[[Mohan K.V 2014-06-06, 21:36:28 Source]]
सदास्वादः
62
अथ कथम् परमेश्वरस्य निःश्रेयस-प्रद-त्वं अभिधीयते ?
(atha katham paramesvarasya niḥśreyasa-prada-tvaṃ abhidhīyate ?)
Meaning
“Now how can the ability to grant the greatest good be said to belong to Parameśvara?” Note the distinct, highly compressed construction: it is literally “Now how [Of Parameśvara] [Greatest-good-granting-ness] [is considered]?” The use of the passive voice and words ending in ‘-tva’, a suffix meaning ‘-ness’, is a hallmark of philosophical discussions in Sanskrit. It allows for great compression, and gives a certain ‘feel’, much like formal technical writing evokes a distinct feeling today. Another notable element here is the nice word ‘niḥśreyasa’ – literally ‘that which has no better’. So who is this, stirring up doubts about the Supreme Lord’s abilities?
Context
In the last chapter on the Gīta (Chapter 61), we had briefly mentioned the ‘right time’ for an idea, and how that is the most critical element in its success. We had also mentioned a kind of innate balance being essential. In this chapter, we’ll consider a few ideas which happened to have great potential, but because they came too early and weren’t sufficiently balanced, ended up becoming caricatures.
This chapter’s phrase is the first line from Mādhavācārya’s Sarva-darśana-saṅgraha. Mādhavācārya lived about 700 years ago in south India. He is most known by his later-life name Vidyāraṇya as the founder-kingmaker of the Vijayanagara empire, and as the mentor to its first few monarchs like Harihara and Bukkarāya. He came from a family of great scholarship, and was himself a great scholar of the Advaita school. He was a major force behind the Hindu renaissance that was the foundation of the Vijayanagara Empire.
The Sarva-darśana-saṅgraha, “Compendium of all views”, is a summary of 16 different schools (darśanas) of Indian philosophy. Mādhavācārya has arranged in them in the order he believed they merited – starting from the Cārvāka view, and ending with the view of his own school, Advaita. Our focus today will be the Cārvāka view, which was propounded at least 2500 years ago.
Mādhavācārya begins his work with a standard invocation:
नित्य-ज्ञानाश्रयं वन्दे निःश्रेयस-निधिं शिवम् ।
येनैव जातं मह्यादि तेनैवेदं सकर्तृकम् ॥
nitya-jñāna-āśrayaṃ vande niḥśreyasa-nidhiṃ śivam |
yena eva jātaṃ mahi-ādi tena eva idaṃ sakartṛkam ||
“I worship Śiva, the abode of eternal knowledge, the store of the greatest good.
By whom the earth and the rest were produced, he alone is the cause behind everything.”
A fairly routine benediction, but right afterward, we get this googly:
अथ कथम् परमेश्वरस्य निःश्रेयस-प्रद-त्वं अभिधीयते ? बृहस्पति-मतानुसारिणा नास्तिक-शिरोमणिना चार्वाकेन तस्य दूरोत्सारित-त्वात् ।
atha katham parameśvarasya niḥśreyasa-prada-tvaṃ abhidhīyate ?
bṛhaspati-mata-ānusāriṇā nāstika-śiromaṇinā cārvākena tasya dūra-utsārita-tvāt |
“Now how can the ability to grant the greatest good be said to belong to Parameśvara? After all, Cārvāka, the follower of Bṛhaspati, the crest-gem of the Nāstikas, has thrown out the very idea!”
Them’s fightin’ words! Note the second use of ‘tva’ again. In spite of the formal tone, there’s an unmistakable touch of lightness in this, what with contradicting the benediction verse itself! We’re willing to bet Mādhavācārya had a sly smile as he was writing this down! Alright, what seems to be the matter?
दुरुच्छेदं हि चार्वाकस्य चेष्टितम् । …
यावज्जीवं सुखं जीवेन् नास्ति मृत्योर् अगोचरः ।
भस्मी-भूतस्य देहस्य पुनर् आगमनं कुतः ॥
durucchedaṃ hi cārvākasya ceṣṭitam | …
yāvajjīvaṃ sukhaṃ jīvet nāsti mṛtyoḥ agocaraḥ |
bhasmī-bhūtasya dehasya punar āgamanaṃ kutaḥ ||
“It is difficult to ignore his doings. [An example of a Cārvāka teaching:]
As long as you live, live happily. There is no one who can escape Death.
