PP/IH/01/13
INDIA
INDIAN RELIGION
Two days ago I was asked by the sixth form to name those whom I regarded as the five greatest men of this century. The three names that immediately occurred to me were Albert Schweizter, missionary, musician, philosopher, who gave up a brillian academic career to found a medical mission in Africa, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rabindranath Tagore – all three religious men, one Christian and the others in some way or other Hindu. The achievements of all three are amazing, and all three have had a most far-reaching effect on both the actions and the thinking of mankind; all three have in a great way eased the suffering of man. This seems to be one up for Xty and Hinduism.
If you go to India you will see men living in the depths of degradation; fifty years ago you would see children forced to marry at the age of thirteen, widows burned to death on the funeral pyre of their husbands, millions of people outcast and untouchable, starving in misery and despair. In South Africa and other places you will see human beings with black skins subject to great degradation and suffering, floggedand tortured - and the whole thing justified by a minister of xx a Xtn church, who regards efforts to defend black races as an attack on the main ideas of Xty. Thisseems to be one down for Hinduism and Xty. Mahatma Gandhi might have been a Xtn if he had not tried to go into a Xtn church in South Africa to hear a friend of his preach: he was turned away at the door because of his colour.
In considering a religion you have to separate its real ideas from what selfish men have made of them. Religious organisations, churches and so forth, are humanthings, and one thus gets horrible things happening in them: there is barbarity, cruelty and prostitution in Hindu temples; and Xtn priests thank God for atom-bombs There is good religion and bad religion. Good religion depends on prophets and mystics. Prophets stir us to do good and show us how; mystics are in continual contact with God, as for them he is as real as I am to you, and give us the inspiration to do good. Without them religion becomes formalised, and argues if it is Xtn that if you go to church God will look after you and make Britain strong if you trust and keep your powder dry, and if it’s Hindu that if you perform the right ritual, you will be born next time one up in the social scale. There are two main sources of good and bad religion in the world – the Jews and the Indians. The history of Judaism and Xty is a story of how things begin good and then go rotten, then are made good again by prophets and mystics. So is the history of Induism. Religion is like an egg; if you get it fresh and eat it, it gives you energy to live by: you also find more egss and go on from strength to strength. But if having found the egg, you put it up on a shelf and worship it for a year or so, when it ffalls off and cracks, it stinks.
Indian religion began in the Vedas, with hymns full of the joy of living addressed to various gods, such as those of fire and light; religious thinking comes with the Upanishads, and here a great step forwards is made, together with a possible great step backwards. The step forwards is into whatwe call monotheism. Instead of a great number of Gods, we find one God, Brahman, to know whom is the aim and purpose of living. But Brahman, or God, is divided in a way similar to Xty division, into three manifestations – Brahma, the creator; Vishnu the preserver of life, and Siva, the destroyer. For the thinking Hindu these are not separate gods, xxx no more than the three persons of the trinity are separate for Xtns; they merely illustrate the workings of God. For the unthinking Hindu they are gods, and occasionally produce hopeless rites and cruelty (Siva dancing on a baby) ????As Tagore puts it, the individism is lost in God as a ?? becomes part of the same. At the same time the writers of the Upanishads go further, and produce a doctrine – which I happen to believe as true – that God exists in two forms, as it were, one as God outside and one inside his creation and the creatures in it. In every man is God, and this part of man can reach out and gain contact with God outside. The religious life, whichshd be the aim of all men, is a tecniqueby which God inside every creature can join himself to God outside, and a union be achieved. But now for the step backwards, to our view. The casts system had begun; and with it the theory that by goodness a soul could win a higher reincarnation, until eventually it cd be good enough to escape from life altogether. From this springs the idea that life is an evil to be got rid of, and those at the top the scale need not do anything to help those at the bottom, since their function is to setle down and think themselves into God. Thus a very good idea causes men to sit still and do nothing while the world goes from bad to worse. The egg begins to rot.
