Man's Fate and God's Choice - Bhimeswara Challa (best e books to read .TXT) 📗

345 Cited in: Andrew Wilson (ed.). World Scripture, a Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts. The Sanctity of Nature. Accessed at: http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/books/world-s/WS-05-01.htm

346 Dean H. Hamer. The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired Into Our Genes. 2004. Doubleday. New York, USA. p.212.

believing, which is one of the greatest gifts of being human.”347 And to that, one might add, believing or even the act of believing, and acting on that belief are altogether different. Much of our malaise comes, not from ignorance of what is right, but from our almost pathological inability to put what we know is right to practical effect. But what is the role of spirituality in a man who lives in the sensory world, where he has to perform multiple chores just to stay afloat? Should he renounce and retreat from one or the other? Can he be spiritual by simply ‘being good’?

But, even at a conceptual level, are we quite sure what ‘doing good’ really is? We may not be sure enough to say, but deep inside we know what the right thing is, in a given situation. Our not ‘doing’ good is due to a combination of several factors: that we do not know what the correct course of action is; that it is not ‘profitable’, not even ‘practical’. The fact is, performing good acts is not that easy without a moral foundation. No Christian turns the other cheek anymore. No Hindu sees divinity in every human being. Under pressure and in response to the other’s actions, it is so easy to ‘pay back in the same coin,’ an eye for an eye. Just as a garland requires a thread to string the flowers, a moral life requires the thread of spirituality. Theoretically, one can be spiritual without being religious; secular and spiritual are not antagonistic. A genuinely spiritual life makes religion an asset, not a hindrance, in overcoming the stress and temptations of modern life. Spirituality has to be adapted to the demands of daily life.

Spirituality has to be integrated into the processes of our thought and has to be built into the fabric of everyday life; it is neither escapism nor an unearthly and utopian dream. Spirituality does not entail a saintly life; a sanyasi (the one who renounces all worldly attachments) need not be a greater spiritualist than a householder. Indeed, in the Hindu religious thought, the dharma of a truthful householder is higher than that of a sanyasi. And the Gita says that a true sanyasi is not one who renounces earthly activities or one who renounces all desires. He is the one who is detached from the fruits of his actions. In that sense, a sanyasi is no different from a karma yogi, the one who acts according to his swadharma, without attachment to the consequences and results. The essence of spirituality is, as the Upanishadic thought says, to identify, indeed fuse, oneself with everyone as inseparable parts of the cosmic whole, that is the Brahman. Once that state is attained, one becomes incapable of injuring any one, in thought, word or deed. That might be too lofty a state for present-day men. But that is clearly not possible with the kind of consciousness that man has nurtured. Making man less hostile to his fellow men and more instinctively capable of relating to the other’s suffering is what is expected of spirituality. That is the key to compassion. The Tibetan scholar Thupten Rinpoche says, “To develop true compassion, first we must know that suffering is real and that sufferings hurt.”348 Compassion ‘is the very essence of a spiritual life, and the main practice of those who have devoted their lives to attaining enlightenment’. Compassion is a ‘mind that is motivated by cherishing other living beings and wishes to release them from their suffering.’349 The world may be unreal, but suffering is real. Even those who do not commit any sin cannot escape suffering. Nothing is nobler than alleviating the other’s sufferings. The French philosopher Simone Weil wrote that

347 Dean H. Hamer. The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired Into Our Genes. 2004. Doubleday. New York, USA. p.215.

348 Cited in: A Collection of Quotations on the Virtue of Compassion. The Virtues. Accessed at: http://www.thevirtues.org/site/10-Compassion.html

349 Cited in: Mahakankala Buddhist Center. What do Buddhists Believe? Compassion. Accessed at: http://meditationinsantabarbara.org/what-do-buddhists-believe

the capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is very rare and almost a miracle. That is because our mind looks at life as a zero-sum game; if we give something we lose it; whereas the truth is that what we finally take, is what we give, not what we take. In the act of helping a sufferer, the one that gains most is the giver, much more than the recipient. The Buddha said that if only we knew what he knew of the benefits of giving, we will not eat a single meal without sharing it with the hungry. In Jainism, what is called Satavedaniya karma is accumulated by showing mercy to all living beings, by sharing the unhappiness of unhappy people and reducing their misery. It is also worth noting that in Jainism, a soul’s karma changes even with the thoughts and not just the actions. Thus, those who think evil of someone will endure ‘karm-bandh’ or an increment in bad karma. Human consciousness, at the present level and condition, is incapable of that kind of sharing, much less the absolute surrender of ego, of everything we do, as envisioned in the scriptures. Sharing has a bigger meaning than sharing of good fortune between two individuals. What we also lack is the sense that we all share the same space on the same planet and a common fate. We are so consumed with our individual fates that we seem utterly oblivious to what happens to the rest.

