Any attempt to list out all the different type of Hindus in India – the cheek-poking devotee, the beer-swilling, chicken-chomping temple-goer, the ascetic sadhu and so on – as Chetan Bhagat did in a column on this page on November 2, is a futile exercise. He confesses that the list is incomplete as “we have never intellectually discussed what it means to be a Hindu (or Muslim or member of any other faith) in 21st century India.”
When Adi Shankara was barely eight years old, Sri Govindapada asked him, ‘Who are you?” The little boy answered in Sanskrit verse – referred to as the ‘Atma Shatakam’ or ‘Nirvana Shatakam.’ He said,
“I am not mind, nor intellect, nor ego,
nor the reflections of inner self.
I am not the five senses, beyond that I am.
I am not the five elements — neither ether
nor earth, wind, or fire.
I am indeed That eternal knowing and b
liss,
eternal love, pure consciousness…”
Shankara concludes by saying, in the sixth verse, that he is attribute-less, that he is attached neither to the world nor to liberation and that since he is everything, he has no wishes for anything.
When one is in equilibrium, do nomenclatures matter? That we forcibly define ourselves and others is also related to our habit of classifying everything into something or other, whereas our true nature is to be all-embracing. And when ‘love for the nation’ overrides universal love, we become insular, repetitive, boring; even insufferable.
Edward Said observed, a few months before his death, “I still have not been able to understand what it means to love a country.” Not everyone, though, has the courage to be “rootless cosmopolitans” as that would entail a high degree of evolved non-conformism with the built-in risk of being seen as someone who belongs nowhere. But such a one belongs everywhere, and this is what Krishna tells Arjuna in the Gita when he talks of the inverted tree that has its roots in the sky rather than deep inside the ground.
The Cosmic Tree – like a cosmozen, citizen of the cosmos – “has neither beginning nor end, nor even stability.” With the sword of dispassion, cut at the root that digs into the ground of attachment and identities and get liberated to experience the real you – freed from pride and infatuation, desires, dualities and identities. Once all duality is overcome, you have to neither prove your patriotism, loyalty to a faith, nor get shrill about what you don’t believe in. Being rootless has its own advantages, for when you are free of trappings – free of religious or political identities, for example – the universe is your oyster.
As Deepak Chopra point out, detachment is not synonymous with indifference; it implies a compassionate outlook that is ego-free and hence is free of all negativity and identities.
You would then be a “rootless” or freewheeling cosmozen, who, having been through the drill of multiple ‘avatars’ and profiling exercises — that identify you as mother, sister, grandma, spouse, or parent on the one hand and astronaut or journalist, taxpayer, teacher or student on the other – finally come into your own as a free spirit. Much like the irrepressible and joyous Maria in the 60s film, ‘The Sound of Music’ who the Mother Superior complains, is difficult to “catch” — “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? / How do you find a word that means Maria?”
Definitions are irrelevant to a cosmozen, for she knows that the horizon is but a mirage.
About the Author
Narayani Ganesh
Narayani Ganesh is a senior editor with The Times of India. She writes on issues concerning the environment, science and technology, travel and tourism, heritage, philosophy, and health. She edits The Speaking Tree Sunday newspaper and daily column of that name, and is a leader writer with the Times of India opinion pages.