The definitive Ayodhya chronicle

 

 

There are very few publications giving a factual account of historical facts underlying the Ayodhya controversy. Yet this controversy has played a decisive role in recent Indian politics, giving the BJP the electoral breakthrough that ultimately brought it to power. Therefore, it ought to be a matter for surprise that the professional India-watchers and the academics concerned remain satisfied with the handful of very partial and highly partisan treatments available in print. But the prevailing poverty of information on at least the factual basis of the affair has now been remedied. This book Rama & Ayodhya by Dr. Meenakshi Jain (Arya Publ., Delhi 2013) will henceforth be required reading for anyone pronouncing on Ayodhya.

Dr. Meenakshi Jain is a historian formerly with the Nehru Memorial Library, presently Associate Professor in History at Gargi College, University of Delhi. In this book she gives a very detailed enumeration of all the sources of a pre-Muslim veneration for or cult of Rama: inscriptions, sculptures and literary references. These already start in the pre-Christian age and soon cover all of India. Yet, the Marxist historians started the Ayodhya controversy in the late 1980s by claiming that there could not have been a pre-Muslim Rama temple in Ayodhya as Rama worship is of more recent vintage. This chapter concurs with the testimonies to Rama worship of the historians employed by the Vishva Hindu Parishad in the Government-sponsored scholars’ debate of 1990-91, except that it is far more complete.

Highly original is the chapter on Hindu testimonies of Muslim iconoclasm and the counter-measures which Hindu society took to prevent or remedy instances of iconoclasm. Particularly under Maratha rule, Hindu ownership of Muslim-occupied places was often restored. But this process was not easy and even in the Maratha domains far from complete. Often there was a factual Maratha but a nominal Moghul sovereignty to which lip-service had to be paid. Sometimes also, the local Brahmins were so fearful of a Muslim return to power that they preferred whatever humiliating makeshift arrangement they had negotiated to a full restoration of the erstwhile Hindu temple. Often idols were dug up from their shelters in the ground and rituals were prescribed in the event of their restoration. These testimonies supplement the Muslim testimonies of iconoclasm presented by Sita Ram Goel in his epoch-making book Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them. Significantly, the “eminent historians” do not touch the subject with a barge-pole.    

Another chapter gives an exhaustive enumeration of all the testimonies, including statements made in court, for the tradition that the Babri mosque had replaced a Hindu temple. Here again, many instances will sound familiar to those who have closely followed the debate, but the list stands out by its completeness. It includes pre-colonial European testimonies as well as reports by colonial officers, but most numerous are the testimonies by local Muslims. It also cites the verdicts and internal correspondence of the magistrates, and some statements by politicians. They all prove that until the 1980s, it was a matter of consensus that the Babri mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple. It was shared by all parties concerned: Hindus, Muslims, European travellers as well as British administrators and scholars. Yet, in a very sudden reversal, a statement by the “eminent historians” from JNU in 1989, statement which already was questionable at the time and has been proven false since, managed to make practically all media and all Indian and foreign observers turn against the established consensus and present it as the “Hindu fundamentalist myth”. I am proud to say I was an exception. But now, that consensus has been restored, and unwilling secularists still denying and lambasting it are fighting a fruitless rearguard action.

An even more damaging part for the secularists is Meenakshi Jain’s presentation of their own testimonies in court.  For the first time, we get to see how one after another, the secular “experts” collapse or lose their credidibility when subjected to cross-examination. One after another admits under oath that he or she has no experience with or no professional competence on the history or archaeology of Ayodhya. Their bluff was enough to fool the mass of secular politicians and gullible press correspondents, but failed to stand up to critical questioning. The Indologists who have invoked those “experts” as arguments of authority, can somewhat restore their lost honour by publicly naming and shaming them and by apologizing for following in their footsteps and ridiculing the old consensus – rather than, at best, looking away and pretending there never was an Ayodhya controversy in the first place; or, worse, still keeping up the false allegations that once swept the concerned public opinion across the globe.

The book also discusses related court cases, the strange fact that a deity can act as a juridical person (though, like a minor, it has to be represented by a fully empowered citizen), and the archaeological findings as well as the unsavoury controversy around these. Ultimately, they all turn out to support the old assumption that the Babri mosque was built on a demolished Hindu temple.

