Purnapramati retreat near Mangalore

(Note: Pawanji conducted a retreat for the teachers of Purnapramati school of Bangalore between 3rd to 11th February, 2024 at Purnaprajna Prakruthi Paathshaale near Mangalore. The Paathshaale is set in a lush forested area near Kudremukh national park. Around 50 teachers from Purnapramati came in three batches to attend a retreat titled ‘Sanaatan and modernity. Photos of the retreat are posted on our Telegram channel.The following is the note written by Pawanji after the retreat.)

I want to thank everyone especially Swami ji, Satyanarayan Acharya ji, Srinivasa, Balchandra, Latha and the entire Purnapramati team as well as other participants for giving me this opportunity to share and organise this event in such an idyllic place. I believe the place, the environment contributes equally to the unfolding that happens.

It was good for me in more ways than one. I could witness rootedness in practice and appreciate it. I could see sahajata in the Anandavana (Purnapramati’s gurukula on the outskirts of Bangalore) students, teachers and many others. I could see the sincerity and, this is important to me, reaffirm my faith in such qualities. Acharya satyanarayan and Swami ji validated many things and that again reaffirms that we are on the right path. So thank you all.

I am getting more and more convinced about the need to challenge and expose the myth of modernity otherwise even tradition is in the danger of getting fossilised.

Also the importance of spaces like the one created by purnapramati through this dialogue, of a discussion forum for people who are rooted and also have knowledge of the devastation caused by modernity, needs to be recognised. And at some point we will have to get rid of our hesitations and fear which makes us compromise by trying to build bridges between modernity and tradition. This is not possible. They are in conflict with each other. Traditions are rooted in the sanatana, irrespective of which tradition. All traditions ultimately have to be based on sanatana—if they are not, they are merely ideologies. And, of course, modernity is not based on anything at all. It is rootless. It is false. Schools like Purnapramati and Udbhavaha and perhaps even traditional institutes like the Purnaprajna Vidya Peetha need to shed their inhibition and come out boldly to challenge modernity, to create such spaces and increase their scope by including not just students, parents and teachers but also lay people uncomfortable with the mainstream systems of education. We need to show all these people that they have the alternative to step out.

On the Bhagavad Gita

“The Gita can only be understood, like any other great work of the kind, by studying it in its entirety and as a developing argument. But the modern interpreters, starting from the great writer Bankim Chandra Chatterji who first gave to the Gita this new sense of a Gospel of Duty, have laid an almost exclusive stress on the first three or four chapters and in those on the idea of equality, on the expression kartavyam karma, the work that is to be done, which they render by duty, and on the phrase “Thou hast a right to action, but none to the fruits of action” which is now popularly quoted as the great word, mahāvākya, of the Gita. The rest of the eighteen chapters with their high philosophy are given a secondary importance, except indeed the great vision in the eleventh. This is natural enough for the modern mind which is, or has been till yesterday, inclined to be impatient of metaphysical subtleties and far-off spiritual seekings, eager to get to work and, like Arjuna himself, mainly concerned for a workable law of works, a dharma. But it is the wrong way to handle this Scripture.

“. . . What the great, the supreme word of the Gita is, its mahāvākya, we have not to seek; for the Gita itself declares it in its last utterance, the crowning note of the great diapason. “With the Lord in thy heart take refuge with all thy being; by His grace thou shalt attain to the supreme peace and the eternal status. So have I expounded to thee a knowledge more secret than that which is hidden. Further hear the most secret, the supreme word that I shall speak to thee. Become my-minded, devoted to Me, to Me do sacrifice and adoration; infallibly, thou shalt come to Me, for dear to me art thou. Abandoning all laws of conduct seek refuge in Me alone. I will release thee from all sin; do not grieve.”

“The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great steps by which action rises out of the human into the divine plane leaving the bondage of the lower for the liberty of a higher law. First, by the renunciation of desire and a perfect equality works have to be done as a sacrifice by man as the doer, a sacrifice to a deity who is the supreme and only Self though by him not yet realised in his own being. This is the initial step. Secondly, not only the desire of the fruit, but the claim to be the doer of works has to be renounced in the realisation of the Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing this Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial manifestation, by whom all works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature. To him love and adoration and the sacrifice of works have to be offered; the whole being has to be surrendered to Him and the whole consciousness raised up to dwell in this divine consciousness so that the human soul may share in His divine transcendence of Nature and of His works and act in a perfect spiritual liberty.”
– From ‘The Core of the Teaching’, chapter 4 of ‘Essays on the Gita’ by Sri Aurobindo

Visit to an organic farm

(A few days ago, I went to the yearly function of a large organic farm near Bangalore. The morning pre-lunch session had many interesting talks about diet, lifestyle, sustainability etc. and it was all very intense and contemplative. At the end, the audience was invited to comment or ask questions and many people spoke up. I missed the opportunity to speak and this post is what I would have said if I had taken the mike that was being passed around.)

