Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) 📖

poet Duque de Rivas’ play Don Álvaro that the great Italian composer Francesco Verdi transformed into La Forza del Destino (‘The Force of Destiny’), Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The same theme occurs in the Indian epic Mahabharata, in which Yudhisthira, the personification of dharma or righteousness, succumbs to the temptation of playing the game of dice twice and, losing his kingdom, gets banished to the forest. In all these works, foreknowledge or forewarnings could not prevent the inevitable fate. In one sense, it is a tussle for control between the past and present, and the present and future. Emerson said that “Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.”547

God certainly can do what he wishes, but if he injects Himself into our lives whenever we want Him to, then will He be undermining His own greatest gift to man — freedom and free will — that make, or rather are supposed to make man a free moral agent? That kind of thinking is typical of human thought. As Arthur Schopenhauer noted, ‘every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world’ — and of God. On the contrary, one can also suggest that that mode of thinking does not diminish or negate the divine sovereignty or omnipotence. In fact it enhances; it shows God to be, in human terms, a true ‘democrat’; not an autocrat or a tyrant of the Old Testament. God allows His subjects to have a lot of elbow room to lead responsible and responsive, autonomous lives without interference; and yet He retains the power to alleviate the woes of the righteous and to ensure that the balance between good over evil is not overly tilted towards evil. But the tricky question is the question Abraham asked Yahweh, the Jewish God, when he was told that God was planning to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah: Would God let good men be destroyed while slaying the evil ones and what are the minimum human numbers required for the species to escape divine wrath? The promised number was ten then; the actual, the righteous were three; what could it be now, for over 6 billion humans? What is the tipping point for divine destruction in this millennium? How much sin can we accumulate and how many sinners can we ‘accommodate’ amidst us without inviting divine intercession? Clearly, with freedom comes responsibility, and with choice comes consequences. Had it not been so, God could well have created robots programmed to be His unflinching devotees. With such

 

 

 

546 Dhananjay Kulkarni. Life After Death. Buzzle. Accessed at: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-14-2004- 55447.asp

547 Ralph Waldo Emerson. ThinkExist.com. Accessed at: http://thinkexist.com/quotations/fate/

 

‘humans’, He could also have created a world of perfect peace and harmony, without wars and or violence. That is His dilemma and that is why He is so choosy and scarce in His dealings with us. And His behavior towards us is dependent on our behavior towards our fellow-humans and towards other animals. We cannot expect God to be pleased with us if we shower praises on him and pray fervently while we abuse and ill-treat His other creations.

We, personally and socially, do not know why we behave the way we do. The problem is that our behavior affects other people more than ourselves, and that affects their behavior and so on, eventually affecting the whole species. Our actions are so obviously irrational and opposed to self-interest that it seems that we are driven by forces we cannot comprehend. But we are rational enough to know that nothing is without consequence. The least of good deeds or the best of bad deeds can yield results proportionate to the deed. The Buddha advised his disciples, “Do not to overlook tiny good actions, thinking they are of no benefit; even tiny drops of water in the end will fill a huge vessel.” At the same time, he cautioned his disciples: “Do not overlook negative actions merely because they are small; however small a spark may be, it can burn down a haystack as big as a mountain.”548 In Buddhism, perhaps more than in any other religion, intention decides whether karma is good or bad. We tend to forget that the most transformative force in the universe is God and that the very essence, meaning, and purpose of divinity is transcendent transformation. One can say that transformation is God and through the path of surrender we can, or rather God willing, transform into His likeness. God is thus the means as well as the end, the way and the destination of scriptural transformation.

Absolute, unconditional, total self-surrender to God or saranagati, the scripture says, elicits the quickest response from the divine and absolves us from all sin. That is because in surrender, the ego dissolves the quickest, like salt in water or butter in sunlight. And once the ego goes, nothing stands and God comes home. Two examples are often offered from the Hindu epics to illustrate this insight. The one from Bhagavatham is the Gajendra moksham, literally the ‘liberation of the king of elephants’. It is the story of a giant elephant caught by a crocodile in a pond and after exhausting all its strength, the elephant totally surrenders itself to the all-encompassing God, and the Almighty comes to its rescue and slays the crocodile.

There are two conclusions one can draw from this story. One, the elephant fought the crocodile for a thousand years and exhausted all its strength before it sought divine help and God came down to its rescue. Two, none of its numerous companions, with whom the elephant was playing at that time came to help when their king was fighting for its life. The other example from the Mahabharata is the Draupadi Vastra Haran, the disrobing of Princess Draupadi, the wife of the five Pandava princes. When Yudhisthira loses his kingdom (and his brothers and finally his wife Draupadi) in a game of dice, and is banished to the forest, Draupadi is dishonored in the open court of King Dhritarashtra. Although some scholars say that she was dragged by her robe, and that no attempt was made to physically disrobe her (as a later addition to the narrative), it is commonly believed that such an attempt was indeed made, and that Lord Krishna came to her succor. Here too, Krishna comes to Draupadi’s rescue not only after she exhausts all her strength, but also after giving up all external resistance, joining both her hands and totally surrendering to Him. And here too, no one, not even the great Bhishma and the guru Drona, who are present at the scene, come to her aid.

