Hamsa, at Home With Philosophy

Programme Details
THEME
“At Home with Philosophy”
A. PROGRAMME
Thursday, July 14, 2016

Departure Alleppey Express (From Chennai Central)
Accommodation AC 3-Tier, AC 2-Tier
Coordinators Prof. C. S. Krishna Das (Mobile 98405-37505)
Mr. V. Anbarasu (Mobile 94447–54834)
Mr. A.R. Balasubramanian (Mobile 94444-60054)
Mr. R. S. Krishnan (Mobile 95512-55505)
Friday, July 15, 2016
Arrival Trichur – 6:55 am
Halt Hotel Elite International
Friday, July 15, 2016
Assembly 9:45 AM - Executive Meeting Hall
1. Lighting the Kuthuvilakku
2. HAMSA Prayer
3. Musical Meditation (5 minutes)
First Session 10:00 AM to 1:15 PM
Lunch 1:15 PM to 2:30 PM
Second Session 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM
Visit to Temples 4:30 PM to 7:30 PM
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At Home with Philosophy
A. PROGRAMME
Saturday, July 16, 2016

Third Session 9:30 AM to 1:15 PM
Fourth Session 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM
Cultural Programme 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Fifth Session 10:00 AM to 1:30 PM
Departure for Chennai 6:50 PM - Alleppey Express
Monday, July 18, 2016
Arrival Chennai Central - 5:50 AM
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Programme Details
B. PARTICIPANTS
S.No. Name S.No. Name
1. Advaith Hebbar Mr. 26. Karthik A.N. Mr.
2. Agnisundaram S. Mr. 27. Kothainayaki Mrs.
3. Aiyamma B.C. Mr. 28. Kothandapani Mr.
4. Ajantha Needhi Mohan Mrs. 29. Krupanidhi S. Mr.
5. Anbarasu V. Mr. 30. Krishnadas C.S. Prof.
6. Aswin T.S. Mr. 31. Krishnakumari V.S. Dr.
7. Aufthab Begum Dr. 32. Krishnan J. Mr.
8. Balamurali G. Dr. 33. Krishnan R.S. Mr.
9. Balasubramanian A.R. Mr. 34. Kshitij Vijayakumar Mr.
10. Balasubramanian M. Mr. 35. Lakshmi A.S. Mrs.
11. Bhaskaran P. Justice (Retd) 36. Lalitha N. Dr.
12. Chandrasekaran S.J. Mr. 37. Maheshwaran Mr.
13. Chandrasekar S. Mr. 38. Meenakshi Vijayakumar Mrs.
14. Chitra Krishnan Mrs. 39. Mishra G. Prof
15. Chitra P. Dr. 40. Muthuswamy D.A. Prof.
16. Deenadayalu R. Mr. 41. Natarajan K.R. Mr.
17. Girish Babu Mr. 42. Natarajan M. Mr.
18. Govindaswamy R.K. Mr. 43. Pattavardhini Mrs.
19. Hemalatha D. Mrs. 44. Pavani Sudhir Mrs.
20. Jayalakshmi T.V. Prof. 45. Radha Alexander Mrs.
21. Indira Srinivasan Mrs. 46. Radhakrishnan V. Mr.
22. Kalyani Mishra Mrs. 47. Raman V.S. Prof.
23. Kamalakannan A. Mr. 48. Ramesh A. I.F.S. (Retd)
24. Kannan J. Mr. 49. Ramesh G. Prof.
25. Kannan R. Mr. 50. Santhanagopalan K.M. Mr.
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B. PARTICIPANTS
S.No. Name S.No. Name
51. Santhanakrishnan R. Mr. 65. Swaminathan A.M. I.A.S. (Retd)
52. Saraswathi V. Dr. 66. Usha Mahadevan Dr.
53. Saroja M. Mrs. 67. Vaidhyanathan K. Mr.
54. Seshiah V. Dr. 68. Vasudevan D. Mr.
55. Seshiah V. Mrs. 69. Velmurugendran C.V. Dr.
56. Shankar Vanavarayar Mr. 70. Venkataraman T.V. Mr.
57. Shradda Kannan Miss 71. Vennila Dr.
58. Shyamala S. Dr. 72. Vijayakumar B. Mr.
59. Sivakolundu T.S. Mr. 73. Vijayalakshmi A. Mrs.
60. Srinivasan A.V. Dr. 74. Viswanathan B. Mr.
61. Sriram V.Aiyer Mr. 75. Yogika Kannan Miss
62. Sudha Kannan Mrs.
63. Sudhir A.R. Dr.
64. Sumathi Mani Mrs.
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Programme Details
C. FOR YOU R GU IDANCE
1. Your train from Chennai is Alleppey Express. It departs from

Chennai Central Station. Please reach the Chennai Central Station
at least one hour in advance in view of the rush hour traffic
congestion. Please ascertain the correct time of departure.
2. We have made our own internal berth allotment. You will be given
separate berth cards. Where necessary, kindly help to
accommodate very senior citizens in lower berths. You do not have
to check your berth in the train chart. Please keep your identity
without fail.
3. Please make your own arrangements regarding your food
requirements during the onward journey.
4. Hotel rooms will be allotted at the discretion of the management.
Accommodation will be in twin sharing basis.
5. The menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner is fixed.
6. Timing schedules will be strictly adhered to so as to get the
maximum benefit from the Retreat.
7. Prof. C.S. Krishnadas, Mr. V. Anbarasu, Mr. A.R.
Balasubramanian and Mr. R.S.Krishnan will be coordinators for the
train journey, local trips and stay arrangements.
8. Mr. Balan of Hotel Elite International will coordinate the
arrangements at the hotel.
9. We are grateful to Mr. K.V.Sadanandam, Chairman of Hotel Elite
International Group, for providing us accommodation, food and
transport facilities as well as for the generous hospitality.
10. Please switch off your mobile phones during the sessions.
11. During the sessions, kindly give your best attention. Try to make
discussions practical, useful and lively. Please do not interrupt
when another person is talking. Reserve your points to your turn.
When your turn comes, make the best use of it. By listening, you
enhance the quality of your contribution. And we expect every
participant to contribute during every stage of the discussions.
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12. A Retreat is the time and place where we should be willing to give
as well as take. When we share our experiences with others, we
learn and let others learn. Raising questions and sharing your
experiences in a spirit of honesty and commitment ensures the
fulfilment of the purpose of the Retreat.
13. When there are practical sessions such as yoga, meditation and
counselling, please give full attention to them in your own interest.
14. Please co-operate.
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Programme Details
D. SESSION DETAILS
Time
Session Date Subject
From To
First Jul 15, 10:00 AM 11:00 AM “The Beckoning of Philosophy”
2016
Friday 11:00 AM 11:45 AM “The Question of Truth”
11:45 AM 12:30 PM “The Question of Meaning”
12:30 PM 1:15 PM “The Question of Justice”
Second Jul 15, 2:30 PM 3:30 PM “The Question of Governance”

2016
Friday 3:30 PM 4:30 PM “The Eye as You See It”
- Talk by Dr. A.R. Sudhir
Retreat Closes for the Day
Visit to Temples - 4:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Time
From To
Third July 16, 9:30 AM 10:30 AM “The Question of Religion”
2016
Saturday 10:30 AM 11:30 AM “The Question of Morality”
11:30 AM 12:30 PM “The Question of Science”
12:30 PM 1:15 PM “The Quest for Happiness”
Lunch - 1:15 PM to 2:30 PM
Fourth July 16, 2:30 PM 3:30 PM “A Thing of Beauty”

2016
Saturday 3:30 PM 4:30 PM “Agony and Ecstacy of Fire
Service” - Talk by Mrs.
Meenakshi Vijayakumar
Retreat Closes for the Day
Cultural Programme - 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
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D. SESSION DETAILS
Time
From To
Fifth Jul 17, 10:00 AM 11:00 AM “Justice Revisited”

2016
Sunday 11:00 AM 12 NOON “Au Revoir Philosophy”
12 NOON 12:30 PM “Yashodhara”
12:30 PM 12:40 PM “Health Tips”

– Dr. Aufthab Begum
12:40 PM 1:30 PM “Open House, Conclusion &

Thanksgiving”
Lunch - 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM
The Retreat Closes

The Participants Leave
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Programme Details
PREFACE
The notes on “At Home with Philosophy” to be discussed at

HAMSA’s annual Retreat, 2016, are reflective of the thoughts,
approach and contents of the Western Philosophy and are based on
the profound contributions of the Western Philosophers. I have
considered the question of comparison of the Western and Eastern
philosophers with specific reference to the topics on which the notes
have been written and found that the volume and vastness of ideas,
writings and approach may not lend themselves to a discussion in a
two-and-a-half day Retreat, even granting the presence of many
enlightened and intellectual minds. Participants may kindly note this
position during the discussions. This is a challenge and invitation to
you to examine your own philosophical approaches in order to
achieve a comprehensive appreciation of the contribution of
philosophy in general to the enhancement of life’s values.
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x
The Beckoning of Philosophy
FRIDAY FIRST SESSION

JULY 15, 2016 10:00 AM TO 1:15 PM
“THE BECKONING OF T. V. VENKATARAMAN

PHILOSOPHY” 10:00 AM TO 11:00 AM
A. INTRODUCTION
He is my long-time friend, one of the fellow beach-walkers. Like
me, he too has become old, restricting his physical activities. In a
two-bedroom apartment, he is always seen sitting by his table in
front of a bright big grilled window, surrounded by his books. He
needs all the natural light to have some vision, because, like me, he
too is fast losing his eye-sight. Quite often, he has to use his
precious magnifying glasses to read the small print. He keeps writing
most of the time, keeping his head low and close to a bright lamp so
that he can see what he is writing. He has written many books,
mainly on philosophical themes. God knows what he is now writing
about! But he loves his writing. I have read one or two of his books,
but have not been greatly impressed, for the simple reason that
much of what he wrote went beyond my head. In his heydays, he
was an accomplished professor of pure philosophy, whatever it
meant. Probably because he did not have good nutrition during his
early days, the professor remained thin and frail, but his base voice
filled any lecture hall with clarity and resonance. At no time has
philosophy been a subject of interest to the students, unless there
was no other option, but this professor was capable of attracting
every one of them, and when he spoke on different philosophical
concepts, they listened to him with rapt attention.
“What do you think of your professor?” I asked a charming young
student who lived close to my house.
“Super!” he responded. ‘Super’ is the word which we have learnt
to use to respond to any situation. A modern jargon.
“Why do you think so?” I asked.
“He is clear. He is logical. He is fluent. Makes us understand,” he
replied.
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“What have you learnt from his teaching?”

“The essence of philosophy. To seek, to pursue and find the truth
in everything.”
“Does it take you anywhere?”
“Yes. It makes me know myself better. There is a lot of untruth.
Separating truth from it is the work of philosophy.”
“You see a lot of untruth?”
“Yes. In what we see, hear or read, there is a lot of pseudo-truth!”
“Pseudo-truth?”
“Yes. What appears to be true, but is not!”
“You feel strongly?”
“Yes. Philosophy’s basic work is to help you to see the truth,
using logic and reason.”
My God, this young man will go far, I thought. He did. He took a
Doctorate in Epigraphy and made significant contributions to the
Indian Epigraphical Studies.
The learned professor’s wife was deeply devoted to him. They
are a fond and lovely couple and never hesitated to show their
affection towards each other at anytime. Though not religious in the
usual sense of the term, the professor encouraged his religious-
minded wife to engage herself wholeheartedly in all religious
activities. He, naturally, does not discuss the philosophy of religion
with his wife, but he must have gathered a lot of wisdom from her
religious attitudes and practices.
On one occasion, I asked the professor about his wife’s
religiosity.
He said, “It is said that man’s instinct is to be religious and this
instinct itself is born out of primal fears that, today, are deeply
embedded in man’s psyche. But I don’t look at the matter that way.
Religion and philosophy, both, have their place in man’s life.
Philosophy guides him to see the truth with his logical mind and
intelligence. Religions seek truth that is said to be beyond the
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mental or intellectual sources. In philosophy, we have a branch

called metaphysics, where we try to examine the nature of
experience which is said to reveal the truth. You have mystics who
fall under this category. They claim to have experiences beyond the
ordinary. Such experience is subjective. Philosophy seeks to inquire
into the reasonableness, if not the fact, of such experiences. In the
West, there are scores of philosophers who have commented on the
metaphysical reality. In the East, particularly in India, the experiences
of the sages and saints, as spelt out by them in the scriptures, are
themselves given philosophical values. They have become
philosophy, the revelation of truth through ordinary reason.”
I had no questions. Weighty statements needed to be pondered
over.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
What is philosophy? The eminent professor at Oxford, Sir Alfred
Ayer, considered to be the founder of the modern school of
positivism, says in his book, ‘The Central Questions of
Philosophy’,
“Even for a professional philosopher, this question is very
difficult to answer, and the fact that it is so difficult is itself
indicative. It brings home to philosophers how peculiar their
subject is. For one thing, it aims at yielding knowledge; or
rather, if this is thought to go too far, at least it comprises
propositions which their authors wish us to accept as true. Yet,
it seems to have no special subject matter. What can a
philosopher be said to study in a way that the chemist studies
the composition of bodies, or a botanist, the variety of plants?”
“A possible answer is that being a subject with many branches,
philosophy has not one but many objects of study. So, it may
be said that metaphysics investigates the structure of reality;
ethics, the rule of human conduct; logic, the canons of valid
reasoning; the theory of knowledge discovers what it is in our
power to know; it aims at establishing criteria for knowledge.
Logic now ranks with mathematics from which it is hardly
distinguishable. Philosophical questions can be raised about
logic, about the status of logical propositions, the character of
logical concepts.”
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Metaphysics is a more complicated matter. One can say that

each of the special sciences deals only with one part of the world;
metaphysics goes beyond them in being concerned with reality as a
whole.
What then is reality? The Eastern philosophy, more than the
Western, claims to penetrate the underlying reality. Philosophy is put
on a higher pedestal than the sciences. Natural sciences are put
along with materialism. The stand taken is that appearances, with
which natural sciences deal, are deceptive, in contrast to an
underlying reality which is brought within the scope of metaphysics.
But what possible experience can authorise us to make such a
distinction? The answer is, ‘mystical experience’. The philosopher
does not doubt the truth of such experiences but raises the
question, whether such an experience yields knowledge, and if so,
what it is that such knowledge establishes.
The claim of metaphysics, which philosophy studies, that the
world is really very different from what it appears to be, had, in the
West, much support from Plato’s ‘Theory of Forms’. If things are
perishable in the world, there are, then, Forms which are universal
and do not undergo any change. Thus, the quality of goodness
abides, independent of its incidence upon human beings in the
world. The Forms determine the quality of perceptible objects. But,
does that lead to questions of reality which the mystic experiences?
Obviously not.
The mystics do not contemplate upon an ideal in contrast to the
perceivable reality. They envisage a reality arising out of an
experience that transcends, in their words, ‘all other reality’. Difficult
matters!
As a philosopher, Sir Alfred Ayer has to have his say,
“Indeed, it is surely obvious that no experience, however
intense, can possibly establish that time and space are unreal.
Or that, things which appear to be different, are in some
manner identical. To obtain any such result, one would have to
formulate a criterion of reality and one would have to show by
argument that things which were commonly taken to be real
did not satisfy it.”
Herculean task!
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From my professor-friend’s simple analysis of the philosophical

issues, to the understanding and arguments of the experts, is not
necessarily a long travel. It could be a leap. It is that leap that makes
philosophy challenging and pleasurable. In his ‘The Story of
Philosophy’, Will Durant puts this beautifully,
“There is a pleasure in philosophy and a lure even in the
mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the
coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the
heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.
Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life
when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, ‘that dear
delight’ when the love of a modestly elusive truth seemed more
glamorous, in comparison, than the lust for the joys of the
flesh and the dross of the world. And there is always some
wistful remnant in us in that early wooing of wisdom. ‘Life has
meaning,’ we feel with Browning, ‘to find its meaning is my
meat and drink.’ So much of our life is meaningless. A self-
canceling vacillation and futility. We strive with the chaos about
us and within. But, we would believe all the while that there is
something vital and significant in us. Could we but decipher
with our own souls, we want to understand that ‘life means for
us constantly to transform into light and flame all that we are
or meet with’. We want to know if the little things are little and
big things are big before it is too late; we want to see things as
they will be seen forever ‘in the light of eternity’. We want to
learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the
looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our
energies by criticising and harmonising our desires; for
coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics and
perhaps, in logic and metaphysics too.”
“‘To be a philosopher,’ said Thoreau, ‘is not merely to have
subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love
wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity,
independence, magnanimity and trust.’ We may be sure, that,
if we find some wisdom all things will be added unto us. ‘Seek
ye first the good things of the mind,’ Bacon admonishes us,
‘and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.’
Truth will not make us rich but it will make us free.”
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Some do think low of philosophy and consider it as obscure, as

ignorance. It is true that philosophy is not loved today. Once, the
most erudite men were willing to die for her. Socrates chose to be
her martyr rather than live in flight and exile. There were great days
when philosophy took all the knowledge for her province and threw
herself into the forefront of mind’s advance. Men honoured her.
Nothing was held nobler than the pursuit of truth. Today, science
seems to have overtaken philosophy. But science, in order to be
science, must have to be philosophically explained. Every science
begins as philosophy and ends as art, in its technology. We shall
devote a session on this matter.
As Sir Ayer told us earlier, philosophy has certain main branches
of study. But in fact, the philosophical method, of seeking truth,
applies to every kind of question that we can think of in this world.
Specifically, philosophy means, and includes, five fields of study:
Logic, Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics and Metaphysics. Not a branch, but
a subject of philosophical inquiry, is Religion.
Logic is the study of ideal methods in thought and research,
observation, hypothesis, deduction and induction. Logic is a dull
study for most of us and I am speaking from experience. And yet, the
great events in the history of thought are the improvements that men
made in their methods of thinking and analysis.
Aesthetics is the study of ideal form, of beauty. It is the
philosophy of art.
Ethics is the study of ideal conduct. “The highest knowledge,”
Socrates said, “is the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of
the wisdom of life.”
Politics is the study of ideal social organisation; aristocracy,
democracy, socialism, anarchism, and so on.
Metaphysics, a troublesome subject, is the study of the ‘ultimate
reality’ of all things, of the real and finer nature of ‘matter’, of ‘mind’
and of the interrelation of the two in the process of perception and
knowledge.
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These are the well-known parts of philosophy. Technically,

philosophy is a study of experience as a whole, or of a portion of
experience in relation to the whole. At once, it becomes clear that
any problem can be the material for philosophy, if only it is studied in
total perspective, in the light of all human experience. The mark of a
philosophical mind is not so much subtlety of speculation as breadth
of vision and unity of thought.
“Today,” my professor friend says, “philosophy has become a
technical subject. It has lost its soul. Sterile intellectualism of
speculation has taken over. Religion has captured philosophy and
utilised it for propagating a variety of intellectual positions,
improperly using its logic and analysis. And science tries to overtake
philosophy, utilising its methods in order to make discoveries whose
ultimate impact can only be philosophical. Science ought to realise
that as science, without philosophy, it is destructive.”
My friend continues, “Philosophy takes us to the knowledge that
the rightness of the ultimate choices of our lives can only be clarified
in the light of our whole experience. If we want stability of mind and
soul, we shall have to seek it only in philosophy.”
“With all the definitions,” I respond, “would you say that
philosophy implies looking beyond your small self?”
“You are right,” says my friend, “but, we should stay clear of
religion here. How we gather our knowledge about any particular
matter, how we sift it using our reasonableness, avoiding self-
centredness, is how we grow philosophically. In this troubled world,
this is definitely necessary to retain one’s sanity.”
“But the world is gathering more and more knowledge and
information,” I say, “with the help of fascinating techniques. Those
who are engaged in pushing the revolution to its frontiers are so
deeply involved, quite selflessly. Would you say that they are
philosophically minded in their pursuits?”
“Certainly not,” my friend replies, “far from it. They are
workaholics. They know what they are doing. And know the results
that will come out of their work. But such knowledge or the resultant
accomplishment are not paths to wisdom. To get wisdom, one must
seek to understand, in a broader context, what is likely to flow out of
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these discoveries and inventions. Even though they may produce

some satisfaction, their eventual or ultimate impact on the human
mind and heart, human conduct, is extraordinarily important and that
is what we inquire into, in philosophy.”
“What about the present day philosophy?” I ask.
“For over two thousand years, philosophy held sway over the
human mind. Basic questions of human life were the stuff on which it
shed its light of elegance. In religion too, philosophy gave man tools
to understand his Gods and understand his position in the cosmic
arrangements. In every nation, every culture, philosophy had its
glorious days. In every field, philosophy was there at the forefront of
mind’s advances. Nothing was held nobler than truth, which was the
prominence of philosophy. Philosophers feared no monarchs. They
made voyages into the distant seas, looking for truth or the meaning
of the farthest horizon. Countless scholars and scientists of yore
pledged their knowledge at the feet of philosophy in order to
sharpen their skills.”
“But now?” I am in a hurry.
My friend heaves a deep sigh. His eyes are half-closed. He
knows that he is a member of a lost breed and probably thinks of his
own masters, the giants who thought sharply and wrote regally.
“Philosophy,” he says, “is not loved that much, since she has lost
the spirit of adventure. The uprising of the sciences has stolen from
philosophy her ancient realms, one by one. Cosmology has become
astronomy; ‘natural philosophy’ has become biology and physics;
‘the philosophy of the mind’ has given way to psychology;
philosophy’s questions on matter and happiness have been huddled
into materialism, that wheel of technology that throws crumbs to fulfil
man’s unknown desires. We deal now with cold peaks of
metaphysics, the childish puzzles of the theories of knowledge and
vague academic disputes on ethics that mankind no longer cares
for. If we, as philosophers, are forgotten one day, only we are to
blame.”
“Do you feel sad?” I ask.
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“In a way, I feel sad,” says my friend, “because the philosophers

are letting philosophy down. When he begins to shun vital problems
of human existence, and builds himself an ivory tower of esoteric
tomes, and professional, periodical seminars, where nobody follows
what the other man is talking about, the philosopher begins to shiver
at the smallest human predicament. Whereas, he ought to be there,
to solve it, he wanders farther and farther away from his time and
place and from the problems of his people. The growing concerns of
society, which he can resolve with reasonableness, do not interest
him. They, in fact, frighten him. The modern philosopher retreats into
his own little corner and busies himself with layers of technical
knowledge. He has ceased to be a philosopher.”
“What if every scientist, every technocrat, every scholar buries
himself in his own terminology?” I ask.
“It matters for the philosopher,” my friend replies. “Philosophy is
an overall study. The function of philosophy is not to bury itself in the
obscure retreats of technicality or verbosity, but to come forth
bravely in every realm of inquiry and gather all knowledge for the
coordination and illumination of human character and human life.
The field of philosophy comprises all that interests or influences the
affairs of mankind. Philosophy ought to continue to study the
problems of value and meaning for mankind and clarify the
possibilities for human progress using knowledge and reason.
Philosophy and wisdom go together.”
“You’ll think of Plato’s wise philosopher as the king?”
“Not as king. We are in democracy. Everybody is a kingmaker
and therefore everybody ought to be wise. Their wisdom may not
have education as a prerequisite, but will certainly call for honesty,
selflessness, sincerity, readiness to see one another’s point of view,
desire to serve and sacrifice and a strong understanding that all
mankind is one, irrespective of nation, race, religion, culture, caste
or community. I recall Dr. S. Radhakrishnan’s words,
“We are all one in emotional responses whether we have a
black face like Othello or white like Hamlet.”
“Philosophy is equally valid for the family and social life?”
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“Yes,” says my friend. “Philosophical approach presupposes

those core values that I have just now referred to. They are as valid
for the family as for the society and nation. Much of our human ills,
mental imbalances and strife can be eliminated by a selfless
approach that is the very basis of philosophy.”
Long and illuminating conversation. My friend is not only a
committed philosopher but someone who has been living the
essence of it throughout his life. Both of us have become old. While I
can frequently become depressed thinking about my future, which is
going to be shrouded in darkness and loneliness, my friend is one of
the most cheerful men I have seen. He has had his own ups and
downs, faced tragedies and suffered insults from his jealous
colleagues, but he never gave himself to despair at any time. He
used to enliven our small group with humour which I could never
credit him with. He will always be there in my heart.
Hamsa’s Retreats, spread over a period of twelve years, have
been devoted to spiritual themes, discussing spirituality in its various
aspects. During the 2015 Retreat, after 12 years, I thought, “that
was it”. However, after some time, I began to feel that something was
missing during those years. Yes. I could see that we did not have the
opportunity to discuss religion and philosophy in our retreats.
Religion, philosophy and spirituality have moulded mankind and
contributed immeasurably to culture and civilisation. Our wrong
understanding of the role of religion and philosophy has contributed
to never-ending strife. Our inability to grow spiritually has resulted in
moral decline. We need to nourish all of them, not in any non-
systematic, clumsy and belligerent manner, but in a way that we
learn to build bridges, that we look beyond ourselves and welcome
friend and foe alike. In other words, we need to bring about the best
in each of us and help to harmonise thought and feeling, the mind
and the heart, see and hear silence, when the symphony of the
heavens reaches the shores of our indrawn ears and open them out
to the music of the spheres.
So, in this Retreat, we seek some understanding of the meaning
of philosophy, its role and functions, despite the overall
disenchantment with philosophy, the mother of all studies. More
people may turn to religion; many may run after the sciences; many
may take to a spiritual life wanting to close their eyes to the
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electronic glamour of the glittering malls. But it is difficult to shun

philosophy. When it is a question of man’s relationship with the sum
of life and the totality of things, of his origin on this earth and his
final destiny, philosophy would speak ‘with the modesty
commensurate with human ignorance’. It is concerned with the
question of immortality, not in the manner of life and death, but by
virtue of contribution to human civilisation and resultant fame. It is
concerned with God, not with God of religion, conceived presumably
outside the realm of nature, but with the God of philosophers, the
law and the structure, the vitality and the will of the world.
Will Durant, in his ‘The Pleasures of Philosophy’, can grow
poetic,
“If there is any intelligence guiding this world, philosophy
would like to know and understand it and reverentially work
with it. If there is none, philosophy wants to know that also and
face it without fear. If the stars are but the transient
coagulations of haphazard nebulae, if life is a colloidal
accident, impersonally permanent and individually fleeting, if
man is only a compound of chemicals, destined to disintegrate
and utterly disappear, if the creative ecstasy of art and the
gentle wisdom of the sage and the willing martyrdom of saints,
are but bright incidents of the protoplasmic pullulation of the
earth and death is the answer to every problem and the
destiny of every soul, then philosophy will face that too, and
try to find within that narrowed circle some significance and
nobility for man.”
(Will Durant, my philosophic mentor will appear again and again
in my papers for the sessions. I thank him. His thoughts and words
are elevating and inspiring.)
Shall we begin?
* * * * * * * * * *
11
B. DISCUSSION
12
The Question of Truth

JULY 15, 2016 10:00 AM TO 1:15 PM
“THE QUESTION OF T. V. VENKATARAMAN

TRUTH” 11:00 AM TO 11:45 AM
A. INTRODUCTION
Chaturvedi Badrinath, a member of the Indian Administrative
Service, a respected colleague of mine, was a philosopher by
qualification and pursuits and not a bureaucrat by instinct or skills.
He left service early in life and took to the teaching of philosophy. He
was a Homi Bhabha Fellow and a visiting professor at Heidelberg
University. He wrote the book, ‘The Mahabharata: An Inquiry in
the Human Condition’ in 2006 - a book, unique in content and
different from others written about this great epic. He was accorded
the Sahitya Akademi Award for 2009. He died on 17th February,
2010, a day after receiving the Award. A true loss to the world of
Indian philosophical studies.
I was keen to read this book but could not get it from the local
shops. About a year ago, Mr. V. Sundaram, a retired I.A.S. officer,
also a colleague when I was in service, came to my house, along
with Dr. Usha Mahadevan, and introduced her to me. Our talk
ranged over many subjects and Chaturvedi Badrinath’s book came
in for mention. V. Sundaram opened his bag, took out a book and
gave it to me. That was Badrinath’s ‘The Mahabharata’. Twin
happiness. The book I longed for on the one hand and the
friendship of Dr. Usha Mahadevan on the other. She is now a
member of our Hamsa group. A few months later, V. Sundaram
passed away from an ailment he was suffering from. An erudite
scholar himself, V. Sundaram had a fantastic memory. He was also a
gifted speaker and writer.
What happens, when and why, are the fundamental questions
that run through the entire Mahabharata. The common man may find
an answer for himself that satisfies his conscience. But, the great
wise men of the Mahabharata Sabha could not offer satisfactory
explanations. That is Mahabharata’s story.
13
It is easy to say that philosophy is concerned with the question of

truth. But, which truth? Truths may be as many as the issues which
philosophy seeks to inquire into. To ask for the absolute truth, may
be like chasing the wisp, considering the fact that the methods used
are reasoning and logic. When we read the New Testament, Pontius
Pilate, the Roman Viceroy, asks a question, “What is truth?” The life
of Jesus Christ hangs on the answer to this question. Anatole
France, the French Philosopher, called it the profoundest question
ever asked. Every other question depends on it or follows from it.
For centuries, philosophers have debated about the meaning of
truth. Will Durant would say that the senses are the test of truth, but
he wants all senses to be there, since one alone may deceive us.
Truth, according to him, is ‘consistent sensation’. He qualifies by
saying the ‘sensation’ must include all that we learn from the
instruments with which we enlarge and sharpen our perception.
Again, the ‘sensation’ must include our ‘inwardness’, our insight,
intuition, and so on. And yet, ‘sensations’ may not produce certainty,
that is, truth. The world is so varied and fluid that our truths may
always be one-sided and precarious. There are no absolutes. Only
relatives. And, we must learn to get along with it, says Will Durant.
He puts it beautifully,
“Reality is a dome of many-coloured glass and from this little
corner, each of us sees a different combination of colours in
the Kaleidoscope. Perhaps, truth is only a common
denominator of our delusions and certainty is an error in which
all men agree.”
We must be contented with that.
But, truth is not to be so easily brushed aside. From the relative
to the absolute, there has to be an upward platform. All religions
have stood by the highest truth, the Absolute Truth. To be able to
conceive of it, or to visualise it, or to experience it, has been the
standard by which all other truths have been put in position. Tamil
savant Saint Thiruvalluvar calls it ‘meipporul”, ‘the true thing’. The
‘true thing’ need not be God or some other supernatural entity. The
true thing must come out of the sharpest perception and that is
‘arivu’, knowledge, says Thiruvalluvar.
14
In the toy shop, the child sees a beautiful toy elephant and
presses the father to buy it. But the father asks the shopkeeper the
nature of the wood, whether it is teak, rose or any other wood. The
perception is different. Each one has his own idea of truth. I suppose
the superior perception must prevail in order for the object to be
declared to be true. Still, Thiruvalluvar’s ‘meipporul’ may call for
transcendental qualities of appreciation.
Against the transcendental approach, Will Durant speaks of
‘reasoned truth’. He says that the role of reason is secondary, but
vital. It must weave the chaos and contradictions of many senses
into unified and harmonious conclusions, which it shall hold, subject
to verification or rejection by subsequent sensations. He calls this a
life’s gamble, since subsequent sensations may call for
presumptions that may take the matter further away from truths. We
must reconcile the discordant senses and partial views if we are to
extend our understanding.
To quote Will Durant,
“Reasoned truths like philosophy and wisdom, like morality
and beauty, is total perspective, the harmonious union of the
part with the whole. Through sensation, we stand firmly on the
earth; through reason, we lift the mind’s eye beyond the
present scope of sense, and conceive new truth, which one
day, senses may verify. Sensation is the test of truth but
reason is its discoverer.”
Will Durant ably combines sensation and reason in determining
truths.
Many of us still feel confused. All that, may be the philosopher’s
way of looking at things. To me and to you, truth is a ‘felt’ experience.
It is seen and felt just like that. It does not require philosophy to
unravel it. Truth is. It is sat. It is existence. One feels existence up to
the very marrow of one’s being. The Hindu Scriptures speak of
satya, Truth, and rta, Order, as the cosmic energies that maintain
and sustain the universe. Following this, the influential advaitic
philosophy says that only one is true, and that is Brahman, the
Absolute, and everything else is not-so-true. The difference is
between paramartha satya, the Absolute Truth and vyavaharika
satya, the Relative Truth. While Brahman is the Absolute Truth, the
15
world is the Relative Truth. It is true, not by itself, but true on account
of Brahman. The ordinary perception that the world is true, is mithya,
untrue, on account of the ignorance of the truth. There are other
Hindu philosophers who do not subscribe to this line of thinking.
However, the view that the world is maya continues to make a
powerful impression in the normal course of living of many
religiously-inclined people of India.
Chaturvedi Badrinath examines the question of truth, from the
many statements and positions attributed to the characters in the
Mahabharata, with characteristic scholarship. I am quoting him, and
the reference from the epic, extensively, since they are all
illuminative and give us an illustration of how such a basic question
as truth was a part of the lives of the people of a few thousand years
ago.
Once, Yudhishthira was asked, “What is the most astonishing
thing in the world?” Yudhishthira said, “Seeing that everyday people
are dying and those that remain, still think that death would not
come to them. What can be more astonishing than this?”
Badrinath chips in,
“There is. Even a more astonishing thing about us, human
beings, is that we are all together and alike when we lie; the
moment we begin talking about truth, we fly at each other’s
throat. What can be more astonishing than this? There has
hardly been anything in human history that has produced
greater violence and killing than the conflicting perceptions of
what truth is. Even before the question, ‘What is truth?’ can be
formulated, there is already a question, ‘Whose truth?’ There
has been in human relationships no other question at once
more intimate and agonising than this, in one form or another.
Not only between one person and another but also between
one religion and another even more!”
To begin with, the Mahabharata offers the definition of truth as
being,
“The way it was heard, the way it was seen and the way it was
done, to represent it through speech without distortion, is
truth.”
16
Correspondence with facts is an essential aspect of truth. At the

same time, schools of Indian philosophy have regarded truth as a
great deal more than correspondence with facts. Motives and
feelings, that lead to acts, pertain to truth, as much as the acts
themselves. Motives and feelings are inner states of mind. While I
conceal them, the facts I speak of, will be true. But, what is factually
true, if separated from the motive, may still be untrue. In the voice of
Shiva, the epic adds,
“What is externally true, but contains clever distortions, is in
fact, a lie.”
The Mahabharata looks at truth from three levels, which are
deeply inter-connected, but not following any theory. One, it shows
the manifest ‘relativity’ of truth. Two, truth being relative may be
disturbing and so the epic insists that it should be ‘relational’ as well.
This means, that the attributes of truth must be seen in the quality of
relationship, with oneself, and with others. Third, the epic shows that
truth is not ‘knowing’ alone, but ‘living’ as much. In the modern times,
‘knowing’ and ‘living’ are seen to be different from one another, like
philosophy from ethics, knowledge from character. The epic unites
them together.
On the question of relativism, the Mahabharata speaks of the
relation of truth with dharma. Truth and untruth are regarded as
related to desha and kala.
“Were all the austerities done in the past and would be done
in the future, multiplied by tens of thousands, weighed against
truth, truth would overweigh them still.”
“Truth alone is the abiding reality. Truth alone is the abiding
austerity. Truth alone is the abiding sacrifice and truth alone is
the abiding knowledge.”
“Social order and self-discipline are aspects of truth. Indeed
everything is founded upon truth.”
“I hear that dharma and truth were once placed on a weighing
scale. Truth was found to be of greater weight.”
“Where there is dharma, there is truth and it is through truth
all are enhanced. To what purpose then, do you wish to act
untruthfully?”
17
“Truth is the reality that pervades the universe. Truth is the

true austerity. It is truth that sustains the world. It is through
truth that one gains all that is heaven.”
“What is truth is what also sustains and enhances life. What
sustains and enhances is also light. What debases and
degrades is darkness, and what is darkness is pain and
suffering.”
“There is no greater dharma than truth, nor worse demerit
than untruths. In truth alone is dharma preserved. Let not
truth, therefore, be obscured.”
“It is good to speak the truth; greater than truth is nothing.”
“Goodness has truth as its essence. Truth is the eternal
foundation. Truth is the highest state of being.”
Can truth be conditioned by desha and kala? Then, it will no
longer be absolute. The Mahabharata says,
“There is nothing that has qualities alone; nor is there
anything that is devoid of qualities; in every act, both good and
bad are to be seen together.”
Yudhishthira asks the questions, “Everything in the world is a
mixture of truth and untruth. Then, how does one act in order to
adhere to dharma? What is truth and what is untruth? At what time
must one speak the truth? At what time must one speak the
untruth?”
The answer was, “It is indeed difficult to determine this.”
Bhishma, however, suggests,
“Undoubtedly, it is good to speak the truth; there is nothing
greater than truth. Yet, I shall speak to you of that which is
exceedingly difficult to judge. Where truth turns into untruth, it
is better not to speak; for there untruth acts as truth.”
“One who understands the relative value of truth and untruth,
he alone understands the dharma.”
Badrinath comments that these views are ambiguous. What is it,
which turns truth into untruth, is not explained. What was needed
was a principle of the highest order to which truth itself must be
subordinate. Bhishma and Krishna attempt to offer a suggestion,
18
“It is best to speak the truth, yet it is also exceedingly difficult

to grasp its substance.”
“There are those who try to understand the very complex
nature of dharma by means of logic and argument. There are
many who say that it is from the Vedas that one learns
dharma, but it is true that Vedas do not provide for everything.”
Then a definition is attempted,
“Whatever does not do violence, then, that certainly is
dharma; for all the sayings of dharma are primarily meant to
prevent violence to living beings.”
“Dharma is propounded with the aim of securing the good of
all living beings. Hence, whatever fulfils it, is dharma – that is
certain.”
“What comes from love of all beings, that is dharma.”
“Dharma was created for the orderly progress and welfare of
all people.”
What sustains people and what secures them may vary with time
and circumstances. Perceptions may also be different. Therefore,
whoever always speaks the truth without regard to them may injure
others. Therefore,
“What is truth only formally in speech is not necessarily truth.
One should discriminate between truth and untruth with regard
to their effect.”
“To save others from being killed is the most exalted dharma.
If by speaking a lie, a life is protected, then speak the lie and
protect the life.”
“Where everything of a person is threatened, one may speak
a lie, so as to protect him, for there the lie has the effect of the
truth. Only a fool will think that a formal truth is a requisite in
all circumstances.”
Kaushika, the Brahmin ascetic, well-read but not wise, was
reputed for his vow that he shall always speak the truth. One day, a
gang of robbers asked him whether he had seen a rich young
couple, whom they were following, come that way and told him to tell
the truth. The ascetic truthfully told them the way they had gone.
19
The robbers found them, robbed them of their belongings and killed
them. For this ‘misuse of speech’, Kaushika, the ascetic, suffered
great demerits and fall.
The Thirukkural says,
“Even falsehood has the nature of truth, if it confers a benefit
that is free from fault.” (30.2)
However, the position that truth is relative may degenerate into
acceptance of the wrong in the context that everybody chooses to
define it in his own way. The Mahabharata emphasises the moral
and ethical context as the most important. It also speaks of the
dharma of doing good at all times, as the best. While ‘satya’ or ‘truth’
is paramount, ‘truth-speaking’, ‘satya-vachana’, has to be kept up
under all circumstances. The Upanishad said, ‘satyam vada’,
‘speak truthfully’. In all discussions in the Mahabharata, this is never
abandoned and even complicated situations have to be upheld on
the law of ‘truth’ or ‘truth-speaking’.
In the Mahabharata, we know how the clever distortion of truth
led to the killing of Drona at the Kurukshetra battle field. When
Drona proved to be invincible in battle, he became a victim of a
clever strategy laid out by Krishna. Bhima’s utterance, “Ashwatthama
was killed”, was taken by Drona to be his only son whose name was
Ashwatthama. But in reality, Bhima had killed a magnificent elephant
which had the same name and announced the name within the
hearing of Drona. Drona insisted on hearing the truth from
Yudhishthira, who would never say a lie. Yudhishthira was made to
say the name of Ashwatthama, but the word ‘elephant’ came in a
whisper, which Drona could not hear. Drona abandoned the fight,
and using that opportunity, Dhrishtadyumna, Draupadi’s brother,
seized Drona and cut off his head. Arjuna, the favourite disciple of
Drona, protested, but the evil deed was done. Outwardly,
Yudhishthira’s answer to Drona was truthful, but he had lied and
knew he was lying.
Arjuna calls his brother a ‘mean despicable liar’ in the garb of a
truth-speaking person, a hypocrite. The scene involving the
episode, the heated discussion between the brothers, exposes,
brilliantly, how frail truth can be, even in the hands of the best of
men.
20
The Mahabharata describes the punishment meted out to

Yudhishthira in a symbolic manner. His chariot which, because of his
truthfulness, had stayed a little above the ground, now touched the
ground. Later, towards the end of his life, he was conducted through
the dreadful areas of Hell, despite his virtues, and when he asked
why, he was told that it was so because he had lied.
At the end of the war, which the Pandavas won, Ashwatthama,
Drona’s son, still alive, and seething with anger at the killing of his
father, would kill all the sons of the Pandavas born of Draupadi,
when they were all asleep. Before that, he would also kill
Dhrishtadyumna, the killer of his father, in the most cruel way and
then rejoice.
The Mahabharata repeatedly says that the nature of truth and
dharma is exceedingly subtle and difficult to grasp. The implication is
that the human relationship with one’s own self and others is
exceedingly complex and is subject to changing desha and kala.
When this is understood, the last words of Bhishma, can be
properly appreciated, “Exert in truth, for truth is the greatest force”.
While the Mahabharata highlights the truth as correspondence
with facts and its relativistic nature, the epic also manifests a deeper
view of truth, which in relation to human life and its potentiality,
consists in self discipline as a feature. Truth is viewed not only in
relation to facts, but as the actual living of an ethical and rational life.
Truth and ethical life were treated as co-equal. To be ethical, one,
first, had to conquer oneself.
“Not to be cruel is a great dharma; forgiveness, is the greatest
strength; self-knowledge is the highest knowledge; and there
is nothing greater than the truth.”
“It is good to speak the truth, but truth must be spoken for the
good of others; what is conducive to the greatest good of all
beings, I believe that to be the truth.”
In addition, the Mahabharata mentions thirteen attributes of
truth - equality (samata), self-control (dama), absence of envy
(amatsarya), forgiveness (kshama), modesty (hri), endurance
(titiksha), not to find fault with others (anasuya), renunciation
(thyaga), concentration (dhyana), nobility of conduct (aryata),
forbearance (dhriti), and non-violence (ahimsa).
21
The above qualities are further defined as follows,

“Truth is that which is undifferentiated, eternal and without any
defect; it is obtained through discipline of not doing anything
against any dharma.”
“Equality lies in displaying the same attitude towards friend
and foe; it is achieved by destroying the feelings of
attachment, antipathy, desire and anger.”
“Self-control consists in not desiring things that belong to
others; in the seriousness and steadfastness of purpose; in
the absence of deviousness and in the conquest of anger, and
it is obtained by knowledge.”
“Absence of envy consists in mental restraint, in doing one’s
appointed duty.”
“Forgiveness consists in being able to bear a conduct that is
unbearable and a speech that is unpleasant. It is achieved
through truthfulness.”
“Modesty consists in securing for others without regret and
always with peace in oneself, what is good. It is achieved by
following dharma.”
“Endurance is the capacity to bear difficulties in pursuing
dharma and one’s desired object. It is obtained through
patience.”
“Renunciation consists in giving up partiality to things as well
as the sense of gratification. It is achieved by rising above
attraction and revulsion.”
“Concentration is achieved through silence.”
“Nobility of conduct consists in working constantly for the good
of others. It is achieved through giving up attachment to things
or oneself.”
“Forbearance consists in rising above happiness and
suffering. It is achieved by constant forgiveness, by sticking to
truth and by conquering fear and anger.”
“Non-violence consists in malice towards none, in act or in
thought, or in speech and in showing kindness and generosity
to others.”
22
“These thirteen attributes of truth together point to truth.

