Gandhi’s satyagraha influenced both Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
Gandhi during the 1930 Salt March
The principle of ahimsa (non-injury or non-violence) runs through all Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and, especially, Jainism. It is rooted in the Atman-Brahman doctrine, which implies a commonality, or shared divinity, between all living creatures.
The motto ahimsa paramo dharma (non-violence is the highest virtue) decorates many a Jain temple. The most recognized Jain symbol is a raised hand with, on it, a dharmachakra (wheel of dharma), and within the dharmachakra, the word ‘ahimsa.’ Even eating honey is seen as violence to the bees that made it.
Jain monks in particular must take special precautions to avoid unintentionally harming a jiva (living being), such as sweeping their path with a peacock-feather duster and not traveling during the rainy season. If you see a Jain monk wearing a mask, it is not because he is afraid of viruses.
There is a Jain story of a fire in the forest. To escape the fire, all the animals crowd around a lake. A restless elephant raises a leg, only for a rabbit to dart into the space beneath. So as not to harm the rabbit, the elephant holds up its leg for three whole days. Although it dies from the strain, it is reborn as a human being.
Many Jains abstain from farming since agricultural operations are bound to injure small animals, including insects and worms. However, violence in self-defence and war can be justified, for example, to protect Jain nuns, and there have been Jain monarchs and even Jain warriors.
Non-violence has worked well for Jains, who are often stereotyped as wealthy merchants and bankers: perhaps ironically, Jains have come to form the wealthiest community in India.
Buddhism and Jainism arose, in part, from a rejection of the Vedic blood sacrifice, and served in turn to accelerate the shift towards vegetarianism in Indian society. The ritual did not die but was transformed, with yagna (sacrifice) replaced by puja, in which the sacrifice is symbolic, with fruits, flowers, and incense offered in lieu of animals. But whereas yagnawas a means of effecting a cosmic end, puja was merely a means of propitiating the gods, who had taken control over human affairs, or, at least, set themselves up as middlemen.
Gandhi’s Satyagraha
In his youth, Mahatma Gandhi was deeply influenced by Jainism, which he regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a tradition of Hinduism. He extended the Jain principles of ahimsa and satya (truthfulness, the second of the five great vows taken by Jains) into the political sphere as satyagraha (“holding on to the truth”). This involves tackling injustice with non-violent resistance, truth-telling, and conquering through conversion.
Gandhi practised satyagraha not only in the Indian independence movement but also, in its embryonic form, during his earlier struggles for Indian rights in South Africa. In a letter, he distinguished it from passive resistance in three points: it is a weapon of the strong; it admits of no violence under any circumstance whatsoever; and it ever insists upon the truth.
Gandhi’s satyagraha in turn influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement and Nelson Mandela in his struggle against apartheid.
King integrated satyagraha into his vision of Christianity, stating that, “Christ showed us the way and Gandhi in India showed it could work.” Later, he declared Gandhi to be “the greatest Christian of the modern world.”
In 2007, the 88-year-old Mandela addressed a conference to mark the centenary of Gandhi’s satyagraha, stating that Gandhi’s philosophy “contributed in no small measure to bringing about a peaceful transformation in South Africa and in healing the destructive human divisions that had been spawned by the abhorrent practice of apartheid.” “In a world driven by violence and strife, Gandhi’s message of peace and non-violence holds the key to human survival in the 21st century.”
Gandhi looked upon ahimsa and satya as two sides of the same coin: truth leads to non-violence, just as non-violence leads to truth. The means, he said, should be as pure as the end.
Satyagraha is an excellent example of how the ancient world can enlighten the modern.
The national motto of India, Satyameva Jayate (Truth Alone Triumphs), is from the Mundaka Upanishad.
“Upanishad” means something like “hidden connections”, “secret teaching”, or “esoteric doctrine”, literally, “a sitting at (the feet of the teacher)”. Upanishadic wisdom can only be transmitted to those who are fit to receive it, by those who are fit to teach it.
Although a part of the Vedas (the last or latest of its four layers), the Upanishads tend to take a dim view of what went before. “Of what use” asks the Shvestashvatara Upanishad, “is the Rig Veda to one who does not know the Spirit from whom the Rig Veda comes?”
The Great Forest Upanishad promises freedom from the very things valued by the Vedas and Vedic society: “It is when they come to know this self that Brahmins (priests) give up the desire for sons, the desire for wealth, the desire for worlds…”
In a passage known as the Udgitha of the Dogs, the Chandogya Upanishad satirizes the Brahmins as a procession of dogs, who chant, “Om, we will eat! Om, we will drink! O Lord of food, bring us food here. Bring us food here. Om.”
