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| The Leap of Faith |
Faith and Reason
Meaning of Argument
At this point, we have examined a
few of the philosophical justifications for the existence of God: Anselm’s
ontological argument tells us that God must exist, since you can conceive of
Him. Aquinas argues that design implies a designer and contingent beings hint
at a necessary being. These arguments may convince us to be more firm in our
faith. In the end, arguments are inconclusive. A leap of faith must be made, according
to Kierkegaard[i].
We must trust our divine inspiration and embrace a higher ideal or live our
life in the mud. Intellectual arguments may sometimes help faith by giving us a
firmer ground to stand on. There are different ways of knowing things, and understanding
knowledge is the branch of philosophy known as epistemology.
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| Saint Anselm |
Faith as a Way of
knowing
Faith is a more
powerful way of knowing. There are those who would question whether faith
deserves to be included as a way of knowing, but many aspects of learning and
knowing defy reason. For example, knowing
your mother’s face or what is feels like to be loved is a very different thing
from knowing how to square the circle. The formula for determining the volume
of a circle is a different kind of knowledge than knowing if my children are
all right, or knowing how to get to work.
Different
Ways of Knowing
Epistemology
is the branch of philosophy responsible for contemplating how we know what we
know. It studies what are called “Theories of Knowing.” According to the
ancient wisdom traditions of the Upanishads, there are different ways of
knowing: There is direct experience, or what is called in Sanskrit pratyaksha. What I know and have learned
through my own senses, mental perception, and experience. Then there is pratyaksha, which
means what we have learned from others. The history of humanity has struggled
with ignorance for centuries and has learned through experience. The collective
sensual and mental experience of humanity as transmitted through education is
called apratyaksha. These are powerful ways of knowing, not to be
discarded easily or treated lightly. Still, it is possible to “know” without
having grasped it with rigorous logic.
You need a busload of
faith to get by.
There are many things
that we know and do without having to go through a complicated process of
justification through logic. When you walk down the street you do so without
calculating every step. You move automatically from one place to another on the
metro, if you know the stops. You navigate city streets at the speed limit and
without understanding either the internal workings of the combustion engine.
You get on and off airplanes to Europe without solving Eratosthenes proof that
the earth is round. You reset your watch to Daylight Savings Time in complete
ignorance of the proof for longitude, the reason for time zones, or the reason
why the Government demands the change.
We make assumptions, assume them true and act. While it would claim
primacy, reason is not the only aspect of epistemology. Just to make it through
an ordinary day we need a busload of faith to get by. Reason is not all in all.
Reason is not the
only epistemology
In the words of
Pascal, “The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.” And in the end, we
must act. Inaction is also action, as Pascal points out in his famous
wager. We may act in ignorance, ignoring
the hankering of our own precious soul. We may act in knowledge, using reason
as a guiding light to bring us to faith. Or we may act in faith and let faith
guide us to divine love. But inaction is not an option. Action itself is a kind
of faith, for we act on the basis of our assumptions. Reason is not conclusive
in matters of the heart, the spirit, and the mind. If, ultimately our
philosophical arguments are inconclusive, if there can be no certainty in terms
of a rational proof for God,
God’s presence, however, is strongly felt through faith. Experience of God is self-evident
through faith. When experience of the divine guides us towards truth it is
called faith.
Opposition
And so,
we may find the so-called “proofs” for God to be inconclusive in Kant’s sense
of critical reason. It’s easy to see that the philosophical positions of
theologians from Anselm to Aquinas to modern theists have faced critical
opposition. Atheists and pragmatists from Kant to Bertrand Russell and Richard
Dawkins have done their best to reduce the idea of faith to mere superstition. Dawkins,
for example advances the idea that faith is “a belief based on no evidence.” In
the God Delusion, for example he states, that belief in God, is a delusion, “a persistent
false belief held in the face of strong, contradictory evidence”[ii]
His argument depends of course on how we define evidence. If we accept the above-mentioned concept of pratyaksha or direct experience, it would be enough that
I have a direct experience of God. Another aspect of evidence, as we have
seen, is apratyaksha, or what we learn from the experience of
others. Evidence is not always conclusive; I may be misled by tradition, or
what my father taught me, but it is still evidence.