Once the body is burnt to ashes, from where can one come back!”
Damn straight! This is a perfectly sensible view! At the outset it bears a resemblance to the ideas of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, which profoundly influenced the history of science and have echoes in our lives to this day. Whyever would anyone want to ward this away?!
Mādhavācārya goes on to quote Cārvāka that everything begins and ends with the body, and that there is no such thing called the soul. This is, of course, the only view accepted by science today, and is even made into poetry by folks like Groucho Marx, who once said, “Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while”! So far, Cārvāka appears to be on perfectly solid ground.
Mādhavācārya then comments that vast masses of people are interested only in the concerns of this world (in particular Artha and Kāma), and not of any higher world. In this context, a famous statement attributed to Cārvāka has been widely condemned elsewhere:
यावज् जीवेत् सुखं जीवेद् ऋणं कृत्वा घृतं पिबेत् ।
भस्मी-भूतस्य देहस्य पुनर् आगमनं कुतः ॥
yāvaj jīvet sukhaṃ jīvet ṛṇaṃ kṛtvā ghṛtaṃ pibet |
bhasmī-bhūtasya dehasya punar āgamanaṃ kutaḥ ||
“For as long as you live, live happily. Live lavishly on debt!
Once the body is burnt to ashes, from where can one come back!”
The ‘live on debt’ line is literally “take a loan and savour ghee!”, presumably a costly commodity in the poet’s space and time. This has often been taken as an elaboration of the ‘sukhaṃ jīvet’ we saw in the introductory verse up above, and it certainly seems wrong. Life is too long for such short-sightedness to even work, leave alone considering the morality of it. Our selves are too complex to be satisfied by mere pleasures, and the desire to transcend them is as fundamental as the desire for the pleasures themselves. We can sympathize with the condemnation of this view of parasitic hedonism.
But we wonder – is there a more balanced version of the same idea that is actually useful? We only need to look at any successful modern society. Cārvāka’s statement can be reasonably cast as encouraging consumerism and inter-dependence. Our economies fundamentally run on consumerism – there is now no other choice. The philosopher Alain de Botton writes in his superlative Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work:
It was in the eighteenth century that economists and political theorists first became aware of the paradoxes and triumphs of commercial societies, which place trade, luxury and private fortunes at their centre whilst paying only lip-service to the pursuit of higher goals. From the beginning, observers of these societies have been transfixed by two of their most prominent features: their wealth and their spiritual decadence.
Their self-indulgence has consistently appalled a share of their most high-minded and morally ambitious members, who have railed against consumerism and instead honoured beauty and nature, art and fellowship. But the premises of a biscuit company are a fruitful place to recall that there has always been an insurmountable problem facing those countries that ignore the efficient production of chocolate biscuits and sternly dissuade their ablest citizens from spending their lives on the development of innovative marketing promotions: they have been poor, so poor as to be vulnerable citizens, whom they have lost famines and epidemics. It is the high-minded countries that have let their members starve, whereas the self-centred and the childish ones have, off the back of their doughnuts and six thousand varieties of ice cream, had the resources to invest in maternity wards and cranial scanning machines.
Amsterdam was founded on the sale of raisins and flowers. The palaces of Venice were assembled from the profits of the carpet and spice trades. Sugar built Bristol. And yet despite their frequently amoral policies, their neglect of ideals and their selfish liberalism, commercial societies have been graced with well-laden shops and treasures swollen enough to provide for the construction of temples and founding hospitals.
David Graeber also argues in his book Debt: The first 5000 years that the history of debt is nowhere as simple as the morally monochromatic “Debt Is Bad”; sometimes, it is necessary for large amounts of debt to be drawn in order for any progress to occur at all! Here too, there is definitely a gem of insight in Cārvāka’s words, but alas, not polished enough be apparent unless viewed in hindsight.
At this point, a brief note about the discussion format in the Sarva-darśana-saṅgraha may be useful: in general, each school’s view is presented as a mix of observations and perspectives, a discussion on logic and some hypotheses about the world. The hypotheses about the world – how it came to be, what elements constitute it, how did they elements combine, etc. – are of no interest to us, so we’ll skip them. The discussions on logic – what counts as evidence, what reasoning is valid, how a proof is constructed – are again mostly peripheral to our interests. The heart of all poetry, as with life, is in observation and perspectives, and we’ll focus on that alone here.
