Maisl033 sergio zenere oops! lajya as social mindfulness in a crosscultural perspective

MAISL033 Sergio Zenere Research In Indian Psychology SERGIO ZENERE

MAISL033 (Research In Indian Psychology)

Essay

ISBN 978-1-387-44387-1

OOPS!

Lajya As Social Mindfulness In A Crosscultural Perspective

Presented to

The International Center For Integral Studies

December 2015

OOPS! Lajya As Mindfulness In A Crosscultural Perspective

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INTRODUCTION

In this essay, the present writer shall try to present a fresh look at the emotion of lajya within this work's limited scope. Although many interpretations have usually been put forth in research, the present writer chose to endorse none.

The word “social mindfulness” has been chosen instead. Why? Although certain grand narrative/imageable schemes recur cross-culturally (=collective unconscious one cannot discuss at this point), the bulk of narrative schemes is eminently situational, that is culture-bound.

While Fascist regimes endlessly celebrated German philosopher Nietzsche (1844-1900), post-war (antifascist) regimes typically share a less complimentary opinion:“ it becomes clear not only that Nietzsche was a despicable racist, but also that he wasn't a very good philosopher”1.

Still in the 1920-30s, it was not only socially permitted, but somewhat trendy publicly to scorn minorities such as Jews or Africans, which is nowadays not only a cause of likely “social death”, but of assumably criminal prosecution in several jurisdictions: lajya's goalposts shift. Furthermore, the attitude of Kali in her fury recalls that of contemporary “socially unwell” psychopaths:”the psychopath’s devil-maycare attitude toward social conventions.”2; “That's a trickster stunt. That's Grim 2005: A Genealogy Of My Morals.

2 Dutton 2012:132.

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a ridiculous act. We think it quite normal for a deity, while if a human being behaved that way we'd send him to a lunatic asylum. The trickster represents the deity coming through as the destroyer, the disrupter of programs. Yahweh is full of this kind of thing.”3.That is what the section “Lajya as social mindfulness “ shall address.

The sacred, generative power of sound also recurs cross-culturally. With examples drawn from both Greek and Hindu mythology, the section “sacred sound versus sacred silence” shall cast lajya in opposition to (sacred) sound or action: the Greek vigilant self-control (epimeleia). A Conclusion shall end this essay.

3 Campbell&Boa 1989:89.

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LAJYA AS SOCIAL MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness -in both its negative and positive connotations- has been categorized in different ways, such as hyperaesthesia, “being in the flow”, (Buddhist) meditative concentration4, “aesthetic arrest”, “cosmic consciousness”, the sublime, “ being in the zone” (positive); or “going on autopilot” (commuter's amnesia), deindividuation etc (negative).

Mindfulness is routinely perverted politically. Peer/social pressure -if not legal pressure- is exerted in various degrees to ensure one addresses various categories the right way. One has to be “mindful” to insure the right carnage with the liturgical description is attributed to the appropriate arch-tyrant. Muslim customs oblige to interject “peace be upon him” every time Mohamed or other accredited prophets are mentioned.

Different interpretations for the term lajya have been suggested. It is one of those “interpretive schemes of a particular script-like -...-kind that give shape and meaning to the human experience of those conditions of the world that have a bearing on self-esteem”5. Terms have been proposed, such as “shame”, 4

For example as Buddhist monastic ven. Wuling (Pure Land Buddhism) described. Gautama Buddha (Cula-Sunnata Sutta) describes emptiness with words that later authors refer to the sublime, aesthetic arrest, being in the flow etc:”even so, Ananda, a monk — not attending to the perception [or mental note] of village, not attending to the perception of human being — attends to the singleness based on the perception of wilderness. His mind takes pleasure, finds satisfaction, settles, & indulges in its perception of wilderness. ”.

5 Shweder no date:24-5.

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“embarrassment”, “modesty”, “shyness”6. Because such states are “something one deliberately shows or puts on display”7, the present writer chose “social mindfulness”: most know one would be threading on eggshells as s-he addresses controversial topics (for example WWII, genocides, illegal immigration...). “Social death” awaits the contemporary incautious (=mindless) proponent of “racist slurs” in public, which is as simple as the remotest association between people of color and bananas. In Thailand, it is considered a social faux-pas not to stand to attention as the monarchical hymn plays at designated times during the day.

