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‘ 𝑆ℎ𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑑ℎ𝑎 ’

Jan 24, 2015

Dr. P. Subbanna Bhat

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The Spiritual Paradigm. . .40

o The Creation is the manifestation of the Divine.

एकं ब्रह्म द्वितीय नास्तत ने न नास्तत ककन्चनः I

o All life is a search for Ananda – direct perception of Brahman यत ्साक्षात ्अपरोक्षात ्ब्रह्म या आत्म सिाान्तरः I

o Freedom (to choose the ‘Path’ , ‘Form’, and ‘Action’ ) is

inherent to the Spiritual paradigm

विमशृ्यैतदशेषेण यथेच्छसस तथाकुरः I

o Evolution is governed by the Cosmic Law (of ‘karma’)

उद्धरेदात्मनात्मान ंआत्मानमिसाधयेत I

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Dharma is that . . .28

Dharma is that which achieves :

तत ्शे्रयोरूपम ्अत्यसजृत धम ंI Dharma was conceived by the Divine for achieving

the ‘highest good’ for all Creation ---[Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1-4.14]

यतोभ्युदय ननशे्रयस ससवद्ध स धमा I That which achieves – Material prosperity ( ‘Abhyudaya’ )

along with Spiritual growth ( ‘Shreyas’ )

---[Vasheshika Sutra, I-1.2]

धारणात ्धमासमत्यहु धमो धारयनत प्रजा I Dharma is that principle which sustains (the society)

----[Mahabharata, Karnaparva, 69-58]

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Distinct from Religion . . . 29

o Ethical value system for the Society

o Temporal and Spiritual growth of people

o Restraint of senses – to evolve to higher level

ततमात्िां इस्न्ियान्यादौ ननयम्य भरतषाभ

[Bhagavad Gita, 3-41]

o Emphasis on ‘shradda’ – essential for any growth

श्रद्धा हह परम गरु

Dharma is distinct from ‘religion’ (Creedal faith systems)

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‘Shraddha’ is not blind. . . 1

श्रद्धािान लभते ज्ञानं तत्परः सयंतेस्न्ियः I ज्ञानं लब्दद्िा परा ंशास्न्तमचचरेणाचधगच्छनत II

One full of ‘sharaddha’ , devoted to the cause, subdued one’s own

senses, obtains ‘Knowledge’; and quickly reaches the Supreme Peace.

तद्विवद्ध प्रणणपातेन पररप्रश्नेन सेिया I उपदेष्यस्न्त ते ज्ञानं ज्ञानननततत्िदसशानः II

Know that Knowledge (of the Self) has to be gained through obeisance

(attitude of respect and surrender), inquiry and service. Sages who

have known the truth alone can give you knowledge.

--- [Bhagavad Gita, 4-39,34]

‘Shraddha’ is . . . 2

o आस्ततक्य बुवद्ध (Trust in the Divine Base of Creation) –

Shankaracharya

o Trust in one’s own (Divine) Self

o Conviction in the meaningfulness of life and universe

o The impelling force behind the search for Truth (Para-vidya,

apara-vidya: science, arts, spiritual quest. . . . )

o Base of character, civil virtues and social graces

o Totality of positive attitude (total absence of cynicism)

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The Lamp within . . .3

Gautama Buddha (‘Mahaparinirvaana sutra’) :

आत्म दीपो भिः I

“Be a Lamp unto yourself. Rely on yourself; do not depend on

external help. The more you draw from within, the more will your

potentialities be realized”

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Trust Thyself ; every heart vibrates to this iron string”

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‘Shraddha’ enters the heart. . .4

o When shraddha entered his heart, Nachiketa thought . . .

श्रद्धावििेश सो sमन्यत I

o Shraddha transformed Panini

श्रद्धािान लभते ज्ञानं तत्परः सयंतेस्न्ियः I

o The channel through which ‘satwa’ manifests . .

