Fr. M. C. D'Arcy replies to Aldous Huxley

Published in 1957 The Meeting of Love and Knowledge, Perennial Philosophy by Fr. Martin Cyril D’Arcy (1888 -1976) is a response to Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley published in 1945. Essentially it recognises the magnificent contribution to the quest for wisdom that is inherent in all the great traditions but it resists what it sees as the assimilation of them that might be summed up as ‘many paths, one goal’. Particularly it distinguishes Christianity as being dedicated to a personal relationship with God via the Son. This D’Arcy claims is not a feature of Hinduism and Buddhism:

Huxley tells us that all the great religions advocate self-denial and charity and it is certainly true that in them the silver must be cleaned of its tarnish, the light freed from its smoky shade. But this is not enough. Personality must be stripped from us so that we emerge in our true godhead. Self-denial, therefore, is to be understood literally, and not in the Christian sense of subduing our lower nature to the purposes of the higher and then subduing our will to the will of God. Cui servire regnare est. In other words, there is this difference between the Christian and the Hindu or Buddhist conception of self-denial, that the former aims to keep the person, the latter to dissolve it.

I wrote before about the denial of ‘the personal touch’ in relation to Islam.
God and Allah
Perhaps this is a trope of Christian theological clerical formation that is founded on a limited acquaintance with the everyday practice of the religions in question. It tends to lean on a very narrow band of theory which blinds one to the self-evident. How could you miss Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana Padma Sambhava, Milarepa, Ramakrishna etc.? Devotional literature predominates in all the great traditions.

Taking the Poly out of Polytheism

Augustine was scathing about Greek and Roman polytheism. He devotes several chapters to the topic in The City of God in Vol.1 Bk.4. A sample:

Next let us ask, if they please, out of so great a crowd of gods which the Romans worship, whom in especial, or what gods they believe to have extended and preserved that empire. Now, surely of this work, which is so excellent and so very full of the highest dignity, they dare not ascribe any part to the goddess Cloacina; or to Volupia, who has her appellation from voluptuousness; or to Libentina, who has her name from lust; or to Vaticanus, who presides over the screaming of infants; or to Cunina, who rules over their cradles.

My favourite god is Sterculius who is in charge of compost heaps and unfortunately does not favour me. It may be due to my ommission of libations as recommended by Lawrence D. Hills in his classical Organic Gardening. Augustine’s ironies might be tempered by the consideration that the roots of his grandfather religion, Judaism, lie in polytheism. That may be resisted by some claiming that tribal religion did not pass over into Judaism until some liminal event, reception of the Tablets of Stone or The Burning Bush Declaration.

Hinduism trumps all priority disputes with its doctrine of the apoureshya (not of human origin ) nature of the Vedas. With each new creation the Vedas emerge precisely the same to be heard (sruti) by the sages. Their polytheism is interpreted by some as aspectual. There are many names but one reality that supervenes, Brahman, sat-cit-ananda. People have their favourites. There is Santosh-Ma, the goddess that deals with the Lotto.

Claude Levi-Strauss in his cybernetic way may have an element of wisdom:

We are not therefore claiming to show how men think the myths, but rather how myths think themselves out in men and without men’s knowledge.

(The Raw and the Cooked.)

Hinduism by Jonardon Ganeri (from Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Religion pub. 2010)

If we were to bake a Hinduism cake what ingredients would we put into it? Clamour of bells at arati, the waving of burning camphor, pre-dawn chanting of 'asato ma, sat gamaya , yoga, the fully naked sage padding along a road with his water pot and staff, first feeding ceremony, Brahmins with thread over their ears drying off after a dip in the Ganges, the smell of the garlands in Bangalore City Market, Gita, Upanishads. I could go on but finally and ever and always – darshan, darshan of the murti, the teacher, your innermost self in meditation.

Now compare that to the alternative cake of Nyaya logic and disputations concerning the empirical foundation of the fruits of sacrifice offered by Jonardon Ganeri in his note on Hinduism in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Falls flat doesn't it? Not that its not an ingredient but it would take a scholar to spot it. It's the sort of hard tack that sustains but barely his lucubrations. The cause of this fallen cake is not hard to discover and its aetiology requires no acute investigation. There is an embarrassment about the relationship between Hinduism and religion, it seems more the province of mad mystics and not the detached logical explorations of the philosopher. How else will the study of Hinduism, if you accept that label, be moved from the Religious Studies Department to the more prestigious Department of Philosophy?

