यद्यदाचरति श्रेष्ठस् तत्तदेवेतरो जनः ।स यत्प्रमाणं कुरुते लोकस्तदनुवर्तते ॥
yadyadācarati śreṣṭhas tattadevetaro janaḥsa yatpramāṇaṁ kurute lokastadanuvartate
Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice; the standard he creates, the people follows.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
His translation
KRISHNA Two are the ways of devotion in this world, already have I declared it to thee, O sinless hero; the devotion of the men of Sankhya is by singleness in knowledge, by singleness in works is the devotion of the men of Yoga. Not by refraining from works shall a man taste actionlessness and not by mere renouncing…Read the whole passage · 1,072 wordsClose the passage
KRISHNA Two are the ways of devotion in this world, already have I declared it to thee, O sinless hero; the devotion of the men of Sankhya is by singleness in knowledge, by singleness in works is the devotion of the men of Yoga. Not by refraining from works shall a man taste actionlessness and not by mere renouncing of the world shall he reach perfection. For verily no man even for a moment remains without doing, since each is made to do whether he will or not by the moods of his essential nature. He who coerceth the organs of action and sitteth remembering in his heart the things in which the senses work, is a man deceived in Spirit, him they call a hypocrite, but he whosoever governeth the senses with his mind, O Urjoona, and entereth on Yoga in works using the organs of action without attachment, is distinguished above all beings. Do thou the works that the law demands of thee, for action is mightier than inaction; yea without works the very maintenance of thy body cannot be. ‘Tis by doing works in other spirit than as a sacrifice that this world of creatures falleth into bondage to its works; but do thou practise works as a Sacrifice, O son of Coonty, with a mind free from the yoke of attachment. For with Sacrifice as their companion the Father, of old, created all these peoples and said unto them, “By Sacrifice shall ye beget offspring; lo the chosen joys of your desire, they shall be to you the milk of her udders. Cherish you the gods with sacrifice and the gods shall cherish you in turn; thus by cherishing each other shall ye attain to your highest welfare. Cherished with sacrifice the gods shall bestow on you the joys you most desire and he is no better than a thief who enjoyeth what they give and giveth not to them again.” The good who eat the remnants of the Sacrifice are delivered from all their transgressions, but those accursed eat and drink sin who cook their food but for their own selfish bellies. From food all creatures are born and from rain is the birth of food; but rain ariseth from the sacrifice and Sacrifice hath its root in works; works know to be born of the Eternal, for by the imperishable word of the Eternal they were brought into being. Therefore is the Eternal everywhere and in all things; yea He hath His home for ever in the heart of the Sacrifice. This is the Wheel that God hath set going and who goeth not with it, whose days are a wickedness, whose delight & ease are in the senses, O son of Pritha, liveth his life in vain. But for the man whose whole pleasure is in the Self and who satisfies his longing with the Self, yea who is content utterly with the Self, for him there is no needful action. For indeed he hath no end at all to gain by doing neither any by not doing, he hath no dependence for end or aim on any or even this whole world of creatures. Therefore without attachment do ever the work before thee, since by doing works without attachment man reacheth the Highest. ‘Twas by works alone that the men of old reached to utter perfection even Junac and the rest. Moreover even if thou lookest to the right government of the world, thou shouldest be doing. What they see their Greatest do, even that the rest of the folk will practise, and the standard that the Best setteth up, the world will surely follow. Behold, O Partha, there is nought at all in the three worlds that I must do, there is nothing I have not or that I yet need to win, and still I move in the path of works. For verily were I not to move sleeplessly in the path of works, lo men follow utterly the way wherein I tread, O son of Pritha, then would all these worlds sink and perish, were I not to do works and I should become the creator of bastard confusion and the slayer of all these creatures. That which the ignorant do with attachment to the work, O Bharata, the wise man should do without attachment, wishing only to keep the world in its traces. Let him not be the cause of division and confusion of mind in the ignorant who are attached to their works, but let him, knowing all, set them to all the works of this world by doing works in Yoga. Lo works are done but by the modes of Nature in her inevitable working, but the Spirit of man is deceived by the sense of separate existence and he sayeth in himself “I, even I am the doer.” But he who knoweth to the core how the workings of the modes are parcelled out, believeth that the modes work in and upon the modes, and suffereth not attachment to seize him. Most men are deceived by the modes of Nature, cling to the workings of these modes; these dull brains, these imperfect knowers, let not the perfect knower cause to swerve and stumble. Repose all thy works upon Me and with thy heart spiritually inclined be desireless, be selfless; then arise, fight, O Urjoona, let the fever of thy soul pass from thee. For men who with faith & without carping follow ever this my Word are released, they also, from bondage to their works, but they who carp at and follow not this my word, know of them that all their knowledge is a delusion; their intellect is nought; they are lost men, Urjoona. Lo even the wise man who knoweth can but act according to his own essential nature; for to their nature all creatures come at last and what shall coercing it avail? Only in the field of each & every sense love and hate are there & ever they lie in ambush; let not the Spirit of man fall into their clutches for they are his adversaries in his great journey. Better is it the rule of thy own life ill done than an alien rule well accomplished, yea death in the path of one’s own nature is better; it is a fearful and perilous thing to follow the law of another’s being.