Strengthen it and enhance it.”
As one reads the Mahabharata, one is impressed by the fact that
the epic is interested, not so much in definitions as, in attributes or
lakshanas. The nature of truth is better understood in terms of
lakshanas. The lakshanas are always inter-connected but the
strong manifestations of even one can give a clear idea as to how
truthful the person will be. However, truth is indivisible. There are no
‘parts’ to it.
“The lakshanas indicate truth as a state of being in right
relationship with oneself and with the other,” says Chaturvedi
Badrinath. This seems to be the main concern of the Mahabharata.
The voice of Bhishma cautions, “The limits of truth’s attributes
cannot be stated”. In other words, no single definition of truth, nor
any one theory of truth, can ever state what truth really is.
However, one can see in the epic, that it lays great importance to
one word, ‘samahita’, which means ‘connected, united, for the good
of the other, for the good of all together’. “Truth is samahita, in every
moment of life, that sustains, and holds together, and enhances the
worth of life and whatever enhances, holds together and sustains, is
something that is truth.”
One may be erudite, scholarly, but even if one of the thirteen
attributes of truth is missing in him, he cannot be considered as a
truthful person.
“Highly well-read scholars just memorise the shastras. They are
even adept at solving all doubts. Yet possessed by greed, their
intellect is clouded and they are no longer truthful.”
Truth, according to the Mahabharata, is the very breath of life.
Whether it is family life, personal integrity and goodness, public
governance, or social relationship, the epic emphasises the quality
of ‘connecting and holding together’ through the various attributes of
truth.
“What secures the greatest good of all beings, is truth.”
“To speak the truth is good. True knowledge leads to the
good.”
23
“Truth is the essence of knowledge, self-control, the essence

of truth; freedom, the essence of self-control; that is the
mystical meaning of all cultured conduct.”
“No one can, without truth, face the mighty assault of death.
Therefore, give up untruth, for, what is beyond death is
dependent upon truth.”
“Henceforth, keeping away from violence, I will search for
truth.”
“Removing desire and anger from my heart and tranquil in
happiness and suffering alike, I will thus conquer death.”
The question of truth appears in the epic again and again and
when the sages and teachers, kings and heroes thrash it out,
searching for meaning that they wish to uphold to suit the occasion,
the epic itself says:
“Truth and non-violence; beyond nothing.”
The Western philosopher would seek meaning and definition in
every word that has come into the philosophical dictionary. The epic
seeks truth as the burning issues of human relationship, with the self
and other selves. The difference is not semantic. It is a question of
how one sees life in the light of truth.
Chaturvedi Badrinath has done a significant service to better our
understanding of human spiritual conduct through the study of the
Mahabharata. All the English quotations are his translations. He has
quoted the relevant Sanskrit passages extensively before giving
their English meaning. He has also numbered the passages from the
various parvas, confirming that these are the extracts. I am proud to
have known this honest and truthful gentleman.
* * * * * * * * * *
B. DISCUSSION
24
The Question of Meaning

JULY 15, 2016 10:00 AM TO 1:15 PM

MEANING” 11:45 AM TO 12:30 PM
A. INTRODUCTION
Sitting by the sea one evening, I watch the waves, big and small,
race towards the shore and break into a thousand foaming sprays
that glisten like fireflies in the sombre light of the setting sun, which
decides, “it is time to go” and glides behind the buildings in the west.
It is a thoughtless, empty mind. Young and middle-aged men, jog up
and down the tracks, wearing imported shorts, t-shirts and shoes.
After a while, they move on to their cars, where the lady folk wait with
health drinks. They want their men to be healthy and the media tell
them how to go about their business. The primitive man wooed his
woman with his strength and power to kill the lions. Modernity has
changed all that. Now, women want their men to be in the limelight, in
sports or business or leadership. It is possible to build an aura of
glamour around their men with the tinsel of the market.
Then, the men may go past their middle age, but there is enough
money, time, and the mind to launch into professions out of the
puerile stuff that the market hankers after. Their wives are happy to
join since they have a chance to show what they possess - house,
jewels and cars. The foreign trips, for business or for holidays, keep
everyone busy and happy.
They are important people, in famous clubs, where they play
cards for high stakes, while tall glasses of glistening beer wait before
them. Women meet over soft drinks, to confer with each other on the
recent gossip, or exchange notes on the features of the latest
mobile phones. Everybody is happy. Sometimes, they put on serious
airs, attend some lectures on religion, give contributions, discuss
what they have heard with their friends and are happy that they
have grasped the essence of the scriptures or philosophy. They are
ready for charity, but only if their names are made known. They are
party enthusiasts. Birds of the same feather, they meet in a
25
restaurant, comment on their bosses, the business, the government

and politics. Their wives too join, dressed in their finest, wearing
costly diamonds.
Men make foreign business trips, paid for by their company, to
enhance their net worth and boost their image. Our gentleman is an
adept in negotiations or at least that is what his company thinks and
he comes out in flying colours and gets a pay hike that is the envy of
his colleagues. Holiday trips are different. They are meant for the
family. The aim is to take the family to the hills, where they can go
scot free, while he can go into tapas. In course of time, children grow
up and, whether they study well or not, go abroad, get a degree and
a job, settle down in small or big companies, find a partner, get
married, and so on. Everybody thinks they are happy. A lifestyle that
creates wants, gives the money to fulfil those wants, attracts, lures,
and absorbs almost everybody, and there is no alternative, since
any lack of will or ambition will sink the person into darker holes of
the Great Divide. It is difficult not to admire this elite group who, with
their wealth and power, seem to rule the country. And, one finds, it
happens anywhere in the world. Ask any one of them if they are
concerned with the meaning of their life at any stage, and they will
consider the issue philosophical. Some are likely to reply, that by
getting what they wanted in their lives, they have achieved the
purpose of their lives.
Actually, I would not expect the affluent to grow so philosophical
as to question the very values on which their affluence rests.
Obviously, their philosophical questions will centre around
professional and business issues, over which much generalisation
can be advanced, and these may, perhaps, help them to handle, if
at all, their practical problems.
It is equally true that this question of meaning has not affected
many of my friends, who were co-beach walkers and whom I had
known for many years. They were government officials, pensioners
or senior executives with private sectors. The pensioners talked of
the upward revision of their pensions or about the anomalies. The
government officials were worried when they would get their
promotion or when the next pay commission would be set up. The
business executives were saying how difficult it is to manage the
juniors or were worried that their Board was still not sanctioning their
26
pay hike. In short, the only questions that loomed large in their
minds were about their own lives, their incomes and their future, not
even about their families, much less about society.
About me, I liked cricket, but I loved walking. As a young boy, I
played cricket with my friends on the sands of the Marina. The ball
that I hit came back to me in the breeze and that was all the power
that I could impart to it. After some time, my friends discreetly told me
that I was too weak to play a strenuous game like cricket. I kept
wandering on the beach and it became a walk. I kept walking until,
late in my life, the doctors said, “Enough!” They did not know what
joy I missed. My brain, otherwise dull, became active, and stimulated
the thinking process, which produced novel and sometimes bizarre
ideas. I began to understand, a little bit, of the abstract and
philosophical reasoning of some scholars, with whom I became
friendly. I used to be amazed at the subtleties which used to come
out of the minds of the scholars. But, try as I might, I never became a
scholar, not even an honorary one.
My early life was difficult, but I got enough encouragement from
my parents. I studied, took to a career, married, got children, who
grew in their own time and got married, and I retired. But, life was not
linear. I lost my wife. I saw no meaning in my life thus far. Nor did I
launch on any self-inquiry that was supposed to give me a glimpse
of who I was and where I was going, if I was going anywhere at all. I
used to feel insignificant before some of my friends who were
geniuses. In the normal course, my mind was rarely aroused to raise
a question or seek an answer. I took things for granted and made
mistakes as a result. Though I was dull-witted, I took care to give the
impression that I was extraordinary. During my younger days, I had
seen my mother lead a life of sincere faith and trust in God. I owed a
lot to her, but, during my youth, I did not think that trust and faith in
God was going to be my way of life. If things happened, they
happened and I did not think it necessary to look for any meaning in
the happenings. I did not also think that I had a destiny and that my
life, or for that matter, anyone’s life, had a meaning or that it was
desirable to seek that meaning and lead a meaningful life.
Science tells that organisms have been evolving over millions of
years, from atoms to molecules and cells and multi-celled organisms,
growing more and more complex, fighting, or adapting to, or
27
surpassing their environment. Simple nerve cells become larger

bundles and man came to possess the most complicated brain
among all living beings. There is every reason to expect that the
evolution of physical matter would continue. This materialistic view,
bordering on faith that there is no break in the continuity of
development from the inorganic matter to the philosopher, may be
broadly right. This view from the ‘outside’, as we may call an
evolutionist, considers man as a mechanism of adjustments. It
reduces ‘thought’ to ‘things’ and ‘mind’ to ‘matter’. It has given us, at
the same time, the theory of natural selection by the environment as
the determinant of evolution.
We have another view, the perspective from ‘within us’. It looks
upon man as a system of needs, impulses and desires, impelling him
to study, to use and master the environment. It looks upon man as
transforming his environment far more than his environment
transforms him. Man may develop superior powers and even a
‘super mind’, in the terminology of the mystic Sri Aurobindo, that
could be the connecting link to the cosmic energy of spirituality.
But, Goethe, the German philosopher, speaks differently,
“But let humanity last as long as it will, there will always be
hindrances in its way, and all kinds of distress, to make it
develop its powers, then will become cleverer and more
intelligent, but not better, nor happier, nor more effective in
action, except for a limited period. I see the time coming when
God will take no pleasure in the race and must again proceed
to a rejuvenated creation.”
How interesting and apt!
Charles Darwin, the great evolutionist, in the last paragraph of
his landmark work ‘On the Origin of Species’, puts it differently
but lyrically,
“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the
most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving,
namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.
There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers,
having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one,
and that, whilst planet has gone cycling on according to the
28
fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms,

most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being,
evolved.”
Richard Dawkins, the famous scientist and the author of ‘The
God Delusion’, quotes the above passage in his book, ‘The
Greatest Show on Earth’ where he offers stunningly foolproof
arguments in favour of evolution. He completes his book with a
powerful peroration,
“It is no accident that we find ourselves perched on a tiny twig
in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life; no
accident that we are surrounded by millions of other species,
eating, growing, rotting, swimming, walking, flying, burrowing,
stalking, chasing, fleeing, outpacing, outwitting......We are
surrounded by endless forms most beautiful, most wonderful
and it is no accident but the direct consequence of evolution,
by non-random, natural selection – the only game in town, the
greatest show on earth.”
How beautiful. The evolutionary march has made humans
special, perhaps the most complete amidst a vast gallery of
surviving, living species!
It seems that evolution itself has put meaning into the very nature
of the growth and spread of life!
Will Durant, the author of the eleven-volume ‘The Story of
Civilization’, goes further and sees in evolution the very meaning
for the existence of God. In the words of a fictional character, Paul,
in a multi-religious conversation on religion, “it is evolution that
proves my God.....”.
Think of evolution, not as Darwin did, not as a forming of
organisms by the environment, but as the transformation of the
environments by organisms whose very essence is insatiable desire.
Can you think of the upward struggle of life from the amoeba to
Einstein without seeing the world once more as the garment of God?
What marvellous beasts we are! We come and go like a ripple in a
stream; we lie and steal and exploit and tyrannise and kill; but
sometimes we make Parthenons and Sistine Chapels; we write
symphony; sometimes we give our lives for our children and our
29
race. And our climb has only begun; we are in the youth and puberty
of our development; everything is budding around and within us; the
things that we have done are but a halting promise of what we shall
do. I cannot look at a green shoot sprouting up through the soil
without saying, “This is God”. I cannot look at a child singing and
growing without saying, “This is God”.
To me, Dawkins makes as much meaning as any believer of God.
I see no difference. My own standing may be unclear but I see in
either case, a glimpse of the meaning of what we are meant for.
Where there is amoeba and Einstein, there is the cosmos too,
our home, the very origin of the dust of which we are said to be
made. The Big Bang, and its era which has seen the gradual
expansion and maturation of the universe, began 13.7 billion years
ago. The continuing era represents a more gradual expansion and
maturation. About 9 billion years ago, our solar system formed, with
the sun and the planets coming into existence at more or less the
same time, condensing from a cloud of gas containing heavy
elements, which makes the sun a third-generation star.
The evidence for the emergence of life on earth is dated 3.5
billion years ago. It took 3 billion years for life on earth to evolve
from single-celled to multi-celled organisms. Multi-cellular animals
were seen only 600 million years ago. The first humanoids evolved
about 6 million years ago. Our species, the homo-sapiens originated
in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Modern humans emerged about
25,000 years ago.
So, we are here today after a 13.7 billion year journey from the
beginning of the universe. We are made of the rarest and finest
ingredients that have been billions of years in the making. Our
atoms are one in a billion that survived annihilation and one in ten of
those that are in the stellar systems and one in 500 of those that are
suitable for life.
We take our earth and life for granted. Everything has happened
so easily, that is what we think. We are born to rule the world, exploit
our resources, destroy our environment, and destroy all forms of life,
so that we can progress materially. But, we must know that nature is
not as dead as we think. When nature begins to retaliate, no human
being can survive.
30
We have reasons to know how precious our habitation is. We

may be right, also, in thinking that the earth is nothing more than a
tiny rock, going round the sun, an average third-generation star,
which itself is positioned in one end of the long arm of the Milky Way
galaxy. So insignificant, that it could be nameless. And yet, man has
evolved fast enough to create cultures and civilisations. He thinks he
is the lord of all that he surveys, the central focus of the universe.
He alone has the privilege of creating God and putting the universe
under his feet.
But, there is reason to draw comfort. Robert L. Piccioni, the
author of ‘Einstein for Everyone’, assures us that our earth is not
just a rock in the universe, but a very special place. He has many
explanations to offer. First, the Milky Way galaxy is a good place to
call home with just the right amount of radiation. Second, the Milky
Way galaxy resides in a placid group of galaxies, and probably,
never suffered a collision with another galaxy. Third, our solar
system is favourably positioned within the Milky Way galaxy. It is far
enough from the galactic centre. It is not too far, not too close. It is in
a favourable position in a neighbourhood called by the
astrophysicists as the Goldilocks Zone. Moreover, our solar system
began at a favourable time, after the most violent cosmic fireworks
had subsided. Also, when the solar system formed, many heavy
elements were sufficiently abundant to support life.
The solar system having one star is more stable than systems
with binary stars. Again, the sun has a favourable mass. If there
were more, or less, life would have been impossible on earth. Earth’s
gravity is another favourable factor. It is strong enough to capture an
atmosphere or retain liquid water. Finally, the author says that the
earth’s location in the solar system is close enough to the sun for
water to be above freezing point and far enough for it to be below
boiling. So, the earth is placed in such a way that life has been
enabled to present itself in innumerable forms, with varying
intelligence at all levels.
So, Earth is a special planet. And, man is special, God having
breathed the spirit into his body. Man is special to God and He has
taken His residence within the soul. He has given it knowledge,
desire and strength. He has watched it grow, make mistakes, do
good and bad and experience the results thereof, as joy or
31
suffering, pleasure or pain, until the soul in the body, out of despair,
turns towards Him for help and succour. Grace, compassion and
mercy flows towards the suffering soul which at last sees the Light,
sees the Truth, free from all delusions. An exciting journey. But, did
God really intend things to happen this way? Is it for man to learn
the meaning, the purpose of his existence?
On this special earth, man seems to have reached the top of the
ladder with a large cortex in relation to his anatomy. Look in
whatever direction you may, you will be impressed to see man’s
footprints on the sands of time, with language, culture, civilisation,
with philosophy. Some kind of intelligence seems to be common to all
organism, plants and animals. But man has capped it all with his
amazing brain power, reasoning capacity, memory storage, and
intelligence, of a magnitude that can traverse the living and non-
living matter and identify the manner of the systems with great
accuracy.
Steven Rose, the eminent Professor of Brain Research in U.K.,
has a comment,
“We are a bunch of neurons and other cells. We are also in
part, by virtue of possessing those neurons, humans with
agency. It is precisely because we are bio-social organisms,
because we have minds that are constituted through the
evolutionary, developmental, historical interaction of our
bodies and brain with social and natural worlds that surround
us, that we retain responsibility for actions, that we, as
humans, possess the agency to create and recreate our
worlds.”
A significant statement that highlights the special importance of
our brain and mind. We may not be able to crack a hard nut at one
bite like the squirrel, but we know the brain of the squirrel much
better than it can ever know ours. All the cosmic and non-cosmic
structures are within the grasp of our understanding, wholly due to
our brain power.
Yet, the fact remains that man is a tiny speck in the universe.
Einstein may not believe in a God, but is stuck with the mystery of
the wonderful order and symmetry of the universe and the regularity
of its laws.
32
The inference is that man himself must learn to lead a life of

balance and order. Between God as the creator and the order of
nature as the sole force, there is a big chasm. It is easy to see how
man has striven to become big in order to jump the chasm. He went
about achieving this with amazing results, that, today, in effect, he
can do whatever he wants with the tools of science and technology.
In medicine, he has extended the span of his life and is aspiring to
conquer old age, if not death. He will go to Mars as surely as he will
cure cancer. He will amass such energy and power that even the
asuras will be afraid of him!
Great! What for? Will Durant will call it his insatiable desire. One
day he will die like all humanity before him. He will say that he will
survive as the soul. But what does that mean to him on this earth?
The simple issue here is the idea of ‘meaning’. Man will ask,
‘Meaning of what?’ Well, the answer is, meaning of life, of existence,
the worthwhileness of it.
“The very question makes me feel depressed,” says my friend, “I
know I have not sought any meaning in my life. I have not thought
that there is a purpose. I have taken things as they came along and
not bothered to ask why they happened. Never once have I pieced
things together or found some meaning, or taken the path to pursue
my destiny according to the meaning I saw in life. Does that matter?”
“You may like to think that it does not matter as long as the going
is good,” I reply, “but when something happens that shakes you to
your very foundation, knocks down all the realness that you had
clung to till then, the feeling that you had not thought about the
meaning of your life could make you even more depressed.”
“Some unbearable suffering?”
“Why not? The Buddha said, life is suffering. Death, pain,
infirmity, are merely the visible form of suffering. More damaging, but
less apparent, we suffer guilt, frustration and despair. We suffer
negative mental states, suffering flows through the whole of life. The
truth of suffering is the profoundly unsettling awareness throughout
our life.”
33
My friend, an ardent student of the puranas, responds, “I

remember Kunti telling Krishna to keep giving her suffering, always.
When the perplexed Krishna asks her why, she replies, “Then, I can
continue to remember you!”
“You hit the nail on the head!” I respond, “Kunti’s only object in
life was to constantly remember Krishna. She speaks with a good
understanding of the meaning of her life.”
“But, death? Cancer? Why should they be brought in?”
“When you ask what is the most important thing about human
existence, the first answer that comes to your mind is that it is
limited. We will die. As Scott Peck put it, we are going to turn into
scrap and dust and ashes. The fact that we will be chopped down,
sooner than later, whether we have been good, virtuous or god-
fearing, kind, generous or not, fills our mind with a helpless sense of
meaninglessness. What meaning can there be for our paltry
existence, though we may be surrounded by fame and prosperity,
when impermanence is the order of the day?”
Shakespeare’s Macbeth laments,
“Life is but a walking shadow,
It is a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
But, let us pause to think. Death is the opposite of what we think,
says Scott Peck. Death is not a taker-away, but a giver of meaning.
Death is full of mystery, and when you grapple with the mystery of
death, you will discover the meaning of life.
Albert Schweitzer wrote,
“We must all become familiar with the thought of death, if we
want to grow into really good people. We need not think of it
every day or every hour. But when the path of life leads us to
some vantage point, where the scene around us fades away
and we contemplate the distant view right to the end, let us not
close our eyes. Let us pause for a moment, look at the distant
view and then carry on. Thinking about death this way
produces love for life. When we are familiar with death, we
accept each week, each day as a gift. Only if we are able thus
to accept life - bit by bit - does it become precious.”
34
This is beautiful, but it is difficult to understand, much less to

practice in one’s life time. The Western culture, for example, does
not accept death as a friend and tries to postpone the inevitable as
much as possible through modern medicine. Still, everyone knows
that everyone dies and hence the emphasis has shifted to ‘quality of
life’. The code is, man must live as well as he can during his lifetime,
he must be healthy, disease-free, active, of alert mind, with a
positive outlook, which he will harness to improve his wealth and
well-being. In addition to modern medical science, health-builders,
gyms, physical training experts, yoga masters, pranayama pundits,
and any number of specialists, have entered the scene. But, death
will spread its wings and cover everybody. It is death that finally
gives meaning to life.
M. Scott Peck in his book, ‘Further Along the Road Less
Travelled’, devotes a chapter on these issues under the title, ‘The
Issues of Death and Meaning’.
“How does one know the meaning of life with absolute certainty?”
a friend asks. Differently put, he wants to know why we are here.
Death, no doubt is a powerful teacher. Equally powerful, is the
intense personal suffering which throws overboard all conventional
ideas and brings into focus the most basic question of meaning.
Suffering is mental, psychological, as well as physical. When it hurts
most, it can be worse than death. Like death, suffering does raise
the question of meaning. “Why me?” is the common question, more
often asked by a person diagnosed with cancer, than a person on
his deathbed.
When suffering strikes us and we do not know how to explain and
try to recall from our memories whether anyone has told us why and
how, and answers are as many as there are people, we think it is
time to get an answer for ourselves as to the meaning of all that is
happening.
In his classic book, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, the famed
Viennese psychotherapist Viktor Frankl, tells us that he, who has a
‘why-to-live-for’ will, can bear almost any suffering. Frankl also
makes the point that it is futile to think in the abstract about what life
35
in general means. The meaning of one’s life is discernible within the

specific circumstances of one’s own specific life. Frankl himself, a
prisoner of the German concentration camp wrote,
“What was really needed was a fundamental change in our
attitude towards life. We had to learn ourselves and
furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not
really matter what we expected from life, but rather, what life
expected from us. We needed to stop asking the meaning of
life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being
questioned by life daily and hourly. Our answer must consist,
not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right
conduct.”
Our freedom and ability to take an ‘inner decision’ need not be
forfeited in the face of adversity. This also tells us that there is a
higher meaning to the pain of suffering. Our inner conviction must
arise from the human recognition that, not death, but eternity is the
source of our strength. Our life is not entirely what it seems to be
right now. Life is always unfolding in the light of larger concerns. It is
a part of human nature to understand that the source of our inner
strength points to a certain kind of relationship or a special
experience.
We must have a future to live for. Being human is not about
survival or enhancing one’s pleasure. It is about living for something,
or someone, other than ourselves. Life’s fulfilment lies in our
concern as to what transcends immediate experience. That is why
Frankl bets on suffering as the forger of meaning. Our suffering is
not a punishment for our sins; nor a mystery beyond
comprehension. It is a call to re-examine our false sense of
happiness, a case to witness the truth of our being.
If I were to tell my story, I would say that I have lived my life as a
son, a husband, a father, a public servant working with the
government, and a grandfather. I looked for something that could be
called my life’s calling or mission. But, there was none. I must admit
that my life has been a series of events. I can say that I have known
both success and failure, in my personal and official capacities, in
the tasks and activities I undertook, as well as in inter-personal
36
relationships. In so many roles and responsibilities, people wear

many masks and we do not know who is the true person behind the
masks. As the Upanishad says, the face of truth lies hidden behind
the vessel of gold. In practice, it is very very difficult to have a true
understanding of oneself. Immanuel Kant, the Western
philosopher, said, “We can never, even by the strictest examination,
get completely behind the secret springs of action.” We might as well
say, ‘secret springs of life’. When we do not have a true
understanding of life, we would not be able to decide on what we
expect from life; nor will we know what life expects of us. Many of us
try earnestly to think about these matters, but very quickly, we will
find we are thinking of other people or happenings, the meaning of
which keeps coming to the surface because of stray emotional
connections. Some of us do free ourselves from the bondage of
memory, and soon our attention will turn to the errors, omissions and
commissions that we did, and we will end in prayers for redemption.
Too much rumination of this kind will be harmful. They can descend
into self-defeating, negative patterns of thought.
Many people seek the meaning of their lives by evaluating
whatever they have done or not done. They pose to themselves
questions like whether they have turned their consciousness into the
interior to come to terms with the unresolved situations. In the
process, have they gone deeper in order to locate the ‘real self’?
Have they spent time to develop their inner and outer talents? Have
they immersed themselves in the river of knowledge and acquired a
taste for the experience beyond the routine? Have they engaged
themselves in spiritual questions and got away from the material
world? Have they firmly believed in God? Have they truly loved?
These and other questions come for evaluation and each one
tries to find an answer in their own way. All these actions may give a
good scope for reading into the past or for taking some kind of
lesson from them. But they will not amount to an understanding of
the meaning of life.
Centuries ago, people called Lokayata said that they saw no
meaning in life, and that life was for living, and pleasure was the
main constituent of living. You may think that such philosophy no
longer holds ground. But, science, technology, economic prosperity,
37
proliferation of goods and services, changing lifestyles, are driving

the global population towards higher and higher consumption levels,
such as our forefathers would never have dreamed of. Lifestyle is
the ‘in thing’ and keeping up with the Joneses, the main motive. This
does not mean, however, that human motivation has changed once
and for all. Revulsion and reaction will certainly follow. It is another
case of history repeating itself. More people, now, are beginning to
seriously seek an answer for the meaning of their lives, than ever
before.
Come to think of it, everyone’s life is full of experiences, good
and bad, sad and happy. Do we learn from them or see any
meaning? Cannot such learning lead to a better understanding of
oneself and for actions that can contribute to the spreading of
happiness? Two thousand years ago, Seneca, the philosopher of
Rome, said, “Throughout the whole of one’s life, one must continue
to learn how to live, and what will amaze you even more, throughout
life, one must learn to die.”
One way of understanding this statement is that learning how to
live and learning how to die must go together. In order to learn how
to live, we must come to terms with how to die, because our death
reminds us of the limits of our existence. We become conscious of
the brevity of our time, so that we may have the right and proper use
of our time and we have no regrets at the end, or anxiety about our
unknown future.
‘Right and proper use of time’ implies a religious, spiritual or
philosophical outlook. Such an outlook, itself, helps us to learn and
appreciate the spiritual nature and enhanced possibilities of our life.
This again means that one goes through life, examining it all along
for the lessons it is teaching us. We learn by examining. This
examination is not a critical approach against anything that one may
come across. This examination is of an inner kind. It starts from our
self. If one does not learn enough about oneself, with honesty, one
will not be able to learn from the life of the world. Socrates said,
“The unexamined life is not worth living”, the idea being, one must be
honest and truthful to oneself. When a man is aware of his
imperfections, failings and weaknesses, he will readily tolerate
imperfections, failings and weaknesses, in other people.
38
Ultimately, when a man looks at the experiences of his life, and

finds that there are lessons to draw, and makes up his mind to
transform his perspective and shape his life, he has known the
meaning of his life. It is exciting. The person becomes stronger, more
vivid, more open, and he suddenly feels a pressing urgency to
overcome his imperfections, to do away with his negative ego and
promote affinity with all living beings.
Experience, learning, and discovery of meaning, by themselves
are not adequate, if the soul and the spirit are not ready for the
journey. This journey involves wider and wider awakening of oneself,
even as humility, love and compassion fill the heart.
The Sufis would say, “Read by the smaller light rather than the
brighter light”. When the soul is learning to take a new path, it is
tempting to go after bright things - enlightenment, truth, spiritual
master, religious learning, or renunciation. Sufi masters warn us
against this kind of spiritual extravagance. It is better to keep the
light small. Live modest, rather than get lost in the grandeur to reach
to higher places of wisdom. It is wiser to go deep where the way may
not be too bright.
* * * * * * * * * *
39
B. DISCUSSION
40
The Question of Justice

JULY 15, 2016 10:00 AM TO 1:15 PM

JUSTICE” 12:30 PM TO 1:15 PM
A. INTRODUCTION
After Lord Krishna returns to Dwaraka, completing his mission at
Kurukshetra, he waited for the last calamity to take place – the
destruction of the Yadhavas, all the members of his race and his
sons for all the sins that they had committed. And the sea would rise
and swallow the beautiful city of Dwaraka, his own city. And he would
shed his mortal coil when the poisonous arrow of Jara, the hunter,
enters his rosy foot. The protection of the virtuous and the
destruction of the unrighteous were his duties and he would have
accomplished his mission.
Lord Krishna is an avatar. God descends to the earth, takes a
human form and establishes justice, putting an end to the evil forces
which adopt unjust means to enrich themselves. This is the
substance of the puranas.
“For protecting the virtuous, and for putting down evil, I shall
appear again and again, yuga after yuga,” says Lord Krishna. So,
there has always been the good and the bad, the righteous and the
unrighteous, the dharmic and the adharmic, the just and the unjust,
seemingly irreconcilable and opposite ends of human nature. The
question of justice therefore, is as old as the cosmos.
According to the Vedic tradition, the entire cosmos, including all
living and non-living things, is the creation of God. It is sustained by
the two great principles of rta, that is Order, and satya, that is Truth.
Gods, celestials, angels, rishis, men, animals, are all part of this
order and have to play their respective roles in sustaining the
cosmos. This, they do, by observing dharma, or righteousness.
Dharma is an expression of utmost significance and yet it is
capable of the widest interpretation, so much so that the great
exponents of dharma in the Mahabharata have admitted on more
than one occasion that it is, indeed, very difficult to define dharma.
41
Dharma is in the heart, they say. It is a matter of conscience. If that

is so, how can it be enforced socially? Even though dharma is basic,
no two persons see it with the same perception.
Still, dharma is the supporting principle of the whole of creation.
Every individual person, object or phenomenon, has his, her or its
own dharma. For instance, it is the dharma of fire to burn and rise.
The cosmos is sustained when every living creature abides by its
dharma by adhering to duties, responsibilities, personal and social,
moral and ethical codes. Sir Monier Williams, the Sanskritist, the
author of ‘Indian Wisdom’ says, “That which is established or firm,
steadfast, decree, ordinance, law, visage, practice, customary
observance or duty, right or justice, virtue, morality according to the
nature of anything.” This makes it appear that the fundamentals of
dharma are eternal, but their manifestations may be formulated or
reformulated by the society and that explains why the course of
events of the Mahabharata cannot be explained merely in terms of
the basics. As a result, at least forty seven Dharma Shastras or Law
Books have been enumerated and twenty seven of them still exist.
Monier Williams says, “At the same time, in other respects, it is
one of the most remarkable books that the literature of the whole
world can offer and some of its moral precepts are worthy of
Christianity itself.”
However, one looks in vain for the treatment of the subject of
‘justice’ in the Dharma tracts, which are more concerned with duties,
responsibilities and codes of conduct of the various ‘varnas’ (in the
words of Manu) which in the later days came to correspond to the
word ‘jati’, meaning ‘caste’.
One would be inclined to think that the ‘dharma’ that the Dharma
Shastras lay down so elaborately, is relativistic, designed to
organise, lay down and govern the relationship of a social and moral
nature among the various communities of ancient India and is
therefore circumscribed by the time and circumstances of that era.
But, there is the other dharma, the eternal dharma, the Sanatana
Dharma. This dharma is not religion. It is above religion. It is not a
revealed text book. It is a set of practices, values, ethics, outlooks
and beliefs which are ‘eternal’ and ‘durable’. They have enduring
strength because they are the result of encounters which the
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humans had with the phenomena, as well as their interaction with the
cosmic forces, and their experiences of nature in its broadest and
deepest sense.
In the course of these encounters, the humans earnestly and
sincerely sought to understand the beauty and mystery of the
powers behind nature. Their search for the mystery brought them
face to face with the reality that the human capacity, mental powers,
and the like, are woefully inadequate to understand and experience
the grandeur of the oneness which gives meaning to all life, which
lays down unwritten laws of conduct to the humans, so that they may
live in peace, ever conscious of truth, order and justice. In the
process, the gifted among the humans began to glimpse the truth
that, while nature regulates and influences our thoughts, feelings
and actions, there is something beyond the comprehension of the
human mind that directs, shapes and influences the movements and
experiences of the cosmos. Dharma seeks to discover, experience
and apply that truth, in order to establish order and harmony in life.
A classic episode of how dharma operates and justice is meted
out, both on earth and the heavens, occurs in the Mahabharata
itself, towards the end. Yudhishthira, the King, ruled in the most
dharmic way. He had committed no breach of dharma throughout his
life. Finally, the brothers decided to give up everything and began
their march into the unknown. On the long trek, one by one,
Yudhishthira’s beloved wife and brothers fell on the way. Draupadi’s
partiality towards Arjuna, Sahadeva’s pride in his wisdom, Nakula’s
pride in his physical beauty, Arjuna’s undue pride as a warrior,
Bhima’s arrogance about his physical prowess, all let them down.
Yudhishthira knew that these were according to the Law of Karma.
Yudhishthira would not leave his faithful dog. It was alive and
devoted to him. The King of Dharma blessed him and wanted to take
him to paradise. Yudhishthira wanted to meet his wife and brothers
and was led to hell. It was explained to him that he had to suffer hell
at least once, because he had told a lie to Drona that his son
Ashwatthama died in battle, whereas it was an elephant with the
same name that had died. Thus, Yudhishthira too suffered a
punishment for a sin against truth.
43
But, after the punishment was over, all the brothers and Draupadi
were given heavenly status. In particular, Yudhishthira in his mortal
body, became physically related to immortality. Yudhishthira’s life is
the tale of a pilgrim’s progress. It illustrates that there is no
discontinuity between earth and heaven and that a life of dharma
bridges them.
Laws of dharma and codes of justice derive their power from their
eternality and universality.
The Tamil word ‘arram’ has been in usage from very early times
and there are copious references to this word in the ancient,
classical Tamil Sangam literature that is dated at least two thousand
years prior to the Christian era. This word is of great significance
and not only matches the word dharma but also surpasses it in many
respects from the point of view of elucidation of natural justice. The
eighteen works of the Sangam literature appear to describe every
aspect of the lives of the Tamil speaking people, underscoring, at
the same time, the importance of righteousness in personal, family,
social, political and economic life of the people.
The classic work of ‘Agananuru’ paints a beautiful picture of
peace and happiness that prevailed, where righteousness was
observed with utmost care. Similarly, the work, ‘Purananuru’, a
collection of poems by a number of poets, glorifies the kings, not
only for their valour in battle, but also for their righteous conduct
while facing many situations. The Tamil epic, ‘Silappadhikaram’ is a
story of a virtuous woman who faced the Pandya King and proved to
him that his condemning her husband, based on an alleged theft,
was wrong and unjust, and that led to the instantaneous death of the
King who was overwhelmed by his guilt and wrongdoing.
The most complete elucidation of arram as righteousness and
justice came from the pen of the greatest upholder of all core values
in life, Saint Thiruvalluvar. In ‘Thirukkural’, the magnum opus, he
describes the values and nuances of arram, righteousness and
justice, with such clarity and understanding, leaving no one in doubt
as to the eternal need to adapt one’s life to a code of right living,
right thinking and right action. The Saint brings out the need for, and
the scope of arram in every walk of life - family life, renounced life,
kingship, ministership, governance, friendship, social life and even in
44
a life of love and marital bliss. The Saint says that the right kind of
family life is the manifestation of arram. In about 1330 verses, Saint
Thiruvalluvar highlights the indispensability of arram in every aspect
of human life for the peace and happiness of society. Truth, Justice,
Righteousness, Humility, Compassion, Proper Education, Happiness
and Welfare of the poor and the meek, Nobility in thought and word,
Sincerity in action, and other virtues, are the foundation of arram.
Discipline in the exercise of responsibilities and performance of
duties, not giving room to undesirable thoughts and practices,
gratitude, readiness to forgive, tolerance, having no malice towards
anybody, are some of the qualities of mind and heart that will
ennoble a person. Such a person will play his rightful role in the
community and if everyone develops the same kind of virtues,
everybody will be a philosopher and everybody will be a king. Since
everybody is not the same, the question of proper administration of
justice becomes a critical issue. Man’s moral and ethical
imperfections are obvious and Saint Thiruvalluvar’s vision remains
an ideal picture. But, there is no denying that the ideal continues to
fascinate good-intentioned people all over the world.
Let us take a quick look at the Chinese scenario. Just as India,
par excellence, is the land of metaphysics and religion, China is
equally pre-eminent as the home of humanistic and non-theological
philosophy. Lao Tze, one of the greatest philosophers of all times, is
reputed to have authored the book ‘Tao-Te-Ching’, the ‘Book of the
Way and the Virtue’, the most important book of the Taoist
philosophy. Tao means the way or the road. It is a way of thinking. It
considers the normal thought process a superficial affair, good only
for argument. The Way is found by rejecting the intellect - knowledge
is not a virtue. It is not wisdom – “rascals have increased since
education spread”.
“When we renounce learning, we have no troubles ….. . The
difficulty in governing the people arises from their having too much
knowledge.” This great master wants every man to be as simple as
nature, and every ruler to guide the nation with few regulations, so
that every man can exercise his freedom and vigour as much as
possible for the good of the society. The aim must be to not interfere
45
with the normal course of things. If there is resistance, the wise

