Religion 101 (20 page)

Trust in Krishna

An illustration of the interrelation of the concepts of karma and samsara occurs in the Bhagavad Gita (Chapter IX, verses 30–31). Krishna says: “Even he with the worst karma who ceaselessly meditates on Me quickly loses the effects of his past actions. Becoming a high-souled being, he soon attains perennial peace. Know this for certain: the devotee who puts his trust in me never perishes.”

The term
samsara
also finds a home in Jainism and Buddhism. To a Western way of thinking, this is known as reincarnation. Reincarnation carries with it a burden; the agent will have to live through generations over and over again. This is contrary to the goals of Indian religions, which stress that individuals must break the cycle of karma and samsara to be free of the burden of life. This release from life is the goal of life, and is called moksha.

Such spiritual release is only possible when an individual has a true knowledge of the illusion of life and recognizes the unity of atman and Brahman.

Of the relationship between karma and samsara, Paramahanda Yogananda (1893–1952), a yogi who introduced millions of westerners to meditation, is full of insight:

Various great Jain teachers of India have been called tirthakaras, “ford makers,” because they reveal the passage by which bewildered humanity may cross over and beyond the stormy seas of samsara (the karmic wheel, the recurrence of lives and deaths). Samsara (literally, “a flowing with” the phenomenal flux) induces man to take the line of least resistance.

To become the friend of God, man must overcome the devils or evils of his own karma or actions that ever urge him to spineless acquiescence in the mayic delusions of the world. A knowledge of the iron law of karma encourages the earnest seeker to find the way of final escape from its bonds. Because the karmic slavery of human beings is rooted in the desires of maya-darkened minds, it is with mind control that the yogi concerns himself.

MOHANDAS GANDHI

Apostle of Peaceful Change

Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) is better known as Mahatma, a title that means “great soul.” In his long and accomplished life, Gandhi became the unofficial leader of India. The philosophy of nonviolence, which he embraced and used to protest British rule of India, would become his legacy.

From Gandhi to King

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. embraced Gandhi’s interpretation of nonviolence, and it influenced his crusade to bring about social change in the United States. While King was a student at a theological college in 1948, he became convinced that this was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

Gandhi’s view of nonviolence was not a Hindu religious thought, but a political idea. It was a powerful concept, and has been used frequently as a successful technique to resolve conflict since Gandhi proved its effectiveness.

The Method of Nonviolence Is Born

Nonviolence first entered Gandhi’s mind as the result of one particular incident.

By age twenty-four, Mohandas Gandhi was a barrister. He passed the London matriculation examination, and after three years, he returned to India. In 1893, he agreed to assist a South African firm in a case. First-class accommodations were purchased for him and he boarded the train at Durban for the overnight journey. But he had not counted on the reaction of his fellow passengers, all of whom were of European descent.

Gandhi’s train pulled into Maritzburg, the capital of Natal, and Gandhi related that a white man entered his compartment and “looked me up and down” and “saw that I was a colored man.” This disturbed the man, who charged out of the compartment and returned with two officials. Gandhi was ordered to the third-class compartment. He refused to leave, protesting that he had a first-class ticket. The official persisted, Gandhi dug in his heels, and eventually a constable was summoned to forcibly remove Gandhi and his luggage from the train.

In the morning his employer used his influence to get Gandhi reinstated as a first-class passenger. He suffered more abuse on the way to Pretoria. On one leg of the journey, he had to travel by stagecoach, but was not allowed to sit inside with the other passengers. The ordeal gave Gandhi a sense of the conditions of Indians in South Africa and strengthened his resolve to do something about it.

A Leader for Civil Rights

Within a week of his arrival in Pretoria, Gandhi had summoned all the Indians of the city to a meeting. At this time, the Natal legislature was taking up a bill to deny the vote to Indians. Gandhi could not stop the bill from passing, but he drew attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa. In 1894, he formed the Natal Indian Congress to fight for the rights of Indians, which became a great force in South African politics. In 1897, he was attacked and nearly lynched by a white mob. His response to the incident was more ethical than legalistic, and showed that a change had come over him; he refused to press charges against his aggressors.

In 1906, the Transvaal government passed a measure compelling the colony’s Indian population to register. This included a strip search of women in order to identify any birthmarks. In Johannesburg that year, Gandhi held a mass protest. For the first time, he articulated his philosophy of
satyagraha
or “truth force,” asking his fellow Indians to oppose the new law using nonviolent methods.

Gandhi’s years in South Africa were pivotal for his political and spiritual development. He resided there from 1893 until 1914; he was twenty-four when he arrived and forty-five when he left. He studied the Bhagavad Gita, and he corresponded with and was influenced by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), who cultivated his own interest in Indian philosophy. In addition, he pored over the writings of a philosophical predecessor and kindred spirit, Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862).

Indians Against the British Occupiers

By 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Gandhi returned to India to bring his political ideas to bear on the Indian struggle for independence. When the British passed the Rowlatt Act in 1919, a measure that allowed the government to imprison Indians without a trial, Gandhi launched his first call for satyagraha or nonviolent disobedience on Indian soil.

On April 13, 1919, the British answered the show of civil disobedience with violence, in what has become known as the Amritsar Massacre. General Reginald Dyer of the British Army gave the order to fire into a large crowd of people who were listening to a speech. The British machine guns killed 379 Indians and wounded 1,137. The firing would have continued, but the British ran out of ammunition.

In 1920, Gandhi was elected president of the All-India Home Rule League; in 1921, he became the head of the Indian National Congress. Now Gandhi practiced a policy of boycotting all foreign-made goods, especially British goods.

