Many years ago, I met Mr Ratan Tata at his office in Mumbai. I asked him, “Parsees are not known to believe in God. They worship fire. They are kind of agnostic, if not atheist. Do you believe in God?”
Mr. Tata looked me in the eye, and replied, “I can’t say about God, but I can tell you what my grandmother once taught me as a child. She said, ‘Whatever you do in life, child, do it with purity of purpose.’”
Still many more years later, actually recently, reading the Avesta, I realized that the Zoroastrian faith of the Parsis, one of whom, Mr Jamshetji Tata, built this industrial city over a hundred years ago, emphasizes on purity as the benchmark of faith.
That set me thinking.
‘Purity of purpose’ is an issue of ethics that arises from somewhere beyond our perceived understanding of religion. It is embedded deep in spiritualism that, I believe, is religion agnostic.
That also aroused my curiosity on how does my own faith, Hinduism, and its spiritual moorings, look at ethics? After much soul-searching, I came to understand that the meaning of ethics is hidden in our understanding of dharma. Dharma is the spiritual bedrock on which the Indian civilization has been built over millennia.
Let me take you there.
Over the ages, dharma has come to mean different things to different people. To preach dharma, then, is to shine the light of wisdom in a hall of mirrors. Which is why dharma is more often misused than used to carry through a point of observation with the purpose of achieving an outcome of ‘good’ over ‘evil’.
The key word here is neither good nor evil, but outcome.
This is the guiding force that helps millions of Hindus walk through the grind of their daily lives for communion with God. Hindus believe that dharma can help liberate the soul, to achieve moksha, by merging with the everlasting divine after several birth cycles.
Our most common understanding of dharma is religion. Others define dharma as the rule of law. Yet, in the fluid world of public morality and demanding jurisprudence, dharma, in the original, means enlightened reasoning, riding on conviction and compassion. In short, dharma is good conduct that is intrinsic to each one of us. That is also the basis of ethics in Hindu spiritualism.
That brings me to the most accomplished practitioner of dharma in Indian history, and the person to whom most Indians owe a significant part of their spiritual inheritance. In the last one year, many of us have woken up to both the enigma and the agony of Ram, to whom a magnificent temple was dedicated in Ayodhya a year ago.
Ram is the prince who is banished by his father Dashrath from his kingdom. Dashrath is instigated by Ram’s step mother. Ram goes into exile for 14 years, during which, his beautiful wife, Sita, is abducted by Ravan, the king of the demons. Ram eventually kills Ravan, rescues Sita, and returns home after completing his exile. In Ayodhya, he is finally crowned king. He rules happily ever after as a prosperous monarch.
The Ram story is an epic journey of a valiant man who walks into oblivion. And his eventual comeback to glorious rule. Deeply buried under layers of storytelling, it is also our spiritual journeys in which the base instinct in each one of us strives to commune with our higher purpose in life. This upward striving is beautifully captured in a chant from the Upanishad: Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.
Ram is the embodiment of what is right. His is the story of unadulterated ethics at work. That, to him, is worship. This is why Ram is worshipped as Maryada Purushottam, the Man of Magnificent Principles.
In the Ram story, Dashrath’s wife, and Ram’s stepmother, Kaikeyi uses ethics to subvert kingship by demanding that her husband honour his promise to her, and so exile Ram, so that her own son Bharat can become king; Lakshman, Ram’s other brother, uses ethics to persuade Ram to revolt against their father, and punish Kaikeyi, both of whom he accuses of flouting ethics to deny Ram from inheriting his kingdom. Jabali, Dashrath’s head priest and mentor, uses ethics to persuade Ram to take up his rightful station as king, following the death of Dashrath. Even Vasisht, spiritual guru to both Dashrath and Ram, uses ethics to goad Ram into assuming kingship, to serve his subjects, and honour the people’s mandate that he rates above the king’s demand, no matter what the compulsions of state and family loyalties.
In these several encounters between dharma and dharma, that is the ethics of one person against the ethics of another, Jabali, Dashrath’s conscience keeper, informs Ram of the importance of realpolitik in statecraft, to help him retrace his reasoned path back from exile to the capital city of their kingdom.
“There is only one world. And that world is this world. Believe all that you see, turn your back on what you cannot see. Renouncing your inheritance can only lead you through a difficult path to much hardship. Mount the throne of Ayodhya,” Jabali counsels Ram. That, to him, is ethics.
Yet, Ram rejects the call to return.
Instead, he defines ethics as recourse to Truth. Nothing else matters, he says.
