Gita and Varna-dharma - 3

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Namaste

 

Part 3 of three articles

Now comes the punch-line of the discussion. The four character-types

arising out of the 28 only possible types are mentioned in the Hindu

scriptures as the four varNas. There are only four, neither more nor

less. By the very definition, there is a hierarchy among them in

terms of spiritual evolution. The spiritually most evolved is the

B-type just because of the dominance of the satva in that type. The

hierarchy for the purpose of spirituality goes down as: the B-type;

the K-type; the V-type; and the S-type.

The hierarchy is only for the purpose of spiritual evolution and for

no other purpose. For all other purposes they are like the four walls

of the society.

The system has certainly suffered misuse and misappropriation both

individually and collectively; but that does not take away the

inherent nature of the classification. The entire humanity is subject

to this classification of the sva-bhAva (one's-own-nature) of the

mind for spiritual objectives. One's varN a at birth, is dependent,

according to the scriptures, on the cumulative effect of responses in

the previous life or lives to the six entities: Knowledge, Action,

Doer, Intellect, Will and Happiness. There could certainly be other

entities or factors which are relevant but Krishna mentions only

these in the Gita for elaboration in this context. And since it

gives a glimpse of the hidden theory (which must be pretty

complicated) very well, we stick to these six entities as if they are

everything. These are the genetic roots

of the individual's later manifestations. The soul in seeking a

rebirth, seeks that kind of genetic environment which matches with

its own vAsanAs; or perhaps, more precisely, with its own

character-type.

These four character-types were known as the brAhmaNas, the

kshatriya s, the vaiSya s and the SUdras in the Hindu tradition. The

qualities and the duties of each are mentioned by the Lord of the

Gita very specifically in the 18th chapter after He talks about the

three-fold division of the six entities Knowledge, Action, Doer,

Intellect, Will and Happiness. There is not a single thing in the

world which is not subject to this guNa-wise triple division. It is

this triple division of the vAsanAs carried into a new life at birth

that decides what are inborn for him in that life. The qualities that

a brAhmaNa brings with him at birth are listed. Krishna says

(Ch.18-42):

 

Serenity, self-restraint, austerity, purity, forgiveness,

uprightness, the urge to learn and know the truth of things, and

belief in God are the duties of brAhmaNa born of one’s own nature.

 

The words 'born of their own nature' (sva-bhAvajam) are important.

These qualities must be inherent in him; then only he is a brAhmaNa.

If they are not his natural qualities, then he is not a brAhmaNa even

though a parent of his may be a brAhmaNa. At the dawn of the

twenty-first century it is ridiculous to interpret the verse in any

other way. The verse should be taken as a definition of a brAhmaNa

thus: those who have these qualities as their own sva-bhAva (= one's

own nature) are brAhmaNas. . A Mahatma Gandhi, a Mother Teresa, a

Srinivasa Ramanujan, a Martin Luther King Jr., are brAhmaNas.

 

Some others, because of their vAsanAs are born in an environment

which makes them leaders and executives of society, men who can

organize, govern and fight for a cause and even give their lives on

the field for it. These are the kshatriyas of the society. Krishna

describes them: (Gita , Ch.18-43):

 

Bravery, vigour, constancy, resourcefulness, promptitude, courage in

the face of the enemy, generosity and nobility as well as a quality

of leadership and lordship - these are the duties of a kshatriya,

born of his own nature.

 

Again these have to be taken as the qualities defining a kshatriya.

In other words, those who have these qualities inherent in them are

the kshatriyas, even of this day.