Essays on the Gita
That this is the sense of the passage is made clear in what3·20–25 follows, by the affirmation of lokasaṅgraha as the object of works, of Prakriti as the sole doer of works and the divine Purusha as their equal upholder, to whom works have to be3·30 given up even in their doing,—this inner giving up of works and yet physical doing of them is the culmination of sacrifice,—and by the affirmation that the result of such active sacrifice with an equal and desireless mind is liberation from the bondage of4·22–23 works. “He who is satisfied with whatever gain comes to him and equal in failure and success, is not bound even when he acts. When a man liberated, free from attachment, acts for sacrifice, all his action is dissolved,” leaves, that is to say, no result of bondage or after-impression on his free, pure, perfect and equal soul. To these passages we shall have to return. They are followed by a perfectly explicit and detailed interpretation of the meaning of yajña in the language of the Gita which leaves no doubt at all about the symbolic use of the words and the psychological character of the sacrifice enjoined by this teaching. In the ancient Vedic system there was always a double sense physical and psychological, outward and symbolic, the exterior form of the sacrifice and the inner meaning of all its circumstances. But the secret symbolism of the ancient Vedic mystics, exact, curious, poetic, psychological, had been long forgotten by this time and it is now replaced by another, large, general and philosophical in the spirit of Vedanta and a later Yoga. The fire of sacrifice, agni, is no material flame, but brahmāgni, the fire of the Brahman, or it is the Brahman-ward energy, inner Agni, priest of the4·24–31 sacrifice, into which the offering is poured; the fire is self-control or it is a purified sense-action or it is the vital energy in that discipline of the control of the vital being through the control of the breath which is common to Rajayoga and Hathayoga, or it is the fire of self-knowledge, the flame of the supreme sacrifice. The food eaten as the leavings of the sacrifice is, it is explained, the nectar of immortality, amṛta, left over from the offering; and here we have still something of the old Vedic symbolism in which the Soma-wine was the physical symbol of the amṛta, the immortalising delight of the divine ecstasy won by the sacrifice, offered to the gods and drunk by men. The offering itself is whatever working of his energy, physical or psychological, is consecrated by him in action of body or action of mind to the gods or God, to the Self or to the universal powers, to one’s own higher Self or to the Self in mankind and in all existences.
