Sādhanā: Tradition and Spiritual Praxis

    Ultimate spiritual authority in India is in practice held to belong not to ancient books or their learned expositions, but to those who are believed to have personal experience of spiritual truth. Spiritual truth is not held to be something totally beyond the human ken, revealed once for all to some incarnation or prophet of God. Nor is it something to which man can attain only in the life after death. Spiritual truth is capable of being reached while a man yet lives; this attainment of spiritual truth is profoundly different from its apprehension in merely faith or philosophy. It is a living vision which transforms the inner life, faculties and powers of the person who attains to it. Authority belongs to one ‘who has attained’ (apta). The Vedic seer (ṛsi), the enlightened one (buddha) or the perfected one (siddha) or the worthy one (arhant) among the Buddhists or the Jainas, or the Adept (siddha) among the tāntrika or the sant in the bhakti schools, are all variations of the same ideal figure. The process of seeking and obtaining spiritual vision and inner transformation has been variously called, the commonest expressions being sādhanā, or yoga.

    It may be felt that what has been described as sādhanā here is nothing different from religious life or mystical practice. While it is true that all moral or religious or mystical life could be subsumed within sādhanā, life could be subsumed within sādhanā, the converse of this would not be true. sādhanā is a term of greater generality and its use betokens the perception of a continuity running through all human effort aiming at the realization of higher values along with a sense of their gradation. Values are undoubtedly relative to human needs and desires but they are equally the objects of rational discrimination.

    Behind the diversity of limited needs and desires, running through them there is the sense of a deeper and unending quest of which the object continually transforms itself but continues to beckon like an ever renewing horizon. The true nature of man is covered by a series of accidents or assumed personae. To each of these corresponds a way of viewing the world and of seeking and valuing it. The gamut of human experience runs from the inmost and highest level of purely spiritual knowledge to the almost purely physical level of instinctive life. Appropriately lived, life at each level is a preparation for transcending it, as if a valve were to open upwards enabling a movement beyond the vortex below it. This process of appropriate living and ascent to higher levels is sādhanā yogah karmasuauśalam–– yoga is skill in action. It is said yo vai bhūmā tatsukhaṃ nālpe sukhamasti–– infinity alone satisfies. There is no satisfaction in what is limited. The Bhagavad Gītā is the most explicit exposition of this and is the yogaśāstra par excellence.

    Sādhanā is thus as extensive as life itself, expressing itself in the upward aspiration and effort organized as a deep and persistent point of view. It is not merely the ascetic and the mystic, the whole time religieux who is a sādhaka. A person engaged in his work in any walk of life becomes a sādhaka by adopting an attitude of detachment and dedication. The Mahābhārata relates how a pious hunter Dharmavyādha instructs a brāhmāṇa ascetic. Similarly, the merchant Tulādhara gives instruction to the ascetic Jājali. The Devī Bhāgavata shows us the king Janaka to advantage over the famous mendicant Śuka. The tradition is widespread and well accepted that the spiritual goal may be striven after in any kind of social situation in the midst of any kind of life.

    The Bhagavad Gītā declares that a man ought to continue attending to the duties of his station without even aspiring to change his station and status. As spoke Kṛṣṇa, svakarmaṇā tam abhyarcya siddhiṁ vindati mānavaḥ––man obtains perfection by worshipping him with his own work. As ordinarily understood, religion is only a part of life; whereas sādhanā embracing the whole of life may be described as a non-dogmatic, universal religion of man coterminous with life in so far as it seeks spiritual elevation. The standpoint of sādhanā recognizes the pervasive unity of human spiritual efforts in the midst of the most diverse conditions of existence. On the other hand, it recognizes that corresponding to the differences of the individual temperament, social situation and cultural tradition, men may engage in the most diverse practices and ways of living seeking to elevate themselves spirituality.

    “Rucīnām Vaicitryādṛjukutilanānāpathajuṣāṃ”–– Just as different rivers flow towards the same ocean, so with their diverse tastes and inclinations do men approach the Lord. “Vineya-bhedāt deśānā-bhedaḥ”–– teaching differs according to the individuality of the recipients. This catholicity not only tolerates moral and religious differences; it discovers a rationale for such diversity. It rejects the notion that there is one true religion, a single spiritual straight-jacket. Contrary to the religious monolithism and consequent conflict which have prevailed in the western world from ancient times, India has upheld through the ages the free dissemination and commingling of different creeds and sects. Saints of whatever religion receive the same respect from the people irrespective of their creed. It took centuries of bloodshed and repeated holocausts to enable the west effect a distinction between religion and politics, without however wholly eradicating the seeking after ideological uniformity.

    The Western concept of secularism merely refused to support religion by political force. Transported to India even the concept of secularism has come to be interpreted not merely as the religious neutrality of the state, but as the catholicity of multi-religious culture, not dharma-nirapekṣatā but sarvadharmasamabhāva. Efforts are sometimes made to question this broad-minded tolerance and to belittle it as the result of a lack of earnestness or as merely confused syncretism. Doubtless, in the long history of India there have been episodes of intolerance and with the intrusion of the Semitic tradition occasionally bloody conflicts: nevertheless, the difference in this respect the histories of India and of the West can hardly be missed by any impartial observer.

    As far as the argument from religious earnestness is concerned, it mistakes the actual situation in India. The different schools and sects neither give quarter, ideologically speaking, nor expect it. The fiercest controversies and debates have raged among the followers of different schools and sects. At the same time, they admit the equal right of others to practice their own beliefs, and it was abhorrent to them to seek to gain converts for themselves by force. There was no lack of earnestness, but there was a counter-balancing recognition of the diversity of men and their ways.

    It was fully realized that in some sense sādhanā constitutes a universal and a unique path or process. It says: “anyaḥ panthāḥ na vidyate”, there is no other path for, treading “ekāyano ayaṃ bhikkhave maggo”––O monks this is the only way.

    The recognition of a single universal spiritual process follows from the basic spirituality of human nature and the unity of its ultimate goal. Nevertheless, it has to be recognized that what divides man from his goal is a differentiating factor and varies from man to man. The human condition is an individualized condition, and consequently there is an individual way for everyone to emerge from his shell or historically constructed psychic scenario into the royal highway of spiritual life. From the ‘house’ to the ‘high way’ everyone must construct his own path joining other pilgrims at different points and tending to identify the highway with their path. In a way every pilgrim feels himself a lonely wayfarer: in another he feels himself incomplete. Tradition, holy books, teachers, prescriptions and ritual, symbols and maps of the journey, all these give one confidence and assurance that he is not alone, that he has the weight and support of others behind him.

    This attitude can easily degenerate into an over-reliance which confuse symbolism with description, spiritual inspiration with magical communion, or into a narrow-minded attitude which confounds a particular tradition with an only permissible spiritual fellowship. 

• 0 min read
• 0
• 0