One point I disagree with, is her seeming acceptance of the VHP thesis that the Babri mosque replaced a “magnificent” Rama temple.  Some temples which lay out of the way of the population centres and military routes failed to attract attention and thus survived; the famous temples of Khajuraho come to mind. But Ayodhya became a provincial capital of the Delhi Sultanate, and it is simply unthinkable that a sizable Hindu temple, a place of pilgrimage moreover, could have survived the Muslim conquest and occupation. This scenario denies the large-scale and systematic Islamic iconoclasm which could not have spared a major place of Hindu pilgrimage; a deluded secularist could have thought it up, but those who believed the VHP was anti-Islamic will be surprised to learn of the whitewash of Islam implicit in the thesis that a Rama temple could subsist for centuries in a centre of Sultanate power. More likely, Babar found an existing mosque on the spot, in dilapidated condition (as a consequence of the collapse of the pre-Moghul Lodi dynasty) or, like in the recent past, under Hindu occupation. Only because he restored it as a mosque has it been called the Babri mosque. Early in the Ayodhya debate already, a theory surfaced that the “Babri” mosque had been built in the preceding Sultanate period, as testified by its building style.

On closer inspection, this position is truthfully described in some detail on p.292-4 as coming from the pro-temple archaeologist R. Nath as well as from the pro-Babri (and otherwise also disgraced) historian Sushil Srivastava, but without evaluation. In the preface (p.xvii), she only says that Babar “allegedly” destroyed the Rama Janmabhumi temple, so the reader cannot find anything wrong in her presentation of the controversy. At any rate, the mosque called Babri Masjid was certainly built after the demolition of a Hindu temple, but it is not sure that this was done by Babar. Not everything in this case is known, but the core of the matter, viz. that Islamic iconoclasm motivated by Prophet Mohammed’s precedent destroyed a major Hindu temple, has been firmly established.

This is henceforth the standard book on the Ayodhya affair. Any so-called expert who now fails to refer to it, is not to be taken seriously.    






(India First, 24 September 2014)

 

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Yoga and sexual conduct

In a recent conversation, the age-old topic of the need or desirability of sexual abstinence came up. The exchange made me contemplate this vexed question again: there is only so much you can think through in a lifetime, and perhaps my opinions had been made in haste and needed some correction. Without having really developed a definitive viewpoint, I have to reformulate my present thinking about it.

Celibacy, pro and con  

Out of politeness already, I wouldn’t want to condemn abstinence as superfluous or, as some consider it, harmful. I know too many people who have chosen celibacy as a lifestyle, either by oath or de facto, and seem to be quite satisfied with it, apparently never even giving it another thought. While stories of sex scandals (true or false) involving gurus make good newspaper headlines, I have known quite a few celibate monks who were great yogis and never seemed to have doubted their choice, e.g. the late Swami Hariharananda Giri, Swami Veda Bharati, Swami Dayananda Saraswati (of Coimbatore), or Swami Naradanada Tirth. If you have a sufficiently heady goal, most of all yoga, it can make you forget most worldly attachments, including the need of a mate. They also cite some important advantages, to be discussed below. Still, the objections to it are equally old, and were often expressed by people with long and voluntary (but as they later judged it, “misguided”) experience of it.

Vedic literature represents an old objection to celibacy and to any other form of deliberate childlessness, viz. that by virtue of being born from a billion-year-old lineage of parents and children, we show ingratitude by breaking that lineage. Instead we have a duty to procreate and continue this line. Indeed, the gift of life by our parents creates a debt in us which we can only discharge by a gift of life to children of our own. By that yardstick, celibacy or any other deliberate prevention of procreation is a form of parasitism, of willfully not discharging one’s duty. When the Buddhists in India institutionalized celibacy, or when they introduced it in China, Brahmins and Confucians objected that the Buddhist monks refused to play their part in the chain of life. While their economic parasitism could perhaps be tolerated as they had it in common with a part of the elite, their biological parasitism really stood out as contrary to nature.

And yet, celibacy has had success. The Jewish Essenes, the Christian monks (later also the Catholic priesthood), the Vedantic and Jain monks, the Daoist monks, they all took to celibacy. It would seem there is a link between the spiritual vocation and celibacy. In each of the affected religions, laymen and some religious personnel lived a normal married life, equally compatible with the spiritual life, but celibacy freed up the most motivated seekers for full-time spirituality. Out of enthusiasm for the higher life, numerous youngsters are willing to sacrifice the prospect of conjugal life. Even activists who set their standards lower than Liberation choose celibacy as the way to free them from family constraints so they can fully devote themselves to their work, e.g. the Opus Dei members or the Hindu-nationalist RSS whole-timers. Belief in the validity of the goal for which you sacrifice married life largely determines whether you will see the effort through.

