In All Things

Cambridge, MA. As indicated several entries ago, I want to tell you now about my seminar at Harvard Divinity School this semester. But first, regarding several of the comments you’ve sent in: 1. The photo of Dorothy Day, as Luke Hansen, SJ, indicated, is indeed from a United Farm Worker protest in 1973, apparently one of the last times when she was arrested in solidarity with the oppressed. 2. I take to heart Jordan Henderson’s comment that canonizations should not be made into competitive sports; but since popular support has very often mattered regarding who is canonized, and since politics do influence how fast causes move forward, I think it not a bad thing to mention our favorite saints-to-be now and then; one could go further and argue that some favored candidates should not be rushed to sainthood any time soon, but I’d rather not get into that now. 3. Regarding my description of my course, Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary, David Power asked whether relativism is not a danger in the classroom. It indeed is, but I find that the remedy that works best is more knowledge, well-presented; the more we know about Goddesses and Mary, for instance, the less likely we are to conflate them or imagine indifferently that they are more or less the same. As for offense, I think my job in the classroom is to make clear what is at stake, and trust my students to make up their minds. Thanks to all who commented recently!
     As for my seminar, “Sankara on the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad,” the concept is simple: this Brhadaranyaka (“Great Forest”) Upanisad (c. 700 BCE) is one of the oldest of India’s ancient Upanisads — speculative, mystical texts inquiring into the nature of reality and self. It explores the symbolic meaning of ritual acts, the creative process by which the world was created (once and again), the deepest, unsurpassable ground of life, the possibilities and limits of language — the poetic, the argued word, the power of teaching, the symbolic connection, the denial of limitations — and the search for the self who makes all knowing possible, while yet remaining itself elusive and never quite the object of knowledge. Yajnavalkya, one of the greatest teachers of ancient India, stands at the center of the Upanisad, as skilled guide, debater, philosopher, and as brave soul who renounces the world at the end of the Upanisad’s climactic fourth book. The largest of the Upanisads, the Brhadaranyaka is also difficult to understand, full of references and symbols that have been obscure for centuries, hard to discern even in the order of some of its chapters — and therefore in need of an interpreter who can unpack its mysteries, and help us to see why the text unfolds as it does.

     This is where Sankara (8th century CE) enters, as one of the greatest interpreters and theologians of Hindu tradition. He is part of the Vedanta lineage of teachers dedicated to teaching the Upanisads. For Sankara, the Upanisad, at least in its first four books, has a direction and purpose that leads the student, reader, through a world of ritual and social conventions, through inquiries into the external and internal meanings of self, toward a still more intense self-scrutiny and eventually to self-transformation in the realization that difference is temporary and secondary, while deep down all reality is one, without a second. While not even all Vedanta theologians agreed with Sankara’s strictly nondualistic reading — Brahman is Atman — it is clear that he is a great exemplar of how one is to read a sacred scripture for its intellectual and spiritual meanings.
     So the seminar is simple: using Swami Madhavananda’s translation of the Upanisad — 663 pages — the eleven of us (myself and ten students) are reading as much as we can of the Upanisad and Sankara’s comments, in 12 2.5 hours seminar meetings. I check the Sanskrit and commentaries as needed, and read more of the Sanskrit with several of the students on another day. As when I’ve taught such courses in the past, this one too has three phases: 1. the hard start-up period, when everything is new, confusing, and hard; 2. the middle period, when all seems to flow along with greater understanding and appreciation; 3. the final weeks, when we see that course is not nearly long enough (My friend Swami Tyagananda came to class one day, and reminded us that doing proper justice to such a text might take 4-5 years, even if we were to meet thrice a week.)
     But, difficulties aside, the course is a wonderful exercise in close reading, putting aside mere generalities and staying with a classic text, intense conversation, and allowing ourselves to be drawn gradually into the Upanisad’s explorations, into Sankara’s powerful rendering of it as the most exquisite path toward a radical conversion of life and realization that all is One. At stake, as we proceed, is what to do with what we understand: the Upanisad is not a Biblical text, and in style and aim does not coincide with Christian teachings; and so we are compelled to decide how to use what we read, where to allow our thinking to be really changed, and where to stop.
     The seminar is part of a cycle of courses entitled “Reading Hindu Texts Interreligiously,” and so here too I draw in a Christian classic, this time St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses. Gregory too is struggling with the meaning of scripture (Exodus, in particular), events, rites and symbols which he finds difficult and obscure and yet which he insists have power still for the Christian reader: for in Moses, and with him, we find our way up the mountain, into the darkness that is the divine light of God’s presence, Christ revealed in the darkness. Is this the same as the radical, ineffable nonduality into which Sankara guides his readers? We have reasons to believe the end points are not the same, yet often enough we also have instincts that tell us we must be ending up in the same Mystery of God. We may get confused at the prospect of such sublime and intense endpoints that meet or don't, are one or not, but the nice thing about reading a classic text, being it the Upanisad or Exodus, Sankara or Gregory, is that we can read and think and meditation, then put the text down, and pick it up again when we are finally ready for more. No one needs a final decision on the meaning of such reading A fine education of mind, heart, and spirit, I would say; not all my students are Christian, but reading such texts with great attention speaks to a value deep in our Christian tradition.