Some satirical observations follow later on:
पशुश् चेन् निहतः स्वर्गं ज्योतिष्टोमे गमिष्यति ।
स्व-पिता यजमानेन तत्र कस्मान् न हिंस्यते ॥
paśuḥ cet nihataḥ svargaṃ jyotiṣṭome gamiṣyati |
sva-pitā yajamānena tatra kasmāt na hiṃsyate? ||
स्वर्ग-स्थिता यदा तृप्तिं गच्छेयुस् तत्र दानतः ।
प्रासादस्योपरिस्थानाम् अत्र कस्मान् न दीयते ॥
svarga-sthitāḥ yadā tṛptiṃ gaccheyuḥ tatra dānataḥ |
prāsādasya uparisthānām atra kasmāt na dīyate? ||
गच्छताम् इह जन्तूनां व्यर्थं पाथेय-कल्पनम् ।
गेहस्थ-कृत-श्राद्धेन पथि तृप्तिर् अवारिता ॥
gacchatām iha jantūnāṃ vyarthaṃ pātheya-kalpanam |
gehastha-kṛta-śrāddhena pathi tṛptir avāritā ||
“If a beast slain in the Jyotiṣṭoma rite will itself go to heaven,
Why then does not the sacrificer offer his own father?
If beings in heaven are gratified by our offering the Śrāddha here [ceremonial offerings to the dead],
then why not give the food from the ground floor to those who are standing on the roof?
Why, [if all this were true], it is needless to even give journey provisions for travellers!
Just perform a Śrāddha at home, and they can be gratified remotely!”
Full marks for comedy here! It is clear that this was a critique of extant practices and literal interpretations of them. The idea of ridiculing supernatural thinking is also perfectly apt, and would warm the heart of any scientifically inclined person reading it, all the more so when one realizes this was propounded 2500+ years ago!
But here is where the imbalance begins to be unjustifiable. Cārvāka rightly throws out the literal interpretation, but also every other interpretation, and descends to name-calling:
ततश् च जीवनोपायो ब्राह्मणैर् विहितस् त्व् इह ।
मृतानां प्रेत-कार्याणि न त्व् अन्यद् विद्यते क्वचित् ॥
tataḥ ca jīvana-upāyo brāhmaṇaiḥ vihitaḥ tu iha |
mṛtānāṃ preta-kāryāṇi na tu anyad vidyate kvacit ||
त्रयो वेदस्य कर्तारो भण्ड-धूर्त-निशाचराः ।
जर्भरी-तुर्फरीत्यादि पण्डितानां वचः स्मृतम् ॥
trayo vedasya kartāro bhaṇḍa-dhūrta-niśācarāḥ |
jarbharī-turpharītyādi paṇḍitānāṃ vacaḥ smṛtam ||
अग्नि-होत्रं त्रयो वेदास् त्रिदण्डं भस्म-गुण्ठनम् ।
बुद्धि-पौरुष-हीनानां जीविकेति बृहस्पतिः ॥
agni-hotraṃ trayo vedāḥ tridaṇḍaṃ bhasma-guṇṭhanam |
buddhi-pauruṣa-hīnānāṃ jīvikā iti bṛhaspatiḥ ||
“Hence it is only as a means of livelihood that Brahmins have established here
All these ceremonies for the dead,—there is no other fruit anywhere.
The three authors of the Vedas were buffoons, knaves, and demons.
Just listen to the pandits’ words [which sound nonsensical], ‘jarbharī’, ‘turpharī’, … ! [The words are from a hymn to the Aśvinis in the Ṛg-saṃhita]
The Agnihotra [a prescribed ritual], the three Vedas, the tri-daṇda of the sannyāsi, smearing oneself with ashes,
Bṛihaspati says, these are only means of livelihood for those who have no courage or intelligence.”
