Deciphering Paradoxes

 

Learning to live with paradoxes:

Hindu philosophy is not easy to understand and certainly not easy by reading any one textbook once. 

This morning a very silly incident inspired me to ponder over paradoxes from philosophy that call for better understanding so we don’t keep circling in an infinite loop of confusion. I saw a ziplock bag sitting in the refrigerator with some candy that used to have its own container. I realized someone had taken away the container for another purpose. My reflex was a thought that was critical of that choice (of displacing the candy from its container). And the next thought was “ it’s a silly container! Don’t sweat over it”. 

Immediately I realized I could very well apply this wisdom to my body! It’s a silly container! It is housing some valuable goodies essential for living, like my brain, heart, lungs, gut and what not. But it is still a container. Stop fussing over it! 

That’s the deh buddhi or body consciousness that the saints keep advising to discard and rise above. This is what invites all sorts of selfish thinking and actions. This is what precludes realizing our eternal self. 

Now the paradox: it is through living in this body that realizing the eternal self is possible! Therefore a human birth must be valued! 

There are many such paradoxes we come across when we deal with teachings of sanatana dharma, commonly known as Hinduism. Why just Hinduism. Many paradoxes exist in almost every aspect of daily life.

Look at it as concept of a double edged sword. 

Being obsessed with one’s identity as being solely associated with our physical body leads to drowning deeper and deeper into pits of ignorance and evil. It puts limitations on our good side. Kindness, generosity, love often extend to our next of kin and close friends. Everyone beyond this limited circle falls into category of “others”. And those others are often “ not deserving” of our good fortune. Our mind paints the picture of good and bad, desirable and undesirable, worthy and unworthy people and then interacts with them accordingly. Sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously. This is the careless use of a precious commodity which is our physical body. It is like a knife in the hands of a madman. 

Such a madman often not only wields the knife at others, he also uses it on himself. Worrying about problems in life, indulging in excess of food, drinks,or sexual activity, neglecting health in the pursuit of wealth are examples of self harm that is directly the outcome of living in body consciousness. 

Saints are like therapists trying to treat this inherent madness and teaching man to hold the knife cautiously and training him to use it skillfully to achieve the best possible results. 

The therapy is aimed at gradually reducing the obsession with physical identity and beginning to see the body as a tool rather than as self. This widens awareness and brings positive change in one’s attitude towards the physical environment. The byproduct of this approach is that the self can be recognized as distinct from the tool and with unique characteristics that are quite unlike those of the tool. You slowly begin to understand that this self is not subject to disintegration, destruction or death. This becomes a powerful antidote for fear. You begin to experience all the inherent qualities of this gradually “purifying” self as it separates from the influence of body consciousness. Wisdom, unrestricted love and therefore inclusivity towards the universe, kindness, non judgment, indifference to personal inconveniences are some of the traits one begins to experience within himself that were hitherto not known to him. 

Such training cannot be given to species other than human beings and that is why human birth is considered so precious. 

The biggest tragedy even amongst educated and good hearted humans is to disregard, dismiss and decline this training from the saints. 

The reason why such good humans shy away from such avenues is quite understandable. The repeated and frequent tales of deceptions that come to light about people who fake sainthood makes reasoning minds mistrust the very possibility and value of true sainthood. For such intelligent yet well meaning people, being drawn to saints and godmen is viewed as something only naive or stupid people would do. 

From point of religion people can be considered in one of six categories:

First, the most stupid are those that neither pay heed to saints nor to any principles of general goodness, 

Second are those that pay heed to saints but without exercising their own power of reasoning. These people don’t know the difference between real and fake saints. 

Third category consists of the “smart ones” who cash in on the stupidity of a few good ones and pretend to be saints. 

Fourth category is that of the smart ones who believe in living a life of general goodness, have a good reasoning capacity and choose to navigate through life without the trappings of religion/ spirituality/ God/ saints etc.. 

There is a fifty category consisting of an extremely small percentage out of the entire human population that includes esoteric people who were in the fourth category above but ventured out for various reasons, to risk finding the truth by themselves. They looked at things with healthy scepticism, verified every claim with personal experience and then endorsed the teachings of true saints. 

