The Harmonist
(The first installment of a tribute to Sarasvati Thakura by Prof. Nishi
Kanta Sanyal, from the Harmonist, March 1928)
The practices and utterances of this truly transcendental teacher of religion are so strikingly unlike and so emphatically opposed to the spirit of all the current notions and activities of the world of today, but are withal so cautiously and so reverently broad-based on the highest teachings of the whole body of the scriptures of this country, that they have already most powerfully agitated religious opinion all over India, and are bound to compel even the most thoughtless to pause and reflect. Sri Paramahamsa Thakura has astounded everybody by the declaration that his practices and teachings are identical with those of the Vaisnava teachers of old, and
strictly in conformity with the teachings of Mahaprabhu Sri Caitanya. Or in other words, what appears to us to be so profoundly and aggressively original, as he tells us, is nothing but the old, eternal, and universal religion in its pure form.
The distinctiveness of Srila Siddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's teachings and practices is all-pervasive, and may be illustrated by a few concrete examples. This is, for instance, what Paramahamsa Thakura says regarding Truth:
Do not try to discover the nature of Truth by the exercise of your imagination. Do not endeavor to attain the Truth through experience of this world. Do not manufacture Truth in order to satisfy your erring inclinations, nor hastily accept anything for the reason that it satisfies such inclinations. Do not regard as Truth anything that has been "built up," or has the support of a majority of people like yourself-nor as untruth, anything that is rejected by the overwhelming majority. According to the
scriptures there is to be found hardly one in a crore of human beings who really worships the Truth. That which is proclaimed by the united voices of all the people of this world as Truth may turn out to be false. Therefore, cease to confront the Truth in a challenging mood. The Truth is not brought into existence by such arrogance. One has to approach the Truth in the spirit of absolute submission. It is necessary to listen to Truth. Truth is self-revealing, and it is only when it is pleased to reveal itself that the real nature of the Truth can be known to us, and not otherwise.
In all it minutest details, the conduct of this great teacher of religion corresponds to his teaching. In his personal conduct he never deviates by the breadth of a hair from the truth of Srimad-Bhagavatam to please any individual or body of individuals. He always tries to please only God in the manner that is laid down in Srimad-Bhagavatam. It is in this sense that his conduct is superhuman. He also never countenances the slightest deviation from the Truth-not even in the most eminent, or dearest and nearest, persons-and holds every single word of the Bhagavatam to outweigh the opinion of all the people of the world. He does not admit that all thinkers and religionists are approaching the Truth by diverse ways. On the contrary, he holds that all so-called truths that pass current in the world point only to a limited ideal formulated by the imagination, and are really untruths and, as such, positive obstacles in the way of the realization of the Truth. This would most certainly seem to be opposed to the judgment of the modern world.
Srila Paramahamsa Thakura's teachings and practices regarding right and wrong are opposed to all accepted ethical conclusions. He says that the so-called ethics of those who are averse to God stop dead before the transcendental conduct of the devotee of God. The ethical law of the devotee is exclusive devotion to God. The moral codes of utilitarianism or idealism are made by man, whereas the holy feet of the Lord are the fountainhead of the law of the devotees. Our empiric knowledge judges right and wrong by the measure of the highest point of view that is attained by its ascending effort. That which is regarded as right and wrong from that distant point of elevation is accepted as the ethical code of this world. Such a code is liable to modification in accordance with the length of vision of the legislator. All worldly morality is confined within the four corners of human knowledge and jumps up and down with the varying height of such knowledge.
Too often we confuse this manmade ethics with spiritual religion. But religion is not general knowledge or mere morality. Under the impression that this morality is identical with religion, we are led to regard as religious such activities as yoga, vowed observances, asceticism, fruitive work, empiric knowledge, service to the poor, to society, to country, to brutes, to the body, to parents, etc. But every one of these spring from the moral law concocted by the imagination of man. This concocted ethical religion bears the name of smarta-vada (canonical creed) in this country. But the law of the devotee possesses such wonderful power that these improvised ethical rules are completely neutralized in its presence. The devotee knows the feet of the Lord as higher than all other things. The law of the devotee may be compared to the downward rush of a mighty river that sweeps away, in its irresistible progress, all the ethical speculations of this world-like bits of flimsy straw lying athwart its course, relegating them to their proper insignificance in an obscure corner of the vast expanse of its vivifying current. Those speculations are no longer able to assume a lofty attitude, or exercise a dominating power, even in their respective limited spheres.