But God is never defeated. About 500 B.C. appear two xxxx movements bringing new life. Louis showed you a picture of a Jain temple; the Jains brought into Hinduism the idea of action for good, but they were outclassed in the race by the person we know as xxxxx Buddha, who shd be known as the Buddha, the one who has attained perfection of soul. Buddha accepted the idea that life, because of its suffering and difficulty, was something to be xxxxxxxxx redeemed and eventually by a process of saintliness to be escaped from, but the process of saintliness involved love for others, and tenderness to them in their plight, caugt up in thesuffering of action in world. Real Buddhism is a religion full of kindness and compassion, and revives a doctrine present in the Upanishads, that of doing no harm to any living thing – the doctrine of ahimsa. The early Buddhists were like many Xtns models of unselfishness and devotion to others. Buddhism was a missionary relign that spread outside India, to China, Japan and elsewhere; it is still spreading. In India there are now very few Buddhists, as the movement was absorbed into Hinduism, who prefer to worship instead of to worship Buddha, and the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx new egg began to rot.
The reason for the rot is the same as before. If one thinks only of the pain and suffering in life, action in it begins to seem evil; and the man who wd join the God inside him to God outside thinks that this can be done only by fleeing from life into a monastery or a cave. If everyone can in a series of lives reach the top of the tree, those at the top are freed from the duty of helping them – their suffering is their own fault. But another new movement rescues man again, in the Mahahabharata and especially its section called the BhagavadGita. In the end of the Mah abharata the saintly king, sets out with his brothers on the journey to Heaven. The brothers die, and he is left journeying alone with his dog. He reaches Heaven, but Indra its king refuses to allow the dog in. Yudhisthira answers that it has been his faithful companion all this time, and is dependent on him, he won’t go in without it, so Indra gives way and they both go in. (The dog symbolises the humble path of goodness leading man to the divine). Once in heaven, the saint looks around him and finds that his brothers aren’t there; he is told that they are not worthy, and are in Hell, where he is taken to see them. Once in the gloom of the horrible place, he finds them, and refuses to leave. For him the place where are those is wishes to serve is heaven xxxxxx. A miracle occurs, and hell becomes Heaven. In that story is the message of the Bhagavad Gita, which is found in another part of the epic. It is one of the great religious books of the world, and is mainly spoken by Krishna, who is regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu, and represents God-on-earth. God has ceased to be something detached from life, and comes down into it to help mankind. The path of the saint, who would join the God-within-him to the God-xxxxxxoutside him becaxomes from this moment onwards the path of action in love, but it is selfless action. The ideas of the Gita find no better expression than in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. (Mahatma is not a name, by the way, it is a title, like Buddha, and means great soul.) Gandhi is not a Xtn outside the fold, as many suppose; he is the embodiment ofHinduism at its best, and we fail to understand him if we do not realise that he accepted the doctrines of Induism, including that of caste and reincarnation – though he wished to redeem both xxx ideas from their unfortunate effects. But he is most significant as he gave a new urge to some basic Hindu doctrines. The success of his campaign for Indian independence is a triumph of satyagraha. or truth-force (explain with reference to teaching a form). Thxis triumph, as Wolf told us, was achieved with no violence and Gandhi re-emphasises ahimsa, that we shd nor harm any living thing (reverence for the cow is a symbol of thism by the way). But most of all, Gandhi exemplifies the idea that we shd strive for the good of others without expecting any return – the doctrine of selfless action; we shd do good, not because we like seeing the effects and enjoying them, but because we are here to do good. The pure action is one from which we expect to get no return at all. The saint may act in the world but quite selflessly; he must not care about whether he is in pain or pleasure, joy or grief. This is straight out of the Bhagavad Gita; For all his greatness Gandhi is in reality convinced that life is evil, and that the aim of humanity shd be to leave it. But byxx te path to realise is part of selfless action, not by retreatxxx. When a Brahman asked him why he did not retire to a cave and live with God he replied: “I am striving to reach the kingdom of Heaven which is called liberation of the soul. In order to reach this I need not seek refuge in a cave. I carry my cave with me .”
In contrast to this last effort of Hindu xxxx denial of life stands Rabindranath Tagore. To those who react to suffering by saying that life is evil and painful he replies that they have the whole thing out of perspective. The aim of life is joy in God not retxreat; the pain and suffering are there and seem to make lifeimperfect only because the God in us knows perfection, and strives to the highest. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
He rejects the Hindu denial of the joy of living, and finds God through full and joyful actions in life. But he rejects our Western ideas of living – our ceaseless and purposeless activity, Xxx The Western ideas that one is in life for what one can get out of it. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Our aim is to find God and join him as a river flows to the sea – but the river laughs in its course. It is, of course, no use engaging in activity for its own sake, the river’s duty is to flow to the sea. It’s an odd river if it tries to flow uphill.