Campbell8 casts the image of the man hanging upside down -just as it appears on the Tarot card- as one of “social death” Mussolini and prominent Fascist honchos hung upside down in their death after the regime's ultimate collapse. Just as Kali, Sekhmet etc are “socially unwell” as they ignore societal limits, so do psychopaths. Of course, all is highly situational: the former hero (for example Mussolini, Najibullah, Ceausescu) encounters (social) death as a rogue as soon as a competing regime gets the upper hand.

Despite our stresses, we tend to live within a fairly manageable window of arousal, neither unbearably overstimulated nor understimulated-except for sociopaths. People who are sociopaths report that they crave extra stimulation almost continually. (Stout 2005:186).

6 7 8

Shweder no date: 28.

Ibid.

1971/1975.

OOPS! Lajya As Mindfulness In A Crosscultural Perspective

MAISL033 Sergio Zenere Research In Indian Psychology pragmatic endorsement of the principles and practices of mindfulness—though not, necessarily, of the precise existential variety that a distinguished Oxford professor might extol—is typical of the psychopath. Their rapacious proclivity to live in the moment, to “give tomorrow the slip and take today on a joyride” -...-is well documented—and at times (therapeutic implications aside) can be stupendously beneficial. (Dutton 2012:116).

Lajya¯ combines feeling and evaluation; it is an emotion and a moral state. The noun lajya¯ is used with the verb cay-gu, “to feel.”

Informants report that the feeling of lajya¯ may be associated with blushing, sweating, altered pulse,and similar psychophysiological phenomena, which are general signs of emotionalarousal or anxiety.

However, experienced emotion in a physiological sense is not always present. The term may be used coherently in the absence of such states, for lajya¯ has, as a moral concept, evaluative and socialregulative uses. -...-The person with lajya¯ (the self, that is, who possesses the capacity to experience shame, who is sensitive to the possibilities of shame) is seen as motivated by lajya¯ (as feeling) to act in a manner consistent with moral norms. -...-Lajya¯ has to do with intersubjective integration into public life: lajya¯ is felt when a person knows that others know that a breach has been committed. When asked if lajya¯ would be felt if no one would see, a high-caste man replied, “If no one sees, why would they feel lajya¯?” Other high-caste informants agreed -...-that lajya¯ may, in certain situations, have a cold, withdrawn dimension, drawing on, or providing an experiential base for, the death metaphor.(Parrish in Corrigan 2004 :159-63).

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SACRED SOUND VERSUS SACRED SILENCE

The present paper's scope makes it impossible to do here justice to the concept of sacred sound: a few scant notes shall suffice. “Hindu Brahma, perhaps its primary meaning is sound, or sacred sound -...- Brahma means the holy power of sound”9. Varma tells about the Vedas:” In India mantra is that rhythmic expression which -when recited- produces a physical effect”10. Chinese Maoist thugs would gag Tibetan Buddhist monks they were about to torture and/or to execute avowedly in order to prevent them from using sacred sound against them.

NLP11 and advertisement author Boothman quips:”Fire energy when you say "Hi" to someone -...-They will notice something special about you some might call it "star quality."”12;”[King David of Israel said]Foreigners came cringing to me; they obeyed as soon as they heard me.”13. Along the same line, charme (French) and charm (English) derive from the Latin carmen: poetry, but also ritual incantation, and magical power of sound. Mormons keep a portion of their liturgy in oral form as ceremonies to be held within the Temple's sacred boundaries only.

Sacred sound doesn't come without anxieties or its doppelgaenger:

9 10 11 12 13

Eck 1994: The Upanishads.

MAISI031 no date: lecture 1.2.

Neuro-linguistic programming.

Boothman 2000:18.

2 Samuel 22:45.

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silence. Ben-Shahar emphasizes14 the importance of silence as a vehicle of teaching and insight, which immediately conjures images up of Muslim Sufi, Hindu or Buddhist sages -such as those from Desjardins' documentaries in the 1960-70s- who applied the same principle.

Diffidence towards speech, an otherwise hierophantic function, is found all over religious traditions. Buddhism includes precepts against false/divisive speech. Judaeo-Christianity explains that:

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. (James 3:7-8).

