After reading the following lines, I closed the book and began to reflect on the topic of ‘renunciation.’ I started to contemplate with a question: why did I renounce? Did I really renounce? As these questions began to inspire me, I wrote this song [BT Song 1158] with the satisfaction that one who renounces need not even understand why they renounced. But they must ultimately renounce the concept of renunciation itself.
It is worth reading what Manu V. Devadevan further says on this subject [A Prehistory of Hinduism, De Gruyter Open Ltd. Warsaw/Berlin, 2016]:
“Whatever compelled men and women to forsake mundane lives and take to renunciation may be a difficult question to answer in the present status of knowledge. One of the pedestrian notions, widely held but never systematically investigated, is that they were driven by a quest for truth. Truth, in this understanding, is not reality or facticity, but the supreme, transcendental determinant of the universe. At least two authorities in recent times, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Clifford Geertz, have tried to reaffirm a place for truth in the sphere of religion. Smith distinguishes between personal and impersonal truths and tries to make a case for the former, arguing that the latter ‘handles the natural world well, but comprehends the human world ineptly.’ He goes on to write:
‘Pilate’s unanswered question, “What is Truth?” Whether expressed or latent, haunts every civilisation, and finally, I guess, every man, woman, and child. We may hope that our society will not cease to wrestle with it earnestly and nobly. In such wrestling, even if we be maimed by it, there may surely be a blessing.’69
While Smith’s wrestling session differs from the perspective of Mircea Eliade in its approach to religion on many counts, it shares with the latter the emphasis on subjective experiences and their inaccessibility to empirical research. This, then, becomes an easy ground from which claims about truth and its relationship with subjective experiences can be made, and arguments concerning the personal and the inner world of emotions put forward without finding it necessary to critically explore them. In a very different vein, Geertz writes70:
‘A man can indeed be said to be “religious” about gold, but not merely if he pursues it with passion and plays it on Sundays: he must also see it as symbolic of some transcendent truths (emphasis added).’
Notions like these are Semitic in origin. That God and the world He created are characterized by transcendental truths that must be known is an idea that springs from the foundations upon which Semitic religious traditions are generally based. In saying so, we are certainly not proposing to identify an entity called Semiticism or essentialize it by disregarding complexities and diversities, for the Semitic traditions also produced the Sufis and the Gnostic authors of what survives in the form of the Nag Hammadi library. Our purpose, rather, is to argue that the notion of truth is not an essential component of religion. Truth as a transcendental category was rarely invoked in early Indian thought, or in practices of asceticism and renunciation.71 The word for truth, satya, had different meanings in different contexts.”
The problem we are trying to grapple with has occupied some of the finest minds of our times. A satisfactory consensus is yet to emerge. Ours is an attempt to offer an empirically verifiable description, drawing upon the proposition that asceticism, renunciation, and religious practices need not be—and cannot always be—understood in terms of truth. We need a cause that is more compelling, more consistent, and more convincing, one that does not yield to the rhetoric of subjective experiences and their inaccessibility. Is suffering one such cause? Perhaps yes. Our emphasis, though, is on perhaps, not on yes. In the current state of knowledge, we cannot be firm like Friedrich Nietzsche, who in one of his later writings observed, rather emphatically: “You have no feeling for the fact that prophetic human beings are afflicted with a great deal of suffering; you merely suppose that they have been granted a beautiful ‘gift,’ and you would even like to have it yourself.” 73—pp. 21-23
*References:*
69. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1997. “A Human View of Truth”. In John W. Burbridge (ed.) Modern Culture from a Comparative Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 99-119.
70. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, p. 98.
71. In the interest of conceptual clarity, we propose to make a distinction (after Thapar 2010a) between the ascetic and the renouncer, although it is not of consequence to the present study. Thapar writes: “The renouncer is identified not necessarily with a religious sect but with an order constituting an alternative lifestyle, in many ways contradictory to that of his original social group. Thus he cannot observe caste rules….The ascetic, on the other hand, lived in isolation, observed the food taboos….A further and fundamental distinction between the two was that whereas the ascetics were figures of loneliness working out their salvation each one for himself, the renouncer was concerned about other people, and this concern was expressed in his desire to lead others along the path which he had found.” (Thapar 2010 “Dissent and Protest in Early Indian Tradition”. In Idem. Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 213-234, p. 877).
72. Thapar, Romila. 2010a: 876-913 makes the interesting suggestion that renunciation involved dissent, which she, however, notes was articulated rather ambiguously. The renouncer, according to this view, was trying to establish ‘a parallel society’ or ‘a counter-culture.’ See also Dumont, Louis. 1960. “World Renunciation in Indian Religions”. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 4, pp. 33-62.
73. No. 316, Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix in Songs. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House.
