Thursday, September 30, 2010

Flawed "Bhramcharya" - Simply abstaining from Sex!

Gandhi and Bhramcharya

Bhramcharya in context of Gandhi and my interpretation:

“Bhramcharya” is a word that can be found both in Hindi and Gujarati. It has same meaning in both languages. Literally it means “Bhram” – God and “Charya” means Proximity.

To sum up: “Bhramcharya” means being in proximity to God.

Often in India and elsewhere people connect Bhramcharya as abstaining from sex. This is a popular yet wrong meaning attached to this word.

If evaluated, in terms of physical senses and perceptions, this word only means keeping your senses under control.

Gandhi has written about Bhramcharya in Harijan Bandhu on 21/06/1936 and again about this topic in Mangal Prabhat, Page #11.

Bhramcharya essentially is a process of control – but a control over sense. It is a control over self. Gandhi calls it as control over all sense including craving for food. He says craving for food and taste buds must be controlled. If we can control our lust for food, we can also control our desire over sex and desire to eat has great proximity with Bhramcharya.

So far as Gandhi’s opinion on marriage is concerned, I don’t know, if I am mistaken but referring to Mangal Prabhat Page #7-8, he says husband and wife should live like brother and sister. In fact, he is asking not to indulge in sexual activities.

For control to be absolute, Gandhi feels that people inclined towards Bhramcharya should not marry.

MY INTERPRETATION:

As usual before embarking on my interpretation, I feel when I sit to measure what Gandhi said, it is probably like a little ant trying to measure elephant. Therefore, my interpretation may be flawed or totally conceived incorrectly.

Nevertheless, I feel I must express my feelings. When Gandhi says something, probably it does not matter if it is 1910 or 2010. He is trying to point at universal laws. They hold true for centuries.

His idea of Bhramcharya is appealing. It is controlling sense – those senses of eyes, nose, touch, speech and ears. Within these senses is comprised a need for sex and perhaps derived habit of taste.

We all tend to control others. In fact: our thought process from dawn to dusk centers around controlling others. Parents try to control children. Boss tries to control his employee. Name a relation and you will find a mechanism of control operating right there. We feel we have things and people under control and we feel desperate when we lose control.

But, under natural law, we must realize that smallest constituent of any matter is atom. Same way, first point of control should be self and not others.

As humans, animal instincts have not died in us. We feel and enjoy a savage satisfaction in controlling others, firing others, and this gives a feeling of superiority. These feelings are external. In reality, if there is a hollow, we would not even control ourselves. Then the external controls are illusory and transient. That is why people with great success and talent commit suicide. There is an inner hollowness.

If we cannot control our senses, we cannot control our emotions. We jump to subjectivity and call ourselves objective.

We start looking at things by taking our ideas and expectations into first place. Basically, we are moving out rather then inner correction.

Here is where most Gandhians (followers of Gandhi) reside, in a zone of external control. They wear Khadi – they keep photo of Gandhi and make a hue of falling ethics and declining values. We also like them tend to complain about things or people when they exist or behave contrary to our expectations.

We are unable to control our expectations. Here is a point where bhramcharya plays a role. It controls the senses as well as expectations that arise from senses. Here is a place where Gita teaches principals of “Karma”.

The moment we stop our efforts of controlling results, but push efforts for controlling our self and our actions, we practice “Bhramcharya” – the inner control – control of self.

Gandhi, as pointed hitherto links to Bhramcharya a concept of marriage. I feel probably Gandhi was not in his 20s or 30s when he first asked people not to marry. May be his testosterone levels had settled by the time he had four kids. So he was comfortable when he said “Don’t Marry”.

From my personal experience, I feel marriage does not hurt Bhramcharya. Even having sex does not hurt Bhramcharya.

You may argue that having and practicing Bhramcharya is like having food and saying I am fasting. They are two opposites that cannot coexist.

But to my belief, that argument is incomplete and therefore untrue. Such an argument emanates from misconception about Bhramcharya.

To clarify, Bhramcharya does not mean eliminating the senses, it means controlling the sense. It does not and cannot mean eliminating or destroying senses and self. This cannot be right interpretation.

Controlling taste is like eating cucumber when you have an option to eat cake. Nevertheless, it does not mean starving yourself to death – Gandhi would never mean anything like that and ascribing Gandhi like that to my understanding would be incorrect.

Same way, controlling sex, does not mean stopping it completely. I mean if that was intention of God, he would not have taken a deep trouble of creating male and female sex organs and sex hormones. In that case, we would be born as asexual organisms. But God gave the organs to use just as he gave mouth to eat.

Excessive eating leads to obesity and therefore loss of health – same is with sex. It leads to loss of health and loss of focus. Eating moderate food having right combination of nutrients and fibers leads to good health. Same way using your sex energies may lead to their transmutation. Sex with spouse is not bad and does not a bad idea and does not hurt bhrancharya – but going to brothel must be shunned.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Gandhi - Truth & Nonviolence - Practical Application

Truth and Nonviolence

At Page #5-6 – Mangalprabhat – Gandhiji talks about Satya – Truth and “Ahinsa” – Nonviolence.

Gandhiji says that normally when we talk of Non-violence – we carry a belief of physical non-injury. It means, if you are not injuring or hurting somebody physically – you feel that you have practiced non-violence. This is a broader perspective.

But Gandhi wants to extend the concept of non-violence. He gives some examples. He says bad thoughts constitute violence. False talks are violence. Jealousy is violence. Praying for somebody’s ill is violence. Being possessive is also a form of violence.

Truth and non-violence are interwoven. They are two parts of a same coin. They are inseparable. Truth is the end and non-violence – may be means to an end.