course is not to fight but to retire in patience. Lao Tze’s famous
words are worth quoting, but impossible to practice.
“If you do not quarrel, no one on earth will be able to quarrel
with you.... Recompense injury with kindness.... To those who
are good, I am good and to those who are not good, I am also
good. Thus all will get to be good. To those who are sincere, I
am sincere and to those who are not sincere, I am also
sincere and thus all get to be sincere.... The softest thing in
the world dashes against and overcomes the hardest.... There
is nothing in the world softer or weaker than water and for
attacking things that are firmer and harder, there is nothing
that can take precedence over water.”
“Get rid of your pride and your ambitions, your affectations
and your extravagant aims. Your character gains nothing from
all these. This is my advice to you.”
Everyone is good and just. Justice is secured automatically. Does
it happen? Of course not!
Confucius, often regarded as the most influential philosopher in
history, though he was unusual, gave to philosophy an example
seldom heeded – to attack no other thinker and waste no time in
refutation. His dominating passion was to apply philosophy to
conduct, government and morality. According to him, wisdom begins
at home, and the proper foundation of society, in the disciplined
individual, in a disciplined family. The world is in disorder because
countries are improperly governed. No amount of legislation can
take the place of natural social order provided by the family. Families
are in disorder because men have not learnt to rectify their hearts.
They have not cleansed their soul because they have not given up
their disorderly desires. Their thinking is insincere, doing scant
justice to reality. Their wishes discolour the facts and lead them to
wrong conclusions. Let men seek impartial knowledge and their
thinking will be sincere. Let their hearts be cleansed and their
families will be naturally regulated, not by virtuous sermonising or
passionate punishments, but by the silent power of example. When
families consist of men with impartial knowledge and sincerity, they
will contribute to a harmonious social order and good government.
46
With Tao’s ‘Silence of the Way’ and the Confucian thoughts of the
human being as the centre and activator of a just social order, the
question of justice can find its answer in the very heart of the citizen
and the family, and can enhance the quality of justice through a
harmonious social order. It was possible for the Chinese mind of the
years past to grasp the essence. But now?
A look at the Greek philosophical picture will also help. As we
know, Greece was the home of some of the greatest philosophers of
the world, more than five hundred years before the birth of Christ.
City-states of Greece, like Athens and Sparta, rivalled each other,
not only in arms and strength but also, in philosophy, architecture
and the manner of governance.
Will Durant wrote in his ‘The Story of Civilization’,
“But, no age has ever rivalled that of Pericles in the number
and grandeur of the philosophical ideas or in the vigour and
exuberance with which they were debated. Every issue that
agitates the world today was bruited about in ancient Athens
and with such freedom and eagerness that all Greece, except
its youth, were alarmed.”
There were the Idealists, the Materialists, the Sophists and many
other groups of thinkers. There were, of course, Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle, who in diverse ways contributed to the sharpening of the
human mind. We, today, continue to reap the benefits of their
questions and answers, their doubts and disbeliefs, their clear-cut
logic peppered with a dose of human shrewdness. In Athens,
Pericles devised an elaborate system of jurisprudence, based on a
democratic system of governance which he devised. For the first
time, it did produce a government of law and not of man. It had
faults. It limited freedom and approach to law to the freeman. It
excluded women, slaves and foreigners from certain participatory
rights. But there was a system that promised to take care of the
everyday needs of the citizens. The idea of justice became
fundamental to political philosophy. If people are to bond together
for mutual protection, if they are to enter into social contracts, if they
are to set their personal interests aside for the interests of a larger
group, they have to accept that the society within which they live is
based on principles that are just and equitable. But, what constitutes
such a political justice?
47
The question, “What is justice?” dominates one of the greatest

works of philosophy, Plato’s ‘The Republic’. In this dialogue, various
answers are proposed and rejected. What is the value of justice in
itself? Socrates argues that justice is found in the fact that in society,
each class of persons performs its own task and justice is found in
the way that the virtues of each class or person is fully utilised. For
the individual, Socrates says that justice is found in the balance of
his mind, spirit and appetite. Justice is to be seen in the harmony
and proper functioning of each part of society. Plato wants the rulers
to be philosophers seeking only the truth rather than their self-
interest.
Plato’s ‘The Republic’ contains mainly discussions among the
friends of Socrates, wealthy young men, admirers of Socrates, all
always ready for discussions. One such discussion touches on the
question of justice, in its fundamental aspect.
Socrates asks Cephalus, apparently a wealthy young man,
“What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which you have
reaped from wealth?”
Cephalus answers that wealth is a blessing to him, chiefly
because it enables him to be generous, honest and just.
Socrates asks him gently what he means by justice. A
philosophical debate starts and Socrates finds it a simple matter to
destroy one definition after another, until a friend, less patient than
others, breaks out, “What folly has possessed you, Socrates?..... I
am sure if you want to know what justice is, you must answer, not
ask and pride yourself in refuting others.”
Socrates does not answer but continues to ask and this irritates
Thrasymachus, another friend, who bursts out, “I proclaim that
might is right and justice is the interest of the stronger.... The
different forms of governments make laws, democratic, aristocratic
or autocratic with a view to their respective interests, and these laws
so made by them to serve their interests, they deliver to their
subjects as ‘justice’ and punish as ‘unjust’ anyone who transgresses
them. Now, when a man has taken away the money of the citizens
and made slaves of them, then, instead of swindler and thief, he is
called happy and blessed by all.”
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Strength rather than good nature was the basic criterion on which
heroism was defined. Pericles, the king of Athens, told his citizens,
“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
What is then justice? Shall we seek righteousness or shall we
seek power? Is it better to be good or to be strong?
Socrates keeps asking, not to tease his friends, but to alert them
of the lurking danger. He himself does not answer the questions at
all. He points out that justice is a relation among individuals
depending on social organisations and as such it can be studied
better as a part of the structure of the community rather than as a
quality of personal conduct.
Plato echoes this by saying that it is easier to study justice on a
large scale rather than from the point of view of the individual.
Justice would be a simple matter, he says, if men were simple. What
we need is a society of harmonious and efficient men and justice in
such a society would be like the harmony of the planetary spheres
which are moving together in unison, without effort. And in the case
of the individual also, justice is effective coordination, the
harmonious functioning of the various elements in him. Justice is
order and beauty of the soul; it is to the soul as health is to the body.
All else is disharmony, between man and man, man and animal, man
and nature.
Such basic thoughts may appear general. But they are lofty and
noble and have held their ground for over two thousand years in
influencing the philosophers, in shaping and moulding the attitude
and approach of men towards every sphere of human action –
social, political and economic.
In the Hindu tradition, the concept of justice led towards the
injunctions and prescriptions of dharma and they had both cosmic
and individual application. What governed man’s conduct
contributed to the stability of the cosmos. Eventually, the ethical
standards were incorporated in the religious customs and became
part of religion.
The Western philosophers of the Socrates’ school had a more
secular perception of justice. Later however, philosophers of
Christianity would look at the idea of justice from the stand point of
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the Biblical exhortations. This came to an end when European

enlightenment swept away everything before it. Great philosophers
began to canvass their own notions of individual liberty, equality,
nature of governance and the nature of man himself. Everyone was
trying to talk of justice, in theory, as an absolute concept, and it was
soon followed by an understanding that justice in the absolute
makes sense, only when the diverse aspects like the political, the
social and the economic are meaningfully enunciated in the context
of the functioning of the institutions.
Oliver Cromwell wanted to reform the English parliament, even
to the extent of doing away with the monarchy. He fought and lost.
His words, “Trust in God and keep the powder dry,” propelled the
people to start a war and the war failed.
The British settlers of America made liberty and equality the
cornerstone of their Constitution.
The French took the same message and dealt a death-knell to
monarchy of an archaic kind.
Abraham Lincoln went on a war against the South, where the
white kept the black as slaves, in order to reinforce the Constitution.
In our country, Mahatma Gandhi was moved when he saw how
badly the Indian labourers were treated in South Africa. He returned
to India to fight for the freedom of his countrymen from the British,
adopting a singularly unique method of ahimsa, which reiterated
basic human values. He was against the caste system and called the
depressed people as harijans and worked for their real political and
economic freedom as his spiritual mission.
Martin Luther King spent a lifetime of crusade for enforcing the
rights of the black people, two hundred years after the American
Constitution began to govern the country. In our own country, the
Constitution was adopted after much deliberation, setting up
democratic institutions and a judicial system for making available, to
every citizen, the core values of human rights namely, equality,
liberty, non-discrimination and justice.
In a sense, all the above is a very short account of the history of
justice. I am with you, if you ask me, what do all these mean to me? I
see so much injustice all around me and I am a victim one way or the
50
other. In the economic sphere, the growing divide makes me poorer

and more crippled. I exercise my political rights, but the real power
vests elsewhere, in systems and men, who tend to use the system
more for their benefits than for the people who have exercised their
rights. The judicial system is too complicated for the ordinary man
who may not be able to enforce his rights on account of laws, judicial
pronouncements and the rules and regulations which take away
what the law gives. What I need is personal justice when I am
unjustly affected, and not lofty pronouncements.
We know that there is much injustice all around us, or denial of
justice. This means that the freedoms, that we are proclaimed to
possess, are not there. Not that they are a myth, but freedom is
simply not available except to those who are able to enjoy them by
virtue of their circumstances. Speaking from a larger perspective, for
example, in a free society, the consumer is said to be the king, which
he is not, since his thoughts, actions and desires are highly
influenced by the advertisements and media. In the political sphere,
no sooner have we exercised our rights, than we are forgotten. The
power has passed into the hands of others. Power corrupts and
power without responsibility hurts even more viciously. In the social
sphere, we are subject to all kinds of inhibitions on account of
familial, communal, casteist and religious factors. We may offer lip
sympathy to the concept of equality of the people. George Orwell
said, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than
others.” However, we could say, “All men are equal but some men
are more equal than others!” And we know what equality of gender
means. If a sixteen year old boy can rape a young woman,
brutalising her to death, it is not the inadequacy of law that we ought
to blame, but the very structure of society and the relevant
institutions as being silent spectators.
The concept of absolute justice may be a good ground for the
philosophers to bat on, but it is its relative aspect that has become
critically important.
It is here that I offer my tributes to the Indian Nobel Laureate
Prof. Amartya Sen for his most relevant and timely approach in his
widely acclaimed, majestic treatise ‘The Idea of Justice’. In the
next few pages, I shall very briefly touch on his ideas, rightly hailed
51
as a ‘major advance in contemporary thinking’. He refers to the

classical distinction between niti and nyaya as enunciated by the
ancient Indian legal thinkers. Let me quote him,
“Among the principal users of the term ‘niti’ are organisational
propriety and behavioural correctness. In contrast with niti, the
term ‘nyaya’ stands for a comprehensive concept of realised
justice. In the line of vision, the roles of institutions, rules and
organisation, important as they are, have to be assessed in
the broader and more inclusive perspective of nyaya which is
inescapably linked with the world that actually emerges, not
just the institutions or rules we happen to have.”
Prof. Sen refers to the word matsyanyaya, ‘justice in the world of
the fish’, where a big fish can easily devour a small fish. “We are
warned,” he says, “that avoiding matsyanyaya must be essential part
of justice and it is crucial to ensure that the ‘justice of fish’ is not
allowed to invade the world of human beings. The central recognition
here is that the realisation of justice in the sense of nyaya is not a
matter of judging institutions and rules but of judging the societies
themselves. No matter how proper the established organisation may
be, if a big fish could still devour a small fish at will, then that must be
patent violation of justice as nyaya.”
Prof. Sen emphasises that the subject of justice is not merely
about trying to achieve, or dreaming about achieving, some perfectly
just society of social arrangements, but about preventing manifestly
severe injustice. The theories of absolute justice, according to him,
as currently formulated, reduce the relevant issues of justice into
empty rhetoric. When people across the world agitate to get more
global justice, they are not clamouring for some kind of ‘minimal
humanitarianism’ nor are they agitating for a perfectly ‘just’ world
society, but only for the elimination of some outrageously ‘unjust’
arrangement and to enhance global justice.
Prof. Sen refers to Emperor Ashoka’s concept of social justice.
His thinking included not only his conviction that advancing the
welfare and freedom of people in general is an important role for the
State as well as for the individuals in society, but also that social
enrichment could be achieved through the voluntary good behaviour
52
of the citizens themselves without being compelled by force. Ashoka

spent a good part of his life trying to promote good, spontaneous
behaviour in people, towards each other.
On the contrary, Kautilya, who was the advisor to Ashoka’s
grandfather Chandragupta Maurya, emphasised the role of the
institutions, laws and rules, in enforcing justice among the people.
He saw institutional features, including restrictions and prohibitions,
as major contributors to good conduct. He made little concession to
people’s capacity for doing things voluntarily without being led by
incentives or restrained by punishments. Justice was to be
maintained by the carrot and the whip.
Prof. Sen also refers to Emperor Akbar’s attitude to social
justice. According to him, Akbar laid the foundation for secularism
and religious mentality of the state. He was a strong advocate of the
pursuit of reason, rather than the murky rules of tradition, in order to
address the difficult problem of human conduct and to conduct a just
society. In fact, in the whole of his book, Prof. Sen argues for
adoption of reason as a tool for deciding on questions of justice and
for establishing proper and just arrangements in society. Every
problem lends itself to reason and the cause of justice is promoted
better through reason. He goes further and says that a politically
reasonable society need not merely manifest justice or implement a
just way of life through mutual benefit and reciprocity. He says that if
someone has the power to make a change which he can see would
reduce the injustice in the world, then there is every argument that
he should do that. His power has that obligation.
The Buddha says that a mother has the responsibility towards
her child, not because she has given birth to it but, because she can
have an influence on the life of her child which the child itself cannot
do. The mother has the power and she has to exercise her
obligations and that is justice. Prof. Sen says, “The justification here
takes the form of arguing that if some action that can be freely taken
is open to a person and if the person assesses that if the
undertaking of that action will create a more just situation in the
world, thereby making it justice-enhancing, then that is argument
enough for the person to consider seriously what he should do in
view of this recognition.”
53
Prof. Sen also refers to the Arjuna-Krishna discussion at the start

of the Kurukshetra battle in the Mahabharata. Krishna’s famous
advice in the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna is to simply fight, to do his
duty. But, there is a strong case to consider Arjuna’s misgivings in
the interest of nyaya. Arjuna’s human-life centred perspective is not
to be so easily ignored. One cannot easily overlook the
consequences of the action – death and disaster – by merely
following a sense of duty. Secondly, Arjuna is overwhelmed by his
sense of personal responsibility for what will result from his own
actions. Thirdly, Arjuna’s worry is based on his personal concern
about killing all the persons he has known or been related to. In
short, Arjuna’s arguments definitely lean towards the side of nyaya,
rather than merely the niti of fighting a war, even though it might be
just. Certainly, Arjuna manifests ‘social realisation’, a concern for
human sympathy, which has direct relevance for justice.
Prof. Sen’s ‘Idea of Justice’ is a massive book of distilled
philosophy running to about five hundred pages. It is hardly possible
to even cull out the important points he makes in his book. I would
only like to refer to some of his important approaches. The aim
should be to judge how to reduce injustice and advance justice
rather than aim at the description of perfectly just societies. Many
questions of justice can be resolved and agreed upon in reasoned
arguments. There is a need for reasoned argument with oneself and
with others in dealing with competing claims. Also, the presence of
removable injustice may well be connected with behavioural
transgressions rather than with institutional shortcomings. Justice is
ultimately connected with the way people’s lives are lived and not
merely with the nature of the institutions surrounding them.
Prof. Sen comments,
“Democratic freedom can certainly be used to enhance social
justice and a better and fairer politics. The process, however,
is not automatic and requires activism on the part of politically
engaged citizens. The role of democracy in preventing
community-based violence depends on the ability of the
inclusive and interactive political process to subdue the
poisonous fanaticism of the divisive communal thinking.”
54
“The use of a comparative perspective can make useful

contributions. We are engaged in making comparisons in
terms of the advancement of justice, whether we fight
oppression (like slavery, or subjugation of women), or protest
against systematic medical neglect... We may often enough
agree that some changes contemplated will reduce injustice,
but even if all such agreed changes are successfully
implemented, we will not have anything that we can call perfect
justice.”
Prof. Amartya Sen in his ‘Idea of Justice’ has made a significant
contribution towards a better understanding of practical justice that
is the pressing need growingly felt in human society. I am grateful to
him for the opportunity to quote some of his observations in this
note.
* * * * * * * * * *
55
B. DISCUSSION
56
The Question of Governance
FRIDAY SECOND SESSION

JULY 15, 2016 2:30 AM TO 4:30 PM

GOVERNANCE” 2:30 PM TO 3:30 PM
A. INTRODUCTION
I returned from Delhi by train after getting the news of my
selection to the All India Services. The retired head master of the
school where I had studied met me at the station and gave me a
garland. An old man, he had walked a long distance on the platform,
searching for me, before identifying me. He was a teacher of
mathematics, a stern man right through, steeped in religion and
rituals.
“You now have every opportunity to govern and serve,” he said
and patted my shoulder. I smiled and said, “Thank you, sir.”
After thirty six years, I drove out of Fort St. George, the seat of
the government, on retirement, with my pension intact. I remembered
the old head master’s words. I laughed to myself. Did I really
govern? Whom did I serve? Twenty two years after retirement, I feel
gloomy and let down. Who is governing? What is this service that is
talked about? I needed to go back to my philosophy to revive my
spirits.
Philosophers have concerned themselves with the question of
governance, since at least the time of the ancient Greeks, and much
earlier in the East. Plato’s ‘The Republic’, which laid the foundation
of the great thinker’s vision of how an ideal political community might
function, has been the largely influential and controversial opening
to the debate that continues right up to the present day. The
fundamental question as to how we live together, simple as it may
sound, has troubled the minds of the philosophers, who want to
know how to bring people together, who should be at the helm of
affairs, what are the requirements of those leading the government,
what should be the rights of those who are governed, and how
should these rights be enforced when they are infringed.
57
These questions are inescapable because human beings are

social creatures, gregarious by nature. Our lives are connected with
those of countless others. We know some of the people, but we shall
never get to know the vast majority at all. So, political philosophy
begins to examine the best manner in which people can live
together, spell out their rights and govern themselves in ‘fairness
and justice’.
We are entering the realm of politics, philosophy and institutions.
It matters to us all, for example, that laws should be fair, that a class
or clique should not oppress us and government must be chosen in
a democratic way and it should be accountable to us – everyone – in
some manner or the other. We should be clear, not only about our
rights, but also about the responsibilities we have towards one
another, towards society. We know that history is littered with
examples, from tyrannical regimes, to persecution and genocide, of
the terrible consequences of getting politics wrong, of not finding
ways to live together.
Human beings have always been concerned with several political
questions. Ideas of justice, equality, and freedom, have bothered
man ever since he decided to live together with others in a
community.
Socrates urged caution about the way democracy functioned in
Athens. He held the view that knowledge was the supreme virtue and
he preferred a rule by the aristocrats who had the virtue of
knowledge. He pointed out that excessive liberty would lead to
tyranny. “The excessive increase of anything,” he said, “often causes
a reaction in the opposite direction....The excess of liberty whether
in states or in individuals seems only to pass into slavery...and the
most aggravated forms of tyranny arise out of most extreme forms of
liberty.”
Socrates was worried that his city of Athens would go into ruins,
unless there was a government of knowledge and ability, and this
was not to be determined by voting, but by qualification. Nor should
power or wealth choose the officials. Tyranny and plutocracy are as
bad as democracy. The reasonable compromise is an aristocracy in
58
which offices would be restricted to those mentally fit, disciplined and

well-trained. At the same time, Socrates appreciated the advantages
of the liberties and opportunities that Athens, his city, gave him.
Plato’s ideas are utopian. He envisaged training the children,
until they grew into adulthood, in all manners of disciplines and if
they survived the ordeals of training for rulership, they could aspire
to become members of the ruling class, after fifty years of age. The
rulers are the philosopher-kings who will have the power, no
possessions, no property, no money, no families. Plato’s advice is,
“Until philosophers are kings or the kings and princes of the world
have the spirit and power of philosophy...cities will never cease from
ill, nor the human race.”
Aristotle too was wary of democracy. Democracy, the rule of the
common citizen, according to him, was just as dangerous as
oligarchy, for it is based upon the victory of one group over another
in its struggle for power and leads to chaos. “It is true that the
multitudes judge many things better than one person, and from their
numbers are less liable for corruption. But, government requires
special ability and knowledge. Whoever would establish a
government upon a community should have experience of many
years, which, plain enough, would inform him whether such a thing is
useful.”
It is difficult and perhaps unfair to judge philosophers like
Socrates or Plato. They lived two thousand four hundred years ago,
in small city states, that cannot be compared to our modern cities, or
our nations. It is to their credit that they brought into use, concepts,
like aristocracy, or democracy, which have stood the test of time.
Their detailed instructions as to their governance may have little
relevance in the present day. But the emphasis that the
philosophers laid on the quality of governance, and service, has to
be taken note of.
Prof. Amartya Sen, in his book, ‘The Idea of Justice’, narrates
how the Athens ballot system had an impact in Iran, Bactria and
India, where the elements of democracy were incorporated in
municipal governance. Also, following Lord Buddha, open general
meetings have been recorded, aiming to settle disputes between
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different points of view on social and religious matters. They were

called Buddhist Councils, where adherents of different points of view
got together to settle their disputes.
Emperor Akbar tried to codify and propagate what were among
the earliest formulations of rules for public discussion. The Indian
epics, particularly the Mahabharata, speak of the ‘sabhas’, the
gathering of elders, where issues such as personal liberty, injustice
and the like, were raised, and the elders gave their ruling by way of
interpretation of the dharma. The most famous sabha was the one
where wise men met in the court of Dhritarashtra to witness the dice
game between Yudhishthira and Sakuni, when Draupadi was put to
shame by the Kaurava brothers, and she cried for justice. All the
elders kept quiet, totally nonplussed. All that Bhishma, the wisest of
them all, could say was that dharma was subtle. Irreparable damage
had been done and the entire Kuru race perished in the
Kurukshetra war that followed.
In Southern India, during the period of the Pallavas, the Cholas,
and the Pandyas, effective arrangements were made to organise
and conduct local village councils to attend to people’s needs
through discussion in a progressive manner. There are inscriptions
to show how village governing bodies were elected, how they
conducted their business, and how the entire village assembled on
specific occasions to take decisions on important matters, or resolve
disputes between individuals or groups.
The crux of the matter in governance is the kind and system of
governance that gives the individual citizen a position in the total
political will and guarantees him certain freedom, equality, and
justice, while at the same time, requiring him to fulfil certain
responsibilities in the common interest. By and large, the philosophy
and practice of democracy, as we know today, have come to be
accepted as a reasonable form of governance. However, it cannot
be doubted that the institutional structure of the contemporary
practice of democracy, as Prof. Amartya Sen points out, is largely
the product of European and American experience over the last few
centuries. As more and more countries took to democracy in the
twentieth century, they kept improvising to suit their local needs and
to reflect the local cultures. Though a ‘Western achievement’, we
have to give adequate recognition to the attraction of participatory
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government that has surfaced and re-surfaced, with some

consistency, in different parts of the world. Democracy in its
elaborate, institutional form may be hardly a few centuries old, yet it
gives concrete expression to a tendency in social living that has a
larger and more widespread history. There is every reason to
believe that democracy, as an alternative to authoritarianism, has
come to stay. This is because of the continuing faith that democratic
institutions will bring about public discussion by reasoning. As John
Rawls, the influential political philosopher of the twentieth century
points out, “The definitive idea for deliberative democracy is the idea
of deliberation itself. When citizens deliberate, they exchange views
and debate their supporting reasons concerning public political
questions.” Such deliberations contemplate active participatory
reasoning and such reasoning must always provide for justice and
fairness, as otherwise, the deliberation itself will fail. So, public
debate, reasoning, and the ingredient of justice, are inseparably
connected.
But such debates, or discussions, have to be channelised
through institutions. So, the organisational democracy becomes
crucial and central to the ballot, the free and fair voting system,
which is still not available in many countries, though the
organisations there carry the brand name of democracy. Elections,
open, free and fair, are considered to be the essence of democracy,
but the ramifications of the institutional set-up may only provide lip-
service to this slogan. What is essential, here, is the quick response
and reaction of the people towards the way the institutions function.
The support of a free and independent media can be a great
advantage. The media can make direct contributions to free speech
in general, and of media freedom in particular. The absence of a
free media or the presence of a paid media, the suppression of
people’s ability to communicate with each other, can directly affect
the quality of life. Media freedom can provide crucial protection to
the neglected and disadvantaged sections of society, and contribute
directly to social security. Media freedom can also contribute to
correct or reasonable value formulations in a number of social
issues, where the government hastens to formulate policy on the
basis of inadequate or interested information. The relationship
between majority rule and the protection of minority rights is
especially dependent on the formation of tolerant societies and
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priorities and the media can play a just and correct role in this
respect. If the majority is ready to support the views of the minority
and is ready to treat dissenting and discordant groups or individuals
with tolerance, then liberty can be guaranteed without having to curb
the majority rule.
We see that many democratic nations in the world are in turmoil.
Poverty, social insecurity, sectarianism, religious intolerance,
absence of basic requirements like food, education, and health
measures, affect the people badly and the growing divide between
the poor and the rich, gender inequality, and the absence of simple,
practical freedom, are increasingly testing the strength of democracy
and giving scope to public agitation. There has been more action in
organised movements based on demands for human rights, such as
right to education, right to food and shelter, right to earn a livelihood
in the normal course, right to good health care, preservation of
environment, and demand for employment. These movements focus
particular attention on the failure of the governments, though this
may not be taken to mean the failure of democracy itself. Democracy
can certainly be used to enhance social justice and a better and
fairer politics, though the looming dark clouds warn us against this
optimism. Much will depend upon how much the citizens care for the
procedural system as against the spirit of the whole democratic
movement.
Prof. Amartya Sen makes this important remark in his book,
‘The Idea of Justice’,
“The success of democracy is not merely a matter of having
the most perfect institutional structure that we can think of. It
depends inescapably on our actual behaviour patterns and
the working of the political and social interactions. There is no
chance of resting the matter in the ‘safe’ hands of purely
instrumental virtuosity. The working of the democratic
institutions, like all other institutions, depends on the activities
of human agents, in utilising opportunities for reasonable
realisation. The practical results from these accounts would
seem to complement, broadly, the theoretical arguments
explored earlier in this book. The conceptual case for invoking
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nyaya and not just niti, in the pursuit of justice is strongly

supported by the lessons of the empirical experiences
presented here.”
During the last few centuries, the world has come to accept
democratic functioning as a guarantee of individual rights. In
practice, however, political history of many countries has not borne
out this understanding. We may talk of certain freedoms as
inalienable. So are responsibilities. Here, we are talking more about
the freedoms enunciated in the written constitution of the concerned
political state. If the freedoms are not clearly laid down in law,
whatever institutional machinery there may be to enforce laws, will
simply be unable to do so. Freedom, rights and equality, in the
prescribed sense, are crucial for the private person’s life, security,
growth and happiness. The institution that makes the law, the
institution that enforces it, and the institution that guarantees it, are
extremely important in democracy. But, even if they are there, their
responsibility to fulfil their mandate should be after a full recognition
of their role. The democratic constitution of a political state trusts
these institutions to fulfil their job with honesty and sincerity. We are
on a razor’s edge here. The ballot, the institutions, and the people,
do not suffice. What matters is the democratic spirit. It means
understanding of one another’s point of view, tolerance, secularity,
and problem-based approach, to the issues that confront society.
The world is in a crisis from many angles. Human values have
sunk low and man is no longer the common denominator by which
the action of the state, or society, or religion, or progress, is judged.
A few hundred years ago, Rousseau, the great French philosopher,
pointed out things, which are more true now, than before. “Laws,” he
said, “are useful to those who own, and injurious to those who do
not.....Laws give the weak new burdens and the strong, new powers,
they irretrievably destroy natural freedom and establish in perpetuity
the law of property and inequality, turn a clever usurpation into an
irrevocable right...All men are created equal and now, they are
everywhere in chains.”
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Explaining this, Will Durant says,

“The social dispositions upon which the natural order rests are
far less deeply rooted in us than those individualistic impulses
of acquisition and accumulation, of pugnacity and mastery
which underlie our economic power.”
Stunningly, he says,
“What use can equality in ballots be when power is so
unevenly distributed and political decisions must obey the
majority of dollars rather than the majority of men.”
Perhaps, it is not democracy that is at fault; it is ourselves. We
forgot to make ourselves intelligent, when we made ourselves
sovereign. We thought there was power in numbers and we found
only the average minds. We do not demand greatness or foresight
in those elected, but at least an honest and intelligent understanding
which will lead to fair and just decisions. We do not much care who
governs us. In fact, we hardly realise that we are being governed,
except when the shoe pinches.
Voltaire, the philosopher during the time of the French revolution,
preferred monarchy to democracy on the ground that in monarchy it
was only necessary to educate one man; in a democracy, millions
have to be educated. And the birth rate keeps rising. The spread of
education cannot keep pace with the proliferation of citizens.
But this was not the only reason for which the ancients preferred
monarchy. As we know, in India, from very early times, the monarchs
always ruled kingdoms, large and small, though in the local matters,
the villages had considerable self-governance. The Mauryas,
Emperor Ashoka, the Guptas, the Moghuls, and in Southern India,
the Pallavas, the Cholas, the Cheras, and the Pandyas, were known
for good governance, based on justice, fairness and equality.
In the following pages of this note, an attempt will be made to
present a picture of the foundation of Raja-dharma, law and
governance, about which we have read in the epic, the
Mahabharata. As a basic principle, we see that no law, no custom,
however old, will have an authority if it tends to degrade and debase
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human worth, if it encourages violence to human dignity. Even the

changing law, subject to changing times, must adhere to dharma as
a foundation.
Yudhishthira asks Bhishma, when he is lying on his bed of
arrows, waiting for his hour of departure, as to the meaning and
contents of governance. Bhishma’s reply and advice are among the
most famous in political literature. The following constitutes a
summary of the conversation.
“Governance is the name of the limits set to keep people from
the confusion of anarchy and to protect the material
conditions of life.”
“There is no other justification for the king to exist than to
protect, in everyway, the people. For, protection is the first
foundation of all social order.”
“The foundation of governance is crucial. It is through it that
all humans are cared for. All limits can be seen in the
foundation of governance. Foundation of governance brings
good of many kinds as none other does.”
“King’s discipline arises from the discipline of dharma.
Sovereignty belongs to dharma, not to him.”
“The protection of the people, this is the highest dharma of
the king. Protecting them with kindness is the highest
dharma.”
This protection is against all kinds of fear. “Let the king protect
his subjects from the fear of him, from their fear of others, from their
fear of each other, from the fear of things that are not human.” This
clearly means protecting the small fish from the big fish.
The Mahabharata warns that the State should not turn into the
biggest fish of all. If this happens, there is oppression, there is
adharma, there is terror by the State itself.
“That king is best in whose realm people live without fear.”
“Do not even think that the weak and the helpless are always
to be despised. Take care that the eyes of the weak do not
burn you and your relatives to death.”
“Where the insulted, the rejected, do not find in their king their
protection, the law of the dhanda will surely destroy the king.”
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“When the king wipes the tears of the poor and the old and
creates happiness, such conduct is called the king’s dharma.”
According to the Mahabharata, the State is organised to protect a
person against fear. Law and governance are the instruments of that
protection. The Mahabharata also enjoins upon the king to create
social conditions more for human flourishing, where the human
being can come into fullness of his being. Prabhava or human
flourishing is possible when there is ahimsa. But, ahimsa by itself, is
not sufficient. Trust, friendship and caring are the elements of
human bonding. “Protecting all beings with utmost kindness is the
greatest dharma of the king.”
‘Arthashastra’ of Kautilya (321 B C) puts it clearly,
“In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness; in their
welfare, his welfare. Whatever pleases him, he shall not
consider as good, but whatever pleases his subjects, he shall
consider as good.”
The Mahabharata also lays down certain principles which should
govern the exercise of power at all times.
“Let the king first discipline himself. Only then must he
discipline his subordinates and subjects.”
“The king who tries to discipline his subjects without first
disciplining himself becomes an object of ridicule, he not being
able to see his own faults.”
“Power is never considered its own justification. The power of
the State has to exercise discipline upon itself, most of all, the
discipline of dharma. The power of the State is not an end in
itself.”
“Where the king begins to oppress the weak by abusing his
power, his officials make that kind of behaviour their means of
livelihood as well.”
“Kindness and friendship to all beings, sharing and speech
that is endearing – there is, in this world, nothing that can win
people than these three. Speak in a way that is reassuring,
never in a way that is hurting. Respect those worthy of
respect. Give to others but never ask anything for yourself.”
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“Governance is a complex affair, and a burden too. The ruler

who is not skilful in the art of governing can never protect his
people.”
“The king who governs always with equality and impartiality
obtains dharma. And the king who has the dharma of equality
and impartiality is applauded and praised.”
“In dispensing justice, the king shall display no partiality
arising from any feeling of affection. While dispensing justice,
the king should, in hearing both sides to a case, have men of
knowledge and understanding to assist him. It is upon justice
that the State is based.”
“It is only after he has heard without prejudice both sides in a
case, has reflected long enough to come to the right
conclusion, has consulted those who know the principles of
good governance, has carefully examined the nature of the
alleged offence, and the character of the accused, has taken
into consideration the context and circumstances and has
understood what is justice and what is injustice, that the king
shall punish a person.”
“When the king, with his heart and speech and governance,
protects the people and does not pardon a wrong-doing even
by his own son, that is called, ‘dharma of governance’.”
The Mahabharata’s pointed references to greed, lobha, are well
known. The king must confine himself to his lawful source of income.
The lawful sources have been detailed both in the Mahabharata and
Kautilya’s ‘Arthashastra’. Taxes must be high or low according to the
capacity of the people; on no account must they be oppressive. The
capacity to pay must be carefully investigated before settling the
amount to be collected. Only wealth that is earned through dharma
is legitimate.
“The royal treasuries increase in every way when people are
protected justly.”
“Don’t ever put financial matters into the hands of those who
are greedy and foolish. Employ only those who are intelligent
and free from greed.”
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That the king should be free from anger that is unjustified, is

repeatedly stressed. Yudhishthira tells his wife Draupadi, “If there
were not men willing to forgive and to subdue their anger, there
would be no peace among men, for anger is the origin of all discord.”
Yudhishthira’s emphatic words are, “Forgiveness is dharma;
forgiveness is sacrifice; forgiveness is veda; forgiveness is sruti; he
who knows this can forgive everything.”
Draupadi argues with her husband that it is not always true.
People will come to disrespect a person, because forgiveness can
be considered as weakness. Neither, force is good always, Draupadi
admonishes her husband.
“There is a time for forgiveness; there is a time for force.
Gentleness achieves nothing if practiced in a wrong place and
at a wrong time and in relation to a wrong person.”
“One’s own self; one’s own grasp of desha and kala;
adequacy of means; clarity of purpose; reliable assistant;
honest but competent advice; these are the six elements of
good governance.”
“When the instruments of governance are used in ways that
are just, truthful and caring, then governance becomes like
father and mother and keeps the world within its proper limits.”
“All living beings have dharma as the foundation of their
existence and dharma exists over and above the king. Only he
remains the king who lives and governs in accordance with
dharma.”
“Only that king is considered worthy of being a king who
honours knowledge and those devoted to it; is himself given to
reflection and to the welfare of others; has no selfish ends and
follows the path shown by those who have in them goodness.”
The Sage Narada visits King Yudhishthira and puts questions to
him about his conduct, personal discipline and governance in a way
that is fatherly, friendly, in the spirit of inspiring the King to greater
goodness. Unique conversation. Some examples,
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“Dear King, in all the villages of your provinces, does the

