Sunny Narang shared a post.
It is now time that the vicious so-called feminist leftist atheistic liberals who use their degrees from the best universities to inanely troll our wisdom systems are taken head on and fully publicly shown their post-modern illiteracy and inability to "imbibe" anything deep .
The Western Age of Intellectual Arrogance is over .
They can keep their so-called "social-science" degrees and textual insanity and use it for their waste paper and any Indians who listen to them are colonized slaves .
Here is the response by Akanksha Damini Joshi to not just this tweet by a White Feminist Sanskritist but the generic language the whole Western Educated and Shallowed-Out Academic Activist Mob uses against our texts and wisdom traditions .
I am told, I first heard Ramayana when i was in my mother's womb.
During the time mom was carrying me, each night parents would read the Ramayana out to me. But the reading was not justlikethat. There was a sacred ritual designed around the reading.
In the tiny temple at home, a small earthen lamp, Deepak, would be lit. Prayers would be offered. First to the Deep Raj, then to Ganesha, Vishnu-Laxmi, Shiva-Shakti, and to our isht Devi, Tara. After the invocation would begin the recitation.
Sometimes Dad. Sometimes Mom. Prayerfully, consciously. Blessing the story of stories to their child, yet to be born.
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In the years to come, Ma repeatedly told me, "Beta, Ramayana is not to be heard. It is to be imbibed."
I don't know if i understood then. But i am beginning to understand now.
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Ramayana is a poem. To be sung.
A sacred song. To be absorbed.
For the singing, an atmosphere: of divine invocation.
Earthen lamp lights, flickering. Mirroring the interplay of ignorance and knowledge within us. The divine form being invoked. Light, now. Darkness, then. Fragrance of the flowers offered to the Lords, suffusing the space. The melody of the epic’s musical notes, amplifying the silence within.
Each of our senses, indriyan - whose nature is to report the happenings, outside - being directed consciously withinwards. Towards the internal space of meditative devotion. With an aim: to transform the perspective. The energy focused on the drishya, the scene, gradually focusing on the #Drishta, the #Watcher.
For Ramayana is not just a story. It is alchemy.
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Our epics, our puranas, our sacred texts. They exist in a context. That context is the bhoomi, the culture of India. In every village, in every home. They are sung, or their 'lila' played in sacred atmospherics.
These sacred stories have, as their basis, the Vedas. These are all, in fact, multi dimensional life-tellings of the wisdom woven in the Vedanta, relatable to our everyday life: psychological, spiritual, relational.
All of the scriptures are but word-sounds. They need to be decoded, contextualised, and offered in a way that can help the listener come closer to the Truth of his own being. For that is what is ultimately being offered: an encounter with your own wholeness ie The Absolute. Atman = Brahman.
Tat Twam Asi | That Art Thou
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Depending on the flavour you like, you can call this #AtmanBrahman equation, an understanding or nectar. I prefer the poetics. So i go with nectar.
To derive this nectar of the Vedas, the Itihasas, or the Puranas, there are conditions that a listener must fulfil. Like we can go to college only after attending school? Yes. These conditions make him Adhikari, deserving. One of them describes the inner state of the listener/reader of these texts. A state needed to access the text. We have a word for that: #Shraddha.
Shraddha has no direct translation in English. It is not faith, it is not belief. We could perhaps stretch the limits of the language and call it ... trust. Trust, pending Realisation.
Just like a scientist has a trust in the direction of his experimentation. A trust, pending results. Same, we as disciples of the dharma have trust in the words, in the stories …pending Realisation.
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Shraddha.
Trust that the words manifested, the stories revealed will lead us across the shore. Trust, that, if we are not understanding it, it is our understanding that needs correction. It is not that the world has gone hazy, its that our eyes have cataract. Ignorance, Avidya. Our psychological, social orientation. Our conditioning, our beliefs , like ‘I am the body’. This hazy mind, that needs surgery.
The words the stories are the tools for that surgery. And in the tradition, the folks who correct our perception, are the surgeons. In varying degrees of expertise: Guru, Acharya, or to a much simpler extent, the kathavachak - the storyteller - each of these have that essential quality to communicate the wisdom in the scripture with clarity, #shraddha.
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Listening to the songs of the Ramayana we pass through the journey, the #Lila, the divine play of The Whole, as an avatar, a manifestation on earth. We pass through the Lila.