Since humanity, through wise men, poets, saints, and the revealed
scriptures has taught me that God
exists, I may rely on that historical account as evidence. The apostle Paul says what many pioneers of modern
science believed, that nature itself is
part of the evidence for the existence of God ,‘ Since the creation of the
world, God’s invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature – have
been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. So that men are
without an excuse.’[iii]
God’s Existence is Reasonable
The
point of philosophical argument is to demonstrate that God’s existence, while
not fully provable by Western reason, is reasonable.
That while faith may go beyond reason it is not unreasonable to have faith. The greatest minds in the history of
human civilization have spent years of their lives in contemplating and
defending faith. Faith may have devastating consequences for reason, but in the
end the tragedy of death overtakes us all with the most devastating of
consequences. Materialists would destroy faith on the basis of reason. But
reason cannot account for consciousness, existence, or life itself, despite the
best efforts of mundane philosophers. And after centuries of scientific
progress human society maintains an innate sense of faith, not only in the
soul, but in a higher power. This despite all propaganda to the contrary.
The Soviet Union under the iron curtain saw nearly a century of state atheism, but as soon as the curtain was lifted, people returned to their worship. It’s hard to see this as mere superstition Is it possible that the best minds of thousands of generations of humanity, including Aquinas, Dante, Milton and others were ingenuous victims of superstition? It is not reasonable.
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| God's existence is reasonable. |
The Soviet Union under the iron curtain saw nearly a century of state atheism, but as soon as the curtain was lifted, people returned to their worship. It’s hard to see this as mere superstition Is it possible that the best minds of thousands of generations of humanity, including Aquinas, Dante, Milton and others were ingenuous victims of superstition? It is not reasonable.
What is Faith?
Then what is faith, exactly? Faith is not an easy concept to
grasp. It does not mean “an unfounded belief.” It stands against reason as a
distinct manner of understanding reality. Faith is only belief. Faith implies trust; it
includes the idea of confidence in the right path. I have faith that my feet
will carry me forward, that the earth will bear my weight and that the sun will
shine tomorrow. I cannot explain this confidence, but it is certainly based on
evidence. Faith in God is based on a
similar confidence in what I know, what I’ve been taught, and what I have
experienced.
Our ultimate concern
Nevertheless, faith is difficult to define. Christian theologian Paul Tillich has pointed out in his work, The Dynamics of Faith, “There is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and popular, which is subject to more misunderstandings, distortions and questionable definitions than the word ‘faith.’” Tillich defines faith as our “ultimate concern,” beyond our concerns with survival, food and shelter. With advances in evolutionary science, the line between man and animal has blurred. All life is concerned with survival. As human beings we are also concerned with survival. Food, shelter, and survival are the basic needs of all animals. And yet human society, in contrast with the animal society has other concerns. Faith is our highest concern, for it deals with the inner life, the life of consciousness. Faith is a way of knowing which guides the soul to its immortal destiny.
Political, Rational, and Spiritual Animals
Animals produce no
art; humans have aesthetic concerns. Animals have no literature; human society
is self-reflective. There are no dogs who write books on what it means to be a
dog; human society abounds with self-reflection. More than dogs, who are highly
social, humans are social animals. We
cannot imagine life in solitary. We yearn for human company, human love. Above
the love of a life-partner, we are social to the extent of a wider human
community. We have social concerns. We organize society through political
means. We are political animals, said Aristotle. And yet more than morality,
society and reason, more than politics, man is a spiritual animal. We have spiritual
concerns. While we have a number of
concerns, the spiritual concern is the most profound, since it goes to
the very core of who we are. Reason
alone is incapable of revealing our complete spiritual identity. Logic and
reason may point in the direction of spiritual reality, but we must travel the
path to spiritual truth with faith alone as our guide.