First of all I feel very blessed to be sitting here under the trees in the peace that envelops this land. The way you transformed this barren land into this green, natural, tree-filled forest is nothing short of a miracle. All my prayers and wishes are with the team working here. May it continue to be a shining beacon!

My wife and I homeschooled our three children, we lived for some years in a semi-rural area in Kerala, we don’t have any vehicle of our own and in many such ways we also walk our talk of trying to live a sustainable life. I bring this up to establish that the next three paras are not meant to be criticism but friendly advice that you may find useful.

The late Ravindra Sharmaji of Kalashram used to say – Paap ka ghada hai, usse bharne do – his view being that once the paap ka ghada was full it would break and the human race could then heave a sigh of relief and start all over again. You and I have to realize that our sustainable lifestyle has no effect in the larger scheme of things and when we evangelize it in our circles or with strangers, we are not just being ineffective but also rather boring (my father’s eyes would start closing when I used to talk passionately about sustainability related topics).

Another metaphor that I like is that we inhabit a collapsing building. It is falling apart all around us and there is nothing we can do to stop it. It is of course good to carry steel tumblers everywhere and not use paper cups or plastic straws (or, like me, travel in 3-tier sleeper compartments even when it is very very uncomfortable) but we should not fall into the trap of thinking that this is going to ‘save’ the world or is going to inspire other people to imitate our strange ways. In that respect, almost everyone is much smarter than us. 🙂

In conclusion I want to say that when we – (a) lighten up about our mission of changing the world and (b) see that, like the song says, ‘anand srot beha raha par tu udaas hai, ascharya hai jal mein rehake bhi machli ko pyaas hai’ – then we may find that everything is all right with the world and it is we who were holding the wrong end of the stick. My intention is to make you smile, but if you find yourself becoming angry, please read the first paragraph above again and delete paras 2, 3, 4 and 5 from your random access memory.

With much love and respect to all of you, Arun.

Ghar Wapsi

(The following is extracted from a long note Pawanji wrote on the SIDH WhatsApp group)

Since 2014, a sharp divide has emerged in the Bharatiya samaj. No, I am not talking of the Hindu-Muslim, or the caste, or the rich-poor or the North-South divides. In the context of power, the only divide of significance in our country has been between the minority of ruling elites—the tiny percentage of our population steeped in modern/ western values and completely alienated from their cultural and civilizational roots—and the vast majority of the dis-empowered ordinary Bharatiyas. All other divisions are dwarfed in front of this one and if this divide can be bridged then other divisions will get consumed and become redundant.

Different governments have come and gone, even the Britishers came and were sent back, but this alienated minority always managed to remain close to the centres of power. After independence Nehru and his Congress with the backing of powerful international forces made sure that all four pillars of (modern) democracy remained firmly in the grip of this alienated minority. This status quo got so deeply entrenched in the system that, over time, even the dis-empowered majority started believing that to be part of the power structure, one had to renounce one’s roots and adopt the value systems of the ruling elite.

It is the good fortune of this country that, for the first time after independence, in 2014 a crack finally appeared in one of the pillars of democracy—the legislature. We have had non-congress governments in the past, in 1977, 1989 (V.P. SIngh), 1990-91 (Chandrashekhar), 1998 (Atal Bihari Bajpai) but the changes they brought in were cosmetic. The order of the ruling elites was not shaken by any of them. But the change since 2014 is unlike any other, it is monumental. It has unleashed a dormant energy that was suffocating for centuries. It will be a mistake to see this change merely from a short term political lens.

This change has silently ignited something powerful in the majority still connected with their civilizational roots. It is something similar to the experience of Sri Hanuman when the wise Jamvant awakened him to realize his hidden powers. After a long time, our ordinary people are sensing freedom and the joy of breathing freely. This has suddenly given them confidence to value and appreciate themselves and their ways and not feel diffident and ashamed about themselves.