किया ससवद्ध सत्िे भिनत महतां नोपकरणे I

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‘Shraddha’ – examples . . .5

o Socrates’ (469-399 BC) last words:

“Criton, we owe a cock to Asclepios; pay it without fail”

o Sir Thomas More (1478-1535):

“I am still the king’s good servant ; but God’s first”

o Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865):

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master”

o Milovan Djilas (1911-1995) :

Author of ‘The new class’

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Swamiji on ‘Shraddha’ . . .6

“I would not translate this word shraddha to you; it would

be a mistake; it is a wonderful word to understand, and

much depends on it . . . . Unfortunately it has nearly

vanished from India, and this is why we are in our present

state. What makes the difference between man and man

is the difference in this shraddha and nothing else. What

makes one man great and the other weak and low is this

shraddha. . . . This shraddha must enter into you . . . ”

--- [Swami Vivekananda, CW, Vol-3, pp.319-320]

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Swamiji on ‘Shraddha’ . . .7

“ Believe in that infinite Soul, the infinite Power which,

with consensus of opinion, our books and sages preach.

That Atman which nothing can destroy, in It is infinite

Power, only waiting to be called out . Here is the great

difference between all other philosophies and the Indian

philosophy. Whether dualistic, qualified monistic, or

monistic, they all firmly believe that everything is in the

Soul itself; it has only to come out and manifest itself.”

--- [Swami Vivekananda, CW, Vol-3, pp.319-320]

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Cynicism . . .8

. . . is the opposite of Shraddha

“. . .[A cynic] is a clod of ailments and grievances, ever complaining

that the world does not devote itself to making one happy . . .”

– George Bernard Shaw, Author, Playwright

अज्ञश्चश्रद्धधानश्च सशंयात्मा विनश्यनत I

नायं लोको s स्तत न परो न सखु ंसशंयात्मनः II ‘𝐴𝑗𝑛𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑐ℎ𝑎 𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑟𝑎𝑑ℎ𝑎𝑑ℎ𝑎 𝑛𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑐ℎ𝑎 𝑠𝑎𝑚𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑦𝑎 𝑡𝑚𝑎 𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑦𝑎𝑡𝑖

𝑁𝑎 𝑦𝑎𝑚 𝑙𝑜𝑘𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑖 𝑛𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑜 𝑛𝑎 𝑠𝑢𝑘ℎ𝑎𝑚 𝑠𝑎𝑚𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑦𝑎 𝑡𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑎ℎ’

[Bhagavad Gita,4-40]

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Macaulay’s Minute. . .9

Lord Macaulay, (Chairman, Board of Public Instruction) in his

‘Minute’, dated Feb 2, 1835 [approved by Lord Bentinck, Governor

General, on March 07, 1835] :

“ . . . In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general

views I am opposed. . . . We must at present do our best to form a

class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom

we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but

English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that

class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the

country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed

from the Western nomenclature . . ."

---- Macaulay’s Minute, 2nd Feb , 1835

[<http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt

_minute_education_1835.html>]

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Macaulay’s Minute . . . 10

“I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I

have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I

have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit

works. . . . I have never found one among them who could deny

that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole

native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the

Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of

the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.”

---- Macaulay’s Minute, 2nd Feb , 1835

[<http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt

_minute_education_1835.html>]

]

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Macaulay’s Minute . . . 11

“. . . . But when we pass from works of imagination to

works in which facts are recorded, and general principles

investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely

immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the

historical information which has been collected from all the books

written may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at

preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or

moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly

the same.”

---- Macaulay’s Minute, 2nd Feb , 1835

[<http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/maca

ulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html>]

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Macaulay's Minute . . .12

In 1836, Macaulay, chairman of the Education Board, wrote to his

father:

"Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. . . . It is my

belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a

single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years

hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytize,

without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural

operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.”

