A. Srinivas Rao
20th July 2011
This article has been written for a dear friend of mine with whom I had spent many hours during my graduation years at engineering college discussing various ideas and whom I admire much (who recently got in touch). He is now a Swamiji at a well known ashram and editing a Gujarati magazine on spirituality. He was lamenting the loss of the institution of the vanaprastha in modern times where retired couples spent time in quiet contemplation and in preparation for the next ashrama the sannyasa, not to mention the mahaprasthaana or final journey. He suggested that I write something about it. I am not sure I sufficiently understand or appreciate the idea but thought I shall write this for him. I believe that institutions evolve with the nature of society but we often hearken to ideas of antiquity with nostalgia and possibly saddle them with ill fitting modern demands.
There are three ideas of Indian antiquity that seem inextricably intertwined in our thinking and form a troublesome formulation. The idea of varna or caste, ashrama or stage of life and purushartha or goals of human striving. The three ideas did not spring forth full blown like the four castes out of the Purusha or Supreme Being as the poem Purusha Sukta of the Rik Veda suggests. But like the Purusha Sukta itself which was a later interpolation into the Rik Veda, these ideas had evolved as a response to a challenge to the Brahmin orthodoxy by the Shramanic thinking like Buddhism, Jainism and also Sankhya. We shall not get into the caste or varna system which is complex and controversial but bear in mind that the ashrama system and the purusharthas were considered appropriate only for those elect of the dvijas or twice born (regardless of the allegorical veneer modern apologists have sought to apply). In other words those who were not twice born were not expected to seriously reflect on the aims or stages of life. Let us therefore set aside the varna system and look at the other two in some detail to place the “vanaprastha” in context.
The seemingly monolithic and elegant constructions of both these ideas of purushartha and ashrama need to be examined closely before we can comment about Vanaprastha. There are according to Hindu thought four goals whose pursuit occupy our lives viz. Dharma or the pursuit of the ‘Good’ in terms of a just ‘order’’, Artha or pursuit of prosperity and power, Kama or the pursuit of desire and their objects, and finally Moksha or the pursuit of liberation. While seemingly an elegant and innocuous formulation it must be remembered that originally there were only two such goals, Kama and Artha. This seemed like a descriptive order of kama desire being the prime mover of human action and artha or the instrumentality for fulfillment, providing the resources. In its formulation, Kama also encompassed desire for apart from sensory objects the “good”, for knowledge, virtue and also liberation; artha encompassed wealth and power as well as effort and capabilities. It seems that the other two non material goals that are added at the beginning and the end to bracket the first two were added in response to Buddhism in particular and Shramana traditions in general. With such a bracketing the descriptive order (what is) becomes normative (what should). Thus the purusharthas became from what are to what ought to be the aims of human endeavor.
Dharma is a complex idea and stems from the root Dhr or ‘to uphold’ or “to sustain” and is based on the natural order or Rta at a macrocosmic level, a social and political order as well as the integrity and responsibility for ethical action at a microcosmic or individual level. This natural and moral order or Dharma became the leitmotif of the epic literature especially of the Mahabharata. Indeed Dharma has been the axial theme of Buddhism and its ethical pursuit is also a quest for personal and collective liberation called Nirvana making it a ‘soteriological’ or salvation oriented faith. As mentioned in an earlier article on Sabda, Buddhism represented the strongest challenge to Hindu orthodoxy; it was urbane, intellectually oriented, patronized by the powerful and ironically was like the other shramanic faiths e.g. Jainism and Ajivikas etc. ascetic in its world view and privileged monasticism over the laity. Personal accountability and responsibility for one’s own salvation were the corner stone of the shramanic faiths. The axial value placed on liberation or nirvana, kevala jnana or kaivalya by the shramanic faiths became popular as life orientations and the goal of life was posited to be teleological (i.e. a doctrine of a final cause or purpose) towards liberation.
The Hindu orthodoxy was not far behind in catching up with those fermentative times and appropriated the idea of liberation anticipated in much detail in the Upanishads and gave it a more conceptual ground and called it moksha. While the shamanic traditions described it in terms of it being non-conceptual and beyond thought and in general in terms of negations, the Hindu mind gave it a more positive affirmation. Of the six orthodox schools of Indian thought Mimamsa wasn’t really concerned about liberation but continuation of the sacrificial ritual order for the attainment of swarga or heaven; Vaiseshika too wasn’t interested in liberation nor was Nyaya though they nominally acknowledged its value. Sankhya slowly cast away its original theological orientation and became closer a dualism like Jainism that did not need “God” or Ishwara as actus primus or prime mover (though it was promptly brought in by Yoga). It was only Sankhya and Vedanta of the orthodox schools that valued liberation or moksha. It also seems certain that Sankhya which fashioned itself more as a shramanic faith was the cause of bringing in (kaivalya) moksha as the ultimate purpose of human endeavor and was co-opted much later by Vedanta. There seemed to now be a convergence of liberation as the final Telos or goal to all human endeavors as moksha. The ethical underscoring of all pursuits made Dharma the first of the purusharthas and the final destination became Moksha effectively bracketing Artha and Kama or the “will to power and will to pleasure”. With the “will to meaning” ordered by Dharma and Moksha this elegant formulation became a neat way of capturing the goals of human endeavors. The will to pleasure and power as encapsulated by kama and artha were evolutionary (pravritti) in contrast to the involution (nivritti) anticipated by the other two goals. This dovetailed neatly into the ashrama theory where the life stages of studentship and marital life were oriented externally (pravritti) and the stages of retirement and renunciation focused on Dharma and Moksha (nivritti). The material goals were in terms of the Upanishads the preyas or the pleasurable and the other two were shreyas or the ‘good’. In many ways moksha is radically opposed, antithetical to and is unrelated to the other three goals.