The works of sacrifice are thus vindicated as a means of liberation and absolute spiritual perfection, saṁsiddhi. So Janaka3·20–22 and other great Karmayogins of the mighty ancient Yoga attained to perfection, by equal and desireless works done as a sacrifice, without the least egoistic aim or attachment — karmaṇaiva hi saṁsiddhim āsthitā janakādayaḥ. So too and with the same desirelessness, after liberation and perfection, works can and have to be continued by us in a large divine spirit, with the calm high nature of a spiritual royalty. “Thou shouldst do works regarding also the holding together of the peoples, lokasaṅgraham evāpi sampaśyan kartum arhasi. Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice; the standard he creates, the people follows. O son of Pritha, I have no work that I need to do in all the three worlds, I have nothing that I have not gained and have yet to gain, and I abide verily in the paths of action,” varta eva ca karmaṇi, — eva implying, I abide in it and do not leave it as the Sannyasin thinks himself bound to abandon works.3·23–24 “For if I did not abide sleeplessly in the paths of action, men follow in every way my path, these peoples would sink to destruction if I did not work and I should be the creator of confusion and slay these creatures. As those who know not3·25–26 act with attachment to the action, he who knows should act without attachment, having for his motive to hold together the peoples. He should not create a division of their understanding in the ignorant who are attached to their works; he should set them to all actions, doing them himself with knowledge and in Yoga.” There are few more important passages in the Gita than these seven striking couplets.
To exalt oneself out of the lower imperfect Prakriti, traiguṇyamayī māyā, into unity with the divine being, consciousness and nature,* madbhāvam āgatāḥ, is the object of the Yoga. But4·10 when this object is fulfilled, when the man is in the Brahmic status and sees no longer with the false egoistic vision himself and the world, but sees all beings in the Self, in God, and the Self in all beings, God in all beings, what shall be the action,—since action there still is,—which results from that seeing, and what shall be the cosmic or individual motive of all his works? It is the question of Arjuna,* but answered from a standpoint other than that from which Arjuna had put it. The motive cannot be personal desire on the intellectual, moral, emotional level, for that has been abandoned,—even the moral motive has been abandoned, since the liberated man has passed beyond the lower distinction of sin and virtue, lives in a glorified purity beyond good and evil. It cannot be the spiritual call to his perfect self-development by means of disinterested works, for the call has been answered, the development is perfect and fulfilled. His motive of action can only be the holding together of the peoples,3·25 cikīrṣur lokasaṅgraham. This great march of the peoples towards a far-off divine ideal has to be held together, prevented from falling into the bewilderment, confusion and utter discord of the understanding which would lead to dissolution and destruction and to which the world moving forward in the night or dark twilight of ignorance would be too easily prone if it were not held together, conducted, kept to the great lines of its discipline by the illumination, by the strength, by the rule and example, by3·21 the visible standard and the invisible influence of its Best. The best, the individuals who are in advance of the general line and above the general level of the collectivity, are the natural leaders of mankind, for it is they who can point to the race both the way they must follow and the standard or ideal they have to keep to or to attain. But the divinised man is the Best in no ordinary sense of the word and his influence, his example must have a power which that of no ordinarily superior man can exercise. What example then shall he give? What rule or standard shall he uphold?
- kiṁ prabhāṣeta kim āsīta vrajeta kim.
But it is to assist that ascent or evolution the descent is made or accepted; that the Gita makes very clear. It is, we might say, to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being, so that man may see what that is and take courage to grow into it. It is also to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its upward endeavour. It is to give a spiritual mould of divine manhood into which the seeking4·7–8 soul of the human being can cast itself. It is to give a dharma, a religion,—not a mere creed, but a method of inner and outer living,—a way, a rule and law of self-moulding by which he can grow towards divinity. It is too, since this growth, this ascent is no mere isolated and individual phenomenon, but like all in the divine world-activities a collective business, a work3·20–25 and the work for the race, to assist the human march, to hold it together in its great crises, to break the forces of the downward gravitation when they grow too insistent, to uphold or restore the great dharma of the Godward law in man’s nature, to prepare even, however far off, the kingdom of God, the victory of the seekers of light and perfection, sādhūnām, and the overthrow of those who fight for the continuance of the evil and the darkness. All these are recognised objects of the descent of the Avatar, and it is usually by his work that the mass of men seek to distinguish him and for that that they are ready to worship him. It is only the spiritual who see that this external Avatarhood is a sign, in the symbol of a human life, of the eternal inner Godhead making himself manifest in the field of their own human mentality and corporeality so that they can grow into unity with that and be possessed by it. The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings.
