SINGING - Svetasvatara Upanisad
Rachael Kohn: That’s from Peter Brook’s 1989 film of the Mahabharata, the world’s longest poem and a central text of the Hindu scriptures.
Hello, I’m Rachael Kohn, welcome to The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National. This is the second in our Spiritual Classics series, where we’re plunging into the passion and the sublime insights of the Hindu scriptures.
They form a vast canon of the Veda, the Upanishads and the epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. One of my guests today says it’s much too large to study in just one lifetime.
In this ocean of literature you find philosophy, prayers, and practical ethics as well as poems and stories within-stories. In fact, the most popular story, the Bhagavad Gita, is found within the Mahabharata, which means roughly the Great History of Mankind.
Today we hear from Anandavalli, who brings the exciting world of Indian epics to the stage in her Lingalayam Dance Company.
We’re also joined by Sri Vasudevacharya, one of Australia’s leading Sanskrit scholars who not only elucidates some key messages of the texts, but also chants them in hypnotic traditional style.
Rachael Kohn: I thought what better place to find an expert on the Hindu tradition, than the Sri Venkateswara temple in Helensburgh, New South Wales, south of Sydney. There, as priests make puja or offerings at the shrines all day long, Sri Vasudevacharya can be found teaching classes.
He’s the resident scholar, but I first met him some years ago when he was a lecturer in Sanskrit at the University of Sydney. Since then he’s become a real resource for the Indian community and you’ll understand why, when you hear how clearly he communicates the subtle ideas that form the basis of the Hindu tradition.
BELL
Rachael Kohn: Well, I’ve come down here again in Helensburgh in this beautiful temple, to speak to you about the Hindu scriptures, and I wonder, as a teacher, do Indians know their scriptures very well?
Sri Vasudevacharya: Some Indians know their scriptures quite well, especially the Bhagavad Gita, it depends upon the family background and their interest. Many know parts of the Ramayana and Bhagavatam, and also stories that they learnt from their grandparents, and slokas, that is, verses and hymns. These things are passed down in families, but in terms of systematic study, not much, though most Hindus would be able to pull out one or two sacred verses if you pushed them.
Rachael Kohn: But it’s a vast body of literature to know. When I think of Indian scriptures, Hindu scriptures, I think of probably the largest collection of ancient works.
Sri Vasudevacharya: It is impossible to study all these scriptures in one lifetime; maybe that’s why people have several lives.
In one lifetime, you could only study a portion, a very small portion of Hindu Scripture. Of these scriptures, the most important is the Veda, the most living scripture among the Veda is the Upanishads, and after that the most popular scripture would be the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavata Mahapurana.
Rachael Kohn: Let me ask you about the Vedas; how far back do they go, who wrote them, and are they considered a divine revelation?
Sri Vasudevacharya: Answering this question we can look at it in two says. The traditional Indian way, or the Western view.
The Western viewpoint is historical, so it tends to want to date things. The earliest strata of the Veda will go back 1500 to 1700 BC, and then the later portions of it may be around 800 BC or 700 BC. Hindus don’t look at their scripture like that. They look at it as a revelation from God, in the same way as the Jewish people would look upon the Book of Moses etc. as a revelation from God, or the Muslims would look upon the Qur’an as a revelation from God via the Angel Gabriel.
So too, and in a similar sense, the Hindus look upon the Veda as the revelation from God to the ancient sages at the beginning of the cycle of creation. And then this wisdom, Vedic wisdom, was passed down through various families, and it has been preserved. Not that it is all living, some parts of it are still living, some parts of it are just in the book, so to speak, but it’s a very ancient teaching.
Rachael Kohn: When you refer to the Veda, what does it contain?
Sri Vasudevacharya: The Veda is a single body of knowledge which was divided (this is according to tradition) by the sage Vyasa into four, because people’s memory capacity was declining. He divided it into Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda. In each of these four Vedas, there are two main sections.
The first section is known as the Mantra section, or the Hymn section, and the second part is called the Brahmana portion which is in prose. The Hymn portion or the Mantra section has largely to do with Hymns to various deities. And the Brahmana portion has to do with the performance of various rituals.
Towards the end of the Brahmana portion there is another portion called Aranyaka, which is an esoteric section largely to do with the meditations on the correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm; the microcosm being your physical body, and the macrocosm being the universe.
Rachael Kohn: Is that a more philosophical kind of writing?
Sri Vasudevacharya: It is, and it was supposedly, since it’s called Aranyaka which means forest treatise, for people who had reached a certain maturity in their life, and dispensed with literally doing the Vedic rituals and were contemplating upon the inner significance of the external ritual. And it is still not Upanishad, it is called the Aranyaka, and it is largely symbolical meditation. It is very esoteric and not much practiced these days.
The most important, probably one of the most important ones of them, was the identification, or the correspondence, between the inner breath, called prana, and the outer air, whereby you see that the inner prana and the outer air are somehow one. So it is looking for identifications at a symbolic level and at a meditative level between microcosm and macrocosm.