An Introduction to the Upanishads
By a restrictive definition, there are around 108 Upanishads. The first dozen or so are the most important, and referred to as the mukhya (main or major) Upanishads. Many “Upanishads” are much later sectarian texts (Vaishnavite, Shaivite…), claimed as Upanishads to lend them the force of revelation.In the Vedas, there are ten embedded Upanishads, with all ten regarded as mukhya. Some of the mukhya Upanishads are in mostly prose; others are in verse.
The earliest Upanishads are the Great Forest Upanishad and Chandogya Upanishad, which date from around or before the sixth century BCE. These two are also the longest Upanishads, with, respectively, 627 and 434 verses; while the shortest mukhya Upanishads are the Mandukya Upanishad and Isha Upanishad (often contracted to Ishopanishad), with only 12 and 18 verses.
The Mandukya Upanishad discusses Om, Brahman, and four states of consciousness. The Ishopanishad is often given pride of place at the beginning of Upanishadic anthologies. In an abridged form, it runs something like this:
Behold the universe in the glory of God: and all that lives and moves on earth. Leaving the transient, find joy in the Eternal … He who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings loses all fear … May life go to immortal life, and the body go to ashes, Om. O my soul, remember past strivings, remember! O my soul, remember past strivings, remember!
Parallels with Plato’s dialogues
The content of the Upanishads is very diverse, and may include mantras, rituals, creation myths, lineages of teachers, historical narratives, and the like. But at their best and most original, the Upanishads take the form of a philosophical dialogue, not unlike those of Plato, with named interlocutors presenting and debating various viewpoints.
For example, in the Great Forest Upanishad, the sage Yajnavalkya engages in philosophical debate with, among others, his wife Maitreyi, the sage Gargi (another, rare, woman), and King Janaka of Videha—who salutes Yajnavalkya with “namaste”.
In the Chandogya Upanishad, the sage Uddalaka Aruni—the guru or teacher of Yajnavalkya—engages in debate with his son, Shvetaketu. Uddalaka Aruni, Shvetaketu, Yajnavalkya, Maitreyi, and Gargi are among the first philosophers in recorded history.
The Essence of the Upanishads
This being philosophy, there is a tendency to abstraction, to grasp at “the truth behind the truth” (satyasya satyam). The central vision is one of pantheism (all is God) or panentheism (all is in God), with the Creator dissimulated in nature “even as the silkworm is hidden in the web of silk he made”.
God is Brahman, and the part or aspect of Brahman that is in us is Atman. The aim then becomes to achieve the knowledge and unity of Atman and Brahman, which is wisdom, salvation, and liberation.
Before the Upanishads, Brahmins sacrificed to the gods for society to prosper. After the Upanishads, Brahmins turned instead to the God within, to achieve their own liberation.
Some two hundred years later, Socrates would make a similar turn. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates tells Phaedrus that he sees no point in being curious about myths or anything else which is not his concern:
I must first know myself… to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.
Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy.
A darshana is an outlook, a philosophy, literally, a “vision.” The term darshana is especially associated with the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy, the so-called shaddarshana, or “six visions.” What makes them orthodox, and therefore Hindu, is that they accept the authority of the Vedas. With good reason, the shaddarshana are often presented in pairs: Samkhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and Mimamsa-Vedanta. In this post, I shall, of course, be focussing on Samkhya-Yoga.
The Samkhya School
The founder of the Samkhya school is held to be Kapila, who lived, perhaps, in the sixth century BCE. Little is known about him. He is sometimes described as an avatar of Vishnu or the grandson of Brahma. He is mentioned by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita as the greatest of sages: “Amongst the gandharvas I am Chitrath, and among the siddhas, I am sage Kapila.” According to Puranic lore, his meditation produced such intense inner heat that, when they disturbed him, he incinerated the Sagarputras, the 60,001 sons of King Sagara, simply by opening his eyes.
In the Buddhist tradition, the students of Kapila built the Shakya capital of Kapilavastu. The Buddha, who was raised in Kapilavastu, was therefore steeped in Samkhya philosophy, explaining the affinities between Samkhya and Buddhism.
Kapila is held to have authored the Samkhya Sutra, although the extant text appears to be medieval in origin. Instead, the school’s primary text is the Samkhyakarika by Ishvarakrishna, who lived in the third or fourth century CE.
In the first verse, Ishvarakrishna states the aim of Samkhya: to eliminate the three forms of dukkha (suffering): internal, from physical and mental disease; external, from outside threats, especially other people; and divine, that is, from natural disasters.
Samkhya is a radical dualism that holds that the universe is made up of two independent, infinite, and eternal realities: Purusha (souls) and Prakriti (matter or nature). The Purushas are conscious but have no attributes. They are pure ‘witness consciousness.’ Prakriti is composed of the three gunas (qualities or tendencies of matter), sattva (preservation, harmony), rajas (creation, passion), and tamas (destruction, apathy).
Initially, the gunas are in equilibrium. But at its approach, Purusha disturbs this equilibrium in favour of rajas, and this imbalance sets off material creation.