It is here that the Gita intervenes with a restatement of the truth of the Spirit, of the Self, of God and of the world and Nature. It extends and remoulds the truth evolved by a later thought from the ancient Upanishads and ventures with assured steps on an endeavour to apply its solving power to the problem of life and action. The solution offered by the Gita does not disentangle all the problem as it offers itself to modern mankind; as stated here to a more ancient mentality, it does not meet the insistent pressure of the present mind of man for a collective advance, does not respond to its cry for a collective life that will at last embody a greater rational and ethical and if possible even a dynamic spiritual ideal. Its call is to the individual who has become capable of a complete spiritual existence; but for the rest of the race it prescribes only a gradual advance, to be wisely effected by following out faithfully with more and more of3·20–25 intelligence and moral purpose and with a final turn to spirituality the law of their nature. Its message touches the other smaller solutions but, even when it accepts them partly, it is to point them beyond themselves to a higher and more integral secret into which as yet only the few individuals have shown themselves fit to enter.
“This way of divine works is a far better release and a more perfect way and solution than the physical renunciation of life and works. A physical abstention is not entirely possible and is not in the measure of its possibility indispensable to the spirit’s freedom; it is besides a dangerous example, for it exerts a misleading influence on ordinary men. The best, the greatest set the standard which the rest of humanity strive to follow. Then since action is the nature of the embodied spirit, since works are the will of the eternal Worker, the great spirits, the master minds should set this example. World-workers should they be, doing all works of the world without reservation, God-workers free, glad and desireless, liberated souls and natures.
The Synthesis of Yoga
At the same time the Yogin who knows the Supreme is not subject to any need or compulsion in these activities; for to him they are neither a duty nor a necessary occupation for the mind nor a high amusement, nor imposed even by the loftiest human purpose. He is not attached, bound and limited by any nor has he any personal motive of fame, greatness or personal satisfaction in these works; he can leave or pursue them as the Divine in him wills, but he need not otherwise abandon them in his pursuit of the higher integral knowledge. He will do these things just as the supreme Power acts and creates, for a certain spiritual joy in creation and expression or to help in the holding together and right ordering or leading of this world of God’s workings. The Gita teaches that the man of knowledge shall by his way of life give to those who have not yet the spiritual consciousness, the love and habit of all works and not only of actions recognised as pious, religious or ascetic in their character; he should not draw men away from the world-action by his example. For the world must proceed in its great upward aspiring; men and nations must not be led to fall away from even an ignorant activity into a worse ignorance of inaction or to sink down into that miserable disintegration and tendency of dissolution which comes upon communities and peoples when there predominates the tamasic principle, the principle whether of obscure confusion and error or of weariness and inertia. “For I too,” says the Lord in the Gita, “have no need to do works, since there is nothing I have not or must yet gain for myself; yet I do works in the world: for if I did not do works, all laws would fall into confusion, the worlds would sink towards chaos and I would be the destroyer of these peoples.” The spiritual life does not need, for its purity, to destroy interest in all things except the Inexpressible or to cut at the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and Life. It may well be one of the effects of an integral spiritual knowledge and activity to lift them out of their limitations, substitute for our mind’s ignorant, limited, tepid or trepidant pleasure in them a free, intense and uplifting urge of delight and supply a new source of creative spiritual power and illumination by which they can be carried more swiftly and profoundly towards their absolute light in knowledge and their yet undreamed possibilities and most dynamic energy of content and form and practice. The one thing needful must be pursued first and always; but all things else come with it as its outcome and have not so much to be added to us as recovered and reshaped in its self-light and as portions of its self-expressive force.
