Patronising remarks by pious preceptors about devotion along a narrow constricted channel alone is redolent of fanatical imposition and not quite consonant with the spirit of traditional Indian thought that explored the divinity of all of sentience and came to vaster conclusions.
The incapacity to understand the scope of a text, the inability to contextualise thereof and the inevitable imbalance in literary appreciation is quite common these days when intellectual clarity is becoming increasingly confounded amidst superficial assertions based on arbitrary assumptions and misreading of the deeper import of traditional texts. It is but natural that monastics with a superior air will flout the scriptures in the erroneous assumption that the laity are ignorant of the same, that they will have a plethora of prostrate pupils of pedestrian intellectual acumen and, why, even of nominal spiritual understanding, to bolster their averment and strengthen their spiritual pride, and that they will casually slip into the realm of the unreal where fools rush in but angels fear to tread. Such a state of assumed superiority of scriptural conception is born out of the puerile predilection of these preceptors that they are privy, by dint of outer renunciation, to every secret of the author's heart and every nuance of his pronouncements in literary composition.
Well. well, such is the sad state of affairs and let us leave it at that, for these inebriated intellects scarce understand the glory of their own spiritual lineage and may best be forgiven for these hopefully unintended lapses in offering uncalled-for superior advice, when one reflects the pitiable state to which they have been reduced, courtesy that terrible vice of seeking name, fame and recognition which is the bane of the renunciate.
May Sri Ramakrishna preserve the purity of the ochre that is donned by the one who has renounced in his holy name !
Written by Sugata Bose
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