Sometimes as Dashratha, yearning for a child. Sometimes as Kaikaiye: insecure, scared for her own future. Sometimes as Rama: keeping the word of his father. Sometimes as Bharatha: angry, so angry, pained, so pained. And yes, sometimes as Sita. Passing through the forest, past the love, into the earth.
Each and every character in the sacred poem, reflects the varying states of our being, our mind. Now, then, there.
Passing through the scenes in the Ramayana - drishya, that which can be seen - slowly, we begin to see, that which is Seeing … Drishta, the #Watcher.
Watching the tears of Dashratha. The jealousy of Kaikaiye. The clarity of Rama. The grace of Sita. And yes, the Bhakti, devotion of ... Laxmana, Bharatha, Hanuman.
Watching. It all passing. The only thing remaining: Drishta, the Watcher. The one, who creates the Lila, and then, dissolves into the Lila.
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This, and this alone is the wisdom tradition behind the Ramayanas. The lens through which the various Ramayanas of this land can be decoded. Without this, everything is just ... words. Empty, lifeless.
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Empty, lifeless.
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Sadly. Thats the way each of our spiritual texts are dissected in the west inspired #University system today.
Minus the lamp, minus the love.
Minus the song, minus the incense.
Minus … the Shraddha.
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These are not, repeat not, just stories or just poems, or just chants. These are spirit codes. For practitioners. With a goal. The highest of the four purusharthas: #Moksha. A realisation of our inherent freedom.
The texts are not an end in themselves. They are a tool.
If that whole infrastructure of the knowledge system: the aim, the mechanism, the path, the conditions, is unclear. Pray, how can one even dare to comment on the texts?
Its like a car mechanic with no understanding of painting, or aesthetics, commenting on an artist’s brush!
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In the west inspired #University system today, the only requisite is to 'know the language' i.e. Sanskrit. And a few books authored by a few others who ‘knew the language’. And you can begin to dissect … a poem, a song, a spirit code from a completely different cultural-spiritual ethos.
But pray ... what is a language? Sanskrit, Awadhi, Kannada, Tamil, just the word sounds? Or is it the whole atmospherics - seen, unseen?
The land, its fragrance, its flickering light, its breeze, its trees. And the thousand and thousands of highly nuanced relational interplays that only life in those cultures reveals.
Can one comment on Ramayana if there is no imbibing of that culture, can one comment on Ramayana if there is no Shraddha?
This is a question that we, whose land, whose culture, whose sacred is being dissected so callously need to ask. And ask with wisdom and grace inherent in our tradition.
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I come from Awadh. The land of Rama. The land of Tulsi. If you go to learn the language of that land ... they'll translate #Hello for you as "Jai Siya-Ram".
Siya, Sita. She comes not just with Rama. But before him. Every day of our lives. Sita Ram are not just texts and stories to be studied in universities. They are archetypes, guides, isht … who bless us in our socio-psycho-spiritual journeys.
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At the risk of generalisation, let me say, for a mind which has been conditioned in a western mode, the method of understanding is #Analysis. Break down, break down, break down. Dissect. Till you get to the little, little bolt and nuts of the system.
This is the basis of the Western Knowledge System.
As far as #matter went, it was all fine till quantum physics hit the west. Then the sanctity of matter itself became suspect. The purity of their Analysis, the beauty of their own search, revealed a dance of waves. Science evolved and started searching for … the #GodParticle!
But the so-called #SocialScience: history, sociology, political ‘science’. These remained stuck in the era of the Newtonian science. Their evolution stopped. Way back. Around the time when the world was still playing Colonisation-Colonisation. They hid themselves from the quantum waves that kept the purity of scientific discovery, the flowering of Analysis, alive in the west.
These quantum waves of scientific evolution understood the depth of the Indian symbolism. The dance of the particles was that of the Natraj, the cosmic dance of Shiva. The wave-particle nature of light, the dual, was easy to understand with the saguna-nirguna understanding of the Brahman.
Pure science understood the depth Indian mysticism. But the social science, made Indian mysticism a ‘subject’. Dissecting, all that wisdom, like a lab rat.
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The Indian Knowledge System has a different language. It is not of Analysis, it is of #Synthesis.
See the whole. Join the dots. Add up, up, up. Till the full picture. Including that of the One making the picture is revealed.
The way of the eastern mind, the language seeped in the Ramayana, is of Synthesis.
