Ephemerality and Reality

Life slips away so quickly that we are often caught unawares and struggling to come to grips with the reality of it. There are of course occasions and contexts like when someone close to us decides to move on, for example – the reality of it hits us but then again the proverbial veil slips back into place, and we go back to living the way we have always lived – a ‘life’ led on the surface of “LIFE” like a bubble floating on water, hurtling towards the inevitable.

Although there is this knowledge that life is ephemeral, slippery, that almost all things in the universe are finite, and that each one of us comes into the world with an “expiry date”, most people live like there is no reckoning or closure. While it is true that in the grand concept of Kāla, of cyclical and eternal time, rebirth and the circle of Samsāra hold out the promise of “another chance”, that in itself cannot be the basis of our attitudes and behavior towards life. The criticality of investing in the here and now cannot be gainsaid enough, because we cannot really be sure of the nature and circumstances of that “rebirth”.

At the other extreme and in stark contrast to this laissez-faire attitude to life, is the almost irrational fear of impending death and living in constant fear of it. Patañjali in his Pātañjalayogasūtra called it “Abhiniveśaḥ” and went on to note that this seems to be an affliction that affects equally, the ignorant as well as the intelligent!

स्वरसवाही विदुषोऽपि तथारूढोऽभिनिवेशः॥ २.९ ॥
svarasavāhī viduṣo’pi tathārūḍho’bhiniveśaḥ || 2.9 ||

The desire to cling to life is a quality that is inherent both in the ignorant and so also in the learned. This firmly established inborn fear of annihilation is the affliction called abhiniveśa. This comes from the fact that the mind retains the imprints of the death-experience from having traversed through many births and incarnations…

In the commentary accompanying the above sūtra, the point about the “mind” carrying the imprints of past births and deaths being at the heart of this “fear” is an important point that brings to mind Kṛṣṇa’s exhortations to Arjuna to practice his Svadharma which was to discharge his duties as a Kṣatriya in the battlefield of life. Physical death is not dissimilar from the normal act of discarding old and worn-out garments. The divine principle that animates all beings is beyond the clutches of death or the vagaries of life and therefore when the “bodily vehicle” no longer serves the divine principle that has animated it till now, then that “vehicle” is discarded just as a motor vehicle is “scrapped” after it can no longer function.

वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि |
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णान्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही || [BG: 2-22]
vāsānsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya navāni gṛihṇāti naro ’parāṇi
tathā śharīrāṇi vihāya jīrṇānyanyāni sanyāti navāni dehī

This crippling fear of death and a strong desire to hold on to life even when it no longer makes sense is compared to a “kleśa” a poison and corruption of the mind that refuses to accept the ephemerality of life and that all things are finite – then abhiniveśa becomes abhiniveśakleśa – an almost toxic clinging to life and a refusal to let go. 

In reality, what we call “life” happens between these two extremes! People often assume that birth and death are the two bookends of life, but when examined carefully, these are simply two events in time that we have no control over. The real bookends are ‘life itself’ and ‘the act of living’, because in “living” is the possibility of getting over the vicissitudes of birth and the act of living in a world with no guarantees at one end and the probability of transcending death in the material world, at the other end. The real challenge is to bridge these two bookends of life. This was not always the case, even a few hundred years ago, when there seemed to be a greater understanding of the ebb and flow of life. 

The Vision of “Life” in Sanatana Dharma

It is in this conundrum that the grand vision of life in the Vedas starts to make sense where the triune of Satyam, Ṛtam, Bṛhat are seen as the fundamental essence of everything. Satyam and Bṛhat are the two great bookends – absolute truth and absolute infinity. Ṛtam is the praxis that bridges the two bookends, in that sense, Ṛtam is the book of life, the root for words like Ritual and Rhythm both of which are essentially about establishing patterns to life that define how we would live it.

This is why Dharma accords such importance to Praxis, because, as life slips away like fine sand through the fingers, praxis and patterns help us come to grips with the pace of life. Praxis is the starting point, consistent and relentless praxis morphs into patterns, and patterns help to slow down the march of time.

