The Many and the One
by Rev. Colin Bossen, October 24, 2010
"Truth is one; the wise call it by many names." This line from the Hindu scripture the Rig Veda could well serve as the motto for our year-long series of sermons on the world's non-Western religions. A central thesis of our sermon series is that all religions arise from a universal religious impulse. To be human is, on some level, to be religious. Religion appears in every culture. The experience of awe, wonder and connection to something greater than one's self is attested to by individuals and communities throughout the world.
Today we are going to explore Hinduism. The most we can hope for from a twenty minute sermon into such a wide subject is the barest of glimpses into its essence. It is little like walking up to the edge of a river on a warm summer's day. You might dip in a big toe to test the water. If you find the temperature to your liking you might decide to take a swim. This morning the most we can hope for is to get our feet a little wet. Perhaps if you find the water pleasant you will be inspired to learn more about the Hindu religion.
Speaking of Hinduism as a single construct is difficult. Some scholars argue that really there is no such thing as Hinduism. They claim that the religion itself is a Western construct. In this view, the idea that Hinduism is one religion was the result of the need of British imperialists in India to assemble a single entity out of a myriad of overlapping indigenous religious traditions.
And Hinduism is incredibly diverse. There are thousands of gods and goddesses, innumerable cults and many sacred scriptures. Unlike Islam, Judaism or Christianity which hold one central text as authoritative, Hindus have dozens of sacred texts. The authority of each text varies from community to community and, in some cases, from individual to individual. To complicate matters further, for many Hindus scripture is secondary to ritual. This makes it difficult to argue that studying only scriptures is the best way to study Hinduism. Such a study provides a distorted view. Yet, for most of us it is easiest to examine Hinduism through her scriptures. This means that any view we develop will ultimately be limited.
The story of Krishna and the Milk Maids provides an apt metaphor for the difficulty of grasping Hinduism as a single thread. The story relates that the god Krishna took on the aspect of a humble cowherd. His physical form was beautiful. His heart and his eyes emanated both kindness and mischievousness. Women found him irresistible.
Krishna began to dally with the local milkmaids. One by one he lured them into the forest late at night. There Krishna and the milkmaids celebrated an ecstatic circle dance. The women came at great risk. Women who had sexual relations outside of marriage could be punished with death. Despite this threat the maids came, evading their parents and the village elders, to rendezvous with Krishna, their lover.
Arriving in the forest each woman saw the other milkmaids dancing with Krishna. Each woman also saw that Krishna had somehow multiplied himself so that he could provide a dancing partner for her. The wild night went on and on, each milkmaid whirling in delight with her divine partner, until each began to think that Krishna danced with her alone. As soon as she became possessive and believed that Krishna belonged to only her he disappeared from her arms and from her sight.
For those that study Hinduism the problem comes when the claim is made that a particular strain of the tradition represents its essential essence. The richness of the religion disappears from sight when it is reduced to a single stream. The waters of Hinduism are so vast that some even claim that other religions of India, including Buddhism and Jainism, are but variations upon its themes.
As the Rig Veda says, "The truth is one; the wise call it by many names." If we wish to delve into some portion of truth we need to pick a starting place. There are an almost infinite number to be found within the Hindu tradition. The sacred text The Bhagavad Gita is as good as any, if only because it was Mohandas Gandhi's favorite text. Of it he wrote, it is "the book par excellence for the knowledge of Truth" and it provides "an infallible guide of conduct." He based much of his spiritual and political practice of Satyagraha, or soul force, on the religious philosophy found within the text.
Any text that inspired one of the great social justice and spiritual leaders of the twentieth century is worthy of study. Looking at The Bhagavad Gita we can find many of the themes central to most variants of Hinduism. We can also find much to challenge us in our daily lives and in our spiritual practices.
The Bhagavad Gita, also known as simply the Gita, is part of a larger text called the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata is an epic verse poem that tells of the struggle between two groups of brothers, the Kurus and the Pandavas, for their ancestral land. The two groups were cousins. The Pandavas were the rightful rulers of land that the Kurus had usurped.
The Gita is set on the eve of a bloody battle between the two sides. Each side gathered their forces for the conflict. The Kurus's and the Pandavas's shared extended family split among them. In the lead up to the battle it became clear that cousin might soon slay cousin, uncle might butcher nephew and grandson might kill grandfather.
The Gita consists of a dialogue between Arjuna, one of the Pandava princes, and his chariot driver, the god Krishna. Faced with the prospect of killing his friends and family Arjuna underwent a spiritual crisis. He confessed to Krishna, "Surely it would be better to spend my life / begging than to kill these great and worthy souls. / If I killed them, every pleasure I found would be / tainted... My will is paralyzed, and I am utterly confused... / What can overcome a sorrow that saps / all my vitality?" The rest of the Gita forms Krishna's answer to Arjuna.
Krishna's answer could be summarized in three points. First, all of reality is one. Separateness and change are illusions. Everything is part and parcel of the same divine essence. Second, this divine essence lies at the heart of every personality. Third, the purpose of life is to learn to perceive ultimate reality and break down the illusion of separateness. If one can accomplish this then in death one will be united with ultimate reality. If not, then after death one will return to the illusion of separateness, be reborn, and, over the course of the next life, try again to obtain unity with the ultimate. The Gita is a guide on how to break down the illusion of separateness and experience unity with divine reality.
