On God, Guru, Hinduism, Saraswati and Wisdom

On God, Guru, Hinduism, Saraswati and Wisdom...Sounds like a load of crap (like most intellectuals give!), right? No, you are wrong, primariry because I'm NOT an intellectual, but also because when I say, you are wrong, you are wrong! This is the blog of the wisest person and he knows it better than you anyday, any time of the year.

Then why all these bombastic words, and that too all at a time? I wish, I could simply say, "This is because of due to their poor English.", but I won't!

Growing up in a small town under the influence of pretty religious family members and others, I, like many others, was ritualistically religious; I had total faith in a very personal God, to whom I confided and with whom I discussed all my troubles, and then prayed to help me.

However, life took its own course and during another phase of my life, I lost faith in all ritualistic apsects of my religion and I almost denounced everything associated with my religion.

It would be more than a decade before I would read Steinbeck's "To A God Unknown". I came across a beautiful Hymn in this book that Steinbeck quoted from the Rig Veda. That Hymn, which refers to making offerings to the God, was so nice that I searched for an online version of Rig Veda to have a casual look.

Of the many beautiful stanzas that Rig Veda contained, the one among the ones that I could have a glance within that short interlude, that impressed me most was one about creation; it made me feel very good about my religion and my God once again. The Hymn is as follows:

Creation. (HYMN CXXIX)

1

THEN was not non-existent nor existent:
There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter?
Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

2

Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal:
No sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature:
Apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

3

Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness
This all was indiscriminate chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless:
By the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.

4

Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning,
Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought
Discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.

5

Transversely was their severing line extended:
What was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces,
Free action here and energy up yonder.

6

Who verily knows and who can here declare it,
Whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production.
Who knows then whence it first came into being?

7

He, the first origin of this creation,
Whether He formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven,
He verily knows it, or perhaps He knows not.

I liked this immensely, perhaps because by now I was converted into a person,who believed in a very Impersonal God, who had no time to applaud me for the good things I did, or to punish me for my faults. I started believing in a God who had much better and more important things to do than to keep an eye of each person. I believed that he had to take care of the whole universal machinery, but he actually could not care less if I ate meat or did not pray to him.

And then I slowly started seeing the beauty of my religion. Here I am reading a verse composed by the descendants of a bunch of nomads, who have just settled down on the banks of a river and started devoting time to more compilcated questions of life, such as the creation of the Universe, and the God. And these nomads have not taken God for granted; they are not yet ready to give Him the benefit of the doubt; while they are willing to accept that He might have known the origin of the Universe, they at the same time are aware of the possibility that He may not hold all the information. I think, I won't have ever looked for a better definition of God!

I feel that the only reason these nomads could develops their civilization so rapidly was because they doubted their God and learned in the process. I don't know if that is the same reason they also compared Guru with the Hindu Trinity, so that we doubt our Guru in the same way as we doubt our God!

In my opinion, one cannot learn unless one doubts. During my childhood, due to family influence and other factors, I started by believing in every word my teachers said. The same applied to every printed word I read! It would take me years to realize that not every teacher is wise or informative, and that MOST books are full of garbages and wrong information. I would turn into a renegade in the high school, I would counter many of my teachers' statements and would end up being a public enemy at the school; but rarely, if ever, they could prove me, or what I said, wrong. (I have maintained that belligerent mood even today. But when I read this Hymn, I feel myself vindicated).

If those nomads knew that -- to doubt is to gather wisdom --, why did they worship a river as their Goddess of wisdom? It looks ridiculous; but for me this is another fascinating facet of their thought! Their entire civilization flourished on the bank of that river, and that prosperity offered them the opportunity to indudge in their lofty quest of wisdom. They knew that all that they had, belonged to the river and its goodwill.

And so they repaid the loan by making Saraswati their Goddess of Wisdom!