Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra (b. 1956)
Perhaps it is not correct to say that there is no coalescing myth or worldview that provides a focus for life today. But, if there is, it is a narrow one organized around materialistic science, technology, consumerism and the profit motive, somewhat modified by humanistic concerns. Moreover, as the industrial age gives way to the information age and the modern mind gives way to post-modernism, a centerless, open-ended relativistic world without reference to any authority is growing, where even this focus is being increasingly subjected to narcissistic individualism and the will to power.
This comes along with the quantification of life, social isolation, mass-mindedness and alienation from the instincts and the power of symbols. It also encourages compartmentalization in both individual life and the life of the culture, where the left hand doesn't know or even care what the right hand is doing.
Increasingly, people find life meaningless and without purpose, while defending themselves in all manner of ways, whether it be through mindless consumerism, obsessive involvement with new technology, or through excessive use of alcohol and drugs, whether legal or illicit. Add to this a popular culture of movies, music, television programs, video games, and possibilities on the internet that generally appeal to the lowest common denominator, while often celebrating destructive tendencies and shadow qualities, and the situation looks anything but hopeful.
The chaos of the present post-modern condition is giving birth to a deep-seated yearning for direction and purpose, integrated around a spiritual center and wholeness. There is a cry for a guiding myth and an integral weltanschauung that is in harmony with the most contemporary view of reality, and that does not repress life but fulfills it in all its multifacetedness. -David Johnston
Dr S Murali - Review of Disorienting Dharma
It is as though the narrative is pushing the reader/listener away to a safe distance that affords a wider vision of the human situation. The disconcerting relationship between dharma and suffering isfore-grounded in the intimate aesthetic experience that the sahrdaya undergoes during the ill-fated moment of the dice game, the disrobing of Draupadi and the disastrous consequences thereon to all the characters. Everything that happens leads to the war. As Hudson points out the blind King Dhrtharashtra sees with insight but does not act with it. The purpose of the tale as it unfolds terror and fear in constant succession in the minds of the reader/listener is definitely cathartic. Time itself figures as a character definitive in the scheme of things. Paul Ricoeur in his Time and Narrative had drawn a distinction between tales of time and tales about time.
The Mahabharata is both a tale of time and a tale about time. For at the heart of this tale is its ethical project of refiguring our understanding of suffering. Emily Hudson’s Disorienting Dharma is in line with other Euro-American scholarly pursuits into Indian ethical and religious ideas like those of Max Weber, Paul Wilmot, David Shulman, Wendy Doniger, O’Flaherty, and James Fitzgerald. What is generally outstanding is her sensitivity to issues that are culturally and geographically alien to her, and her willingness to take on a text that is absolutely reluctant to provide any straightforward answers to life’s riddles. It is seldom that one comes across genuine scholarship these days like what Emily T. Hudson has exhibited in these pages. Her concern for the larger questions of human life through probing the profounder strands of the narrative textures and her unrelenting commitment to inquire into what each character and each specific situation in the text means at any given time and also to refigure it in the overall order of things, is quite clearly evidenced in her erudite critical reading.
A TALK IN HINDI (AUDIO)
In the beginning of sadhana, it is better to avoid TV or newspaper etc. These things create a bombarding of the senses which creates hurdles in the free flow of the divine energy.
TEXT IN ENGLISH
When one does not know what one is really looking for and the seeking is still vague, it may be best to start with the Letters on Yoga, The Mother and Sri Aurobindo on Himself.
When one looks at the immensity of Sri Aurobindo’s Works it can be both appalling and enthralling. It is appalling when we look at the sheer volume of it all, written in the best of English with a style and substance that we are not often used to. The modern man flooded with information available at a push-button, his life busy with the trivia and the insignificant, his motives often all too ordinary and utilitarian is not accustomed to serious uplifting thoughts that can transport him to realms of Light and Delight as if carried by magical waves. He would rather content himself with the mixed shades of earthly life, he has pacticed with the greyness and the dull round of terrestrial things to even aspire for the heights too sublime and lofty for his vision and effort. Even when men turn towards spiritual things they seek some kind of a fast food, easy to do, quick to achieve technique. It does not matter whether the fast-food will eventually cause more harm and that the quick results are a deception and a diversion, a marketing strategy to buy souls in the arena of the world. It is sad but true that cults and sects, religions and ideologies have become a game of numbers and thrive on the number of their adherents, regardless of whether people truly follow and live by the doctrines or not. Their proponents often expand the net by propagating simple, easy to do techniques or furthering a philosophy at once puerile and too simplistic to accommodate, let alone synthesise even the sheer facts that stare at us. Yet this is not a final verdict on our humanity. Our souls are bound to wake up one day and make a sincere effort to break free from the chains of ignorance that bind us, our minds are bound to expand their horizons, our thoughts cannot rest at halfway homes forever partitioning the world in two clear cabins of this-worldly and other-worldly, our hearts are bound to seek a love and a light greater than anything that has even manifested so far, our ever-dissatisfied life cannot find its ultimate satisfaction in the blank port of nirvana. It is bound to, rather destined to go further, beyond moksha and salvation and nirvana to build a new earth and a new city and a new body that would reflect truly the image of God.
