|
Ramakrishna
Vedanta in the West:
New
Interfaces and Challenges
Dr. M. Sivaramkrishna
The
power and ideas that are within this body will automatically
spread all around in course of time. Hundreds of Himalayas
will not be able to suppress that power. - Sri Ramakrishna
to Keshab Chandra Sen. (1)
Sri
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was a very unusual person. It is good
to remember our ‘past masters’ to re-examine their teachings
in order to apply them to our present-day problems. (2)
The
Nineteenth-century Ethos of the Sacred
In
his incisive study of the state of oriental religions (particularly
Theosophy) and the cult of the gurus in the West, Peter Washington
observed, ‘… towards the end of the nineteenth century it
was becoming clear that an enduring public appetite existed
in the West for new and exotic forms of religious belief to
supplement or even replace orthodox forms of Christianity.
Swedenborg has shown one possible way forward by uniting religion
and science. Mesmer and the spiritualists had demonstrated
another by opening doors to the spirit world.’ (3)
Pointing
out further facets of what Frank Kermonde has called ‘a neglected
story of serious frauds and delusions that had no small influence
on modern art and thought’, Peter Washington adds that in
this ethos, ‘Hinduism drew doctrinal subtlety and sheer exotism.’
And he devotes a chapter to Vedanta as exemplified by Swami
Prabhavananda and his writer devotees, notably Aldous Huxley
and Christopher Isherwood, commenting that Swami Prabhavananda
‘managed to stay above the temptations of Hollywood, where
more adeptly self-dramatizing gurus were constantly in continuous
demand. People were impressed by his ability to live chastely
in a notoriously corrupting world.’
The
New Mystical Renaissance
Obviously
the role of the Ramakrishna Vedanta movement has been to steer
clear of all the fads gaining ground in this ethos. Neither
esoteric nor messiah-based, it advocated the way of Vedanta
not theorized and mystified but lived in the lives of Ramakrishna,
Sarada Devi and Vivekananda. By the 1960s when the ‘Eastern
masters made a concerted Westward push’ the Ramakrishna Vedanta
movement was a quietly authoritative and authentic one.
The
result is evident today in what ‘analysts’ are pointing to
as a new spiritual renaissance, the novelty lying in the integration
of spiritual rhythms in everyday living. As Peter Ochiogrosso,
in his study of ‘a small but representative sample of those
transformative experiences’ (the sampler includes Lex Hixon)
says, ‘Somewhere between the hard edge of Christian fundamentalism
and the self-satisfaction of secular humanism, each of which
in its own way seems to threaten dominance of American life
at times, a whole world of spiritual growth and transformation
is taking place.’ (4) While Lex Hixon calls this ‘the General
Theory of Relativity of Religions’, it seems to signal for
Andrew Harvey ‘the new mystical renaissance that is struggling
to be born against terrible odds in the rubble of our living
civilization.’ (5)
On
‘The Edge of One of the Megatrends’
The
quiet but crucial role of Ramakrishna Vedanta in ushering
this new renaissance can hardly be exaggerated. As Carl T
Jackson, the cultural historian of oriental religions in the
USA, has declared, ‘One hundred years in the United States
has given the movement a visibility and degree of acceptance
unequalled by any Asian group.’ Identifying the reasons he
says, ‘the Ramakrishna movement’s obvious commitment to present
Vedanta at a high level, the swamis’ strong intellectual qualifications,
and an ecumenical attitude toward other religious bodies have
won over most critics.’ Finally, ‘predicting’ the future he
says, ‘As a pioneer in paving the way for introduction of
Asian religious perceptions in the West, the Ramakrishna movement
may be said to stand on the edge of one of the “megatrends”
of modern world history.’ (6)
More
or less, the same view is validated by Diana L Eck in her
study of the pluralistic, inclusivist religious situation
today: ‘Vivekananda’s perception that the crying need of the
West was something he called “spirituality” has been borne
out in the one hundred years since the Parliament.’ (7)
Similarly
in a recent study of world religions, Peter Ochiogrosso says,
‘The … yogic practices taught by the succeeding waves of Indian
gurus to come West are all more or less descendants of the
Vivekananda approach and in one form or other were appropriated
by the Beat culture of the 1950s, the counter-culture of the
60s and the current New Age movement.’ (8)
The
‘perception’ to which both Jackson and Eck refer is, indeed,
far-ranging, deeply interior and coextensive with the other
prophets. A deeply moving example is evident in Henri Nouwen.
