" All scriptures
and religious texts are mere self-help books," wrote M N Roy, one of the
greatest rationalists of the last century. I'm reminded of his famous statement
in the context of C C Das' assertion that Bhagvad Gita's much more than a
self-help book. According to him, it's a book of self-discovery,
self-empowerment and self-actualisation. First of all, the terms self-discovery
and self-actualisation are intangible and self-deceiving.
British anthropologist Sir Martin Congdon
wrote in his seminal book The Reality of Scriptures (1987) that ' Human mind still being
pretty ill-developed, ill-advanced and frightened, looks for an anchorage
and tries to find solace in the shelter of scriptural conundrums.' Moreover,
the comparative study of religious texts reveals that there's the same old
and threadbare stuff in all scriptures. I've always found Gita's core
message comparable to that of the Hasidic tales and even 4,000 year
old oriental totemism of the South East Asia that predated Buddhism in all
forms.
Biblical psalms and the most celebrated
'Sermon on the mount' are no different than Bhagvad Gita. In fact,
Sermon on the mount's appeal's more overwhelming than that of
Gita. There's a word in Cantonese (other prevalent language of China apart
from Mandarin) : Minshung
that means 'feel-good' or 'euphoric'. Chinese people still call their
scriptures 'Minshung' or 'Uenwong' (Mandarin)-Books that make you feel
good!!! What else is the
purpose of a self-help book or a scripture other than giving a faux sense of
goodness that lasts for a few hours? Confucius, the scholarly Chinese sage, was
once narrating parables to his select few disciples. He saw that one
of the disciples Shimpenong was jotting down something. He asked
him, what was he writing so frantically.
Shimpenong replied, '
Master, I'm writing this for the posterity to benefit from your
teachings.' ' No need. Expunge it. Tomorrow, this will DEGENERATE
into a scripture and the purpose will be forgotten.' It's said that
whatever we read as the teachings of Confucius is interpolated and
later-day additions because Confuscius himself had no faith in the
divinity of any religious book. ' What we don't comprehend sounds very
exalted,' Christopher Isherwood
used to say. When the English philosopher and the 'Vedantist' began to study
Vedanta, Upanishad and Gita, he was intrigued by the repetition and reiteration
of the word 'self'.
-----Sumit Paul