Comparisons With Western Dualism
Unlike Western dualism, which is between mind and matter, Samkhyan dualism is between self and matter—with “matter” encompassing most of what Westerners would consider “mind” (intellect, ego, emotions, etc.)—everything, in fact, except witness consciousness, of which mind is the instrument.
Also, unlike Western dualism, Samkhyan dualism is atheistic or agnostic. Although an orthodox school, Samkhya is remarkably silent about God and the Vedas.
The Samkhyan Account of Creation
At the approach of Purusha, undifferentiated Prakriti evolves 23 tattvas (elements, aspects), first buddhi (intelligence), and from buddhi ahamkara (ego or self-consciousness).
Under the influence of sattva guna, ahamkara yields the five organs of sense (eyes, ears, nose, skin, tongue), the five organs of action (arms, legs, speech, organs of elimination, organs of creation), and manas (mind).
Then, under the influence of tamas guna, ahamkara yields the five subtle elements (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste), from which the five material elements (earth, air, water, fire, ether) emerge.
Notice that the material world is last in the order of creation. Its evolution from the five senses suggests that the world is an illusion, although this is never explicitly stated.
Manas has a special role in mediating between the ten organs, the five senses, and the world without. Being of Prakriti, buddhi, ahamkara, and manas are not conscious. However, they appear to be conscious and are set into motion by proximity with Purusha—functioning, as it were, by reflected consciousness.
The Samkhyan Account of Liberation
Adding Purusha and Prakriti to the 23 tattvas makes a total of 25 tattvas—of which 24 are of Prakriti. Nonetheless, it is for the sake of Purusha that the differentiation occurs, to provide it with experience and, in time, with liberation (moksha). By reflecting the consciousness of Purusha, Prakriti is showing Purusha to itself.
Purusha and Prakriti are like a lame man and a blind man, lost in the wilderness. The blind man carries the lame man, who guides his steps. Both are looking for their way home, to moksha, when they will part ways. But having never traveled, the lame man is avid of experience and so enthralled by his adventure that he forgets about his destination.
To be consistent with the universal law of karma, Samkhya assumes that a Purusha that is bonded to Prakriti (that is, a jiva), has two bodies: a gross, mortal body, and a subtle body made up of the higher functions which transmigrates according to past merit. The continuity of the subtle body enables the Purusha to keep on learning through numerous incarnations.
Final liberation consists in the realization of the separateness of Purusha and Prakriti. This involves a process of involution, or “going back to the womb”—that is, reversing, through intellect and understanding, the process of evolution from the material elements back to undifferentiated Prakriti and beyond.
In short, salvation consists in counting backwards.
The Yoga School
Samkhya exerted such a profound influence on Yoga that the two schools are sometimes merged as Samkhya-Yoga. But whereas Samkhya emphasizes knowledge and discrimination as the path to liberation, Yoga rather emphasizes discipline.
Although Yoga essentially borrows the metaphysics of Samkhya, it introduces a twenty-sixth tattva, namely, Ishvara, or “the Lord”—for which reason it has been called “Theistic Samkhya.” The nature of “Ishvara” is open to interpretation, but it may be regarded as a special Purusha that is unentangled and, therefore, inactive.
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
In the second century BCE, or perhaps the fifth century CE, Patanjali collected the ideas around yoga in the Yoga Sutra. These 196 verses became the foundational text of Yoga, which, towards the end of the first millennium, began to be mentioned as a separate school.
Patanjali’s synthesis influenced all other schools of Hindu philosophy, which regard it as authoritative. It is sometimes referred to as Raja Yoga (Royal Yoga) or Ashtanga Yoga (Eight-Limbed Yoga) to distinguish it from the many other forms of yoga, such as Jnana, Karma, Bhakti, Mantra, and Tantra—which are, of course, more complementary than mutually exclusive.
The Yoga Sutra has four sections: Samahdi (Concentration), Sadhana (Practice), Vibhuti (Yogic or Magical Powers), and Kaivalya (Isolation or Liberation). In the first section, Patanjali defines yoga as “the cessation of mental fluctuations” (chitta vritti nirodha)—with chitta (mind) assimilated in the Samkhyan system to buddhi, ahamkara, and manas. In the third section, he warns against practicing yoga for the perverted purpose of acquiring yogic powers—suggesting that this sort of thing may have been common.
Ashtanga or Eight-Limbed Yoga
The eight stages of Patanjali’s Yoga are:
Yama(abstinence or restraint)
Niyama (discipline or observances)
Asana (‘seat’, posture)
Pranayama (breath control)
Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses)
Dharana (concentration of the mind on some object)
Dhyana (steady meditation on that object) and
Samadhi (absorption, ecstatic union with the ultimate).