Assembly of the Five, or Pancha, consisting of those who are
wise and competent, keep working for the good of the
people?”
“I hope your conduct towards the social callings is as liberal as
was the conduct of your forefathers.”
“Dear King, I hope you do not create distress among people
by inflicting harsh punishments. Do your ministers sustain and
preserve your realm by their lawful and just conduct?”
“I hope you do not create in anybody’s heart anger or sorrow.”
“Do the people of your nation trust you as one would one’s
father or mother?”
I have taken these translations of quotations from ‘The
Mahabharata’, the book written by my learned friend and eminent
philosopher Chaturvedi Badrinath. One should be grateful to him
for his simple translations, clarity of thought, and sound
philosophical approach.
This note contains references to the various philosophical
thoughts on political governance right from the ancient Greek days.
The Greek philosophers lived in the democratic city states, but
argued for aristocracy, for the rule of the philosopher king who would
be the embodiment of wisdom. Socrates was inclined to consider
knowledge as wisdom. A wise man would also be detached, fair and
just. In course of time, democratic institutions replaced monarchy,
when the nations became stronger and required powerful rulers.
The Mahabharata envisaged kingdoms with powerful rulers who
were extending their sway over the Gangetic plains and towards the
north, west, east and south. They needed guidance in the art of
governance; they needed personal ethics; they needed to be told
about the conduct of detachment, service, selflessness and the goal
of achieving superior virtues.
Bhishma’s instructions to Yudhishthira were a set of model
lessons for all kings. History does not tell us whether the kings of
yore studied those lessons or followed them in any way. Epic heroes
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and teachers stand at too far a distance away from the normal
human beings, that they are only impressed by the cinematic impact
of the epochal happenings. And the lessons are lost.
Possibly because of that reason, monarchy was giving way to
democracy, aided by the philosophical, intellectual and emotional
upsurge of newer teachings from equally faithful souls who were
interested in the ultimate concerns of man. Where monarchy
remained in name, it became the symbol of the historic state, now
replaced by the political state. The monarchs were expected to
disappear into limbo, but surprisingly, they retained their prestige,
thanks to the nostalgic memory of the people. The race for
democracy had begun. From primal democracy to global monarchy
to national democracy, it became necessary to provide for the
culture of democratic governance. Considering the fact that the
blossoming of democracy has been of a recent origin, lasting not
more than four centuries, the roadmap of its functioning has been
fairly clearly laid out - the ballot, the institutions and the core values
of democracy. Extra emphasis is laid on one or the other depending
on the exigencies of the situation. However, good governance
demands the harmonious functioning of all these, with the main
objective of preserving the nationhood, stimulating the intellectual
appreciation of the people to their own roles, rights and
responsibilities, and the proper functioning of the various
institutions, with utmost concern for the law. Neither the party-based
legislative frenzy, nor the servility, nor the detachment of the
bureaucracy, nor judicial activism, will help in proper democratic
governance. It may miss the overall aim of providing prosperity and
peace to the people. The call is for wisdom in all directions.
Thinking people will find it difficult to accept that the democratic
system of governance is the best under all circumstances. But, that
can be no reason to scuttle it at any time for one purpose or the
other. At the same time, even within democratic governance, one
can very well see that the systems are exploited for the advantage of
one or the other. Legislature may legislate in favour of some group;
the bureaucracy may work to add confusion by working for its own
interests; the judiciary may over-react. The main purpose of the
constitution, laying down that all the institutions of governance are
meant for promoting people’s welfare, will be lost. Still, people have
70
fought monarchy, and overthrown rulers in the last hundred years,

and have put their stake in some form of democracy, hoping for the
best.
All this is philosophy. It is for introspection. But how many people
introspect? Yet, I was caught by a wave of optimism when I was
reading Will Durant’s ‘The Pleasures of Philosophy’.
“The time must come when men will understand that the
highest function of government is not to legislate, but to
educate, to make, not laws, but schools. The greatest
statesman, like the subtlest teacher, will guide and suggest
through information, rather than invite pugnacity with
prohibition and commands. His motto will be: Millions for
education, not one cent for compulsion...We need not so
despair of our race that the government will be in the hands of
the politicians for ever. Day by day, a horde of knowledge
rises; generation after generation the heritage of culture
grows and finds transmission to a larger minority of mankind;
soon man will not tolerate charlatans that we have suffered so
patiently and so long. Our children’s children, lifted by our
care, will choose their rulers more wisely than we chose. They
will ask not for law-makers but creative teachers; they will
submit not to regimentation, but to knowledge; they will
achieve peace and order not through violence and compulsion
but through the advance and spread and organisation of
intelligence.”
* * * * * * * * * *
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B. DISCUSSION
72
The Question of Religion
SATURDAY THIRD SESSION

JULY 16, 2016 9:30 AM TO 1:15 PM

RELIGION” 9:30 AM TO 10:30 AM
A. INTRODUCTION
The word ‘religion’ comes from the same Latin root as that for the
word ‘ligament’. It means to bind. It also means connecting. Both
point to the same thing. The true spirit of religion is expected to
connect us to the source of our existence. Through religion, we are
in touch with the deepest mysteries that shape our lives. We are
enabled to connect to the current of thoughts and emotions that
help us to make us aware of our true selves. Religion, then,
becomes an approach through which our smaller selves aim at a
farther reach, with the object of transforming themselves in the
process. In this sense, religion has a sense of reverence, vision,
piety, love and compassion. When the flowers of these virtues
blossom in a person, religion’s meaning, ‘to bind’, comes into full
play. Religion is not about God alone, but also about family, the
community and all those relationships that make life meaningful.
Through the family, we learn what it is to be human, and do
things that we believe to be morally right. Religious feeling can help
us to perceive our joys and sorrows in a detached manner and help
us to understand a little bit of the mystery of the universe. Religion
helps us, not by changing the facts, but by telling us to look at facts
in a more comprehensive manner.
These are personal thoughts that I had expressed in the note
captioned ‘Am I Religious?’ in Hamsa’s Retreat book of 2009.
In the Retreat book of 2013, captioned ‘A Pilgrim’s Progress’, I
had expressed myself further, in a long conversation with Jane, an
American friend who had come to India to study Hindu religion.
“Religion,” I said, “is a structure of ideas, doctrines and
philosophy, all underlining man’s need to accept God and surrender
to Him. History has shown, repeatedly, that doctrines demand implicit
obedience and unquestioning commitment. In practice, religion may
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result in the building of rich and powerful institutions, as materialistic

in aims and objectives as the ordinary man’s craving for pleasure in
daily life. The power and philosophy of these institutions may be
contrary to the spirit and intent of the founders. Priesthood, rituals,
and ceremonies may come to dominate in the place of innocent
belief. The individual is all the time worried about the problem of
understanding the externals of religion, when he ought to be soaring
in the contemplation of the Divine Presence. Institutional discipline
may even fail to kindle the spark and may kill the very devotedness
of the well-meaning soul. It is said that when the devil wants to
create confusion, he starts an institution. The important truth that
religion is a means, not the end, pales into insignificance.”
Swami Vivekananda said, “It is good to be born in religion, not
to die in it.”
I continued, “To a great many people, God is an idea, a principle.
They seldom think that it is possible to think of God as an
experience. Their relation to God is an abstraction, whether as a
devotee, a servant, a lover or a slave. They may be well-versed in
the idea of God and quite capable of intellectually analysing and
dissecting different philosophies about God with the power of their
reasoning faculties. They do this, mainly to confirm or uphold their
arguments that their idea of God is logically sustainable. Quite a few
remain unconvinced about their own position and seek all manners
of external philosophical support; philosophical positions become
more important than contemplation or experience of God. Common
people, not concerned with dogmas or doctrines, do surrender
themselves before their chosen deity and derive strength from their
devotional approach.”
“But, they too, soon become intellectually inclined and mistake
their scholarly curiosity for devotional intention. In the end, God, in
effect, is shunted to the background which gets cluttered into hair-
splitting arguments, and the devotees get stuck at the periphery.
God is nowhere to be seen.”
“It is not surprising that great souls did not look upon God as the
inspirer of all philosophy or the fountain of all wisdom. They simply
experienced within their hearts what they called ‘Light’. They said, ‘I
have seen’. Some did not even say that, because words are a
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clumsy and insufficient instrument of communication. Words can be

misinterpreted, and in religion, this occurs very often. Attempts are
made to relate words to dogmas that have no relation to their
experience. The first teachers spoke out their conviction with such
intensity that their message could easily make the listeners see new
perceptions, new vistas and their conversion was a smooth transition
from whatever beliefs they previously held.”
“In course of time, however, the words of the masters became the
subject of philosophy, going under the scanner of logic and reason.
Today, when people speak of their adherence to a particular creed
or religion, they mean that they go by the correctness of the logical
approach or the method of reasoning, not the reality of the
experience, with which they do not have much to do.”
You may have seen that I have used the word ‘philosophy’ quite
often. The word, here, has more to do with the analysis of the
concepts of the religion or creed than with the philosophy of religion
as such. My ideas here describe the practicalities of religion, the
‘how’ of it, rather than the ‘why’ of it. Religious philosophy seeks to
find the truth of basic questions of religion.
For example, philosophy seeks to find out what religious
language means, what it does, whether it can be shown to be true or
false.
It deals with metaphysical matter such as whether God exists, the
proof or otherwise of God’s existence.
It deals with the question of religious or mystical experience, what
it is, what sort of knowledge it can yield.
The problem of evil, whether belief in God is compatible with the
existence of suffering and evil in the world.
The question of miracles, whether there can ever be sufficient
evidence to prove that a miracle has taken place; and similar
questions which are not raised by the followers or exponents of any
particular religion.
When religion uses descriptive language in general, there is no
problem. For example, religious festivals, celebrations, the
description of the architecture, and the like.
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The use of religious words is not often to describe something, but

to point out a more complex reasoning, or indicate a purpose or
goal. The Sanskrit word ‘advaita’, for example, has a specific
meaning in the dictionary. But, religious philosophers have sought to
give different sets of meaning for the term, resulting in the creation
of a variety of creeds like advaita, dvaita, vishishtadvaita,
shuddhadvaita, kashmir advaita, neelakanta advaita and so on. The
word is one, but different religious meanings are sought to be
superimposed.
Religious philosophy is somewhat unique, in the sense, that its
propositions contain both understanding and commitment. They may
include facts, but facts that are capable of delivering messages
appealing to the religiously-inclined. For example, the believer uses
the word ‘God’ not only to describe a reality but to communicate a
whole world of ideas of the creed to which he belongs, for, his God is
simply not a matter of speculation.
We may therefore distinguish between a philosopher who
examines the argument for the existence of God in an objective and
disinterested manner and the religious believer who uses the word
‘God’ to express a reality, a sense of direction, purpose or meaning
which comes through religious or spiritual experiences. For another
example, we may quote the statement that God is the designer of
the universe. It does not mean that a religious believer has some
personal knowledge of a process of design being carried out by
God. It only implies that the believer is trying to superimpose his
knowledge, however limited, about designing, to magnify the
capacity of God to infinite levels. Therefore, the believer always
adds superlative words such as ‘infinite’ or ‘perfect’ or ‘absolute’ and
so on. Believers usually say that God is beyond the world of senses,
of logic and reason. They also like to view God as an object of
experience, in a metaphysical sense, and philosophers spend a lot
of time trying to understand the character of metaphysical reality.
In short, speaking of religious languages, we can say that it is
simply descriptive. When it expresses beliefs, it may be a particular
way of looking at the world; since religious language is not a
statement of fact, to be checked against evidence, such religious
language is unacceptable so far as logic and reason are concerned.
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However, the religious believer will simply counter this by saying

religious experience is subjective, not reducible to reason and the
words emanating from such experience have a built-in authenticity
by virtue of such experience. The debate goes on.
The next major question that philosophy deals with is regarding
the existence of God. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have an
approach which may be summed up as follows: God is a supreme
being, infinite, perfect, spiritual, and personal creator of the world.
He is described as being all-powerful, and since he has created the
world out of nothing, he can do anything that he wishes. He is all-
loving, in a personal, caring relationship with individual believers. He
is generally considered to be beyond literal description, though he
has many auspicious attributes that are revealed through the words
of the founders.
Belief in the existence of such a God is known as theism. The
view that there is no conclusive evidence to decide whether God
exists, or not, is agnosticism. An identification of God with the
physical universe is pantheism. The belief that God exists within
everything but not identified with the physical universe is pan-
atheism. Indeed, if God is infinite, there is nothing which is external
to Him.
We know that the existence of God is never in question in
Judaism, Christianity, Islam or Hinduism. Only Buddhism does away
with God and Soul since its main concern is to build up the moral
and spiritual capacity of man, which will help him to lead a detached
life, treating joy and sorrow equally. But, the philosophers however,
want to know how the existence of God may be proved, if at all. One
argument, called ‘ontological’, says, if you understand what God is,
you understand that He must exist. Also, if God is the greatest thing
imaginable, then He must exist.
But, Kant, the Western philosopher questioned this, in this way,
“If you accept God, it is logical to accept his necessary
existence.
But, you do not have to accept God. In that case, God does
not exist.”
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Iris Murdoch, the eminent Oxford philosopher, argued that while

speaking ontologically, the proof is not simply logical. It points to a
spiritual reality that transcends any limited idea of God. She states,
“What is perfect must exist, that is what we think of as
goodness and perfection, the ‘object’ of our best thought must
be something real, indeed especially and most real, not as
contingent accidental reality, but as something fundamental,
essential and necessary. What is experienced as most real in
our lives is connected with a value which points further on. Our
consciousness of failure is a source of knowledge. We are
constantly in a process of recognising the falseness of our
‘good’ and the unimportance of what we deem important.
Great art teaches a sense of reality, so does ordinary living
and loving.” (‘Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals’)
An influential argument in favour of God, in religious philosophy,
is known as the cosmological argument. It may be stated as follows,
Everything that moves is moved by something.
That mover, in turn, is moved by something else again.
But, the chain of movement cannot be indefinite, or the
movement would not have started in the first instance.
Therefore, there must be an unmoved mover causing
movement in everything, without itself actually being moved.
The Unmoved Mover is what people understand as God.
The line of argument proceeds further.
Everything has a cause.
Every cause itself has a cause.
But, you cannot have an infinite number of causes. There is
bound to be an uncaused cause, which the people
understand as God.
Following this line further, one may say,
Individual things come into existence and later cease to exist.
Therefore, at one time, none was in existence.
But, something comes into existence only as a result of
something else that already exists.
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Therefore, there must be a being whose existence is

necessary and, that is God.
We may object to all these on the ground that the very concept of
cause and effect is mental, and what is conceived as a mental
concept cannot be applied on a cosmological scale, which is beyond
the comprehension of the mind. Besides, the observable
phenomenon of cause and effect cannot be applied to a situation,
where you cannot go ‘outside’ the world to see both the world and
the cause. However, the religious person may use the idea of
movement and mover or, the cause and effect, to point to the way in
which he sees God as a being that stands behind, yet causes or
moves everything, something beyond, yet involved in everything.
Philosophers have one more argument in favour of the existence
of God. That is, argument from design. God as a designer.
According to the ‘teleological’ argument for God, only a ‘mind’, a
designer, can properly account for the order we find in nature.
Throughout nature, particularly in living things, means seem to be
very well adapted to the ends. All parts of the eye, for example, are
so arranged to work together to provide vision. Since all parts of
nature are well-adapted to serve their purpose, there appears to be
a single designer. A sense of awe and wonder fills one at the
contemplation of God as the sole designer of this mechanism of the
universe, endlessly.
But then, the theory of evolution of Darwin stated that ‘natural
selection’ provided an alternative explanation for the design. It did
not require any external designer. It became possible to see the
world, not as a machine but as a process of struggle and death, in
which those best adapted to the environment were able to breed
and pass their genes on to the next generation, thus influencing the
very gradual development of the species. Adaptation, in order to
survive, became the key to the development of the most elaborate
forms which would have been described as an almost miraculous
work of the designer-God. But the argument is that such a selection
is not designed, but random, and the result of evolution. Millions of
random mutations keep taking place in the organisms. Some of them
coincidentally help the organisms to survive and reproduce.
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Eventually, they become essential parts of the organism. So,

organisms may appear to be designed, but they are the product of
coincidence. Or perhaps, God himself set up nature in such a way
that life evolves by natural selection! But the view still persists that
the cells of the organisms, the basic raw material, are too complex to
have evolved randomly. Intelligence was required to produce them.
Beyond these arguments based on reason and facts,
philosophers seek to understand God from the point of view of
religious experience. Religious awareness, in other words, may be
the result of a feeling of dependence, and of seeing finite things in
and through the infinite. Mystical experience will fall into this
category, a sudden perception of a larger dimension which throws
light on the ordinary world around us. The point is that religion is not
a dogma or logic, but is based on the direct experience of oneself as
being small and limited against the background of the eternal. It is
an identification of the self with the whole. Feelings like these are not
the result of logic, but of intuition, a kind of inner experience, where
the mind has no role.
Rudolph Otto, in his famous book, ‘The Idea of the Holy’, said
that religious experience is something ‘totally other’, something that
is awesome in its dimensions and power, something which is also
attractive and fascinating. The ‘holy’ can only be described however,
in words that have a rational, everyday meaning, language which,
taken literally, does not do justice to the special quality of
experience. Such religious experience, called mystical experience,
may sometimes involve a sense of unity of everything and of
oneself; a sense of presence of something quite extraordinary; a
sense of the absolute rightness of something; a general sense of
the wonder of nature; a personal experience resulting in a sense of
a higher value system and commitment.
Rupert Brooke spoke,
“One instant I, an instant, knew
As God knows all, And, it and you
I, above Time, oh, blind! could see
In witless immortality.”
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Sri Aurobindo said,

“The mystics open the doors for us to escape out of our
situations. They give us integrated knowledge. People with
strong religious feelings develop close relationship to God.
The mystics adore their Gods, not through their symbols, but
as a living presence, close enough, that they can feel it, touch
it, converse with it and derive immense pleasure out of such
contact. And, when they look around themselves, they see
living presence everywhere. They see it in every living
creature.”
The above statement may be taken as a true voice of mystical
experience.
William James, the eminent psychologist, who examined
religious experiences, says that the heart of such experience is an
immediate sense of reality of the ‘unseen’. The awareness may be
beyond even an ability to think about it, or put into words, in any
usual terms.
Philosophy does not dismiss mystical experiences, and calls them
unique.
Philosophy also deals with the question of ‘miracles’ in detail, but,
this is not the place to consider them at length. The view is that, the
idea of a miracle violates the regularity and orderliness of the
universe, and introduces some arbitrariness and unpredictability into
an understanding of the world, and this undermines the proven law
of the cosmological structures. Therefore, it may be appropriate to
term an event a miracle because it is thought to have a special
value, not just because it is a rare or special occurrence.
Philosophy also concerns itself with the issue of evil. We may
recall, that at a Hamsa Retreat a few years ago, a smart little girl
stood up and asked,
“Grandpa, if God is everywhere, why is there so much suffering?”
Another smart young girl promptly replied, “If you make all the
mistakes and commit all the sins, why do you bring in God?”
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Both, the question and the answer, are important. Phrased a little
differently, the question may be,
“If God created the world, if God is all-powerful and all-loving,
then, why is there evil and suffering in the world?”
In our minds, quite often, we are likely to draw the following
conclusions,
Either God is not all-powerful,
Or God is not all-loving,
Or, suffering is either unreal, or necessary or a means to a
greater good.
One way to argue out the matter is to say that we are all
imperfect beings. The world, as we see, is full of imperfections.
Suffering and evil are bound up with those imperfections.
Philosophers also hold the view that human life is no doubt
imperfect, but, having been made in the image of God, human
beings can expect to grow and develop, aspiring to be what God
intended them to be. Through free will and all the sufferings of life,
people have an opportunity to grow and learn and be freed of all
impurities. That is possible only in a world with good and evil.
When we use the word ‘evil’, we normally think of something
morally wrong, or inhuman, or destructive of individual freedom, of
the fabric of social peace and welfare. ‘Drinking’ is an evil, not only
because it harms the individual’s life, affects health and therefore
peace with oneself, but as it also causes disruption to the social
morals by attracting other people to take to drinking. It causes
overall suffering and is therefore an evil. Here we can seek resort to
accepted values which can identify the evil and help the person to
veer away from it. But there is no guarantee that the person will
accept those values and may still persist along the path of evil.
Knowing that, in everyday life, the religious believer has to face a
number of situations which may make him do morally wrong things,
quite often, he tightens the personal discipline and engages himself
with relief promised by religion. Human will is, however, frail and
therefore a strong faith in himself and a confidence in his capacity
alone will help him. Large numbers of saints and sages have spoken
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of the suffering man encounters through evil and they always try to
help him out by a reformative process. Religious philosophy
acknowledges that religion has a big role here. But, we see that the
tenets of religion are misinterpreted, deliberately, to harm people,
using religious sentiments and then, what is considered evil by one
religion may not be so considered by another. Ultimately, basic
human goodness is the only parameter by which all actions should
be judged. Then, ‘who is to judge’?
Philosophy looks at issues relating to faith. A religious believer, in
the course of coming to terms with the acceptance of God’s
existence, starts as a believer, on account of his own personal life
and circumstances. His learning, through books and masters, gives
him confidence and takes him on the path of faith. Happenings in his
life, and contemplation of an intense kind, take him along that path,
towards an understanding that brings him the solemn assurance that
there is no alternative to God. From faith, he has moved on to
conviction. His personal doubts have been cleared. In the place of
doubts, an insight moves him on to a comprehensive perception and
God has taken His place.
It is often argued that faith and reason are fundamentally
opposed to each other. However, the view, that faith is beyond
reason in matters of religious belief, has not always been accepted.
Faith involves trust and commitment, but not irrationally. William
James, the philosopher, for example, argued that it is occasionally
right and even reasonable to believe something without sufficient
evidence for its truth. We may face a ‘genuine option’ that cannot be
decided on the basis of evidence, where we feel that we could
believe either of the two alternatives, such as, ‘God exists’ or ‘God
does not exist’. In such cases, if our intellect cannot decide, our
emotion will decide. In belief, we have two goals, to avoid error and
to discover truths. These are complex, because we hardly have any
evidence. If mystics speak of their experiences as evidence, it is
subjective and the believer may have to be guided by his conviction.
Religious philosophers argue that religion should not be considered
in a philosophical way and ideas like faith need to be viewed
differently. While some philosophers hold that faith is not
‘unreasonable’, and a ‘leap of faith’ can be made, others hold that
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faith is unreasonable and belief in God is not rational and the onus,
is on those who believe, to come up with arguments to support their
position.
Now, let us hear Thomas Moore, the eminent therapist, the
author of the book ‘The Soul’s Religion’, on the subject of faith,
“Spiritual faith is grounded in ordinary human faith, in
emotional trust in life and in self.”
“Faith is trust in a way of thinking and living that may not be
universally accepted or intellectually verifiable. There may be
no reasonableness involved at all, no obvious intelligence, no
criteria of reliability and no clear signs of prudence. Faith is a
kind of folly and so it may entail a feeling of inferiority. Maybe
that is why some religious people take excess pride in their
faith.”
“In faith, one leaps. One does not study the options. Faith is
not the result of will power mixed with information. Faith arises
out of a concoction of desires, intuitions, habits and a
generosity of spirit, but the heart of faith is a leap. There are
no sequential steps, no secure path to a well-prepared goal.
And, therefore, it may look like a folly.”
“Many religious people, who find themselves to be full of faith,
sound too certain. What they call faith looks like its opposite.
Like those who whistle in the dark, some seem to parade their
beliefs precisely so that they don’t have to face the anxiety of
not knowing the answers to the basic issues of life.”
“With hollow belief, people insist on their own faith too strongly
and force them on others. They are rigid in their beliefs and
eventually become belligerent.”
Faith in religion, too, can be empty, bereft of ideology or sincerity.
It may be only a blind worship of a set of ideas. A true faith can
incorporate the whole of the soul.
“Such faith is based on most subtle of perceptions. It is born
and nurtured in the area of the third eye, the open heart, and
the sensitivity of an ear tuned to mystery.”
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Thomas Moore’s idea of faith is different from the philosopher’s

logic and reasonableness. Yet, faith is a fact of experience. But, can
we say that faith is above and distant from the world? From human
beings? Their joys and sorrows? If so, what use is there of such
faith?
As we reach the end of this piece of writing, we see that
philosophy keeps an open mind, tries to see the truth in the various
aspects of religion from the stand point of reason. The attitude of
the scientists has been ambivalent for centuries. In the West, the
dominant Christian Church has been critical of the findings of
science. Science kept to its path and many scientists went through
persecution. With the growth of science and technology, the tide is
changing. Today, Richard Dawkins, the well-known Professor of
Oxford, could write the popular book, ‘The God Delusion’ and
generate a wave of enthusiasm among the young people. He says,
“To be an atheist is a realistic aspiration and a brave and splendid
one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, morally and
intellectually fulfilled.”
We will later deal with the question of how philosophy looks at
science.
I am an admirer of Will Durant, the great historian and
philosopher. I first read his ‘The Story of Philosophy’ during 1955-56.
The world knows that he spent more than fifty years writing his
eleven volume series, ‘The Story of Civilization’. I was not sure if I
would have an opportunity even to glimpse through that monumental
work. Two years ago, I happened to mention this to a cousin of mine.
After two months of search, he was able to purchase all the volumes
for me. On my birthday, a big box arrived and to my greatest
surprise and delight, I found all the volumes inside the box and it was
a gift to me from my cousin. I do not know if I will be able to give all
the volumes one full reading in this lifetime. From my point of view,
they are simply awesome.
At the age of ninety five, Will Durant wrote a short book of
elegant prose, giving his ideas, briefly, on almost everything
important. Why should he spell out his ideas at that advanced age?
He says, “But in truth, my chief reason for writing – aside from
narcissism implied in all authorship – is that I find myself incapable of
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doing anything else with continuing interest.” The book is ‘Fallen

Leaves’, the last personal work of Will Durant. He has written a
chapter on ‘Our Gods’, parts of which are appealing to my
conscience and I take the liberty to quote them at random, and
close.
“I see many evidences of design in nature and myself, many
indications of the cosmic spirit experimenting to find
adjustment of means and organs to ends and desires; but, I
also see many instances of organs imperfectly adapted to
purposes and functions; and of events that suggest, from a
human point of view, a cruel, instead of a kindly cosmic power
as in that Lisbon Earthquake (1955) which slaughtered
thousands of pious souls worshipping their God in Church.
‘Nature’ obviously cared no more for Spinoza than for the
tubercle bacillus that killed him at the age of forty-four.”
“There is so much suffering in this world and so much of it
apparently undeserved, so much war, destruction, crime,
corruption and savagery, even in religious organizations, that
one finds it hard to believe that all this exists by the permission
of an all-powerful and benevolent deity.”
“Periodically, in history, man’s concept of God changes as
man’s knowledge and moral sense improves; and these
epochal transvaluations can upset not only philosophers and
saints but also whole nations and eras. We live in such an age
when the revelations of science and history have made it
impossible for developed minds to believe in that ‘grim-beard
of a God’ who frightened our forefathers into decency.”
“I know that there are other aspects of reality than this life,
that nature is rich in terrors as much as in beauty and
development; all the more should I have reverence and help
all growing things.”
“Is my God personal? No – and why should it be? Personality
belongs only to a part of the creation, not to the creative force;
personality is spontaneous; a special form of will and
character. The God I worship could not be such a separate
and partial self; it is the sun and source of that universal
vitality, of which our little egos are abstracted fragments and
experimental proliferations.”
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“I am prepared to have you put me down as an atheist, since I

have reluctantly abandoned belief in a personal and loving
God, but I am loathe to leave the word ‘God’ out of my life and
creed. I will respect your definition of deity. Perhaps you will
allow me to have my definition too. I have rejected materialism.
I have accepted mind as the reality most directly known to me,
and I have pictured the world as a scene, not of blind
mechanism, but of striving and creative life. Let me then keep
the word ‘God’ for that inventive vitality, abounding fertility of
nature, the struggle of ‘matter’ to rise from atomic energy to
intelligence, consciousness, informed and deliberate will, to
statesmen, poets, saints, artists, musicians, scientists and
philosophers. Let us have something to worship.”
Perhaps, we may supplement Will Durant’s life-long experience
with another observation of Thomas Moore,
“A life given whole-heartedly to secular claims of beauty and
human need may be the most religious of all. What really
matters the most and what reveals the presence of God is the
emptiness, the open-endedness, the trust and the surrender.”
OM SHANTI! AMEN! WA-SALLAM!
* * * * * * * * * *
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B. DISCUSSION
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The Question of Morality

JULY 16, 2016 9:30 AM TO 1:15 PM

MORALITY” 10:30 AM TO 11:30 AM
A. INTRODUCTION
Every person who has lived through life, looks around him and
comments, almost involuntarily, on the ‘decline of morality’. So it was
in every age! Only that today, the gap between those who think of
morals seriously, and those who do not, seem to have widened
enormously, with the result that the two seem to stand at two
different shores of a vast sea and do not see each other. Some of
us, however, use a less frightening expression, ‘changing morals’,
implying thereby, that in a fast changing society, the morals are not
bound to remain the same. But, if morals are going to change with
every change in society, what is their permanent significance? Are
there no morals of eternal value?
Morals, in etymology and history, derive from customs; morality, in
origin, is adherence to those customs which are considered
essential for the preservation and well-being of the group.
No society can exist without order and no order can be enforced
without regulations. Rules are necessary for the conduct of life.
They may differ in different groups. These rules may be customs,
conventions, morals or laws. Conventions are forms of behaviour
found expedient by people. Customs are conventions accepted by
successive generations, after natural selection through trial, error
and eliminations. Morals are such customs as the group considers
vital to its welfare and development. In primitive societies, where
there was no written law, these vital customs and morals, regulated
every sphere of human existence and gave stability and continuity to
the social order. Through the slow ‘magic of time’, such customs, by
long repetition, became second nature to the individual; if he
violates them, the individual feels a prick of conscience, discomfort
or ‘moral shame’, giving birth to the concept of ‘moral sense’. The
great Charles Darwin described ‘moral sense’ as the most
impressive distinction between man and animals. In its higher
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development, the feeling of moral sense becomes social

consciousness – the feeling of the individual that he belongs to a
society and owes it some sense of loyalty and responsibility.
“Morality is the cooperation of the part with the whole and of each
group with some larger whole. Civilization, of course, would be
impossible without it.” (Will Durant, ‘The Story of Civilization’,
Vol.1)
When we study History, Sociology, Anthropology or Psychology,
we come to know of the enormous differences in the moral codes of
the various communities through the ages. Details are too many and
this is not the place to go into them. An old Greek thinker said, if you
make a heap of all the customs, somewhere considered sacred and
moral, and then take from it all customs somewhere considered
impious and immoral, then nothing will remain – a good way of telling
the fact that customs and morals have been relative to the society in
which they originated and grew in importance.
While moral codes may be relative to particular societies, we
must also go back to the first question we raised about the ‘moral
decline’ or the ‘changing moral sense’. Since this question was
considered pressing and serious in the economically flourishing and
rapidly changing Western society, making possible liberties of all
kinds to the young and the old alike, the philosophers and the
sociologists have sought to highlight the developments that are
continuing to contribute to the situation. Important among the factors
that changed the status of morals, are the replacement of family as
a unit of living, and the father as the moral authority and the
economic leader of the household, thanks to industrialisation, growth
of urban centres, the scattering of jobs far and wide and the onrush
of the youth to the new found jobs that gave them economic freedom
and escape from parental moral authority. The youth, with money in
his hands and a sense of freedom in his heart, became open to his
newly-found life, its challenges and pleasures. Information revolution
has given wide publicity to the idea of indulgence, making it look as
not being immoral as it would in the eyes of the elders. Technology
has vastly extended and de-personalised cruelty and horror, which
certainly would go against all canons of natural morals. Thus,
industrialisation, economic prosperity, and the encouragement of
freedom of all kinds, have played a major role in the moral flux.
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Millions of young people come together in work places and are

experiencing a feeling of moral emancipation which would not have
been possible if they were still under the moral influence of their
parents.
It is interesting to listen to what philosophers talk about morality,
for it is not a subject of today. Society’s moral code is as early as the
society itself. Callicles, of Plato’s ‘Gorgias’, is made to say that
morality is an invention of the weak to chain the strong, a way of
restraining the stronger man within the limits and capabilities of the
mediocre and average. The wise man will maintain a superior
impartiality between ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’. Plato’s ‘Republic’ also
mentions ‘might is right’, that justice is merely the interest of the
stronger, and the ‘just’ is always the loser by comparison. These
views reflect the views of the group of influential philosophers known
as the Sophists. Plato himself had no such view. The problem of
morality in his time was whether it was desirable at all to be ‘good’.
It is here that the philosophers have accorded a high place to
Socrates in the development of moral philosophy. Socrates
believed that the greatest problem of philosophy was to develop a
natural ethic (morals). If one could build a system of morality,
absolutely independent of theological creeds, then individuals could
learn to bind themselves with meaning and purpose into a society. If,
for example, good meant intelligence, and virtue meant wisdom, if
men could be taught to know their real interests, to see afar the
distant results of their deeds, to criticise, and coordinate their
desires out of a mad chaos into a purposive and creative whole, this
perhaps would provide for the educated man, the right morality
which the common people seek in the supernatural sanctions.
Possibly, all this is on account of ignorance, a failure of total vision?
Would not intelligence, spread by the right education, be a virtue
sufficient to maintain all necessary social order?
The old dilemma remains, to inculcate morality through
intelligence and make it social or to find for morality some basis
outside of intelligence and reason. Plato tried the first solution.
Intelligence, he argued, is not merely an intellectual affair. It is
aesthetic and artistic harmony of the elements in a man’s character,
a symmetry or order or proportion in human conduct, and the
highest virtue is not the brilliance of the mind, but the harmony of the
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parts with the whole, whether in the individual or in the society. All
moral concepts revolve around the goodness of the whole. Morality
begins with association and contribution to a ‘wisdom-society’.
Morality requires giving up some part of the individual’s freedom to
maintain the harmony of the whole. Ultimately, the individual
behaviour according to the moral norms is a prime requisite for the
welfare of the society.
Jesus came and spoke of morality as kindness to the poor. The
view that morality was the bravery of the strong was still widespread.
Plato said morality is the effective harmony of the whole. Probably all
these doctrines must be combined to find a perfect code of ethics.
This has not happened. When Christianity spread in the West, the
world was ready for a moral code that would reinforce honesty,
altruism and charity, with hopes and fears about virtue and sin.
But, philosophers have not stopped here. During the centuries of
Christian domination of personal and social life in Europe, they were
beginning to look at the connection between morality and religion. In
the sixteenth century, Francis Bacon said,
“It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to
atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about
to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second
causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no
further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate
and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”
It was Kant who sought to establish the moral basis of religion.
Religion, obviously, cannot be based on science and technology. It
can be based on morals. The moral basis of religion must be
absolute, not derived from sense-experience or influence. It must be
derived in the inner self by direct perception and intuition. We must
find ethics that are universal and necessary. We must show that
moral sense is innate, not derived from experience. The moral
imperative, that we need as the basis, must be absolute, a
categorical imperative.
According to Kant, the most astounding reality in all our
experience is our moral sense, our inescapable feeling in the face of
temptation that, this is, or that is, wrong. We may yield, but the
feeling is there, nevertheless. And, we try again. What is it that
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brings a pang of remorse and the new resolution? It is the

unconditional command of our conscience to act as if our action
becomes ‘a universal law of nature’. We know, not by reasoning, but
by vivid and immediate feelings, that we must avoid behaviour, which
if adopted by men, would render social life impossible. Do I wish to
escape a predicament by a lie? I can lie, but I cannot make lying a
universal law. Therefore, there is always a sense deep in me that I
should not lie, even if it benefits me. To say, for example, that
honesty is the best policy is to limit the immense scope of honesty
which is a sense of moral feeling, to reasoned relativism. The moral
law in our hearts is unconditional and absolute.
To quote Will Durant,
“And our action is good, not because it has good results, or
because it is wise, but because it is done in obedience to this
inner sense of duty; this moral law does not come from
personal experience, but legislates imperiously and a priori for
all our behaviour, past, present and future. The only thing
unqualifiedly good in this world is a good will – the will to follow
the moral law, regardless of profit or loss for ourselves.”
Never mind your happiness; do your duty. “Morality is not
properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how
we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” (Kant).
Let us seek happiness in others, but for ourselves, perfection,
whether it brings us happiness or pain. To achieve perfection in
yourself and happiness in others, “so act as to treat humanity
whether in thine own person or that of another in every case as an
end, never as a means”. (Kant).
Let us live up to such a principle and we shall soon create an
ideal community of rational beings. To create it, we need only to act
as if we already belonged to it. We must apply the perfect law in the
imperfect state. It is hard ethic, you may say, - this placing of duty
above beauty, of morality above happiness, “but only so can we
cease to be beasts and begin to be gods”. (Will Durant).
This innate moral sense has the power of freedom of choice built
into it. We can conceive a notion of duty only if we feel free. This
freedom is not explainable by reason. We prove it directly by feeling
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it in the crisis of moral choice. We feel this freedom as the very

essence of our inner selves. We feel it as the spontaneous activity
of the mind choosing goals, giving meaning to our experience. We
may make laws to explain the experiences of nature. But our ability
to make moral choice is above that. Each of us is a centre of
initiative force, creative power and possessed of innate wisdom to
make the moral choice. The power is ours.
In a drama or cinema, Kant says, vice may be punished and
virtue rewarded. Not so in real life. Numerous thieves walk away with
the prize. And yet, knowing all this, facing the brutal repetitiveness of
the vice, we still feel the command to righteousness, we know that
we ought to do the inexpedient good. How could this sense of good
survive if it were not there in our hearts? We feel our life to be a part
of an overall existence, this earthly dream only an embryonic
prelude to a new birth, a new awakening, that in some later life all
the balances will be set right, and a cup of water generously given
will be returned a hundred fold. That is a foundation for the good in
this life.
And, for Kant, this innate moral sense of duty justifies the
existence of God. However, our reason does tell us that behind all
things, there is a just God; our moral sense commands us to believe
it. Rousseau was right; above the logic of the head is the feeling in
the heart. Pascal was also right; the heart has reasons of its own
that the head can never understand.
I am grateful to Will Durant, the writer. No one else could have
summarised Kant as succinctly and beautifully as he has done. In
arguing for ‘going-beyond-reason’ philosophy, Kant is close to my
own heart. It is good to know that philosophy is not an arid desert,
and that it too can feel the power of the spirit. Our own religious
debaters may like to take note of their heart sounds.
But, this innate moral sense is also subject to question. Today,
our ethical notions are quite confused. The principles which we
apply in our actual lives are quite often very different from what we
study in the books or what we learn from the religious or spiritual
masters. While our personal moral sense is in favour of peace,
friendship or kindness, we are confronted by the actions of others
who behave totally differently. Either they do not have the innate
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moral sense as we, or do not care for it and give precedence to their
private interests. We preach peace, obviously from the depth of our
hearts. Many do not believe in it and carry on wars on racial,
religious and national issues. A militant group, or nation, may exalt
certain virtues and carry on what others might consider as crimes. A
patriotic or committed member of a militant society will consider
bravery and killing as the highest virtues. In times, when evil men call
it bravery to kill innocent people on land, sea and air, should the
weak, the injured or the affected, accept death and disaster in
humility and weakness? Whatever be the moral sense, the absence
of a global reaction to violence can never be explained in terms of
morality, either of the sufferers or of the perpetrators. However, one
does not observe any great abundance of humility in our modern
conditions. Morality is thrown to the winds either way.
‘Virtue’ continues to be a challenge for the philosophers. They
like to call it ‘virtue ethic’. Rather than looking at action, and asking if
it is right or wrong, start by asking the basic question, ‘what does it
mean to be a good person?’ and develop this to explore the qualities
and virtues that make up the ‘good person’. This is said to be more
‘naturalistic’ since it moves away from the idea of obeying the rules,
to an appreciation of how one might express one’s fundamental
nature and thus fulfil one’s potential as a human being.
The position in philosophy regarding morality, brought out so far,
that the philosophers have no single view on a subject so important
to man’s place in society, may be disappointing. Religion, tradition,
custom, social moves, conscience and God have been said to have
a role in defining and amplifying the ingredients of morality.
Philosophers have chosen to emphasise one aspect or the other
and their own thinking, without doubt, must have been influenced by
the special nature of the circumstances, to which they are prone.
One can then appreciate the empirical nature of the philosophic
thought surrounding morality. Let us also admit that when
philosophers debate, they are very much concerned with the
question of whether there are universal moral truths, whether
morality is simply an expression of emotions or cultural customs. So,
they discuss whether morality relates only to particular situations, or
is comprised in the whole human nature and how ‘moral values’ can
fit into the scientific concept of the world.
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To paraphrase what we have said before,

