard Hindu ideas and explicitly argued against them throughout his original scriptures. These are known as the Tipitika scriptures, written in the language Pali. One of these scriptures, the Agganna sutta, criticizes the traditional caste story that Brahmins were born of God’s mouth while the subservient caste, the Sudras (including the lowest Untouchables) were born from his lowly feet. Buddha counters this longstanding prejudice, and deflates the mystification, by pointing out that all the Brahmins, warriors, craftsmen, and servants that he knows were all born the exact same way—from their mother’s wombs! In addition, the Buddha noted that since virtue and vice are easily witnessed in all the castes (not just the Brahmin priestly class), there is no real ground for saying that one caste is inherently better than another. Open your eyes, he suggests, and you will find Brahmin scoundrels as well as Untouchable saints. A more earthly law of value, of observable ethical goodness, should therefore trump the old transcendentalist hierarchy.

Yet the Buddha saved most of his logical acumen for a career-long attack on the Hindu idea of the soul. He aimed not to be some nihilistic kill-joy, however, but to break the romantic obsession with eternal unseen realities which Indian culture had embraced—the kind of romanticism which, in scriptural form, led Hindu Gods (like