Gandhi and Spinning

Aware of the effect of his behavior on that of his fellow Indians, Gandhi could often be found at his spinning wheel, which he used to spin thread for cloth for all his own clothing. He wanted all Indians to use homespun cloth in place of foreign-made fabric. He became the symbol of the Indian independence movement.

The boycott of all things foreign expanded to British education facilities, and even to a refusal to pay taxes. The British quelled the agitation and sentenced Gandhi to six years in prison for sedition. For health reasons, Gandhi served just three years and was released in 1924. By 1928, the British had appointed a constitutional reform commission with no Indians on it. Gandhi countered by launching another nonviolent resistance campaign, this time against the tax on salt.

Gandhi’s famous Salt March in 1929 was a campaign against the salt tax levied by the British. This campaign was a piece of political theater, the highlight of which was the 250-mile Dandhi March from Ahmedabad to the seaside village of Dandhi. There, Gandhi made his own salt, a powerful symbolic image.

By 1934, Gandhi resigned as the party leader of the Indian National Congress because he found a lack of commitment to his program of nonviolence as a way of life for the new India by members of the Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru became the new leader; meanwhile, Gandhi devoted himself to the goal of educating rural India. He fought against the institution of Untouchables, and worked to promote the manufacture of homespun clothing and other village-level cottage industries.

Quit India Movement and Independence from Britain

In 1942, Gandhi made the clarion call “do or die” — either we must free India from British rule or die trying. Still, the method was passive resistance, not violence. The resolution to quit India was passed at the Bombay session of the All-India Congress Committee. In response, the British detained Indians and arrested more than 10,000 people. Gandhi fasted, hoping for the release of the prisoners.

By 1946, the prisoners were set free, and the British conferred with the Indian National Congress to make arrangements for India’s independence. Gandhi believed in cooperation between the Hindu and Muslim communities in India and maintained relationships without regard to religious affiliation; he did not believe in segregation of the two faiths. Nonetheless, the Indian National Congress agreed to a partition agreement that cleaved two states out of British India: India and Pakistan. The process of partition in August 1947 was very violent — several million people were forced to flee their homes and at least 1 million were slaughtered in communal riots.

Gandhi sought peace between the two religious groups and between the two new countries, but when he visited New Delhi in an attempt to pacify the two communities on January 30, 1948, a gunshot rang out and the champion of nonviolence fell. Nathuram Godse, a Hindu radical who opposed Gandhi’s acceptance of Muslims, had pulled the trigger. It was the irony of ironies — the world’s greatest champion of nonviolence, killed by a gunshot. As he expired, Gandhi uttered the word “Rama,” an Indian word meaning God.

CHAPTER 7
BUDDHISM

Buddhism traces its roots back to the Buddha, a yogi who lived more than 2,500 years ago in northern India. The Buddha discovered a way to live that radically transformed people’s lives, starting with his own. His revolutionary insights have withstood the test of time and his methods can still transform lives as they did in ancient India. The Buddha taught mindfulness, kindness, and compassion. Buddhism, the family of religions that evolved from the Buddha’s teachings, is one of the great ethical systems for benefit of humanity.

While Buddhism may be considered a nontheistic religion, it transcends religious belief into practical experience. You don’t believe in Buddhism, you practice Buddhism. In fact, you don’t even need to be a “Buddhist” to practice “Buddhism.” You just have to sit down and meditate.

At a time when yoga had enjoyed widespread popularity, the Buddha was a prodigious yogi. He mastered the yogas of his day and then founded a way that could go beyond all suffering. This way also goes beyond words and needs to be experienced for yourself. The good news is that is available right here, right now.

Jane Hirshfield, in the PBS documentary,
The Buddha
, offers an explanation of the Buddha’s teachings in seven words: “Everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.” This is a nice condensing of millions of words attributed to the Buddha in the Pali Canon (a collection of Buddhist scriptures).

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

The World Is Suffering

The Four Noble Truths can be thought of as a medical metaphor. The Buddha often considered himself to be a physician, more so than the founder of a religion, and as a doctor he offered medicine to heal the illness of the human condition.

As a physician, he provided a diagnosis for the human condition (First Noble Truth), a cause for the condition (Second Noble Truth), a prognosis (Third Noble Truth), and a prescription for the treatment (Fourth Noble Truth).
Dharma
— the truth reflected in these teachings — is the medicine. The Four Noble Truths can take you all the way to enlightenment. His teaching was radical and he was concerned people may not be open to or understand his message.

The Buddha’s teachings were a pathway to letting go of suffering, freeing oneself from pain. The Buddha knew the only way was the Middle Way. He knew that excessive pleasure — a life built on sensual delight — or excessive pain — such as the life of an ascetic — led to continual suffering with no release from it.

The First Noble Truth: The Truth of Suffering

The world that the Buddha lived in was a world that knew warfare, great poverty, and disease. Life expectancy was short and infant and child mortality was great. But
dukkha
goes beyond these obvious forms of suffering of aging, sickness, and death. It also refers to a pervasive dissatisfaction that colors every moment of life.
Du
of
dukkha
means “bad” and
ka
means “wheel.” The Buddha invoked the metaphor of a “bad wheel” to capture the essence of
dukkha.
It is more than suffering. It describes an oxcart whose wheel is off its axle, biasing every movement of the cart. That bumpy dissatisfaction or sense that things are not right captures the more important aspect of
dukkha
.

If
dukkha
is self-inflicted there is a way out of this misery and it is to this possibility that the remainder of the Four Noble Truths point.

What, O Monks, is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering, sickness is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering. Pain, grief, sorrow, lamentation, and despair are suffering. Association with what is unpleasant is suffering, disassociation from what is pleasant is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering.