जीवन ते त्रै उद्देश

Dharma

The very instant we speak or hear the word "dharma," a long reel seems to run before us, like a film — Hindu dharma, Buddhist dharma, Parsi dharma, the dharma of Islam, the dharma of the Christians: that is, religion. And when we read or hear the history of the followers of these religions, it seems as though this thing called dharma has brought men together less and set them fighting more — has spurred them little toward creation, and much toward destroying the most precious heritage bound up with another's faith. People grant this too: that among the foundational ideals of all religions there is not so much opposition as is found in their rituals. And yet it is hard to deny that the ordinary religious man, even if he accepts those shared ideals for a moment, as a passing expedient, carries on his mind only the stamp of the rigid ritualism of his own religion — which he never tests upon the touchstone of his own reason. In the fields of art and literature, in the praiseworthy works men have done in this world, the hand of religious inspiration has been great too; this cannot be denied. But eighty or ninety per cent of that wealth, men have created while remaining far from any such inspiration. Several of my companions take this ratio of religious and secular inspiration in the making of art and literature to be a mere bias in the secular's favour — but who can deny that much of the guilt for the destruction of the priceless treasures of art and literature falls upon this very rigid and venomous religious feeling? What I mean is this: when we speak of dharma among the aims of life, we do not mean this narrow form of religion, founded on superstition. How is that narrow form of religion to be accepted as the aim of life — that cage in which, imprisoned, the mind, the intellect, and the soul of man, all three, grow blunt and stubborn? A man's thinking, his deeds, get set in such a mould that there is left not a particle of room for the thought of what is fitting and what is not. Man becomes a lifeless cog in the machine of that rigid religious feeling. He cannot think freely for himself; he cannot examine and weigh his deeds by walking the road his own thought points out. And if some bold spirit, crossing this wall and breathing the clear air of the open field, were to say — life is in this free air; within is only darkness upon darkness, a suffocating dark, and what dim light there is holds only military-style drills, swarm upon swarm filing past with heads bowed low — then, in the days when these jails of rigid religious feeling stood solid and their guards were strong, whoever found fault with the jail, the jailers, and the jail-laws would be flung before lions and torn to pieces. They were hung head-down and fires lit beneath them to render the fat from their rebel skulls. They were given poison to drink. They were raised upon the gallows. But the wonder is this — that the man who loves freedom has, in every age, gone on challenging that rigid form of religion, declaring aloud that rigidity is not religion. This slavery to scriptures and books is not the true nature of religion: it is conceit, it is hypocrisy, and with true humanity it has no kinship. Those who divide and break true humanity into separate compartments — how can that be called dharma? Dharma is the name of the virtues that uphold humanity. Dharma is the name of those paths by walking which man arrives at the true destinations of life. Dharma teaches the hatred of no one. Dharma teaches enmity with no one. Dharma does not swell into pride in the heart and intoxicate a man. And dharma does not consist of false hypocrisies. What, then, is true dharma? Dharma is the simple flow of a guileless, simple life. What is the dharma of trees and creepers? What of flowers? What is the dharma of the sun, what of thorns? To answer a hundred such questions seems no hard thing. There is no need even to expound the dharma of the air. Let the breeze fall still even a little, let the air grow sultry and the sweat begin to flow, and the mind begins to long for a fan and cool water. Let the breeze be checked even briefly in the keeping of its dharma, and see what a commotion arises! Let the sun stay hidden four days in the clouds, and then tell me what the dharma of the sun is. Seat a man shivering with cold in some snowy place beside the warmth of a fire, and as he warms his hands and feet, ask him — what is the dharma of fire? Why do they cut the barren trees from the garden? Neither shade nor fruit — what good, after all, is such a tree? When the strength to keep its own dharma is gone, then cut it, chop it, and make firewood of it.

And what is the dharma of man? To worship in temples and set fire to mosques? Or to bow in prayer in mosques and set fire to other houses of worship? No, no, no. The first dharma of man is this — that he keep himself made a man; that he become neither beast nor demon. That no deed of his become thorns for other men, nor a spike, nor a snare. Billions of stars shine in the sky; lakhs of trees grow and rise together in the forests; the creepers are laden with thousands of flowers. Then can man alone not live together upon this earth? It is because man has the itch to meddle in another's work, the itch to make a show, the itch to stand apart and lord it alone. These are his weaknesses. These are the things that lead him astray. These are the things that carry him far from his dharma.