In writing the Ramayan, Valmiki uses Ram as a messenger of Truth, the pursuit of which, he believes, is the supreme spiritual goal of every person. This requires strict adherence to ethics. The Ramayan advocates control and conduct as instruments of righteousness, and condemns the person of unrestrained passions for walking the unrighteous path.
In this new framework, Ram insists that a person’s character and deed alone must determine his high or the low birth, the purity or impurity of his purpose, and the bravery or wickedness of his behaviour. To walk upright, a person must conduct his life according to the sacred. For, that alone can earn a person respect, both among his peers and from the gods.
Dharma, according to Ram, is to honour truth based on commitment and compassion. For dharma to function, it must operate within the framework of defined rules and restraints on the sovereign’s responsibilities and rights. Ram says that within these limitations, his father kept his word to his wife, and, likewise, he too must keep his word to his father. That to him is Truth.
Ram insists that truth is the mainstay of the world. The gods and the sages have declared truth as the highest goal of human accomplishment. Charity, offerings, penances, good deeds and knowledge are all based on truth. So, truth alone must prevail.
Truth is the highest good.
Truth is the highest god.
Truth is the basis of existence.
Truth exalts the mortals to heaven.
Nothing is greater than truth, says Ram. This is the reason why people dislike liars.
That brings us to what really is Truth in a world where the moral boundary is constantly shifting, and Truth manifests in multiple facets, just like ethics, in the hall of mirrors. This is also how Truth often misleads the person who seeks to uphold the truth.
In the Ram story, Dashrath, husband of Kaikeyi, father of Ram, Bharat, and Lakshman, boss of Jabali, and disciple of Vashisht, loses his spiritual fortune, his sons, and his kingdom by clinging to Truth. As with Dashrath, people often lose great fortunes by engaging with illusory ideals. Radical morality, as Ramayan scholar Patricia Y Mumme, professor of Religion at Denison University, suggests, cannot be reduced to a structured code of ethical principles that precisely state what is divinely demanded of us humans.
In this contest on many viewpoints, my purpose is not to take sides, my purpose is to reflect and reason, searching the way forward to guide us into the future. And I hope this symposium will help us take home some pointers to make that happen.
Till then, let me dive a bit deeper into the tradition to which I belong. The Vedas are the world’s oldest scriptural text on ethics, with several recensions and exegesis added over the millennia.
Truth, the Vedas say, is that there is That One and Only, no other. All the world’s major belief systems are agreed on this. However, the Vedic scriptures also hold that we do not need to look up at the sky to perceive, recognise and locate That One truth; we can discover that truth deep within our being itself. Everywhere else, we see illusions. To get to the bottom of that One Truth, the spiritualist, among us, must retrace his steps from his mortal body, and dive into the dark night of the soul, that is the limitless space within us. The journey from light to darkness and darkness to light defines what the Truth really is all about. And that journey is ours alone, to achieve an outcome. In that sense, truth is the experience of who we really are, and what we do to justify who we really are. This is the purpose of all spiritual learnings.
Nineteenth century American essayist, poet, lecturer, philosopher and abolitionist Ralph Waldo Emerson, of the Unitarian Church, who led the Transcendentalist movement, deeply subscribed to this universalism of the Vedas. So did David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist. The two together inspired the abolition of slavery in America that provoked the Civil War.
The Vedic exposition on the discovery of truth brings us to the realm of karma. Put simply, karma is whatever we do, in our daily walks through life. But like dharma, karma too has many facets, and multiple explanations. To the scholar of ethics, karma holds a special significance.
Karma, the ancients said, is the manifestation of the unmanifest within a given timeframe. Karma, then, is restrained by the timeline. It is the journey of the metaphysical point. The Hindus call this invisible point parabrahman, that is God. It is this God who first said, “Let there be light.” And so, there was light. That illumination of the illuminating is karma. Karma is also our delving into the dark. In doing so, we extinguish light.
Indian seers said light travels from the dark to our visible universe, in stages, using sensory perceptions, and the awareness of being present. Growing out of that awareness and perception, light leads us to wisdom. And that wisdom eventually leads us to an outcome. This is a spiritual journey that is experienced both by the supernatural and the natural being, that is, both by God and us humans. However, God alone has the will to act as he chooses, to experience what he desires. This is because he is the supreme sovereign of the Universe. We humans, on the other hand, need to channel our will to arrive at pre-determined outcomes, whether for good or evil.