Rachael Kohn: One thinks of Hinduism as not only a philosophical system that is non-dualistic but one that has also great emphasis on the inner.
Sri Vasudevacharya: That comes more in the Upanishads, which is the last portion in the Vedic literature, and therefore gets the name Vedanta, which literally means End of the Veda. Sometimes Culmination of the Veda, but literally End of the Veda.
The Upanishads deal with what we say is the highest wisdom, and though mostly they are at the end of the Veda, one Upanishad is even found in the Mantra portion of the Veda, so it is really the subject matter that defines the Upanishad or secret treatise.
The word ‘Upanishad’ literally means ‘sitting down close by’, so the student is sitting down close to the teacher and some secret communication, or a communication which is not for the wider public, is being passed between them, so it is a kind of secret teaching, not for many people. The whole Veda is considered to be the revelation of God, dealing with these two subject matters: the first subject matter is about performing rituals to take you to heaven, because we don’t know whether there is a heaven, and we don’t know that performing this ritual and putting this ghee in the fire and saying this mantra will take you to heaven, so that is a revelation that there is a heaven, and leading a certain type of life is a way of reaching heaven.
And then the second main subject matter in the entire Veda is the knowledge of ultimate reality which is the subject matter of the Upanishads.
For me, understanding the nature of God that is revealed in the Veda, is the essence of Hinduism. It has a distinct conception of the nature of God, which is very much to do with oneness; it looks upon God as the maker of the world, and it also looks upon God as the very material, the shakti, we will say the upadana, the material cause of the world, and if that’s the case, then nothing is really separate from God. Therefore the world and God are not two separate things.
Like if you look at the relationship between my gold ring and the gold, then the ring is not a separate thing from the gold, I can’t say ‘I give you the ring and I’ll keep the gold.’ I’m doing a fine deal, but you don’t get much.
In a similar way, this division between the world and God is there at a certain practical level but ultimately those divisions are not really true. And the Upanishads reveal a teaching of oneness, or non-duality.
Non-duality also means that the essence of the individual soul is not distinct from God. This has to be understood properly. Otherwise it can be misunderstood that myself is God or something like this. It’s not right. Or if the New Age are understanding this way, they’re not understanding correctly. These are religious teachings and spiritual teachings, and they should be taken accordingly.
It is only when you’re prepared to go through the discipline and understand what it is about you that is being equated to the supreme, it’s certainly not at the level of the physical body or at the level of the senses, or at the level of the mind, or at the level of the psyche. It is at the level of the animating spirit that the equation is made. And only then you can make the equation, otherwise it is illegitimate to do that.
Rachael Kohn: And that’s a very, very subtle concept.
Sri Vasudevacharya: Yes, it takes a certain subtlety of intellect to intuit it. You don’t have to be the most intelligent person, but it takes a certain qualification of mind. That’s why traditionally in these teachings, they put quite a lot of emphasis upon qualifications. Not only that you have the qualification to understand, but you have the qualification to try to live according to your understanding, and not to misuse it later. Because the habits of anger and greed etc., they seem to reside somewhere in the human heart.
Those things should be dealt with as well.
So there’s a strong ethical rigour in this teaching, as well as a spiritual teaching, because the teaching has to then sit in a mind which is not opposing the teaching.
As you say, you have to polish the mirror so that it can shine.
So one of the main psychological teachings of the Bhagavad Gita is to try to gain an equanimity of mind in various circumstances. And one of its main metaphysical teachings is to try to see that there is one ultimate source of life animating every living thing, which is what we might call God.
So metaphysically it talks about a oneness and psychologically it talks about equanimity. I think it’s a good introduction. Anybody of any religion can read the Bhagavad Gita and get something out of it. That doesn’t mean that you have to convert to Hinduism or that you have to worship Krishna. You can leave all that aside because Hindus are not largely concerned with getting more numbers. There are quite a lot of Hindus around in India as it is. But Bhagavad Gita - just like anybody can read the New Testament for example, and you can get something out of it, even if you aren’t a Christian, some of the sayings of Jesus are very powerful - so similarly in Bhagavad Gita everyone can get something that will benefit them in their lives.
Rachael Kohn: Can you read a bit?
Sri Vasudevacharya: I’ll read a couple of shlokas, towards the end of Chapter 13. The Bhagavad Gita has 18 chapters.
LANGUAGE – SANSKRIT
A translation of these two verses, similar:
The person who is able to see…the supreme Lord or God abiding equally…in all living things, that God who is imperishable among the perishable, and abiding equally in all things, the person who sees that…that person sees Truly, that person sees correctly.
The second verse is a similar idea. I rather like these two verses.
“The person who sees the God abiding equally everywhere, that person does not destroy himself”. Does not destroy himself means the person’s life has come to a fruition. Otherwise, a life ignorant of the knowledge of the truth is figuratively called as ‘self-suicide’. The person does not destroy themselves means they fulfill their existence, that person goes to the supreme end.