1. Morality is a matter of duty. Duties are understood in terms of
particular actions that we do or refrain from doing. Actions are
understood in terms of intentions. The view is that we should
judge whether the action is right or wrong by the action’s
intentions. However, in practice, it may be difficult to know what
the real intention is.
2. Moral principles can be derived from practical reason alone.
They will be universal and consist of a set of rules that will be
the same for everyone. Everyone can act morally or
transgress the rules. Morality and rationality are categorical
and do not change, because we want things to happen one
way or the other. Choice is an important tool here. The ability
to make free and rational choice gives human beings dignity.
3. One reason for believing that certain types of actions are right
or wrong in themselves, is because God wills it and has
commanded us to do or not do. How does God make His will
known? Through His prophets and sages? If so, how do we
presume that what they say is what God has commanded
them to say? There can be many slips between what God
says and what the prophets and sages say. This also raises
the question of belief and faith in the Word. Believers simply
accept the texts as transmitted Word of God and take the
moral precepts and try to act according to them. Non-believers
will not easily accept such words without a stronger evidence
of such divine elements. For many, however, belief in God has
been a high source of moral incentive. Sometimes, the motive
is altruistic, being the love of the deity; or respect for a saint;
or the love of other human beings on the ground that they too
are children of God. More frequently, the adherence to moral
principles is on account of the fear of punishment from God,
or a reward from God. If there was no divine injunction behind
the moral principles, the feeling was that men are not capable
of behaving decently. This led Voltaire to say that if God did
not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Sir A.J. Ayer
discounts all these factors that make for the observance or
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disregard of morality as mainly psychological and social and

that religious belief has a smaller influence either way than is
commonly supposed.
When morality is made to depend on God, the presumption is
that morality needs an ulterior justification. It is also presumed that
God can supply such a justification. But many philosophers do not
accept that morals can be founded on any divine authority.
According to them, moral standards cannot be justified by an appeal
to authority, either human or divine. There has to be the additional
premise that the person, whose dictates we are to follow, is good, or
that what he commands is right. This also calls for implicit
obedience, which could be dangerous. This does not mean we
cannot look for guidance in conduct to those whom we judge to be
better or wiser or more experienced than ourselves. To a greater or
lesser extent, we do take our morals on trust, but in so doing we are
taking a moral decision ourselves. We are at least implicitly judging
that the moral code which we have been brought up to respect, or
the instructions of our mentors, are morally right. In the end, as Sir
Ayer would put it, “It is a matter of finding principles which one is
prepared to stand by, and when they conflict, as for most of us they
sometimes will, of giving more weight to one or another, according to
the circumstances of the particular case.”
This may be a long and rambling examination of morality from the
philosopher’s point of view. This cannot be helped, the reason
being, as we know from experience, a variety of factors have
influenced man’s thinking on morality and the practice of morality. It
is easy to take a stand on one moral attitude or the other, but unless
our own conscience or intuition has seen the truth, our moral
attitude will be subject to fluctuations and eventually we may give up
ideas of morality in human transactions and respond entirely on the
basis of our whims and fancies, or on an ad hoc basis, which does
not help to build up our character. If everyone does the same, there
will be chaos.
The frightening speed with which science and technology are
thrusting new knowledge and new ways of life upon mankind is
placing the individual at great peril from the point of view of his
mental and emotional stability. The fear of isolation, of competition,
the loss of parental love and understanding, the many conflicts in
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family life owing to various complexes, - all these and many more
difficult situations are driving the individuals to an ad hoc,
purposeless life - a life of misery, even though the individual may not
realise it, and making him resort to seeking temporary havens of
pleasure as the be-all and end-all of life.
The words ‘morality’ and ‘immorality’ are in a flux; no one seems
to know just what they should mean. Old moorings have gone; new
moorings are yet to emerge. How ‘morality’ should be redefined in
this fast changing world, is our biggest concern.
Let us ask the questions just as Will Durant does,
“We stand between the two worlds, one dead, the other hardly
born; and our fate is chaos for a generation. We are like
Socrates and Confucius, conscious that the morality of
restraint and fear has lost its hold upon men. Those of us who
have children are faced by a thousand questions in morals
and psychology, in which our old answers will not serve. We
are compelled, despite ourselves, to be philosophers, to
scrutinize our assumptions and our habits, to build for
ourselves a system of life and thought that shall be consistent
with the experience and demands of our times. We stand
before the stars, almost naked of supernatural creed and
transmitted moral code; everything has to be rebuilt, even as if
we had been cast into the wilderness and forced to begin
civilization anew.”
“Where shall we find a moral code that shall accord with the
changed conditions of our lives and yet lift us up as the old
codes lifted men, to gentleness, decency, modesty, nobility,
honour, chivalry and love? Or to new virtues as beneficent as
these? How shall we remake the moral basis of the Great
Society?”
* * * * * * * * * *
B. DISCUSSION
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The Question of Science

JULY 16, 2016 9:30 AM TO 1:15 PM

SCIENCE” 11:30 AM TO 12:30 PM
A. INTRODUCTION
Science is an attempt to understand the universe and humanity’s
relationship with nature. The scientific spirit and achievements of
today have made it appear that science is something new,
something special and only a few talented brains could think
scientifically. This is not wholly true. When the primitive man
fashioned tools to kill animals for food, he was using his brains along
strictly rational and scientific lines. When he later formed settled
communities, he used his knowledge of the wild crops as they grew
and used his brains to systematically analyse how they grow and
began planting crops for food. There was science in all these, but it
was a matter of putting general knowledge into specific practices. It
had a basic understanding of the ways of nature and gave the
human brain an opportunity to work out the cause and effect
sequence by a process of logic and reason. It was still primitive.
Around the fifth century, pure science was still a handmaid of
philosophy, and was studied and developed by men who were
philosophers rather than scientists. To the Greeks, higher
mathematics was an instrument, not of practice but of logic, directed
less to the conquest of the physical environment than to the
intellectual construction of an abstract world.
People have always wondered about the mystery of creation.
How did the universe come into being? Why does the universe exist?
How is it that we have a sense of wonder to question these things?
For thousands of years, such questions belonged to the province of
philosophers and theologians. Even when the foundations of
modern science were laid four or five centuries ago, it was accepted
that such questions were outside the province of science. Newton,
for example, sought to explain the behaviour of things within the
universe, as it exists. He did not explain how and why the universe
came into existence in the first place. These were areas for the
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philosophers. But, today, science is encroaching into the territory of

the philosophers. Modern physics is on track with answers to the
ultimate questions, the nature of reality, the nature of life and the
origin of the entire universe.
Has science become philosophy or has philosophy become
science? The distinction between the two has become blurred, since
the philosophical study now being pursued by physics is the deepest
and most profound of all studies, metaphysics, which dates back to
Aristotle in Greece more than two thousand years ago.
Metaphysics was called the ‘study of being as such’. Philosophers
have regarded it as the most fundamental science, a search for a
comprehensive understanding of reality as a whole. Metaphysics, for
example, looks at a tree, and wonders whether it has a real
existence. No jokes! Modern discoveries in physics have led to the
conclusion that at the fundamental level of sub-atomic particles,
such as electrons and protons, things really do not have any ‘real’
existence, when they are not monitored. My idea of the ‘tree’ grows
out of my sense impressions of the object. These impressions are
transmitted to the brain which interprets the impressions. All my
knowledge of the ‘tree’ is through the sense impressions, modulated
by the brain. Which is more real, the sense impressions or the tree?
Such was the kind of questions which the philosophers debated for
many centuries. You will be surprised to know that very similar
questions, metaphysical in nature, were raised by the scientists
concerning the ‘reality’ of sub-atomic particles at the beginning of
the twentieth century. For centuries, philosophers have
contemplated on the nature of the universe, time and space, and the
reality of everything. The scientists have also thought over such
issues and proceeded ahead, with tools of logic, to plunge into the
reality, first to understand the laws of its behaviour and then to see if
they can be used for practical purposes. And then, the scientists, of
course, will know that the scientific method, the logic, the syllogism,
deduction, induction, and hypothesis, are the contributions of
Aristotle, in the West at least.
If we look at the Indian picture of early science, we find that
sciences that contributed to religion were cultivated first. Astronomy
grew out of the worship of heavenly bodies and the observations of
their movements, aimed to fix the calendar for rituals and festivals.
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Grammar and philology developed out of the requirement that every

prayer and formula for rituals should be textually and phonetically
correct. Astronomy and astrology were closely aligned. Noted
astronomers like Aryabhatta accurately formulated the course of the
planets, the rotation of the earth and even anticipated the law of
gravity. The great scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace acknowledged,
“It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all
numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a
value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and
important idea which appears so simple to us now, that we
ignore its true merit.”
By general consensus, ‘zero’ was from India and the most modest
and most valuable of all numerals is one of the subtle gifts of India to
mankind.
Kanada, the founder of Vaisheshika philosophy, declared that
the world was composed of atoms, as many in kind as the various
elements. There are plenty of other original contributions by sages,
in algebra, medicine, surgery, the decimal system, and those sages
were philosophers as well. Pythagoras, Plato and other Greek
thinkers, appear to have been influenced by the metaphysics of the
Indian sages. Gautama’s Nyaya Sutras describes the rules of
arguments, exposes the tricks of controversy and lists the common
fallacies of thought. He seeks the structure of reasoning in syllogism;
all are relevant to both the philosophers and scientists alike.
The Western society, with its abundant resources, development
of science, education on a vast scale, encouragement of the study
of the fundamental sciences, enormous amount being spent on
research, and above all, the zealous programmes to turn the
findings of science into technological inventions, that is said to help
lead better material lives, has stolen an impressive march over other
societies, even though the history of such a revolution started hardly
about five centuries ago.
Not only have the scientists gone on to discoveries and findings
using conventional scientific methods, but they have also
demonstrated intuitional ‘leaps’, that are as profound as the early
philosopher’s speculations. Albert Einstein’s theories are one such
example.
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Some of the other examples could be,

• In 1981, Cambridge biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposed
that the form and natural intelligence of animals, and even
human beings, is moulded and influenced by a new type of
field, that is able to communicate across both space and time;
• The same year, David Bohm, a theoretical physicist at the

University of London, proposed that the working of the sub-
atomic particles would make sense only if we assume the
existence of other and more complex dimensions beyond our
own;
• In 1980, Sir Fred Hoyle, the leading theoretical astronomer,

proposed that within the laws of physics, there is not only
mathematical evidence that the universe was designed by
some sort of cosmic intelligence, but that the intelligence is
unfathomably old, billons of years older than the known
universe;
• And in 1984, Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist, Sir John
Eccles, announced the discovery of what he believes to be
the bio-chemical evidence supporting the existence of the
human soul.
And then, scientists are agog with excitement that we are close to
understanding nature, that we are just about to understand all there
is about the forces that brought both the universe and life as we
know it, into being.
Now, the scientists have been seriously attempting to find the
location of ‘consciousness’. Centuries ago, Descartes, the great
philosopher, said that though the brain and the consciousness are
clearly related, mind, and all things mental, constitute a world apart
from the physical matter and work according to their own systems
and dynamic laws, a belief known as ‘dualism’. But, with the
development of psychology, study of mental states and interest in
artificial intelligence, dualism is losing ground. Such occurrences like
out-of-body experiences, and the para-normal experiences, are
bringing to notice that different parts of the brain may be involved,
but such things can be understood only through a ‘holistic’
approach. Still the mystery remains. On the one hand, it seems that
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mind or consciousness must be physical, if it is to have any causal

effect in the world. On the other hand, some experiments have
shown that facts about our conscious (or mental) experiences, are
over and above the physical facts. This is the mystery with which
both the philosophers and the scientists continue to struggle.
There is yet another striking view of an eminent scientist, Ilya
Prigogine, which also parallels the speculation of the philosophers.
In his book, ‘Order Out of Chaos’, published along with the chemist
Isabelle Stengers, Prigogine offers what he feels is the
inescapable conclusion - biological life, instead of being a pocket of
strangeness gazing out at a sterile universe, is embedded in a living
universe. That is, we are not different in kind from the sand beneath
our feet and the cloud over our heads. We are cut from the same
cloth, and everywhere, in every corner of its fabric, the cloth is
involved in the dance. As Prigogine puts it, “This is the heart of the
message. Matter is not inert. It is alive and active.”
Scientists are impressed with this categorical view, and are
seeking to find the organising capacity of matter and life in the
universe. This should warm the hearts of the philosophers, because
they would like to see harmony, and not chaos, in nature, since truth
at its best is the harmonious blending of opposing principles.
Philosophers discuss the existence of God, arguing by reason
and logic. When the vast canvas of the universe unfold in their
minds, and when they see order and regularity, with or without
scientific explanation, they try to picture a designer, or a first
principle, that is prelude to all subsequent organisation of energy.
The scientists too, with exceptions, are excited to see a superior
energy behind all cosmic panorama. In1983, Paul Davies, in his
book, argued that science has reached a point where it is hard to
resist the impression that the present structure of our universe,
apparently so sensitive to minor alterations, has been rather
carefully thought out. Paul Davies concluded that one possible
explanation is that the existence of many coincidences might be
attributed to God. Davies also adds an additional intriguing and
fascinating picture. He thinks that the mind is a software element in
the universe and we can imagine an overall consciousness, a
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super-mind, existing since creation, encompassing all the

fundamental fields of nature and taking upon it the task of ordering
the laws of physics. Paul Davies states,
“This would not be a God who created everything by
supernatural means, but a directing, controlling, universal
mind pervading the cosmos, operating the laws of nature, to
achieve some specific purpose. We could describe this state
of affairs by saying that nature is a product of its own
technology and the universe is a mind; a self-observing as well
as self-organising system. Our own mind could then be viewed
as localized ‘islands’ of consciousness in a sea of mind, an
idea that is reminiscent of the Oriental conception of
mysticism.”
Davies also says,
“One can envisage creatures whose capabilities are so great,
we could not distinguish their activities from nature itself. This
hierarchy would involve a supreme being, possessing the
greatest power and intelligence. Such a being would fulfil
many of the traditional requirements of God.”
Another eminent scientist, Sir Fred Hoyle, in 1984, boldly
asserted that scientific evidence indicates that the universe is
governed by some sort of inter-locking hierarchy of intelligence. He
thinks it is improbable that the creation of biological life on earth was
the result of a purely random sequence of events. Sir Fred says that
there seems to be a universal religious impulse or spiritual drive in
humanity that has, in the era of intellectual enlightenment, come to
be viewed as an archaic remnant. However, it is this religious
impulse that has created monuments, literature, civilisation, culture
and tradition, that continues to give stability to humanity. This
religious impulse may be an awareness of our awareness to the
connections to this hierarchy of intelligence. Perhaps our religious
impulse is a little more than the simple encoded message in each of
us, “You are derived from something out there. Seek it and you shall
find much more than you expect.”
In a path-breaking work, ‘Science, Order and Creativity’,
David Bohm, who propounded the theory of the Implicate Order,
says,
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“But with the coming of the modern era, science began to

make the religious worldview appear implausible to many
people. Today, in both East and West, religion has, by and
large, ceased to be the principle source of ultimate meaning in
life. Yet, science, for its part, has been unable to take its place
in this regard.”
“If there is to be a new creative surge, it seems clear that it
must bring in all the basic dimensions; the individual, the
socio-cultural and the cosmic. Indeed, with the loss of contact
with nature and the general decrease in the importance of
religion, the civilized world is approaching a state in which it
has little sense of contact with the totality. It is therefore in
danger of losing contact with key cosmic dimensions, just at a
time when it needs it more than ever, because, both the
individual and the society are overwhelmed with destructive
misinformation.”
David Bohm calls for a new order of creativity in science, art and
religion and goes into the question in some detail in his book.
From the various accounts of the contemplative approach of
leading scientists, we may see that they intuitively become
philosophers when they are anxious to move from the particular to
the general. But, they do not, by the same token, swear by their
thinking. They want their approach to be tested, following the
procedures of science, in order to arrive at findings which can be
accepted as truth.
The philosophers know that the entire universe is also available
to them for their voyage to seek the truth; they too use reason and
logic. In fact, they were the originators of the logical mode of arriving
at the truth. The mark of the philosophical mind is its breadth of
vision and unity of thought. The sciences are the windows through
which philosophy sees the world. “They are senses of which it is the
soul.” Without it, knowledge can be as helpless as the many
sensations that come to a disordered mind. Spencer, the
philosopher, said, philosophy is the most generalised knowledge; it
seeks a difficult and elevated view in which mere knowledge is
elevated to a total vision that orders and clarifies desires. Its
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hallmark is the strange quality of wisdom. But, wisdom draws on the

basis of knowledge built with observation and research, the
handiwork of impartial minds. Without science, philosophy may
become avid scholasticism. Without philosophy, science can become
dangerous and destructive. Science seems to be always advancing.
Philosophy deals with the hard task of dealing with problems, not yet
open to science, problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness,
order and freedom, life and death. When a field of inquiry yields
knowledge, susceptible to formation, it becomes science. Every
science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis
and flows into achievement. Philosophy is the hypothetical
interpretation of the unknown or insufficiently known. “Philosophy is
the front trench in the siege of truth; science is the captured
territory.” And, behind are those secure regions in which knowledge
and art build an imperfect and marvellous world.
Science is analytical description; philosophy is synthetic
interpretation. Science wants to resolve the whole into parts, the
organism into organs, the obscure into known. It does not inquire
into the values and the ideal possibilities of things, or into their total
and final significance. It is content to show their present actuality and
operation. It narrows its gaze, resolutely, to nature, and processes
things as they are. But, the philosopher is not content to describe
the facts. He wishes to ascertain its relation to experience in general
and thereby to get at its meaning and worth. He combines things in
interpretative synthesis. Science tells us how to heal and how to kill;
how to make an atom bomb or how to generate electricity from
atomic energy. Science reduces death rate in retail and then kills
wholesale in war. But, only wisdom, desires coordinated in the light
of experience, can tell us when to heal and when to kill. Shorn of this
wisdom, if men want to kill people without rhyme or reason, science
can help to manufacture deadly arms at least expense, with the
latest technology. Science may not tell us whether civilisations
should be destroyed, even though individual scientists will have their
qualms of conscience.
“Whether life is sweetest when engrossed in acquisition and
possessed with possessions, or when it is involved in creation and
construction; or whether it is better to seek knowledge and
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disillusionment, or the passing ecstasy of beauty; whether we should

try to forgo all supernatural sanctions in our mind from the stand
point of matter, what science shall answer us here? How shall these
ultimate choices of our lives be clarified except by the light of our
whole experience, by that wisdom to which knowledge in a mere raw
material, in which all the wealth of all the sciences find place and
order and a guiding significance?” Such is the wisdom of the
philosopher-historian, Will Durant.
It is true that philosophy is more hypothetical than science.
Science does use hypothesis, but, as a starting point. It must result
in verifiable knowledge that can be tested and proved by anybody
equipped with the same scientific tools. “Science is a committee on
ways and means; philosophy is a committee on resolutions and
programmes.” Facts and instrumentalities have worth and meaning
only in relation to desire and expectation. Desires themselves must
be consistent, an ordered part of an integrated personality and to
establish this is the task of philosophy. To observe processes and
construct means is science; to criticise and coordinate ends is
philosophy. Today, our means, instruments and inventions have
multiplied and our ability to synthesise ideals and ends is lagging
behind. Our life is now full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and values,
cannot save us from disaster and despair. Science can give us
knowledge; philosophy alone can give us wisdom. Perhaps, if we
want stability of mind and soul, we shall have to seek it less in
science than in philosophy.
We need more knowledge. But, we need something more than
knowledge. We need wisdom and character to use our knowledge
with foresight and caution, with resolution and restraint. Character is
a rational harmony and hierarchy of desires in coordination with
capacity. What is wisdom? It is the application of experience to
present problems, a view of the part in the light of the whole, a
perspective of the moment in the vista of the years past and the
years to come. Man has committed many blunders in the past, but,
he has created civilisation and bred creatures. We now have to
harness our knowledge to wisdom, our science to conscience, our
power to humane purpose. What will do that? Religion?
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While science and philosophy are managing to pull on together,

understanding each other, albeit cautiously, the same cannot be
said of the relationship between science and religion. When science
began to sow its seeds in the minds of men, they too started looking
away from organised religion, at least in the West, and that invited
the wrath of the Church, which lost no time in declaring the men of
such temperament, who questioned the claims of religion on the
basis of its facts, as heretics, and dealt with them harshly.
Science reacted sharply and massacred all conceivable
arguments against the mystics and superstitions of religion. Religion
would not budge and carried the war into the enemy camp fairly
successfully because religion appealed to the hearts of men,
whereas science confronted the minds of men and it was a question
of comparative receptive power.
The West was mainly the stage for the grand drama of the mind
versus the heart. In the East, religion had penetrated into the
personal and social behaviour for a much longer period and had
shaped the tradition and culture of the people to an extent that
western ideas of the scientific attitude and behaviour were slower to
penetrate, until recently.
However, in the West, the scientists were not totally atheistic or
religion-less. Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist of our age,
said he had proof of God’s existence. The internal gravity of all
celestial bodies had not pulled together into a huge spherical mass
because, he said, they had been carefully dispersed throughout the
universe, with sufficient distance between them to prevent a
collapse. This would have been impossible without a Divine
Overseer! Newton said, “Gravity may have put the planets in motion
but without divine power, it would never have put them in such
circular motion.”
He even went on to describe God’s attributes. “The most
beautiful system - sun, planets, comets, could only proceed from the
counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. He is
eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient. He governs all
things and knows all things that are and can be done. We admire
him for his perfection, but we revere and adore Him on account of
His dominion.”
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Scholars tell us that Newton laid the foundation for God, not on
the basis of religious tradition, but on the basis of insight and
contemplation. That was a new development.
After Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of
the recent era, expressed a sense of wonder and mystery at what he
had seen. His was not plain God-worship, however. He described his
religious feeling as one of “rapturous amazement at the harmony of
the natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority,
that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of
human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
On another occasion, Einstein said,
“The most beautiful thing that we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. To
know that what is impenetrable really exists, manifesting itself
as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our
dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive
forms, this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true
religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to
the ranks of the devoutly religious men.”
Many people who knew Einstein personally claimed that he was
the most religious person they ever met. But Einstein was not
religious in any denominational sense. He said that many times and
in many ways.
“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable,
superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are
able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply
emotional conviction of the presence of the superior reasoning
power which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe,
forms my idea of God.”
Towards the end of his life, he said with feeling, “In their struggle
for the ethical, good teachers of religion must have the stature to
give up the doctrine of a personal God.”
Einstein was a great scientist. He was a profound and good
man, a very superior human being. He said, “The true value of a
human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense
in which he has attained liberation from the self.”
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Einstein wrote a remarkable essay on Religion and Science,

which is worth reproducing here.
“Instead of asking what religion is, I should ask what
characterizes the aspirations of the person who gives the
impression of being religious. A person who is religiously
enlightened appears to me to be one, who has, to the best of
his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish
desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and
aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonal
value. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this
superpersonal content and the depth of the conviction
concerning its overpowering meaningfulness, regardless of
any attempt made to unite this content with a divine Being, for
otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and
Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly, a religious
person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt about the
significance and loftiness of those superpersonal objects and
goals, which neither require nor are capable of rational
foundation. They exist with the same necessity and matter-of-
factness as he himself.”
Note that Einstein does not use the word God. But he manifests
immense godliness that is born of lofty experience. His mysticism
encompasses both his views on religion and his scientific
temperament. This is a rare combination. His simple humility and
deep conviction are ample testimony to his philosophical mind.
When we read more about science on a broader level, we cannot
escape philosophy and a mystical world-view bordering on religion.
Fritjof Capra, the eminent physicist and the author of the
famous, ‘The Tao of Physics’ has this to say,
“The parallel between modern physics and Eastern mysticism
are most striking and we shall often encounter statements,
where it is almost impossible to say whether they have been
made up by physics or Eastern mysticism.”
“When I refer to Eastern mysticism, I mean the religious
philosophers of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.....that
modern physics leads us to a view of the world which is very
similar to the view held by the mystics of all ages and
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traditions....the parallels to modern physics appear not only in

the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist
sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of
Ibn Arabi or in the teachings of Don Juan.”
Dr. Francis S. Collins, a leading scientist and a geneticist, is the
leader of the International Genome Project and coordinated the work
of thousands of scientists in six countries. He was an agnostic to
start with, then he became an atheist, and when he saw the power of
religious faith, he began to change. In his important book, ‘The
Language of God’, he presents reasons why belief in God is the
most natural thing that can happen to a human being. He says that
spiritual belief is more prevalent among scientists than many realise.
Dr. Collins says,
“In this modern era of cosmology, evolution and human
genome, is there still a possibility of a richly satisfying
harmony between the scientific and the spiritual world views? I
answer with a resounding yes. In my view, there is no conflict
between being a rigorous scientist and a person who believes
in a God who takes a personal interest in each one of us.
Science’s main domain is to explore nature. God’s domain is in
the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the
tools and the language of science. It must be examined with
the mind, the heart and the soul. And the mind must find a way
to embrace both the realms.”
Dr. Collins further says,
“It became clear to me that science, despite its
unquestionable powers in unravelling the mystery of the
natural world, would get me no further in resolving the
question of God. If God exists, then he must be outside the
natural world, and therefore the tools of science are not the
right ones to learn about Him. Instead, as I was beginning to
understand from looking into my own heart, I found that the
evidence of God’s existence must come from other directions
and the ultimate decision would be based on faith, not proof.”
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“There is joy and peace to be found in the laboratory of God’s

creation. My prayer for our hurting world is that we should get
together with love, understanding and compassion and seek
and find that kind of wisdom.”
I will refer to one more scientist, Dr. Mani Bhaumik, a top-
ranking physicist of U.S.A., and co-inventor of Laser technology. A
very rich man, he found a spot in the Lifestyles of the Rich and the
Famous. He wrote the best-selling book, ‘Code Name God’. He
says,
“I am a scientist first and scientists are very sceptical
creatures. I had to do a lot of questioning before I was able to
reconcile the two aspects of my nature.”
“The more we learn the clearer it becomes that the precepts
of mysticism differ from those of modern physics mostly in
language and methodology. Could it be that the common
experience of the mystics has an analogy to the unbroken
wholeness of the quantum physicist?”
“Now, I believe, that for the first time in human history, we have
remarkable support from science for one source of religion.”
For centuries, philosophers have been arguing about the
existence of God, seeking proof through reason and logic. Religion
steps in and claims that this is a matter of its exclusive jurisdiction
and religious experience is of a different category altogether.
Science studies nature in all its details, using language and
instruments of its own, and generally, is not concerned with God or
religion. From the observations of a few leaders of science, we see
that they accept the possibility of the mystical experience of a power
that is, probably, the foundation of all that goes on in the universe.
But, you hear a powerful dissenting voice. And that is from the
eminent scientist Richard Dawkins, who has launched a virulent
attack in his best seller, ‘The God Delusion’, where he seeks to
demolish all claims about the existence of God. He is on even
stronger ground when he attacks the dogmas and theories of all
religions. He doubts the veracity of the religious person’s proof of
God on the basis of personal and subjective experience. The way he
disposes of the claims of ‘personal experience’ is a striking example
of how he deals with the subject.
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“Many people believe in God because they believe that they

have seen a vision of Him with their own eyes. Or He speaks
to them inside their heads. The argument from personal
experience is most convincing to those who claim to have had
one. But it is least convincing to anyone else, anyone
knowledgeable about psychology.”
“You say you have experienced God directly? Well, some
people have experienced a pink elephant. Pete Sutcliffe, the
Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him
to kill women and he was locked up for life. George W. Bush
says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity that God did not
vouchsafe for him - a revelation that there were no weapons of
mass destruction). Individuals in asylums think they are
Napoleon or Charles Chaplin, or that the entire world is
conspiring against them or that they can broadcast their
thoughts through other people’s heads. We humour them, but
don’t take their internally revealed beliefs seriously, mostly
because, not many people share them. Religious experiences
are different only in that people who claim them are
numerous.”
Richard Dawkins quotes approvingly of Sam Harris, author of
the book, ‘End of Faith’,
“The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal
human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider
them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught
that religious propositions need not be justified in a way that
all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the
preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over
ancient literatures. Who would have thought that so tragically
absurd a world would be possible?”
Dawkin’s ‘God Delusion’ goes on to demolish every religious
argument in favour of the existence of God. The brilliant faculties of
Dawkins are at full play. He is passionate about what he says and is
entitled to respect. Science and scientific methods are his passion.
At the same time, we know that when a person allows himself to be
overwhelmed with passion about something, he may not necessarily
see the truth of the same thing. While we admit that Dawkins’ best
brain faculties are at display, we may remember that the best brains
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in the world today still use an insignificant fraction of the brain’s

potential. We can still think that as more and more of it is used, the
human brain may explode into a totally new pathway, an extra-
scientific pathway, where an unknown can become known through
ordinary perception. Is it impossible?
Religion does not lag behind in its counter attack. To put all the
arguments in one place is difficult, but Dan Brown, in his celebrated
novel, ‘Angels and Demons’ does this most impressively through
his character, a Vatican priest, said to be close to his people. In the
novel, this priest marshals all arguments against science and
addresses all scientists and followers in the world in front of the
television camera. The exposition is long, but powerful and gripping,
and I have chosen to extract them fully for its provocative content.
“Medicine, electronic communication, space travel, genetic
manipulation....these are the miracles about which we now tell
our children. These are miracles that we herald as proof that
science will bring us answers. The ancient stories of
immaculate conceptions, burning bushes or parting seas are
no longer relevant. God has become obsolete. Science has
won the battle, we concede....”
“But, science’s victory has cost every one of us and it has cost
us dearly.”
“Science may have alleviated the miseries of disease and
drudgery and provided an army of gadgetry for our
entertainment and convenience, but it has left us in a world
without wonder. Our sunsets have been reduced to waves and
frequencies. The complexities of the universe have been
shredded into mathematical equations. Even our self-worth as
human beings has been destroyed. Science proclaims that
Planet Earth and its inhabitants are a meaningless speck in
the grand scheme. A cosmic accident...Even the technology
that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now
electronically connected to the globe and yet we feel utterly
alone. We are bombarded with violence, friction, fracture and
betrayal. Scepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and
demand for proof have become enlightened thought. Is it any
wonder that humans feel more depressed and defeated than
they have at any time in human history? Does science hold
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anything sacred? Science looks for answers by probing our

unborn foetuses. Science even presumes to rearrange our
DNA. It shatters God’s world into smaller and smaller pieces in
quest for meaning and all it finds is more questions.....”
“The ancient war between science and religion is over. You
have won, but you have not won fairly. You have not won by
providing the answers. You have won by so radically
reorienting our society, that the truths that we once saw as
signposts now seem inapplicable. Religion cannot keep up.
Scientific growth is exponential. It feeds on itself like a virus.
Every new breakthrough opens the doors for more
breakthroughs. Mankind took thousands of years from the
wheel to the car. Yet, only decades from the car into space.
Now, we measure scientific progress in weeks. We are
spinning out of control. The rift between us grows deeper and
deeper, and as religion is left behind, people find themselves
in a spiritual void. We see UFOs, engage in channeling, spirit
contact, out-of-body experiences, mindquests - all these
eccentric ideas have a scientific veneer, but they are
unashamedly irrational. They are the desperate cry of the
modern soul, lonely and tormented, crippled by its own
enlightenment, and its inability to accept meaning in anything
removed from technology.”
“Science, you say, will save us. Science, I say, has destroyed
us. From the days of Galileo, the Church has tried to slow the
relentless march of science. I warn you. Look around
yourselves. The promises of science have not been kept.
Promises of efficiency and simplicity have bred nothing but
pollution and chaos. We are a fractured and frantic species
moving towards destruction.”
“Who is this God science? Who is the God who offers his
people power but no moral fragment to tell you how to use that
power? What kind of God gives the child the fire but does not
tell it how to use it? Or warn it of its dangers? The language of
science comes with no signpost about good and bad. Science
tells us how to create a nuclear reaction but does not tell us if
it is a good or bad idea...”
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“To science, I say this. We ask not why you will not learn to
govern yourselves. But, how can you? You would move so fast
that if you stop even for an instant to consider the implications
of your actions, someone more efficient will whip past you in a
blur. So you move on. You proliferate weapons of mass
destruction. Someone else has to tell you to exercise restraint.
Who among the living creatures, who is there to tell you the
moral implications of your actions?”
“You speak lightly of the ignorance of the religious leaders.
But, who is more ignorant? Show me the proof there is God,
you say. I say, use your telescope and look at the heavens
and tell me why there could not be a God? You ask what God
looks like. I say, where did the questions come from? The
answers are one and the same. Do you not see God in your
science? How can you miss Him? You proclaim that even the
slightest change in the force of gravity or the weight of an
atom would have reduced the universe to a lifeless mist rather
than our magnificent sea of heavenly bodies and yet you fail
to see God’s hand in this?”
“Whether or not you believe in God, you must believe this –
when we as a species abandon our trust in a power greater
than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faith, all
faiths, are admonitions that we cannot understand and
something to which we are accountable. We are accountable
to each other, to ourselves and to a higher truth. Religion is
flawed, but only because man is flawed.”
“We are perched on a precipice. None of us can afford to be
apartheids. Wherever you see evil, Satan, corruption,
immorality, the dark force is alive and growing everyday. Do
not ignore it. The force, though mighty, is not invincible.
Goodness can prevail. Listen to your hearts. Listen to God.
Together we can step back from this abyss.”
Sitting in the vast arena of this mighty debate, I watch with
wonder how religion seeks to answer back with powerful honesty. I
know science listens, smiles and replies gently that it is for you, the
religious people, the philosophers, the thinkers, the intellectuals and
the statesman of all nations, to think about and solve your own
problems. The spirit of scientific enquiry cannot be scuttled. But is
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this the correct way of looking at things? The scientist, too, has a
moral conscience. But, when and how will it come to play, if humanity
is to be saved from recurring crisis?
Meanwhile, we will continue to breathe air, drink water, and eat
food, polluted by the products of science, by the burning of fuel in
the factories and the cars, by the industrial waste poured into the
rivers, by the dangerous chemicals used in growing or processing
food. Oftentimes, I wonder whether I should not go to a village, live
amidst open fields, breathe fresh air, grow my own organic crops
and read philosophy until the sun sets. But, what is the guarantee
that such pleasures are indeed available in our rural areas? Maybe,
I would have to go back to the idyllic countryside of eighteenth
century England.
We need knowledge that science can give us in plenty. But, we
need something more. We need wisdom and character to use our
knowledge with foresight and caution, with resolution and restraint.
Who will come forward to connect knowledge to wisdom, science to
conscience, the power in our hands to humane purposes? Who will
call a halt to all the hatred and suicidal tendencies and establish
peace?
Let me quote Dr. Collins, the scientist,
“So let us together seek to reclaim the solid ground of an
intellectually and spiritually satisfying synthesis of all great
truths. The ancient motherland of reason and worship was
never in danger of crumbling. It never will be. It beckons all
sincere seekers of truth to come and take up residence there.
Answer the call. Abandon the battlements. Our hopes, our joys
and the future of our world depend on it.”
* * * * * * * * * *
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B. DISCUSSION
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The Quest for Happiness

