The Heritage of Indian Culture: 2.3 -Swami Krishnananda.

===============================================================================================================

Thursday 18, June 2026, 20:00. 
Books
Bhagavadgita & Hinduism
The Heritage of Indian Culture: 2.3 .  
Chapter 2: The Vision of True Religion -3.
Swami Krishnananda.
Post-7.

====================================================================================================

A degenerating outlook of life, which somehow presented itself before the human eye for reasons which we cannot examine at present, became the reason for this carping criticism. While every criticism has some truth in it, it is not wholly true. We can appreciate that the truth of the criticism lies in the fact that we always look upon divinity as something which has nothing to do with our inner desires. We consider all our desires as devils, unholy satanic urges, and so we abruptly conclude that religion is nothing but a hastening into monasteries, putting on a hood or an ochre cloth, and dreading the very sight of the world. We have a fear of the perception of objects, and a peculiar, obnoxious, isolated attitude towards the things of sense, which resulted in what we call the occupation or vocation of religiosity.

Today, we live in a world where we have to be very cautious. We can no longer be foolhardy. The world has shown its true colours to some extent; it is not going to give us a long rope as it used to earlier. It has begun to show its teeth and claws, and if there is some truth in the saying, "nature, red in tooth and claw," perhaps the teeth and claws of nature are visible these days, to some extent, when no man can lay his head on his pillow with total security. Thus, a need to understand life has become the urgency of the hour; and if we are going to be content and complacent with our usual go-lucky attitude, we will have to pay a heavy price by way of utter repentance when it will be too late.

Our religions have become a mockery. This is the great truth. We are not going to be saved by our religion; nor is religion going to save mankind if it is to be a practical vocation of getting on in life, to somehow earn a name as a religious man, a pontiff, an acharya, a guru, a sannyasin, a yogi, a minister, a pope. If these are our ambitions and aspirations, God forbid, we do not know what is going to be our future.

We have to go back once again to the original sources of the vision of true religion which became the entire occupation of all life, and not merely one aspect of life. Our religions are only in the lecture halls or temples; they are not in the taxi stands or tea shops. Our religions are far, far away from the dirty roadside where beggarly people sell their wares. We have become accustomed to the idea of God arising only under a peculiar physical atmosphere; and when we are about to draw our last breath, it is not very likely that we will be in an atmosphere where we can see or perceive this religiosity.

The great masters who had the vision of India's culture regarded the many sides of life—the political, social, ethical, economic, aesthetic, civic, and axiological sides—as different aspects of one totality of life. If there is anything praiseworthy in the vision of India, it is the vision of this totality of the various manifestations of life.

We can imagine how far this criticism of India's religious outlook is removed from the truth when we realise that an emphasis was not laid on any particular branch of life. In India we have the most perfect artists and musicians, not merely monks who meditate on a super-transcendent Absolute. The perfection which architecture has reached, sculpture has attained, music, dance, literature have realised should be a surprising recognition and realisation to people who see only a negation of values in the culture of India.

Unfortunately, our people today seem to confirm the value of this criticism by confining their religious aspirations to worship in temples, and feeling hatred for human values in general. When hatred is rampant and is rancourous in the hearts of man, whatever be the cause, how can religion be a seed behind it? The ethics of life is nothing but the reading of the meaning of the present in terms of the ideal that is above it. The morality of a situation can be judged by the standard of the ideal or the aim towards which it is moving, and in the light of which its significance is to be read. How do we know what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is immoral, what is ethical and what is unethical? What is the standard of our judgement? The standard is nothing but the immediately superseding state of perfection in the light of whose constitution and characteristics this would be worthwhile and meaningful. This would be a very effective pedestal on which we have to place our feet to rise to that immediately superseding level of perfection. Perfection in its totality is not reached at once. It is achieved gradually, stage by stage.

There is nothing utterly unimportant or meaningless in life, because if anything is totally insignificant and substanceless, we would not perceive it. There is some sort of value seen in some way, by some individual, under some condition, at some time—therefore, one is after it. A total nihil or a zero cannot be an object of attraction to anyone. Truth is present even in the worst ugliness and distortion, and the Upanishadic seers were pioneers who proclaimed that our own movement or evolutionary progress is always from ananda to ananda—not from dukha to ananda. Though we have been hearing again and again that life is dukha, painful, sorrow, this is but one side, and not the whole vision of it.

The negative emphasis on the painful aspects of life, and the consequent need felt to run away from these painful centres, again precipitated the advance of humanity towards a false reading of meaning into religion. No genius can have this vision always throughout life; not even the greatest of prophets can have the hardihood to affirm that this vision of perfection is always before his eyes. There are progressions and retrogressions in everyone's life, but a margin has to be given to all these because "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"; and we have to give this margin of concession to the foibles of human nature, together with the great strengths that are inside, which are the deeper spiritual aspirations.

*****

Continue

===========================================================================================================