“Every young Brahmin who learns geography in our colleges, learns to

smile at the Hindoo mythology”

---[Arun Shourie, ‘Missionaries in India’, pp.64-65]

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Bankim records ‘the impact’. . .13

Relative to the people at large who remained illiterate . . . The number of

babus (babu – ‘a native clerk who writes English’ - Webster) was small.

They were still a sufficiently noticeable feature on the landscape of the new

dispensation for Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to write caustically in 1873:

“The babus will be indefatigable in talk, experts in a particular foreign

language, and hostile to their mother tongue . . . Some highly

intelligent babus will be born who will be unable to converse in their

mother tongue. . . . Like Vishnu they will have ten incarnations,

namely clerk, teacher, brahmo, accountant, doctor, lawyer,

magistrate, landlord, editor, and unemployed . . .babus will consume

water at home, alcohol at friends’, abuses at the prostitutes’, and

humiliation at the employers’.”

---[quoted from: Pavan Verma, “The great Indian middle class”, pp.4-5] 19

Swamiji on ‘the consequence’. . .14

Swami Vivekananda pointed out more than a century ago:

"The child is taken to school, and the first thing he learns is that his

father is a fool, the second thing is that his grandfather is a lunatic, the

third thing is that all his teachers are hypocrites, the fourth is that all

his sacred books are lies. By the time he is sixteen, he is a mass of

negation, lifeless and boneless. And the result is that fifty years of

such education has not produced one original man in the three

presidencies . . . . We have learnt only weakness” . . .”

---[Swami Vivekananda, ‘India and her problems’, pp.38-39]

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‘Strangers in own land’ . . .15

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. . . A graphic image of the more privileged products of Macaulay’s education

system was given by Ananda K Coomaraswamy as early as 1908 (Modern

Review, Calcutta, Vol. 4, Oct. 1908, p.338):

‘Speak to the ordinary graduate of an Indian University, or a student from

Ceylon, of the ideals of the Mahabharata – he will hasten to display his

knowledge of Shakespeare; talk to him of religious philosophy – you find that

he is an atheist of the crude type common in Europe a generation ago, and that

not only has he no religion, but is as lacking in philosophy as the average

Englishman; talk to him of Indian music – he will produce a gramophone or a

harmonium and inflict upon you one or both; talk to him of Indian dress or

jewellry – he will tell you that they are un-civilised and barbaric; talk to him of

Indian art – it is news to him that such a thing exists; ask him to translate for

you a letter written in his own mother-tongue – he does not know it. He is

indeed a stranger in his own land.’

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---[quoted by Dharampal, in the “The Beautiful Tree”, p. 91]

Swamiji’s remedy . . .16

“Therefore, this ‘shraddha’ is what I want., and what all

of us here want, this faith in ourselves, and before you is

the great task to get that faith. Give up the awful disease

that is creeping into our national blood, that idea of

ridiculing everything, that loss of seriousness. Give that

up. Be strong and have this ‘Shraddha’, and everything

else is bound to follow.”

--- [Swami Vivekananda, CW, Vol-3, pp.319-320]

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‘Light a lamp within’. . .17

For Spiritual unfoldment and temporal success:

o Light a Lamp within (Trust thy [Divine] Self )

o Resolve every conflict in the light of the Lamp within

o Maintain positive attitude (Search for meaning in every

experience of life [absence of cynicism] )

Trust the Core Divinity – the ‘Guru’ will light the Path

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References

1. Swami Ranganathananda, “The Message of the Upanishads”, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1980

2. Swami Vivekananda, “ India and her Problems”, Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, 1976

3. Swami Vivekananda, CW, Vol-3,

4. Arun Shourie, ‘Missionaries in India’,1994

5. Dharampal, “The Beautiful Tree”, 1983

6. Pavan Verma, “The great Indian middle class”,

7. Macaulay’s Minute , Feb 02, 1835 <http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html>

8. <www. Wikipedia.org>

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Atma Deepo Bhavah . . .

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Socrates taking hemlock

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