Laboring only for personal salvation and praying without social concern is not true spirituality. Because prayer then becomes a petition, and a place of worship becomes a place for barter. Indeed, prayer without piety and worship without compassion, like virginity without chastity, is a ruse to lure God. And God, if He is anything we imagine Him to be, is not likely to fall for it. In the Bhagavad Gita, responding to Arjuna’s question why man commits adharma, Lord Krishna says it is because man turns his back on society. He tells Arjuna that he (Arjuna) lives in society; society does not live in him. As Swami Vivekananda so eloquently proclaimed, the search for God and service to man, indeed service to all creatures, are one and the same; anything less, anything else is an affront to God. One cannot be spiritual if one causes injury to others; although spiritualism is essential, that by itself is not sufficient. Doing good and being truly happy with others’ happiness should be turned into a habit, and such an instinctive act requires a trained heart and that training comes from God- centered spirituality. One who marginalizes or manipulates God cannot be truly spiritual.

In pondering over the innate but hopelessly hidden spirituality in man, we cannot blink at the religious savagery of the previous and present centuries. Although savagery and brutality are not endemic to any particular part of the human personality, few things in the human world are more appalling and more ‘rationally inexplicable’ than slaughter and savagery in the cause of religion. Religion has been used to justify everything we denounce in human affairs, through the use of labels like ‘just war’ and ‘religious duty’. Even holy men like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas justified ‘just wars.’ In 1095, Pope Urban II made a qualitative and religious leap when, at the time of the First Crusade of the Middle Ages, he used the Latin term ‘bellum sacrum’ (holy war) instead of ‘bellum justum’ (just war). He reportedly said “If you go and kill the infidel, you will be forgiven immediately — Paradise.”350 It is said that in 1,300 years of Islamic history, people have fought for 1,100 years.351 In fact, religious wars have always been fought in one form or another. We cannot run away from the historical fact that religion transforms human personality and somehow

350 Cited in: Craig von Buseck. Christian Jihad: the Crusades and Killing in the Name of Christ. [Interview with Dr Ergun Caner]. Spiritual Life. CBN.com. Accessed at: http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/churchandministry/churchhistory/crusades_canerchristianjihad0505.aspx

351 Cited in: Craig von Buseck. Christian Jihad: the Crusades and Killing in the Name of Christ. [Interview with Dr Ergun Caner]. Spiritual Life. CBN.com. Accessed at: http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/churchandministry/churchhistory/crusades_canerchristianjihad0505.aspx

brings out the very best and the worst in us; the best can make man a god, and the worst can make him a fiend. We cannot typecast or stereotype the kinds of people concerned. Anyone can be of either kind, divine or destructive; what tilts the scales we do not know. Some anthropologists assert that it is savagery that distinguishes the animal from human, implying that animals indulge in savagery whereas humans do not. But history has a different tale to tell. It has explained away every act of savagery as an aberration, but so much has accumulated and has become so commonplace that we cannot shut our eyes to the ugly fact that it is inherent in human nature. And it is becoming increasingly difficult for a man to accept that another man’s allegiance to a different belief-system is no threat to the integrity of his own allegiance. Two things seem certain; one, even if misdirected, the grip of religion on the human consciousness has never flagged; and two, religion, in some form or the other, will continue to be a dominant dimension of human life. It is therefore important that we come to grips with religious violence. While its destructiveness cannot be denied, the power of religion could also be turned into a potent tool for human transformation. Organized or unorganized, formal or informal, personal or impersonal, monotheistic or pantheistic, religion in some form or the other has to remain an important part of human life. The diverse religions of the world will continue nibbling and gnawing at each other unless either God intervenes or human consciousness itself changes. There is no moral or spiritual reason why one cannot be a Hindu and a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew, at the same time. But such a choice is clearly not possible with the mind-controlled consciousness. But this consciousness, with its multi- faceted capabilities, can transform religion itself into a tool. A spiritual person, since he cares for his fellow mortals, can do much in purging religion of extremism and intolerance. He can exercise his influence in inducing religion to rid itself of its rigid exclusivity and monopolistic and intolerant edges. If that happens, the gap between religion and spirituality will become progressively narrow, and the combined force of religion and spirituality could be a formidable positive force.

Knowledge and desire

Man may be, as the Greek philosopher Sophocles characterized, ‘the greatest marvel’ on earth, but that does not necessarily translate into him being the desirable being. Without spirituality, man cannot afford to stand still for too long, either as an unfinished product (as de Chardin said) or as a transitional being (as Sri Aurobindo put it). Man either becomes an agent of moral change or rides the crest of negative forces to his doom. The philosophy and axioms of the Upanishads, the Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon at Sarnath (of the Buddha), the teachings of Zoroaster, Mahaveer or Muhammad, and the sayings of saints and sages have been part of the human consciousness for thousands of years — without leading to any directional difference in human behavior. We hear or read the teachings of the Buddha or Jesus, of Rumi or Ramakrishna or Ramana, and having done that, we merrily