Philosophy, Swami Chinmayananda, and revisiting a post from yesteryears.

Some coincidences are difficult to ignore. Human beings are, by nature, meaning-seeking creatures, and coincidences lend themselves to discovering patterns. Yesterday morning, April 12th, my good friend and colleague Sriram sent me a five-minute excerpt from a 1961 talk by Swami Chinamayananda on Karma yoga, one of the most celebrated chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. Just fifteen minutes before I received Vijay’s message, Facebook had alerted me about an essay I had written a few years ago on the same date. The subject was Chinmayananda, and I had written about my experiences growing up attending his lectures. The essay I wrote then was also triggered after listening to an excerpt from a Chinmaya talk on another great spiritual poem by Adi Sankara, ” Bhaja Govindam.”

Philosophy is an odd thing. As a child, you have hardly any choice in your philosophical ideas. You are born into a specific religion and expected to follow one’s heritage. As you grow up, however, you have a choice of sticking with what you have inherited and living it to the letter and/or spirit of your chosen book or books, in which case, there is a possible danger that your philosophical stand can end up becoming dogmatic or inflexible, or, if you are fortunate enough, you begin to doubt, struggle with faith, explore fresh ideas, lead an unsettled mental existence, and come out at the other end far more embracing, and clear that the love of wisdom, which is the meaning of word philosophy as not something static that can be captured in any net, but as a fluid, dynamic and ever-flowing river of discovery that speaks to the most profound human concerns that science cannot touch. The former path is more accessible, safer, and generally accepted; the latter is socially dangerous and walking on the knife’s edge. You never know where you will land.

Before I got to listen to Chinmayananda for the first time ( recounted below), I was already dabbling with the Hindu scriptures and trying to make sense of them. It was a time when I was beginning to become disillusioned with the hair-picking and minute commentaries and interpretations given by various practitioners. I was missing the essence, the vitality that is necessary to keep a passion going. Gradually, I was becoming neither a believer nor a skeptic. Not a good position to be in. It was at this juncture, in 1988, that I laid my eyes for the first time on a book that would completely change my thinking about philosophy and religion – Will Durant’s ” Story of Philosophy.” While the book itself is a series of profiles of great Western philosophers and their philosophical contributions analyzed, distilled, and written in a beautiful style and tone for the general reader, it was the first chapter of that book, ” On the Uses of Philosophy,” that caught my attention and changed my orientation. One sentence in particular blew me away: ” Philosophy, when dismembered, loses its beauty and its joy. We shall seek it not in its shriveled abstractness and formality but clothed in the living form of genius.” In hindsight, I would think that what Durant presented in that sentence wasn’t something that no one had said before, but the way Durant articulated it made the difference. It struck me powerfully, especially the dismemberment and shriveled abstractness of philosophy. I realized with a jolt when I read that sentence that the challenges of living are never felt as parts; they hit us whole, and we are expected to respond with our whole being. If philosophy is to be of any value, its approach must be holistic and empower me to meet day-to-day life. Anything that doesn’t isn’t worth my time. Durant’s book nudged me in the right direction. I knew where I had to look and what I should be looking for. Not that everything became crystal clear soon after, nor did my life fall into admirable order. The discovery is still on. At least, I had spotted my Northstar.

I dedicate this piece to Vijay, who, in my opinion, continues to maintain a nice, delicate balance between the demands of traditional Hindu scriptural studies and its application in modern times. In current times, Nobody seems to have the time to pause, take a deep breath, and think about more profound questions. We are jolted about here and there like flotsam and jetsam. Religion, which is about thinking about deep questions, has, for most of us, become a set of rituals, temples, and formalities. Few have the capacity or resolve to ask the right questions. With every technological revolution, we have chipped away at something that we thought to be genuinely human. The Industrial Revolution, with its steam engines, mechanical looms, and electricity, made human hands and feet redundant; the computer revolution has steadily eaten away our thinking and reasoning capacity, and now, with the explosion of AI, we are in fear of losing our dearly held faculty of intelligence. The question of what makes us human is no longer an abstract question taken for granted by our ancestors. Today, it is a burning question. And the answers, if any, cannot be found in science but only in philosophy because science is never about the subject, only objects. We can probe the brain till the cows come home; we will never be close to understanding consciousness for the simple reason that the subject is always outside the purview of what is being studied. As long as there is a subjective self who feels, thinks, creates, cries, laughs, suffers, loves, empathizes, and seeks moral justice, philosophy will remain the most critical field of study.

The following paragraphs are from my previous post with minor revisions.