The first two stages are ethical preparations. Yama involves abstinence from injury, falsehood, stealing, lust, and avarice. Niyama involves purity or cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study, and devotion to God.
The next two stages are physical preparations, each involving a series of exercises to remove physical or bodily distractions.
The fifth stage involves taking control of the mind by emptying it of impressions.
The remaining three stages, which may take several lifetimes to perfect, aim at increasingly heightened states of awareness and return.
According to Patanjali, the five kleshas (poisons, obstacles to Yoga and liberation) are ignorance, ego, attachment or desire, aversion to unpleasant things or truths, and fear of death and desire to live.
Final Remarks
The aim of yoga, and ascetic practice in general, is essentially to react against ordinary human habits, which entangle us, or our Purusha, with Prakriti, to the extent that Purusha identifies with Prakriti and more particularly with the restless chitta and its manifold modifications.
This is a far cry from the yoga practised in the West as a form of physical culture, with postures borrowed from Hatha Yoga and optional spiritual sprinkling for stress relief. Even Hatha Yoga is about a lot more than that.
Two early insights that led the Buddha to enlightenment are the Middle Way and Dependent Origination. According to the doctrine of the Middle Way, we are more likely to achieve insight and wisdom if we avoid extremes of self-gratification and self-mortification.
According to the doctrine of Dependent Origination, or Interdependent Arising, life is a continuous process of change, and every instance of change has manifold causes and effects. This means that all things are conditioned by other things, and that all things are interconnected. Suffering arises from a craving for permanence; but all permanence is an illusion that, in time, can only lead to pain and disappointment.
Although nothing exists permanently, it is equally wrong to say that nothing exists at all. This, too, is a middle way. Does the self exist? In a sense it does; in another sense it does not—which is why, when asked the question, the Buddha, as was his way, simply remained silent.
Nagarjuna on Emptiness
The Middle Way and Dependent Origination pervade all aspects of Buddhist thought. After the Buddha, the most noted Buddhist philosopher is Nagarjuna (d. c. 250 CE), who founded or re-founded the Madhyamaka (“Middle Way”) school, an important strand of Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Buddhism. In the Root Verses on the Middle Way, Nagarjuna argues that between the extremes of permanence and nothingness lies emptiness, or shunyata. Although they exist, all phenomena are “empty” insofar as they lack permanence and autonomous existence.
Although this sounds pessimistic—and Nagarjuna has been accused of being a nihilist—it is precisely this emptiness and fluidity that underlies the possibility of change and creation. In Zen Buddhism, a more dynamic alternative to the koan, or riddle, is for the master to suddenly slap his student to shake him out of who he thinks he is and what he thinks he’s doing. This, however, would not be legal today.
The Not-Self
How is it that the self can both exist and not exist?
The self, or “not-self” (anatta), is composed of five elements (skandhas), namely, body, sensation, perception, will, and consciousness. The five skandhas are in a constant state of flux but together create for the not-self the illusion of integrity and continuity, that is, the illusion of the self.
This explains why, when I try to become aware of myself, I can only ever become aware of such and such perception, such and such sensation, or such and such thought, but never of any actual, core self.
Try it now for “yourself”…
Rebirth and Release
The death of the bodily self leads to the disaggregation of the skandhas and to their re-aggregation into another not-self, which is neither identical to nor entirely different from the previous one, but forms part of a causal continuum with it. An analogy that is often offered to describe this process of rebirth is that of a flame, fuelled by desire, passing from one candle to the next.
The cycle of rebirth can only be broken if the self is able to transcend its subjective and distorted image of the world, which is built around the “I am” conceit. This, then, is nibbana, or, in Sanskrit, nirvana. Nirvana, as I see it, rests on the understanding that consciousness is a sequence of conscious moments rather than the continuous, unbroken consciousness of the “I am” conceit.
Western Parallels
If this all sounds rather mystical, consider that the empiricist philosopher David Hume (d. 1776) independently arrived at a similar view:
…when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for a time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible to myself, and may truly be said not to exist.
This is taken from Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature.
Implications
Our ego defences as broadly conceived—that is, not only our ego defences proper but also our habits, customs, culture, and other ties—may provide us with an illusion of self, but they also define us as such and such, and, in so doing, constrain our range of thought, feeling, and action. Paradoxically, the very elements that furnish us with our sense of self are also those that prevent us from fulfilling our true promise and potential as human beings.
As I argue in my book on the psychology of self-deception, it is only by renouncing the self, that is, by dropping her defences and committing symbolic suicide, that a person is able to open up to different modes of being and relating and transform herself into a pure essence of humanity. In so doing, she becomes free to recast herself as a more joyful and productive person, and attains the only species of transcendence and immortality that is open to us, mere mortals.
And so, if we are to live, we must first learn to die.
There is much more to mental health than the mere absence of mental disorder. Today, I write about all the things that I was never taught. Click here to find out more.
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