AMBITION AND CASTE: INDIA FOR CONSUMERS by Stuart Shell Chalice Lighting When ignorance is dispelled by knowledge of the Self, knowledge shining like the sun reveals the Supreme. When the understanding enables one to see an immutable oneness in all beings, and an undivided whole in all the manifold shapes, know that to be the true Light. - Bhagavad Gita
Affirmation: A Prairie Sunset Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn, The earth’s whole amplitude and Nature’s multiform power consign’d for once to colors; The light, the general air possess’d by them – colors till now unknown, No limit, confine – not the Western sky along – the high meridian – North, South, all, Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last. - Walt Whitman
Readings: Ethics, Spinoza We sometimes see men so absorbed in one object, that, although it be not present, they think they have it before them; when this is the case with a man who is not asleep, we say he is delirious or mad; nor are those persons who are inflamed with love, and who dream all night and all day about nothing but their mistress, or some woman, considered as less mad, for they are made objects of ridicule. But when a miser thinks of nothing but gain or money, or when an ambitious man thinks of nothing but glory, they are not reckoned to be mad, because they are generally harmful, and are thought worthy of being hated. But, in reality, Avarice, Ambition, Lust, &c., are species of madness, though they may not be reckoned among diseases.
Khandogya Upanishad 1. 'Fetch me from thence a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree.' 1
Here is one, Sir.' Break it.' 'It is broken, Sir.' 'What do you see there?' 'These seeds, almost infinitesimal.' 'Break one of them.' 'It is broken, Sir.' 'What do you see there?' 'Not anything, Sir.' 2. The father said: 'My son, that subtile essence which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists. 3. 'Believe it, my son. That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it.' 'Please, Sir, inform me still more,' said the son. 'Be it so, my child,' the father replied. 1. 'Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in the morning.' The son did as he was commanded. The father said to him: 'Bring me the salt, which you placed in the water last night.' The son having looked for it, found it not, for, of course, it was melted. 2. The father said: 'Taste it from the surface of the water. How is it?' The son replied: 'It is salt.' 'Taste it from the middle. How is it?' The son replied: ' It is salt.' 'Taste it from the bottom. How is it?' The son replied: 'It is salt.' The father said: 'Throw it away' and then wait on me. He did so; but salt exists for ever. Then the father said: 'Here also, in this body, forsooth, you do not perceive the True (Sat), my son; but there indeed it is. 3. ‘That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it.'
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AMBITION AND CASTE: INDIA FOR CONSUMERS by Stuart Shell
Introduction I have been moved by the messages from this pulpit, especially by their personal tone. Indeed, the speakers from this platform presented their individual experiences as legitimate sources of spiritual wisdom. I believe that gives life to our faith, making it accessible. I am presenting my own story in that spirit – that you may glean something of value to you. And because I’m a little nervous being behind a pulpit for the first time, I’ve also crammed in a bunch of facts about India so at the very least you will leave today with some trivia in your pocket.
Voyage I spent January in India as part of a Rotary exchange trip, the purpose being to build understanding across cultures. I traveled on a team with Barb Bartle, who led us as the representing Rotarian, and fellow team members Sarah Skarka and Lindsay Schumaker. We were selected by the rotary district here, under the guidance of Bob Perrin this year, to travel to our exchange partner – another rotary district in India whose team members are actually visiting Omaha this coming week. Our trip was an opportunity to visit with many Rotarians and present to their clubs about life in Nebraska. We were shuffled through as many cultural and vocational experiences as practicable. The goal was for our team to absorb a little culture that we would then share with our community, as I am doing here today. Being hosted in the homes of Rotarians was the most meaningful part of the trip since it is there one has a chance to begin to internalize some of the culture. Frankly, from the perspective of cultural exchange, the equation was a little lop-sided. Most of our hosts had a solid concept about the whole of American culture, while we saw India through a shutter-hole that just grew larger and larger. As I enjoy being 32, or 25 years of age, I came to this experience from a place of transition. In a common machismo paradigm, I might have been forcing it a little, pushing for a miniature revelation in each person I met and each temple I entered. Even here I acknowledge a forced quality in climbing a pulpit to cull something profound from my opportunity to travel to India. In a reflexive sense, I hope you can forgive that, as it is also really cathartic for me, as a way to provide some closure to my experience. Because I was loved and also left alone enough to discover the world on my own as a child, I developed a projected altruism wherein I understood that I had a purpose on this planet and it was to do important things to improve the world. An implicit part of this was to be recognized and celebrated by my peers and perhaps, to attain a little piece of immortality. Conveying this recently to a friend at Caffeine Dreams, I discovered that she actually dreaded the idea of being talked about after death. I’m still pondering how for me having a legacy can seem like 3