On the other hand, the Protestant Reformation largely abolished religious celibacy, and one Japanese Buddhist monastic order opened itself up for “married monks”. Some religious leaders explicitly condemned celibacy, reviving the old Vedic objection to “parasitism”, notably the Sikh lineage. In my own youth, I witnessed the wave of Catholic priests leaving the priesthood because they preferred the love of a tangible woman to God’s love. It is not that they felt any less religious, just that they couldn’t tolerate the shackles of celibacy anymore. As one of my professors, who was a married ex-priest, said: “I still feel like I am a priest.” For the same reason, many clerics sworn to celibacy, in all the religions concerned, have strayed from their vows and enjoyed love on the side, all while remaining in their religious roles. The grass is always greener on the other side of the hill: among those who have experienced celibacy, second thought develop.

To prove that celibacy is not strictly necessary for the higher life, Hinduism knows of a category of married yogis, known as seers or rishi-s, who continue the tradition of the married men who became court poets and composed the Vedic hymns. The belief that Liberation can only be reached by celibate monks is in evidence in some texts, but is clearly wrong. My own principal yoga teachers have been married men.

A realistic system intermediate between lifelong marriage and lifelong celibacy was the Vedic system of the three life ages: as student, as householder, and as “forest-dweller”. (A fourth stage, of renunciate, has later been added to it, but Hindus are mistaken to understand this as a fourth stage; it is an alternative to the second and third stage in civilians’ life, viz. celibate monkhood.) The forest-dweller stage starts when a householder has married off his daughters and seen his first grandson: he withdraws from his worldly duties. Often, he also withdrew from married life. I say “often”, as distinct from “always” and “never”, because real life is more varied than the uniformity of the law books. The best-known forest-dweller was the sage Yajñavalkya, whose epoch-making explanation of the Self, the absolute cornerstone of all Indian thought, was in fact a farewell address to his co-wife Maitreyi. When the musician Ravi Shankar lost his wife and remarried in old age, some Hindus were up in arms because the married state (and in his case, producing more offspring) was not proper for his station in life.

The genesis of religiously motivated celibacy 

The origin of celibate monkhood probably lies in the bands of young warriors living on the outskirts of society and spending their days putting each other to tests of courage and fortitude. Normally, for every young man this phase of life ends when he gets married. At stag parties, it is part of the ritual that the friends try to dissuade the groom from leaving their jolly good company and choosing the constraints of marriage and the householder’s life. Now, imagine that this mock dissuasion succeeds. Some young men do not want to leave this tough but free life; they want it to be their lifelong vocation, till death. Celibate monks are older men who continue the bachelor lifestyle of young men. Their asceticism is a peaceful but equally demanding form of the tests which young warriors impose on one another.

Among the first known practitioners of asceticism (the “sky-clad” Munis described in the Rg-Veda, forerunners of the Naga Sadhus, who indeed still have a martial role and train in wrestling-halls; and the proto-Jain ascetics), it seems that celibacy did not so much mean sexual abstinence. It didn’t matter if they did it with prostitutes or other willing women, what counted was that they remained free from the bonds of marriage and the endless social codes that accompany the householder’s state. This then is the first reason for celibacy, one equally known to the non-religious “confirmed bachelors” in Western society: to remain free. To be sure, “freedom” can mean a number of different things, but in every case it is deemed to be mutually exclusive with the constraints of marriage. Being free from social codes is the defining trait of the renunciates’ life, which is why they shed their civil name with its connotations of region, caste and family.

That sexual abstinence was not required from sages who stuck to an unmarried wandering lifestyle, is proven by their employment as sperm-donors. If a married man was infertile and wanted to have offspring, he used the services of a man who lived outside society. As a renunciate, he was also deemed to have the necessary disinterest and self-control not to embarrass the social father. Thus, when regent Bhishma needed a stand-in to produce offspring on the widows of the deceased king Vichitravirya, he brought in the sage Vyasa. (When the royal wives received this forest-wanderer, they were struck by his ugliness. Ambika closed her eyes, so the son born from this union was blind; Ambalika turned pale, so her son was pale and weak; but when the first queen’s maid was led to him, she had no such hang-ups and enjoyed their union, so her son became a royal counsel renowned for his wisdom.)   