Other writings
As Vyasa progressed in years, his personality developed towards intellectualism and his manner of expressing emotion became sensibly modified. In the Savitrie he first reveals his power of imparting to the reader a sense of poignant but silent feeling, feeling in the air, unexpressed or rather expressed in action…Read the whole passage · 542 wordsClose the passage
As Vyasa progressed in years, his personality developed towards intellectualism and his manner of expressing emotion became sensibly modified. In the Savitrie he first reveals his power of imparting to the reader a sense of poignant but silent feeling, feeling in the air, unexpressed or rather expressed in action, sometimes even in very silence; this power is a notable element in some of the great scenes of the Mahabharata; the silence of the Pandavas during the mishandling of Draupadie, the mighty silence of Krishna while the assembly of kings rage and roar around him and Shishupal again & again hurls forth on him his fury & contempt and the hearts of all men are troubled, the stern self-restraint of his brothers when Yudhisthere is smitten by Virata; are instances of the power I mean. In the Mahabharata proper we find few expressions of pure feeling, none at least which have the triumphant power of Damayanti’s laments in the Nala. Vyasa had by this time taken his bent; his heart and imagination had become filled with the pomp of thought and genius and the greatness of all things mighty and bold and regal; when therefore his characters feel powerful emotion, they are impelled to express it in the dialect of thought. We see the heart in their utterances but it is not the heart in its nakedness, it is not the heart of the common man; or rather it is the universal heart of man but robed in the intellectual purple. The note of Sanscrit poetry is always aristocratic; it has no answer to the democratic feeling or to the modern sentimental cult of the average man, but deals with exalted, large and aspiring natures, whose pride it is that they do not act like common men (प्राकृतो जनः). They are the great spirits, the महाजनाः, in whose footsteps the world follows. Whatever sentimental objections may be urged against this high and arrogating spirit, it cannot be doubted that a literature pervaded with the soul of hero worship and noblesse oblige and full of great examples is eminently fitted to elevate and strengthen a nation and prepare it for a great part in history. It was as Sanscrit literature ceased to be universally read and understood, as it became more & more confined to the Brahmins that the spirit of our nation began to decline. And it is because the echoes of that literature still lasted that the nation even in its downfall has played not altogether an ignoble part, that it has never quite consented as so many formerly great nations have done to the degradation Fate seemed determined to impose on it, that it has always struggled to assert itself, to live, to be something in the world of thought and action. And with this high tendency of the literature there is no poet who is so deeply imbued as Vyasa. Even the least of his characters is an intellect and a personality and of intellect and personality their every utterance reeks, as it were, and is full. I have already quoted the cry of Draupadie to Bhema; it is a supreme utterance of insulted feeling, and yet note how it expresses itself, in the language of intellect; in a thought.
लोकसंग्रहमेवापि संपश्यन् कर्तुमर्हसि ॥ यद्यदाचरति श्रेष्ठस्तत्तदेवेतरो जनः । स यत्प्रमाणं कुरुते लोकस्तदनुवर्तते ॥ न मे पार्थास्ति कर्तव्यं त्रिषु लोकेषु किञ्चन । नानवाप्तमवाप्तव्यं वर्त एव च कर्मणि ॥ यदि ह्यहं न वर्तेयं जातु कर्मण्यतन्द्रितः । मम वर्त्मानुवर्तन्ते मनुष्याः पार्थ सर्वशः ॥ उत्सीदेयुरिमे लोका न कुर्यां कर्म चेदहम् । सङ्करस्य च कर्ता स्यामुपहन्यामिमाः प्रजाः॥ सक्ताः कर्मण्यविद्वांसो यथा कुर्वन्ति भारत । कुर्याद्विद्वांस्तथासक्तश्चिकीर्षुर्लोकसंग्रहम् ॥ न बुद्धिभेदं जनयेदज्ञानां कर्मसङ्गिनाम् । योजयेत्सर्वकर्माणि विद्वान्युक्तः समाचरन् ॥
“Looking also to the maintenance of order in the world thou shouldest act; for whatever the best practises, that other men practise; for the standard set by him is followed by the whole world. In all the Universe there is for Me no necessary action, for I have nothing I do not possess or wish to possess, and lo I abide always doing. For if I abide not at all doing action vigilantly, men would altogether follow in my path, O son of Pritha; these worlds would sink if I did not actions, and I should be the author of confusion (literally illegitimacy, the worst & primal confusion, for it disorders the family which is the fundamental unit of society) and the destroyer of the peoples. What the ignorant do, O Bharata, with their minds enslaved to the work, that the wise man should do with a free mind to maintain the order of the world; the wise man should not upset the mind of the ignorant who are slaves of their deeds, but should apply himself to all works doing customary things with a mind in Yoga.”