John Woodroffe, a 19th century English scholar of the Vedic tradition says, “Our sensory faculty is integral to all existence, both physical and metaphysical. It essentially comprises the functions in relation to environment, response to stimuli, and cellular memory in the lower and inorganic plane. In the higher or organic plane, it includes all the psychic functions such as consciousness, perception, thought, reason, volition, and individual memory.”
This is the reason why it is characteristic of the flower to adorn the feet of the gods, just as it is characteristic of stone to metamorphose into the idol, and us, humans, to aspire for godhead.
To appreciate this, we must assume that consciousness, that makes things happen, is programmed with the basic functions of the will to perform and the prospect of work. Our memory and experience of all that exists around us motivate our will and work.
Based on this assumption, practitioners of Indic wisdom hold that throughout, the invisible metaphysical Being, we call God in all faiths and spiritual practices, is that one agent that works. At times, God works in ignorance, and at other times, God is fully aware, gradually revealing itself in the evolving forms of world life.
That is how this manifest Universe, is described as the complete whole, that has moved forth from the invisible (w)hole to emerge as an expression of the primordial divine energy, that is God. This movement is in two stages, first as the nature of the being, and then as its behavior. That movement is born from wonder at the existence of the universe, which is expressed in the word of amazement. The poet expressed this word of wonder in the aha! moment. Next, the movement is driven by will, and articulated as wisdom that prompts the being to work to create our manifest world of outcomes.
All these movements, wonder, word, will, wisdom, work, and the world as a whole, are inputs that inform our ethics.
When we mortals channel this flow of the divine in our individual lives, inspired by conduct and compassion, we live in perpetual joy. This doctrine universally translates to good will, good thought, and good deed as the bedrock of everlasting ananda or happiness.The seers believed that this movement alone, across the specific milestones mentioned above, is ethics.
The Upanishads, that are mystical insights into the Vedas, say that it is possible for us mortals to not only reach Brahman, but to become one with it.
“I reach Brahman by controlling my free will.
I control my free will by controlling my sight, which is the human wealth I see and seek.
I control my free will by controlling my hearing. This is the human wealth I hear of and desire.
I control my free will by controlling my thoughts. My thoughts make me what I become.
I control my free will by controlling my speech. What I speak is a reflection of me, my speech is my spouse.
I control my sight, hearing, thoughts and speech by controlling the breath I take. My breath is my offspring.
I control the breath I take by the company I keep. In controlling the company I keep, I meditate upon what I desire. In meditating upon what I desire, I become what I desire. In becoming what I desire, I acquire a glow in my personality.
This is to say, he who knows Brahman becomes Brahman.
This is also to suggest that our ethics transforms our deed, whatever the deed. The result is there for all to see. That is how the throne was eventually restored to Ram.
Our lack of ethics instigate our misdeeds. We reach negative outcomes. Such was the case with Ram’s archenemy, Ravan.
In the Ramayana story there is a monkey warrior Hanuman who accomplishes a great deed to rescue Sita, Ram’s abducted wife, and restores happiness in what is otherwise a long, sad story. To achieve his purpose, Hanuman takes a giant leap of faith to cross the ocean of fear. As he readies himself, his wise commander blesses him: “May you attain your goals safely. May your intelligence, determination, vision and competence never fail you.”
Hanuman, the monkey, has no reason to leap.
It is Ram’s war from start to finish.
Yet, Hanuman makes a choice.
Hanuman’s choice was influenced by the wisdom of the Upanishads:
“May Brahma protect us both, may Brahma nourish us both, may both of us be glorious. Let us not fight among ourselves. Let us attain the hereafter together.”
When the practitioner achieves this stability, he effuses tolerance and purity within. This influences even the violent to renounce violence, and beasts to become besties.
In a different civilizational context, Jesus Christ confirmed this choice: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
May our choice help us accomplish the task at hand.
Sources:
This essay draws on Roy’s existing work, and his readings of Valmiki Ramyana (translated by Arshia Sattar), Many Ramayanas (edited by Paula Richman), The Principal Upanishads (translated by S Radhakrishnan), Varnamala, The Garland of Letters by Sir John Woodroffe, and Roy’s forthcoming book, pixel: Decoding Hinduism.
Shubhrangshu Roy, is a student of spirituality, and history. In an earlier avatar, he was a newspaper Editor. Roy has authored two books on Indian spiritualism, Zara’s Witness (2019), a retelling of India’s Upanishadic wisdom, and Shadows of the Fragmented Moon (2022), a reimagination of two Indian wisdom texts. His third work, ‘pixel: Decoding Hinduism’, is awaiting publication.
This presentation was made at the first interfaith symposium at the XLRI, Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur on 10 February, 2025
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