It is a major disruption. The alienated elite are extremely uneasy and unable to fathom the change. If they wish to make sense of the civilizational churning that is happening they will have to look, not outside (as they are used to), but deep within themselves. In this process of self-examination they will be required to see themselves dispassionately, almost like one is required to observe one’s thoughts and feelings during meditation. And this is not going to be easy. Most of them will back off and revert to their old ways of ignoring reality and putting all their energies in creating the same old world they have been so comfortable with.

But those few like us who are neither there nor here, those who have also been a part of that elite power structure from time to time and have enjoyed its fruits, but by some quirk of fortune have also remained connected with the roots of this great civilization, may go through this yagna and come out purified. We may realize that all the various masks we were wearing all these years, trying to belong to that false but rarefied atmosphere of the power elite were so unnecessary and so burdensome. This is the time of praayshchita (atonement) for us, paving the way for our ghar wapsi – coming home. Ghar wapsi to being able to relate to the majority, our long lost brothers and sisters, to appreciate their ways and their greatness, to appreciate the greatness of our civilization.

This is a period of great churning the likes of which is rarely seen, even in centuries, and this change is happening not just in Bharat but all over the world. 2014 has been a watershed year unleashing an amazing energy residing in our ordinary people who are able to, for the first time, find a voice, a space for themselves. Be it Kashi Vishwanath, Mahaakaal, installation of Netaji’s statue on Kartavya Path and now this great event of Ram Mandir, these events need to be seen as major milestones in a process of civilizational resurgence.

Who Am I?

Sri Ramana Maharshi, in 1902, wrote out the answers to some questions asked by a disciple seeking spiritual guidance. These questions and answers, collected together as ‘Nan Yaar?’ or ”Who Am I?’, give a short introduction to self-enquiry as a path to liberation. The 8 page PDF of ‘Who Am I?’ is available here. The following excerpts may encourage you to read the full document.

Excerpt 1:

Q. What is the path of inquiry for understanding the nature of the mind?

A. That which rises as ‘I’ in this body is the mind. If one inquires as to where in the body the thought ‘I’ rises first, one would discover that it rises in the heart. That is the place of the mind’s origin. Even if one thinks constantly ‘I’ ‘I’, one will be led to that place. Of all the thoughts that arise in the mind, the ‘I’ thought is the first. It is only after the rise of this that the other thoughts arise. It is after the appearance of the first personal pronoun that the second and third personal pronouns appear; without the first personal pronoun there will not be the second and third. By the inquiry ‘Who am I?’ the mind will become quiet. The thought ‘who am I?’ will destroy all other thoughts, and like the stick used for stirring the burning fire, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization.

Excerpt 2:

Q. What is happiness?

A. Happiness is the very nature of the Self; happiness and the Self are not different. There is no happiness in any object of the world. We imagine through our ignorance that we derive happiness from objects. When the mind goes out, it experiences misery. In truth, when its desires are fulfilled, it returns to its own place and enjoys the happiness that is the Self. Similarly, in the states of sleep, samadhi and fainting, and when the object desired is obtained or the object disliked is removed, the mind becomes inward-turned, and enjoys pure Self-Happiness. Thus the mind moves without rest alternately going out of the Self and returning to it. Under the tree the shade is pleasant; out in the open the heat is scorching. A person who has been going about in the sun feels cool when he reaches the shade. Someone who keeps on going from the shade into the sun and then back into the shade is a fool. A wise man stays permanently in the shade. Similarly, the mind of the one who knows the truth does not leave Brahman. The mind of the ignorant, on the contrary, revolves in the world, feeling miserable, and for a little time returns to Brahman to experience happiness. In fact, what is called the world is only thought. When the world disappears, i.e. when there is no thought, the mind experiences happiness; and when the world appears, it goes through misery.

What are our retreats about?

(The following is collected together from messages written by Pawanji on a WhatsApp group)

In the retreats that SIDH has been organising over the recent past, we have tried to invite only those who in our opinion are more or less aligned together. More or less on the same page in terms of self-enquiry and a genuine desire to Know (to know what is it all about?). The retreats are broadly about exploring the inner world, the self and the external world. We do not use any scripture, any Guru for this because we believe in this process of delving within in togetherness. We have no issues with scriptures or genuine Gurus, for them we have the highest of regard, but we think our retreat process, which is non-hierarchical, is better for self-learning. Authority has a tendency to lead us towards belief rather than learning.