The propounders of all changing creeds of this world have proclaimed the law of devotion as being only one among a multitude of such a miscellaneous body of rules of conduct. A few may have assigned to devotion a slightly higher place than the rest. There are those among them who say that devotion to arents or to one's country belongs to the same category as devotion to God, and is a constituent part of spiritual devotion. There are some preachers of religion who have declared that it is permissible to disregard devotion to God for the purpose of serving one's parents. Some have gone further, holding that there can be no devotion to God by causing pain to the minds of parents or wife, that the service of Krsna is not valid if it stands in the way of the service to parents or the maintenance of the wife. But such is the transcendental power of the sacred stream of the superhuman, non-evil-producing kindness of Sri Krsna Caitanya Candra, that it is able to build up a stratum of the most unflinching firmness in the hearts of all jivas to whom He proclaims-with a deep reverberating sound like unto the blessed peal of the conch Pancajanya-this sublime Truth: There is no other rule, there can be no other land, for the jiva, than the service of Krsna. The only severe Truth, although it may not pass current amidst the orgy of perverted notions of a perverted world, is enshrined in such texts as sarva-dharman parityajya, "Seek only My shelter"; satyam param dhimahi, "Contemplate the Absolute Truth"; bhaktya vimucyen narah, "Man is liberated by devotion to God"; and so on.
This transcendental teacher of the spiritual religion, this great follower of Sri Rüpa Gosvami, has so thoroughly laid bare the utter triviality of the current conception regarding renunciation, that it has administered a rude shock to the entire body of the purveyors of pseudo-asceticism. Therefore naturally enough, these latter affect to regard his discourses as perverse and unscriptural. The discriminative renunciation (yukta-vairagya) enunciated by Sri Rüpa Gosvami Prabhu, by command of Sri Gaurasundara, in his great devotional work Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, has been set forth-decked out in such diverse and beautiful decorations by this great acarya, through his practices and discourses, that to one who may have the good fortune of making its acquaintance, the trivial renunciation that prevails in the world is bound to disclose its real face as that of the accursed goddess of destitution (Alaksmi). Only those who are averse to God deceive themselves by worshiping at her shrine.
It is because we cannot keep on our legs without our three meals a day that we regard one who can go without food for three days as unattached to the world. It is because we ourselves are so much addicted to material enjoyment that we regard as unworldly anyone who practices abstinence from such enjoyment. To the doer of evil deeds, the doer of good works appears to be unselfish. The Epicurean considers the pervert ascetic as one who has truly renounced the pleasures of the world. To the ignorant the learned may seem to be devoid of earthly passions. But such one-sided judgment is not the impartial verdict of the Kingdom where everything is perfect. The ideal of
this sort of renunciation has a very good superficial look, resembling the consistency of level, dry land. But if one looks two inches beneath the surface of this sundry film of renunciation, he is sure to find the foul water-stagnant and muddy-of selfish enjoyment or of the realization of selfish desire. Our acarya, this great follower of Sri Rüpa Gosvami, never gives the place of honor to this perverted asceticism, this embodiment of the goddess of destitution and misfortune. He says that the constant and single-minded employment of oneself, and all things of the world, for the gratification of the senses of God is the only true asceticism.
Take again the all-important subject of universal concord, of which the world undoubtedly stands in need. The solution offered by the non-evil-producing mercy of Sri Caitanya Candra is so diametrically opposed to all current ideas of comprehension as to have necessitated the addition of two most important chapters to the science of logic, entitled "perverted interpretation" (viparita-rüdhi) and "enlightened interpretation" (vidvad-rüdhi), of the etymology of words. Not to destroy the peace of anybody, not to cause annoyance to anybody over any matter, to patch up a compromise, or seeming absence of opposition between the weak points of individuals or aggregates, is the denotation of the term "concord" in the current usage of the age. The fear of ourselves being attacked by those whose weaknesses we are to point out recommends to our prudence the adoption of this convenient principle of "I am silent if you are also dumb." The so-called concord of the age is only another name for: drifting according to one's individual tastes with the current of laws concocted by the mind, and to not in any way oppose the similar efforts of others.