A wholly different reason for celibacy, very prominent in India but also known elsewhere, is the belief in the supreme energy content of sperm. It is a fact of life that ejaculating causes tiredness, proving that energy has been lost. After sex, men tend to fall asleep rather than playing along with their energized wives, or so the wives complain. Conversely, saving your sperm gives you spiritual power. A variation on this idea is the Freudian notion of “sublimation”: either you spend your sperm in normal sexual activity or you sublimate it into a passion for higher pursuits. Since you cannot use your natural quotum of sexual energy twice, directing this energy into spiritual matters requires saving it from its more worldly use. When Indian freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose died at the end of WW2, it transpired that he had an Austrian wife and daughter, but millions of his followers refused to believe this because such a charismatic leader could not possibly have wasted his sperm. Also, Adolf Hitler was so popular (among Muslims because of his anti-Semitism and militarism, but also) among Hindus because of the swastika, his vegetarianism and his propagated (though untrue) reputation for celibacy.

So, both men and women could invoke, as a justification for a life without sex, the waste of time that living with a partner and possibly with children would entail for an individual devoted to higher pursuits. But only men could also invoke the waste of sexual energy: women were supposed to be more determined by nature, unable to make a serious difference by their doings or non-doings. At any rate, the choice of spurning sex life and practicing celibacy became the hallmark of the spiritual life, esp. after Shankara (8^th century CE) established a monastic order at the centre of Hindu society.

The correct interpretation of Vedic texts is tricky, but usually Hindus take the story of the couple Agastya and Lopamudra as referring to this sexual abstinence for spiritual reasons. In the end, she managed to seduce him into doing his conjugal duty. This would be mankind’s oldest testimony of the belief in the spiritual value of abstinence, though the Vedic poet failed to commend it (just as the one Vedic testimony of sati, i.e. a widow’s following her husband into death, is at once a rejection of this practice). This belief is given as the prime reason for the celibacy of the monkey-god Hanuman, the secret of his immense strength; and of the historical strategist Chanakya, who transmuted his sexual energy into political and military shrewdness. It is given as the reason for the celibacy of monks, but also forms the basis of the phenomenon of married men deciding to live with their wives as “brother and sister”.

Abstinence within marriage

Famously, Mahatma Gandhi told his wife Kasturba that henceforth, after four children were born to them, their marriage would be free of sex. Some people consider this saintly, I am not so sure about that. After his wife’s death, he, already in his seventies, found it necessary to “test” his chastity by sleeping with naked young girls. Again, some consider it saintly, I think it was positively sick. So many millions of men have practiced chastity, either by lifelong celibacy or by remaining faithful in marriage, and never made a song about it. They just did it whereas this saint had to make so much drama about it.  

In his Autobiography of a Yogi, Swami Yogananda testifies how his mother confided to him that she and her husband had had sex only once a year, just enough for procreation. In Hare Krishna communities, married couples are required to have just enough sex for procreation, and otherwise to abstain from it. In my observation, this results in cold marriages and a high divorce rate. I have also had several friends impose this abstinence on their wives or girlfriends, and invariably saw this end in separation. It seems the intimacy of sexual relations is good for the bonding between spouses. I doubt that people who practise this abstinence are thereby so much more spiritual than others, eventhough this sacrifice of pleasure and togetherness proves their initial spiritual commitment. In this case, I tend to forgive Saint Paul for his wrong views on matters like the illusory Resurrection, and recommend his advice that husband and wife should not refuse each other their bodies.

An alternative, now popularized in New Age circles through workshops called “Tantric” or pertaining to the “Dao of Love”, is that sperm should indeed be saved, but not at the cost of sex. This goes back to an ancient practice in Chinese elite circles of having sex without “spilling” any sperm. The man can save and maximize his life force by dipping his “stalk” into the female juices but refraining from ejaculation. The woman has no such option, but nonetheless greatly benefits: it is because of her sexual excitement that the juices flow. Feminists might object that the woman only serves as an instrument for the man’s practice, but at least her satisfaction is highly valued, which is rather preferable to, say, female genital mutilation. Of course, modern science is skeptical of the magical properties ascribed to sexual juices, but at least the practice of having sex without ejaculating is reported by many men as both feasible and beneficial. The initial hurdles to be overcome are a sense of incomplete satisfaction afterwards, which is overcome with some practice; and the female partner’s feeling of being rejected, of the man withholding himself from her. It is up to him to prove to her that this was a mistaken impression, and that in fact she stands to gain from his self-control. In this case, the spiritual benefits ascribed to this limited form of sexual abstinence are not moralistic and anti-sexual, but pertain to the tangible gain in energy. The sexual excitement and “friction” generate energy, and this energy is then channeled upwards. The self-control contributes to a yogic attitude, though yoga itself is still something else.