Since we can control the means, which is handier. Non-violence is the first step. In that sense, truth is God. If we don’t worry about the end (God), but if we cling onto the means – non-violence, probably some day we will reach at a point where we meet God.

According to Gandhiji, Non-violence is not a discrete happening. You practice it one day or for one person and leave it next day or for some other person – it does not work that way. Non-violence has to appear in each act of life. He felt that non-violence is good for individual as well as for larger sect of people.

Gandhi to support his views cites historical events. He says let us peep back into the history and we find that human as a race is getting non-violent by and by. Look at this: we had been hunting during initial years of civilization. Some of us were even cannibals. Later we realized better ways beyond hunting. We started agriculture. We settled down from nomadic state. We, as humans built cities and towns. The world has witnessed various prophets and priests all of whom have taught non-violence. This was natural since violence could only lead to an end of this world and extinction of humans.

My Interpretation:

OUR DOUBTS:

Normally when we hear about non-violence, our paradigm revolves around the fact that we must not resort to physical fights.

The physical aspect of non-violence is fairly convincing to most of us. So every day street fights and murders are not so rampant. Though physical violence occurs, but in comparison to total number of people and interactions happening every day, they are few.

It is also true that we no longer take out daggers and swords every now and then. Neither do we run to kill our opponents in every day life.

Gandhiji, however talks about other part of nonviolence that extends in the mental and spiritual part.

This part of non-violence is not very convincing at the first instance. To those whom this aspect convinces, find great difficulty in practicing it.

Applicability of non-violence and its benefits in legal, corporate and personal worlds:

As pointed out earlier, the principals of non-violence and truth sound archaic.
Very first questions that we may want to push on the table, if we open our heart and tell out our feelings honestly are:

1. How is non violence going to help me?
2. My opponents don’t practice it – why should I?
3. I cannot survive if I try to step into shoes of saint – and you talk of non-violence!
4. In a world of business, we have to tell lies, we have to fool others, and we have to respond to events in a way they react to us…
5. These things look great in books – they are useless in practice!
6. Non-violence is a word used by cowards and sadist who have no ability to respond.

The points raised above are very genuine. They are not wrong and they make more sense then nonviolence. But, I must say after lending analysis that they are incomplete and represent single dimension that is misleading.

When I hear Gandhians (followers of Gandhi) talking about Gandhi’s principals, I find amazing stiffness – sort of sadist people in them. They are a fracas of “Tanpura” (Indian Musical Instrument). But can we add spice and hip hop to his great ideas without losing its great flavor and benefits it offers? Let us see.

When I read first these thoughts, I was deeply inspired, but doubts came in. I must confess. It did not simply work – I thought how is this going to apply? I mean for example, lawyers take wrong adjournments, they fool their clients – bill them extra hours, they give advice that encourage people to litigate and even if they do pre litigation review, they do it many times even if they are sure about legal position and a clear advice without pretending to research could clear off the matter. They write articles in journals, not with an intention of educating people, but to attract clients. Don’t lawyers envy each other? Can a lawyer openly confess to his client and say – he believes that opponent has a better lawyer? Doesn’t each of us do it in some form or other? For example, a known person suddenly becoming very successful and we find no happiness or admiration for that success. Rather may not even like to hear that! That is envy!

May be this is smoke that clouds our minds.

Not only lawyer but all of us in different parts of life in different professions do this thing often, knowingly or unknowingly.

We tend to be self centered. But the difficulty comes, when we are not truly self-centered. We don’t even know what is good for us from a selfish standpoint – be it selfish.

One thing that we must accept is a fact that genetically we are in a race for survival and the fittest survives – one who can adapt to change survives most.

But a survival of uncivilized is different from civilized. Once in higher state of mental standards the rules of game become different – although the principal of survival continues.

When we talk about rules of game – what do we want? We want honestly for us. We want people to be honest to us. When we buy car or a house we don’t want to be dumped with crap lot. In relations we want our wife to practice fidelity. We want our child to work hard and grow up shouldering responsibility. We want our business associate to be honest to us. We want our debtors to make timely payment to us and so on is the list. Yeah!

But how are we going built up a rendezvous like that? I mean if you go to a church or temple you meet people who like to worship and you go to a brothel you meet people having physical cravings.

You shall reap what you sow – there are no short cuts. Now if you are a person intrinsically supporting violence or back stabbing, you will be supported by people who also enjoy that. May be, if you are too good at creating designs for trapping people – you lead your band. It is great to be a gang of that sort because, things work right. A devil team resounds well because they manage to subdue people. But – when you do that remember you are never surrounded by people with high ethics or sense of integrity. You will built a mess around you and survive so long as you can handle the mess. The moment your evil team finds you weak, they withdraw support you – they tear you to pieces because that is a rule of game you play. You enjoyed the rules when you won and you must not complain foul when others practice same sins you patronaged.

Say in the group of lions – those carnivorous – moment principal lion is injured or incapacitated, he is ousted and sometimes in such a great misery that wolves tear off lions. Now remember human counterparts – all of us care for older ones – don’t we? So in a human concept growing physically old does not necessarily by implication mean death – of course unless you have sown distrust, selfishness, lack of attention in your children – you get great results.

Here the principal of survival - the natural principal remains intact. That principal is not wrong and neither invalid. But the rules of game change.

Gandhi’s ideas to my understanding should be applied for changing the rules of the game. The rules of the game that Gandhi talks support the basic principal of survival. Rather that old man quietly whispers – if you want survival – you have to practice non-violence.

If you want your friends and your associates, customers and your family viz. wife, child and all others around you to be honest to you – first give honesty. Shun people who cannot simply accept honestly as a basic idea. If you do that you built a long lasting relation. Relation – where you eat mangoes you have sown for years.

So from selfish point of view – Gandhi’s principals are very appealing and make sense.