In todays world, there are many religions that acknowledge a higher power than ourselves, but often there are many others whose paths lead them to philosophies or belief systems that fulfill the same emptiness for them that religions do for people of faith. There are various belief systems that I will discuss in this paper from Vedanta to Sankhya Yoga and even Materialism. All of them are dated in the late A.D.'s or early B.C.'s and have been translated from Sanskrit texts of India. I call them belief systems because they do not all consist of a God and religions have always insisted that God is central in their teachings. In India, God is Brahman. Some religions say God is within us all, In India Brahman is within us all. I will be answering the following three questions according to the three belief systems above: “What is basic human nature? What is the highest good for human beings? And what is the path to the highest good?” After that I will focus on the lives of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore and do my best to interpret how they may have answered the same questions.
Vedanta is out of the Vedanta Sutras translated from Badarayana as a way to organize the Upanishads teachings as he tries to eliminate some inconsistencies and ambiguities that exist within the text. Brahman is the ultimate principal or reality that humans must connect with in order to vanquish the limitations of self-identity. The concept of God is close to Brahman in that Brahman is in everyone like God is in everyone. People who practice Vedanta respect all religions because they understand that there are many approaches to finding God and they believe that all paths that lead to God are valid because they all lead to the same spiritual awakening and self-realization.
Vedanta believes that basic human nature is divine and the aim of life is to realize that human nature is divine. They think of life as being a kind of shared consciousness that spans the universe. Human beings all have the ability to achieve higher forms of consciousness rather than only accepting the lowest form of it which man is born with, self consciousness, Vedanta's believes that the highest good for human beings is to achieve “cosmic consciousness”. The path to the highest good is by learning the knowledge of Brahman.
Vedanta is a collection of 555 sutras that are divided into four chapters containing four sections each. The first chapter is on “harmony”. It teaches that Brahman is the central reality for the Upanishads text. I am skipping the second chapter for a moment and I will return to it shortly. The third chapter discusses the ways and means of attaining the highest knowledge and the fourth chapter deals with the results of doing so...mainly what happens to the soul after death, as well as the character of the souls released. Now, as for the second chapter, certain metaphysics are discussed that have raised objections. Sankhya is one of the main objectors which is one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy. Schools have always been necessary for teaching these sutras as they are packed with meaning and must be interpreted by experienced commentators in order to unravel the deep messages folded within them. Each sutra contains only two or three words, but commentators manage to interpret numerous meanings and messages from the scriptures and then they still must be translated into various languages.
Wikipedia says the major text of this Vedic school is the extant of Samkhya Karika, written by Ishvara Krishna. This philosophy led to the rise of “Tantra Sudhana” which eventually formed the “Hare Krishna movement”. For Ishvara Krishna the evolution of the world takes place from the interaction between Parusha and Pakriti.
Sankhya calls this interaction primordial matter and believes that effects of the first substantial cause created the world. The processes consist of three Gunas that become disturbed from equilibrium creating evolution. Sankhya also believes that there are multiple spirits that create the variety of experiences
Yoga is a form of meditation which is important for all belief systems in India. Yoga believes that basic human nature is Brahman. However, Man also has the ability to create his own destiny. The paths that each of us choose will always be based on our own free will and, because of that, we all suffer the consequences of our actions that find their way back to us through the transcendent forces of cause and effect. Karma is rooted in mans afflictions with ignorance, egoism, attraction, aversion and clinging to life. These afflictions fill our lives with various levels of karma that effect us in this life and the next. One of the main beliefs of Yoga is in reincarnation. Those that study Sankhya Yoga believe that humans have a choice to generate either good or bad karma, and that the choices they make will not only effect their life now, but will also effect them in their future incarnations. According to Yoga, if we do good things and live our lives following the eight-fold path then we generate good karma for ourselves. The goal is to try and eliminate all negative influences by having right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration and hardest of all finding the right livelihood.
For them, the path to the highest good is found by motivating yourself to always live your life with high ethical values. Karma, they feel, can liberate them from the suffering on earth or it can keep them trapped to this world with chains of unbreakable bondage if they let selfishness or greed alter their path. This belief accepts that humans are embodied out of a mental awareness that is part of an eternal cycle of consciousness that experiences rebirth or reincarnation forever unless the being is liberated from the physical events that keep it from acknowledging Satwa. The highest good for Sankhya Yoga is to find Moksha, and to find that you must find a way to liberate Parusha or the seer (pure consciousness) from the perception that it shares the fate of Pakriti or the seen (nature), which remains bound to physical events and objects on earth and inevitably tied to Dukkha (suffering). The consequence of this liberation leads the being to finding Nirvana while still on earth and ending the cycle of rebirth at last.
The only way we can eliminate these negative influences and free ourselves from karma that brings us only more suffering and pain is through constant meditation. The key to learning this meditation is broken into four sections: Concentration, to gain control over ones mind. Practice discerning the difference between the seer and the seen. Empowerment comes from being able to master the mind and dwell in the state of “pure seeing”. Only then can one achieve what is refereed to as a state of isolation and find absorption in the “cloud of virtue”.