This glorification of sexual abstinence has a basis in reality, but is much exaggerated. Modern medicine holds that at least some sexual discharge is healthier than constant self-denial. The choice between celibacy and marriage involves far more than just the sexual aspect, but here the evidence is even stronger. It has been shown that Protestant vicars, who are married, enjoy a longer and healthier old age than Catholic priests, who are celibate. Hindus will also object that Christian abstinence differs from Hindu abstinence in that Christians effectively save up their sexual energy but don’t use it, whereas in yoga it is transmuted into spiritual power. Being familiar with both religions, I hesitate to speak out, if only because many venerated Hindu sages aren’t really yogis.

“Tantra”

Conversely, the “Tantric” glorification of sex is equally exaggerated, or is just plain wrong. As a lady commenting on the sex scandal involving US president Bill Clinton said, pooh-poohing all the commotion: “It’s only sex.”

Sex is only of limited importance in yogic matters. The New Age slogan “f…ing towards Enlightenment” (to borrow from a cover-story in the leading Dutch New Age paper Onkruid) is obviously ridiculous: sex turns attention outwards, whereas yoga turns it inwards. More seriously, it can be observed that the attitude regarding celibacy and chastity differ between different traditions promising a path to Liberation. In some traditions they will teach you that abstinence is indispensible, whereas in others the same spiritual path is practiced and taught by married men.  The main difference here is not between Western and Eastern, as both cultural spheres have known both celibacy and skepticism thereof. Some think abstinence is a precondition for serious yoga, others hardly even talk about the subject.

Now that the word Tantra has acquired such a titillating aura in the West, it deserves mention that this is all a big misunderstanding. To be sure, Tantra is a major tradition and contains a lot more than this “left-hand path” of sexual indulgence. Leaving those 99% aside, we had better realize that the explicitly sexual part (the “transgressive sacrality”, i.e. doing for religious purposes what is otherwise forbidden) is less than appealing. As a well-known researcher says: the Tantra of New Age workshops is mainly concerned with giving women better orgasms and men more staying power, but these were not at all the focus of Indian Tantra practitioners. What was more in evidence was a sacrificial ritual in which sexual fluids were offered to the gods. Not really appetizing, and nothing that a modern Westerner would deem capable of triggering anything worthwhile.

Sexual symbolism is in evidence, as in the copulating gods of Tibetan Buddhism, or in the Shiva-Shakti imagery, but its meaning is multidimensional and should not be reduced to the sexual level. Thus, the mantra “Aum mani padme hum” can be translated as “Hail the jewel in the lotus”, which Freudians (including a vocal school of American Indologists) eagerly interpret as “the penis in the vagina”. In fact, the sex organs are only the most explicit incarnation of the male and female principles which are operative at every level, like the Chinese yin/yang principles. It is heaven/earth, consciousness/nature, bright/shady, hard/soft, fire/water etc., and yes, also male/female. The reductionist interpretation as “nothing but” sexual symbolism is simply wrong and shows the limited framework of psycho-analysis. The smaller cannot contain the greater, and psycho-analytical models cannot grasp the vastness and complexity of Hindu cosmology.

Marriage

Marriage may not be for everyone, but for many it is the best setting for living their lives, even for practising yoga. What should it look like?

As a principle, walking the spiritual path entails limiting your worldly needs. Buying all kinds of objects, travelling etc., it should all be kept to a minimum and subordinated to the ultimate goal. Pursuing sex for its own sake may yield colourful and interesting life-stories, but it is not yoga. Abstinence within marriage may not be as colourful, but it need not be yogic either; it is only recommended if both partners really agree to do it. However, if you get restless by sexual abstinence, or if it entails going against social norms (such as the requirement to “pay off your debts to your ancestors”), or if you simply like living with your own family, a normal sex life paradoxically frees you up more for spiritual life. In that case, as my yoga teachers taught me, it is best to create a sociologically safe situation within which togetherness can flourish. In today’s Western society this may not strictly require marriage anymore, but a stable and enduring “relationship” is at any rate most conducive to a yogic state of mind and a successful yoga practice. Love triangles, cheating and all those other little pleasures only create unrest and distract from what is really important.

Divorce may sometimes be the best solution, and it is a good thing that this is now accepted; but it should be the exception, not the rule. Indeed, many people get divorced very mindlessly (often after getting married on a whim, too), in passing also breaking up common projects and of course the protective common home of the children. Most divorces that I have witnessed, including my own, left in their wake a whole trail of material and emotional damage. All this turmoil should be minimized if at all you want to focus on getting somewhere in yoga. The yogi does not care to condemn the free sexuality of today’s society, but it is hardly a yogic lifestyle.