In the conception of Satyam, Ṛtam, Bṛhat; Satyam is often translated simply as “Truth” or “Absolute Truth” – when we start to ask what this means, we realize the difficulty that this question poses because those who have found it, cannot speak of it in terms that can be understood by those who are seeking to get there – it is a lived-experience that needs to be atomized to the level of the individual consciousness. Furthermore, if Satyam is the object of attainment, how does one start the process, where does one begin? It makes far greater sense to see that Satyam actually refers to that which is changeless, unshakeable, timeless, auspicious, and pristine; Achala, Sthira, Ananta, and Anādi, Śivam and Śubhaṁ.

Therefore, if it is this state of existence that we seek, then how do we get there, while Satyam is one bookend the other is the infinite vastness of Bṛhat, the universal macrocosm – where can one locate this Satyam in this incomprehensible vastness of eternal space? This is where Ṛtam comes into play. That which bridges the incomprehensible vastness with the eternal truth is Ṛtam, that which sets the Rhythm and flow of life – praxis, tradition, and rituals are all practiced to raise the individual resonance to the level of the universal resonance – to be in Yoga (union) with life and the act of living. 

Sri Aurobindo captures the interplay of this triune in evocative prose:

Vijnana is Ṛtam, is knowledge perfectly self-arranged & self-guided; spontaneously self-arranged in perception & in action spontaneously self-fulfilled through the law of inevitable manifestation of the Truth in its own nature & by its own force, it is the faultless instrument of an unerring omnipotence & omniscience. Satyam Ṛtam, Bṛhat, the True, the Right, the Large, describes God in His being of pure ideal knowledge and self-efficiency. Human life & being will then be molded into the forms of the Satyam, Ṛtam, Bṛhat. For man knowing himself & the world, man will work out his life spontaneously as the sun moves or the oak tree grows, by the force of the idea working out the swabhava, own nature, own or proper becoming.

That is why the Hindu speaks of divinizing all work to a level where that which is Adṛṣṭa (unseen) becomes Dṛṣṭa (seen). This is why the seers of lore were called Dṛṣṭas (Seers), this is also why Adṛṣṭa is loosely used to mean “luck” because surely you should be extremely lucky to be one of those Dṛṣṭas blessed with the Dṛṣṭi of that truth. Since Dṛṣṭi is such a rare occurrence, the need for Praxis and Ṛta – consistent, unfailing, and unflinching. It is through praxis that life is divinized in the spirit of Sri Aurobindo’s “All life is Yoga”

“The base of our being is in matter, its knot is in mentality, its escape into divine bliss. Our aim as human beings must be to rise from the pure idea into the divine bliss and there freed from mental egoism and vital and material limitations spiritualize and beautify our whole existence from the base to the summit.” 

It is praxis alone that provides meaning to what appears to be an utterly meaningless existence – if one is born only to die, then why be born at all? When people in corporate circles speak of finding meaning and purpose, they are speaking of purpose and meaning only in the ephemeral and fleeting material world, without pausing to ask if there is more to life than just the material – it is because there is no divinity in “work” that it appears a chore.

The current scenario, where rituals are looked down upon and everyone claims to be “spiritual but not religious” is at the very heart of the problems that we face. Spirituality and other such vague notions of piety are not anchored in anything substantial and therefore lack the ability to provide the ring-fence and succor we need to navigate the highway of life. It is rituals that help build the connection between us and our Iṣṭa-devata or Kula Devata and so on. Hindu Dharma was conceived to be a means to develop through constant effort, the ability to connect at an intimate and personal level with the divine – every single ritual, even those that seem on the surface to be mundane have been codified after years of experiential validation. Hinduism, unlike what the top court decreed, is not just a “way of life” because simply saying “way of life” only perpetuates the “spiritual but not religious” narrative. The “way of life” needs to be qualified by the fact that Hinduism or Sanātana Dharma is complete in the way it expects its adherents to lead their lives – rooted in the ancient cosmology of life with a time-tested way of living in accordance with the history, culture, tradition, and ritual that finds meaning and expression both in the socio-cultural sphere as well as at the level of the individual – where there is meaning to be had in the mundane as well as the spiritual.

Thus it is that praxis is the beginning of the journey toward self-realization because the only true purpose of existence is to know “who you are” the journey from the known to the unknown which begins with an acknowledgement of the need for practice as well as establishing a pattern of practice.