With such a teleological ordering of human goals the social legitimacy and its supporting institutions generated the idea of ashrama dharma or the stages of life theory which along with the idea of the sixteen samskaras or rites of passage, effectively provided guidelines and social markers to the practice of the purusharthas. There are four ashramas, brahmacarya, grihasta, vanaprastha and sannyasa; studentship, marital life, retirement and renunciation. Most of the sixteen samskaras were concentrated upon the first stage of studentship (14 samskaras) and with marriage almost all but one (anyeshti-funeral rites) samskaras were concluded. It is quite likely that the priestly emphasis on being custodians of scriptural lore, and the idea of divine elect of being twice born, the samskaras of the first stage were all that needed to differentiate the hierarchical varna system. Moreover few reached the longevity described by the ashrama system according to which a quarter of a hundred years is associated with each stage.
The vanaprastha ashrama was meant for those who had religiously observed the rules of the ‘snataka” or the ones who held the ritual vows as a twice born. Having discharged their vows to the gods, the ancestors, the family and society these people who had crossed the age of fifty carried their ritual fires to the forests to lead a contemplative life. A significant portion of these pursued the ideal of moksha and commented and contemplated on the Vedic insights. It appears that there was an institutional exchange almost of a collegial type across hermitages and forest settlements in the Vedic times who did write the Aranyakas or the Wilderness Books section of the Vedas (e.g. Tittiriaya, Aitreya, Bhrihad Aranyaka etc.). These Aranyakas were not lofty philosophical insights but prose commentaries/notes on the performance of ritual. It is likely that the Vanaprastha ideal was formed reminiscent of the life of the mind pursued in these hermitages. It was a life that eschewed urbanity and embraced seclusion and solitude, significant leisure with their attendant spartan and absent material comforts. Much later rules mentioned in the Padma Purana (probably 8th -11th CE) were formulated to govern the degree of asceticism that ought to be pursued by the Vanaprastha (e.g. what they could eat, wear, spend time on etc.). The Vanaprastha was like the classic stuck in the middle stage of Trishanku. It had neither the institutionalized radicalism of rejecting a social order like Sannyasa, nor the productive legitimacy of Grihasta. In being a preparatory to Sannyasa or radical renunciation this was merely a foretaste of the quest for moksha. The Vanaprastha was a retiree and a novice 'renunciate'. His renunciation was only of the “haves” that defined him, of power, pelf, and name but not of his being that sought liberation. But as a prelude to exploring his being he began by asserting that the quest for authenticity lay in being and not in having. Sannyasa by contrast was the renunciation of not just possessions but the self. The ordination ritual of sannyasa is the Viraja Homa which is the funeral oblation unto and of oneself and is dead to the past which has any bearing on his identity. Vidyaranya (14th CE) had referred to two kinds of sannyasa those who have renounced the seeker or enquirer (vividisha), and those who have renounced the 'knower' (and thereby the 'known') (Vidvat). It follows that when the boundaries between the 'knower' and 'known' dissolve the quest is complete. When Sannyasa has institutionalized such a radicalism of the self the Vanaprastha by contrast is the preparation to such a radicalism that yet struggles with the idea of self as a seeker.
To our modern sensibilities these notions would appear rather quaint and possibly an archaic resurrection of dying or dead institutions. Ashrama dharma in our modern times has to contend with the fact that society is much more complex in its plural hierarchies and the nature of social stratification is ordered globally around artha, power and pelf. The life of contemplative ease even in the best of times was temperamentally suited to a few with the rest merely attempting to conform to the social institutions. Moreover wisdom is also served when one focuses on how one lives ones life than what goals it serves. The second issue it has to address is the significant rise in the longevity of individuals. With the considerably rise in longevity across the human planet the number of people who exceeded the average lifespan of 40 years has exponentially risen and now centenarians are common. Death brought in a certain tension to life that has been reduced with the rise in longevity and security. The problem of modern times is that the productive age seems to elastically extend working life but institutional norms of retirement haven’t changed. We have today several retirees who can be equally productive as those half their age being forced to yield their place to the pressure of young recruits. There was along with the rise in longevity a rise in the age of marriage by more than a decade. (The likely Oedipal conflicts between father and son in India were contained according to some research by early marriage. This had the effect of advancing the retirement of individuals at an early stage given the shorter lifespan.) Managing this transition has not been easy and the collapse of an older order has left many a psychological scar on a not yet geriatric population. The contemplative solitude that the Vanaprastha requires makes for companionship with oneself rather than the habitual sociability engendered by our working lives. Solitude is comfort with the sociability with ones own self while loneliness that plagues us is discomfort with the absence of others. Any quest or seeking began with the yearning for such solitude. For a society fed on a staple diet of dwindling attention spans, the monetization of all pleasure, the display of ones identity, party solidarity; the value of leisure and solitude has been depreciated. Blaise Pascale (17th CE) had commented that “all human unhappiness came from not knowing how to sit quietly in a room”. I am not lamenting the loss of leisure or that of the Vanaprastha but merely noting that we need a fresh institutional imagination than keep groping for old sky hooks to peg our emperor’s new clothes.
No comments:
Post a Comment