immortality and control, but for her it is a lack of control and, in some way, a death worse than death. I used ‘consumer’ in the title of this sermon in the sense that I represent what is perhaps the most evolved cohort of consumers ever known to this planet. My life has been shaped in many ways by subtle and not-so-subtle encouragements to consume goods and services at the highest level attainable. I’ve grown up in a place where it just makes sensed to be a consumer. In fact, not being a consumer here pretty much makes you a bum. The 36-hour trip of airports and connections to arrive in Goa seemed to represent a kind of broken time machine, where the world was exactly the same except only one aspect moved back in time – the constructive, pragmatic, can-do spirit of a people giving shape to their country. The trip was my first taste of the power of ‘globalization’ – in helping me take that word off the shelf and actually make it an idea. In recognizing myself in my hosts, I discovered that human sentience is possibly the strongest and oldest ‘globalizing’ force. The transmission of ideas, people, and goods means that life in Kohlapur can and does feel the same as life in Omaha. The world of knowledge and technology in India is one and the same as ours here. The difference, to me, was one of inertia – both in development and spiritually. Significantly, the role of consumer does not figure prominently in the world I visited. In going away I’ve learned about my home. I’ve found where America can be proud and where I can be proud to be American. I see more clearly the work ethic and determinism that built our country. I have more perspective for the role of oppression in developing countries. I can see my home country as a place of big ideas; ideas that are bigger than men, and also the very big men who built America. As if driven by divine motive, the likes of Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Rockefeller brought the nation into harmonious production for a vision almost beyond comprehension. But could it be there is a little insanity at work in our economy? Is it not the aegis of America which fed the fire of today’s Empire from the kindling of an indigenous genocide and slave culture, and by converting raw natural resources to wasted energy on an unprecedented scale? “But when a miser thinks of nothing but gain or money, or when an ambitious man thinks of nothing but glory, they are not reckoned to be mad, because they are generally harmful, and are thought worthy of being hated.” I am curious how I fit into the narrative of America. I wonder what I have adopted from our national legacy regarding my outlook, values, and sense of purpose in life.
Approaching India Out trip was based in Goa on the southwest coast of India, about 250 miles south of Mumbai. We visited the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra, seeing a variety of ecosystems and hearing at least five languages. We often traveled 30 miles to arrive in an entirely different demographic area with a different language. However the cultural customs remained comfortingly constant throughout our trip. I was hosted by thirteen families and was surprised to discover how much we had in common. In most cases it was easy to talk about everything with them. 4
In many ways, there is also a synergy between the nations of the US and India. India’s military is second only to ours. Their arable land area is second to ours. Their postal and rail systems are efficient and developed. Regarding population, it’s about four times the US: 1.2 billion versus 0.3 billion. Regarding land area, about one third the US: 1.3 million square miles versus 3.8 million square miles. The GDP, however, is around one-eighth of the US at 1.7 trillion, and its population is 70% rural. India is about 80% Hindu and 13% Muslim. The other notable religions are Christianity, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Depending on locale, the tensions between Muslims and Hindus in the cities and towns we visited ranged from unnoticeable to managed. Reflecting Hindu values, there is an air of tolerance in this reverent land that seems to inspire everyone equally. My college had a ton of students from India. They would often sit together over warm milk in the dorm cafeteria before bed. There was something in the stillness and milk, a place for quiet and routine that I was not accustomed to. There was