This widely respected father reports, ‘Over the years many
new pictures have appeared on my inner walls. Some show words,
some gestures of blessing, forgiveness, reconciliation and
healing. Many show faces: the faces of Jesus and Mary, the
faces of Therese of Lisieux and Charles de Foucould, the faces
of Ramakrishna and the Dalai Lama.’ (9) (From our forthcoming
bibliography of writings on Ramakrishna, a random survey reveals
nearly 250-300 citations during the last two years alone.)
Movement
versus Message/Ideology
The
Ramakrishna Vedanta movement will still face institutional
challenges which increasing acceptance and visibility engender.
The Asian groups may become larger in patronizing and may,
by sheer numbers, make Vedanta centres extensions of ethnic
religiosity. Islands of ‘India’, the ‘motherland’, may build
themselves up with the swami as the nucleus. This, if it becomes
persistent, may overshadow the interiority and inwardness
of the characteristically Western responses to Ramakrishna
Vedanta. Whatever one may say to the contrary, Ramakrishna
Vedanta needs mediation in terms of what Andrew P Tuck called
‘isogesis’. This is employing one’s ‘personal cultural perspectives’,
to make appropriation of the ‘other’ ‘intelligible’. The ‘act
of productive understanding-isogesis - is an integral part
of the interpretive process.’ The Western appropriation of
Ramakrishna Vedanta has to be in the logic of its own historical/cultural
frames.
The
challenge here is to respect the autonomy of Western interpretations
and not overly ‘Hinduize’ Ramakrishna, however dominant Hindu
paradigms and symbolic forms are in his life and message.
One may have to balance what the paramaguru of postmodernism,
Jacques Derrida, called ‘philosophy proper’ and ‘exemplary
philosophy’, signifying respectively cultural specifics, and
areas that ‘transcend’ these cultural specifics by offering
an idiom translatable across boundaries.
The
movement has to face, consequently, the legitimating of autonomy
for the Western exponents of Ramakrishna Vedanta. The considerable
growth of the Western counterpart - far flung in its centres
in Europe (even Russia), the Far East, the USA, the UK and
so on - necessitates that the movement recognize in terms,
strictly, of autonomy. The Great Swan’s wide waters can no
longer be contained in the Ganga alone. New rivers are ready
to receive Ramakrishna but in their own spiritually individualistic
territorial waters! The movement’s greatest challenge is to
consider how far to let the ‘Western’ Ramakrishna Vedanta
movement go its own way. Perhaps increasing insurgency may
be the outcome if imaginatively conceived checks and balances
are not voluntarily worked out. Institutional challenges are
relatively manageable but they are linked to the more formidable
ideological ones. Interfaces counterpoint challenges.
Interfaces:
Bhavamukha
Bhavamukha
seems to be, what Western seekers are calling ‘ordinary magic’,
the perception of everyday life itself as a spiritual path.
What Pema Chodron says - ‘self-liberate even the antidote’
- seems approximate to this. ‘The ultimate perfection,’ she
says, ‘must be some sense of completely realizing that samsara
and nirvana are one, not preferring stillness or occurrence
but being able to live fully with both.’ In this balancing
vision, even the despised ritual dimension finds a paradigmatic
place. ‘When things are properly understood, one’s whole life
is like a ritual or ceremony. Then all the gestures of life
are mudra and all the sounds of life are mantra - sacredness
is everywhere.’ (10)
Similarly,
in his careful (though not always defensible) analysis of
the implications, Timothy A Jensen says that bhavamukha is
‘a crucial element in … the transforming experiences’ of Ramakrishna.
