Release

What do we have to give up to be free, to be truly ourselves? 

Recently, my office mate and I were discussing the Hindu concepts of samsara and moksha, and I realized something that I hadn't thought of before.

In Hinduism, samsara is the cycle of death and rebirth that we are trapped in, potentially forever. Moksha is the release from samsara, which is the ultimate goal of all life. When one attains moksha, he is reunited forever with the eternal.

It's easy to think of moksha in terms of escaping, but I think it is better to think about it in terms of letting go.

Escaping the cycle of death and rebirth would be like trying to swim out of a whirlpool. The vortex is nothing of your own making, and all you can do is try your best to overcome the forces dragging you down.

In the Bhagavad Gita, however, Lord Krishna counsels that a person attains moksha after realizing his true self, which can only be done by letting go of all desire, ego, vanity, insecurity, doubt, ambition, and fear.

In my mind, this path to achieving moksha could be animated as an image of a hand opening and dropping the heavy weight it is carrying.

Not restricted to Hinduism, a similar idea is offered in the Tao Te Ching:

In pursuit of knowledge,

every day something is added.

In the practice of the Tao,

every day something is dropped.

In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is quoted in the Hadith as encouraging believers to reject whatever binds them to the world just as a seasoned traveler would avoid packing a heavy suitcase:

“Be in the world like a traveler, or like a passer on, and reckon yourself as of the dead.”

Rather than being morbid, the injunction to be as the dead means to have no cares or burdens, which is a very zen way to travel through life...be it this one or the next!

Elegance is refusal

What does it mean to be a woman born of lotus flowers?

Padmavati, or woman born from the lotus, is a goddess in Hinduism who is an avatar of Laxmi, goddess of wealth. She is a beloved of Lord Vishnu, repairer of the world, and like him, is often depicted as having ebony skin.

Padmavati

The lotus in Indian tradition is a symbol of self-detachment and sexual purity. It rises above its ecosystem and lives in the air, just as a person is supposed to abandon the search for personal gratification in her social environment.

Lotus flowers in Xuanwu Lake, Nanjing, China

The lotus flower is perhaps the opposite of the shakti, which is the devouring/destructive power that is the essence of the feminine divine in Hinduism. Women are penetrators by nature, with the capacity to destroy as well as produce, which is the foundation for the argument in dharma literature for them to be restrained.

In contemporary India, women's rights groups have re-interpreted shakti as the creative and powerful energy that women bring to the world.

How can one be both creative and detached -- a woman born from lotus flowers? Can you be a mother, an artist, or a teacher and still be detached from the results of your actions?

Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita counseled the soldier Arjuna to do his duty and fight on the battlefield (even against his kinsman), but to detach himself from whatever actually happened. Like the lotus, he was supposed to rise above the bloodshed, mud and debris of war with a pure heart and mind. He was to transcend a situation that was so absurd it should never have happened, and not let it destroy his soul.

As Coco Chanel said, "Elegance is refusal," and the lotus is just that -- something elegant fashioned out of negation. Something, perhaps, that has forgotten its roots. There may be an unreal beauty in letting everything go, but I continue to grapple with what that might mean for a person.

Ready, Set, Discuss: "Jihad"

‎"Everybody's at war with different things...I'm at war with my own heart sometimes." -Tupac Shakur

 

As a world religions teacher, I have lately been very interested in examining the concept of jihad from a comparative religions perspective. Jihad is a great subject for discussion, because it is a topic with many layers of meaning that is treated one-dimensionally in the news. 

 

While we examine the world of Arabia in which the Prophet lived, and the concept of jihad related to the struggle for the survival of the Muslim community against Meccan adversaries, we also examine the Prophet's teaching about the jihad within one's self, or personal jihad. I am especially interested in the Sufi Islamic understanding of jihad as a war against the "nafs," or ego, and one's own desires. 