a togetherness in the face of something ritualistic, and not the otherness that might accompany the ritual delivered by a priest, but instead the one that we perform personally, intimately, and on display for our family and friends to witness. This is the same ritual which my hosts would perform each morning, called puja. Prandit Pran Nath and Ravi Shankar, influential musicians, captured my imagination as a college student. I was lucky to have a more enlightened roommate to raise my sensitivity to the stillness of this music and bring me along to hear Ravi Shankar play a raga in Chicago. This music also inspired some of the best American music, resonating through Terry Riley and Lamonte Young – and need I mention the Beatles? Shankar helped me appreciate music essentially as a beingwith. During my trip I had more experiences with musicians that rekindled my awareness of the invocation music represents to spiritual attainment. Warmed by ritual and resonated by music, as a college student I was open to Indian culture. However, the arrow that sunk and which continues to reach deeper into my faith was launched by American Transcendentalism. My identification with Unitarian Universalism is largely though my exposure over the last ten years of my life to this movement that I consider a treasure of our culture. I think it began with a decision by the public librarian in Norfolk to offload one of their books on the topic – I’ve always been a sucker for book sales. How can we understand the failure of American Transcendentalism? It is close to our hearts in this room. Why didn’t America take to the wisdom and insight of Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Fuller? Did their idealism stand a chance against the materialism of brave new science and the pragmatism of a bustling industrial restlessness? Perhaps American intellectualism is most readily associated with the gloss and spectacle of ‘life in the fast lane.’ Our culture is poorly situated to hear the voice of wisdom, or to feel a living spirit present in Hinduism, or really in any religion. This is from Emerson: “These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. 5
There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike.” Because of the way we conduct life in the US, it is a challenge to arrive at place where hearing the wisdom of the Hinduism is possible. Here is a specific difference that for me was freeing – and I mean physically freeing, like when a house arrest ankle bracelet is removed. The conduct of eating, digesting, and pooping is perhaps the most arresting adjustment that visitors make when traveling to India. Eating with your hands - or rather, your right hand - is the first clue that something is different. Indians believe the food tastes better when eaten this way. My hosts explained that there is also an ideal order for eating the foods which aligns with the body’s digestion process, for example, beginning the meal with the sweets which activates the stomach for the work ahead. What I would discover by the end of my trip is that even the layout of food on the round, high-rimmed stainless steel plates called thalis was the same. This goes deeper. I can see how the ritual of eating serves as a metaphor for, or even a reification of the practice of Hindu faith. Wherever you go, food has a local influence but the basic rules remain the same. And one of those was almost unreal cleanliness. Kitchen and bathrooms seemed perpetually clean – often the last rinse of water not having evaporated. In Hinduism there is a keen awareness of the ways we relate to the external world, through our five senses, and through action organs, or karma indriyas of hands, feet, face, anus, and genitals. Food is prepared and eaten by clean hands, which are also washed after the meal at sinks positioned in houses for this purpose. In the bathroom, toilet paper is replaced by your own, actual hand and rinsing water. If you are afraid to touch your anus you may be an American. In most bathrooms a water spout is fitted into the toilet bowl for convenience – a kind of combined bidet. While the ergonomic, full-squat fixtures are being replaced in the cities with toilets more familiar to us, many of them actually incorporate a wide rim which you can step up onto to assume a squatting posture. This is one quirky but significant way that India has brought the logic of our final stage of digestion to bear on the emerging global standards in plumbing fixtures – a detail to which I am attuned as an architect.
Hinduism If devotion was money, India would be Switzerland – neutral and safe. Perhaps the place represents a font of eternal devotion, not to be expired or diluted even under the sword. Inhabited by humans about 30,000 year ago, the subcontinent has been conquered repeatedly since recorded history. India’s namesake is the Indus river, which is also how the religion of these peoples came to be called Hinduism. The actual faith is called sanatana dharma, or ‘eternal law.’ Nobody runs this law. Followers look to several scriptures and various gurus for religious direction, based more or less on their disposition.