‘Both the literal meaning of bhavamukha and the discussions
by the hagiographers point toward a resolution of the problems
of identity and vocation,’ he says, adding that through bhavamukha
Ramakrishna ‘could … see the possibility of living … in close
contact with the world yet without clinging to it.’ (11)
This
is making everything sacred not as a pious, static axiom but
as a vibrant, live transfiguration of the world. The Master
himself pins it down: ‘… I see it is He who is moving about
in different forms, now as an honest man, now as a cheat and
again as a villain.’ ‘Try to know the nitya,’ he commanded,
‘through the lila’, and ‘the Eternal is to be reached by means
of the non-eternal, the Real through the help of the unreal,
and the Noumenon through the help of the phenomenon.’ (12)
Interpreting
this in terms of Christian faith, Beatrice Bruteau (who notes
that she learnt the synthesis of the four yogas ‘mainly from
the swamis of the Ramakrishna Order’) says, ‘In the Christian
vocabulary … the liberating spiritual death is not the end
of the path of growth. It must be followed by resurrection,
the return to embodied life which itself is a developmental
state. … In resurrection, we experience unity in differentiation,
we see the Absolute in every differentiated being.’ (emphasis
added) Citing Ramakrishna specifically, Bruteau notes
that he ‘pointed out … the state in which to abide for ordinary
daily life, … the coming back into consciousness from the
absolute unity and formlessness of samadhi. In his tradition
this state is called bhavamukha, and in the symbology
of his spiritual life, he heard Divine Mother tell him, “Remain
in bhavamukha.”’ ‘We might say,’ adds Bruteau, ‘this
means … he was told “Be true God and true man.”’ (13)
Finally,
Hans Torwesten brings out the uniqueness of bhavamukha
and states, ‘Many - as perhaps Teilhard de Chardin - have
“dreamed” of that other state in which the whole world is
transformed in a trice. Ramakrishna did not dream of it; he
lived in that state every day. It was not just poetry, not
a vague pantheism - he simply saw God with eyes open, wherever
he looked.’ (14)
The
‘New’ Celibate
Abiding
in ordinary life with strong spiritual bases is fraught with
several challenges of which, for the West (and through increasing
exposure of its media for the East, too), is love in the context
of marriage. This implies what John Welwood calls ‘challenge
of the heart’, ‘the need to be pioneers in territory that
has never been fully and consciously explored. Men and women
have never had to face each other with such honesty and awareness.’
(15) Many are inclined to see marriage as a sacrament, and
it needs, as Henri Nouwen holds, celibacy not only ‘for physical,
mental or spiritual reasons, but also because intimacy of
marriage in itself is based on the common participation in
a love greater than the love two people can offer each other.’
(16)
Ramakrishna
advised that after the birth of two or three children, husband
and wife should live as brother and sister and ‘fight’ for
realization ‘from within the fort of samsara’. This is a paradigm
increasingly being held as inevitable for inner growth. Paradoxically,
the very excesses of eroticism evident everywhere are reinforcing
the vitality of celibacy within marriage. Indeed, as Adolf
Guggenbuhl-Craig tersely puts it, ‘the central issue of marriage
is not well-being or happiness; it is salvation. Marriage
involves not only a man and a woman who happily love each
other and raise offspring together, but rather two people
who are trying to individuate, to find their soul’s salvation.’
(17)
‘Goddessliness’
A
related interface (with Ramakrishna Vedanta) is the figuring
of Sarada Devi as an exemplar of what Diane Mariechild calls
‘the lineage of feminine wisdom’. Equating ‘mindfulness’ itself
with feminism she says that both suggest ‘pay attention, explore
and check it out for yourself’. Choosing two of Sarada Devi’s
sayings (‘I am the Mother of the virtuous … say to yourself:
I have a mother’ and ‘If you want peace … the whole world
is your own’), Mariechild regards Sarada Devi ‘as a human
being who has fully manifested her godliness and goddessliness’.
The ‘embodiment of divine love’ Sarada Devi’s words ‘indicate
that her love is impersonal; it is given to all, regardless
of their behaviour. The Holy Mother is there reaching out
to every individual, whoever and wherever they are.’ Consequently
‘the edges will soften more easily without the attitude of
criticism and faultfinding.’ (18)
Viewed
thus, Beatrice Bruteau’s contention that ‘a second challenge
that still seems to threaten the West is the popularity in
the East of feminine images of God’, finds an interface in
the attitude and practice of Ramakrishna Vedanta towards woman
as the potential of Shakti as an imperative for interior illumination
(exemplified gloriously in Sarada Devi’s life). This brings
us to another challenge emerging again, from ‘desire’ as embodied
woman.
Challenges:
Tantra
The
most formidable challenge to the interpretation of Ramakrishna
as a sadhaka and Ramakrishna Vedanta as a path of sadhana
now seems to stem from the larger Western landscape of Tantra
studies in general and the focusing on Ramakrishna in particular.