Why saman-dharmi or people on the ‘same page’? The entire retreat process is a means to go deep within and get answers (from within) rather than from someone else. When people are on the same page and are sincere about the enquiry then they are deliberating (speaking and listening), but not with the other but with themselves. Samandharmita is supportive, or rather a pre-condition, of the other becoming a catalyst in our journey of diving deep within. Otherwise, the deliberations tend to be argumentative and opinions, facts and information start dominating rather than Truth. Arguments are aligned with opinions. Self-enquiry and authentic questioning (as different from rhetorical questions or challenging questions) is aligned with Truth. Opinions, by their very nature, will always differ, while Truth tends to converge even if different people come from different directions.

Another essential requirement, in line with the above, is the importance of authenticity in such a process. Authenticity is with oneself, honesty is with others. Honesty is certainly a virtue but authenticity is even more difficult. The ultimate lie is with the self not with the other. In the process of self enquiry and for “stepping out”, authenticity is essential. Authenticity to acknowledge our inauthenticity with ourselves (nothing to do with the other) and not feel depressed. No justification and no guilt. No blame and no complaint. No feeling sorry for oneself. No victimhood. All of these are escape routes – mind games to keep us away from going deep within.

To understand modernity we need to acknowledge that all of us – to a larger or lesser degree – are afflicted by it. This is painful to acknowledge because our tendency is to justify all our actions. To be rid of the trap of modernity we need to see its totally illusionary nature. The gap between what is professes and its reality. This leads to भ्रम मुक्ति and मोह भंग। if this happens, we step out of the trap of modernity. This is what we are trying to do in our retreats.

Learning to learn – Part 2

Part 1 of this post talks about the first of the two books on ‘Learning to learn’. Here are some excerpts from the second book, ‘Learning to learn – Ideas on implementation’.

Excerpt 1:

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) established in 2008 has been giving data driven insights into our education system. The latest ASER report in various places says the following:
“In 2018, ASER returns once again to the ‘basic’ model. A total of 546,527 children in the age group 3 to 16 years were surveyed this year. ASER 2018 is the thirteenth ASER report. ASER 2018 data indicates that of all children enrolled in Std VIII in India, about 73% can read at least a Std II level text. This number is unchanged from 2016. The overall performance of Std VIII in basic arithmetic has not changed much over time. Currently about 44% of all children in Std VIII can solve a 3-digit by 1-digit numerical division problem correctly.”

My colleague and I were visiting a rural school near Bangalore. We were sitting on the floor with the children and observing a 1st standard class in progress. A small girl came and sat near my colleague and asked him in Telugu- ‘Do you speak Telugu?’, seeing his hesitation she asked in Kannada, ‘Oh, you speak Kannada.’ My Tamilian colleague speaks very good Kannada and he responded to her question. She understood that he was not a native speaker and switched to fluent Tamil. I am just wondering whether the ASER team will not talk to this miraculous child after 7 years and tell us that her reading proficiency in class 8 is at 2nd standard level…

What the story illustrates is that it is not the child but the system that has failed. Failed to recognize, acknowledge and develop the Self-Learning capacities that she is naturally endowed with.

Excerpt 2:

As children, we grew up learning how to make many types of paper planes (ordinary/ fast/ rocket etc.), boats (ordinary/ with a sail/ catamaran etc.), whistles from leaves or paper, string telephones with empty cans, rubber band powered rolling toys, a jumping mouse from a handkerchief, a boat cut out of a plastic tongue cleaner with a blob of soap at the notch behind etc. I can go on adding to this list. Nobody formally taught us any of this but every child knew many such tricks. This was probably because there was a lot of unstructured free time to play, explore, talk to other children and adults, read, get bored, etc.

This has now become replaced by the idea that learning is all academic and structured and there is no space for children or adults to discover such things. I feel that we need to get these free spaces back or Self-Learning, which I think thrives on these spaces, will probably not work.

(If you are interested in buying copies of the two ‘Learning to learn’ books, please write to me at arun@sidhsri.org.)