JULY 16, 2016 9:30 AM TO 1:15 PM
“THE QUEST FOR T. V. VENKATARAMAN

HAPPINESS” 12:30 PM TO 1:15 PM
A. INTRODUCTION
Richard Schoch, the writer, begins his book, ‘The Secrets of
Happiness’ with the statement, ‘unhappy is the story of happiness’.
More than two thousand years ago, when the Greek philosophers
discussed good life, happiness was nothing more than a virtue to be
cultivated by practice. Far away in the East, the Hindu sages put the
highest seal on happiness, calling it ‘ananda’, said to be the best
expression of pure joy when the soul is freed from all temptation and
is immersed in the experience of the Divine Presence. Philosophers,
during many centuries, have spoken of happiness veering from one
extreme to another, while scientists, particularly, the psychologists
and sociologists, have offered a hundred parameters in order to
define happiness and identify happy persons. They have been
evolving a ‘happiness quotient’ and the Himalayan country of Bhutan
claims to have the largest number of happy people.
Richard Layard, the U.K. economist says, “Happiness can be
measured. We can ask people how they feel. We can ask their
friends or observers for an independent assessment. Also,
remarkably, we can take measurements of the electrical activity in
the relevant parts of the person’s brain. All these different measures
can give consistent answers about a person’s happiness.” Is this
economist talking about happiness or pleasure, I wonder.
We have heard of Epicurus, the pre-Christian philosopher. He
said that the sole source of happiness was pleasure. He believed
that we should seek pleasure, all the time, because nature herself
had planted within all of us the desire for it. In a fundamentally
healthy way, pleasure was good. Epicurus founded a quasi-religious
cult that survived for seven centuries and flourished in every part of
the Mediterranean world. Epicurus was tragically misunderstood.
Epicureanism propagates none of the self-indulgence that had been
attributed to it. He defined pleasure, not as sensual indulgence, but
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an absence of desire. True pleasure, Epicurus insisted, was marked,

not by intensity but, by tranquillity. Happiness, profound and lasting,
is the calm after the storm.
Seneca, a Roman, in the period just before Jesus Christ, went
through many trials and tribulations in the Roman court and learnt
the hard way that detachment and indifference could bring him
happiness, even in the most dreadful of circumstances. He
addressed his readers saying that happiness, “can only be achieved
by having first a sound mind in constant possession of its
soundness, then a brave and energetic mind which is also gifted with
the noblest form of endurance, able to deal with the circumstances
of the moment, attentive to the body (but not obsessively) and its
needs, without being a slave to Fortune’s gifts....everlasting freedom
and tranquillity follow once we have banished all that vexes and
frightens us.”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, was a profound Muslim scholar of
Baghdad in the eleventh century. He was an acknowledged religious
authority and became rich. Once, he was affected by a serious
illness which no one could diagnose or treat. Ghazali spent two
years in intense meditation, at the end of which, he became
convinced that only through direct personal experience could he find
happiness that came from knowing God. He was instrumental in
introducing Sufism, the mystical side of Islam, which preaches
neither doctrine nor dogma, but affirms above all, the transforming
powers of the personal experience of God’s presence. As the Sufis
say, “He who tastes, knows”. Ghazali wrote a short book, ‘The
Alchemy of Happiness’. As the title implies, just as the alchemist
transforms base metal into gold, we can transform our vices into
virtues and we can become the best possible version of ourselves.
Nice feelings, good mood, refined pleasure – all these matter.
There is no end to experiences that make us feel good; gazing into
the eyes of our beloved, the feel of a child’s soft cheeks on our
fingers, listening to a rapturous piece of music, a sudden view of the
icy mountains as we drive up the road. These and more, joyfully
crowd our lives and make them wonderful and worthwhile.
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But, do they make us happy? The pleasurable feelings give us a

warmth, a glow, when we feel them inside us. Yet, no matter how
wonderful life feels with these experiences, these feelings can only
be the ‘beginning’ of happiness, not the ultimate destination. In life,
we care about many things other than pleasurable experiences. We
care about our values and beliefs, our accomplishments, about
leaving a legacy to the world, about the well-being of the people in
our lives. If we are magnanimous, we will also care for people not in
our lives. All these bind us to the whole, through what we believe,
what we achieve, and whom we love. Happiness may or will begin
with pleasurable experiences and feelings, but it will go well beyond
them, because, happiness, really, is not about feeling good, but
about being good. John Maynard Keynes, the eminent economist,
said that the ‘art of life’ is more concerned with the remote future
results of our actions than with their own quality or immediate results
on our own environment. Happiness is more than pleasing
ourselves. It means pleasing others, especially others who we are
destined never to know.
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor in the second century
A.D. He was a wrestler. He says that happiness feels like wrestling
because it requires us to “stand prepared and unshaken to meet
what comes that we did not foresee”. You have to keep working for
your happiness. You just don’t arrive at a blissful destination.
Happiness does not just happen; it must be prepared for, cultivated
and sustained. In some ways, Aristotle, too, thought of happiness
as an activity. He meant that it requires skill, concentration and
focus. Far from relaxing on a sunny beach, it demands active effort.
It is the concentration and attentiveness that makes us feel we are
happy. We need to look upon life as a journey in which we move
purposefully towards that ultimate goal.
“Happy families are all alike”, wrote Leo Tolstoy in the first line of
his famous novel, ‘Anna Karenina’. He is presumably wrong. The
statement ‘I am happy’ or ‘I am not happy’ carries no objective
meaning that is independent of the person, the subject making the
statement. It must be different for every person who utters it. This
explains why all attempts to measure happiness are meaningless.
Happiness is less an objective fact to be encountered in a mall or
multiplex than an experience to be cultivated by the individual. The
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happiness of the ancient Indian cannot be the same as the

happiness of today’s youth. The happiness of a religious person can
never be shared by an atheist. Moreover, happiness is never
identical even for people united by culture and community. Your
happiness belongs to you and you alone. Therefore, we must think
less of determining happiness or fitting into categories and focus
mainly on making it happen. Though happiness cannot be deduced
theoretically, happiness can be conjured up in the moment of
experience.
There is no unchanging idea of happiness. A concept of
happiness that appears natural to one culture, or a period of history,
may appear strange to another. Hinduism places strong emphasis
on duties and responsibilities of everyday life. Christianity
emphasises that we cannot become truly happy on our own because
we need the gift of God’s grace. Buddhism stresses on the adoption
of the eight-fold path in daily life, to attain a measure of freedom
from desires and detachment, which is the source of happiness.
Differences arise, not because the paths are insufficient or
incomplete. Being different is part of what it means to belong to your
own culture and to exist in your time.
The eighteenth century English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham,
known for his utilitarian approach, defined happiness in hedonistic
terms, maximising pleasure and minimising pain. He asserted that
“pleasure and pain governs us in all we do, we say, in all we think”.
Individuals experience pleasure and pain and they also can
experience happiness. The community’s happiness is the sum total
of the happiness experienced by the people who comprise it.
Bentham devised what he called ‘felicific calculus’ which says,
happiness equals pleasure minus pain. Bentham offers norms,
parameters and definitions which make the whole calculation
complex. He however, understood that each of us could not spend
so much of time calculating the numbers for happiness that we may
never get. He suggested that we should entrust the job of unwieldy
calculations to the government so that we can continue to be happy
or unhappy privately. As Bentham says, each person must “direct his
own conduct to the production of his own happiness”. The state will
contribute to that endeavour by making sure that nothing obstructs
you on your journey.
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It is easy to criticise Bentham. The only comment that we may

make at this juncture is that happiness has dimensions beyond
pleasure and that may make all the difference.
The moral philosopher, John Stuart Mill, who followed, also
stated that happiness was the ultimate purpose and that it was
bound with pleasure and pain. But he said happy people are those
“who have their mind fixed on some object other than their own
happiness. On the happiness of others, on the improvements of
mankind, even on some art or pursuit followed, not as a means but
as itself an ideal end. Aiming at something else, they find happiness
by the way.”
“We must secure other people’s happiness first, because, that
is the only way to guarantee ours, and we must look upon
ourselves as disinterested and benevolent spectators.”
The Benthamite principles made a strong impact on the
development of free economic enterprise in U.K., and Europe but
gave no scope for moral or altruistic vision or place for conscience.
I have mentioned about Epicurus, the Greek philosopher, with his
unique pleasure principle. “Let no one,” said Epicurus, “delay the
study of philosophy, while young, nor weary of it, when old. For no
one is either too young or too old for the study of the soul.” Epicurus
emphasised that being happy meant subscribing to the four
fundamental principles, that Gods exist, but not in the way we
suppose; that death is nothing to fear; pleasure is the key to
happiness; and everything we need to be happy is easy to obtain.
He would say that the Gods do not condescend to involve
themselves in our affairs. This is a big relief; we do not have to go to
them and make ourselves unhappy. About death, he says the fear of
death is absurd because it leads to feeling pain about something
that has not occurred and something that may not be painful when it
happens. Only a fool would fear the prospect of death. All the worry
and anxiety causes a great deal of harm by distracting us from the
very things that are necessary for our happiness.
Epicurus says pleasure is the key to happiness. In judging the
actions that lead to happiness, he says that the criterion is not
whether they subscribe to a moral code, but whether they make us
feel tranquil, that is, free from anxiety. He says that we will know
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which action makes us tranquil when we are able to distinguish

between necessary and unnecessary desires. We must satisfy
desires that are natural and necessary because they are vital to our
happiness. But we should never seek to satisfy desires that are
unnatural and unnecessary. The secret of happiness is to attain the
state of tranquillity in which we no longer need to satisfy any desire,
no longer need to pursue any pleasure. Then we will make decisions
about desires, not in terms of the desire itself, but in terms of what is
good for our life as a whole. The advice of Epicurus is, “Those who
least need extravagance, enjoy it most.”
While discussing happiness, pleasure and pain, we may like to
know something about the approach of the Hindu philosophers. The
literature is vast and difficult to compress. But, one or two ideas are
important. The existence of an all-pervasive, eternal, Absolute is the
basis of all our happiness. The fact of Absolute Reality is
experienced by us all the time, even if we cannot express it like the
philosophers. The ‘finite’ and dissatisfied soul, that we carry day
after day, is not our true self; our true self is infinite. The Absolute
surrounds us, but is also within us. The effort to understand this is
the path to happiness. The search for happiness begins with the
intuitive knowledge that the individual (Atman) and the cosmic
(Brahman) are identical. This knowledge can transform our lives by
ushering in new habits of thought, action and feeling, which helps us
to become a greater, more developed, soul, to which we aspire. On
the question of how to find happiness, the Bhagavad Gita tells us
that it is through the way of knowledge, the way of action, and the
way of love and devotion. This teaching, that the ingredients of
happiness consist of knowledge, duty and loving devotion, contrasts
with the prevailing Western notion that happiness consists in the
satisfaction of the physical and material desires. Happiness, here, is
not a feeling of self-satisfaction, but a dynamic energy directed
outward, towards knowledge, of something greater than yourself,
duty to your community, devotion to your God, and love for others.
Hinduism tells us that our path to happiness must be our own
path; it must be suited to our temperament and talents. The path to
happiness must begin at the doorsteps of where we live. We must
become the perfect version of the people we already are. That is, we
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must know that we are not the body, but the soul, which is the real
and imperishable self. To be in real happiness, we need to
experience this truth.
It is important to know that these ingredients of happiness –
knowledge, duty and loving devotion – contrasts sharply with the
belief widely prevalent in the modern era, both in the West and in
the East - that happiness lies in the satisfaction of the physical and
material desires. The Hindu concept of knowledge calls for profound
wisdom that is the result of the cultivation of many virtues leading to
detachment. It is difficult to expect everyone to aspire for such
knowledge, even though one would read so much about it or get
indoctrinated by scholars and sages. It is a matter of insight and
experience after long schooling, that the prevailing kind of
happiness is so much the better, because it is easier to obtain.
“Duty as a path to happiness” - we hear this from Krishna on the
Kurukshetra battlefield. Krishna tells us that we must act, but always
with indifference, neither pinning our hopes on the outcome nor
desperately seeking to avoid another. Let us be clear. We are not
expected to suddenly relinquish all desires and motivation for action.
It is not desire itself that is harmful. After all, the desire for happiness
is still a desire! Rather, we must prevent ourselves from being
obsessed with the results of what happens when we act upon desire.
So, our goal is the detachment from the fruits of all labour, whether
gain or loss, praise or blame, joy or sorrow. You are filled with a
sense of happiness.
Loving devotion is a powerful path to happiness. The Narada
Bhakti Sutra says, the devotee feels “Joy in His presence, pain in
His absence, indifference towards all other objects. Happiness then
becomes an overpowering and incomparable experience of joy.” But
loving devotion carries with it the risk of sentimentality and zealotry.
Here, we must learn to keep matters under control, with a sense of
detachment, which is a way to happiness.
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The epic, Mahabharata, deals extensively with pleasure and

pain, not in theory but as felt experiences. The teachings are
inherently related to dharma and adharma, truth and untruth, himsa
and ahimsa.
“Human beings keep having both suffering and happiness.
Don’t let them paralyse you.”
“Suffering and happiness move in a cycle.”
“The most effective remedy for suffering is not to think too
much about it, for, the more one thinks, the more it increases.”
“The suffering of the mind is to be removed through
understanding; that of the body, through medicine.”
“Anxiety and worry do not help; they only increase the pain.
Only those who transcend the duality of pleasure and pain,
suffering and happiness, are truly happy.”
“Contentment is the greatest happiness.”
“Happy are those who have the inner contentment of
knowledge and wisdom; the unhappy fools are always
discontented.”
“Sorrow destroys one’s form; sorrow destroys one’s strength;
sorrow destroys one’s knowledge and awareness; sorrow
leads to illness.”
“The day ends in the setting of the sun. And there is a new
dawn at the end of the night. Pleasure ends in pain. And the
end of pain is always happiness.”
“Not to do violence to the other; to adhere to truth; simplicity in
conduct towards all beings and non deviousness; forgiveness
and reconciliation; and vigilance. Whoever has these qualities
becomes a happy person.”
“Whoever knows these to be the foundation of life and
relationships, and knows them to be conducive of the
happiness of all beings, becomes happy too.”
“Those who have the happiness of the mind and have gone
beyond the play of the opposites, and are free from envy, are
affected neither by gain and prosperity nor by loss and
adversity.”
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“On transcending the conflicting opposites of ‘truth’ and

‘untruth’, ‘sorrow’ and ‘joy’, ‘fear’ and ‘non-fear’, ‘agreeable’ and
‘disagreeable’, one becomes peaceful, tranquil in one’s
innermost mind.”
(Quotations from ‘The Mahabharata’, courtesy, Chaturvedi
Badrinath.)
One may think that this is high philosophy, or advice almost
impossible to follow. One must remember that all these, and more
moral sayings, arose in very practical circumstances which the
characters of the Mahabharata faced. They desperately wanted and
needed advice and solutions. So, these have very great practical
value, if only we care to think deeply and try to incorporate them in
our daily conduct.
When Prince Siddhartha left his palace, wife, and family, in the
night and rode in a chariot to the forest boundary, got down and
bade goodbye to his earlier life, we realise oftentimes, we too wish to
do something similar, to get away. We feel we are trapped by a false
life, and quite often, ignore the fact of our trappings. But, if we are
ready to feel free, what lies ahead is our mental journey, like the
Prince’s chariot journey, from delusion to insight, and finally to
enlightenment, which is another way of saying that it is a journey to
happiness. Like Siddhartha, we can delay the journey for only so
long. Something inside us, call it the dark night of the soul, a change
of heart, or even a mid-life crisis, the label does not matter, compels
us to leave our place of so-called well-being, climb into the nearest
vehicle and take to the open road in search of inner understanding
and stability.
Out of compassion for humanity, the Buddha, (as he now must
be called) spent the remaining forty-five years of his life, sharing his
teaching, the Dharma, with the world. At Kusinara, as he attained
nirvana, his last words were, “All things of the world are passing.
Strive, with a clean mind, to reach nirvana.”
In the first instance, the Buddha’s teachings on suffering and
release may appear to be coloured by his first visions of death, pain,
infirmity and disease. But, who can deny that this is the truth?
Suffering infects the totality of our lives. “They gave birth astride of a
grave,” wrote Samuel Beckett, in his famous play, ‘Waiting for
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Godot’. The truth of suffering is the unassailable fact of life, and

despair, its companion. You may wonder what this has to do with our
quest for happiness. The Buddha does not want you to be
pessimistic. Instead, he wants you to be realistic. And, that is the
honest response to life’s problems. The Buddha tells us that desire
is what causes us to be reborn in this world of suffering and only
when we stand apart from our desires, can we finally escape
suffering. The Buddha is referring to the insatiable desire to
experience new things; to race through life with the foot pressing on
the accelerator.
Buddhism invites us to meditate upon suffering, not to be
demoralised about it, not to be consumed by it, but to be released
from it. What enlightenment does remove, is the mental and
emotional anguish, that too often threatens to take control of our
lives. The liberation that we seek, lies not in altering life itself, but,
our reaction and response to it. The Buddha did not lay down his
eight-fold path as commandments. The Buddha invited everyone to
examine whether the ‘right action’ or the ‘right speech’ made sense
in their own personal lives. If they are useful, continue with them. If
not, find other ones. Buddhism is not so much a ‘believing’ as a
‘doing’ religion; less a faith to be professed than a path to be
followed. And the Buddha kept telling his disciples that the journey to
happiness is always an individual and inward journey, not a
submission to a force or authority, or a passionate devotion to a
charismatic teacher, but a patient listening to your thoughts, feelings
and hopes. Buddhism begins with self-discovery and then it rouses
you to action, compelling you to seek the good in all creations.
When we come to Christianity, the historical truth of the Christian
God as manifested as a revelation in the Bible and as incarnation in
Jesus, put a special stamp on the Christian approach to happiness.
Happiness came to be understood as an intimate relationship with
God. A few centuries later, the focus of happiness shifted from this
life to the next. Only in the after-life, as Christians have been taught
from the earliest times, could anyone enjoy true happiness. This true
happiness would outshine any happiness that we could achieve here
on earth, just as God outshines man. And yet, such happiness
cannot be guaranteed because, it is unattainable through human
effort alone and requires the gift of God’s grace. In the middle ages,
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the Church did acknowledge the possibility of a link between partial

happiness to be obtained from life and the ultimate felicity to be
enjoyed only in heaven.
The only person largely instrumental in enlarging the traditional
ideas of happiness was St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas wrote
prodigiously and suddenly stopped writing because of a profound
mystical experience. His ‘Summa Theologica’ was perhaps the
greatest work of the so-called Dark Age. There, he did not seek to
explain one Biblical passage or another, but sought to organise the
totality of revelation into a logical and systematic whole. He raises
many questions concerning happiness and proceeds to answer
them. In all, the book has 613 questions, 3125 articles, and 10,000
objections and refutations. Aquinas discusses happiness in the
second part of the book. He uses the Latin term for happiness,
‘beatitude’, throughout his book. For the Christians, the word
immediately calls to mind the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus
spoke the beatitudes. The word conveys a sense of ‘blessedness’,
the state of being that is closer to God, warmed by his radiance. The
state of drawing nearer to God is the Aquinas’ concept of happiness.
Perfect happiness exists only in heaven in the contemplation of
God’s presence and essence.
In Aquinas’ discussion of happiness, the starting point is that
whenever we act, we act for a purpose. “Each thing desires its own
fulfilment, and therefore, desires for its ultimate end, a good that
perfects and completes it.” He was certain that there must be a goal
to guide everyone and impose some meaning on life. Instead of
contending with infinite series of purposes, we need to stay focussed
on the supreme purpose that will govern all our actions. What is this
single point of destination? It is nothing other than happiness.
Happiness is a complex and perfect goal. God created us to be
happy and our desire to be happy is natural. So, according to
Aquinas, the only definition that can be defended is that it is perfect
happiness that consists in the vision of God, in heaven, because
God is infinite goodness. But, we are standing in reason’s shadow,
not in light. We are trapped by inferior versions of happiness, like
wealth, power, position, glory, courage, in bodily perfection, and so
on.
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Unlike God who is happy in His own essence, mankind must

search for and achieve happiness. This achievement is a union with
God, a sharing of, or participating in the divine good. Aquinas
speaks of activity for this purpose, which is dynamic, the progress
from potential to actuality, immaturity to maturity and imperfection to
perfection.
To be happy, according to Aquinas, we must contemplate. But, we
cannot contemplate on any or everything. Since happiness is our
highest end, we must use our intellect to contemplate on the highest
object, the most final thing that can be known. Only one entity,
Aquinas believes, meets the criterion: God, the architect and the
governor of the universe. The happiness that we get from
contemplating Him will be perfect, because, God, the first cause of
everything, is happiness itself. Only in this ‘vision of the divine
essence’ Aquinas declares can we attain ‘ultimate and perfect
happiness’.
Striving in life, through reason and virtue, we can obtain only a
glimpse of the complete and everlasting beatitude. Incapable as we
are of becoming perfectly happy through our own resources, we rely
on God’s help. As we stand on the threshold of celestial bliss, unable
to cross over, God comes to our rescue. He raises us through the
gift of His grace. God truly gives His grace to all humanity because it
is He who created us, and it would be a perverse God who would
deny us His gift of grace to enable humanity to get reunited with him.
Grace is what makes all these possible. But, we must do our bit. We
must lead a life of virtue, of faith, hope and charity.
Heavenly happiness, Aquinas believed, may be a continuation of
earthly happiness. There is no guarantee that we will end up in
heaven. We do not know if perfect happiness awaits us. Christianity
does provide through God’s grace the means to achieve perfect
happiness, a glimpse of which we can capture here on earth. But,
ultimately, the path may well take us deep into a mystery whose
resolution lies in a sphere beyond our immediate reach, but the path
is open to all.
At the heart of Islam lies the Koran, the sacred text that God
revealed to the prophet Muhammad, in the cave on Mount Hira,
around the year 610 AD. The Koran, which embodies the full range
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of principles and values by which Muslims are called to order their

lives, is supplemented by the prophet’s many sayings and reports of
his actions and decisions. Together, these texts shape the Muslim
tradition known as the ‘Prophetic Way’. This tradition, like that of the
other monotheistic faiths, centres on the laws to be obeyed, the
commandments to be fulfilled and the rules to be correctly followed.
In the Koran, law and morals are one; the secular is included in the
religious; and every commandment is of God. Here, are rules, not
only for manners and hygiene, marriage and divorce, treatment of
children and animals, but also for commerce and politics, interest
and debt, contracts and wills, industry and finance, crime and
punishment. The Koran gave to the simple souls, the simplest, least
mystical, least ritualised of all creeds, free from all idolatry. The
Koran asked men for an uncomplaining acceptance of the hardships
and limitations of life.
Yet, the religion of the Book, “has another side, a side that seeks
to reveal the inner meaning of the Words”. This other dimension is
Islamic mysticism. It is not another religion, but an approach and a
way of life that seeks to penetrate through the religion’s outward
form, to find its deeper truth, a truth that cannot be expressed in
normal thought or language. It is an experience and requires an
inward journey. The Infinite God, for example, cannot be known by a
finite mind. Our sense perceptions and rational thought will be of no
help. We need to intuit the hidden meaning which reason alone
cannot disclose. The Muslims, for example, make a pilgrimage to
Mecca. Outwardly, it is a travel to the world’s holiest shrine. But, the
inner meaning is that we must travel away from our sins, leaving
behind our old self. The real pilgrimage is an inward moral journey.
The Islamic Sufis gave expression to such inner teachings. They
invited the Muslims not only to accept and follow the Islamic Law in a
superficial way, but to discover its deeper and richer meaning. They
tell us that we are all searching for what is absent in our lives, dimly
aware that we are separated from the origin of our being, this being
God’s presence. Beholding His face is the supreme pleasure and
ultimate end of human life. This is the same as saying that
happiness arises from contemplating the beatific vision. Islam tells us
that a direct encounter with God’s essence can occur during a
lifetime, but that such experience is granted only to the prophets and
the saints.
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The great book, ‘The Alchemy of Happiness’, which al-Ghazali

wrote a few thousand years ago, is still a popular reading.
The mystical path to happiness is not easy to understand. It does
not conform to our rational mindset. It presumes that everyone
believes in God. It takes long periods of training and apprenticeship.
In a fast moving culture, the patient nurturing of insight into a higher
reality, to find happiness, may not seem worthwhile. We want
happiness and we want it now. In another way too, the mystic’s view
of happiness seems elitist. True happiness will come only to those
select few, who are versed in the ways of imagination and intuition,
and only they will know the inner meaning of the outer form.
We are at the end of the story of happiness as some major
religions perceive it. Umpteen philosophers, right from Aristotle, have
expressed their views. This essay will become too long if I indicate
even a few of them.
Let me now share with you a few thoughts of my own, for what
they are worth. Firstly, we do not have to become someone else to
be happy. We think we have to forge a new life, journey to distant
lands, perform extraordinary acts, exchange a dismal present for a
fantastic future or wish for an auspicious start. Such wasteful efforts
distance us from opportunities that are always before us. Wherever
we are and whatever circumstances we face, the possibility of
happiness is always closely with us. We are always in the right place,
though we keep on lamenting about it and do our best to forget it.
Let us cultivate a happiness that is authentically ours and let us
be happy with the things that we have, and they, in fact, are giving
us happiness, even when we are looking out for bigger things, larger
aims in the name of happiness. To be authentically happy means to
take possession of ourselves, to bring out the potential in the person
that we are, to become more real. As Voltaire famously put it, “We
must make our garden grow”. Action is the heart of authentic
existence, and only in action do we attain fulfilment. Action, here,
means the focussed performance of a selfless kind that brings out
the best in us and brings about a realisation of what we are.
Through purposeful action, we give our lives a coherent shape, and
save ourselves from dissolution of mind and body. We become our
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future and find contentment. Happiness, in fact, feels like growing

up. We create happiness for ourselves, as best as we can, within life
as it is, and do not import from some magician elsewhere.
The search for happiness does not involve any journey to any
exotic land. It simply means returning home.
Happiness feels like something we once knew, though dimly, but
are finding it again. In a way, we are discovering a part of ourselves
that we had only vague ideas about.
Becoming happy is not a deliberate consumer choice. We cannot
appraise paths to happiness as though we are making a bargain in
the market. In a way, the path finds us, for it must fit the shape of life
that we live, right here and now. Happiness is the perfection of our
existence. Happiness is not something that takes you by surprise. It
is your right and it is your nature. We cannot find happiness in
isolation. The activity of becoming happy is the one that binds you to
the world. Finding happiness means not despising the world, but
wanting to create a better one within our powers.
Happiness is a symbol of something higher, greater, deeper and
faster than ourselves. There is a human need to become part of the
symbol. That is also happiness.
* * * * * * * * * *
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B. DISCUSSION
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A Thing of Beauty
SATURDAY FOURTH SESSION

JULY 16, 2016 2:30 PM TO 4:30 PM
“A THING OF BEAUTY” T. V. VENKATARAMAN

2:30 PM TO 3:30 PM
A. INTRODUCTION
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”
So speaks the great poet John Keats in his ‘Endymion’.
Beauty, according to him, in whatever form it may be found, is an
eternal joy to all human beings, because it offers them a never-
ending opportunity to contemplate on that beauty. It is in so much
contrast to the monotony and ugliness of our everyday lives. Beauty
helps to give strength to bear sufferings. Beauty moves that pall
away from our dark spirits. Beauty is the endless fountain of
immortal nectar, that helps man to forget the harshness and
bleakness of everyday reality.
And so, Keats goes on. Remember, he died very very young, of
an illness, in acute misery, but the poetry in him was so strong that
only he could say,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, all ye need to know.”
John Keats’ short life, his experiences, his poverty, his sickness,
is a story of the victory of the mind and heart over matter. He said, “I
am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and
the truth of imagination.”
Poetry became for him the only means to resolve all the
contradictions in his life. While the student of medicine progressed
confidently, the poet in him was compulsively coming alive.
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“O poetry, for thee I hold my pen,” yearned Keats. He had

intuitive grasp of being in the present, the immediate truth, which
was ‘beauty’; the other aspect of truth was revealed when he hit
upon the word, ‘sensation’.
“Oh for a life of sensation, rather than of thoughts.”
Thought, to him, was an intellectual activity which restricted wider
learning. Knowledge was, to Keats, something deeper and
mysterious, which was beyond the purview of the intellect.
The death of his brother, Tom, his fatal attraction for Fanny
Brown, the loneliness, the agony of an impossible love, took a toll on
his health. Sadness was not his philosophy of life but an aspect of
his suffering.
“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
His strength lay in his disinterested love of beauty and truth. His
mind and heart were upon their essential oneness that with a sense
of compassion for himself, he could utter,
“I have been half in love with easeful Death,
——
To cease upon the midnight with no pain.”
Keats tells us too,
“Seek ye, first, the ideal of beauty
And all other things shall be added unto you.”
John Keats died at the age of twenty-five. And he wrote his own
epitaph,
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
The above notes on John Keats I happened to read late one
night, when everything was silent, except for the buzz of the air-
conditioner. They had been written by Prof. T.V.J. in her article, ‘Joy
and Grief are Woven Fine’, published in Hamsa’s Retreat book for
2010, which itself carried the caption, ‘Pursuit of Happiness’. Prof.
T.V.J’s notes seemed a perfect beginning for my own notes on
beauty. And what better praise can there be to shower upon beauty
than the words of Keats! To think that beauty has something to do
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A Thing of Beauty
with philosophy may appear somewhat quaint, but, I find it is not so.
If philosophy is to deal with truth, the philosopher too must have a
sense of beauty, or otherwise, his learning will be arid. Whereas,
softened by beauty, the philosopher can have a better vision of truth
in the mellow light of beauty’s sensitivity.
“What is beauty? Why do we admire it? Why do we endeavour
to create it? One may try to answer by saying that beauty is
any quality by which an object or form pleases the beholder.
Primarily and originally, the object does not please the
beholder, because it is beautiful, but rather it is called
beautiful because it pleases the beholder. Any object that
satisfies desire will seem beautiful. Food is beautiful to a
starving man. But often, the pleasing object may be the
beholder himself. In our secret hearts, no other form is as fair
or beautiful as ours and the art begins with the adornment of
our own exquisite body. Or, the pleasing object may be the
desired mate and then aesthetic beauty-feeling takes on the
creativeness and intensity of art and adoration. The one who
sees beauty in his beloved spreads the aura of loveliness to
everything that concerns the beloved one, to all forms that
resemble her, to all colours that adorn her, please her, or
speak of her. Beauty may also invite an appreciation of
strength and sublimity, of loftiness and nobility. Nature, itself,
with our sense of beauty, may become both sublime and
beautiful, not only because it stimulates both the tenderness
of women and the strength of men, but also because we
project into it our own feelings and emotions, our memories
and remembrances, our love of others and of ourselves,
relishing in it the scenes of our youth, enjoying its quiet
solitude, escaping from the storms of life, living with it, in
memory at least, our own sense of green youth, hot maturity,
‘mellow fruitfulness’ and cold decay, and recognising it as our
mother who lent us our life, and will receive us in our death.”
“Art is the creation of beauty. It is an expression of thought or
feeling in a form that seems beautiful or sublime, and
therefore, arouses in us some reverberation of a primordial
urge that calls for satisfaction. The thought may be any
capture of life’s significance, the feeling may be an arousal or
relief from life’s tensions. The form may satisfy us through
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rhythm, which falls in pleasantly with the alternations of our

breath, the pulsation of our blood, the majestic oscillations of
the seasons, ebb and flow, night and day; or the form may
please us through symmetry which is a static rhythm, standing
for strength, recalling to us the ordered proportions of plants,
and animals, of men and women, or it may please us through
colour, which brightens the spirit or intensifies life, or the form
may please us through veracity, because its lucid and
transparent imitation of nature or reality catches some mortal
loveliness of plants or animals, or some transient meaning of
circumstances, and holds it still for our lingering enjoyment or
leisurely understanding. From these many sources come
those noble superfluities of life, song and dance, music and
drama, pottery and painting, sculpture and architecture,
literature and philosophy. For, what is philosophy except one
more attempt to give ‘significant meaning’ to the chaos of
experience?” (Will Durant, ‘The Story of Civilization’, Vol.
1)
What are the needs and impulses that make a man spend years
of preparation and then months of labour, to produce a work of art?
Presumably because he wishes to express himself, his ideas and his
moods; because he longs for distinction and awards; because he
has a keener sense of duty than most of us, or because he aspires
to combine partial beauties and veiled meaning of actual but
transitory forms, in a vision of clearer significance, or more lasting
loveliness. Usually, he sees more than we see, in fuller intensity or
detail; he wishes to remove some of the perceived aspects, in order
to leave the essence and some of the impact of the scene more
movingly visible to our eyes, and souls. To do this, he may
deliberately sacrifice beauty and crowd a wall or canvas with
disturbed figures.
Philosophers have shown more hesitation in defining beauty than
in describing God. Aristotle considered the basic element of beauty
to be symmetry, proportion and an organic ordering of parts into a
united whole. But the romantic spirit of every age always claims that
excess is the secret of success, and feeling, not reason, is the
source and message of art. Many artists, including the Japanese,
tired of symmetry and proportion, found beauty and satisfaction in
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A Thing of Beauty
surprising deviations from regularity of forms. To the normal man,

however, basic beauty lies in figures and features, colour and a
meaningful personality, or ‘good looks’.
From basic biological origins of bodily beauty, the sense of
beauty spreads to their secondary forms, smooth surfaces, graceful
proportions, bright colours, fragrant aromas, melodious sounds,
clothing, painting, music or dance. Also, the aesthetic sense may
overflow to tertiary sources, in the softer forms of nature, peaceful
landscapes, bubbling streams or sense of sublimity evoked by
towering mountains, arresting architecture or boundless seas.
On the contrary, the contemporary artists may not care much for
rules, standards. They seem to think that shapeless colours are
enough to fill the common eye. But, they do indulge in a riot of
innovations for its own sake. They mistake novelty for beauty. They
reduce all forms to cubes, or all paintings to points, or all reality to
surrealist dreams, or all sculpture to a prosaic collection of
hardware. Popular painters spend their colours upon abstractions
that shun every form, follow no logic and communicate no feelings.
Abstract art can be noble, when it follows form and embodies an
aim. Art exists, not merely to exhibit but, to transmit an emotion, an
aspiration, an idea. There can be much beauty in abstract Chinese
art because it has much decorative content and worth.
Will Durant puts it beautifully,
“Meanwhile new arts are being born. Why should we not
acknowledge that a handsome automobile is more satisfying
to our aesthetic sense than much of the sculpture of our age?
I pass amazed and delighted by the lovely objects that our
departmental stores offer us in textiles, metal, glass and wood.
Should we be ashamed of this happy mingling of the useful
with the beautiful? Let us rank among the arts, the industrial
design that glorifies almost everything that serves us in our
daily life. So some old and ailing skills are replaced by new
ones and the sickness of certain contemporary arts may be
merely the natural obsolescence of exhausted forms. All things
flow, except perhaps our categories, prejudices and tastes. Art
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without science is poverty and science without art is

barbarism. Let every science fulfil itself in beauty or wisdom
and let us rejoice when a science becomes an art.”
Sublimity is a characteristic of beauty. Nature is flooded with
sublimity. Much of the joy which majestic nature gives us is due to
the fact that we are lifted up by a sense of sublimity. And in nature,
one also feels at home due to a feeling of love that fills one’s heart.
The total quiet, the flight of the birds in the air, the rustling of the
leaves in the gentle breeze, the distant cry of a hyena for its mate,
give us love, love towards everything that God has created. Love is
the mother of beauty. With ‘you by my side’, all that one sees in
nature gets attributed to ‘her’. All the world comes to partake of the
fair one’s splendour. In the appreciation of nature, beauty, to the
untrained emotion, may appear to wander away from love, but, truly,
much of the joy which natural scenery gives us, is due to its
sublimity. At the same time, a feeling, originally sensual, may
overflow to objects totally unconnected with love. One’s adoration of
beauty is subjective; it is not rational; it is instinctive.
Listen to Spinoza, the great Spanish philosopher, “I would warn
you that I do not attribute to nature, either beauty or deformity, order
or confusion. Only in relation to our confusion, can things be called
beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”
Will Durant adds, “For example, the motion which the nerves
receive by means of the eyes from objects before us is conducive to
health; those objects are called beautiful; if it is not, those objects
are called ugly.”
Here are some ideas of Immanuel Kant, the German
philosopher of the eighteenth century. His concern is about the proof
of the existence of God. He begins by connecting design and
beauty. ‘The beautiful’ is anything that reveals symmetry and unity of
structure. He observes that the contemplation of symmetrical design
always gives disinterested pleasure; and that, “an interest in beauty
of nature for its own sake is always a sign of goodness”. Many
objects in nature show such beauty, such design. At the same time,
Kant says that there are many objects in nature, which are wasteful
and chaotic.
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A philosopher said that the function of beauty is the elevation of

the mind to the will-less contemplation of the truth. The object of art
is a particular that contains the universal. A work of art is successful,
in proportion, as it suggests the universal, or the group to which the
represented object belongs. Art is greater than science, because the
latter proceeds by laborious accumulation and cautious reasoning,
while the former at once reaches the goal, by intuition and
presentation. Science can get along with talent, while art requires a
genius.
Our pleasure in nature as in poetry or painting is derived from
the contemplation of the object without the admixture of will. To the
artist, the River Ganga is a varied series of bewitching views, stirring
the senses and imagination with suggestions of beauty. The artist
frees himself from personal concerns that “to the artistic perception,
it is all one, whether we see a sunset from a prison or from a
palace”. The artist’s objective perception is that which paints the
scene with colour and glamour. Similarly, a work of tragedy may take
an aesthetic value by delivering us from the strife of the individual
life and enabling us to see suffering in a larger view. Art alleviates
the ills of life by showing us the eternal and the universal behind the
transitory and the individual.
Science, says a European philosopher, gives us utility, but art
gives us beauty. Art takes us from the particular person and the
unique fact to the philosophical universal, intuited with the form of
the individual. Knowledge has two forms; either it is intuitive or
logical; knowledge obtained through imagination or knowledge
obtained through the intellect. The origin of art lies in forming
images rather than ideas. Images are the wealth of the arts. Art feels
and presents. “One paints not with the hands, but with the brains,”
said Michelangelo. And Leonardo da Vinci wrote, “The minds of
men of lofty genius are most active in invention, when they are doing
the least external work.”
The story is told of da Vinci that when he was painting the ‘Last
Supper’, he sorely displeased the Abbot, who had ordered the work,
by sitting motionless before an untouched canvas, and revenged
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himself for the Abbot’s persistent query as to when he would begin

the work, by using the gentleman as an unconscious model for the
figure of Judas.
The essence of aesthetic activity lies in this motionless effort of
the artist to conceive the perfect image that shall express the subject
he has in mind; it lies in a form of intuition that involves no mystical
insight, but perfect sight, complete perception and adequate
imagination. The miracle of art lies not in externalisation, but in the
concept of the idea.
“When we have mastered the internal word, when we have
vividly and clearly conceived a figure or a statue, when we
have found a musical theme, expression is born and
completed; nothing more is needed.”
Does this answer the baffling question, what is beauty? There
seem to be as many answers as there are heads. Croce answers
that beauty is the mental formation of an image that catches the
essence of the thing perceived. Beauty belongs to the inward image
rather than to the outward form. We like to think that the difference
between ourselves, and, say, Shakespeare or Kalidasa, is largely
a difference in the technique of external expression. But, this is a
fond illusion; the difference lies, not in the power of externalising the
image but, in the power of inwardly forming the image that expresses
the object.
Will Durant says,
“Both in the artist creating and the spectator contemplating
beauty, the aesthetic secret is the expressive image. Beauty is
adequate expression; and since there is no real impression, if
it is not adequate, we may answer very simply the ancient
question and say, ‘beauty is expression’.”
A king commissioned a well-known sculptor to sculpt a huge
elephant from a single stone, to be placed in front of a new temple
being constructed as per his orders. A huge boulder was placed
before the sculptor. He looked at it and started working with his
chisel. Before long, an elephant emerged out of the boulder and
everyone was wonderstruck that so huge and realistic an elephant
could be carved out of the rock by the sculptor, working single-
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handedly and continuously. The king asked him how he produced

such a marvel. The sculptor’s reply was simple. “I did not see the
rock at all. I only saw the elephant and chiselled out all the unwanted
rock!”
A true artist sees the object of his imagination in any material and
proceeds to externalise it. He forgets himself and his ego takes a
back seat during his creative endeavour.
The world renowned rock-cut sculptures of Mamallapuram were
carved during the time of a great Pallava King in the seventh
century. Hundreds of artists and sculptors were at work when the
project was in full swing. The King used to visit the site regularly and
review the work. A famous sculptor was working at a massive rock,
chiselling, carving and sculpting what would eventually become
famous as Arjuna’s penance. This sculptor was a strong-willed
person who would not brook any interference or interruption. He had
a habit of chewing betel leaves while at work and he used to spit into
a small vessel, which his assistant would be holding at arm’s length.
When he concentrated on his work, he was not even aware that he
was spitting.
The King came to the site and watched the work for sometime. He
was amazed to see the concentration of the sculptor. The man did
not notice anybody in the vicinity even though there was a lot of
bustle and movement on account of the King’s arrival. The King
surveyed the monolith stone come to life. He felt humble. He wanted
to go close to the sculptor and experience the power of his creativity.
Quietly, he moved close, knelt near the sculptor, took the vessel
from the assistant’s hand and kept it close to the sculptor, to enable
him to spit the betel leaves. The man continued his work, carving
and spitting. Some of the little stones fell on the King. After a bout of
labour, the sculptor turned back, saw the King holding the vessel
and was shocked beyond measure. He fell at the King’s feet and
prayed for pardon. The King patted him on his back and said that
the magnificent Arjuna’s Penance would be hailed as one of the best
rock carvings in the world. How true!
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The episode shows that the King and the sculptor were on the
same wavelength. Art was as much in the King’s heart as in the heart
and hands of the sculptor. The creative centre is part of us; only that
we have no time or inclination to utilise it to cultivate a creative life.
I have gone to the Himalayan town, Rishikesh, quite a few times.
That is the place where the fast flowing River Ganges descends
from the mountains on to the land. All around are low hills, the
foothills of the mighty Himalayas. Amateurs and professionals
continue clicking their costly cameras to take stills and videos of the
landscape, the devout pilgrims, the curious tourists, and the quaint
shops which sell from tinsel to the holiest and rarest of books. I once
went to an exhibition of paintings, of natural scenery. A large canvas
held my attention. It was a flowing river, realistically painted by a
local artist. Trees on both banks. Birds flying at a distance into the
blue sky. Hills, with thick green vegetation. I stood gazing at the river
for some time. A fish was jumping up, another gliding in the waters. I
felt like going into the river; I wanted to feel and enjoy the coolness
of the waters.
“No man can step into the same river twice,” says Heraclitus, the
Greek philosopher, who lived before Jesus Christ. Nothing is
constant. Nothing is permanent.
Alexander, the Great, was on his way to India to conquer the
country. He heard of a strange man, a mystic, who was living by the
side of a river in his country. He lived naked. He was a legend in his
own time. Alexander proceeded to meet him, to get his blessings for
his mission. Diogenes was the name of the philosopher, considered
as one of the greatest in his time in Greece.
Diogenes asked Alexander, “You are trying to conquer the whole
world. What about you? Will you have time enough to conquer
yourself?”
Alexander said, “I cannot say I am certain about the next moment.
But, I promise you that when I have conquered the world, I would like
to rest and relax just like you.”
Diogenes was stretched full length on his back on the banks of a
river, a picture of perfect serenity. He listened to Alexander and
laughed. Alexander, the mighty king, was offended.
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A Thing of Beauty
He asked, “Why do you laugh?”