The soldier of the army, seated in his trench, forgetting the business of dealing two firm blows to the enemy dug in across from him, may fall to brooding that Ghisu Shah of his village is thriving — speaks sweetly and weighs short when paid in full; his children too eat and drink and make merry, while we sit here playing chaupar with death. Master Ralaram, seated on his chair in the classroom, may begin to muse, absently, that Papo the confectioner sells milk mixed with who-knows-what water, and that the whole of his household wears gold chains about their necks; and if Papo has four solid houses, then the very breeze seems to stop, the sun to rise in a different sky; dharma begins to cry out for justice; the men coming and going on the road begin to seem to jostle him. O young man in the trench — mind your gun, keep your belt of bullets ready. Across from you the enemy is watching through his binoculars; a moment's negligence will become your death. Master Ralaram-ji! the children are looking up at your distracted face. Today you were to teach them the method of addition — and you have fallen into subtraction! The dharma of the mother, the dharma of the father, the dharma of the son, the dharma of the subject, the dharma of the king — in every age these have been one and the same. For this reason we do not accept the rigid, scripture-bound form of dharma. Dharma and life have an unbreakable bond. Every living being, coming into this world, must keep its many dharmas — for every man bears, in his society and his family, many forms. The same man is a son, and a brother too, and a father too; just so, a daughter, and a sister, and a mother. In the locality, another's neighbour; in the town, a townsman; in the country, a countryman; and upon the earth, a man. And besides all this, he must carry on some trade as well. In each of these forms, the responsibilities that fall to him — to fulfil them all is his dharma. The inner obstacles to right growth in his life — greed, attachment, ego, selfishness — and the outer ones — kinships, friendships, sundry obligations — to clear these away too is his dharma. And if he finds that, in the society in which he lives, it is impossible to live as a man without changing its very structure from top to bottom, then he has the full right to break the framework of that anti-human order, and, freeing himself from it, to raise and run a structure in which all men may have equal opportunity for growth.

Artha (Wealth)

There is a saying in English — "Money makes the mare go." Mills and factories run nowadays on the strength of electricity; motor lorries and aeroplanes run on diesel or petrol. In the same way, the cart of human life runs in this world only when it has the fuel of wealth. Wealth is also called artha. It has many forms and faces. In every age there has been the talk and the recognition of wealth; the social life of every age, bowing its head before its thousand-faced dominion, has thought its very salvation to lie in worshipping it. The root meaning of the word artha is "to ask, to seek." As the life of man began to move forward, away from the beasts and the destitution of the forests, a new element named artha began to appear in it. Wandering out of the Stone Age and the Metal Age and arriving at the Age of Agriculture, the conduct of man's life kept changing. When he gave up the wandering life, built house and home, and resolved — on the strength of land and cattle — to settle and live in one place, and, joining with the other men of his clan, laid the foundation of social life, then from that very day he felt the need of new means to carry his new endeavours through. For ploughing, the plough and the ox became the means. For milk, man began to keep cows and goats. A greed for fine, fertile land arose; his eye fell upon the wealth of the woods and forests. The needs of eating and drinking, of wearing and using, began to multiply, and he had to ponder how to meet them. One man could not meet all his needs by himself; he had to think out a way to supply each. Then a division of labour became necessary. A way emerged of paying the wages of those who did these various tasks; the practice of exchanging thing for thing arose — to get the thing you need, give its owner, in return, the thing he needs. Here the means itself began to be called artha.

Gold, silver, copper, iron, grain, fruit, cattle — all the things, that is, with which a man could buy what he needed — became artha. He who had artha became arthavan, the wealthy man; he who had none, the poor wretch, became arthahin — destitute, of no account. Man recognised the form of artha, saw its glory, and then fell to chasing it, seizing it, grasping it. Within society, recognition belonged to him who had artha, who had the means of producing it. And then — a new race began. Artha was no more than a device for running the affairs of life smoothly; but when man recognised that with it he could also bring others under his sway, that with it he could buy for himself and his kin the pleasures and enjoyments of the world, then, setting aside every value of good and evil, justice and injustice, dharma and adharma, sin and merit, truth and falsehood, he took up every means, fair or foul, to become arthavan. This very thing split the men of the world into two camps: the arthavan and the arthahin. The arthavan are few in number, but the lordship over social life is theirs. The scriptures say —

मा गृधः कस्यस्विद् धनम् — that is, do not covet another's wealth.

Or — लोष्टवत् परद्रव्येषु — that is, regard another's property as a clod of clay.