While I reject the Gandhian notion that husband and wife should live together as brother and sister, for all men and women not united in a marriage bond, it is the perfect model to follow. Hindus have a festival called Raksha Bandhan, the “bond of protection”, in which women tie men a thread around the right wrist. This signifies that they are united as brother and sister, that he will protect her and she will give him good advice. (After all, women are wiser than men.) Its general meaning is that men and women have a meaningful relation but without the sexual dimension. Well, I can’t guarantee that Raksha Bandhan makes a real difference in society, but at least the ideal is established.

In marriage, by contrast, the partners should be united by “love and admiration”, as one of my first yoga teachers (I remember being proud to be given his luggage to carry), Ekiralla Krishnamacharya, said. This is all the more remarkable as most marriages in India are arranged. You are expected to muster love, no less, for a partner picked by your parents. Rather than an initial lightning of “love”, meaning attraction, gradually subsiding, as in movies and in the West, your love is expected to grow gradually, as you get more common experiences. That often doesn’t work, anymore than love marriage always works. But on the whole it gives fewer failed marriages, and as yet fewer divorces, than the Western system.

One of my yoga teachers in Belgium had a kind of arranged marriage. Since he spoke about it in public, I guess it is okay to repeat the story here. When he was translating for a lady who was taking a lesson from their joint Guru, the latter surprised him with the question: “Do you like X?” And her: “Do you like Y?” Without much further ado, they started preparing their wedding. Some 35 years later, they are still together; she now has cancer and he is lovingly taking care of her. Beautiful.

Being very much a Westerner myself, I am rather attached to the joyful experience of falling in love. Sentimental! I remember, long ago, talking to ordinary Hindus in Varanasi who had to laugh at the lyrics of sentimental love-songs, saying that you can’t build a lasting marriage on something as fleeting as emotions, even an emotion melodramatically presented as “love”. But then again, I understand that the surprise of meeting the partner selected for you, and gradually discovering all her charms (as well as the rest), has a lot going for it as well. While I realize the possible drawbacks, I happen to have met many couples for whom an arranged marriage was or is successful. Loving the spouse selected for you is an extension of the love for those who did the selecting, viz. your parents. It doesn’t deprive you of the right to choose, because some decades down the line, you will choose the spouses of your children.

As for “admiration”, it means that, while there may be a downside to your spouse’s personality, you always have to focus on her good aspects. Of course we have to see the positive side in everyone and everything, and we often fail; but this is not just anyone, this is your spouse. It is really imperative that you always remain conscious of the best in her. To turn one of the most profound lines of Hindu philosophy into a piece of marriage advice: “Not because of the wife is the wife being loved, but because of the Self.” This implies an act of will. If you only go, reactively, by your emotions triggered by your partner’s behaviour, you may find fault in her. But here, you remain conscious of your own attitudes and stay on the positive side. Happy outcome guaranteed. It is like Patañjali’s enumeration of the benefits of his life-rules: the imperative of “contentment”, forcing yourself to be cheerful no matter what, yields the benefit of “always being happy”.        

In divorce stories, one recurring complaint is the frequent outbursts of anger, ultimately making life together unbearable. A yogi has control over his moods. Except for saints, some anger may be inevitable, but at least you can develop the habit of treating anger as wrong, to apologize for it as soon as it dies down, to make up for it, and to stop thinking that you had a right to be angry. Modern therapists are wont to say that it is good to vent your anger, that you shouldn’t repress your emotions. Indeed, you shouldn’t repress them, you should make them die down by remaining aware. Admiration for your spouse means that you remain aware of her dignity, so that you think twice before venting your emotions on her. This is a thoughtful and respectful attitude, yogic par excellence.      

Conclusion

Yoga is the self-realization of consciousness, which is the same in men and women. Therefore, the modalities of sex (or no sex) only pertain to the practical setting, not to yoga itself. Any guidelines are partly determined by culture, and are at any rate relative. They should not be taken too literally.

These too are only some fleeting thoughts of mine and undoubtedly fail to do full justice to the importance of the topic. But the topic must at least be recognized as important,for I have seen too many people wrestling with it or getting fixated on some related belief or other. We should be realistic in these matters, all while keeping our eyes on the ultimate goal.

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The goal of yoga

 

Answering a challenge to formulate the goal of yoga in a single page, I can start by saying that it won’t even take me a page.