They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent's; the poison of vipers is on their lips. (Psalm 140:3).

The Graeco-Roman world prescribes more or less the same:

This use of saophron is notable because to be silent, or to speak only briefly, was to become an important facet of sophrosyneextnote for women (and for young persons of either sex) throughout Greek literature. -...- The concept was especially congenial to the Apolline morality with its emphasis on restraint, self-knowledge, and the acceptance of limits, imposed in some cases by the gods, in others by the state, and in the case of women by men. (North 1977:37-8).

Often is man's best wisdom to be silent (Pindar, Greek poet, 518438 BCE).

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2009: lecture 1.1. xtnote �the Roman equivalent, Pudicitia, who was portrayed in images and portrait busts, as well as on the imperial coinage from the time of Hadrian� (North 1977:35). (note of the present writer).

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And so does Islam:”wisdom consists in keeping silent, and those who practice it are few “.

The goddesses Sekhmet (Egyptian) and Kali (Hindu) are summoned to dispel a great threat. They get so violent in their fury they get drunk on their victims' blood (Kali), or are served blood-colored beer/wine, which they drink thinking it to be blood (Sekhmet, 7.000 jugs according to legend); in her drunkenness, Sekhmet sleeps for three days (=common mytheme). Not linked to threats to dispel but angry at humankind's fickleness15, Ugaritic goddess of war and love16 Anat also goes on a murderous spree as the oceans turn to blood.

When their rage subsides, the goddesses revert to their gentler, motherly self as Durga (Kali) and Hathor (Sekhmet). In Kali's case (in one version), only trampling her husband Shiva (=the doppelgaenger motif) brings her back to her sense of Hindu lajya, the Greek epimeleia (vigilant self-control), thus linking supreme transgression and ultimate virtue. Kali is forever depicted as feeling lajya as she bites her tongue:”the facial expression used by women as an iconic apology when they realize, or are confronted with the fact, that they have failed to uphold

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She accused humans of not having sided with chief god Baal (=lord) against the dragon Yamm. The turncoat dilemma goes back to the dawn of civilization. Baal represents the sky or order and Yamm the sea or chaos. Synchretist Greek thought equated Yamm with Poseidon and Baal with Zeus.

16 The commingling of erotic and martial arousal at the dawn of civilization might be at the core of Greek soldiers' sacrifices to eros (=procreative instinct) and sayings such as “all is fair in love and war”.

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social norms.�17.

In Hindu mythology, the wrathful goddess Kali either kills Shiva (=unmanifested form of god) turning him into Shava (=corpse); or the other way round: the goddess Kali copulates with Shava (a corpse with an erect phallus) in order to awaken Shiva, just like Isis copulates with the erect phallus of Osiris' (semi)dead body to beget Horus:

Shiva in this second form is known as Shava, "the Corpse," and the analogy with Ptah as the mummy is obvious. -...-Compare the figure, above discussed, of Ptah, the Mummy, begetter of the Apis bull, and Pharaoh, whose counterpart in the later Tantric symbolism of India is Shava, the Corpse, turned away from, yet in essence one with, the world-producing Shiva-Shakti pair (Campbell 1962:90,334).

Durga (Kali) was angry after the gods had lied to her, and she had to expose her naked body to defeat a demon18. Cross-cultural implications are obvious.

Still sophrosyne and its cognate forms were so closely identified with the feeling for harmony and restraint which governed every phase of Greek life that they were bound to appear occasionally in literary criticism. Their use serves to illustrate the constant interchange between ethical and aesthetic spheres in ancient civilization, for the process by which sophrosyne found its way into criticism is typical of the development of many such terms.

-...-[Sophrosyne] reflects the equally Greek demand for fitness and propriety in speech and action (North 1948:2)

17 18

Shweder no date:31.

A terrible humiliation. In the Mahabharata, the evil Kauravas want to strip Draupadi (the common wife of the Pandavas) naked. Krishna intervenes, and Draupadi's clothes unfold endlessly as she's still covered.

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Although the “heroes” of Homer’s Iliad and the central protagonists of Thucydides’ the Peloponnesian War possess the Homeric excellences of skill in battle and the ability to inspire other warriors, they lack the introspective natures necessary to cultivate a sophron state of being or moral excellence. Many of these characters are akratic because when they do have moments of clarity or revelation, they often do not have the strength of will necessary to act upon the insight they have gained, or they sometimes act in direct opposition to what they know on some level is the greater good. (Higgs 2004/5:43).