It is when this happens when we are not satisfied anymore by all the traditional explanations of life, whether scientific or spiritual, religious or ideological, that we are best ready to turn towards Sri Aurobindo. In fact when that happens, when the seeking in us has begun to soar beyond the horizons we see then the book we need to read, the word we need to hear, the person we need to meet will by itself come into our life carrying the message from the One whom we are secretly seeking. Yes, these books are at best messages from the Divine, or from the Future, if we like, inviting us to the greatest adventure we have ever known. They are at once an invitation and a companion that accompanies us through the journey we are asked to embark upon. The words are vehicles of Light that illumine the night burdened path of man. They carry within them the ambrosia that gives us new life, the love that heals, the strength that helps us through the journey. Therefore they are best read with a mind or an inner state of seeking. Paradoxical though it may seem, but the philosopher who is all too full and satisfied playing with the ideas is often found wanting in a true understanding of Sri Aurobindo. He picks up a pearl from here and there and strings it with other gems or even glaring and glittering imitations making a terrible hodgepodge, a messy academic porridge that has all the ingredients, even those that are not needed but all in strange proportions making it an inedible dish to any serious and sincere seekers. Well, this method of compare and contrast may apply in academic circles but that is hardly the best way to approach Sri Aurobindo’s works that are synthetic by their very nature and contain within them the whole universe and much more. What is needed is the heart of the seeker and a mind that is ready and open to new ideas. For even when Sri Aurobindo writes about the well-known Scriptures he gives them such a new profundity and depth that the average person with fixated opinions and views based on doctrinal and dogmatic understanding may find it something difficult to understand. But the difficulty is not outside in the writing but in the reader himself who knowingly or unknowingly wants Sri Aurobindo to conform to his ideas or echo his thoughts and sentiments. When he does not find this happen then he often gives up the effort, little realizing that the very purpose of his writings is to open new horizons hitherto closed to thought and understanding. A fundamental humility is always required for any Knowledge and when it is a knowledge that is as vast as the universe then the need for humility is indeed indispensable. One may wonder what this statement means when it is said that Sri Aurobindo’s writings contain the universe in them. Well, it means what it says. His writings do touch upon each and every aspect of creation, not only as we perceive it now but also what it was at the beginning and what yet it shall become in the future. But not only do we have this vast cosmology but most importantly our place and role in it.
It is this vastness and catholicity that in the end misses nothing from the smallest grain of sand to the most complex of all creatures called man, not only the world of men but the gods, the titans and everything else is there placed in their proper place and function that constitutes the metaphysics of Sri Aurobindo’s all-encompassing Thought. If all this is too appalling to our mind busy with our own little life then there is also the luminous finger touching upon each and every aspect of our life, often in surprising details as if our ‘heavenly father’ held our fingers to teach us how to walk, how to eat, how to sleep, how to read, and every other conceivable and inconceivable aspect of human life. Finally, we have the core of the teachings that relates to the actual practice of yoga in all its shades and details, with every possible experience, even giving his own example and the Mother’s to show us that there is nothing impractical about what he is saying. It is perhaps the first time that the Divine has given His message in such an elaborate way, directly through the agency of the Word released by him and not through any transmitted document noted by memory or inspiration. And all this in a language that is modern, using images with which we can relate and connect to, taking into consideration all the new developments that have taken place through science and polity over the millenniums. Now all that is needed for us is to read, reflect, meditate and make a sincere effort to live. Ultimately true understanding comes only when we try to live a teaching. The path becomes clear as we actually walk the way.
JLONSRI AUROBINDO'SSAVITRI
Sri Aurobindo was a master yogi and visionary and wrote brilliantly in various areas of culture. He considered himself to be primarily a poet by vocation. His poetry found its apotheosis in the epic poem Savitri, a work in excess of 23,000 lines.