Reason vs. Faith
The greatest poet of faith in the medieval world was Dante
Alighieri, who wrote his greatest work some 700 years ago in 1316. In his Divine Comedy he does his best to justify faith as a
higher guide to reason. Reason is useful, says Dante: it can guide us through
hell, just as the dead poet Virgil guided him in his moment of crisis. Reason
is even capable to some extent of mitigating the tortures of marginal reality,
purgatory, where one may be suspended between eternity and the world of
exploitation. But only faith is capable of bringing us closer to divinity.
Reason fails us when we need the higher guidance that only faith can bring. And
so Virgil leaves him when he finds a higher guide in faith, represented by
Beatrice.
The blind poet Virgil was a competent guide through the
travails of hell and even through purgatory’s torments, but since he represents
reason, his council is left behind when Dante is ready to enter his final
journey towards divinity. Virgil represents reason, literature, the authority
of poets. His vision is limited. His blindness is more than a metaphor. Reason
can guide us towards the light, but in the end is blind and cannot perceive the
spiritual light directly. Virgil can penetrate no further than purgatory, the
margin between hell and heaven. Unable to lift Dante beyond the marginal plane,
he takes his leave.
Reason is fallible
Like our own sense of logic and science, Virgil’s reason is
fallible. Like a gentle father he guides Dante as far as he can towards the
divine light of perfect love, but like a good father, he knows his limitations.
Virgil falls back when the time comes and lets Dante proceed with the help of
faith alone in the form of Beatrice. Beatrice represents faith in divine love
for Dante. Only faith can bear him beyond the realm of reason. He must bid
goodbye to reason in the form of Virgil. Virgil confesses as much when he tells
Dante to suspend his doubt until he hears what Beatrice as the light between
truth and the intellect tells him. [iv]
Virgil confesses his own limitations as a representative of reason and commends
Dante to the truth of faith. “As much as reason sees here,” says the old blind
poet of Rome, “I can tell you; beyond
that, wait still for Beatrice, for it is a matter of faith.” Purgatorio 18.46-48 Virgil, the representative of reason who
guides Dante with the help of philosophy cannot take him beyond the realms of
human trial; he cannot go higher to perceive the visions and paradoxical realities
of divinity. Only faith as represented
by Beatrice can help gain him entrance into that realm.[v]
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| Dante's Beatrice represents "faith." Only through faith can we go higher |
Mundane
argument inadequate
The rejection of mundane argument as inadequate is a commonplace
in faith-based literatures from the Mahābhārata to the poetry of Dante. The
ancient Sanskrit of the Mahābhārata says, acintyah khalu ye bhava
na
tams tarkena yojayet
prakrtibhyah param yac ca
tad
acintyasya laksanam: “Anything transcendental to material nature
is called inconceivable, whereas arguments are all mundane. Since mundane
arguments cannot touch transcendental subject matters, one should not try to
understand transcendental subjects through mundane arguments.”
Beyond
the Doors of Perception
We cannot understand which is beyond the perception of our knowledge.
Things which are beyond our perception, we should not simply try to understand
by logic and argument. It is useless waste of time, because nobody can decide
theory. What is beyond your experience cannot be
argued. Things which are beyond our conception cannot be established simply by
argument, logic, so-called science and philosophy, that is not possible. So for things which are beyond our conception,
simply argument will be useless. Virgil leaves Dante, for Dante must be guided
higher by faith. This is the essential idea of the Divina
Commedia.
