n modern times we Indians are criticized for aping the west. We have adopted the western systems of education. Our ways of living are immensely influenced by foreign culture. Sometimes we wonder if our own culture and traditions are gradually disappearing from our own land. Whereas we are hardly aware of our own rich treasure of knowledge, there are scores of western thinkers and men ofletterswhoareprofoundlyinfluencedbyancientIndianknowledge and wisdom. They have delved deep into the invaluable treasure of learning and proclaimed that ancient Indian philosophy and the way of life professed in India of bygone years do offer a remedy to the ills plaguing the modern world. Let us consider a few glaring instances.
Perhaps the most celebrated poem of the twentieth century is The Waste Land, written by T.S Eliot. In all respects, it is a modern English poem depicting all the complexity and the elusiveness of meaning and purpose of the modern world. The technique adopted, the stream of consciousness is a complicated one.
An ordinary reader finds it difficult to understand the poem as the references are too many and of a range as wide as the world itself. No three consecutive lines of the poem present a continuous coherent thought. It is rightly described as ‘a crossword’ puzzle of verbal algebra’. Commenting on its extremely puzzling briefness someone has described it as the trailer of a film which is awfully missing.
A poem of four hundred and odd lines, The Wastelanddepicts the modern world which, in fact, is a wasteland. Adopting a very complicated poetic technique Eliot presents the horrors of our world. The question then arises, “What is the remedy?” How can the illsofthemodernworldbewashedaway?Eliothasnodefiniteanswer. ‘A silver line in the cloud’ appears in an anecdote in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad– Bhagirath is bringing Ganga from Lord Shiva’s head to his dried up, parched land. He is directed not to look back under any circumstances. He faces many testing situations that tempt him to look back. But he resists all temptations. In order to wean him away from his determined path, the cloud roars ‘Da, Da, Da’. The roar has differentimplicationstohumans,godsanddemons.Tohumanbeings it means ‘Datta’-give. To Gods it means’ Dayadhvam’ – sympathise and demons interpret it to mean Damyata-control. Eliot seems to point out that this world will be a much better place to live in if only all of us imbibe these qualities. The poem, like any typical Sanskrit poem ends with Om Shanthih, Shanthih, Shanthih, indicating that peace of a very high order will prevail in this world if we develop the qualities of Datta (Give - in the right spirit-eschewing all selfish motives)Dayadavam(developfellowfeeling,showcareandconcern for others) and Damyata (use our powers in a controlled manner for the benefit of mankind).
This is one of the greatest tributes to the Indian culture and lore paid by one of the most celebrated poets of our times. ***The Razor’s Edge a novel written by Somerset Maugham describes the philosophical pursuits of its protagonist, Larry. The title itself is based on a
line in Katha Upanishad which contains the essential message of the novel, the way to salvation and supreme knowledge is as difficult to pass over as the edge of a razor.
¤ÉÑUxrÉ kÉÉUÉ ÌlÉÍzÉiÉÉ SÒUirÉrÉÉ SÒaÉïÇ mÉjÉxiÉÉiÉççè MüuÉrÉÉå uÉSÎliÉ |Larry, an air force pilot in the U.S. is saved by his friend, but the friend himself dies in the act. This incident has a profound effect on Larry. He loses all interest in mundane matters and sets out to find something which he wants to know ultimately. He brushes aside casually all the nice and attractive things that come to him. He starts on an indefinite unknown journey. The novel describes his sojourns at various places and his varied kinds of experiences. He is unable to find solutions to his strange problems in any of the wide range of experiences he gets in his journey around the world. Finally he reaches India and stays in the Ashram of a saint. It is there that he gets fulfilment. He feels that he has got something of what he has been in quest of. The last part of the novel deals at length with ancient Indian philosophy and how it is an ideal way of life.
***
Henry David Thoreau , an American thinker and writer was a great influence on Mahatma Gandhi. The non-violent movements Thoreau led against an unjust tyrannical government impressed Gandhiji very much. Gandhiji’s ideas of ‘non-violent disobedience of unfair
and unjust laws’ are derived from Thoreau’s struggle. Inspired by Thoreau Gandhiji coined the expression ‘Civil Disobedience’ which later assumed the Indianized version ‘Satyagraha’.
Thus no less a person than Mahatma Gandhi was inspired and influenced by Henry David Thoreau. What made him such an elevated and enlightened personality? It is undoubtedly ancient Indian philosophy.
Thoreau was greatly influenced by the way of life adopted by the Rishis in ancient India. He did not blindly accept the Rishis and their revelations as he learnt them. He would accept them only on finding them to be true personally. He lived the life of a typical Rishi for over a year by the Walden Pond spending no money virtually. He lived entirely on the things provided by nature. During this period he shunned the mechanized sophisticated world totally. He proved that it is possible to live the life of a saint even in modern times. The reflections he made during this period of his life are recorded in his celebrated book Walden. It is a clarion call to avoid being too much dependent on modern scientific and technological developments. Man invented machines to be his slaves but quite sadly and ironically man himself has become a slave of machines. In pursuit of gross materialism, he has shunned the grassroot realities and caused high values and virtues to erode. He exhorts people to minimize the evils of modernization and sophistication and move closer to Nature.
His aesthetic and unworldly experiences and his noble thoughts are closely akin to ancient Indian philosophy and ways of life professed and practised in India of ancient times.
A few memorable extracts from the writings of ThoreauOne farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with,” and so he religiously devotes a part of his duty to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle.
… I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.
Confucius said, “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”
Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above? – for the noble plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground,
The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam.