"Is Ignorance really Bliss?" - An Essay on VII.15 of the Bhagavath-Gita

[Guest guest]

A few years ago there was a report in an Indian newspaper about how a

majority of candidates taking an All-India Civil Services examination

failed to give correct answers to questions like "Who was the author

of the Vishnu-Sahasranama?", "What is "ashva~mEdha-yagnya", "Name the

6 chapters of the Ramayana".

 

I was once watching a Quiz-show on popular TV. The brightest pair of

students from a prestigious school in New Delhi was competing and

they had ready answers to posers like "Who is the author

of "Canterbury Tales" but were stumped when asked "Who wrote

the "vivEka-choodAmani"?

 

It is general fact that amongst the youth of India today, whether at

home or abroad, there is little awareness of nativity and roots ...

or of religion, traditions, customs, manners, history or literature.

 

Sadly, the ignorance of adult Indians exceeds even that of their

young brethren. One day some years ago I ventured to conduct my own

version of a lunch-hour gallup poll amongst a dozen collegues of mine

at office (all highly educated, wordly-wise and hailing from

different parts of India). Seated around a table in the cafeteria, I

casually put to them a question, "What is Vedanta?". Their answers

were amazingly varied, beginning with the rather rude "I don't know,

I don't really care" to the vague and uncomfortable, "I don't really

know, but I guess it's the stuff Vivekananda -- or Chinamayananda and

the like -- deal with". The polled responses revealed to me the

varying degrees of ignorance prevailing amongst modern-day ordinary

Indians about Vedanta. Not one came up with the simple, direct answer

I was expecting viz.: "Vedanta is Indian philosophy".

 

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Ever since I did the poll, I have often found myself wondering why at

the very mention of the word "Vedanta", ordinary Indians today (like

my friendly office co-workers, for example), become embarrassed or

discomfited. Why do they respond with feelings that one can only

characterize as uneasy, lukewarm or callous --- feelings such as

apathy, disinterest, derison and ignorance? To me the answer seems to

be this:

 

The average Indian today prefers to pursue the practical to the

virtual exclusion of the profound. "Philosophy bakes no bread; so why

waste time on it?" is the argument. I I have heard many close friends

and colleagues similarly saying to me, "Our religion, philosophy,

Vedanta, 'pUrANa' and all that... of what practical use really are

they to me in the present day? What relevance do they have in the

world we live in? A world plagued by terrorism, war, job-losses, HIV

and ozone-depletion? I find I'm better off just concentrating on my

work, profession or career. I'd rather put my faith in the

motto, "Work is Worship". As for religion, Vedanta and all that...

well, my mantra has always been: "Ignorance is bliss".

 

The oft-quoted mantra of "Ignorance is bliss" is a clever but

specious quip. It has raised the status of Ignorance to a modern

pseudo-virtue. Many Indians (especially "young and upwardly-mobile"

members of the SriVaishnava community) are quite fond of quoting it

to justify to themselves their general indifference to all things

religious or scriptural. But they actually do so rather unthinkingly.

What they believe is some kind of wise maxim is actually a statement

of sad and profound irony. They have no idea of its original source.

The line appears at the end of a poem by the English poet Thomas Gray

(1716-1771) titled "Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College":

 

"Alas, regardless of their doom

The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come

Nor care beyond today: ....

 

Yet ah! why should they know their fate .....

Thought would destroy their paradise...

where Ignorance is bliss,

'Tis folly to be wise.

 

The "Ode" by Thomas Gray is a poem of great moral despair and it ends

with those famous lines on a deeply ironical note. It was written at

a time when England was in the throes of great economic and social

turmoil caused by the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The poet

was reflecting upon the many ills and injustices that were

bedevilling his country but of which his countrymen, the silent and

thoughtless majority, seemed utterly ignorant. The line "Where

Ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise" actually was meant to

describe the young but ignorant English masses of those times. They

had really "no sense of ills to come"; they didn't seem to

know "their fate". They busied themselves only with the humdrum, day-

to-day cares of personal life and livelihood. They did not seem

to "care beyond today", believing that any thought of the Beyond

would only "destroy their (petty, private) paradise".

 

No one who really knew the context or significance of Gray's famous

line would ever really wish to quote it to make a moral case for

Ignorance.

 

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Vedanta is generally acclaimed to be India's highest contribution to

human thought and civilization. The first Western philosopher to come

across Vedantic literature (the Upanishads) was the great Arthur

Schopenhauer. After reading the Upanishads he made a famous statement

about it:

 

"From every sentence deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and

the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit. In the

whole world... there is no study.. so beneficial and so elevating as

that of the Upanishads. They are destined sooner or later to become

the faith of the people".

 

Schopenhauer's statement is to Vedanta what the astronaut, Neil

Armstrong's statement was to Man's historic landing on the Moon: "One

small step for man; a giant leap for mankind." It is therefore one of

the saddest stories of the times that India's Vedantic 'step',

representing one of the most historic 'leaps' of human thought in the

history of mankind, did not, alas, become the "faith of the people"

as Sri.Schopenhauer had predicted. Not even 1 in a 1000 people in

India today -- not even those who might regard themselves

as "religious-minded" or "God-fearing" -- might be able to correctly

name, if asked, the 10 principal Upanishads! Vedanta does not anymore

cause (as once it did) Indian hearts to flutter, as proudly as the

glorious tri-colour. The average Indian, instead, finds far greater

reason to gloat that his great country today contributes to, say,

making some odd new suite of Microsoft-software run successfully in

America...

 

Young India today represents the complete triumph of the practical

over the profound. And the general consequence: young India prides

itself on its roller-coaster romance with mundane-ness... a romance

in which Ignorance rules bliss as surely as the heart rules the head.

 

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(to be continued)

 

dAsan,

Sudarshan