After reading the following lines, I closed the book and began to reflect on the topic of ‘renunciation.’ I started to contemplate with a question: why did I renounce? Did I really renounce? As these questions began to inspire me, I wrote this song [BT Song 1158] with the satisfaction that one who renounces need not even understand why they renounced. But they must ultimately renounce the concept of renunciation itself.
It is worth reading what Manu V. Devadevan further says on this subject [A Prehistory of Hinduism, De Gruyter Open Ltd. Warsaw/Berlin, 2016]:
“Whatever compelled men and women to forsake mundane lives and take to renunciation may be a difficult question to answer in the present status of knowledge. One of the pedestrian notions, widely held but never systematically investigated, is that they were driven by a quest for truth. Truth, in this understanding, is not reality or facticity, but the supreme, transcendental determinant of the universe. At least two authorities in recent times, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Clifford Geertz, have tried to reaffirm a place for truth in the sphere of religion. Smith distinguishes between personal and impersonal truths and tries to make a case for the former, arguing that the latter ‘handles the natural world well, but comprehends the human world ineptly.’ He goes on to write:
‘Pilate’s unanswered question, “What is Truth?” Whether expressed or latent, haunts every civilisation, and finally, I guess, every man, woman, and child. We may hope that our society will not cease to wrestle with it earnestly and nobly. In such wrestling, even if we be maimed by it, there may surely be a blessing.’69
While Smith’s wrestling session differs from the perspective of Mircea Eliade in its approach to religion on many counts, it shares with the latter the emphasis on subjective experiences and their inaccessibility to empirical research. This, then, becomes an easy ground from which claims about truth and its relationship with subjective experiences can be made, and arguments concerning the personal and the inner world of emotions put forward without finding it necessary to critically explore them. In a very different vein, Geertz writes70:
‘A man can indeed be said to be “religious” about gold, but not merely if he pursues it with passion and plays it on Sundays: he must also see it as symbolic of some transcendent truths (emphasis added).’
Notions like these are Semitic in origin. That God and the world He created are characterized by transcendental truths that must be known is an idea that springs from the foundations upon which Semitic religious traditions are generally based. In saying so, we are certainly not proposing to identify an entity called Semiticism or essentialize it by disregarding complexities and diversities, for the Semitic traditions also produced the Sufis and the Gnostic authors of what survives in the form of the Nag Hammadi library. Our purpose, rather, is to argue that the notion of truth is not an essential component of religion. Truth as a transcendental category was rarely invoked in early Indian thought, or in practices of asceticism and renunciation.71 The word for truth, satya, had different meanings in different contexts.”
The problem we are trying to grapple with has occupied some of the finest minds of our times. A satisfactory consensus is yet to emerge. Ours is an attempt to offer an empirically verifiable description, drawing upon the proposition that asceticism, renunciation, and religious practices need not be—and cannot always be—understood in terms of truth. We need a cause that is more compelling, more consistent, and more convincing, one that does not yield to the rhetoric of subjective experiences and their inaccessibility. Is suffering one such cause? Perhaps yes. Our emphasis, though, is on perhaps, not on yes. In the current state of knowledge, we cannot be firm like Friedrich Nietzsche, who in one of his later writings observed, rather emphatically: “You have no feeling for the fact that prophetic human beings are afflicted with a great deal of suffering; you merely suppose that they have been granted a beautiful ‘gift,’ and you would even like to have it yourself.” 73—pp. 21-23
*References:*
69. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1997. “A Human View of Truth”. In John W. Burbridge (ed.) Modern Culture from a Comparative Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 99-119.
70. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, p. 98.
71. In the interest of conceptual clarity, we propose to make a distinction (after Thapar 2010a) between the ascetic and the renouncer, although it is not of consequence to the present study. Thapar writes: “The renouncer is identified not necessarily with a religious sect but with an order constituting an alternative lifestyle, in many ways contradictory to that of his original social group. Thus he cannot observe caste rules….The ascetic, on the other hand, lived in isolation, observed the food taboos….A further and fundamental distinction between the two was that whereas the ascetics were figures of loneliness working out their salvation each one for himself, the renouncer was concerned about other people, and this concern was expressed in his desire to lead others along the path which he had found.” (Thapar 2010 “Dissent and Protest in Early Indian Tradition”. In Idem. Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 213-234, p. 877).
72. Thapar, Romila. 2010a: 876-913 makes the interesting suggestion that renunciation involved dissent, which she, however, notes was articulated rather ambiguously. The renouncer, according to this view, was trying to establish ‘a parallel society’ or ‘a counter-culture.’ See also Dumont, Louis. 1960. “World Renunciation in Indian Religions”. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 4, pp. 33-62.
73. No. 316, Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix in Songs. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House.
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