Its basic prescription for behavior is laid out in the second chapter, from which we read earlier. To obtain unity with the divine one must, "free the senses from / attachment and aversion alike" and see the divine, which the text calls the Self, in all things. The Gita relates that such an enlightened "sage awakes to light / in the night of all creatures." Even the foulest beast is part of same sparkling unity.
This understanding of unity can be found in a Hindu story of creation. "In the beginning," states one of the Hindu scriptures called the Upanishads,
"the universe was nothing but the Self in the form of a man. It looked around and saw that there was nothing but itself, whereupon its first shout was, 'It is I!'; whence the concept 'I' arose....
Then he was afraid...But he considered, 'Since there is no one here but myself, what is there to fear?' Whereupon the fear departed...
However, he still lacked delight...and desired a second. He was exactly as large as a man and woman embracing. This Self then divided itself in two parts; and with that, there were a master and a mistress...
The male embraced the female, and from that the human race arose. She, however, reflected: 'How can he unite with me, who am produced from himself? Well then, let me hide!' She became a cow, he a bull and united with her; and from that cattle arose. She became a mare, he a stallion...and from that solid-hoofed animals arose... Thus he poured forth all pairing things, down to the ants. Then he realized: 'I, actually, am creation; for I have poured forth all this.'
In this story everything springs from the same source. Everything is part of the same creation, the same unity. All belongs to the singular Self. Furthermore, fear is an unnecessary emotion. If all there is is the Self there no need to fear anything. Likewise love and the urge towards unity should reign supreme. Love is honoring the Self. Unity is the fulfillment of desire, the dispensation of loneliness and the original and permanent state of state of existence.
There are parallels between Hindu mythology and the findings of contemporary science. The Big Bang Theory describes all matter and energy as derived from the same original unified source. Ecology understands animal, plant, bacteria and fungal life as interdependent and woven into the tapestry of the planetary systems of climate and geology. Even much of economic theory views the economies of individual communities and countries as inextricably interrelated and dependent.
If we accept the premise that the individual is part of a greater whole then there are implications for our actions. We come to understand that what affects each on some level affects all. The harm I do to you in some way harms me. The good you do me benefits you. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, we "all...are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."
This concept is the origin of the Hindu idea of karma. Karma is the belief that our actions have consequences both in this life and in the next. The good and the ill that we do affects how we are to be reborn. Those who did good in their past lives are born well situated to do good in this one. Those who did ill are placed so as to learn from their past mistakes. Existence is, in some manner, hierarchical and each being has its place on the karmic ladder. Learn your lesson for this life, do the good you were given the opportunity to do, and you will advance to the next station on the ladder. Fail to learn the lesson and you will be reborn into similar circumstances, or maybe even sent down a notch or two on the karmic ladder.
The Gita teaches that the goal of existence is to escape from this endless chain of birth, death and rebirth. Instead of gradually moving up the ladder, one should stop playing the game and experience unity with the ultimate. This can be done by abandoning attachment to karmic outcome. Those who have done so, Krishna tells Arjuna, understand that "They have nothing to gain or lose by any action; / neither people nor things can affect their security."
Once such wise individuals have left behind their attachment to outcome they learn to, Krishna says, "Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the / world." Through "devotion to [such] selfless work one attains / the supreme goal of life." Elsewhere Krishna puts it slightly differently saying, "The ignorant work for their own profit... / the wise work for the welfare of the world."
The teachings of the Gita are partially what led Gandhi to develop his philosophy of non-violent resistance. Responding to violence with non-violence is akin to removing yourself from the karmic system. Instead of entering into the withering tit-for-tat of violence where each side seeks to diminish the other you stop treating your opponent as other. Hate is met with love, force redirected with non-cooperation and the ultimate Self is recognized in each.
The recognition that the Self is found in each has its parallels in 19th-century Unitarianism. The great Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, for example, preached "that true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being." In Channing's view we gather in religious community "chiefly," if you will excuse the 19th century language, "to turn men's aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul, which constitutes it a bright image of God." For Channing, as for the Gita, all humanity contained within it at least a spark of the divine.
The parallels between the teachings of the Gita and Unitarianism do not just belong to the past centuries. The seventh principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association provides a contemporary one. The seventh principle is "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." This is not quite the same thing as claiming that everything is part of the same eternal reality. It is not intended as a metaphysical statement. Nonetheless, it acknowledges the interconnectedness and interrelation of all, a point surely found in the Gita.
The presence of such parallels between religions may lead to the conclusion that just as the impulse towards religion is universal so are the findings of religion. Such a conclusion would not be foreign to either our own Unitarian Universalist tradition or to portions of the Hindu tradition. For many Hindus each separate god or goddess is but an aspect of a single divine unity. As the Rig Veda says, "Truth is one, the wise call it by many names." Let us remember that and in doing so let us learn to see the truth, the spark of the divine, in all things.
Amen.