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One thing resoundingly true of sanatana dharma is that it meets you where you are, as you are. So while there are the four Vedas which are somewhat recondite, being the breath of the lord, there are also epic tales that convey the same truths that the rest of us can digest. The former is referred to as Sruti and includes the Vedas and Upanishads. The latter is called Smrti and is like a secret weapon employed by religious leaders to make the basic truths of the Vedas relevant today. The Smriti include the action-packed Ramayana and Mahabharata, written about 500 years after the first Vedas were recorded on paper. The Bhagavad Gita is contained within the epic Mahabharata, which is approximately contemporaneous with Homer’s Odyssey. Let me recap that since I know many in this room might be looking into this. There are two types of scriptures. The sruti are hardcore and include the four Vedas as well as the Cliffs Notes for the Vedas, called Upanishads. The moghul emperor Akbar provided the first Persian translation in the 1580’s. Henry Thomas Colebrook translated the Upanishads into English in 1805, and it was Max Muller who provided the first systematic treatment in 1879. These scriptures are new to us – barely 100 years have they been accessible to the general public. On a tangent, that’s about the same amount of time the bicycle has existed, which is currently having earnest and profound impacts on civilization though its anatomical meshing with our circumlocutory apparatus. The second type of scripture is smrti and includes anything written by religious geniuses about the sruti. To help expound the truths, they were written into epic stories called the Ramayana and the Mahabarata. These are a great place to start if you are interested in getting a good dose of sanatana dharma. Hinduism recognizes our wants. In fact, the path of desire is a first step in one’s spiritual journey. I will say personally, and professionally as an architect, I was subtly seduced by the Hindu temples which were flanked by buxom stone figures. I think that was their purpose, and perhaps part of the reason that sanatana dharma was so successful in spreading historically. There is no shame in going after what you want, provided you don’t act unethically or become obsessive compulsive. Drinking, smoking, gambling – basically what my father-in-law calls ‘honkey-tonkin’ – is allowed. If that becomes a little unfulfilling, then you might take up business and seek fame or wealth. This too is A-OK. However, sanatana dharma has more than just this path of desire to offer. If you are so inclined, you will realize fulfillment by learning to serve your community and do your duty, the first step down the path of renunciation. However, even this does not grant you access to those things humans most need for happiness. The dharma tells us that we have insatiable hunger for being, knowledge, and joy. It is in striving towards these that the devout might obtain mukti, or liberation. In order to obtain true fulfillment in life, pleasure-seeking, success, and serving one’s duty just won’t cut it. Unsatisfied, one will still be seeking more life, knowledge, and joy. It is necessary to follow the gurus in one of the four methods of yoga to obtain a congress with the infinite within. These various yoga paths are an accommodation designed to make spiritual attainment available for the different people we actually are.
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In undertaking this spiritual work, you may perceive a personal God (saguna brahman) that would relate to Hindu mythology, or you might grapple with the abstract impersonal God (nirguna brahman). Either one is acceptable, and they are both believed to represent the same entity. See, most of the temples have real avatars carved all over, with the temple being dedicated to one of the avatars, such as Krishna. However, we also visited a temple of Ramakrishna, the most famous 19th century guru, which had no avatars whatsoever – not even ganesha, the lovable elephant-person! In fact, it looked not unlike this room. You’re starting to understand how this is a religion that can suit a variety of tastes. One story from Hindu mythology familiar to me prior to my trip was the tale of Arjuna and Krishna on the battlefield. This story is from the Bagahvad Gita, one of the most popular stories in the Mahabarata in the western world. It presents us with Krishna, the wisest god-person, and Arjuna, the most talented archer. Arjuna is struggling with a terrible war which has divided families, in that he is now charged with putting his deadly skills to test against his kin. In a moment of failed resolve, Arjuna turns to Krishna, his advisor and charioteer. Krishna explains that when one is doing one’s duty, or fulfilling one’s purpose, then one is righteous. The right path lies not in trying to struggle against the inertia of fate, but instead to understand one’s role within time and abandon the fears and desires that impede such a task. Krishna gives concise advice on how to obtain access to the infinite. Please investigate this chapter of the Mahabarata yourself to better understand why it has become the most famous Hindu text for today’s world. Varna dharma refers to the duties of each caste. From the spiritual perspective, this is like Myers-Briggs or Strenghthfinders today. Each personality has varying degrees of intellection, empathy, strategy, and focus. Accordingly, dharma tells us that we should orient ourselves in society according to our personality. This is different from today’s practice of caste assigned by birth. The merits of this approach to social organization are many. The higher you are on the scale, the more responsibility you have for society, and the more harshly you will be judged for