The
Uncertainty of Logic
After so much analysis we are left with only uncertainty in the
words of Heisenberg. The language of the scientists is conditional: No doctor
will tell his patient that he has no hope of survival. The language is
equivocal: “It could be…It might be..perhaps, maybe." There is no
certainty in their arguments. Arguments are inconclusive: they may always be
refuted with new argument. So while,
priding itself on mathematical certainty, logical argument has no value. It
depends on equivocal language. This is why Wittgenstein reduced philosophy to
linguistic quiddities. There can be no certainty. So the ancient wisdom of the
Mahābhārata says: acintyah khalu ye
bhavah. “Beyond your perception, beyond your sense perception, don't try to
understand it by argument and logic. Then how to know it? Know it from the
person who knows it. That is knowledge.”
The
Blind leading the Blind
Our knowledge of this material world is contingent, relative, subjective.
Just as in the story of the blind men and the elephant, the so-called “logical”
argument of science resolves nothing. The poet[vi]
tells us that once upon a time, six blind men came across an elephant for the
first time in their life. They formed a committee of investigation and tried to
understand the nature of the animal. One held the elephant’s leg and said,
"An elephant is like the trunk of a tree". Another grabbed the tail
and said; "No, you are wrong: an elephant is like a rope". The third
blind man touched the elephant’s long trunk and said, “No. The elephant is like a huge snake. A fourth felt the elephant’s side and said,
“No. the elephant is like a large leather wall.” Another touched the ear and
said, “No, the elephant is like a sail.” Iin this way, they argued on and on
without ever discovering the truth about the elephant. In the same way we can
discuss consciousness as having feeling or being an epiphenomenon of the brain,
without ever understanding consciousness, the soul, or God. Argument will only
end in uncertainty, as Heisenberg tells us.
Inconceivable
Nature of Divinity
Because there is no logic
to explain how things happen in the realm of spirit, the Lord is
sometimes described in the living spiritual tradition of India as
being beyond the range of experience. But if we
simply accept the inconceivability of the absolute, we can then adjust everything. The inconceivable energy of the absolute as
manifest in consciousness and the time-space continuum cannot be understood
through argument. This is why it is said that God is beyond the range of
conceivable
expression. Acintyāḥ khalu ye bhāvā na tāns tarkeṇa yojayet: “Matters
inconceivable to a common man should not
be a subject for argument.”[vii] One
should not try to understand the supreme cause by argument or reasoning. If God
does not have inconceivable potencies to the God, He is not God. This
contradicts the ontological argument. It is because of these inconceivable
potencies that the glories of the Lord have always been accepted as difficult to
understand or inconceivable.
Toolsets
Kant has accepted that some things are unknowable by reason and
logic and prefers not to use those particular mental tools in their analysis.
This does not preclude the existence of another kind of tool-set. Kant’s resistance to analyzing metaphysical
matters through the use of logic does not mean that God does not exist and that
we cannot experience communion with the divine. It only means that the toolkit
that we use to exploit material nature is different than the tool-set we need
for holy communion. Faith is part of the tool-set of consciousness and exists
apart from and superior to reason and logic.
Uncertainty
Principle
Absolute reason and logic resolve into uncertainty, where nothing
can be known. Classical physics is man’s
attempt to know everything about matter. Still, in the early 20th
century theorists in physics were caught completely off-guard with the
discovery of the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle was
discovered by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, and says that the
position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly, at the
same time, even in theory. The very concepts of exact position and exact
velocity together, in fact, have no meaning in nature. If we cannot understand
such a simple principle as the velocity and exact position of objects in
nature, how can we expect our feeble reason to define the inconceivable?
Relative
Concerns
Logic and reason may help us to achieve our goals when our
concerns are relative: food and shelter, survival, even family and country.
Many of the concerns of human existence can be worked out rationally. But food
and shelter are not our only concerns. Eating,
sleeping, reproduction, exploiting the material elements for selfish survival
are basic concerns. In the end human beings have a higher concern: our true
self-interest is in our eternal life. There, faith claims supremacy over all
our other interests and in the end demands surrender. And while faith demands
surrender, faith promises total
fulfillment. All risk, all gain. All
other claims and concerns may have to be left behind or rejected. It may seem
unreasonable to sacrifice our local self-interest for our highest
self-interest, to forsake our temporary gain for an eternal one. But this is
the promise and demand of faith. “Surrender all. Gain all.”