 

A third category of people is the group of technical personnel who

have a skill, trade or profession and each one is a specialist in his

own way. These are the vaiSya s; they are the hands and limbs of

society. Without them the society cannot survive. When the Gita

says (Ch.18-44):

 

Agriculture, cattle-rearing and trade are the duties of the vaiSyas,

born of their nature;

 

it proceeds on the maxim that the mental temperament of a man

determines what class he belongs to and each class has his own duties

for which he is temperamentally tuned. None belonging to the 'higher'

varNas is justified in looking down upon the other varNa s on the

'lower' rung of the ladder. In fact 'higher' and 'lower' are

misnomers in the context of society and everyday life. The

high-and-low concept originated in the levels of spiritual evolution

at which the accumulated tendencies of an individual peg him. This

idea of 'level' has been wrongly imported into the context of society

by several centuries of degenerate application by the people

involved. Each of these varNas has a function for which the inborn

tendencies fit the individual well. That is why the Lord says:

Better you follow the dharma that befits your nature and not

something that is foreign to your nature. It must also be remembered

that the rigors and standards of behavior expected of a brAhmaNa

are far stricter than those expected of, say, a vaiSya or a SUdra.

The 'lower' you come in the ladder of spiritual evolution the more

liberal are the norms of behavior prescribed for you. There is an

interesting anecdote in the Mahabharata , in this connection, where

King Yudhishtira recommends four different punishments for four

people, (who have individually committed the same heinous crime),

because they belong to the four different varNas. The punishments he

recommended are; for the Sudra it is just a warning, for the vaiSya

it is a beating; for the kshatriya it is a prison term, and for the

brAhmaNa it is life imprisonment!

 

If the nature of responses to the six deciding factors in the

previous births cumulate into one of dominant tamas type, the

individual is born of the fourth varNa, the S-type, whose nature will

be to serve. Again where the Gita

verse (Ch.18-44, 2nd line) says:

 

the inborn nature of a SUdra is servitude,

 

we have to correctly interpret it as follows. Those whose inborn

nature is one of servitude, they are the SUdras. Looked at this way,

the verse loses all its 'sting' attributed to it by successive social

reformers. Properly understood it means that all the clerks of the

world, all the 'employees' who cannot do anything else except 'obey

orders' -- maybe because they have been put in those circumstances,

but more often because they cannot do anything better -- belong to

the fourth varNa. The so-called brahmin who quill-drives all his

life-time, not knowing anything else to do, and not having anything

else to do, - he must be performing his ‘gAyatrI’ for the good of the

world - is a Sudra by this definition. He has no business to take

pride in the fact that he was born of brahmin parentage and therefore

deserves respect. If he makes any claim to brahminhood it has to be

on the basis of the definition of a brAhmaNa, given in Gita

Ch.18 - 42. The 'brahmin' who has defaulted on the gAyatrI , the

Queen of all mantras, must be considered lower in spiritual evolution

than the fourth varNa who just chanted the names of God . In fact the

scriptures say that the moment a 'brahmin' thinks that he is superior

because of his varNa, his eligibility to that varNa is already

jeopardized. A brAhmaNa by attitude is what every world citizen

should strive for. In the country which gave the world the greatest

apostle of non-violence, there must not be any doubt about Truth and

Non-violence being more basic social virtues than a social system

like the present caste system in India. Remember the scriptures

prescribe only four varNas and no more. 'varNa' should not be

translated into 'caste ' The caste system is man-made. But the varNa

system is universal. The multiplicity of castes in India is a fault

of the sociological milieu of the nation and a massive misuse of the

natural theory of varNa. Listen to Mahatma Gandhi on this:

 

"varNa-ASrama is in my opinion inherent in human nature. Hinduism has

simply reduced it to a science. A man cannot change his varNa by

choice. Not to abide by one's varNa is to disregard the law of

heredity. The division however into innumerable castes is an

unwarranted liberty. The four divisions are all-sufficing. They

define one's calling; they do not restrict or regulate social

intercourse. The divisions define duties, they confer no privileges.

To arrogate to oneself a higher status is arrogance. varNa-ASrama is

self restraint, economy and conservation of energy".

 

The context in the Gita, in which all this discussion of the varNa

system appears, is significant. Arjuna is told that he is a

kshatriya, his foremost duty is not to run away from the field in

compassion to his enemies, and it is better to do one's duty born out

of one's own nature (sva-dharma) rather than adopt the dharma foreign

to one's calling and nature. It is in this context the entire varNa

system is elaborated.

