Sugata Bose : Easy it is to be humble when you know the Lord alone lives.
Debaprasad Bhattacharya : Sugata, pl replace 'lives' by 'is'.
Sugata Bose : Debaprasad Babu, if I replace 'lives' with 'is', I will be venturing into the realm of unitary consciousness where multiplicity vanishes and with it humility, too. Humility is possible only in the phenomenal world of Maya where relative existence which we call life is and hence the particular choice of word. Life here would connote an intermediary state of existence of the immanent God in manifested reality who lives His cosmic life in cyclical prolonged impermanence, a state of relative being, nonetheless, between the eternity of existence of the Absolute Being and the fleeting finite form's ephemeral existence. The word 'is' takes away the dynamism of terrestrial life where humility has its play amidst the multitude of jostling forces and renders it passive in a sterile Self-conscious sameness where singularity prevails and interaction necessarily is none. Your objection, DebaprasadBabu, is quite valid from the standpoint of the Divine that dies not and, hence, cannot be said to 'live' as such but, I guess, I have clarified the context of the usage of the word in human terms in societal parlance. Thank you, nonetheless, for always being there as a guiding hand and leading us with your wisdom in the scriptural texts and, so, preventing our precipitous fall into perceptions perplexing, conceptions confused.
My elaborate defence of just a word reminds me of our pundits in the scriptures dealing in hair-splitting deliberations in defence of a philosophical assertion. I am now culpable to the same offence and must seek your forgiveness for such self-indulgence in semantics. This, I guess, is a habitual pitfall into which little learning leads and binds one to verbal limitations in the lower intellectual realm far, far beneath the spiritual self that lofty abides beyond the reach of word or thought. 'Yato vacho nivartantey aprapya manasa saha' [From where speech (word/sound) and thought reflect back and the realm remains beyond reach].
Words are words and are but vehicles of thought that convey, clarify and confuse the befuddled mind caught in its web. 'Shabdajalaang maharanyang chittabibhrama karanam' [The web of words is a vast forest that befuddles the mind.] This is the linguistic predicament of intellectualism and must be overcome if spirituality is to be in any sense attained. The spiritual realm remains far above these intellectual embellishments in words and phrases and their attempted exposition of the supreme truth.
Sri Ramakrishna exhorted his devotees and disciples to shun the unripe ego and to make habitat in the ripe ego. He always stressed on the cultivation of humility as a prerequisite for spiritual progress, stating that water rolls off higher surface to collect in lower surface. So also, he said, was the mode of deposition of divine grace. The humble lay more accessible to divine grace than the vain.
Swami Vivekananda, however, was not much of a subscriber to humility. He stressed more on the attitude of sameness towards all beings which meant that there would not remain any unevenness in perception of personality that could manifest as either egotism or humility. Swamiji's absence of egotism stemmed from his vision of God in all and the perception of the deeper equality of all living beings. Such a lion-soul that he was, he could not constrict himself to cowardly shows of humility but was fundamentally shorn of all egotism in all his dealings with men. His very expansiveness of spirit and altitude of being kept him above petty exhibitions of both egotism and humility.
This brings to mind another seminal personality of remarkable originality of thinking. Rabindranath Tagore had said, ''Humility is an attribute in absence. Its very expression is the expression of egotism.'' No more need be said here for sure. So, let us proceed.
'Vidya dadaati vinayam' [Knowledge bestows humility.] This is an age-old aphorism which is pertinent in principle, though not quite so in practice quite often with modern men of learning who are more often than not masses of concreted ego, data-driven vain scholars of little realisation and a like character, mired in materialism and its concomitant evils, yet, exhibiting a superior sense of rarefied understanding of issues which in essence is material gibberish masquerading as masses of truth. No wonder Swami Vivekananda had said, ''...Bring light to the ignorant, and more light to the educated, for the vanities of the education of our time are tremendous!...''
So, there you are. Let me end on this Vivekananda note and let us all ruminate on what he says.
Debaprasad Bhattacharya : Sugata Bose, wonderful explanation for the usage of the particular word appropriate for the intended expression. Thanks for the clarification.
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