For many, an encounter with the
sacred and ancient literatures of India can be a life-changing experience;
pregnant with wisdom and deep meaning, these ancient Sanskrit texts produced a
remarkable repertoire of sacred stories and mythological narratives that have,
over the centuries, exercised a profound influence on the intellectual,
cultural and religious history of the sub-continent. Unmatched in the profundity
of their insight, these extraordinary narratives have, in turn, given rise to
living religious and cultural traditions that express, in perhaps a manner that
no other demonstration could, the extraordinary human capacity for religious
experience and mystical insight.
Taken in their entirety, these
sacred books provide for the intellectual, religious and aesthetic needs of
humanity and point their readers to a supernal realm, rich with infinite
possibilities and divine joy. The Vedas and their corollaries have attracted
great thinkers from around the world and have inspired countless others in
their pursuits and endeavors, be they material or spiritual. Unfortunately, the
sacred books of India have not always been embraced with such warmth and
excitement; the biggest obstacle that many face in their attempt to digest the wisdom
available in these texts is the problem of authenticity or validity. How
seriously are these fantastical narratives to be taken? Are they of purely
symbolic import or do they describe and thereby illuminate ancient historical
events? Is there one way of reading sacred literature or do the texts operate
on multiple levels? These are just some of the questions that I want to spend
the next few paragraphs exploring. By no means do I intend for the following to
constitute an answer to these questions; I simply want to use them to frame the
discussion.
A sound and tradition-rooted
approach to the reading of scripture enables spiritual aspirants to gain a
keener and more penetrating insight into the infinite realm of possibilities
that sacred literature opens up for us. Read, studied and served in the
appropriate way, scripture begins to take on a life of its own, inviting and
directing its readers to a life of infinite promise, transcendent purpose, and
beatific experience.
So as to provide a degree of
specificity and context to the following discussion, I want to limit myself to
the genre of sacred Indian literature that deal with the irresistibly charming
and richly poignant stories of the blued-hued deity, Krishna. Many of the
points made and issues addressed in this connection, however, are of general
application.
The wonderful activities that
Krishna performs while on earth serve as a unique window into the life of the
Absolute; according to the Vaishnava traditions, the life of the Absolute is
characterized by unceasing engagement in purposeless play. From this
perspective, then, the Lord’s activities on earth assume extraordinary
theological meaning- they convey, in richly poetic style, an insight into the
deeply private and otherwise unfathomable nature of God’s activities in his
transcendent personal abode. As a manifestation of his boundless compassion and
deep, unceasing concern for humanity, the Lord descends to the earthly realm,
periodically, in order to invite his estranged servants to his supernal realm
to participate with him in divine and joyous play.
In my view, the deep theological
significance of Krishna’s descent and his divine activities militate against a
purely allegorical construction or interpretation of his earthly interactions. A
theological construction that seeks to extirpate Krishna’s earthly activities
of all historical significance is one that runs the risk of injuring the
coherence and cogency of the theological account that underpins the Indic
notion of divine descent. The avatara
concept, in one sense, constitutes the ultimate expression of divine action in
the earthly realm. The Vaishnava God is a distinctly un-Aristotelian one; he is
not the unmoved mover, the absentee Lord, who sets the world into motion only
then to remain forever absent from it. He engages intimately with the world,
sustaining it and according it a regularity that makes our lives in this world
possible. However, the sustenance that he offers, according to Vaishnava theologians,
is not merely one of a cosmic type. In appearing in this world he upsets the
neat distinctions that we draw between the phenomenal and the noumenal; his
world and abode is supernal but in descending to earth he imbues our realm with
a sacrality, making it possible for us to apprehend his presence among the
seemingly ordinary and mundane things of this world.
This extraordinary expression of
divine disclosure is effectuated, scripture informs us, for one reason and one
reason only: to provide succor to those great souls whose lives remain deeply
immersed in the divine being, whose deep unmatched longing for God compels us
to redefine our notions of divine attachment, whose lives are testament to [what
I referred to earlier as ] the extraordinary human capacity for religious
experience and mystical devotion. Their calls to him, saturated with profound
devotion and unceasing attachment, never remain unreciprocated for long; the
divine Lord, in order to fulfill their unmatched longing for divine union,
descends to our world to embrace and nourish them, and in so doing gives new
meaning to our understanding of the potentialities of human existence.
It is the particularities of his
engagement with his greatly devoted servants that provides aspiring seekers
with a vision of the divine life. The allegorical approach has, in my view, as
its major flaw its tendency to abstract from the particularities of the lila in order to make a more general,
philosophical point about, say, the nature of reality. The wonderful stories
and narratives of the scriptures then are interpreted [or re-interpreted
rather] not as extraordinary visions of divine engagement with humanity, but as
didactic devices that have as their primary aim the inculcation of moral
wisdom. However, in enacting his earthly lila, Krishna’s interest or purpose is
not one of a primarily pedagogical nature; instead, as I sought to argue above,
by engaging in his earthly sports, Krishna’s central and overriding purpose is
to showcase to us all, the divine nature of his transcendental play. The
problem with the allegorical approach is that it neglects unduly this important
and arguably principal facet of the lila.
My intention here, of course, is not
to exclude the allegorical approach from the domain of discourse in this area.
Its role in this discussion is of extraordinary significance since it enables
us to expand our capacity to theologize about the prime issues at play here.
After all, a historically reductive account of Krishna’s earthly sports does
tremendous violence to the spiritual beauty and emancipatory potential of the
lila since it reduces it to a historical incident or a series of bare
historical incidents. In effectuating his descent, Krishna’s intention is not
to create a special place for himself in the history books of the world; his
objective, as scripture reveals, is to beckon humanity to his blissful abode
where his inexhaustible embrace awaits us all. In other words, his descent
creates the possibility for our ascent and so constitutes a tremendously
compassionate and otherwise unmatched instance of complete divine
self-disclosure.
Our rationalistic predilections may inhibit
our ability to interpret the sacred narratives literally, but we ought never to
lose sight of the fact that where reason’s jurisdiction ends, the domain of
divine faith begins. And it is precisely that faith in our Lord’s unconditional
compassion that endears us to him and entitles us to seek a place, all be it a
humble one, among his devoted faithful. And when that faith of ours, so tender
at first, grows and deepens, we derive ever-greater joy and insight by
immersing ourselves in the seemingly illimitable ocean of his stories. And
then, almost ironically, the historicity of the lila no longer engages us; we
brush it aside as a triviality or irrelevance that we could do without. That is
when we have truly understood the nature of lila; when we avoid both the
tendency to allegorize its particularities and the tendency to historicize its
details, we focus instead on internalizing the Lord’s play. And when this
immersive experience achieves finality, a great beatific transposition is achieved,
as we ourselves become participants in the Lord’s play.
[All of this constitutes merely an
introduction to what I hope will be a series of posts where I hope to be able
to explore the aforementioned issues in greater detail].