Diogenes said, “It is so simple. If it is rest and relaxation that you
aspire for, you can have it straightaway without having to conquer
the world. And nothing prevents you. The river is long. The riverside
is spacious. Everyone can have enough space. So, rest and relax
now, or never!”
A painting of the riverside stirred my imagination and I thought of
Diogenes. Though somewhat out of place, I will tell you a little more
about the great but outlandish philosopher. He was a bankrupt
banker who begged from actual want. He adopted the beggar’s garb
and made his home in a tub in a temple at Athens. He envied the life
of the animals. He injured no one, but refused to recognise the laws.
He was good in debate and never lost an argument. He called
‘freedom of speech’ as the greatest gift that society could ask for.
Everyone knows the story of how Alexander came upon Diogenes
lying in the sun.
“I am Alexander, the great king,” said the ruler.
“I am Diogenes, the dog,” said the philosopher.
“Ask of me any favour you choose,” said the king.
“Stand out in the sun,” answered Diogenes.
“If I were not Alexander,” said the young warrior, “I would be
Diogenes.”
The two men died on the same day in BC 323, Alexander at
Babylon, Diogenes at Corinth, in his nineties. The Corinthians
placed a marble dog over his grave.
Diogenes was a cynic. He said that the only philosophy was
ethics. The aim of life is to find happiness, but this is to be found in
simple and natural life. A modest and virtuous life is the only way to
abiding contentment. Virtue consists in eating, possessing and
desiring as little as possible, drinking only water and injuring no one.
A life that is lived simply, naturally. How many of us can even think
of that in the present-day context of glaring materialism? Yet, there
is beauty in such a life, if only it can be lived.
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I think almost everybody has a taste for music, be it Western or

Eastern, Hindustani or Carnatic, Chinese or Japanese. Shakespeare
spoke of the music of the spheres.
Aesthetic appreciation of music, no less than the harmonious
rapport with nature, draws us nearer and nearer to the divinity in us
until our inner being is wholly absorbed in its ecstatic joy of ultimate
peace. Music engages. It opens up an entrancing world of beauty.
Music attracts and elevates. With a cultivated centre of appreciation,
you can reach the heart of the musician. The musician’s inspirations
can be a powerful tool to kindle your own creativity. This creativity, in
turn, may express itself in the cultivation of specific musical talents.
Music appreciation is a fascinating experience. The harmony, the
rhythm and the melody flowing from the heart of the talented
musician can uplift your spirit and transport you to a realm of joy and
contentment.
Once, a friend and I went to a classical dance concert. The story
was woven round the compositions of a great Saivite saint of the
seventh century. It was a solo performance by an experienced
classical dancer. The story was about a girl who sees the divine
image of a famous temple being taken in a procession in the streets
around the temple. The girl is overwhelmed by the beauty of the
God, falls in love with the God, shuns her parents, gives up all daily
routines and rituals and goes into a state of divine madness. Filled
with overpowering love, she dances in the streets, in ecstasy. It was
a beautifully choreographed spectacle. The song, the singing, the
accompaniments, the flawless dancing, the profound emotions that
the dancer displayed, touched the core of our being. The packed
audience, experiencing pure spiritual fervour, gave the dancer a
thumping ovation at the end. My friend was visibly moved and, as for
me, tears were flowing freely.
When Pablo Picasso said, “When I paint, my object is to show
what I have found and not what I am looking for”. This sums up the
essence of the true artist as we have seen above. In our Carnatic
musicians of the present day, I have found the Picasso-feel brimming
all over. And, there is the eminent and popular musician, T.M.
Krishna, who has captured the hearts of thousands of listeners by
his singing, style, technique, and above all his manodharma. His
greatly interesting book, ‘A Southern Music – the Karnatik Story’
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A Thing of Beauty
is described by David Shulman as “a passionate book, written by a

person capable of strong feeling – capable, that is, of love.” Zubin
Mehta, the well-known conductor of orchestra, speaks of the book
as containing “a beautifully constructed thesis, not only on Carnatic
music, but an intense philosophy of music and aesthetics, which will
inspire anyone who is involved with arts and culture”.
In the rest of this note, I shall record a few relevant observations
extracted from this book, which will give us a good idea as to the role
of music as a source of beauty and joy.
“Whether flowing out of the hollow of the bamboo, or taking
complex forms in the musical imagination, music has been and
remains an integral part of human existence. It mirrors every
moment of a person’s life, not just one special time. It is life
itself. Music is something intimate, a friend, a guide, teacher,
protector, challenger, aphrodisiac, stimulator and much more.”
“Music, indeed, art itself, deals with a person’s personal
feelings, conditioned by experience.... The personal nature of
the experience lies within the created space, yet it remains
impersonal, because, the felt experience is not just about the
individual’s conditioned feelings as much as it is about the
quality of the art being experienced in itself. This experiencing
of the art is definitely far more than a manifestation of
personal human feelings or needs.”
Somewhat differently, T.M. Krishna defines aesthetics in arts as
the understanding of art, of intent, structure, form, changes,
development and history, thereby examining why an art form is what
it is. Looking at beauty in music, T.M. Krishna would say,
“It (beauty) has a personal manifestation, and a sense beyond
the personal. We need to go beyond the personal in order to
grasp the idea of beauty. Similarly, we must develop the
capacity to critique music on the basis of the aesthetics that
define it, rather than our personal sensibilities.”
“Music transcends melody and rhythm. It is a deeply personal
emotive experience that connects our life through our senses.
This is what makes music meaningful in normal life. Beyond
comprehension, grammar, format, what music ultimately is, is
its ability to reveal ourselves to us.”
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“The artist’s personal imagination - transforming into creativity

through introspection, understanding and improvisation – is
what imbues her with an identifiable, distinct, creative
personality and a true artistic quality.”
“Various improvisational techniques built into Karnatik music
gives the musician scope for creative expression. In this lies
the beauty of the form. It enables an interplay between the
creative compositions of the vaggeyakara and the inherent
creativity of every musician.”
Here, we must hear what T.M. Krishna says on ‘manodharma’.
“The word ‘manodharma’ has two components to it: mano,
meaning one’s own will; and dharma, which refers to a certain
righteousness in the path. This is a challenge, not to the
music, but to the musician’s ego, and how much of it she is
willing to give up to let dharma lead the will. There is no rule
book, only a depth that every aspect of Karnatik music has. In
this depth lies the journey of every raga, tala and composition.
All these are like living beings, because of what they have
experienced and the way they have been transformed. They
also carry the bruises of manipulation. Every musician seeks
to respect this journey of Karnatik music and take it forward.
Dharma here signifies, not a force, but the attitude of being
respectful, yet questioning. In this critical balance, the
musician allows Karnatik music to engulf his sense of music.
From within this submission is born an expression of creativity
that is truly the musician’s.”
How beautiful! Like T.M. Krishna’s music!
Art and culture have always been the essential ingredients of all
great civilisations - Egyptian, Syrian, Jewish, Roman, Greek,
Chinese, Indus Valley, Vedic, Dravidian, Christian, Islamic,
Renaissance and many more. We must read all books of arts to
understand civilisation, says Ruskin - temple, churches, mosques,
culture, painting, monuments, and the like. There is no doubt that all
these convey a sense of beauty through their sublimity and
grandeur. Such things of beauty are possible only when there is
enough food, leisure, and minds ready for stimulation. We must
remember, at the same time, that all these have had their beginnings
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A Thing of Beauty
at a time when the ‘primitive’ man was developing ideas of beauty.

He was well-placed to cultivate a sense of beauty, because he lived
amidst nature, experienced rain and storm, lightning and thunder, as
though they were sent by God. Even as he killed animals for food,
he admired their beauty. In the night, when there was no light, and
he and his mate were close together, he felt the beauty of love and
kinship stir in his heart. In the day when there was no work, he and
others of his tribe joined together and sang and played. We have
inherited a lot from them and all that we boast of now have always
had humble beginnings.
After I wrote this note on ‘A Thing of Beauty’, I came across an
article in The Hindu, dated, 28th February, captioned, ‘A thing of
beauty is a ploy forever’. The article, written by Jayant Sriram,
referred to the contribution of Prof. Semir Zeki, the father of
neuroaesthetics, to the study of the neural mechanism that goes into
aesthetic appreciation. I found it interesting and would like to share
the entire article with you. Some of you may have already read it.
“Students of the humanities may have been debating the
meaning and value of art and beauty for centuries but they still
don’t take kindly to interventions by scientists. So it was with
Professor Semir Zeki, a renowned neurobiologist who in the
late 1990s turned his attention to the study of what happens
to the human brain when it sees or experiences art. His 1999
book, ‘Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain’, serves
as the founding text for the field of neuroaesthetics and one of
his major arguments is that there can never be a complete
theory of aesthetics without taking into account the role of the
brain and how it correlates such experiences.
Not surprisingly, over the course of hundreds of lectures
delivered on the subject, Professor Zeki, who teaches at
University College London, has often been confronted with the
accusation that he is attempting to demystify concepts such as
beauty or even love.
Prof. Zeki explains that art historians are suspicious about the
fact that neuroaesthetics seeks to give answers to the
question of what is beauty, a subject, he says, that they have
been debating for thousands of years without coming to an
answer. But, have they got the question wrong all along?
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‘Neuroaesthetics does not ask the question of what is beauty,

but only the brain mechanism that engages with the
experience of beauty,’ says Prof. Zeki. Studying the neural
mechanism that goes into aesthetic appreciation has allowed
Professor Zeki to frame debates around the uses of beauty
that go beyond the art historian’s domain. In a 2011 study, for
instance, he found that the same part of the brain that is
excited when you fall in love with someone is stimulated when
you look at great works of beauty. Viewing art, the study
showed, triggers a surge of the feel-good chemical, dopamine,
in the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain — which is involved in
the cognitive processing of decision-making — resulting in
feelings of intense pleasure. Apart from its utility as a scientific
argument, the study also raises questions about whether more
exposure to art could improve mental health. And conversely, it
raises the question of whether a diminution in our ability to
experience beauty is a sign of depression.
The questions that Professor Zeki is currently dealing with go
even further - studying the correlation between the experience
of different sorts of beauty. ‘Whether it is physical beauty,
visual beauty, musical beauty, all cause activity in the same
part of the brain. But, above all, the phenomenon is interesting
because it holds true for mathematical beauty,’ he explains.
What does mathematical beauty allude to? Plato called it the
highest form of beauty because it told you something about
the structure of the universe. And Immanuel Kant wrote that
the pleasure that we derive from a mathematical equation is
that it ‘makes sense’.
It is often said that mathematicians strive for beauty in their
work the way painters do. And that some mathematical
equations are simply found to be more beautiful than others.
‘Take for example Einstein’s theory of relativity, which was
widely accepted because it imported a concept of extreme
beauty into mathematics in the way that it sought to stabilise
all that we know about the universe. And only recently, with the
discovery of gravitational waves, it was proven to be true,’
Professor Zeki explains. In experiments conducted in 2014,
Professor Zeki attempted to demonstrate that for
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A Thing of Beauty
mathematicians the conclusive test for the veracity of an

equation is not whether it is simple or complex but whether it is
beautiful. ‘I depart from Darwin now, whose theory was that the
uses of beauty are simply related to sexual selection,’ he says.
‘I think beauty is a sign towards the truth about the universe.’
He goes on to elaborate his hypothesis: ‘Take string theory
for example. It has not yet been conclusively proven or
accepted but I wonder if any of the equations in string theory
are really beautiful and if that is what they need to strive
towards’.
From causing consternation in the world of art to a deeper
understanding of how the brain responds to the experiential,
Professor Semir Zeki’s explorations of the nuance of beauty
will perhaps end up humanising science as much as decoding
art.”
Beyond beauty, there is nothing else!
* * * * * * * * * *
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B. DISCUSSION
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Justice Revisited
SUNDAY FIFTH SESSION

JULY 17, 2016 10:00 AM TO 1:30 PM
“JUSTICE REVISITED” T. V. VENKATARAMAN

10:00 AM TO 11:00 AM
A. INTRODUCTION
“The world is in turmoil. India is on fire!” I told two of my friends,
as we sat talking in my lounge, one cloudy evening. We are easy-
chair enthusiasts. We have been beach-walkers for more than three
decades. All of us had retired long ago, happily counting our
pension money, waiting for the day when the next D.A. increase will
be announced. Whenever time permits, we meet in the house of one
or the other friend and today, they are with me. Both of them are
allergic to cool sea breeze and have chosen to come to my place.
While I have crossed eighty, the two friends are moving steadily
towards this goal. I stopped walking after my illness and that
probably explains my swinging moods. I was somewhat low, that
evening, having pondered over the Rohith suicide incident.
“Every other day, you hear of a student committing suicide, may
be because of some frustration, tiff with parents, love failure, quarrel
with a professor for his tasteless remarks,” I said.
“You seem to be in great form today,” Vasu, the sixty-five year
old, said.
“As if you care for anything. Nothing matters to you except your
business!”
“With whom are you angry today?” Vasu shot back.
“Newspapers are full of murders, accidents, unnatural deaths,
hartals, fasting. Roads are full of agitating people and of course,
those muddy potholes. Thefts galore. I’m afraid of leaving the house.
I can’t trust the watchman or even the driver!”
“The Met Dept. is forecasting very heavy rains for the next ten
days,” said Krishna, the other friend. “El Nino effect.”
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“Enough is enough. If you go to the vegetable shop now, prices

will be sky high. Many of the vegetables will be missing, bought by
the affluent people in advance of the impending storm.”
“You are out to criticise Narendra Modi,” roared Vasu. “He is
doing such a good job.”
“Mind you,” I retaliated. “I am not in politics. I left it long ago, after
reading Marx. What I am stating are facts, stark facts. You can’t
controvert.”
“I agree,” said Krishna, “look at the universities. They seem to be
like battlegrounds. And the faculty members, too, are getting
involved.”
“Why not?” I asked. “When genuine freedom is restricted,
casteism is rampant, there is open discrimination, conscious persons
do feel they have a duty to do their bit to set matters right.”
“But they don’t have to fight along with the students. They can
exercise their influence at the right place,” said Vasu.
“You are right. At the right place. But, where is the right place?
Not the political quarters, certainly. So, everybody rushes to the
courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court. Yes, we will have justice
there. But, it seems odd that we cannot set our own house in order
and expect somebody else to do so. There is no goodwill anywhere.
No tolerance.”
“But why should the young people go about agitating, when their
job is to study?” said Vasu. “Their parents are anxious about their
future but the students do not appear to be so.”
“I don’t think it is fair to generalise,” I replied. “Take the case of
Rohith at the Hyderabad University. You mean to say he was not
conscious of his responsibility as a scholar? What affected him,
profoundly, was his own role as a scholar and the pressures upon
him. Otherwise he had no business to commit suicide.”
“Some relatives of his said he was a Dalit. His own parents
denied this. It is all confusing,” said Krishna.
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Justice Revisited
“Dalit or not was not the question in Rohith’s case. That is

politics, which entered the scene as usual in such matters. What is
important is how Rohith felt on certain important matters that
affected his conscience.”
I continued, “I want you to read this article, ‘The Clarity of a
Suicide Note’. It is about Rohith’s letter. This article appeared in
The Hindu dated 21st January. It is written by Manash
Bhattacharjee, a poet and a scholar, and an Adjunct Professor in
the University of Delhi. The Hindu carried it as a centre page article,
with a charming photo of Rohith. The article moved me. I felt sad and
desolate that we were unable to control our own affairs. Here is a
copy of the article. Please read.”
“So, the future lies in darkness and the forces of right
Are weak. All this was plain to you
When you discovered a torturable body.
(Bertolt Brecht, ‘On the Suicide of the Refugee W.B.’)
These lines by Brecht, from his poem on the German Jewish
philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin, tell you a person
committing suicide has one terrible advantage at his disposal:
his clarity. In Benjamin’s case, it was not simply clarity about
his personal situation, being unable to cross through the
border check posts and fearing he would be turned over to
the Nazis. It was also the darkened vision of a future Benjamin
carried before his eyes, for a racist regime was ruling his
country and hope had receded beyond the horizon. In
Vladimir Mayakovsky’s last poem, ‘Past One O’Clock’, written
two nights before he shot himself, the clarity is equally chilling,
caught between a Stalinist regime discrediting his poetry and
a failed love affair. Paul Celan was driven to the same fate also
for more reasons than one, a mediocre poet’s wife accusing
him of plagiarism, and his psychiatric treatment. But the poet
might also have been referring to the larger web of desolation
of being Jewish in post-War Europe, when he wrote two
months before he jumped into the Seine: ‘They have healed
me to pieces.’
A 25-year-old Dalit scholar from University of Hyderabad,
Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide on Sunday evening, left
a stunning note for his friends and the world alike, whose
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content is full of serious lessons for India’s caste-ridden

society. The sequence of events leading to the suicide was
plaguing Rohith’s life, when he decided to end it in his friend
Uma Maheshwar’s room. In the note, Rohith says a growing
gap between his soul and body made him feel he had become
a monster. He immediately goes on to say where his soul lay
— in becoming a writer of science, like Carl Sagan. But his
body got entangled in politics, a politics that reduced him to
his body, dismissing his soul. The science of politics, a science
that tears the soul apart from the body, was not for him. He
laments in the note, he loved people without knowing they
were long divorced from nature. That is quite a Rousseauian
angst, pretty late into the heart, or heartlessness, of a post-
industrial era. All Rohith saw around him was second-hand
feelings, constructed love, coloured beliefs and artificial art.
There was no room for artifice in his soul, the note seems to
suggest. But nature, like politics and art, has both soul and
room for artifice, which tore apart his soul from his body. No
wonder Rohith concludes, it is difficult to love without getting
hurt. Love, like nature, art and politics, is a thing of artifice,
and no science can prove it otherwise. It made a huge
difference to him.
The note then moves into the political sphere of things: what
Rohith understood as valuable in a man meant nothing to the
world around him, beyond the constraints of his identity and its
thin possibilities. Rohith was a Dalit, and it came in the way of
his quest for the stars. Sounds incredible, but the Hindu caste
system still lives in the Middle Ages. Being Dalit was Rohith’s
only value for caste Hindus, a value measured only through
denial, insult and injury. Casteism, analogous to racism, is no
less sinister and monstrous than what Celan faced under the
Nazi regime. When Rohith was suspended by his university
authorities, for an alleged assault on a fellow student that
wasn’t proven beyond doubt, he must have felt the world
closing in around him. The accusation of being ‘casteist,
extremist and anti-national’ by a Union Minister in a letter must
have broken his heart. How can a Dalit, who is a victim of
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Justice Revisited
casteism, be casteist? The game of casteism is prone to

absurd charges, and Rohith’s intelligence couldn’t make sense
of it.
It all started after he was part of a small protest against the
disruption of a film screening on the Muzaffarnagar riots in
Delhi University by a Hindu right-wing student organisation.
Can’t a film showing atrocities on religious minorities be
screened in the university of a country that boasts of being the
world’s largest democracy? Rohith was well within his rights to
protest against majoritarian vandalism. But the exercise of
such rights comes with a price, for the rhetoric of democracy
doesn’t match up to its practices. The value of man, Rohith
sums up in his note with precision, has been reduced to a
vote, a number, a thing. It is a prescient summing up of what
the instrumentalist logic of capitalist and casteist democracies
has made of people. Rohith refused to be counted as a
number wearing an identity mark forced around his neck, in
this absurd game where democracy and casteism play
calculable crimes between each other.
In the middle of having contemplated his fate, having decided
to end his life with his own hands, in a farewell act that will
destroy his torturable body, Rohith leaves his own idea of
man: A ‘glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in
studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living’. Rohith
was left wondering at his immeasurability that opened up
spaces between him and the stars. To be a vote counted for
much less. He only saw his own immeasurability everywhere,
while protesting against the disruption of a film screening, or
for a suspension he and his friends didn’t deserve. Even in
death he believed he can ‘travel to the stars’. But how did he
feel on earth? The quoted phrase, ‘From shadows to the
stars’, gives an impression. The Dalit, whose shadow pollutes
the caste Hindu, one who is ascribed a body that embodies
the shadow of pollution, feels like a shadow aspiring for the
stars. From measure to immeasurability. From darkness to
light.
And yet, Rohith reminds us, the moment of his birth is
irreconcilable: For people like him, life is ‘a curse’. He finds his
birth a ‘fatal accident’. He writes further, I can never recover
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from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from

my past.’ Despite that accident of birth, which becomes
catastrophic, being saddled with a caste, foreshadowing all his
troubles, overshadowing his quest for the stars, his lonely,
unappreciated childhood and adolescence, he nevertheless
sees himself in the true measure of immeasurability that he
knows he inhabits within. In that, Rohith betrays a clarity that
Brecht saw in Benjamin, and Mayakovsky and Celan saw in
themselves.
Those who have most overwhelmingly suffered the barbarism
of history — Dalits, people of colour, vulnerable women,
workers — alone carry a genuine value of universality in them,
and in their protests against injustice we see the true
unfolding of that universal spirit that impresses upon our
hearts. The claims to universality of those in power - white
colonisers, caste Hindus - are essentially un-universal,
bigoted and discriminatory. It is not in “universal gospels” that
we find any real, universal capacity but in the spirit of those
who suffer these gospels, the propaganda of spiritual and
cultural supremacy, these lies. The lack of vindictiveness in
Rohith’s note is a historic lesson for nationalist and casteist
hate-mongers.
So Rohith, and not his detractors, alone can claim the stars,
the universe, the world, the soul of man, because he knows he
belongs to such immeasurable dreams and promises. In his
death, we realise the lies and mockery being played out in this
country and in this world by those who don’t deserve, unlike
Rohith, a place among the stars after death.”
(Manash Bhattacharjee)
We finished reading. There was silence. My friends were,
probably, trying to think as to what to say. It is difficult to say
anything.
“Why all these?” questioned Vasu, breaking the silence.
“It is important,” I said. “It is good reading. It touches your heart. It
is thoughtful and provocative because you must know your own
position. There is no longer the question of caste alone here. Here
is a question of injustice – a feeling of suffering through life that
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Justice Revisited
nobody wants to come forward to understand. Above all, he was a

young man, in the prime of his life. The world was before him. But,
that is a battered world, split by many unwanted forces. It is possible
that there are millions who feel like him – not for reasons of caste
alone but for several other reasons from birth, from lack of freedom,
from peer pressures, all of which, only too rapidly, destroy their
creativity. In the end, they fall a prey to the politicians. They become
politicians themselves - the survival route!”
“All that you say is true, sir,” said Krishna.
“Read the sentences of Rohith again,” I said. “He says in his
note, ‘The value of a man is reduced to his immediate identity, and
the nearest possibility, a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a
man treated like a mind.’ By whom, I would like to ask and answer,
‘By all the social and political forces.’ In a portion of the letter which
is supposed to have been struck off by Rohith himself, he adds,
‘Everything exists for its own sake... To get power, to become
famous, or to be important, in between the boundaries, and to think
we are up to changing the system. Very often we overestimate the
acts and find solace in trials.’ Rohith may have been an angry man
eager to undo the injustice caused to the Dalits over the centuries.
But his note reveals the sensitivity of his soul. He says, ‘I have no
complaints on anyone. It was always with myself. I had problems. I
feel a growing gap between my body and my soul. And I have
become a monster.’ Why was there a disconnect between his body
and his soul? What made him think that he had become a monster?”
I continued, “Listen to something more from Rohith’s letter.
‘Maybe I was wrong all the while, in understanding the world. In
understanding love, pain, life and death. There was no urgency. But
I was always rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, for them,
some people, life itself is a curse. My birth is a fatal accident. I can
never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated
child from my past’.”
When I spoke of this letter to a neuro friend, he said, Rohith was
a case of untreated childhood psychological malady. Subsequent
pressures of social, personal and political issues must have weighed
heavily upon the young man. We come across suicides in cases of
this type.
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“True as it may be, purely from a psychological point of view,” I

said, “this picture is over-simplified. Not Rohith’s death, but the
demands of a kind that are wholly unjust, that raise the main
question of understanding the true cause of his death, that is of
utmost importance. In this, as in many other cases, rape of women,
hunger deaths, suicide of farmers, of school girls and boys,
domestic disharmony on account of pressures of various kinds,
financial disputes, murders of unprotected women for small gains, all
darken the face of a nation that saw glorious truths propounded and
followed in centuries past. I give utmost importance to tolerance.
There will be much less injustice if there is tolerance, a give-and-
take attitude, an understanding that everyone matters on this earth,
not oneself alone.”
“God,” said Vasu.
“I bow down in reverence before Emperor Ashoka,” I said,
“about whom you all know. He lived in the third century BC and
authored numerous inscriptions on good and just behaviour. He
argued against intolerance and in favour of understanding that even
when one social or religious group of people find themselves
opposed to other sects or groups, other sects should be duly
honoured in every way on all occasions. The reason he gave was
that other people deserve reverence for one reason or the other.
And Ashoka adds dramatically, ‘He who does reverence to his own
sect, while discouraging the sects of others, wholly from attachment
to his own sect, in reality, inflicts by such a conduct, the severest
injury on his own sect.’ Ashoka’s point is that intolerance of other
people’s beliefs and religions, does not help to generate confidence
in the magnanimity of one’s own tradition.”
“Ashoka’s thinking on social justice, if I may describe it as such, is
based on his conviction that achieving the welfare and freedom of
the people is an important role for the state as well as the individuals
in society, and social enrichment could be achieved through the
voluntary good behaviour of the citizens themselves. Ashoka spent a
good bit of his life in promoting good, spontaneous behaviour in
people, towards each other, and the inscriptions that he erected
across the country are a part of this effort.”
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Justice Revisited
“Ashoka was perhaps over-optimistic in his belief in the moral

behaviour of the people. They need to be disciplined where there is
blatant injustice.”
“How do we do that?” asked Vasu. “We cannot constantly come
to blows in the streets to discipline one another.”
“You are right. That calls for institutions,” I said, “but one has to
search for institutions that promote justice, rather than treating the
institutions themselves as instruments of justice. I am repeating what
Amartya Sen said in his book, ‘The Idea of Justice’. The fact is,
however excellent the institutions may be, one is not very sure how
sensitive they are to what actually happens in the world. Therefore,
for the prevention of injustice in the world, or society, the institutions
must focus on what happens in society, understand the seriousness
of the differences and then proceed to handle cases of injustice,
even on an individual basis.”
“We must also note that whatever good may be associated with
the ‘chosen institutions’, it is difficult to think of them being basically
good by themselves, although the charter that created them may be
basically good. However, the institutional foundation for the
dispensation of justice is vastly important, considering the fact that
justice is the basic ingredient of any constitutional charter, unless it
is that of a dictatorship.”
“What are the institutions that you are talking of?” asked Vasu.
“Well, in a democracy, we have the Legislature, the Executive
and the Judiciary. The Legislature, politically constituted, is there to
pass laws in line with the policies of the Executive, maintaining the
principles of justice and equality at all cost. The Executive, the
political wing, is there to formulate its policies and ensure their
implementations. The bureaucratic wing of the Executive, takes
charge of implementation, ensuring that the nitty-gritty of
administration do not tamper with the policies or interpret them or
enforce them in an injudicious and non-egalitarian fashion. The
Judiciary ensures the protection and enforcement of justice in
individual, social and public cases and should not hesitate to declare
as unlawful the legislation or the executive action which goes against
the fundamental features of the constitution, like equality, justice,
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non-discrimination, and freedom in certain essential categories. The

Judiciary at the same time must ensure the safety of the nation and
the protection of the civil rights of the citizens.”
“Sounds idealistic,” said Krishna. “What happens in practice,
don’t we all know!”
“You have raised an important question,” I said. “The idea of
democracy, though practised for many centuries, in many nations,
bristles with difficulties of a challenging nature.”
Let me here mention, what Amartya Sen says in his ‘The Idea of
Justice’,
“The crucial role of public reasoning with practice of
democracy makes the entire subject of democracy relate
closely with the idea of justice. If the demands of justice can
be assessed only with the help of public reasoning, and if
public reasoning is constitutively related to the idea of
democracy, then there is an intimate relationship between
justice and democracy, with shared discursive feature.”
“Simply put,” I said, “if justice is to be properly promoted in
democracy, there ought to be public reasoning of a shared kind.”
“But, today, there is a lot of tension in our understanding of
democracy by public reasoning and in election by ballots. We see
today that democracy is recognised in rather narrow form in
organisational terms, focussing particularly on the procedure of
balloting. Ballots and elections do, of course, have an effective role
for the expression and effectiveness of the process of public
reasoning, but they are not the only thing that matter. Free speech,
access to information, and freedom of dissent, are an important part
of public reasoning and where they do not occur to the satisfaction
of the outside observer, we may say that the whole process of
reasoning through balloting is a failure. Where freedom is not
available, public reasoning may be said to have failed and the
political machinery to promote justice will be a failed instrument.”
Let me quote Amartya Sen again.
“Democratic freedom can certainly be used to enhance social
justice and a better and fairer politics. The process, however,
is not automatic and requires activism on the part of politically
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Justice Revisited
engaged citizens..... Communal distinctions, like racial

differences, remain open to exploitation by those who want to
cultivate discontent and instigate violence, unless the bonds
established by the national democracies serve as an effective
safeguard against this. Much depend on democratic politics,
in generating tolerant values, and there is no automatic
guarantee of success by the mere existence of democratic
institutions. Here, an active and energetic media can play a
competent role by making the problems, the predicaments
and the humanity of certain groups more understood by other
groups.”
“The success of democracy is not a matter of having the most
perfect institutional structure that we can think of. It depends
inescapably on our actual behaviour patterns and the working
of the social and political interactions. There is no chance of
resting the matter in the ‘safe’ institutional virtuosity. The
working of the democratic institutions, like that of any other
institutions, depends on the activities of human agents, in
utilising opportunities for reasonable realisation of justice.”
“I may have been quoting eminent experts,” I said, “and you may
not get the answers to your questions of the ideal versus the
practical. They make their conclusions in a generalised form. We
need to see how much we can apply in practice. The gap is big, of
course. For example, there is indignation and argument when there
is injustice. Frustration and ire may help to motivate us to action,
but, in the end, we have to rely both for assessment and for
effectiveness, on a reasoned approach and scrutiny, to obtain a
plausible and sustainable understanding of the basis of the
complaints and allegations, and what can be done to address the
underlying problem.”
“But, there is an increasing tendency to confuse patriotism with
nationalism. They seem to think that only if you subscribe to certain
values, you are patriotic. And only then you display your nationalistic
feelings.” This is from Vasu.
“I agree with you,” I said. “The whole thing is wrong. Conceptually
this ought to be condemned. Practically, this leads to dangerous
divisions and disruptions,” I said. “All of us have to deal with this kind
of ‘unpatriotic’ patriotism. Eternal vigilance is the pride of liberty.”
163
“I would like to reiterate that it is in being a citizen of a nation that

you are patriotic. The nation is founded on certain principles. Your
patriotism is manifest when you adhere to, propagate and live for the
idea and ideals of the nation. The word ‘patriotism’ is not used when
one is wedded to a particular culture, religion, race, caste or creed. I
would like to emphasise that the goals of democracy will suffer, when
mistaken notions are floated.”
“Let us try to keep democracy intact. Democracy, all over the
world, is under strain for multiple reasons. Economic equality and
freedom are no longer prized. Political hypocrisy is rampant. With
the bulging size of the nation, death of traditional values, an
educational system that seems to cater more for brawn than for the
brain, with the absence of interaction among citizens on the basis of
values and good parameters, the goals of democracy are distancing
themselves from the people, with the growing complexity of the
government, the growing powers of bureaucracy, the problem gets
more compounded. With all the spread of information and
intelligence, the common man is ignorant of what really transpires
around him, unless the news is fed to him by the mass media. The
theory of democracy had presumed that man was a rational animal;
no doubt, someone has seen this in a book of logic. But, man is an
emotional animal, occasionally rational; and through his feelings he
can be deceived to his heart’s content. It may be time, as Lincoln
pretended to believe, that, ‘You can’t fool all the people all the time’.
But, you can fool enough of them to rule a large country. It has been
computed that the supply of fools on this planet is replenished at the
rate of two hundred every minute. That is a bad omen for
democracy.”
“Apparently, it is not democracy alone that is a failure. It is
ourselves. We forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made
ourselves sovereign. We thought there was power in numbers, but
we found only mediocrity. The larger the number of voters, the more
ordinary must be the man, or the qualities that will appeal to them.
According to Bacon, ‘The ancient politicians said of democracies,
that people were like the seas and orators like the wind’.”
“Voltaire preferred monarchy to democracy, on the ground that in
a monarchy, it was only necessary to educate one man; in a
democracy, you must educate millions.”
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Justice Revisited
“These are not my words. I am quoting from Will Durant’s ‘The

Pleasures of Philosophy’. But, we have some more interesting
fireworks from him.”
“But, today, every man and woman burns with the fever; it
makes our wealth and our illnesses. Liberty means for us that
each of us is fit to be a President; and the result is the most
restless and persistent strife that history has known. Peace is
for unequals; the pretence of equality brings a perennial tug
of war. Hence, democracy breeds endless conflict in politics,
economics in the society and in the individual; worry and strain
are written in every face and embitters every home. When
society recognises the natural inequality of man in intellect
and will, and eliminates the hypocrisy of egalitarian
institutions, men may come to know peace again. Then,
society will graduate from competition to courtesy, from
quantity to quality, from imagination to intelligence and from
wealth to art.”
I raise my eyebrows on his point about abolition of egalitarian
institutions. What is he driving at? Abolition of democracy and
restoration of the aristocracy of the intellect? He is, no doubt,
pleading for merit against mediocrity. But, beware! That is how we
are usually tripped. I, for one, would plead for a more intelligent
democracy, granting all its limitations. And where is justice in all this?
Thrown into the rat hole, because the intellectuals and the
aristocrats do not suffer from injustice. To them, justice is what they
conceive of. To the common man, justice is what he does not have,
in many cases, when his vital interests are involved. Democracy is
still the safest bet, because, the three winged administration can
provide a kind of watch over one another. Above all, justice, finally, is
what is delivered by the judiciary. But, let it not be said that the
nation is ruled by the judiciary. Democracy is a harmonious blending
of opposing principles and each principle must strive to promote
justice as its legitimate role, because, the security, defence and
welfare of the nation depend not only on the proper delivery of
justice by all the arms, but, even more important, people know that
this is being done.
* * * * * * * * * *
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B. DISCUSSION
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Au Revoir Philosophy