Beyond Mere Faith: Sacrifice
Faith deals with our ultimate concern: our immortal
spiritual life. Faith, then is a way of knowing for it brings us in communion
with God. But faith is not merely a way of knowing. Knowing is inadequate.
Knowledge is a dry thing. The innate character of the soul is ananda—blissful. Knowledge may give us a
glimpse of God’s transcendent Being and our own immortal character, but faith
can take us higher into the world of divine love, where we can discover ananda, eternal joy. But in doing so, in
bringing us higher, faith takes on a different characteristic—that of sacrifice
and surrender. For knowledge implies action and faith implies sacrifice
Knowledge of God’s Existence: Insufficient
It is not sufficient merely to have an inkling of God’s
existence. I may have faith in God’s existence, but mere acceptance of
God’s existence is insufficient to achieve fulfillment through divine bliss. The
soul is composed of three characteristics: being, knowledge, and bliss: sat, cit, ananda. Knowledge of eternal
existence, awareness of immortality is finer than mere being. But love is finer
still. Ananda is the food of the immortal soul, but that
sustenance is possible only through love. True love means sacrifice. So, in the
end, faith in God, realization of the divine, will lead us to sacrifice and surrender. In this sense,
faith is not only a way of knowing but a way of doing. Faith informs me with the realization of God’s existence,
but faith challenges me with that realization. If God exists, what am I
prepared to do about it. God’s
existence implies a relationship between the Supreme and the individual. That
relationship must be one of sacrifice, of service, of dedication, of devotion. The reward for
that devotion is infinite. That is the promise of faith.
The Promise of Faith
With the promise of eternal live and divine love, faith
stands in relief against all other claims, all other concerns. It implies the
ultimate sacrifice but offers the ultimate reward. It is this sacrifice and this promise of
ultimate fulfillment which are at stake in the act of faith: sacrifice, eternal
life, and divine love. There is the realization of Ultimate reality, but also the
acceptance of unconditional love, and
the promise of ultimate fulfillment which is accepted in the act of faith and
surrender.
Faith leads to Surrender
Full surrender is the purport of the Vedas. Acording to the Prapanna-jivanamritam of Bhakti Rakṣaka
Śrīdhara dev Goswāmī, the teachings of Prahlāda Mahārāja in the
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam are conclusive on this point:[viii] Prahlāda was not a member of a proper Hindu
caste, but the son of a demon outcaste, Hiranya Kashipu. Prahlāda’s father was an atheist alchemist
who challenged the power of the gods. Since his own son, Prahlāda was a
believer in Vishnu, his father persecuted Him. In spite of his father’s
tortures, Prahlāda kept the faith, invoking God, who in the form of an avatara, Nṛsiṁhadeva, punished the alchemist.
Prahlāda’s teachings demonstrate that even in persecution, faith is the
stronghold of the dedicated soul, and that God is impartial and does not
discriminate on the basis of caste. Prahlada holds that:
“The
pursuits of religiosity, prosperity, and sensual enjoyment have been delineated
as the three ends of human existence. They include the sciences of
self-knowledge, elevation, and logic, the principles of government, and various
methods of livelihood such as farming, etc. All these pursuits are advocated by
those sections of the Vedas dealing with trimodal matters, and therefore I
consider them to be transient. On the other hand, I know self-dedication unto
the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the dear well-wisher of the soul, to be the
only factual reality propounded by the Vedas." Śrī Prahlāda Śrīmad Bhāgavatam
7.6.24-25
As Surrender is the
outcome of faith, it has been described by Rūpa Goswāmī[ix]:
The six steps of surrender are called śaraṇāgati
and include: “Accepting all
that is favourable, rejecting all that is unfavourable; faith in Kṛṣṇa's
protection, and accepting Him as guardian; fully surrendering to Kṛṣṇa, and
humility are the six steps of śaraṇāgati.”