The only person who speaks up is the mantri or the minister Vidura, a man of great wisdom and a Nirahankaari (man without arrogance), a Nishchalamanaska (man with a still mind), a

 

 

 

548 Sogyal Rinpoche. What is Karma? Law of Cause and Effect. Accessed at: http://www.meaningoflife.i12.com/karma.htm

 

man in whose name stands a whole moral treatise called Vidura Neeti. From these two anecdotes, five messages spring out for the common man: 1) evil begets evil; 2) no one can escape his or her destiny; 3) total surrender requires total effort; 4) when we truly need help, no one will respond and God alone will aid us in His own way; and 5) when seeking His help, we must give up the baggage and burden of our being, most of all, the ego.

According to the scriptures, absolute surrender to God is both the simplest and the most difficult state to attain. It is simple because its path is straight and smooth. All religions advocate this path of ‘letting go’. The very root of the word Islam means peace and surrender. In Christianity, the holy cross is a symbol of spiritual surrender; the faithful are exhorted to make Jesus not only their savior but also their Lord. Buddhists are told to throw themselves into the abode of the Buddha. The concept of surrender, saranagati or prapathi, is also an integral part of Bhakti Yoga and an important aspect in Hinduism, particularly in Vaishnavism, in which it is extolled as a direct means of attaining moksha or liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth. The Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, and the epics also exhort devotees to take the path of saranagati. Saints such as Sri Adi Shankaracharya and Sri Madhvacharya gave immense importance to saranagati. This act of total self-surrender at the feet of the Supreme Being is hailed as the pinnacle of bhakti yoga. It does not require any

pre-requisite rituals and can be followed by all, irrespective of caste, creed or sex.

The six ingredients of saranagati are rendered as: “Anukulyasya sankalpa pratikulyasya varjanam; raksisyati iti visvaso goptrtve varanam tatha; atma-niksepa karpanye sas-vidha saranagati.” They translate as: 1) acceptance of that which is favorable to bhagavad-bhajana, or ‘singing the praise of the Lord’; 2) remembrance of God; 3) rejection of that which is unfavorable; 4) firm faith in the Lord as one’s protector; 5) deliberate acceptance of the Lord as one’s guardian and nourisher; and 6) submission of the self, and humility. Saranagati is possible through both self-sacrifice (Sadhana bhakti) and self- forgetfulness (Raga bhakti). The former path is calculated, and the latter is automatic and continuous. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna explicitly and repeatedly tells Arjuna and through him to all of us, “Sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja; aham tvam sarva-papebhyo moksayisyami ma sucah” — ‘let go all duties and take refuge or shelter in God, surrender everything; that God will protect and absolve you from all sins’. The concept of ‘surrender to God’ is also there in the Bible.

Spiritual surrender is considered as the highest form of devotion or bhakti. If one can attain such a state, God, it is said, would respond in the form and way of our wish. Which means, in a sense, the roles would be reversed, between the devotee and the deity. In a culture where winning is lauded and surrender is equated with losing, or is considered a negative attribute, it is to finally ‘give up’ any hope of victory. We even say that ‘surrender to evil’ is itself evil. But in the divine context it becomes a supreme virtue, a sacred duty. And it is not even surrender per se; it has to be so absolute and unconditional that there is nothing left with you or in you or about you. In such a state, the difference and distance between the devotee and the divine crumbles. Saranagati is simply the annihilation of ego, and without the ego, the scriptures tell us, man is God, or rather what is inherent becomes manifest; it is like when a stone first becomes a statue in the hands of a sculptor, and then a god in the mind of a bhakta or devotee. The idea is that God is your creator, He is in you: indeed He is you, and life before divine surrender is life away from home; it is like a river finally finding peace in the ocean. When you surrender willfully, you take refuge in the protection of the Supreme, and when you take such a refuge you do not have to care for yourself. Even in everyday life, we so often feel relieved in surrender; then you do not have to fight anymore; you have no responsibility and the one you surrender to takes all responsibility. Then there is no conflict between our will and someone else’s wish, between our ego and another person’s or Force’s

 

power. After a time the mind realizes that surrendering causes less pain than resisting. In the case of God, in surrender you triumph; even achieve liberation.

But our mind is used to either control or subordination, it can only be a master or a slave; and it can effortlessly oscillate between the two. We