The official, the liberal Congress politician, the well-read litterateur, the Oriental scholar, the journalist proficient in English and fluent of Western ideas, the professional man successful and sleek, these were the foremost men of the old generation, those who were in the eyes of all śreṣṭha, the best, in whose footsteps, therefore, all strove to follow and on whose pattern all formed themselves. An active, self-confident, voiceful generation making up by these qualities for the lack of height, depth and breadth in their culture and atoning for the unoriginal imitativeness to which they were doomed by the fidelity in detail and framework of the imitation! In all but one of these lines of activity Romesh Dutt had achieved a high distinction among the men of his own generation, and we doubt whether another man could be pointed out among them so many-sided, so full of strength and hope and energy, so confident, so uniformly successful. Nature was liberal to him of her gifts, Fortune of her favours. A splendid physique, robust and massive, equipped him to bear the strain of an unceasing activity: a nature buoyant, sanguine, strong, as healthy as his frame, armed him against the shocks of life and commanded success by insisting upon it; an egoism natural to such a robust vitality seized on all things as its provender and enabled its possessor thoroughly to enjoy the good things of life which it successfully demanded; a great tact and savoir faire steered him clear of unnecessary friction and avoidable difficulties; an unrivalled quickness of grasp, absorption and assimilation, more facile than subtle or deep, helped him to make his own all that he heard or read; a rapid though not ingenious brain showed him how to use his material with the best effect and most practical utility; and a facile pen and speech which never paused for a thought or a word, could always be trusted to clothe what he wished to convey in a form respectable and effective and so well put as to conceal the absence of native literary faculty and intellectual distinction. These were Nature’s presents to him at his birth. Fortune placed him in a wealthy, well-read and well-known family, gave him the best advantages of education the times could afford, sent him to England and opened the doors of the Civil Service, the pinnacle of the young Indian’s aspiration in his days, and crowned him with the highest prizes that that highest of careers could yield to a man of his hue and blood. It is characteristic of his career that he should have died as Prime Minister of the Indian State which has been most successful in reproducing and improving upon the Anglo-Indian model of administration.
Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the śreṣṭha of the Gita.
Shankara, one of the mightiest of metaphysical intellects, a far greater intellect than the Buddha, though a less mighty soul, built up by his intuitions and reasonings a third position which reconciles Vedic Brahmavada and the Karmavada of Buddhistic rationalism & Rationalistic materialism. Shankara asserts the real…Read the whole passage · 1,128 wordsClose the passage
Shankara, one of the mightiest of metaphysical intellects, a far greater intellect than the Buddha, though a less mighty soul, built up by his intuitions and reasonings a third position which reconciles Vedic Brahmavada and the Karmavada of Buddhistic rationalism & Rationalistic materialism. Shankara asserts the real existence of the Atman, self or soul which alone exists and is indeed the essential substratum & continent of this phenomenal universe. But he admits with Buddha the absolute rule of Karma, of the law of works, the law of cause & effect over the conscious soul immersed in the phenomenal universe. Is then the soul eternally coerced by its own phenomena, eternally bound to the revolving wheel of its own phenomenal manifestations? No, for freedom is the ultimate spiritual experience. Where then is the point of escape, the door, the egress? The point of escape is for Shankara, as for Buddha, in an ultimate act of knowledge which denies the real existence of the phenomenal world. He erects a rigid antagonism between essential truth and practical truth, paramartha & vyavahara, the one alone we must admit to be true truth, the other we must reject as only apparent truth. This world is a world of action, of karma, & in a world of action the governing practical truth is the law of karma which drives the soul through the endless chain of birth & death & rebirth, whirling for ever betwixt heaven & earth & hell, tossed from good to evil & evil to good, pain to joy & joy to pain, like a tennis ball kept continually at play between two equally skilful players. But all action depends upon and is only rendered possible by relation, and all relation depends upon and is only rendered possible by self-division, by bheda, by dwaita, by the false conception