The sixth category is the saints themselves who had found the ultimate truth of our existence and needed nothing for themselves, but lived simply to pull out fellow humans out of the slumber of their ignorance. These people have attained immortality by finding that truth and long after their mortal lives have concluded, their words continue to serve as guiding lights for us. A lucky one of us from the above five categories may occasionally stumble upon the teachings and benefit from them depending on our qualifications. Majority just keep walking over mines of gold and diamonds without knowing what lies around and also within themselves. 

Coming back to the subject of paradoxes, this post is dedicated to shining some light on important paradoxes in our lives, understanding them with clarity and using this to our advantage. 

First is of course understanding the concept of body consciousness, learning to use it as a tool rather than as our only identity. Once seen as a tool, like any modern gadget, learning all the finer capabilities, and functions of this gadget is the goal. 

Second paradox is about our power of reasoning. Those that do not understand the language of body consciousness or spiritual practice can understand the language of cognition and reasoning. The same reasoning that prompts us to steer clear of the con game of godmen, organized religion and such things, is actually our only tool and also our best tool to grasp the ultimate truth that real saints talk about and scientists delving into mysteries of the origins and constituents of the universe are seeking. If we do not use this unique potential of our reasoning faculty it’s like using an iPhone for making phone calls, sending texts and emails, taking pictures and surfing the net but missing out on thousands of other very useful things the device is capable of. And how would you learn to use those lesser known functions? By talking to an expert you can trust or reading a manual. 

Once you get curious to learn, you will find the expert, or you will locate the manual, or both. You will remain curious until you find the answers and no longer allow yourself to resign to the thought that there are no answers. Every single question that comes to mind has an answer. Whether our mind is lazy, reticent, indifferent towards the questions or is it driven by curiosity to find answers makes the difference to the momentum of our lives.

In the absence of curiosity we begin to live on stagnant conclusions that our mind adopts. It appears to be a safe and comfortable space to put our heads on these pillows of personal conclusions but in reality that is dead space. We have disallowed growth in that area. We have shut the door to learning in that space. Reasoning has been essentially paused there but continues to argue that it is not. For reasoning to do its daily optimal exercise it needs the fuel of curiosity. And where the tap of curiosity is shut off, reasoning goes into low power mode.

The world needs more curious, intelligent and good people. They are the best hope for our human race. When any of these three traits go dormant in humans, bad things happen. Whichever level we are at now, this should be the goal each day. To remain curious to learn more about ourselves and our surroundings. To use intelligence instead of dogma in day to day activities and interactions. Practice goodness at every opportunity. Teach our kids these three things rather than perpetuate dogma to them. Be more awake than we were yesterday.

One of the stagnant conclusions many intelligent people arrive at is that don’t try to teach others, it’s of no use. Often vigilance about other people’s bad behaviors leads to barricading ourselves from those people. It is perhaps safer for young people to adopt this policy. But for more mature adults who know the difference between good and bad and who know themselves, it’s a mistake to let ignorant people remain ignorant . I have come to believe that we ought to awaken others when we see they are asleep at the wheel. It just needs to be done in a way where it doesn’t look like teaching, instead looks like friendship. In fact, it must come from a place of friendship, not merely look like friendship. It takes courage to extend a hand to someone who hates you for what you are and conviction to stand firmly grounded in who you are, as you do that. Takes both tact and perseverance to allow them time to recognize you as a friend. If you manage to change one person into accepting who you are and turning them towards goodness in your entire lifetime, you have paid back to the universe for hosting you. And until then we have ourselves been a burden here. 

In an earlier post I spoke about the paradox in the concept of equality as observed in the teachings of the Bhagwad Gita. Another common paradox we often hear about is seeing unity in diversity. A paradoxical proclamation from one of the major Upanishads namely the Ishavasya Upanishad is surrounding the concepts of Vidya and Avidya. It declares that pursuit of Avidya( ignorance) plunges a man into darkness, but pursuit of Vidya( knowledge) takes him into even greater darkness. There are many such paradoxes that beg for reflection and understanding. Each paradox is like a plot in a mystery novel inviting a hungry reader so it can be revealed. And in every revelation of a paradox we find a little bit more of ourselves.