The work by scholars such as Mircea Eliade, Erich Neuman,
Ken Wilber (notably his recent Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality),
Georg Feurstein, Julius Evola, Herbert Guenther, Indra Sinha
and Gunter Nitschke has focused on what they contend as sexual
origins and foregrounding of spirituality. They seem to strongly
endorse Paul Ricoeur’s assertion that ‘it is not possible,
in point of fact, to understand the adventurous history of
sexuality apart from that of the sacred among men.’
One
can see this as, also, an important aspect of the ‘feminist’
discourse of desire ‘interwoven with gender issues and values’.
To be more precise, as Kim Power in her remarkable study of
St Augustine’s writings on women observed, ‘The Christian
discourse of desire sets up a choice between woman and God,
wherein the sexually desirable woman is represented as being
in direct conflict with God for the hearts of men. The other
side of the coin is that properly ordered desire for God will
eradicate disorderly desire for women.’ (19)
Tantra
- specially, the left-handed one - is seen by many as a way
out of the paradox. Yati calls it ‘perhaps the most exotic
and at its initial ritual levels certainly the most erotic
of all the methods arousing the evolutionary sleeper’. (20)
Julius Evola notes that ‘the idea of arising and assuming
the forces of desire’ in order to make them ‘self-consuming,
that is, to transform or, better, to destroy their original
nature finds its most classical expression’ in Tantra. (21)
He goes a step further and claims, interestingly, that Tantra
is more Western than Christian: ‘Tantrism, in its spirit -
leaving out of consideration the framework of local traditions
- should be considered distinctly Western. It is more conspicuously
Western than Christian soteriology, is looked upon as a “vale
of tears” and contemplates the destiny of a human nature that
has been infected with sin and that stands in need of redemption
…’ (158) Commenting on the implications, Evola adds that ‘the
password of Tantrism is not the incompatibility but rather
the unity of spiritual discipline (sadhana) and enjoyment
(bhoga) …’ (158)
(To
be continued)
References
1.
Swami Chetanananda, Ramakrishna as We Saw Him (Calcutta:
Advaita Ashrama, 1992), 287.
2.
Bimal Krishna Matilal, The Collected Essays: Ethics and
Epics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 14.
3.
Peter Washington, Madam Blavatsky’s Baboon: Theosophy and
the Emergence of the Western Guru (London: Secker & Warburg,
1993), 9.
4.
Peter Ochiogrosso, Through the Labyrinth: Stories of the Search
for Spiritual Transformation in Everyday Life (New York: Viking/Penguin,
1991), 18.
5.
Andrew Harvey, The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi
(London: Souvenir Press, 1995), 2.
6.
Carl T Jackson, Vedanta for the West: The Ramakrishna Movement
in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1994), 144-5.
7.
Diana L Eck, Encountering God (New Delhi: Penguin,
1995), 152.
8.
Peter Ochiogrosso, The Joy of Sects: A Spiritual Guide to
the World’s Religions (New York: Image Books, 1996), 63.
9.
Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit (London:
Darton, Longman, Todd, 1994), 84.
10.
Pema Chodron, ‘Not Preferring Samsara or Nirvana’ in Ordinary
Magic: Everyday Life as Spiritual Path, ed. John Welwood
(Boston: Shambhala, 1992), 44-5.
11.
Timothy A Jensen, ‘Madness, Yearning and Play’ (Doctoral Dissertation;
Chicago, 1978), 125-6.
12.
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna
Math, 1993), 279.
13.
Beatrice Bruteau, What We Can Learn from the East (New
York: Crossroad, 1995), 71-2.
14.
Hans Torwesten, ‘Ramakrishna and Christ’ in Vedanta for
East and West (Bourne End: Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre)
September-October 1996, 227-8.
15.
John Welwood, Challenge of the Heart: Sex, Love and Intimacy
in Changing Times (Boston: Shambhala, 1985), xiii.
16.
Seeds of Hope: A Henri Nouwen Reader, ed. Robert Durback
(New York: Bantam, 1990), 15.
17.
Challenge of the Heart, 158.
18.
Diane Mariechild, Open Mind (San Francisco: Harper,
1995), 11 April.
19.
Kim Power, Veiled Desire: St Augustine’s Writings on Women
(London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1995), 3.
20.
Yati, The Unknown Man: The Mysterious Birth of a New Species
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988), 158.
21.
Julius Evola, The Yoga of Power: Tantra Shakti and the
Secret Way (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1992), 158.
|