North and South

My wife and I prefer to travel sleeper class and not in the AC coaches on the many 12+ hour train journeys we do. We have a simple rule – when we travel anywhere in South India, we buy sleeper class tickets but on North Indian routes we travel by AC. This is because the trains, for example between Kolkata and any place in South India, seem to have twice the number of people the sleeper class compartments can accommodate. It was bad to start with, but in the recent past the Indian railways have been slowly reducing the number of non-AC sleeper coaches and increasing the AC 3-tier coaches. This must be the bright idea of someone high up in the railway hierarchy to reduce the losses made by our passenger trains. The people who suffer are the poor who are forced to travel like cattle and, of course, some people like me and my wife who prefer to travel by sleeper class but are forced to buy AC tickets to avoid the impossible rush.

My wife and I were on a train from Delhi to Visakhapatnam recently and we calculated that Visakhapatnam was not on the especially crowded route and decided to try out the sleeper option. Our train was starting from Delhi at 8 pm and we were to reach Visakhapatnam after a 32-hour journey. Fortunately, we had two upper berths and got into them as soon as the train started moving. The compartment looked all right and we went to sleep reassured that our decision of travelling by sleeper had paid off. At Agra, 3 hours from Delhi, a huge crowd got in and brought back our memories of a nightmare journey on a Kolkata train many years ago. There were five people sleeping on the two lowest berths below us and people sleeping in between them on the floor and all along the corridor as far as we could see. When I went to the toilet at night I had to navigate in between the sleeping limbs and heads. This story had a good ending because the crowd emptied at Nagpur in the late morning and the next 24 hours of our journey was like travelling on our nice South Indian trains.

I wanted to bring this story up to highlight not just the differences in what public transport feels like between North and South India but also to point to something else. It seems to me that there is a difference in the harshness of people’s behaviour between these two parts of our country. To me, the Northern part feels somewhat more threatening than the much gentler Southern part. For example, the rough looking five friends on the two berths below us – their language and the stories they were telling each other are not something I expect to hear anywhere on public transport in South India. Now, I may be overreacting or making generalisations from too little data but what has your experience been? When you travel around, does North India feel more aggressive than the South?

Announcing a two week break

The first post on this blog was written on 23rd November 2020, just over three years ago. The blog has 158 posts that broadly cover the areas of education and modernity. The next post here will appear on 25th December after a two week break.

With many thanks,

Arun, SIDH

Why China Survived Its Dark Ages

In his last week’s blog post, John Michael Greer talked about the reasons for China’s culture continuing more or less intact after repeated collapses, while so many other civilizations rose, fell, and vanished. I thought that the insights in the post were useful for looking at our Indian context. Here are some excerpts to encourage you to read the full post:

Excerpt 1:

During its recorded history, China has been through four major dark ages: during the late Zhou dynasty, 770-226 BC, when the Zhou emperor became a powerless figurehead and warlords fought over the wreckage of the empire; during the long interval between the Han and Tang dynasties, 220-618 AD, another age of warlords when some sixty short-lived dynasties struggled for power; after the fall of the Tang dynasty, 960-1271, another brutal period of war and chaos; and finally the period after the fall of the Ming dynasty, 1644-1949, when China fell under foreign rule, first Manchu and then European, and plunged into poverty and misery as its wealth was stripped away by its foreign masters and its government disintegrated into another round of rule by local warlords.

Excerpt 2:

The most important resource base for any nontechnic society—that is to say, any society that gets most of its energy from human and animal muscle—consists of food and water. . . . The heart of China’s traditional subsistence economy was wetland rice agriculture, which used human and animal manure, nitrogen-fixing water plants, and hundreds of varieties of rice specialized for local conditions to provide a relatively robust food supply come thick or thin. Supplement that with dryland millet and soybean agriculture and animal raising that focuses on small livestock such as pigs, chickens, and pond-raised fish, and you’ve got a means of subsistence that’s impressively resilient. It doesn’t depend on extracting nutrients from the soil, as less sophisticated systems of agriculture do; instead, it systematically puts nutrients back into the soil. This is why there are areas in China that have been producing rice crops regularly for five thousand years.

Excerpt 3:

The old sustainable agriculture that made China so resilient for so long is a thing of the past. These days China uses more chemical fertilizer than any other nation on earth, by a significant margin. That’s not optional—more than a billion Chinese depend for their daily meals on the extravagant yields that only massive use of chemical fertilizers can provide—but it’s also not sustainable. On the one hand, chemical fertilizer feedstocks are mostly nonrenewable resources, and as those deplete, feeding China’s population is going to become more and more difficult; on the other, chemical fertilizers wreck the soil over time, so that an area that’s been farmed using chemical agriculture becomes more and more barren. That promises a very difficult future for China and the Chinese people.