Yoga has many meanings and the first reports on yogis were as miracle-workers. However, the very first recorded definition of yoga, in the Katha Upanishad, has nothing to do with paranormal powers. It describes yoga as “silencing the mind, shutting out all thoughts”. A similar definition is given in the synthesis by Patanjali, the Yoga Sutra: “Yoga is the stopping of the modifications of the mind.” Some technical explanation about the preparations may then be given, but the definition itself is very simple: emptying the mind. Not too easy (“next week, don’t think of a monkey”), but certainly simple, like the zero among the numbers.

No goal need be defined. Silence is just silence, it is not in the service of anything else: "What's the use? No use! I just sit."

The conjunction with the doctrine of reincarnation (which also exists in cultures that don’t know of yoga), central to Jainism and Buddhism, is now generally believed east of the Indus, and also among Western yoga practitioners. It says that the goal of yoga is the stopping of the wheel of reincarnations. Possibly this is based on empirically-gained knowledge of the reincarnation cycle by practising yogis. The Buddha claimed to know all his incarnations, but accomplished yogis I know, report never to have had such experiences. At any rate, reincarnation is a separate doctrine not necessary for the notion and practice of yoga.

The conjunction with the doctrine of kundalini (energy lying coiled at the base of the spine which can be awakened and raised to the crown) is even younger, and was unknown to the first yoga writers. Here again, kundalini exists separately from yoga: it has been reported to rise in non-yogis, spontaneously or under the influence of drugs, and is known in cultures that don’t know yoga, such as those of the San (Bushmen), who dance to create a “warm feeling in the back”, or the Australian Aboriginals. In China, it was applied in a meditational practice, the “microcosmic orbit” where energy is led up the spine by the attention and the breath. I suspect that “kundalini yoga” came about as a variation on this Chinese practice, but am still looking for more relevant information. At any rate, yoga can be understood without reference to kundalini.   

In China, a practice of yoga (meditation) existed in parallel with the yoga outlined in the Upanishads and the ensuing Indian tradition. Zhuangzi speaks of “turning your eyes and ears inwards”, “shutting out your own thinking” and “remaining silent”. His simple definition is “sit and forget”. So, let’s cut out all the crap, all the visions and “spiritual experiences”, and focus on this demanding but very straightforward practice: emptying the mind.    

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Comparative Philosophy: SCFA 25 years

 

 

The School

On 6 September 2014, in the central auditorium of Antwerp University, within biking distance of my home, the School voor Comparatieve Filosofie Antwerpen (no translation needed; in puristic Dutch the middle terms would have been “Vergelijkende Wijsbegeerte”) celebrated its 25^th jubilee. Its founding president was Ulrich Libbrecht, now 86, who spoke at the function. He was my thesis promotor and main professor in Sinology. The School’s present president is Patricia Konings, who was a fellow student of mine. We graduated in 1989, just when our promotor founded the School. I myself have given a number of lectures at the School; and know many of the lecturers and former and present students. So I had ample reason to attend.

It must have been when I was doing my thesis, i.e. when the professor was laying the groundwork for the School, that he related his experiences at the conference on Comparative Philosophy in Hawaii. Richard Rorty and other big names in Western philosophy dismissed the whole idea. Indeed, that was and still largely remains the standard viewpoint in Western philosophy circles: that, as we learned in our course of Fundamental Philosophy, “the Orient has ideas, has wisdom, but not what we understand as philosophy”, and therefore no meaningful comparison can be made. Worse, at the conference, lectures by Asian speakers were treated as coffee-breaks. So, that was the mentality the fledgling School was up against. Everybody talks about globalization, but the globalization of thought is taking off only very slowly.

 

The celebration 

The show started with Feniks Taiko, a handful of Flemings playing the Japanese drums. To my surprise, Grete Moortgat, whom I had also known as a student, had found a lifelong vocation as leader of this band.  Very exciting. Later on, the afternoon was punctuated by the very European folk band Faran Flad, featuring Erwin Libbrecht, the founder’s son.

The welcome word was pronounced by Georges Bogaerts, co-founder and secretary since the beginning, who gave a survey of the genesis and history of the School. Briefly, it has been flourishing since the beginning, and even took the turn of Professor Libbrecht’s retirement successfully. Per course day, there are some 200 students; 90 at the start.

The next speech was given by Dra. Konings, who highlighted the positive role the School had played in the lives of its students and the need for such a globally-oriented thought centre. She emphasized the School motto Ego Mundi Civis, “I am a citizen of the world”. She also thanked the School’s anonymous sponsors, for there is no form of financing by the state.  She offered a Japanese acorn tree to Prof. Libbrecht, who lives in the hilly countryside, still works in his large garden, and at one time was a leading pioneer of the ecologist movement in our country.