But who is to heed it? Who, once the key of lordship has come into his hand, will let it go? When we read the history of the world today — which, on the one hand, gives us joy and pride to learn how far man has come out of that savage state; how, on the strength of his enterprise and intellect, he has changed the very face of the world; how, with the help of science, exploring the storehouses of nature, he has raised the solid palace of "civilisation" — who, seeing it, is not amazed? But alongside this, the story of that progress has an aspect, too, that makes the hair stand on end. The hordes of men, blinded with the madness of becoming arthavan, in what manner they oppressed other men! The races that went and settled in America — how they hunted the Africans down like wild beasts, loaded them onto ships, brought them to the markets of their own cities, and auctioned them like cattle! How the old kings of Egypt offered up thousands and lakhs of people in forced labour to have their tomb-temples raised! How the marauding races of Europe, fastening their imperial grip by force upon the countries of Africa and Asia, plundered the riches of that soil with what utter recklessness, and looted, for the price of cowries, the generation-upon-generation labour of those countries' people! What an outrage — an anartha — it is, that for the greed of this very artha, man has drunk the blood of man in great draughts. Our own land is the victim of all these robberies and raids. Plunderers like Ghaznavi, Nadir Shah, Genghis, Hulagu looted it; and afterwards the marauding peoples of Central Asia ruled it for centuries. Escaping them, the English, the French, the Portuguese came and oppressed it. Why these raids? Why did this loot and plunder go on? Why all this bloodshed and tyranny? Only for the greed of becoming arthavan. In the rosiness on the faces of the white races of Europe and America, the blood of how many innocent peoples runs? Of this, the history of today has kept no honest reckoning.

We had begun by saying that among the aims of life there is also the talk of artha — that in life, artha too has been given recognition; that to attain artha too was counted a great aim of life. Why, then, citing the witness of history, did we call those who amass artha robbers? Why did we say of the races that strive to become arthavan that they drink the blood of others?

Both things are true, each in its own place. The recognition of artha is a true thing; and that men enslave others, loot and plunder, to earn artha, is a reality too. In its root form, artha is merely a means for the running of worldly life. In worldly life, man needs economic means to meet his needs. By virtue of his very humanity, every man upon this earth ought to have proper opportunity to advance his physical, mental, intellectual, and social life. Upon this earth — where every kind of means needed to meet the needs of all its dwellers exists — how can it be that the life of lakhs and crores of men cannot find so much as a rag to cover itself? A house to live in; proper food and medicine to keep well; learning and skill to drive out ignorance; the means of a trade, to stand on one's own feet — why should all men not have these? He who has no money in his knot today, how is he to come by all these things? How is he to do the duties of a mother and father toward their children? How is he to treat his illnesses? How is he to manage his eating and drinking? And this stings the sharper when we see that upon this very earth there are also those gods (?) called millionaires and multi-millionaires, who hold such wealth that, were it but shared out, hundreds of hungry, naked families could live a life of honour.

So when we call artha a great aim of life, our meaning is this: that all the men of the world should have the conveniences artha brings. The having and attaining of artha does not mean that ten or twenty men in the world should become Kuberas of wealth, while lakhs live on their leavings, singing their praises and fighting like dogs over scraps. By calling artha an aim of life, we give it that very rank we have given to dharma. To those who keep their own dharma, the means of artha too should be given, to help them keep it. Artha too is a thing of social right, over which all men have a shared claim. Artha is a means for the running of man's life. If man's selfishness makes it his very faith and creed, his this-world and his next, then how is the work to go on? When artha is worshipped as the god of man's selfishness, it too maddens him, until he turns from a man into a demon.

If we do not keep artha within social discipline, it will tear the order of social life to shreds. So the root principle of a socialist order of life is this — that the individual rights of man over artha, and over all the means of producing it, be abolished at the very root; and that artha, in the form of national property, be used only in the work of making the life of all the living of society happy.

Kama (Desire)

Come, let us now take up the third aim, named kama. Many ask: "Dharma" can be accepted as an aim of life; artha too — very well, to keep and use it as social property — we accept as an aim. But kama, which is bound up directly with man's desire and craving — how are we to accept that as an aim of life, when the scriptures have given so sharp a verdict upon it —

"न जातु कामः कामानामुपभोगेन शाम्यति।"
That is — by the enjoying of enjoyments, desire is never stilled.

Where dharma, and where kama? The two seem far, far apart, like the northern and southern poles. If dharma be accepted as the aim of life, then how is kama — the attainment of pleasure and worldly bliss — also to be accepted as the essence of life? But the philosophical truth is that kama, like dharma, is a foundational aim too; between them there ought to be no opposition at all. The opposition that seems to lie between them is born of certain sayings and proverbs handed down in our social life. The saints and poets of our land have often censured this world and its affairs, calling it "maya." Kabir says —

"जग सूं प्रीत न कीजिए, समुझि मन मेरा।"
Or — "माया दीपक, नर पतंग, भ्रमि-भ्रमि इतै पड़ंत।"