I was fortunate to listen to Chinmayananda live for a few years in the late eighties and early nineties during my time in Hyderabad and Chennai. I don’t remember who introduced me to his lectures. No one, perhaps, and I could have been attracted by the huge banners announcing the “Geeta jnana yagna coming soon” on the Hyderabad highways and was sufficiently intrigued by the radiance of Swamiji’s smiling face on the posters. I don’t know. But it is accurate, and many will acknowledge, that there was something about his face that captivated and arrested the viewer – a mesmeric and glowing countenance. In my late teens at that time, like everybody else, I was fast developing into a skeptic. I began to hold the common notion that bearded swamis flaunting spiritual wares and pieces of advice were aplenty in India. I remember my determination that I wouldn’t easily fall into the trap. But this bearded swami, with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips for a change, was different even on the poster. He had an undefinable magnetic quality that was hard to describe. One simply gravitated toward him despite all reservations.

During those years, I was particularly interested in the Indian scriptures. Regular visits to the newly built Ramakrishna Math and systematic lectures on the Geetha and the Upanishads by Swami Ranganathananda – a very respectable scholar and humanitarian – had kindled enough interest in me on the inner quest for spirituality. The lectures at the math were tied to the scriptural semantics and the meaning of it. While it was interesting in its own right, after a time, I began to get the itchy feeling that somehow I was missing its living essence, if there was any, in all of this. Understanding a scripture line by line, verse by verse, serves a purpose and gives solace. However, there comes a point when words have to be transcended, and life, as it is lived daily, has to be touched.

I still remember the first day of the Geeta jnana yagna at the Ravindra Bharati Auditorium. A jam-packed hall, and everyone carrying a booklet of the 12th chapter of the scripture – Bhakti yoga. The twelfth chapter is considered the crown jewel of the Bhagavad Geetha. In twenty beautiful verses, Vyasa condenses the entire essence of the Vedanta into a succinct exposition of Bhakti as surrendering to a greater force. In many households in India, This chapter is read as a daily spiritual routine. I had read many commentaries on this chapter and more or less knew the dictionary meaning of most of the verses. So there I was, sitting in the last row of that August hall, waiting for this charming old Swamiji I had instantly liked on the posters to make his appearance. He did appear sharp at 6.30 PM and walked unhurriedly to his king-sized chair covered with a golden-colored shawl. The bhajans had stopped the moment he arrived, and the hall was silent. At the distance I was seated, I could only see the lean, thin frame clad in ochre-colored robes with a cloth casually draped on his shoulders. He looked around for a few seconds and then began, ” Let the mind be where the hands are……..”. The magic has begun.

His deep, baritone voice, a uniquely exaggerated accent that is distinctively Indian yet universal – acquired and honed over years of studying world literature and public speaking across continents – reverberated across the hall and bounced off its walls before settling into a pregnant silence. That from such frail a man, so powerful a sound can emerge, threw me off balance. In an instant, I was all ears. The beginning was unlike anything I had heard before. For twenty minutes, he did not refer to the scripture or philosophy of any kind. He held us in thrall with his incisive understanding of human psychology as we know and live it in our daily lives. His words were powerful, his metaphors illuminating, his language so melodic, and more than anything else, the power of his experienced convictions vibrated in every syllable uttered. In a few broad strokes, Swamiji painted the background of the study we were embarking on, and after a brief pause, he signaled to his group with a crisp nod of his head to sing the first verse of the twelfth chapter. The verse was chanted in a chorus, and as they neared completion, the booming voice of Swamiji picked up the formal discourse with the majesty and authority of a soloist in a violin concerto of Bach.

That was the beginning of my love affair with Swami Chinamayananada. After thirty-odd years, his style of exposition and his deep understanding of the living stream of life remain a source of energy to me. Over the years, I have drifted from traditional philosophical moorings, and my own experience has gone beyond the routine of scriptural studies. However, each time I hear Chinmaya speak, I am rooted back to where it all started. I can never get tired of him. The authenticity and verisimilitude of his insights are too powerful and immediate to repudiate. YouTube is full of Swamiji from different denominations talking about various aspects of the Indian philosophical structure. They are good in their own right. But for me, like countless others who have had the experience of listening to Chinamayananda in flesh and blood – the originality of his expression, the depth of understanding he brought to synchronizing the ancient scriptures to man’s daily life and living will remain inspirational and transforming. Like Swami Vivekananda before him, Chinmaya reinterpreted and recast the study of Hindu scriptures for the modern age.

Swamiji’s favorite scriptures were the Bhagavad Gita and Bhaja Govindam by Adi Shankaracharya. Perhaps he felt that these two texts presented the insights of Indian sages in simple yet undiluted form. Chimaya’s commentaries on both these texts sparkle with wit, clarity, and swelling insights. Each time he talked about them, he brought up fresh perspectives. The link below came from Vijay. It is quintessential Chinmayanda.