That is our language. Sanskrit, Awadhi, Garhwali, Bangla, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil. These are manifested word-sounds of that essential language: #Synthesis.
For us everything is sacred. Language itself is a Goddess. Feminine. Ma Saraswati. The way Vac Devi reveals herself is through prayers, devotion, dedicated study … and humility.
She is the Goddess. We pray, she reveals.
The scripture is not final, ever. Depending on our spiritual maturity it reveals its depths to us. What we read today will not be what we read tomorrow. We would have lived, seen, known more. Our understanding would have grown, we would have matured. In each phase of our lives, the scripture will reveal something different to us. It is like a spiritual mirror, ever responsive. To us.
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“Jaisi Drishti, Waisi Shrishti”
What you see, you create.
Even ‘uneducated’ autowallahs in India will go around with this deepest philosophy etched behind their three-wheelers.
In India, we know, we suspect our little Drishti, vision. We know that needs correction. There is a bigger Drishti, which includes the Drishta. We have to get there. Scriptures point the way. Bit, by bit. They reveal.
In the University library - minus the warm glow of the earthen lamp, the fragrance, the moorti, the satsang, the songs - the Ramayana is just a #ColdText.
No question of the teacher or scholar’s own individual drishti, position. That is final.
An Indian acharya or a guru would look into us first.
What is our own psychological life as a commentator? Consciously, unconsciously, do we have any political agenda? Any career ambitions? Is the scripture a wisdom tool for us, or an opportunity?
Are we imposing our own traumas, our own politics on the characters?
If we are doing all of this, it is natural. We are insecure. We assume that we are the body-mind-emotion-sense complex. A woman. The pathos of a woman. Thats what we see. Naturally, understandably.
Jaisi Drishti, Waisi Srishti.
Whether the graceful Ma Sita would ever call her beloved, a ‘pig’ is highly suspect. But, most likely, in another world women like us suffering the angst we impose on Sita, would. So, we impose. Naturally.
But the scripture, Ramayana, is meant to take one beyond this nature. In to our own Truth. Remember that equation? Ataman=Brahman? It will make one pass through the joy, the sorrow … so that one begin to see the one who is See-ing.
But for that our Drishti needs correction. We cannot be arrogant.
Just like knowing english language cannot give us the authority to head a mission to mars, the same way knowing sanskrit or reading a few books will not give us the capability to understand the depths of wisdom in the Ramayana.
For that we need spiritual maturity. That - in the soil where the huge huge tree of Ramayana roots in - comes with that little big word, #Shraddha.
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This is a massive power issue: who has the right to comment. And how. In the garb of scholarship is there a disrespect, a conscious attack on a culture politically weaker than another? As Indians, or as devotees of the Indian wisdom scriptures - for indeed, there are many friends in the west who have Shraddha - we need to clearly, gracefully, consciously, address this.
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Ironically, it all began again with a tweet on #AdiShankara’s jayanti. So let me invoke a story. This wise guru once told a 'Pundit' mugging up Sanskrit grammar in Varanasi:
भज गोविन्दं भज गोविन्दं
गोविन्दं भज मूढमते ।
सम्प्राप्ते सन्निहिते काले
नहि नहि रक्षति डुकृञ् करणे ॥
Worship Govinda, worship Govinda,
Worship Govinda, oh fool!
At the time of your death,
Rules of grammar will not save you.
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The so called professors and the so called scholars of the #IndianScriptures trained in the western university system could do well to remember this.
भज गोविन्दं भज गोविन्दं
गोविन्दं भज मूढमते ...
Not just the language. But the devotional spirit.
Only when you imbibe that spirit, do you have a right to comment.
And the way to imbibe that spirit?
भज गोविन्दं भज गोविन्दं
गोविन्दं भज मूढमते !
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In our tradition, even Kalidasa, the master of Sanskrit, with humility invokes the grace of Parvati-Shiva,
"वागर्थाविव सम्प्रुक्तौ वागर्थप्रतिपत्तये
जगतः पितरौ वन्दे पार्वतीपरमेश्वरौ"
For gaining knowledge of language
I bow to you, Parvati-Shiva,
Parents of the world,
ONE,
Just as word and its meaning.
For even the knowledge of language - vak, speech, communication - we need the grace of the jagat pitrau, world parents. And the Humility to ask for that grace.
... वन्दे पार्वतीपरमेश्वरौ !
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