Relentless quest

YET ANOTHER BOOK ON VEDANTA: Dhruv S. Kaji; Business Publications Inc., 229/A, Second Floor, Krantiveer Rajguru Marg, Girgaon, Mumbai-400004. Rs. 300.

THE AUTHOR is a financial consultant working globally. His interests include flying, scuba-diving and watching wildlife. He is also widely travelled and his travels and interests would seem to have affected his reading of traditional Vedanta significantly. He seeks in this book to make a contemporary introduction to traditional wisdom. Indeed one of the chapters is entitled ``What the Vedanta is not''. The disarming modesty of the title of the book does not deceive and ought not to deceive anyone about the scholarship of the writer or about his earnestness and seriousness in setting out to write yet another book on Vedanta.

The select bibliography at the end of the book, referred to modestly as books which he found ``interesting'', does not mention any of the common standard works on Vedanta like Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's Indian Philosophy or Deussen's System of Vedanta or even Max Mueller's Six Systems of Philosophy or Three Lectures on Vedanta. It includes, however, Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness which few would regard as a milestone in the mind's journey to Vedanta. He has read the Upanishad in Gambirananda's translation with Sankara's commentary but this two-volume book does not cover Brihadaranyaka or Chandogya Upanishad which one would regard along with the Brihadaranayaka as indispensable reading for the study of Vedanta. He is well aware of the difficulty with translations which reflect the orientation of the translator. Also he recognises contradictory translations as a serious obstacle. The more important prakaranas like Viveka Choodamani, Vakyavrithi, Atmabodha and Upadesa Sahasri are found to have been part of his ``interesting'' reading for Vedanta.

The author had his own suspicions about Vedanta - inevitable in the kind of mental conditioning which modern education yields of regarding religion as utterly irrelevant to the world revealed by science and technology. Even trained philosophers have, in their arrogance and ignorance, dismissed Vedantic texts as mindless gibberish.

He recognises the indispensable role of an Acharya to help us overcome our sense of dismay and frustration and become aware of the transcendent beauty, vitality and relevance of the teachings of Vedanta.

Avidya or ignorance is natural to ordinary man and the Acharya's role is to remove this Avidya and set his pupil to enquiry into the nature of his own being, Atma vichara, when pursued on sound lines of Sravana, Manana, and Nidhidhyana, will awaken in the pupil, a knowledge of the inner self which is identical with the whole of being.

One cannot ``see'' ourselves with physical eyes but one can develop an inner vision which surpasses in its power of comprehension, all the normal, visible and the so-called practical aids to vision.

If one feels quite happy and comfortable living the secular life one leads, one may feel that Vedanta is irrelevant. It is because the most comfortable and happy of men have a chilling sense of inadequacy, frustration and helplessness that one is set on the path of Vedantic enquiry with the aid, the indispensable aid of an Acharya.

A new level of thinking, new objectives and the wholly different, yet thoroughly rational mode of thinking would be the result of any enquiry into the nature and meaning of life.

The world, instead of being too much with us, as Wordsworth says, will vanish into nothingness, Mithya. The Jagat has no reality in itself. It appears only real because we have not awakened our being to its essential unreality and inconsequence. The process of awakening is also a process of demystification. Vedanta is not the pursuit of an abstract idea or notion but a quest, a relentless quest for the Sat which is identical with the whole universe of Sat.

Vedanta is not a Hindu or Indian quest for reality but a universal quest. Everyone has willy-nilly to be Vedantic if at all he has the glimmering of a curiosity about his own real nature. Truth is one, sages speak of it variously, in various languages and in various countries of this vast universe. It is not a quick fix and takes time instead of aiming to show results instantly.

A Ramana Maharshi was fortunate but we are, generally speaking, less fortunate and need a lot of experience of the misery of Samsara, the cruelty of life, to seek to go beyond it and find the meaning that is perennial and universal. Vedanta does not annihilate the `mind'. It evokes a power of perception of that which is beyond phenomena and is essentially noumenous. That it would lead to an ascetic state of mind is indeed true but that depends on what one means by asceticism.

As Matthew Arnold said in his sonnet and as Marcus Aurelius proved, even in a palace one may lead a clearly detached life. The section on the teaching of Vedanta is altogether excellent for it deals with the core teaching and the peripheral, with uncanny lucidity and perception.

In the section entitled ``The texts'', the author shows scholarly discrimination and insight. He cites instances of varied translations of the invocatory passage, ``Purusastha Puram Dharam'' to show how translation is treacherous and can trip us up. The selections included are the right ones and show skill in assuming the textual basis of Vedantic realisation. The book is strongly recommended to all including sceptics for it may serve these more than they dream of, to wake them up to Reality.

S.R.

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