But the power of the mercy of Sri Caitanyadeva does not tolerate such deception. The great spiritual concord declared by Him is a wonderful instrument yielding delightfully harmonious music charming the ears of Sri Krsna Himself. In that music there is no tendency, like that to be found in all so-called efforts at comprehension, toward the ultimate destruction of all diversity. In that harmony there is present eternal diversity, but no mutual conflict; there is variety of tune and cadence, but no want of agreement. The objective of that harmony is not abstraction or neutralization. Its goal is the Absolute Truth. This divine instrument of harmonious music, although it may fail to gratify the senses of the jiva, serves nevertheless to perfectly gratify all the senses of the Absolute Truth. This spiritual concord, although it may not build in the empty air enchanting gardens of imaginary flowers, nevertheless admits to the boundless treasures of the real Truth, the knowledge of which is our highest realization. This concord is not the fictitious, temporary absence of conflict brought about by law concocted by the human mind; it is the eternal spiritual harmony.
Sankirtana is that kirtana of Hari which is performed by many in company. These words make an offering of such concord as was never known before. In this argumentative and querulous age it provides the only never-failing weapon for imposing universal spiritual harmony. The rationale, and absence of self-contradiction, of all the conclusions of the Vedas is to be found in this great spiritual synthesis. Sarvajna-sükta, Parijata-saurabha, Sri-bhasya, and Sarva-samvadini (which establishes the spiritual and scientific validity of Pürnaprajna-darsana by lighting up the lotus feet of the Absolute Truth in the act of adoration) scatter the fragrance of this
universal spiritual concord across the infinity of worlds. The great acarya is proclaiming through the medium of the Harmonist this message of universal spiritual concord, for the delight of the votaries of the Absolute Truth in all parts of the civilized world. Founded by this great religious teacher, the Gaudiya is pointing the way to spiritual agreement by demonstrating the futility of the endeavors for non-spiritual harmony.
Kanta Sanyal, from the Harmonist, March 1928)
The practices and utterances of this truly transcendental teacher of religion are so strikingly unlike and so emphatically opposed to the spirit of all the current notions and activities of the world of today, but are withal so cautiously and so reverently broad-based on the highest teachings of the whole body of the scriptures of this country, that they have already most powerfully agitated religious opinion all over India, and are bound to compel even the most thoughtless to pause and reflect. Sri Paramahamsa Thakura has astounded everybody by the declaration that his practices and teachings are identical with those of the Vaisnava teachers of old, and
strictly in conformity with the teachings of Mahaprabhu Sri Caitanya. Or in other words, what appears to us to be so profoundly and aggressively original, as he tells us, is nothing but the old, eternal, and universal religion in its pure form.
The distinctiveness of Srila Siddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's teachings and practices is all-pervasive, and may be illustrated by a few concrete examples. This is, for instance, what Paramahamsa Thakura says regarding Truth:
Do not try to discover the nature of Truth by the exercise of your imagination. Do not endeavor to attain the Truth through experience of this world. Do not manufacture Truth in order to satisfy your erring inclinations, nor hastily accept anything for the reason that it satisfies such inclinations. Do not regard as Truth anything that has been "built up," or has the support of a majority of people like yourself-nor as untruth, anything that is rejected by the overwhelming majority. According to the
scriptures there is to be found hardly one in a crore of human beings who really worships the Truth. That which is proclaimed by the united voices of all the people of this world as Truth may turn out to be false. Therefore, cease to confront the Truth in a challenging mood. The Truth is not brought into existence by such arrogance. One has to approach the Truth in the spirit of absolute submission. It is necessary to listen to Truth. Truth is self-revealing, and it is only when it is pleased to reveal itself that the real nature of the Truth can be known to us, and not otherwise.