in the soul of itself as not one, but many, by Avidya therefore, by Maya, a great original sin of Ignorance, a mighty cosmic self-deception. Where there are many, relation and action are possible; where there is one, there can be no relation and therefore no action. Atman or Soul is one, therefore relationless and actionless, shantam avyavaharyam, therefore free from karma, from rebirth, from Maya. The rest is a phenomenon of creation produced by the play of active consciousness, jagati, & cast by it like a shadow or reflected image on the surface of the still, actionless & relationless soul. This play, this jagati is Maya which is and is not,—is in itself, for its works are there, but is not, for those works are unrealities; they are a mass of self-deceptions starting from an original selfdeception rooted in the principle of mind. What the mind sees is a reality, it is Atman, Brahman, but the ideas, the terms in which mind sees it are falsehoods.* All practice therefore, however true for practical purposes in world, is really the plausible & well-arranged play of a falsehood; & practical truth & action are only so far useful that out of them, properly handled, emerges the impulse which leads to cessation from action & the knowledge which denies practical existence. In that cessation, in that denial is man’s only escape from his false mental self into the calm essential reality, objectless bliss & relationless self-knowledge of the Atman. We see then that Shankara has practically transmuted or replaced Buddha’s vague & undefined Nirvana by this actionless & peaceful Atman, the shanta akriya Sacchidananda, substituted for Buddha’s false world of subjective sensations a false world of erroneous ideas starting from the original self-deception of duality, and accepting Buddha’s law of karma as applicable only to this false world and Buddha’s means of escape by an ultimate act of knowledge, substituted knowledge of real self for Buddha’s knowledge of non-self as the essence of that act & the true culmination of inner experience & meditative reason. Shankara like Buddha refuses to explain or discuss how active consciousness came at all to exist on the surface of a sole Self-existence which is in its very being shanta and inactive; he drives, like Buddha, straight at the actual fact of our bondage, the practical cause of bondage and the most direct path of escape from the bondage. These he states for us as he holds them to be established by Scripture, experience & reason & then, the fact once thus triply established, our business is not to account for its existence, which, moreover, must in the nature of things be inexplicable to the mind, since Maya is an original mystery & therefore incapable of solution, but to grasp at the one means of escape, of release, of the great & final liberation. The intellectual difference between the two systems is immense, their temperamental kinship is close. Yet we have this curious result, due to Buddha’s stress on the means of self-denial provided by life & its ethical & altruistic possibilities as a preliminary training, that Shankara’s system, less intellectually Nihilistic than Buddha’s, has been practically more fatal to the activities of the divine power & joy in life in the nation which has so largely accepted his teachings. By denying God in life, by withdrawing the best souls from life, by discouraging through their thought & example,—the thought & example of the best, yad yad acharati sreshthah,—the sraddha of life, the full confident self-acting of Matariswan even in those who have practically accepted & cling to the burden of worldly existence, he has enlarged the original Vedantic seed of ascetic tendency into a gigantic growth of stillness & world-disgust which has overshadowed for centuries the lives & souls of hundreds of millions of human beings. On one side the race & the world have gained immensely, on the other it has suffered an immense impoverishment. The world-fleeing saint & the hermit have multiplied, the world-helping saint & the divine warrior of life come rarely & fail for want of the right atmosphere & environment. The Avatars of moral purity & devotional love abound, the Avatars of life, Krishna & Balarama, manifest themselves no more. Gone are Janaka & Ajatashatru, Arjuna & Vyasa, the great scientists, the great lawgivers. The cry of OM Tapas with which God creates has grown faint in the soul of India, the cry of OM Shanti with which He withdraws from life alone arouses & directs the best energies of a national consciousness to whose thought all life is sorrow, self-delusion & an undivine blunder. Chilled is that marvellous & mighty vigour which flowed out from the Veda & Upanishads on the Indian consciousness & produced the grand & colossal forms of life eternally portrayed for us in the fragments of our ancient art & history & in the ideal descriptions of the Epics.