Many teachings are like this in the Bhagavad Gita, so it’s good ethically. It has some valuable things to say, metaphysically and devotionally. It’s a good place for a person to see what Hinduism has to say. It is the most popular of the Hindu Scriptures, because it has a practical orientation.
BELLS
Rachael Kohn: Sri Vasudevacharya on the ethical teachings of the Bhagavad Gita.
Later, Anandavalli, well known for her Lingalayam Dance Company, will tell us how the characters from the great Indian epics come alive on stage.
CHANTING
Rachael Kohn: The Bhagavad Gita is a story within the epic poem the Mahabharata, where among the many characters, Ganesha the Elephant God makes an appearance as the Scribe. The other Indian epic, described by Sri Vasudevacharya is the Ramayana, in which Hanuman the Monkey god plays a key role.
Sri Vasudevacharya: The Ramayana is the story of Lord Rama, who is considered to be an incarnation of Vishnu, and Rama came on earth in order to destroy the demon Ravana. So it is a fight between good and evil. Just like the Bhagavad Gita is set on a battlefield, so to here, it was a fight between good and evil.
That’s why it is not quite correct to think that Hinduism is an entirely non-violent religion. It is a non-aggressive religion, but when it comes to the fight against evil, the Hindu gods themselves take part. So I think in that sense, since the Bhagavad Gita is set on a battlefield, and Rama is fighting the demon Ravana, sometimes if it is a case of fighting against evil, then there is such a thing as a just war. But it shouldn’t be under aggressive circumstances, it should only be as a defensive action against evil.
At a practical level there is a concept of good and evil. We know within ourselves that we can improve ourselves; there are negative emotions and positive, and the Hindu prayer ‘from the unreal to the real, from darkness lead us to light, from death to immortality’ - I believe that Pope Paul VI recited this prayer on one occasion. These are all things that we should try to incorporate in our lives.
From darkness means from spiritual darkness and ethical darkness, to light; we should always try to improve ourselves, never thinking that we are perfect, and not criticising ourselves too strongly when we fail, we should just try to pick ourselves up and improve ourselves. That’s why Gita and these texts are important, because they are manuals of self improvement also.
Among the seven divisions of the Ramayana, Sundara Kanda is the most famous and people read it as a vow, as a religious exercise. They will recite every chapter of this book; so many chapters, there must be 40 or so.
I’ll just choose a few verses and read. This is the verse where Hanuman, the Monkey God, has discovered Sita because Sita was kidnapped by the demon Ravana, and no-one knew where she had been taken. And he has leapt over the ocean from India in a single leap to the island of Sri Lanka, and then he has gone to the demon kingdom. He has worked out where Sita was and he has located her. And he has with him a ring which Rama had given, which he can give Sita to prove that he’s a legitimate messenger. So Hanuman is just handing over the ring to Sita to prove his bona fides.
LANGUAGE – SANSKRIT
We think of the Veda as a text because the Qur’an is a text, and the Bible is a text. Nowadays the Veda is a text, people are often chanting from a book, and in the book various marks are put so we know how to chant it properly. But originally, and probably for more than 1,000 years or 1,200 years, the Veda was not a text, it was just sound, and ultimately it was in the form of thought. Let me explain:
If you take the word ‘Rama’, the word ‘Rama’ exists in your mind as a thought and you can repeat ‘Rama, Rama, Rama’. So the Veda was in the mind of the teacher, and he passed it on to the mind of the student who passed it on into the mind of his student over time and it was just an oral transmission, there was no text called Veda.
Therefore, it had to be learnt very, very accurately, and even in India to this day, even though people are using books, still when people study in a traditional way, they often do not use books. The teacher repeats the sentence twice and the students repeat after him twice or three times, and the teacher keeps saying until he is happy with how the student has said it, and then he moves on to the next portion.
The next day they have to recite that portion again, before they move to a new portion, and it is all done orally and there is no book between teacher and the student. And therefore we have to get the chanting of it correct. So let me just chant a little bit of Taittiriya Upanishad, which is rather nice to chant, and you can hear that the special feature about Veda chanting is the tone.
And there are upmarks in the book, you can see they are vertical lines, and horizontal lines, and there are also some double vertical lines, and these denote where your tone should rise and where it should fall, and where there is a certain repetition of certain vowel sounds, and it is not optional.
For chanting Veda there is either a right way or a wrong way. So the Indian tradition holds that one should not pursue it independently, without going to a guru and learning properly, at least in the initial stages.
CHANTING VEDA– SANSKRIT
Rachael Kohn: This is Hindu Spiritual Classics on The Spirit Things, and you are tuned in to ABC Radio National.
That was Sri Vasudevacharya, the resident scholar of the Sri Venkateswara temple in Helensburgh, New South Wales.
SINGING
Vasudevacharya is a Sydney-based religious teacher and scholar of Hinduism. He is associated with the Sri Venkateswara Temple at Helensburgh outside of Sydney.