GL Krishna on Romantic

Source: TW

(Friends suggested that I turn one of my recent comments into an independent article. I’ve tried. Hope they like it.)

THE ELUSIVENESS OF ROMANTIC FULFILMENT

PART I

Romantic fulfilment is perhaps the greatest joy that life in the world can offer. The deep pleasures of sexual intimacy occupy a place unmatched in the vast repertoire of human experiences. As the Brihadaranyaka Upanishat candidly proclaimed, सर्वेषाम् आनन्दानाम् उपस्थम् एकायनम्। - “Joys reach their fullness in lovemaking.”¹

Yet, romantic fulfilment is an experience that is tragically elusive. Sex is easy to get; sexual fulfilment is not. That requires deep compatibilities in the emotional, intellectual, and moral planes in addition, of course, to the all-too-basic physical plane. Sans these, sex with even the best-looking person soon becomes “dull, stale and tired”. What then to speak of the misery of marriages that lack even the basic component of mutual physical attraction between partners!

As in the case of other deep joys, romantic fulfilment is a need that only people with fine sensibilities feel. In the rare occasions when two souls with such sensibilities come together, love might refuse to work its magic. In the still rarer occasions when love becomes obliging, societal pressures might play the spoilsport. Only in the rarest of rare cases, where all challenges are thwarted, hearts wed and life lights up.+++(5)+++

Even after all this, does the light last? This is the question that men of great experience and wisdom leave us with.

The inaugural episode of the Ramayana - the famous Krauncha-vadha - in which the hunter’s arrow shoots down the male bird decoupling it from its female, sets the theme of the whole epic. The love between Rama and Seeta is deep, but their togetherness is repeatedly challenged by the arrows of fate. Ironically, the most formidable challenge comes not from Ravana, the demon-king who abducted Seeta, but from street gossips who saw in Rama a lecher lusting after his ‘spoilt’ wife! Rama’s bravery could stifle Ravana but he had no arsenal at all to counter street gossips. Deeply wounded, he gave up his wife. After his final separation from Seeta, Rama’s life became desolate. She remained irrevocably lodged in his heart, though. Nothing could remove her from there and he never took a second wife.

Kshemendra opines that Ramayana’s central message is, in fact, about the elusiveness and precariousness of romantic fulfilment.

भोगार्हे नव-यौवनेऽपि विपिने चीराम्बरो राघवः
तत्राप्य् अस्य परेण दार-हरणं क्लेशस् तद्-अन्वेषणे ।
संप्राप्तापि जनापवाद-रजसा त्यक्ता पुनर् जानकी
सर्वं दुखम् इदं, तद् अस्तु भवतां श्लाघ्यो विवेकोदयः ।।

Shakespeare’s take on the precariousness of romantic love is not much different. Throughout his sonnets, he clearly implies that being in love a pitiful state.² Contrary to the feelings of euphoria that we ordinarily associate with love, Shakespeare’s young man in love is typically someone who “sighs like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow.”³ Nor does the bard believe that who we love and wed is wholly a matter of our choice. “Hanging and wiving goes by destiny,” he says with amusing suggestiveness.

All in all, great writers across the continents and throughout the ages refrain from giving us any grand hopes about the possibility of finding and sustaining deep romantic relationships.+++(5)+++ On the other hand, they speak eloquently about the elusiveness of romantic fulfilment. If it be true that poets are the unofficial spokesmen of the human heart, we’d better pay heed to them and work on discovering sources of joy that are less precarious. At least, when the occasion comes, we can approach love with lessened expectations!

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow’r depose.
(Andrew Marvell)+++(5)+++⁴

PART II

What then is the way to live a fulfilling life? What’s the solution for “loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.” ⁵

The Bhāgavata has an interesting story. Krishna’s last days are nearing and Uddhava is anguished about the plight of devotees if Krishna were to leave for good. “How would they live without you? How would they endure the pangs of separation from you?”, he fervently asks. Uddhava’s anguish is so deep and so real that it plunges Krishna into contemplation. From the depths of this contemplation emerges Krishna’s timeless beatitude – He lyricizes himself to become the Bhāgavata!+++(5)+++ The lover becomes the lyric to live on with his beloved, ‘that in black ink his love may still shine bright’! ⁶

The story tells us powerfully albeit suggestively that literature exists to fulfil a fundamental human need: the need for soul-nourishing companionship. This central function of literature has been oft-alluded to by our poets and thinkers. Kumaravyasa, for instance, spoke of his epic as ‘the balm of love-pangs’.+++(4)+++ Panchatantra too claims for itself similar merit. In thus claiming, these great works are actually pointing at the essence of art experience: “Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness. We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life”. (Harold Bloom)+++(5)+++⁷

Art experience is layman’s yoga.⁸ This joyous yoga will eventually bring an understanding of the nature of the world and of everything else. Krishna calls this the worship of Vibhuti. It will, through incremental steps, lead to true understanding and true understanding brings fulfilment.

Some would object that the idea of ’true understanding’ might itself be a mere philosophical construct - an empty fancy. Spiritual advancement has no objective measures at all, in their view.

They misunderstand, I believe. They misunderstand primarily because of a lack of study of the subject. There certainly are objective indicators of spiritual advancement. The “Sthita-prajna” qualities elaborated in the Bhagavad-Gita are all about that. A study of those qualities alongside the life of a sage like Ramana would convince a sincere seeker that there indeed is a state beyond all woes and cares.+++(4)+++ The idea is not an empty fancy.

All said, each of us has to march from the stations of life we are in. The golden rule is to courageously go after things that, in our experience and understanding, conduce to sustainable happiness.

Do we have another way?

REFERENCES AND NOTES