Writings in Bengali
কর্ম্মসন্ন্যাস জগতের পক্ষে অনিষ্টকর এবং ত্যাগহীন সন্ন্যাস বিড়ম্বনা মাত্র। সন্ন্যাসে যে ফললাভ হয়, ত্যাগেও সেই ফললাভ হয়, অর্থাৎ অজ্ঞান হইতে মুক্তি, সমতা, শক্তিলাভ, আনন্দলাভ, শ্রীকৃষ্ণলাভ। সর্ব্বজনপূজিত ব্যক্তি যাহা করেন, লোকে তাহাই আদর্শ করিয়া আচরণ করে, অতএব তুমি যদি কর্ম্মসন্ন্যাস কর, সকলে সেই পথের পথিক হইয়া ধর্ম্মসঙ্কর ও অধর্ম্মপ্রাধান্য সৃষ্টি করিবে। তুমি কর্ম্মফলস্পৃহা ত্যাগ করিয়া মানুষের সাধারণ ধর্ম্ম আচরণ কর, আদর্শস্বরূপ হইয়া সকলকে নিজ নিজ কর্ম্মপথে অগ্রসর হইবার প্রেরণা দাও, তাহা হইলেই আমার সাধর্ম্ম্যপ্রাপ্ত ও প্রিয়তম সুহৃদ হইবে। তাহার পরে তিনি বুঝাইয়াছেন যে, কর্ম্মদ্বারা শ্রেয়ঃপথে আরূঢ় হইয়া সেই পথে শেষ অবস্থায় শম অর্থাৎ সর্ব্ব-আরম্ভ-ত্যাগই বিহিত। ইহাও কর্ম্মসন্ন্যাস নহে, অহঙ্কার বর্জ্জনপূর্ব্বক বহুলায়াসপূর্ণ রাজসিক চেষ্টাত্যাগে ভগবানের সহিত যুক্ত হইয়া, গুণাতীত হইয়া তাঁহার শক্তিচালিত যন্ত্রের ন্যায় কর্ম্ম করা। সেই অবস্থায় জীবের এই স্থায়ী জ্ঞান হয় যে, আমি কর্ত্তা নহি, আমি দ্রষ্টা, আমি ভগবানের অংশ, আমার স্বভাবরচিত এই দেহরূপ কর্ম্মময় আধারে ভগবানের শক্তিই লীলার কার্য্য করে। জীব সাক্ষী ও ভোক্তা, প্রকৃতি কর্ত্তা, পরমেশ্বর অনুমন্তা। এই জ্ঞানপ্রাপ্ত পুরুষ শক্তির কোনও কার্য্যারম্ভে কামনা-রূপ সাহায্য বা বাধা দিতে ইচ্ছুক হন না। শক্তির অধীন হইয়া দেহ-মন-বুদ্ধি ঈশ্বরাদিষ্ট কর্ম্মে প্রবৃত্ত হয়। কুরুক্ষেত্রের ভীষণ হত্যাকাণ্ডও যদি ভগবানের অনুমত হয় এবং স্বধর্ম্মপথে যদি তাহাই ঘটে, তাহাতেও অলিপ্তবুদ্ধি কামনারহিত জ্ঞানপ্রাপ্ত জীবের পাপস্পর্শ হয় না। কিন্তু ইহা অতি অল্পলোকের লভ্য জ্ঞান ও আদর্শ, ইহা সাধারণ ধর্ম্ম হইতে পারে না। তবে এই পথের সাধারণ পথিকের কর্ত্তব্য কর্ম্ম কি? তাঁহারও এই জ্ঞান কতক পরিমাণে প্রাপ্য যে, তিনি যন্ত্রী আমি যন্ত্র। সেই জ্ঞানের বলে ভগবানকে স্মরণ করিয়া স্বধর্ম্মসেবাই তাঁহার পক্ষে আদিষ্ট।
Letters
Yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas tat tad evetaro janaḥ.*
- “Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice.” Gita 3.21. Sri Aurobindo’s translation. Essays on the Gita, volume 19 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, p. 135.
Or again, if B or C prefer not to come to the Dining Room, why should others not follow their example? After all, the Gita’s line does apply: yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas tad tad evetaro janaḥ. If the well-known great sadhaks go about loosely, the ordinary sadhaks have few good examples to go by.*
- Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice. Gita 3.21
SABCL — text not in the CWSA
Yadyadācarati śreṣṭhastattadevetaro janaḥ.
“Whatever the best do is taken as the model by the rest.”