Leading Flemish philosopher Guido Van Heeswijck spoke about “The uselessness of Comparative Philosophy”. Useless, but a privilege. The word school comes from scholè, “leisure”, and it is the domain of “a scholar and a gentleman”. This is not the school our politicians have in mind as a preparation for the labour market. The School is really for pleasure, useless. There are, in English, two types of researchers: “scholars” vs. “scientists”. Philosophy is for mankind what water is for the fish.   Ideas are never innocent, for they change the world. Breaking out of the dogmatic sleep creates uncertainty, “the certainty of uncertainty”. He quoted Libbrecht as desiring in philosophy more Reine Luft, “pure air”. The School contrasted with the average University, which is too much of a Procrustean bed of usefulness.

Finally, playwright Peter De Graef brought a monologue. Of the many profound topics touched upon in a light manner, I recall the first impressions of the meditator. He is bound to ask himself, not as a deep metaphysical question but as an immediate self-doubt: “What am I doing here?” And that question is the beginning of all wisdom.

 

Ulrich Libbrecht

The aged professor himself took the stage to relate, with his usual humour, a lot of detail about the founding of the school. In this process, the crucial moment turning a plan into a viable institution was when he appointed Georges and his wife Katrien Haeck, then yoga practitioners in Sint-Niklaas, as the practical executors of his vision. Georges once negotiated with then Culture Minister Joke Schauvlieghe, with Georges concluding that the School would prefer its independence to state support annex state control: “We don’t need your money.”  Libbrecht then told the story of Yu the Great, one of the legendary founding emperors of China, who developed dykes and other controls for the flood-infested valley of the Yellow River. The people who put into practice the techniques he had developed, explained: “We learned it not from Yu but from the water.” In Libbrecht’s experience, tangible reality easily trumps all philosophies.

Among his major influences he mentioned the late Leo Apostel, philosopher at Ghent University, non-religious thinker and pioneer of the notion of “non-religious spirituality”. In his path-breaking work on “worldviews” as well as elsewhere, he emphasized that we must think structurally. In the postmodernist age, it came to be said that “philosophy is but a literary genre”, all subjective and relative. Against this tendency, Apostel and Libbrecht have always stood firm in applying the exact methods of the sciences to their philosophical researches. Anyone who has studied Libbrecht’s model for comparing philosophies across cultures won’t be surprised by his profession of trust in the physical sciences. Incidentally, my favourite course with him was History of the Sciences in China.

Libbrecht has to spend three afternoons a week lying down tied to machines for his kidney dialysis. In a sense, he is grateful for this plight, for it forces him to do nothing and contemplate. In so doing, he had devised a new book, De Bricoleur en de Dummies (“The Handyman and the Dummies”, the “philosopher-handyman” being himself according to established philosophy professors, and the dummies being the young generations), already out, and even a subsequent one still in the manuscript stage. Thereby hangs a tale. When I reviewed his magnum opus, the four-volume Dutch-language work Inleiding tot de Comparatieve Filosofie, (“Introduction to Comparative Philosophy”) he was already past 70, and I called it “probably his intellectual testament”. But in subsequent years he kept on churning out book after book. His municipality, Kluisbergen, organized a big celebration for his 80^th birthday, where I acquired a copy of his latest, Met Dank aan het Leven (“With Gratitude to Life”), which he told me he intended to be really his last. I gave it to my mother, equally born in 1928, who liked it a lot. But now it turns out he has held his peace long enough. Earlier this year, his book about non-religious spirituality came out: Adieu à Dieu (“A Farewell to God”). And today I learned I will have to read two more books. Scripta manent (“the written word stays”), they say, but apparently, scriptor manet as well.

Then again, Libbrecht spoke in a carefree manner about his death, which at his age must be considered impending. To those who considered him indispensable, he assured that the graveyard is full of such indispensable people. He saw for himself a remaining task of handelen, lachen en zwijgen (“ doing, laughing and keeping silent”, after Peter Sloterdijk). He wanted to remain active till the very end; he valued laughing as that which distinguishes man among the animals, more than thought; and after a life in philology, he had found that “the great thing about knowing many languages, is that you dispose of many ways to hold your silence”. He ended with a line of the medieval poetess Hadewych: vaart wel ende levet scone, “fare well and live in beauty”.

 

 

 

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