The
sixfold path has been celebrated by Bhaktivinoda Ṭhakura in his work Śaranāgati, and is briefly covered by
A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmi in his purports to the Bhagavad-gīta: in his purports to his Bhagavad-Gītā As It
Is translation of verse 18.62 Surrender
exclusively unto him with your whole being, O Bharat. By his grace, you will
attain perfect peace and the eternal abode[x], Bhaktivedānta Swāmī comments:
ānukūlyasya saṅkalpaḥ pratikūlyasya varjanam
rakṣhiṣhyatīti viśhvāso goptṛitve varaṇaṁ tathā
ātmanikṣhepa kārpaṇye ṣhaḍvidhā śharaṇāgatiḥ
(Hari Bhakti Vilas 11.676)[v33]
The above verse explains the six
aspects of surrender to God:
“1. To desire only in accordance with the desire of God. By
nature, we are his servants, and the duty of a servant is to fulfill the desire
of the master. So as surrendered devotees of God, we must make our will conform
to the divine will of God. A dry leaf is surrendered to the wind. It does not
complain whether the wind lifts it up, takes it forward or backward, or drops it
to the ground. Similarly, we too must learn to be happy in the happiness of God
2. Not to desire against the desire of God. Whatever
we get in life is a result of our past and present karmas. However, the fruits
of the karmas do not come by themselves. God notes them and gives the results
at the appropriate time. Since God himself dispenses the results, we must learn
to serenely accept them. Usually, when people get wealth, fame, pleasure, and
luxuries in the world, they forget to thank God. However, if they get
suffering, they blame God for it, “Why did God do this to me?” The second
aspect of surrender means to not complain about whatever God gives us.
3. To have firm faith that God is protecting us. God
is the eternal father. He is taking care of all the living beings in creation.
There are trillions of ants on the planet earth, and all of them need to eat
regularly. Do you ever find that a few thousand ants in your garden have died
of starvation? God ensures that they are all provided for. On the other hand,
elephants eat mounds of food every day. God provides for them too. Even a
worldly father cares and provides for his children. Why then should we doubt
whether our eternal father, God, will take care of us or not? To have firm
faith in his protection is the third aspect of surrender.
4. To maintain an attitude of gratitude toward God. We
have received so many priceless gifts from the Lord. The earth that we walk
upon, the sunlight with which we see, the air that we breathe, and the water
that we drink, are all given to us by God. In fact, it is because of him that
we exist; he has brought us to life and imparted consciousness in our soul. We
are not paying him any tax in return, but we must at least feel deeply indebted
for all that he has given to us. This is the sentiment of gratitude.
The reverse of this is the sentiment of ungratefulness. For
example, a father does so much for his child. The child is told to be grateful
to his father for this. But the child responds, “Why should I be grateful? His
father took care of him and he is taking care of me.” This is ingratitude
toward the worldly father. To be grateful toward God, our eternal Father, for
all that he has given to us, is the fourth aspect of surrender.
5. To see everything we possess as belonging to God. God
created this entire world; it existed even before we were born, and will
continue to exist even after we die. Hence, the true owner of everything is God
alone. When we think something belongs to us, we forget the proprietorship of
God. Let us say that someone comes into your house when you are not at home. He
wears your clothes, takes things out of your refrigerator, eats them, and
sleeps on your bed. On returning, you ask indignantly, “What have you been
doing in my house?” He says, “I have not damaged anything. I have merely used
everything properly. Why are you getting annoyed?” You will reply, “You may not
have destroyed anything, but it all belongs to me. If you use it without my
permission, you are a thief.” Similarly, this world and everything in it
belongs to God. To remember this and give up our sense of proprietorship is the
fifth aspect of surrender.