In all it minutest details, the conduct of this great teacher of religion corresponds to his teaching. In his personal conduct he never deviates by the breadth of a hair from the truth of Srimad-Bhagavatam to please any individual or body of individuals. He always tries to please only God in the manner that is laid down in Srimad-Bhagavatam. It is in this sense that his conduct is superhuman. He also never countenances the slightest deviation from the Truth-not even in the most eminent, or dearest and nearest, persons-and holds every single word of the Bhagavatam to outweigh the opinion of all the people of the world. He does not admit that all thinkers and religionists are approaching the Truth by diverse ways. On the contrary, he holds that all so-called truths that pass current in the world point only to a limited ideal formulated by the imagination, and are really untruths and, as such, positive obstacles in the way of the realization of the Truth. This would most certainly seem to be opposed to the judgment of the modern world.
Srila Paramahamsa Thakura's teachings and practices regarding right and wrong are opposed to all accepted ethical conclusions. He says that the so-called ethics of those who are averse to God stop dead before the transcendental conduct of the devotee of God. The ethical law of the devotee is exclusive devotion to God. The moral codes of utilitarianism or idealism are made by man, whereas the holy feet of the Lord are the fountainhead of the law of the devotees. Our empiric knowledge judges right and wrong by the measure of the highest point of view that is attained by its ascending effort. That which is regarded as right and wrong from that distant point of elevation is accepted as the ethical code of this world. Such a code is liable to modification in accordance with the length of vision of the legislator. All worldly morality is confined within the four corners of human knowledge and jumps up and down with the varying height of such knowledge.
Too often we confuse this manmade ethics with spiritual religion. But religion is not general knowledge or mere morality. Under the impression that this morality is identical with religion, we are led to regard as religious such activities as yoga, vowed observances, asceticism, fruitive work, empiric knowledge, service to the poor, to society, to country, to brutes, to the body, to parents, etc. But every one of these spring from the moral law concocted by the imagination of man. This concocted ethical religion bears the name of smarta-vada (canonical creed) in this country. But the law of the devotee possesses such wonderful power that these improvised ethical rules are completely neutralized in its presence. The devotee knows the feet of the Lord as higher than all other things. The law of the devotee may be compared to the downward rush of a mighty river that sweeps away, in its irresistible progress, all the ethical speculations of this world-like bits of flimsy straw lying athwart its course, relegating them to their proper insignificance in an obscure corner of the vast expanse of its vivifying current. Those speculations are no longer able to assume a lofty attitude, or exercise a dominating power, even in their respective limited spheres.
The propounders of all changing creeds of this world have proclaimed the law of devotion as being only one among a multitude of such a miscellaneous body of rules of conduct. A few may have assigned to devotion a slightly higher place than the rest. There are those among them who say that devotion to arents or to one's country belongs to the same category as devotion to God, and is a constituent part of spiritual devotion. There are some preachers of religion who have declared that it is permissible to disregard devotion to God for the purpose of serving one's parents. Some have gone further, holding that there can be no devotion to God by causing pain to the minds of parents or wife, that the service of Krsna is not valid if it stands in the way of the service to parents or the maintenance of the wife. But such is the transcendental power of the sacred stream of the superhuman, non-evil-producing kindness of Sri Krsna Caitanya Candra, that it is able to build up a stratum of the most unflinching firmness in the hearts of all jivas to whom He proclaims-with a deep reverberating sound like unto the blessed peal of the conch Pancajanya-this sublime Truth: There is no other rule, there can be no other land, for the jiva, than the service of Krsna. The only severe Truth, although it may not pass current amidst the orgy of perverted notions of a perverted world, is enshrined in such texts as sarva-dharman parityajya, "Seek only My shelter"; satyam param dhimahi, "Contemplate the Absolute Truth"; bhaktya vimucyen narah, "Man is liberated by devotion to God"; and so on.
This transcendental teacher of the spiritual religion, this great follower of Sri Rüpa Gosvami, has so thoroughly laid bare the utter triviality of the current conception regarding renunciation, that it has administered a rude shock to the entire body of the purveyors of pseudo-asceticism. Therefore naturally enough, these latter affect to regard his discourses as perverse and unscriptural. The discriminative renunciation (yukta-vairagya) enunciated by Sri Rüpa Gosvami Prabhu, by command of Sri Gaurasundara, in his great devotional work Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, has been set forth-decked out in such diverse and beautiful decorations by this great acarya, through his practices and discourses, that to one who may have the good fortune of making its acquaintance, the trivial renunciation that prevails in the world is bound to disclose its real face as that of the accursed goddess of destitution (Alaksmi). Only those who are averse to God deceive themselves by worshiping at her shrine.