Hindu Conversion II

Thoughtful, objective analysis reveals that all Gods are but partial manifestations of the same purusa, Sri Krsna, and all Goddesses partial expressions of the primal sakti, Sri Radha. Krsna possesses all attributes of divinity found in other incarnations as well as aspects found in him alone. There can be only one God, yet . . . he has many expressions of himself. ~ Swami Tripurari (Rasa: Love Relationships in Transcendence, p. 71)

Hinduism is like the Irish Tourist Board slogan with a picture of a country road and the legend the road you're on will take you there. One can see from the opening quote of a leading figure in ISKON that they regard Krishna as the main highway. In that sense they are unusual and fall outside the standard 'all paths are one and no one path is superior' doctrine. They also reject the saguna (formful)/nirguna(formless) characterisation of Brahman. Vishnu then would be an incarnation of, a ray of, Krishna. The division of doctrine into the vyavaharika and the paramarthika namely that which can be understood as limited and provisional and that which is beyond conceptual understanding and is a matter of realization; is also rejected by Swami Tripurari. That quote is taken from a statement by Dr. Michael Sudduth who became a convert to Gaudiya Vaishnavism (G.V.).
gaudiya vaishnavism
Obviously Hinduism is so broad a church that it encompasses all positions including proselytism but speaking purely from the vyavaharika position it is logically counter to the main understanding of sanathana dharma which baffled missionaries. 'Yes, yes', the target group would say with that assenting wobble, 'Jesus is God, all are God'. If they were already there how could they be brought there. Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought this was due to a lack of concentration:

APHORISM XVIII. (Aids to Reflection)
Examine the journals of our zealous missionaries, I will not say among the Hottentots or Esquimaux, but in the highly civilized, though fearfully uncultivated, inhabitants of ancient India. How often, and how feelingly, do they describe the difficulty of rendering the simplest chain of thought intelligible to the ordinary natives, the rapid exhaustion of their whole power of attention, and with what distressful effort it is exerted while it lasts! Yet it is among these that the hideous practices of self-torture chiefly prevail. O, if folly were no easier than wisdom, it being often so very much more grievous, how certainly might these unhappy slaves of superstition be converted to Christianity! But, alas! to swing by hooks passed through the back, or to walk in shoes with nails of iron pointed upwards through the soles—all this is so much less difficult, demands so much less exertion of the will than to reflect, and by reflection to gain knowledge and tranquillity!
Comment.
It is not true, that ignorant persons have no notion of the advantages of truth and knowledge. They confess, they see and bear witness to these advantages in the conduct, the immunities, and the superior powers of the possessors. Were they attainable by pilgrimages the most toilsome, or penances the most painful, we should assuredly have as many pilgrims and self-tormentors in the service of true religion, as now exist under the tyranny of Papal or Brahman superstition.

Conversion to Hinduism

Matthew Disti on the Indian Philosophy Scholars group blog:
conversion

Also, it’s hard to take the claim that genuine converts don’t count as real Hindus or Buddhists to be anything more than fashionable racism. By “convert” I mean people who have taken some formal connection to a tradition–or something analogous–and aren’t just dreamy hippies.

Conversion is an interesting subject to discuss and the first thing that may be said that is indisputable is that Buddhism is an openly proselytizing religion so there is no doubt that one can become a convert to it. Hinduism is different with the oft heard claim that theirs is not a proselytizing religion and their well observed resentment of the poaching of their members by other religions. There is a certain amount of ambivalence on this front as there is a standing army of swamis in Europe and North America. ‘Certainly’, the response would be, ‘Sanathana Dharma is the natural birthright of everyone and it does not require any formal induction naming ceremonies, commisioning of japamalas (rosaries) and the like’. Another objection not generally voiced but which to me seems insuperable is that unless you are born into a caste you cannot assume the duties of a member of that caste as laid down by the dharma shastras. However there is no central authority in Hinduism, itself a contested label, that would disallow some Swami to create his own induction and conferring ceremony. There might even be a little charge for it, have you looked at the price of ghee recently, and coconuts, aiyo. ‘Then there’s garlands and sphatik japamalas and rudraksha from the far Himalya. Ganga jal. Very costly. Martin Luther had only 39 articles itself, much more is wanted for us.’

swami can get it wholesale