By 'monsterizing' women, men were able to gain a level of control over their dangerously unstable position within society. -...-Like monsters, women were not bound by the order of man's world and, even more unsettling, had the ability to manipulate this world. (Kovatch 2008:36,41).

Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggartsself-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky. They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs. They appear charismatic or "electrifying" to some people. Psychopaths are seldom embarrassed about their legal, financial, or personal problems. Rather, they see them as temporary setbacks, the results of bad luck, unfaithful friends, or an unfair and incompetent system.(Hare 1993:38-9).

Adam's first wife Lilith also represents a liminal woman slipping out of society's fabric. Lilith becomes a blood-thirsty demon much as Hathor and Durga embody demonic powers once out of the societal bounds of vigilant self-control, which for some equals patriarchal control, or society planting a policeman in everybody's head through internalization of social norms specific to a given culture.

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CONCLUSION

In this essay, the present writer chose to cast the state of lajya as one of “social mindfulness”. This implies situational constraints. There indeed is a grand narrative of the socially acceptable (=collective unconscious), but in practice what is socially acceptable here and now may become unacceptable there and then. Social death (as the Tarot card of the man hanging upside down suggests) awaits those who publicly break taboos or voice inopportune opinions mindlessly. Social mindfulness requires one to “thread on eggshells” socially speaking: the Greek notion of vigilant self-control.

Both psychology and mythology offer examples of “socially unwell” figures who publicly transgress in matters of lajya: they lack vigilant self-control.

Modern day psychopaths and ancient deities aptly fit the bill. Hindu goddess Kali is perpetually represented as biting her tongue: a gesture associated with quintessential lajya. After all, Kali in her fury had trampled on her husband Shiva.

Lajya thus rests at a crossroad as Kali puts the Shiva and Shava modes of being in motion, where supreme transgression and ultimate virtue coexist. Moving across the lajya spectrum, Kali can both turn Shiva (=unmanifested form of god) into Shava (=corpse), or the other way round.

WORD COUNT (Bibliography&title page excluded):2271.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Ben-Shahar, T.D., 2009, Foundations Of Positive Psychology, URL:http://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/online/non_credit/fpp (Accessed 15 August 2009).

Boothman, N., 2000, How To Make People Like You In 90 Seconds Or Less , Workman Publishing Company.

Campbell, J., 1962, The Masks Of God (Oriental Mythology) , Martin Secker&Warburg.

Campbell, J., 1971/1975, Tarot & Christian Myth, audio lecture, Joseph Campbell Foundation.

Campbell, J. & Boa, F., 1989, This Business Of The Gods, printed interviews, Windrose Films.

Corrigan, J. (ed.), 2004, Religion And Emotion, Oxford University Press.

Dutton, K., 2012, The Wisdom Of Psychopaths, Doubleday Canada.

Eck, D., 1994, Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem, Sikh: the Religions of India, audio lectures, The Teaching Company.

Grim, P., 2005, Questions Of Value, audio lectures, The Teaching Company.

Hare, R.D., 1993, Without Conscience, The Guilford Press.

Higgs, D., 2004/5, The Sophrosyne Problem, URL:http://www.hsu.edu/uploadedFiles/Faculty/Academic_Forum/2004-5/20045AFSophrosune.pdf (Accessed 1 Fenruary 2012).

Kovatch, E., 2008, “Defining The Indefinable”, B.A thesis, Ball State University.

MAISI031 (Evolution Of Indian Psychology), no date, electronic materials, New Delhi: International Center For Integral Studies.

North, E., 1948, 'The Concept of Sophrosyne in Greek Literary Criticism', Classical Philology,43:1,1-17.

North, E., 1977, The Mare, The Vixen And The Bee, URL: http://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/11657 (Accessed 1 February 2012).

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MAISL033 Sergio Zenere Research In Indian Psychology Schweder, R.A., no date, Culture And Emotions, URL:https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx3dRb_WeXyR3pMSG9hajJQSzg/edit? usp=drive_web (Accessed 1 December 2015).

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