It is because we cannot keep on our legs without our three meals a day that we regard one who can go without food for three days as unattached to the world. It is because we ourselves are so much addicted to material enjoyment that we regard as unworldly anyone who practices abstinence from such enjoyment. To the doer of evil deeds, the doer of good works appears to be unselfish. The Epicurean considers the pervert ascetic as one who has truly renounced the pleasures of the world. To the ignorant the learned may seem to be devoid of earthly passions. But such one-sided judgment is not the impartial verdict of the Kingdom where everything is perfect. The ideal of
this sort of renunciation has a very good superficial look, resembling the consistency of level, dry land. But if one looks two inches beneath the surface of this sundry film of renunciation, he is sure to find the foul water-stagnant and muddy-of selfish enjoyment or of the realization of selfish desire. Our acarya, this great follower of Sri Rüpa Gosvami, never gives the place of honor to this perverted asceticism, this embodiment of the goddess of destitution and misfortune. He says that the constant and single-minded employment of oneself, and all things of the world, for the gratification of the senses of God is the only true asceticism.
Take again the all-important subject of universal concord, of which the world undoubtedly stands in need. The solution offered by the non-evil-producing mercy of Sri Caitanya Candra is so diametrically opposed to all current ideas of comprehension as to have necessitated the addition of two most important chapters to the science of logic, entitled "perverted interpretation" (viparita-rüdhi) and "enlightened interpretation" (vidvad-rüdhi), of the etymology of words. Not to destroy the peace of anybody, not to cause annoyance to anybody over any matter, to patch up a compromise, or seeming absence of opposition between the weak points of individuals or aggregates, is the denotation of the term "concord" in the current usage of the age. The fear of ourselves being attacked by those whose weaknesses we are to point out recommends to our prudence the adoption of this convenient principle of "I am silent if you are also dumb." The so-called concord of the age is only another name for: drifting according to one's individual tastes with the current of laws concocted by the mind, and to not in any way oppose the similar efforts of others.
But the power of the mercy of Sri Caitanyadeva does not tolerate such deception. The great spiritual concord declared by Him is a wonderful instrument yielding delightfully harmonious music charming the ears of Sri Krsna Himself. In that music there is no tendency, like that to be found in all so-called efforts at comprehension, toward the ultimate destruction of all diversity. In that harmony there is present eternal diversity, but no mutual conflict; there is variety of tune and cadence, but no want of agreement. The objective of that harmony is not abstraction or neutralization. Its goal is the Absolute Truth. This divine instrument of harmonious music, although it may fail to gratify the senses of the jiva, serves nevertheless to perfectly gratify all the senses of the Absolute Truth. This spiritual concord, although it may not build in the empty air enchanting gardens of imaginary flowers, nevertheless admits to the boundless treasures of the real Truth, the knowledge of which is our highest realization. This concord is not the fictitious, temporary absence of conflict brought about by law concocted by the human mind; it is the eternal spiritual harmony.
Sankirtana is that kirtana of Hari which is performed by many in company. These words make an offering of such concord as was never known before. In this argumentative and querulous age it provides the only never-failing weapon for imposing universal spiritual harmony. The rationale, and absence of self-contradiction, of all the conclusions of the Vedas is to be found in this great spiritual synthesis. Sarvajna-sükta, Parijata-saurabha, Sri-bhasya, and Sarva-samvadini (which establishes the spiritual and scientific validity of Pürnaprajna-darsana by lighting up the lotus feet of the Absolute Truth in the act of adoration) scatter the fragrance of this
universal spiritual concord across the infinity of worlds. The great acarya is proclaiming through the medium of the Harmonist this message of universal spiritual concord, for the delight of the votaries of the Absolute Truth in all parts of the civilized world. Founded by this great religious teacher, the Gaudiya is pointing the way to spiritual agreement by demonstrating the futility of the endeavors for non-spiritual harmony.
posted by Vyoma at Wednesday, December 26, 2007