If we’re very generous, we may grant that some, or even a majority, of priests in Cārvāka’s time were frauds. But to extend that to say all priests and all rituals of all time are fraudulent and devoid of all value to all people is plain wrong. Like the ‘militant atheists’ of today, Cārvāka throws out the baby with the bathwater. In this one-dimensional guillotine of literal correctness are sacrificed hundreds of time-tested fulfillments of higher needs that define us as humans: the need for peace of mind; for expressing gratitude; for the satisfaction of having done one’s duty; for belief in a just authority; for emotional solace; for social support; for a means to cope with our pitiable situation of having the awareness of much, but the power to control little; and a thousand other non-rational factors that are connected with religion and ritual. In short, balance is lost.
From another perspective, even today in our modern times, we face immense uncertainties and challenges from events beyond our control. Even today, a baby growing up to be a healthy adult has a large element of sheer chance to it. The vast majority of us need a centre of faith to cope with this kind of fragility. Perhaps one day in the future, civilization would have progressed enough for us to expect a high level of stability in our lives, and the role of religion would gradually become entirely symbolic and historical. Perhaps Cārvāka will be studied in the future as a visionary – but in any case, as a man whose idea wasn’t quite in sync with the timing gears of Kāla.
The great Kannada poet DVG has several sublime verses that touch upon many of the topics we have discussed, and would make for a great comparison here. First, many of the rooted practices we see today have survived the test of time for very good reasons, which are a part of human nature itself. They weren’t put in place in a day by someone’s stroke of illogic, and won’t go away in a day by someone else’s brainwave. DVG writes,
ಬಲು ಹಳೆಯ ಲೋಕವಿದು, ಬಲು ಪುರಾತನ ಲೋಕ
ಬೆಳೆದಿರ್ಪುದಿದು ಕೋಟಿ ರಸಗಳನು ಪೀರ್ದು |
ಸುಲಭವಲ್ಲಿದರ ಸ್ವಭಾವವನು ಮಾರ್ಪಡಿಸೆ |
ಸಲದಾತುರತೆಯದಕೆ - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ ||875
balu haḷeya lōkavidu, balu purātana lōka
beḷedirpudu idu kōṭi rasagaḷanu pīrdu |
sulabhavu alla idara svabhāvavanu mārpaḍise
saladu āturate adake - manku timma ||
“This is a very, very old world,
grown from absorbing a billion essences.
It is very hard to transform its nature too quickly –
Make not haste, my friend!”
Reformers may have the best of intentions; indeed, the chapter on Cārvāka ends thus:
तस्माद् बहूनां प्राणिनाम् अनुग्रहार्थं चार्वाक-मतम् आश्रयणीयम् इति रमणीयम् ॥
tasmād bahūnāṃ prāṇinām anugrahārthaṃ cārvāka-matam āśrayaṇīyam iti ramaṇīyam ||
“Thus, in order to be kind to the mass of living beings, we must adopt the pleasant ways of Cārvāka.”
Who could argue against that goal? And yet, in its enthusiasm, or in its hubris, it forgets something very important:
ಮತಿವಂತರಿದ್ದರಲ ನಮ್ಮ ಹಿಂದೆಯುಮಿಲ್ಲಿ ?
ಹಿತ-ಚಿಂತಕರು ಜನಕೆ, ಕೃತ-ಪರಿ-ಶ್ರಮರು? |
ಅತಿ-ವೈದ್ಯದಿಂದ ಹೊಸ ರುಜಿನಕೆಡೆಯಾದೀತೊ
ಮಿತಿಯಿಂ ನವೀ-ಕರಣ - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ || 877
mativantaru iddaru ala namma hindeyum illi ?
hita-cintakaru janake, kr̥ta-pari-śramaru? |
ati-vaidyadinda hosa rujinake eḍeyu ādīto |
mitiyiṁ navī-karaṇa - mankutimma ||
“Surely some clever men lived before us?
Wise men who wished good upon the world, those who poured their soul into it? [So don’t discard all of the past in your enthusiasm]
Be careful about creating new diseases in your rush to apply a cure for old ones –
moderation in everything, my friend!”