6. To give up the pride of having surrendered. If
we become proud of the good deeds that we have done, the pride dirties our
heart and undoes the good we have done. That is why it is important to keep an
attitude of humbleness: “If I was able to do something nice, it was only
because God inspired my intellect in the right direction. Left to myself, I
would never have been able to do it.” To keep such an attitude of humility is
the sixth aspect of surrender.
If we can perfect these six points of surrender in ourselves,
we will fulfill God’s condition and he will bestow his Grace upon us.”
[ii]
The God Delusion (Mariner ed., 2008)
Preface, p. 28
[iii]
Romans 1:20
[iv]
non ti fermar, se quella nol ti dice
che lume fia tra ‘l
vero e lo ‘ntelleto.
Non so so ‘ntendi; io
dico di Beatrice
“Do not desist…until she tells you, she who will be a light
between the truth and your intellect.”
[v]
Quanto ragion qui vede
Dir ti poss’io da indi
in la t’aspetta
Pur a Beatrice, ch’e
opra di fede
As much as reason sees here, I can tell you; beyond that,
wait still for Beatrice, for it is a matter of faith.
Purgatorio 18.46-48
[vi]
The
Blind Men and the Elephant
John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)
John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. |
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: "God bless me! but the Elephant Is very like a WALL!" |
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho, what have we here, So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 'tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a SPEAR!" |
The
Third approached
the animal,
And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up and spake: "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a SNAKE!" |
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee "What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain," quoth he: "'Tis clear enough the Elephant Is very like a TREE!" |
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a FAN!" |
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope, Than seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a ROPE!" |
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! |
[vii]
(Mahābhārata,
Bhīṣma parva 5.22).
[viii]
परमात्मनि स्वात्मार्पणम् एव सर्वथा वेद-तात्पर्यम्
धर्मादयः किम् अगुणेन च काङ्क्षितेन
सारं जुषां चरणयोर् उपगायतां नः
धर्मार्थ-काम इति यो’भिहितस् त्रि-वर्ग
ईक्षा त्रयी नय-दमौ विविधा च वार्ता
मन्ये तद् एतद् अखिलं निगमस्य सत्यं
स्वात्मार्पणं स्व-सुहृदः परमस्य पुंसः
dharmādayaḥ kim aguṇena ca kāṅkṣitena
sāraṁ juṣāṁ caraṇayor upagāyatāṁ naḥ
dharmārtha-kāma iti yo’bhihitas tri-varga
īkṣā trayī naya-damau vividhā ca vārtā
manye tad etad akhilaṁ nigamasya satyaṁ
svātmārpaṇaṁ sva-suhṛdaḥ paramasya puṁsaḥ
[ix] आनुकुल्यसय सङ्कल्पः प्रातिकुल्य-विवर्ज्जनम्।
रक्षिष्यतिति विश्वासो गोपतृत्वे वारणं तथा
आतमनिक्षेपकार्पण्ये षड्विधा शरणगति: ।।३२।।
वैष्णवतन्त्र
ānukulyasaya saṅkalpaḥ prātikulya-vivarjjanam|
rakṣiṣyatiti viśvāso gopatṛtve vāraṇaṁ
tathā
ātmanikṣepakārpaṇye ṣaḍvidhā śaraṇagati:
||32||
vaiṣṇavatantra
[x]
तमेव शरणं गच्छ सर्वभावेन भारत |
तत्प्रसादात्परां शान्तिं स्थानं प्राप्स्यसि शाश्वतम् || 62||
तत्प्रसादात्परां शान्तिं स्थानं प्राप्स्यसि शाश्वतम् || 62||
tam
eva śharaṇaṁ gachchha sarva-bhāvena bhārata
tat-prasādāt parāṁ śhāntiṁ sthānaṁ prāpsyasi śhāśhvatam BG 18.62 Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, Translated A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmi
tat-prasādāt parāṁ śhāntiṁ sthānaṁ prāpsyasi śhāśhvatam BG 18.62 Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, Translated A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmi
