Our culture has become highly verbalized. To understand’ has come to mean ‘to be able to communicate’. It is impossible to communicate without opening your mouth. When a philosopher once asked the Buddha, “Without words, without the wordless, will you tell me the truth?”
The Buddha replied by keeping silent.
The word silence is derived from the Greek
hesuchia.
John Climacus (late 16th century), in his book
The Ladder of Divine Ascent,
writes: The beginning of
hesuchia
is to throw off all noise as disturbing for the depth of the soul. And the end of it is not to fear disturbances and to remain insusceptible to them.” Surely, earplugs could successfully cut off external noises! What Climacus must have meant by becoming insusceptible to them was to cultivate stillness of the mind. Much earlier, Plutarch had observed: “We learn speech from men; silence from the Gods.” You can avoid speech, but true silence has to be cultivated.
The Sufi Abu Yazid Al-Bistani (9th century) once said: “No lamp I saw brighter than silence; no speech I heard better than speechlessness.”
These savants were concerned with the mystic value of silence. Not being a mystic, I can only command the virtues of silence in worldly affairs. Besides recharging one’s inner batteries, it has many other uses. It can be the decisive winner in an angry dialogue.
Chesterton called it “the unbearable repartee”; Bernard Shaw described it as “the most perfect expression of scorn”. As still waters run deep, so does a man of silence conceal what he has within him. It is truly said, “Beware of a man who does not talk and of a dog that does not bark.”
8/4/1987
L
ast month, many parts of Bangladesh were stricken with drought. Rains were long overdue and the transplanted paddy seedlings had begun to wither. It was clear that if rains did not come the season’s rice crop would be lost and Bangladesh would once again be faced with the prospect of famine. As a desperate last measure, President Ershad called on his people to pray to Allah to send them rain. In Dhaka, he along with 50,000 others, said the
Nimaz-e-Istisqa,
a special prayer asking for Allah’s bounty. Ten hours later there was heavy rainfall all over the country. The devout felt reassured that Allah never lets the prayers of the faithful go unanswered.
A week later Bangladesh was struck by a cyclone which took a heavy toll of life: over 10,000 people perished and many more were rendered homeless. What did the devout have to say to the affliction visited on them by the same Allah who had answered their prayers a few days earlier?
All religions believe that God rewards the good and punishes the wicked. He is
Daata,
the Giver,
Anna-daata,
the Provider of Food,
Vad-daata,
the Most Bountiful. The Judaic family of religions (Judasim, Christianity and Islam) also believe that God can become angry and visit his wrath upon people he wants to punish. The vengeful aspect of God is not as clearly defined in the Hindic family of religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism). When sin and vice become too rampant, He sends an avatar – a reincarnation – to punish wrongdoers, restore righteousness and bring the people back to the path of dharma. But as far as the day to day lives of the people are concerned, He does not seem to care very much whether the good are rewarded or sinners punished in their lifetimes. He is the
Vadda Beparwah
– the Great Unconcerned. He could not care less. In his
Lothair,
Benjamin Disraeli wrote: “I am not clear we ought to pray at all, either in public or private. It seems very arrogant in us to dictate to an all-wise Creator what we desire.”
One might well ask, what then is achieved by praying to God? Should we thank Him if our prayers are answered and curse Him if they are not? Is prayer any different from flattery of the big boss? Those who treat prayer as a kind of
saudeybaazi
– a commercial transaction – are usually disillusioned and turn hostile to God and religion. I know of at least two Sikh families which turned dramatically from being extremely orthodox to atheism. In one, every member of the family said all the five prescribed daily prayers (
nit neym
) as well as read the
Granth Sahib
for an hour or two. They had
akhand paaths
– nonstop reading of the
Granth Sahib
– almost every other month. Then a succession of tragedies struck the family. Two daughters lost their husbands; a third’s marriage broke up within a few weeks of its celebration. And their business collapsed. One fine morning the family decided that all their prayers and worship had been in vain and that God had shown utter disregard for them. They abandoned prayers and gave away their
Granth Sahib
to a gurudwara. The second family did even worse. After years of preaching Sikhism and making converts, the head suddenly came to the conclusion that prayers and recitations from the
Granth Sahib
were futile and wanted to sell the holy scripture to a
raddiwala
by its weight in paper. There was a near riot outside his house.
Prayers, though ostensibly addressed to God are, in fact, addressed to oneself. There is nothing intrinsically good in prayer: prayers come from the same mouth as oaths. Dacoits are known to pray before they rob and kill people. Combatants in battle pray for victory; only one side wins. Carlyle, in his
Life of Fredrick the Great
has Prince Leopold praying: “O God, assist our side: at least avoid assisting the enemy, and leave the rest to me.” Belief in the efficacy of prayer is based on the desire to be successful in whatever is uppermost in one’s mind. If you are ill, you pray to be restored to good health. And quite often it generates the will necessary to get the better of one’s ailment. My mother-in-law, stricken by stomach cancer and having been declared unfit to be administered general anaesthesia, asked the surgeon to allow a Sikh attendant to recite aloud the Sikh morning prayer
Japji
while her stomach was being cut open. She went through the ordeal without showing any sign of the pain she was suffering or shedding a tear. She came through the operation successfully. Many people pray to have peace of mind; they get peace of mind. This is all that the Bard meant when he said: “More things are wrought prayer than the world dreams of…” Prayer does not produce miracles, it only gives us reassurance and self-confidence to help us face adversities.
The Bible has a great deal to say on the efficacy of prayer. The best known version, repeated in many forms throughout the holy book, is from the Psalms: “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry!” It is repeated almost in these words in the cry of anguish by David when he is unable to deal with his rebellious son Absalom: “Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not thyself from my supplication.” And it is David again who raises his hands and says: “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” There is historical evidence to prove that this form of prayer was used by the early Christians to distance themselves from the pagans who killed animals as sacrifice and had reduced prayer to a meaningless ritual. What David meant to emphasize was that prayers offered by a person with a pure heart and without desire to bargain with God could be as effective as the incense and smoke of sacrifice.
It is evident that Christianity accepted the power of prayer to strengthen the moral fibre of the pure hearted. Paul exhorts his followers to fight the powers of darkness and regard God as their armour: “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Evil.” What is emphasized over and over again is that one must not lose faith in God or in the power of prayer. “The Lord hath heard my supplication; the Lord will receive my prayer.”
23-29/6/1989
I
asked for an audience with the Dalai Lama. I did not intend to question him about the Chinese occupation of his homeland – which to me is as immoral as the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, now fortunately coming to an end. Rulers of China are not bothered about political morality nor yield to pressures of world opinion. So there was no point my making the Dalai Lama talk of the offer of compromise settlement he had made recently and its outright rejection by the Chinese. I was more intrigued by his claim that Buddhism is a more sophisticated religion than others as it strongly stresses rationality and is very modern in its sensitivity. He had gone on to say, “For those types who want to follow a path of sceptical inquiry and reason, rather than a path of faith, Buddhism may prove useful.” Buddha himself said, “Do not believe in anything merely because I said it. Be like an analyst buying gold, cutting and burning the substance to test it in every way. Accept it only when it meets the full criteria of reason, and when it proves to be of benefit to you.” That kind of attitude is compatible with modern scientific outlook.
I arrived in Dharamsala where the Dalai Lama is in residence since his exile from Tibet. The upper part of the mountain range known as McLeodganj has become a little Tibet in India: Tibetan schools, libraries, a medical institute, a separate township for 1,500 children, temples, and over 50 restaurants serving Tibetan food. You hear more Tibetan spoken than the local Pahari dialect of Kangra.
Before I tell you of my question and answer session, let me tell you of the Dalai Lama’s background. He was one of 16 children of a peasant family of eastern Tibet of which only seven survived their infancy. At the age of two he was picked up by the national committee charged with the duty of finding the incarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama who had died in 1933. Two years later he was brought to Lhasa, proclaimed His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. However odd this system of locating successors may sound to sceptical ears, it has an enormous advantage over other political or social systems: from childhood a boy is trained to take over the responsibilities of a spiritual and secular leader of his people. He does not have to be the eldest son of a king to become the Prince of Wales nor the son of a President or a Prime Minister to be the heir presumptive. By the time he takes over his responsibilities, he is fully acquainted with his job. Tibetan Buddhism does not separate politics from religion. The 14th Dalai Lama is Tibet’s Secular and Spiritual monarch.
I waited my turn to be received. A group of monks came out with a boy of five with his head shaved. He had been discovered as a reincarnation of another Lama and initiated by His Holiness. A German couple waiting before us in the queue were ushered in. Fifteen minutes later we were asked to go in. The Dalai Lama stood outside his reception room – a tall, powerfully built man wreathed in smiles of welcome. We presented the traditional silk scarfs, shook hands and were escorted to our seats.
“Your Holiness, I am not going to ask you about politics. My questions will be on matters of religion. I am an agnostic and they may sound impertinent. I ask to be forgiven before I begin.”
He laughed uproariously and took my hand. “In that case I can relax. I have to be very careful about politics: you may ask what you like.”
I had my list of questions ready: How did life originate? Is there a God? If so, why is there so much injustice and wickedness in the world? Are there rewards and punishments for good or evil deeds done in life? What is death – the destruction of body and mind or only the body? Is there a life hereafter or a rebirth after death?
My first question to the Dalai Lama was his view of the origin of life on our planet. Did he accept the Judeo-Christian-Muslim belief of it being created by a Supreme God? Or did he accept Darwin’s Theory of Evolution not from divine but natural causes – from amoeba to fish to land creatures, birds, mammals, monkeys down to man? There is also the intermediate theory put forward by Hinduism and its off-shoots (Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism) of roder (
rta
) emerging from chaos by the intervention of divinity in the form of a creator, preserver and destroyer.
“As a Buddhist as well as personally I do not accept the theory of a divine creator of life,” replied the Dalai Lama. “The real creator is one’s own mind. The universe and all its galaxies were created or happened at a certain period of time.” He was not precise about the time or the causes which brought it about but once life evolved in its different manifestations, their forms were determined by Karmas – deeds. Then added: “Buddhist scriptures maintain that certain sections of humanity are different from others. In Tibetan mythology there is a story that the Tibetan race came into being through the mating of a monkey and an ethereal being.” You can see an element of Darwinism in this legend which ascribe the evolution of a race from an earthy and a celestial being.
The Dalai Lama also accepted the possibility of virgin birth. “In my generation and even earlier there were instances of women who had not been near a man conceiving. Conception was preceded by strange dreams. The offspring of such virgin births were extremely powerful and mentally advanced beings.”
The Dalai Lama repeated that he did not accept the notion of a Creator God. Life came into being through a mysterious and subtle energy. Some people were more evolved than others; the greater majority evolved as Darwin spelt out in his Theory of Evolution.
I did not fully comprehend his line of argument, as at times for loss of the right word he broke into Tibetan and had to be translated into English. I went on to my next question: “Even if you do not credit God with creation, do you believe in God as an omnipotent and compassionate reality?”
“God in the Christian sense and as some other religions see it as someone Supreme and Almighty, we Buddhist do not accept,” said the Dalai Lama categorically.