Often, it may be that the reason someone is erring is not ignorance, but helplessness. We can forgive the errors in judgment in Cārvāka, but far more grave errors from a poetic perspective are errors of observation. We are hardly simple beings who can stop doing something because someone showed us it doesn’t work. We’re complicated creatures, carefully juggling motivations like hope, pride, fear, favor and desire, and shaking us off balance rarely helps:
ಬಳಲಿ ನೆಲದಲಿ ಮಲಗಿ ಮೈ-ಮರೆತು ನಿದ್ರಿಪನ
ಕುಲುಕಿ ಹಾಸಿಗೆಯನರಸೆನುವುದುಪಕೃತಿಯೆ? |
ಒಳಿತನೆಸಗುವೆನೆಂದು ನೆಮ್ಮದಿಯ ನುಂಗದಿರು
ಸುಲಭವಲ್ಲೊಳಿತೆಸಗೆ - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ || 873
baḷali neladali malagi mai-maretu nidripana
kuluki hāsigeyanu arasu enuvudu upakr̥tiye? |
oḷitanu esaguvenu endu nemmadiya nungadiru |
sulabhavu alla oḷitu esage - mankutimma ||
“A man is deep asleep on the ground, dead tired after a hard day’s work.
Is waking him up and urging him to go to find a nice bed and better himself, doing him a favour?
Be careful about destroying a man’s peace when looking to do him good –
it’s not so easy to do good, after all!”
Iconoclasts of all time have railed against the status quo, but very rarely have they thought through a meaningful alternative. Revolution, for the most part, has simply been that – spinning around in the same place:
ಒಡೆಯದಿರು ತಳಹದಿಯ ಸರಿ-ವಡಿಪೆನದನೆಂದು
ಸಡಲಿಸುವ ನೀಂ ಮರಳಿ ಕಟ್ಟಲರಿತವನೇಂ? |
ಗಿಡವ ಸರಿ ಬೆಳೆಯಿಸಲು ಬುಡವ ಕೀಳ್ವುದು ಸರಿಯೆ?
ದುಡುಕದಿರು ತಿದ್ದಿಕೆಗೆ - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ || 878
oḍeyadiru taḷahadiya sari-vaḍipenu adanu endu
saḍalisuva nīṁ maraḷi kaṭṭalu aritavanēṁ? |
giḍava sari beḷeyisalu buḍava kīḷvudu sariye?
duḍukadiru tiddikege - mankutimma ||
“Don’t rush to break the very foundation in your quest to improve.
Are you really sure you can build it back up?
Would you tear away at a tree’s roots if you wanted to make it grow better?
Make not haste, my friend!”
We’ll close with a beautiful meditation on balance:
ಮಿತಿಯನರಿತಾಶೆ, ಸಮುಚಿತವ ಮರೆಯದ ಯತ್ನ |
ತೈತಿಕ್ಷೆ ಕಷ್ಟಾಂಶದ ಪರಿಹಾರ್ಯತೆಗೆ ||
ಮೃತಿಯೆ ಜೀವನ-ಕಥೆಯ ಕೊನೆಯಲ್ಲವೆಂಬರಿವು |
ಹಿತಗಳಿವು ನರ-ಕುಲಕೆ - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ || 881
mitiyanu arita āśe, samucitava mareyada yatna |
taitikṣe kaṣṭāṁśada parihāryatege ||
mr̥tiye jīvana-katheya koneyu alla eṁba arivu |
hitagaḷu ivu nara-kulake - mankutimma ||
“Desire which knows its bounds; Effort which doesn’t forget harmony;
Patience in difficult times;
An understanding that Death isn’t the end –
these are humanity’s cornerstones.”
Parting Thought
Mādhāvācārya has been widely lauded for presenting all of the 16 views with reasonable accuracy (at least with what was available in his time). This was a highly appreciated aspect in the tradition of Indian debate: outlining each party’s argument so clearly that the party himself would be as perfectly satisfied as if he presented it himself. It turns out it wasn’t just to obey the rules; Mādhāvācārya showed genuine openness of mind. In an introductory text to Advaita called the Pañcadaśī, he quotes a lofty verse by Sureśvara, a disciple of Śaṅkara:
यया यया भवेत्पुंसां व्युत्पत्तिः प्रत्यगात्मनि ।
सा सैव प्रक्रियेह स्यात् साध्वी सा च व्यवस्थिता ॥
yayā yayā bhavet puṃsāṃ vyutpattiḥ pratyag ātmani|
sā sa eva prakriyā iha syāt sādhvī sā ca vyavasthitā|
“Whatever be the way that can help one turn inward to one’s true self,
That is a valid way; that is the right way.”
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