And then there are those, too, who hold human life a golden chance to eat, drink, and make merry. There is a saying in Sanskrit — "अपि ऋणं घृतं पिवेत्" — that is, drink clarified butter even if you must run into debt for it. Turn over the literature of the world, and you will find so much in support of both sides that man's reason would hang, like Trishanku, caught midway between the two. From the sayings of both kinds, this much comes plainly to understanding — that the aim of human life is to attain true happiness, true ease and bliss. The destination is but one; and these two roads that reach it are both good. If one seems to run toward the east, the other runs toward the west — and yet the purpose of both is one: to attain bliss in life. It is true that the bliss promised by walking these two roads is not of one kind. Holding the world to be maya and illusion, when a man — "तृष्णा अरु अभिमान रहित है, हरिपद रमे उदासा" (free of craving and pride, he dwells detached at the feet of Hari) — then he attains the bliss of Brahman, on tasting which the mind comes to that state which is the mute man's on eating jaggery. But the others say that this world here is a sharp reality, and that beyond it, before and after, all is darkness upon darkness; and to call the visible joys of life false and, leaving them, run after the imagined pleasures of liberation and nirvana, is just as if a man should leave a real thing to chase its shadow and reflection.

One thing is worth noting in both these opposing sides: that in both, it is "bliss" alone that has been given primacy. From this at least it grows clear that, in human life, the attaining of bliss is a very root impulse. And this too is sharp: that for those who walk both these roads, it is only "one's own self," and the bliss "of one's own self," that has been given the first place. Walk whichever of the two roads you will, and you need give no thought to what is befalling the people among whom you live, the soil on which you dwell. To call the world maya means this too — that all kinships and bonds besides one's own self, friend and foe, the known and the recognised, one's own and others, are false, a deception of the eye. For this reason, even on that footpath of devotion, the talk is of walking alone. And "eat, drink, make merry," or "drink bhang, plunder the gardens, the householder lives by his own luck," or again, in the words of the folk song, "Eat it up, spend it up, take the heart's joy, O life!" — on that road too one is given leave to walk only alone. In truth, this very "aloneness" betrays the real worth of both kinds of bliss; it lays their hollowness bare.

Man is a social creature. Cut off from society, he cannot draw an easy breath for a single day. The thousands-of-years history of human life bears witness that men, upon this earth, in rising out of savage life to this civilised, adorned life of today, always made their endeavours together, faced their dangers together, and only by co-operating with one another came by these many-coloured, pure boons of civilisation and culture. We cannot for an instant imagine — "let society go to ruin; we shall do what gives us pleasure." Look about you a moment and consider how much labour of how many people has gone into making the very room in which you sit. Examine each single thing, and it grows plain that it is the fruit of the labour of hundreds and thousands. What can we make for ourselves, alone? These chairs, tables, mattresses and cushions, rugs and carpets, electricity and radio, notebooks and books, pens and pencils, clothes, pictures, doormats, screens, curtains, the paint upon the room, the calendar, the telephone, and a thousand other things great and small! How is a man, alone, to make all these for himself? Without another's labour, without another's co-operation, would not our life turn back into the bare, naked, savage state? Whatever we are, we are by virtue of this very social life. Then, ignoring the debts we owe it, how can we be solitary? Calling it "maya," how can we cut ourselves off from it? How can we think of "drinking clarified butter even by running into debt"?

For this very reason, the wise and understanding people of the world, even while holding the longing for "bliss" important in human life, have held it a thing to be walked alongside dharma. When they accepted the three aims of life, they counselled this understanding and this practice: that you should certainly strive to attain "bliss," but keep dharma at its side — understanding that we have the right to enjoy only that "bliss" which is not opposed to dharma.

We have already spoken of the form and nature of dharma. Our scriptures too have given a very clear answer to this question — "स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयावहः।" That is, dharma is each one's own; to meddle in another's dharma is a sin. The teaching teacher has his own dharma, the father his own, the customer his own, the shopkeeper his own. If all walk upon their own dharma, then no quarrel arises, no turmoil. And to make dharma clearer still, this definition of it given in the scriptures is also worth seeing — "यतोऽभ्युदय-निःश्रेयस-सिद्धिः स धर्मः।" Dharma is the name of those deeds by which our physical, mental, and spiritual advancement comes about. And such deeds can occur where the obligation falls on us to fulfil our duties toward the people around us. Our three obligations of social life have two aspects: our duties, and our rights. The other name of our social duties is dharma; and the other name of our rights is kama and artha. Come to this, and the matter grows clear. Social life is like a balance-scale: on the one side our duties, on the other our rights. The weighing must be equal — for just as to take a thing from the market without paying its price would be reckoned a crime, deemed theft, so in life the aim of merely "eat, drink, and make merry," turning one's back on one's duties, cannot go on. Those who run it so, by their own force, history has always branded criminals — like Ravana, Kamsa, Duryodhana, and Nero. Kama — the attaining of ease and bliss in life — is the root impulse of man's life. Snatch this impulse from him, and he becomes like a lifeless doll; all his deeds, all his endeavours, go lifeless. So the primacy of kama in life cannot be lessened — but for it, man must keep ever before him the touchstone of the bounds of dharma. Only then will an order hold in the world. Only then will there be no danger of his turning criminal. ✧