 

 

Reading Jihad in Sufi Islam: Jihad Al-Nafs

 

"...the chatter of vain passions, ambition, envy, love of praise and compliments--all of them worldly bonds blinding the heart." - Hakeem Tirmidhi, Jihad al-Nafs

 

The film New Muslim Cool is the story of Hamza Perez, a Puerto-Rican Muslim rapper who lives in Pittsburgh, PA and strives to make a difference in his community through music, family and social work. In this film, Hamza discusses the concept of jihad as "struggle," making it universal to the human condition. Hamza's own struggles of trying to live a religious life (as a former gangster) according to the example of the Prophet Muhammad while dealing with setbacks such as FBI surveillance and obstacles to his prison ministry are especially poignant. This film is excellent for presenting the Sufi concept of jihad al-nafs and great for class discussion.

 

 

Reading "Jihad" in Buddhism

 

Sufiism's jihad al-nafs, the struggle against the ego, can be explored alongside the teaching of the Buddha that the essence of life is dukkha, or suffering/dissatisfaction. Buddha's major teaching, the Four Noble Truths, is that this suffering is caused by tanha, or desire for personal gratification. The Buddha's Eightfold Path teaches followers how to overcome this desire. The message is simple: the implementation, not so easy -- it requires diligent, daily practice.

 

Buddhism's notion of "emptiness" or anatta (no-soul) -- the idea that we have no ego or essence that sets us apart from the rest of the universe -- also has a counterpart in Sufi Islam -- the concept of "non-existence"; there is no way to separate oneself from Allah, the all-encompassing Love. The poet Rumi writes,

"Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof."

Reading "Jihad" in Hinduism

 

Lord Krishna's conversation with Arjuna on the battlefield is the setting for one of the most beloved Hindu texts, the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna the warrior is in crisis about whether to go into battle against his own family members. The message that Krishna, Lord of all worlds, gives to Arjuna, is to fight the battle, because it is his duty. The story is a metaphor for the struggle within the self to fulfill the laws of the universe, or dharma. Arjuna must rid himself of all desire in order to faithfully accomplish his duty, which means detaching himself from expecting any particular outcome.

 

"The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: The giving up of activities that are based on material desire is what great learned men call the renounced order of life. And giving up the results of all activities is what the wise call renunciation." -- Bhagavad Gita 18:2

 

Kirshna's counsel to Arjuna to relinquish attachment to outcomes in serving the Lord is echoed in the words of female Sufi mystic and poet Rabi'a al Basri (8th century CE): 

 

"O my Lord,

if I worship you
from fear of hell, burn me in hell.

If I worship you
from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.

But if I worship you
for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face."

 

Reading "Jihad" in Christianity 

Like the Buddha, who struggles with the demon Mara while seeking enlightenment under the bodhi tree, Jesus struggles with being tempted by the Evil force in the wilderness, Satan, while preparing for his ministry. Also like the Buddha, Jesus emerges victorious: 

^1"Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, ²where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

 ³The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."

 ⁴Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'

 ⁵The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. ⁷So if you worship me, it will all be yours."

 ⁸Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'" 

Jesus's temptation is very similar to Buddha's time under the bodhi tree in that it demonstrates an almost supernatural power on Jesus's part to resist desire for self-fulfillment -- comfort, food, wealth, and fame. In this way, the story's message is similar to Lord Krishna's message to Arjuna and the Prophet Muhammad's teachings to his followers: serve the Lord, and do not attach yourself to outcomes.

Summary

I hope that you will take away from this post that "jihad," while a polarizing term used to "other" Muslims in the media, is a multi-faceted term. One dimension rarely discussed is the esoteric dimension -- the inner daily struggle to free oneself from the entrapment of the ego, suffering, and desire. This inner struggle is a near universal concept in major religious traditions, and depicted in the sacred histories of Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. There are still more examples from these and other religious traditions that I didn't include in this blog post. Enjoy the search. Peace!