JULY 17, 2016 10:00 AM TO 1:30 PM
“AU REVOIR T. V. VENKATARAMAN

PHILOSOPHY” 11:00 AM TO 12:00 NOON
A. INTRODUCTION
The lure of philosophy is great indeed. We get into a
philosophical mood fairly easily. We tend to philosophise in the
course of our conversation with our friends. We think that philosophy
is tough, but flaunt it in arguments in the family and elsewhere, trying
to show that we are capable of rising above the rest. We often
confuse our religious sentiments as philosophical positions.
Conversely too, when we get into arguments with friends over
religious philosophy, we tend to become emotional and forget that
we are talking philosophy. When we see the sky over the sea darken
with rain-bearing clouds, we admire the beauty and go into
philosophical ecstasy. Tall mountains and high peaks, snow and
running brooks, all move us to making philosophical observations,
as high and encompassing as the mountains themselves. When old-
age stares at us, we begin to think of the end, contemplate upon
impermanence in a mood of philosophical indifference. When we see
death next door, fear grips and a rude reminder knocks in our head
that all philosophies are of no use, we cringe before our personal
deity praying that we may be treated lightly when it comes to
answering questions. Philosophy everywhere and yet, philosophy
nowhere.
When I entered college and decided to take Economics and
Political Philosophy for my Honours course, a German professor
introduced us to a whole new world of Western philosophy. It was all
Greek and Latin, yet challenging all the same. My Eastern mind and
heart could not give room easily to all those abstract concepts and
ideals, abstract from my point of view, but a matter of day-to-day
concern for the youth of Greece, let us say, with Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle knocking about. In Plato’s view, the ‘dear delight’ of
philosophy should not be permitted to the youth, for the youngsters
debate the problems of human life with no desire for truth, but only a
blind hunger for victory; they tear and bite at one another with
167
arguments, and the truth, in the end, lies torn and battered at their
feet. I only want to say that the students tear, not philosophy but,
various other things. What I read in the college, however, were
rudiments of information culled out from text books which were not
philosophy. I wound my way slowly through the maze and became
familiar with the names of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus,
Marcus Aurelius, Kant, Hume, Spinoza, Hobbs, and other names
which I could not even pronounce. But, more happily, I came to find
great writers, who transformed philosophy into poetry, drama and
literature. All that I could get, in truth, during those years, was the
conviction that there was such a thing as philosophy. I also learned,
on seeing elderly scholars and retired professors, that there was
always time and leisure for speculation, and I could go back to the
legendary names and grapple with these in order that I may master
them. However, I had no idea at that time, that, as a result of such
mastery, I could unsettle my long-held beliefs and travel to some
plateau of clear insight. I am still not sure, today, in my late years. I
am able to see that all philosophies march towards one goal, one
faith, one truth. I am not able to afford sympathy for all the dreams
and aspirations of the human beings. Nor have I cultivated a loving
understanding of their diverse ways. Try as I might, I do not know, if
ever I will have the peace and simplicity, the tolerance and the
catholicity of the sages who walk barely clothed in the holy
Himalayas.
My confusion got worse, confounded, when I turned to Hindu
philosophy. I did that mainly to stay updated with my friends who had
mastered all the nuances of Hindu religious thought, from their early
years, through familial inspiration, or teaching in the schools. Here, I
found not discourses on philosophy, but hair-splitting arguments in
the name of philosophy. I saw breezy debates but no understanding.
I found that the outcome of such debates was not love but pure
intellectualism. I noticed that the message of such debates was not
understanding and compassion but a call to adhere to one faith or
another. Overall, I was disappointed despite my profound respect for
the great masters. Where insights of philosophy are not truly
experienced, there can only be disharmony and absence of peace.
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I am no philosopher, but I philosophise. I am not a religious

person but expand on religious texts with little effort. I am not a man
of spirituality but I write books on spiritual themes. This is what we
generally encounter, a tribute to one’s own mastery of hypocrisy.
We need to think more profoundly about our thought, our word, and
action, and the world will have more true philosophers.
There is pleasure in philosophy; the love of the elusive. Truth is
more glorious than the lust for the world. We always feel that life has
a meaning. With chaos around us, it is good to feel that there is
something vital and significant in us and dream of philosophy as the
road to self-discovery. We want to know that little things are little and
big things are big. We want to know that our mind and heart are in
the right place. Go to philosophy and make a sincere effort and the
light will dawn on you.
But, let us beware, philosophers will have abundant wisdom, but
common sense? You may be able to give them that. Philosophers
like to soar, but very often, the air may be thin. In their wanderings,
philosophers seem to be losing grip on the issues. Science seems
always to advance but philosophy seems to lose ground or remain
stagnant. It must be said to the credit of philosophy, that it is
accepting the hard task of dealing with problems not open to
science, problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and
death, and so on. When philosophy yields some knowledge, at any
time, capable of formulation and specification, then such a
knowledge comes to be called science. Every science begins as
philosophy and ends as art. Philosophy is the hypothetical
interpretation of the unknown, or partially known.
Even as philosophy likes to look at a thing as a whole, philosophy
itself must be considered as a whole. Philosophy, dismembered into
a series of parts or studies, is no philosophy at all. A true scholar is a
‘whole-person’, not a ‘part-person’.
It has been conceded by the philosophers themselves that
philosophy clings like a spinster to the old fashioned problems and
ideas. Direct preoccupation with contemporary difficulties is left to
politics and social awareness. Philosophy is in flight today before the
sciences. One after another of the sciences have run away into the
productive world and perceptible achievements. It seems that
169
philosophy has withdrawn from its vital concerns – men and their life
in the world. Philosophy should not develop a complacent attitude
that old problems are no longer alive and have got solved by
themselves. This is not the right approach. The world’s problems
and antagonisms are not merely social, political or scientific. At their
root, they are deeply philosophical. Religion may condescend to
help, but one can always sense cynicism on the face of the recipient.
Philosophy can be a source of great help for illuminating the mind of
man, for better understanding of his fellow beings.
Philosophy is vital in governance too. Plato spoke of the
philosopher-king. Government suffers, Francis Bacon said, like
science, for want of philosophy. Philosophy bears to science the
same relationship which statesmanship bears to politics; movement
guided by total knowledge, and perspective, as against aimless and
individual seeking. Just as the pursuit of knowledge becomes
scholasticism, when divorced from the actual needs of men and life,
so the pursuits of politics become a destructive bedlam, when
divorced from science and philosophy.
“And so it must needs be dangerous to have the civil body of
States managed by empirical statesmen unless well-mixed with
others who are well-grounded in learning.”
“The power of the intellect over the will permits of deliberate
development; desire can be moderated or quieted by
knowledge; above all by a determinist philosophy which
recognizes everything as the inevitable result of its
antecedents. The more we know of our passions, the less
they control us. The greatest of all wonders is not the
conqueror of the world but the subduer of oneself.”
Schopenhauer’s sane advice,
“The first counsel, then, is Life before books, and the second
is, Text before commentary. Read the creators rather than the
expositors and the critics. Only from authors themselves can
we receive philosophical thoughts; therefore whoever feels
himself drawn to philosophy, must seek out its immortal
teachers in the still sanctuary of their own works.”
170
In his ‘Pleasures of Philosophy’, Will Durant moans the dying

fortunes of philosophy. There was a time when philosophy took
charge of all knowledge. The philosophers were the greatest. They
were honoured by the kings and men. Nothing was held nobler than
the pursuit of truth. Diogenes bade Alexander aside lest his royal
body should block the sun. Philosophy is not loved today because
she has lost the spirit of adventure. Science is taking away from
philosophy what was her exclusive domain. Cosmology has become
astronomy. The philosophy of the mind has given birth to
psychology. Natural philosophy has become biology and physics. All
the important problems of the globe have escaped her attention.
The tragedy today, is that few people understand that the purpose
of philosophy is not puzzle-answering in the clouds, without any
impact or influence on the affairs of the world, but the vast and total
problem of meaning, and value, and possibilities, of the human life.
Schopenhauer tells us,
“What one human being can be to another is not a very great
deal; in the end every one stands alone, and the important
thing is who it is that stands alone.”
“The happiness which we obtain from ourselves is greater
than that which we obtain from our surroundings.”
“The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way
in which he looks at it. ….. since everything which exists, or
happens for a man, exists only in his consciousness.”
Therefore it is with great truth that Aristotle says, “To be happy
means to be self-sufficient.”
Will Durant says,
“Unselfish intellect rises like a perfume above the faults and
follies of the world. Most men never rise above viewing things
as objects of desire....hence their misery; but to see things
purely as objects of understanding is to rise to freedom.”
We need not have to fly on the wings of philosophy. It is enough if
we see ourselves grounded by philosophy to the hard truths of life. It
is the task of philosophy to help us understand the truth behind both
the fickleness and the solidarity of human personality, so that, man
may know which way to go. You may say that philosophy contradicts
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itself; and that the philosophers are never content until they have
destroyed every rival claimant to the Throne of Philosophy. At the
same time, philosophers have also told us to march from thesis to
antithesis and then on to synthesis and never waver. Are not the
royal battles themselves helpful in the search for truth? It is not how
you go and how you come back; it is a question of what you see.
The temple, that I visit occasionally, attracts all sorts of people,
young and old, men and women, scholars and businessmen. As I
perambulate, I hear the babel of voices discussing from the
milkman’s failures, to the extra charges of the Electricity Board. A
group of angry young men is trying to marshal all arguments to
condemn the government for its dictatorial attitudes. I do not hear
the conversation clearly, because, much of it is lost in the noise. At
one corner, where I used to sit and contemplate in the years past, I
see a group of elderly persons conversing vigorously. They are
noisy within the limits of their vocal capability.
One voice in the semi-darkness says, “We have come a long
way. What have we done?”
“We have learnt,” says another.
“What learning? I have done nothing,” says yet another person.
“Wisdom,” says a respectable looking elderly person.
“Wisdom! You can afford to say that. You have been a
professor!”
“As if all professors are wise people!”
“I am wise,” replies the elderly gentleman, “because I learnt from
my experiences.”
“Experience is your teacher? That is what everybody talks of.
Don’t believe it. All of us have had loads of experience, but I do not
claim to be wise!”
“You must read philosophy!”
“Noble, no doubt. Too abstract. Too difficult to understand!”
“When I read a great philosopher, I am neither here nor there.
When I enter, I don’t know how to come out!”
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I am passing by. I hear this. I stop before the group, introduce

myself. “Kindly listen to Omar Khayyam,
‘Myself when young, did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about, but evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went’.”
* * * * * * * * * *
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B. DISCUSSION
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Yashodhara

JULY 17, 2016 10:00 AM TO 1:30 PM
“YASHODHARA” T. V. VENKATARAMAN
12:00 NOON TO 12:30 PM
A. INTRODUCTION
The book, ‘The Buddha’s Wife’, written by Janet Surrey and
Samuel Shem, one of my choice, deals with the life of Yashodhara,
wife of Prince Siddhartha, before he became the Buddha. The book
describes her life with her husband, her family, and all the nuns after
her conversion with elegance and compassion. It describes a new
path of bringing happiness in relationships, while staying together.
Everyone knows the story of the Buddha. As Siddhartha, the
Prince, he left his royal home to ‘go forth’ to seek enlightenment and
liberation from suffering. It is told that he left his wife Yashodhara on
the night of the birth of his child Rahula, and that he left without
saying goodbye. Siddhartha wanted to conquer suffering that came
of disease, poverty, old age and death, and in the process, walked
on to experiment with many faiths, abstinence, and finally came to
the conclusion that, by giving up desires, one could free oneself
from suffering. He put himself through great austerities, aspiring to
see the truth. But, none of these helped him. Finally, under the
Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, when he meditated, enlightenment
dawned on him, and he intuited the cause of suffering and
understood the method of removal of suffering through one’s own
effort and merit. He spoke not of the soul or of God, because he was
more concerned with the sufferings on this earth and the methods of
overcoming the suffering. Siddhartha sat in meditation under the
Bodhi tree and was Awakened and transformed into the Buddha. He
gave his first sermon to a small gathering of holy men and spoke on
what he called the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Path, which
offered any true seeker a path to the end of suffering. His teachings
attracted great attention and hundreds joined him as he walked up
and down the Gangetic plain giving his Dharma talks. He became
famous as the Teacher and thousands of people took to his
teachings with commitment. The kings and the merchants, the rich
and the poor, all followed him so as to listen to his talks and to host
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him and his followers. The Buddha came home only once, when his
son Rahula was seven years old. He met with Yashodhara, Rahula,
his step-mother, Prajapathi, his father, and others. According to the
early texts of the Pali Canon, a few years after this visit, Yashodhara,
Prajapathi and many other women of the palace asked for
permission through his cousin, Ananda, to join the Sangha. The
Buddha refused them two times, but then, when the women shaved
their heads and walked from the palace for several hundred miles to
where his Sangha was encamped, he agreed to accept them under
special conditions. It is widely accepted that Prajapathi, the Buddha’s
step-mother became fully enlightened and Yashodhara came to be
widely respected for her wisdom, achieving arahantship.
How did Yashodhara emerge from the pain and humiliation of the
abandoned, grieving wife, to become part of a strong, vital
community of women who persisted after the Buddha refused to let
them join the community? What spiritual conditions were present
before they ‘went forth together’ to go homeless into a holy life? How
did the spiritual transformation occur for Yashodhara? How did her
spiritual relationship help her to sustain and nurture the healthy
growth of her son, Rahula? The earliest texts of the Pali Canon
make scanty references to Yashodhara’s spiritual maturation. They
refer, among other things, to her refusal to go and meet the Buddha,
when he visited his home, and the Buddha having had to approach
her.
The Great Renunciation of the Buddha is celebrated as the ‘Path
of He Who Goes Forth’ – Thathagatha. Traditional Buddhism
emphasises solitary meditation and spiritual serving with community
support.
Yashodhara was left by her husband just hours after she became
a mother, in the palace, in the company of the extended family. From
the moment of the loss of her love in her life, Yashodhara came
under the umbrella of a lineage of wisdom that was available to her
from the mothers, the women, the relations and the healers in the
community. In her desperation, this gift allowed her to endure her
grief, stay alive to mother her son, and ultimately brought her the
name, ‘She Who Comes Forth In Relation’, to enter the full
awakening of compassion and wisdom, reflected in a life of
accompanying others.
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Yashodhara
Each journey necessitates wrestling with solitude and

communion. Yet each entered through a different Dharma gateway;
he through solitude and she through communion. Both are
necessary for a fully realised path. While the Buddha is a figure
represented in a solitary meditative posture, the fact is that except
for some days and nights spent under the Bodhi tree, he lived his
first thirty years as a prince in a busy palace and thereafter lived in a
huge community with other monks. And after his enlightenment, he
was always accompanied by hundreds, if not thousands, of
followers. Yet, he was the ‘One Teacher’ above all.
When her husband left, Yashodhara experienced immense
suffering at her core for the first time and called out for help from her
women, beginning the process of healing by relationship, until she
herself began to show up and accompany others, including men, as
a beneficial presence.
Imagine Yashodhara talking to her friends, “Your life story and all
our life stories of coming to awareness are now being subsumed in
the powerful and healing dharma of the Buddha’s teachings. But that
is not enough. It is not our whole experience. Nor exactly the path we
walked. Are there not many doorways to the Dharma? Could it be
that we have entered through another door? Could it be that there is
another way – a companion and sister to him – on entering and
walking together on a path that leads to the same place? Could we
not bring forth his and ours, interwoven, a shared path?”
There was this woman, Gotami, whose child died and she went to
the Buddha for the rebirth of her son.
The Buddha said, “Go and bring me some mustard from a house
where death has not taken place.”
Gotami went and searched and could find no such house or
family. The insight of impermanence dawned on her. When she went
to look for mustard, she heard and learnt of the sufferings of others.
The people opened their hearts to her. In listening to their suffering,
her own healing became complete. A right relationship, a true
community sense was born that was as big an inward teaching as
any the Buddha taught.
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Yashodhara and Prajapathi and all the women of the palace

spent a few years with the Sangha, understanding and benefitting
greatly from the Buddha’s teachings. But Yashodhara would feel
that “we feel something else, which is still unseen by the Master.
Perhaps the Buddha’s fully awakened perspective sees this, but it is
not clearly spoken in his teachings.”
If Prajapathi could express it,
“The Buddha achieved freedom by learning, by going forth
alone, and then bringing others along. Our path was in
staying, in learning to be with each other more and more
deeply and then going forth together. It is the Path of She
Who Stays, the Path in Right Relations. It portends learning to
live together.”
Yashodhara and Siddhartha were as close as the two could be. In
their emotional as well as intellectual life, they sailed together as
smoothly as the swans sailed over the still waters of the lake that lay
before their palace. Of course, by this time, Siddhartha had known
of disease, debility, old age and death. He had also come to know of
renunciation when he met the single monk who walked in front of his
palace lost in his own thoughts. He was aware of the problems of life,
while Yashodhara was only too keen to cultivate him closely. There
was beauty in love that concealed the harshness of life. Together
they had come across the mantra, “The mind creates the abyss and
the heart crosses it”. While Yashodhara knew something about the
heart, she had little concern for the mind or its antics, whereas deep
in his heart, Siddhartha was already grappling with his mind.
Siddhartha left. In retrospect, Yashodhara found that there was
no question of her following him, with or without her child. The
thought came to her that he had closed the door on his ‘deeply
shared enquiry’ into the spiritual meaning of life. For Yashodhara,
his exit from her life was a terrifying experience. There is suffering in
all lives, but there comes at least one moment in everyone’s life
when suffering becomes most intense and the moment has ripened.
Prajapathi chooses the right time to advice Yashodhara. In her
own life a similar thing happened when Siddhartha’s mother died,
leaving the child in her hands.
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Yashodhara
“You will find a way. Your child needs you. A new door has
opened for you and you will walk through it with us. This is the
path of one who stays, who endures, who comes forth with
others in love and compassion.”
Yashodhara is grateful to Prajapathi. She has the first glimpse of
how suffering and compassion co-arise. When the student is ready,
the teacher will appear. When the sufferer is deeply listened to,
compassion and insight arise. Everything the listener has learnt, all
the wisdom, comes to bear on this moment of reflection.
“Wisdom co-arising to suffering is the art of relating;
Compassion follows suffering as the cart follows the ox;
In suffering, she who comes, who offers love and hope,
She who has seen everything and is still smiling,
This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible.”
With Yashodhara’s never-ending grief, comes another bit of
Prajapathi’s advice,
“The only thing in your mind is your grief, circling and circling
without end. You are obsessed with it. Any obsession is a
turning away from the act of living, from life itself. The only way
out of it is through being in relationship with others.”
“Just listen and take in what the other person is saying and
feeling and being. And you don’t need to do or say a thing.
Can you do that? Silence your own mind and receive theirs.”
In the life of Yashodhara, something began to change. For long,
she was thinking that the pain would gradually ease. Then, she
understood that her suffering might not come to an end, but that she
would begin to perceive a new beginning, a glimpse of something
else, something greater than herself, something not yet seen or
understood. She wondered whether she could join Siddhartha or
give him up altogether.
“In that moment of wanting to die, I chose to live.”
In this conversation with the nuns which takes place in the
Sangha, after Yashodhara had become a nun herself, Yashodhara
says,
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“I have come to understand that when we were in the pine

grove together years ago, we were discovering a new
teaching, a new practice, coming together in the circle with a
clear intention, finding a way of being and speaking together,
what I have come to call ‘a practice with others’ or ‘relational
practice’.”
“When you step into the sacred circle, you practice a new way
of being with others in your life, in deep listening and a new
way of speaking that vibrates with the ring of shared truth. You
bathe in the well of compassion. I remember the beautiful
words of Prajapathi: ‘We are our temples’ ....... Participating in
this mindful relationship with others is at the centre of our
lives; not standing alone, but with others, with the trees, the
groves, the stones, the dirt and the minerals, the animals, the
birds and the plants, with all living things, with all those who
have passed on, who have been born and those still to be
born. Without knowing it, we have lived through another ripe
condition and began to sense an immense power entering this
circle of compassion.”
When Rahula turned six, he began to ask the question, “Where
is my father?”
Between Rahula, Yashodhara and Prajapathi, the experience of
shared feeling was in full swing. The spiritual quest of Siddhartha
was explained to his son Rahula again and again. Siddhartha had
gone to save the world from suffering. The son seemed to accept
the explanation, but kept asking,
“When will my father return?”
Nobody knew.
“Not even my father?” asked Rahula.
“No,” was the answer.
For Yashodhara, this was a moment of intense agony.
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Yashodhara
Between Yashodhara and Prajapathi arises a delicate

relationship of love and understanding, and together they carry out
their own mission of alleviation of suffering by extending sympathy
and consideration to everyone. Their techniques worked, even when
there were only two people.
“Sitting on the ground, eye to eye, on the same level with the
person, in the grove of the ancient shade trees, touching the
earth, open to the world of the birds and animals, plants and
minerals, being present and attuned to each other, we offered
our presence, listening deeply and being with the person in a
mindful way that seemed to allow the creative energies of the
communion and right relation to arise. We ingrained into the
nature of the suffering which we each and all knew – how it
arises, how it can be held in compassion and awareness and
how we could find the way together.”
Yashodhara’s way,
“In the sitting, we offered our faith in the possibility of being
with the suffering, helping others to meet it as well, opening
the mind and the heart. I came to understand that this
experience was of benefit to others and it drew out of me
words and counsel that I did not know I had. Often, more often
than I would have thought, the sufferer and I deeply touched
the moment together; and then something else, something
new, seemed to be happening within us, around us and
between us. I realised that what happened grew out of the
intermingling of each person’s experience.”
And then Siddhartha became the Buddha. The Awakening took
place at Bodh Gaya. His teaching attracted great attention and
hundreds followed him as he walked the Ganges plains giving the
Dharma talks. People, irrespective of caste and creed, joined his
fold. Yashodhara felt a profound sense of happiness. She wondered
if his teachings echoed her own understanding of suffering and the
method of enduring it.
When she wanted to know this, Yashodhara brought Siddhartha
within her own mental circle, the way she did with other sufferers.
She had great swings of feelings – the old demons of devastation
and grief, bursts of insane rage, wanting to retaliate. But, she also
181
had great moments of forgiveness. “I realised that he had no choice

but to follow his own spiritual path, wherever it might take him.” She
began to sense a profound sense of connection with him and was
ready to hear, directly from him, what he had come to understand,
practice and teach.
Yashodhara tells the nuns,
“Now that I, for several years, have been touched by the
dharma of Buddha’s teaching, I realise that at that time before
he returned, our devotional practice became meditative. We
women, together, were establishing a way of sitting with
breathing, listening and responding, entering deeply into
connection on a deeply fundamental level, letting go of old
ideas and images, truly entering the new dimensions of
relationship, releasing the ideas of separation and being
embraced in the field of compassion.”
“Breaking through, piercing the heart of each to each other so
that there is nothing else but compassion, becoming one with
the Law of Love, at the heart of the universe. Here was the
wisdom, insight and practice that arose along the Path of
Right Relation. We became aware that every wise relationship
creates a Sangha and helps to turn love towards ourselves
too. Love and care arising for each other and for ourselves
too, keeping ourselves in the circle of care no more and no
less than others. This was our deep relational practice.”
Through particular connection, compassion arises in you for all,
so deeply that it touches the ground of all beings everywhere.
“Our path, our truths, our teachings and our practices, all
grow through particular connections to each other. And now I
realise that it joins the Buddha’s Path, the Noble Truths and
the Eight-fold teachings and practices, moving towards a deep
awareness of this human suffering as a whole and its release.”
And then the Buddha met Yashodhara in the palace. “She was
profoundly touched by his immensity, his abiding presence. She had
a sense of him seeing deeply into her own transformation. She felt
that he was seeing into the depth of her struggle and the light of her
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Yashodhara
own spiritual attainment. A moment of profound meeting and mutual

recognition. In that instant, she felt liberation from the past, breaking
free and willing to go. At last!”
She wanted a meeting with him again. He agreed. They met
alone, in silence. He was meditating and when he opened his eyes,
she spoke. She told him about the sacred practice of the Circle, the
companionship, the removal of suffering through compassion. He
smiled quietly and nodded.
She spoke, “Is it also possible to live in the world, to live deeply
and truly in the everyday suffering of the world, to stay with others,
to walk through that together into awakening? Can there not be a
practical path, walked hand in hand, with ordinary, particular others?
One by one, family by family, community by community with others to
the end of suffering?”
The Buddha spoke, “Your journey, Yashodhara, is deep and
strong. You and the others have discovered this for yourselves, as I
have for myself and all the beings. I offer you my teachings. I have
taught the Three Jewels, the Three Refuges of this Path, the
Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. And, you have begun with the
Sangha, with the wisdom and compassion arising within the
community. It is one path, with many doorways. And, I also teach that
the spiritual friendship is the whole of the holy life.”
Then, Yashodhara lost her son Rahula, as she lost her
Siddhartha. Rahula demanded to join the monk’s order and was
admitted, at the initiative of Ananda. Rahula became the youngest
member of the Sangha. Yashodhara felt depressed and became
reluctant to accept the Buddha’s teachings.
Prajapathi, who had wholeheartedly accepted the Buddha’s
teachings, decided to join the Sangha. She gathered the women of
the palace and in a ceremonial ritual, each woman shaved the head
of another. They gave up all their possessions, walked several miles
and waited on the Buddha till he relented. Though Yashodhara
remained with Prajapathi and the women’s Sangha, she held back
from fully embracing the Buddha’s teachings. She continued to feel
intense sorrow over Rahula’s separation. Each time she saw him
with the monks, carrying a begging bowl, her heart sank. Her moods
were getting more and more sullen.
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Prajapathi saw this and tried to offer her sympathy and

understanding.
“I can never forgive Siddhartha for what he has done and for all
that has happened.”
“I will never be able to sit alone with Rahula again.”
Prajapathi tried to pacify her.
“I know. But the Buddha has spoken about this clinging and
shown the way through.”
“Clinging?” Yashodhara reacted sharply. “Is that what you call the
bond between mother and son? It is as deep a love as anyone can
know.”
Yashodhara wanted to leave the Sangha but she stayed on
because she was sure of her path of relationship and compassion
with which she knew one could bond the community together.
Prajapathi was soon recognised as Fully Awakened and came to be
known as Mahaprajapathi. She gave talks, despite her age, on the
great Buddha nature of all sentient beings including women. Women
became more valued and their great potential for spiritual attainment
was fully recognised.
Until her death, Yashodhara lived quietly, offered her teachings to
those who came to enquire with her. She also responded when
invited to visit other communities, often in strife, to share her wisdom
of compassion, non-violence, peace-keeping circles.
Channa, the charioteer, now old and twisted, said slowly and
gently,
“What was so beautiful about Yashodhara in those later years
was the depth of her listening, as deep as the ocean and as
wide as the expanse of the sky, or the great plains of the
Ganges. The listening of one who has known great suffering,
one who has lived through great love and loss and has come
to peace. She listened deeply to everyone. ‘Right listening’ or
‘wise listening’, she called this, her final spiritual practice. She
felt that her silent meditation practice with the Buddha had
come to fruition. ‘Opening’, ‘listening’, coming again and again
to the wholeness of each moment, each relation, hearing the
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Yashodhara
unspoken, the silence behind the speech, the space that

births the words, arising out of and vanishing back into the
deep well of compassion, within us, around us and between
us, the dharma of love at the heart of the universe.”
“We, together, weave an invisible thread at the heart of the
universe, that connects us all.”
Yashodhara died, loved and cared for by Channa, his family, his
children and grand children. On the eve of her passing away, she
made a prophecy,
“While the conditions are not ripe today for the full flowering of
the shared path, the seeds have been planted. I do not know
when, but, sometime they will sprout, bud and blossom. There
will come a time.”
This is not the history of the life of Yashodhara except in small
parts. The rest is fiction, a moving story, but true in faith and spirit if
one touches one’s heart and feels how it beats when it hears the
plea of Yashodhara for love and compassion and relationship, in this
world torn by hatred, jealousy, mutual bickering and little respect for
human life.
The book, ‘The Buddha’s Wife’ is in two parts; the first deals
with the story of Yashodhara and the second, a number of practical
true life examples and ways to apply and live the wisdom of
Yashodhara’s path in our modern-day lives. Yashodara’s path
demonstrates the potential transformative power of staying and
deepening in relationship. Rather than ‘going forth’ alone, it is
‘coming forth’ together, into right, fully engaged, mutual connection.
I have enjoyed reading this book. It focuses on my own call for
love and compassion with a more direct, practical and personal
approach. I have literally transferred many of the passages from the
book into this note. That is the only way I could maintain the purity of
the content and the essence of the spirit.
Many many thanks to Janet Surrey and Samuel Shem!
* * * * * * * * * *
185
B. DISCUSSION
186
The Profile of a Spiritual Retreat

Hamsa is the name of our group. Hamsa is a bird in the Indian
mythology (probably belonging to the swan family) that has the
ability to separate the milk from a mixture of milk and water and drink
the milk only. The name Hamsa stands for an enlightened person
who has learnt to distinguish truth from untruth, reality from illusion,
matter from spirit and transmits his learning to all those who seek his
guidance. This learning is the product of the totality of his spiritual
life and experience.
We are a small group. There are no leaders or followers. All are
seekers. We are just about 100 in number. We have professors,
scholars, business people, professionals and the like, in our midst.
They represent every shade of rational, philosophical, scientific and
spiritual outlook. Their age ranges from 23 to 87. We have no
membership, no subscription. We just meet at a friend's place by
rotation and engage ourselves in contemplation, and discussion,
mainly on spiritual topics.
Hamsa is thirty years old.
Our thematic Spiritual Retreats are popular events much sought
after by our members and others who have come to know about
them.
A retreat is recognised in all major spiritual traditions as the time
and place for man to work for his spiritual renewal by focussing his
attention upon his inner self through meditation, introspection and
mutual sharing with like-minded participants.
Over the years, for Hamsa, the Retreats have become special
occasions for a deeper understanding of the more profound aspects
of the meaning of life. We have found that they make an impact, far
beyond the duration of the Retreat itself.
We wish to highlight some aspects of our Retreats as follows:
1. We try to hold a Spiritual Retreat once in three months.
2. The Retreat is always held outside of metropolitan cities. We
choose fairly remote hill resorts, away from the noise and
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bustle of city life, in pollution free atmosphere, with clean air

and good water and picturesque landscape.
3. For a Retreat, we take both men and women as participants.
4. The Theme papers (together with some instructions) are
given to the participants, a few days ahead of the Retreat.
5. Our Annual Retreat is held at Trichur, in the State of Kerala,
in June-July, when the monsoon rains are heavy and the
weather is cool, and the temple town of Trichur, sandwiched
between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, turns all
its charms on the visitor.
6. The Retreat is held for three days, from the morning of
Friday till the evening of Sunday.
7. We assemble in the metropolitan city of Chennai and travel
by train (all participants together) in the lowest sleeper class;
some generous members serving us food in the train, if the
timings require it.
8. The Annual Retreat is held at Hotel Elite International,
Trichur, with the generosity of the owner, who provides
accommodation, food and transport free to all the
participants. The beauty of nature and the bounty of goodwill
of the owner, make the Trichur Retreat a memorable event,
always.
9. Accommodation is on a twin-sharing basis, subject to
availability.
10. We begin the Retreat on Friday morning and end on Sunday
evening, in time to catch a train at the nearest station. The
sessions last from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 2:30 p.m.
to 4:30 p.m., with lunch break from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Coffee is served during the morning and afternoon sessions.
In the evenings, participants visit nearby places of tourist
interest and some famous temples. We provide the
transport. We meet again at dinner, which is an informal,
warm and friendly affair, giving opportunity for the
participants to get to know one another.
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11. The programme begins with a universal prayer. Meditation

Music for about 10 minutes follows. Participants would stay
quiet absorbing the music, allowing their mind to calm down.
12. The session then begins with introductions of the
participants and a formal welcome and an introduction
outlining the objective of the Retreat.
13. Each participant is advised to give his or her best attention
to the discussions during the Retreat and to make it
profound as well as lively. They are told that active
participation enhances the quality of experience and learning
that everyone can get. Raising questions and sharing
experiences, in a true spirit of honesty and commitment,
ensures the fulfilment of the purpose of the Retreat.
14. In our Retreat, there is no teacher, no student. Everyone is
going through a learning experience, which will help to clarify
inner perceptions and learning about a spiritual change. So
every person participates, comes out with his or her own
feelings, thoughts, experiences and their simple truthfulness
and sincerity make them elevating spiritual experiences to
share.
15. In our Retreats, some basic meditation practices and
breathing techniques are always taught, the idea being to
help the participants to calm their mind, improve their
concentration and focus on the inner-self. Some yogic
relaxation techniques are also taught.
16. The ultimate goal of our Retreats is spiritual, to help the
participants to understand and appreciate that their true self
is spiritual and our perception of it is lost in our material
pursuits and our efforts must be directed towards awareness
and abiding in our spiritual self, which is the true self and the
rest is falsehood and fiction. Harmony, balance, equanimity,
self-possession, self-confidence, contentment, joyfulness are
all wonderful spiritual assets, and as we grow in life, the need
to understand their importance as the true source of
happiness and peace, becomes compelling. In the evening
of our lives, loneliness, aimlessness, lack of clarity, absence
of philosophical attitude, and an ambivalent attitude towards
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God, brings us much misery, and if one looks closely at what

ails man at this stage, our lack of interest in cultivating
certain basic and friendly virtues, in understanding their true
scope and meaning towards building up a strong spiritual
foundation, will strive us as being the root cause of much of
our unhappiness. Our Retreats help the participants to
become aware of these spiritual assets and to resolve to
follow the spiritual path for the removal of misery caused by
our over attachment to the material situations and for the
realisation that the flowering of the inner qualities of the
heart pave the way for enduring happiness.
17. Our thematic Retreats work with such spiritual goals in view.
Some of our theme titles were:
Month/Year Theme
Feb 2016 “Food for Thought”
July 2015 “Return of the Pilgrim”
Aug 2014 “A Pilgrim's Progress”
Mar 2014 “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall” - A Time for
Reflection
July 2013 “A Pilgrim's Progress”
July 2012 “Gentle Whispers from the Distant
Mountains”
July 2011 “When the Strings are not Touched, the
Music is Heard Within”
Mar 2011 ”Spiritual Gym”, a Spiritual Workshop for
Young Executives
Jan 2011 “Bhakthi”
July 2010 “Pursuit of Happiness”
Mar 2010 “Where the Seas Meet”
July 2009 “A Butterfly in the Valley of Flowers”
190
Month/Year Theme
July 2008 “Hills and Dales – A Journey to Remember”
July 2007 “Little Drops of Rain” – Thoughts on
Personal Transformation
July 2006 “A Fulfilling Life”
July 2005 “The Spiritual Path” - Some Principles and
Practices
Mar 2005 “The Religion We Need”
Aug 2004 “Mysticism - The Path of Experience”
Mar 2004 “The Spiritual Life”
Oct 2003 “Light Up Your Life - Look Within”
June 2003 “The Sacred Journey”
Mar 2003 “The Inner Journey”
18. Our Retreats help the participant to see that when the doors
to inner perception are opened, inner spirituality begins to
blossom and there is a correct understanding about one's
own self and this in turn urges the true self to see the
ground, the source of every self. The Retreats help the
participant to know his God, and to begin to love him and
from there, to love all living things. In our Retreats,
spirituality and God are not considered as two separate
things.
19. At the same time, in our Retreats, we are non-
denominational. We do not support one Religion over the
others. We consider that true values of the world's leading
religions, the messages of the great spiritual masters are the
foundations for spirituality. Therefore, in our Retreat papers,
we quote extensively from the various scriptures.
20. In our Retreats, we do not talk much about theories or
philosophical positions. We rely on the personal
191
experiences of the participants, to elicit their appreciation of

the meaning of spiritual values.
21. In every Retreat, we ensure that a good number of
participants are past sixty. We have found by experience
that they demonstrate a certain degree of urgency in
knowing all about spirituality, and in practising some of the
precepts, to have peace and contentment in a stressful age.
At the same time, younger people, successful in life, full of
aspirations about achievements in the world, find our
Retreats useful, since they help them to develop a
productive inner life in which they find peace, understanding
and creativity. The number of young people joining our
Retreats is increasing.
22. HAMSA is now registered as a Trust, so as to give it a farther
reach and wider sphere of activity.
23. Our friends in U.K. have joined together and started a
HAMSA group at Durham (UK). They meet regularly and
discuss matters of spiritual importance.
24. You may visit our website www.hamsaretreat.com to view
more information about our activities.
* * * * *
192

Hamsa, at Home With Philosophy

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Programme Details

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Saturday, July 16, 2016

S.No. Name S.No. Name

1. Advaith Hebbar Mr. 26. Karthik A.N. Mr.

2. Agnisundaram S. Mr. 27. Kothainayaki Mrs.

3. Aiyamma B.C. Mr. 28. Kothandapani Mr.

4. Ajantha Needhi Mohan Mrs. 29. Krupanidhi S. Mr.

5. Anbarasu V. Mr. 30. Krishnadas C.S. Prof.

6. Aswin T.S. Mr. 31. Krishnakumari V.S. Dr.

7. Aufthab Begum Dr. 32. Krishnan J. Mr.

8. Balamurali G. Dr. 33. Krishnan R.S. Mr.

9. Balasubramanian A.R. Mr. 34. Kshitij Vijayakumar Mr.

10. Balasubramanian M. Mr. 35. Lakshmi A.S. Mrs.

11. Bhaskaran P. Justice (Retd) 36. Lalitha N. Dr.

12. Chandrasekaran S.J. Mr. 37. Maheshwaran Mr.

13. Chandrasekar S. Mr. 38. Meenakshi Vijayakumar Mrs.

14. Chitra Krishnan Mrs. 39. Mishra G. Prof

15. Chitra P. Dr. 40. Muthuswamy D.A. Prof.

16. Deenadayalu R. Mr. 41. Natarajan K.R. Mr.

17. Girish Babu Mr. 42. Natarajan M. Mr.

18. Govindaswamy R.K. Mr. 43. Pattavardhini Mrs.

19. Hemalatha D. Mrs. 44. Pavani Sudhir Mrs.

20. Jayalakshmi T.V. Prof. 45. Radha Alexander Mrs.

21. Indira Srinivasan Mrs. 46. Radhakrishnan V. Mr.

22. Kalyani Mishra Mrs. 47. Raman V.S. Prof.

23. Kamalakannan A. Mr. 48. Ramesh A. I.F.S. (Retd)

24. Kannan J. Mr. 49. Ramesh G. Prof.

25. Kannan R. Mr. 50. Santhanagopalan K.M. Mr.

52. Saraswathi V. Dr. 66. Usha Mahadevan Dr.

53. Saroja M. Mrs. 67. Vaidhyanathan K. Mr.

54. Seshiah V. Dr. 68. Vasudevan D. Mr.

55. Seshiah V. Mrs. 69. Velmurugendran C.V. Dr.

56. Shankar Vanavarayar Mr. 70. Venkataraman T.V. Mr.

57. Shradda Kannan Miss 71. Vennila Dr.

58. Shyamala S. Dr. 72. Vijayakumar B. Mr.

59. Sivakolundu T.S. Mr. 73. Vijayalakshmi A. Mrs.

60. Srinivasan A.V. Dr. 74. Viswanathan B. Mr.

61. Sriram V.Aiyer Mr. 75. Yogika Kannan Miss

62. Sudha Kannan Mrs.

63. Sudhir A.R. Dr.

64. Sumathi Mani Mrs.

C. FOR YOU R GU IDANCE

1. Your train from Chennai is Alleppey Express. It departs from

Lunch 1:15 PM to 2:30 PM

Second Jul 15, 2:30 PM 3:30 PM “The Question of Governance”

11:30 AM 12:30 PM “The Question of Science”

12:30 PM 1:15 PM “The Quest for Happiness”

Lunch - 1:15 PM to 2:30 PM

Fourth July 16, 2:30 PM 3:30 PM “A Thing of Beauty”

Fifth Jul 17, 10:00 AM 11:00 AM “Justice Revisited”

12 NOON 12:30 PM “Yashodhara”

12:30 PM 12:40 PM “Health Tips”

12:40 PM 1:30 PM “Open House, Conclusion &

Lunch - 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM

The Retreat Closes

The notes on “At Home with Philosophy” to be discussed at

FRIDAY FIRST SESSION

“THE BECKONING OF T. V. VENKATARAMAN

“What have you learnt from his teaching?”

mental or intellectual sources. In philosophy, we have a branch

Metaphysics is a more complicated matter. One can say that

From my professor-friend’s simple analysis of the philosophical