Sankhya Yoga is unique in its decision to recognize the Vedic authority of Hindu philosophy in their belief system. This places them among the “astika” schools of Hindu philosophy. However, astika schools are also considered “theist” or orthodox, meaning that they accept God and schools that do not are called “nastika” or heterodox of which Buddhism practices. Samkhya is one of the rare “atheistic astika schools” and also one of the oldest philosophical systems in India.
Materialism or Carvaka is classified as nastika or heterodox and like Buddhism, is atheist, and does not believe in God. The beliefs came from the Lokayata sutras that were all lost except for some fragmentary texts and other philosophies refuting them. Although it is not considered as one of the schools of philosophy, it did cause a materialistic movement in Hinduism. An Indian Philosopher names Jayarsi Bhatta belonged to the school of Indian Materialism or Carvaka. Carvaka challenged all the belief systems by asking the question, “How do you know that such entities exist?” This question, above all others, they know cannot be answered with anything else but faith. Carvaka could be considered the scientific community as they were always looking for proof when acquiring knowledge.
In their era there were three ways to acquire knowledge: Perception (external or using the five senses through physical objects and internal which gives us knowledge through our own mental states), inference and testimony. Much of the knowledge they gained through logic and analysis.
Carvaka taught that basic human nature is to die. The movement grew larger while gradual skepticism continued to draw people in and ask questions of their own. The materialistic views of Jayarasi were made famous in his published work, “Tattvopaplavasimha”. Amazingly, his conclusions from this work is that we cannot know anything about reality.
The highest good for human beings is to use common sense and question everything until its ultimate conclusion satisfies you with knowledge obtained by asking questions. The path to the highest good is to enjoy life while your in this world because there is nothing beyond. For Carvaka, all other philosophies are untenable as they go beyond common sense and base their beliefs on things that cannot be proven and call it faith.
Now I will move on to the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi whose ambition was “to wipe every tear from every eye”. Gandhi collected ideas from an assortment of Indian philosophies, mostly Hinduism. He became popular for the brave stand he would take fighting for what he thought was right. They say his greatest achievement was the creation of a new instrument of social action, sarayagraha, also known as civil disobedience.
For Gandhi, basic human nature is to challenge injustice. Unfortunately, he also knew that when people are victimized, it is also their nature to fight back with violence. This was not an option for he knew that violence only feeds upon itself and never ends with satisfaction for any of the parties involved. He came up with another option which he called, satyagraha. This would bring an end to injustice by changing the heart of the wrongdoer with love which would awaken his sense of justice and make him do the right thing by not hurting people anymore. This kind of communication made it mandatory that the victims be willing to endure self-suffering while still remaining open to communication and arbitration.
The highest good for human beings is truth. God is truth and truth is God. Gandhi also realized that not all people accepted God in their lives, but everybody was willing to accept love. For him, the path to the highest good was by acting without attachments to the fruits of action, a belief taken right out of the Bhagavad-Gita. He believed in egolessness as the highest personal value.
His teachings have something to offer for nations involved in conflict, for oppressed minorities and their governments, social groups and individuals because what he proved was that it was possible to resolve issues that would otherwise seem impossible to solve without war or violence by planning direct action and accepting all adversity until the issue was resolved. He also proved that it is not necessary to attack an opponent that disagrees with you with physical violence. In a Gandhian fight, you can only claim you have won if your opponent can say the same. This is the brilliance of Gandhi and of human nature.
His message resonates throughout the world today because each of us believe that he may be right about human beings all coming from the same soul. That's why we can feel sadness for a human being we have never met or happiness when we see a couple smiling at the birth of their baby. We all feel connected to each other and share at the very least, our existence to be in this world together.
Rabindranath Tagore was one of the greatest literary talents of all time. He has written thousands of poems, along with plays, short stories and even songs that have all been successful and welcomed by the industry. The work that Tagore exhibited was a perfect example of his philosophy of creativity, harmony, love and joy. He was drawn to the arts since he was a boy and he made an impression on each and every one of the categories considered to fall in to the art world. He even began to paint before he died and as usual it too was a success. With all of his accomplishments you would assume he was a genius, and in his own way he was. However, he was a self taught man that had a difficult time learning from others. Even the best tutors found him a difficult pupil. This did not stop him from proving that whatever he put his mind to would be remembered by others forever.
Tagore believed that basic human nature was to express themselves with the personality that the Supreme one blessed them with. He felt that humanity itself had all felt the same stream of life running through their veins. He lived a long and distinguished life of creativity and service as well as being a voice of love and international harmony.
The path to the highest good is to accept and breathe in all the beauty of nature and open your heart to the love that surrounds us all everyday. For Tagore, self-realization and love are the highest good. Anyone who has read the poetry of Tagore will remember it. He has an impressionable personality that is obvious in his works. Only a rare few men can say they will be remembered for something they wrote or painted. Tagore can say that everything he wrote or painted will be remembered. How can anyone not believe in God when he has so many ways of sending his messages of love to us. How dark this world would become without the love of God to brighten our lives with natural beauty. The very wonders of life itself can be felt by holding a new born baby in your arms and feeling only pure and complete happiness in their eyes. That's not a coincidence, that is proof of God in the creation of life itself. How wonderful that we are allowed to actually create life ourselves. What a sweet gift.
The World in Black and White by
Laura McCallum is licensed under a
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