impropriety. Also, instead of competing with the whole of society for opportunity and recognition, one instead operates within a group of relative social equivalence, hypothetically protecting the quality of life of all. In sanatana dharma, all humans are equal, just different. For example, for one at the highest level of spiritual attainment, sannyasin, caste no longer has significance and social customs are pushed aside. While not a bad idea from the perspective of a just social system, caste has in practice been an oppressive structure. Despite being banned by the government, the untouchables and sudras, collectively called the dalit, continue to face discrimination in the predominantly rural county. Having origins in the migration of Arayans into India millennia ago, caste has evolved into a sophisticated endogamic system tied to arranged marriages and social fixedness, operating over 3,000 sub-castes and even more groups within those. Possibly connected to methods for controlling disease for the susceptible immigrant ruling class, most agree that the British played up varna dharma to effect the monolithic conception of caste now held by the global community regarding India. I believe arranged marriage and caste represent an affront to our consumer values in the US. We find the practice of endogamy deplorable in practice, even as it promulgated in our society on the basis of class and race. Yes, we rely on the ‘rational’ forces of the markets and the concept of 8
‘freedom’ to determine our societal attainment. How common is the trope that anyone can do anything? And how true is it? We are not willing to acknowledge the invisible fences in our own country, and are much more comfortable pointing out the injustice of visible ones abroad.
Conclusion According to sanatan dharma, there are four parts to our life that serve as a way to guide and gauge your progress on spaceship earth. You may skip over a period in your life, or get stuck in one, but nonetheless they provide a roadmap. Until we are about 25, we should study with little responsibility beyond service to our teachers. With our minds and bodies formed as suitable vessels, we move into households and serve our families, careers, and community at noon, traveling the path of desire. In the afternoon we retire to discover ourselves, leaving our duties for the next generation. Your cue is when you see the face of your grandchild – that is your time to start getting out of your children’s business, out of your own career, and make plans with your spouse for your end-life. Yes, we can continue to enjoy the pleasures of life into our old age – continue to amass power and wealth, seek new thrills, or make plans for the future of our families or communities. In our culture, I have seen this is common. In fact, it almost seems like in the US this incessant searching for success is all we are capable of, or willing to imagine for our lives. However this path does not pay tribute to the reality of death. Through the yogas we can learn to convene with the atman inside of us, already there and infinite. Imagine yourself an hour ago, before you came inside this church. You do not think that person is now dead, but it was just yourself in a previous state. So, too, we can aspire to see the self that is present throughout our entire lives, and thereby to experience the infinite of time and space. If in our afternoon we can unite our psyche with the world around us, in the evening we return to society naked, as a sannyasin: feeling no shame, pity, fear, or pain, and not distinguishing our own fortune from that of the universe, home nowhere and everywhere, anonymous, both hating and loving nothing. It is in such a manner that dharma would have you pass into your next life. Personally, I have been floating a little the last couple of years – not exactly sure of my purpose. I think I’ve stopped believing that I can, will, or even should have a profound impact on the world. This is because I have begun to see a world that cannot be healed or cured in the ways I thought it needed. That is, utopia appears to me now as a false goal, not worthy of devoting a life’s work, even if it might result in a minor decrease in human suffering. This is hard for me, since it means recognizing I cannot remain the same person, motivated by the same drives. I cannot control my own death, and perhaps should begin now to seek the anonymity to which my friend alluded over coffee at Caffeine Dreams. My wife sent me to India with a poem hidden in my sketch book, its message amplified by the moonlight of rural Bhatkal:
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When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curved point, - what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher, The angels would press on us and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Beloved, - where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to stand and love in for a day, With darkness and the death-hour rounding it. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning With six months of space to absorb and digest my time in India, the poem now reads as a comfort to me because I can imagine dying with a complete life. And even more, I can imagine sharing one. I have caught a glimpse of the order of a world that offers satisfying, albeit difficult answers. What stones on the path to liberation! Emerson will close today: “The best part of every mind is not that which he knows, but that which hovers in gleams, suggestions, tantalizing, unpossessed, before him. His firm recorded knowledge soon loses all interest for him. But this dancing chorus of thoughts and hopes is the quarry of his future, is his possibility, and teaches him that his man’s life is of a ridiculous brevity and meanness.
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