So Krishna concludes this discussion by saying : Whoever performs

diligently and contentedly the work allotted to him is the one who

finds perfection. Even if you put him in a different environment he

would not blossom. And those whose natural instinct, born of his

varNa, is very strong, they will even transcend their immediate

man-made limitations and will themselves, drawn by their prakRti,

seek the environment and the work which suit their nature.

A Ramanujan , though compelled to work as a quill-driving clerk in

the Port Trust Office in Madras, could not restrict his brAhmaNa

urge to know and inquire, which was predominant in him, and he

finally ended up in Cambridge to become the twentieth century's most

famous self-made genius of a mathematician.

A shepherd boy of twelve could not be restricted to tend sheep and

cattle in the distant land of Corsica, for his kshatriya genius

would urge him to run away and seek a position in the French army in

which he quickly rose up to become the world's most well-known

general, for all time, Napolean .

A lad of age sixteen, was sweating it out in the staircases of a

multi-floor building in Calcutta carrying the share documents up and

down, to the brokers and owners, and was not allowed, by the English

overlords, even to use the lifts, because he was a 'native' -- but

nothing could restrain his vaiSya genius to become within the next

decade so dynamic as to start his own business which in due time made

him one of the two tallest industrial giants of India, Ghanshyamdas

Birla .

All these three started their lives with a profession of servitude

which was not in their inborn nature, but finally rose to shine

superlatively in the work and calling that was theirs by their

sva-bhAva, which they pursued diligently to perfection.

A Dhanurdasa , of low birth, a wrestler by profession, was spotted by

Sri Ramanujacharya in a most lustful act of meanness, but was

converted by him overnight into the most noble devotee of the Lord

and disciple of his Guru -- that the brAhmaNa disciples of the Guru

felt jealous; and the teacher taught them by putting Dhanurdasa and

his wife, of equally condemnable antecedents, to the most severe test

out of which the couple came out not only as the winners but became

the model of brAhmaNa devotees to the rest of the disciples of their

teacher.

There are scores of such instances in the ocean of Hindu tradition

that emphasize the viewpoint that it is not the caste that one is

born in but the innate behavior that really matters. Many of the

Alvars and Nayanmars and several of the devotees of Ancient,

Medieval and modern India who are towering giants of Spirituality,

belong to this category. (CONCLUDED)

 

praNAms to all advaitins.

profvk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

=====

Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

My website on Science and Spirituality is http://www.geocities.com/profvk/

You can access my book on Gems from the Ocean of Hindu Thought Vision and

Practice, and my father R. Visvanatha Sastri's manuscripts from the site.

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

It was a delight for me to read the excellent presentation on Varna

System by ProfVK. His scholarly articles (three part series)

elaquantly address the issues that are relevant for the spiritual

seekers. Also these articles are quite useful for us to improve our

behavior with greater sensitivity toward fellow citizens with a

different background.

 

In the book, `Surviving the Great Depression of 1990' Ravi Batra

presents the invisible Varna System in the Western Society.

Typically workers are classified as intellectuals (academicians,

scientists and philosophers), business executives or managers,

military, white collar workers, blue collar workers, manual laborers

(those fall within the minimum wage category), etc. Within this

broader category, there are other subcategories and the

classification varies by the degree of the intellectual and technical

abilities. In other words, the Varna system is not something unique

to the Vedic civilization.

 

The Myers-Briggs is a widely used method of personality evaluation

instrument with the purpose to improve work and personal

relationships with the rest of the community. According to this

system, each person is endowed with a Guna (personal behavior

pattern) and they are identifiable through a structured enquiry. By

knowing the behavior pattern of others it is possible to improve

interpersonal communication which can help to remove conflicts and

misunderstandings. This may partly explain the relevance of the

knowledge of Varna system in the context of advaita philosophy.

Ignorance is the fundamental problem for liberation from temporary

and permanent sorrow and sufferings.

 

Warmest regards and Pranams to Profvk,

 

Ram Chandran