Thread by @vakibs

In this thread, I want to discuss about Brahmacharya: an ideal for human life in Hinduism, but which the Judiciary of India is seeking to destroy in every manner possible.

First, I wish to point to this excellent essay in @IndiaFactsOrg on #Brahmacharya.

indiafacts.org/brahmacharya-a…

Brahmacharya is typically translated as celibacy. For certain people and stages of life, this is a correct translation. But it is actually different from that, and much larger in scope and intent.

Here is Gandhi who popularized the idea of Brahmacharya as celibacy.

As the essay points out, Brahmacharya is not necessarily to be equated with celibacy.

For a married person (in the Gṛhasthāśrama of life), Brahmacharya does not mean celibacy, but rather adhering to the marital vow of having sex with just the spouse, as opposed to adultery.

Brahmacharya means "walking with the Brahman". It means understanding life in as holistic a sense as possible. It requires renouncing desires and attachments, to the extent possible. It can be seen as circumambulating the Purusha on the wheel of Prakṛti.
pragyata.com/mag/the-cosmic…

To understand what Brahmacharya means, and how it can be applied in different worldly contexts, I find it illuminating to see the odd and peculiar cases in which it is discussed in the Dharmaśāstras.

For example, a Brahmachari should not gamble.
He should not climb tall trees.

He should not cross wide rivers.
He should not pour oil or water several times on his body.
He should not engage in risky activities.

Such injunctions are almost mirrored by the Chinese philosopher Yang Zhu.

Here is Ed Slingerland discussing Yang Zhu.

Risky activities threaten life and its potential for the realization of Brahman. So they need to be avoided to the extent possible.

But what to make of the injunction to not pour oil on one's body !?

In order to understand this, one needs to know the deeper symbolism of India.

Once we understand the deeper cosmography of Indic knowledge systems, these injunctions do not look as odd as they seem.

My opinion is that the ideal of Brahmacharya, as espoused by Indian teachers, greatly influenced various world cultures, but often in very limited teachings.

At the core of Indic understanding of life is the concept of "Samsāra". Buddhists call this as the wheel of suffering.

In India, "Samsāra" colloquially means a "family life". In my language Telugu, a person who keeps making mistakes in life is jokingly termed a "Nitya Samsāri".

As an aside, I want to recommend this excellent documentary "Samsāra", which shows the beauty as well as the industrialized horrors of the world today.


In short, "Brahmacharya" is the opposite of "Samsāra". It is a way out of the traps of its sorrow.

To know what "Samsāra" means, one needs to know the cosmography of time and space, as understood by Indian sages.

In the Indic tradition, space and time are not absolute. They are not created by some "God". They are constantly malleable, and play to the mind of the observer.

The most destabilizing implication of this, when one truly gathers its import, is that history is not absolute. There is no single time-line of history that spans from the moment of creation ("the big bang" of physics) to the current moment of now, uniquely predicted by a "law".

Instead, what truly exists is a cacophony of timelines, all spinning furiously from the center, although an observer in any one of them would be convinced that he is living through the one and only "history".

This is Vishnu Chakra, a firework in Deepawali that illustrates this.

Like in the film "Groundhog day", one would not know the other timelines, unless one penetrates them through a mysterious quirk in space-time. Or perhaps by a deep meditative realization.

In quantum mechanics, we see the effect of alternate histories, but only at minute scales.

Let us now consider the problem of living a fulfilling life at this cosmic scale.

How should one's mind react to different objects of desire? Should it pursue them? Or should it train itself to be content with what it has? What would lead to a greater potential for experience?

This problem was discussed in a Vedic verse in the Taitiriya Upanishad, known as the Brahmānandavalli.

The one who conquers desire would achieve successively higher amounts of happiness.

This chant is from the album of Ravi Shankar and George Harrison.

Brahmacharya is a carefully crafted regime of Do's and Dont's that trains a person to walk towards Brahman.

With this in mind, the injunction to avoid risky activities makes sense. It is about saving oneself not just in this timeline, but in all possible timelines of history.

When one gambles, one is explicitly looking outwards to one of the timelines which split from where one stands at a position in time. In one timeline, one would win. In another timeline, one would lose.

But in both timelines, one would be farther away from the center.

To the contrary, when one is completely dissuaded from gambling, in all the possible timelines of history which stem from that position in time, one would continue the pursuit of Brahman alone.

This logic is exactly the same for committing adultery in one's marital life.

When one's mind is so trained and restrained that one avoids all possible temptations that lead one astray from marital vows, both the husband and wife will walk together in the cycle of Dharma. They would share the same timeline irrespective of their individual choices in life.

The Hindu marriage is a commitment to share the effort as well as the fruit of Dharma, between the husband and the wife. It is ultimately a commitment to be with each other in whichever timeline of history. In this marital context, Brahmacharya thus means not committing adultery.

When we comprehend the situation in its true potential, we will see that adultery is not limited to physical actions, but also applies to the thoughts in the mind.

When an adulterous thought sets in the mind, in one of the possible universes from now, one would be led astray.

In the Gṛhasthāśrama, one would thus need to practice Brahmacharya in both one's deeds as well as in one's thoughts. When one commits adultery in either of them, one needs to perform a penance (Prāyaśchitta: literally "prior mind") to return to one's prior state of being.

Since a married couple is the foundation for Dharma in a society, adultery is the quintessential enemy of Dharma.

How to minimize the scope for adultery, and how to cope with the aftermath when adultery is committed (either in deeds or thoughts), is the problem to be solved.

Visiting a temple to meditate or maintain a vow (Vrata), or celebrating festivities with the entire family across the various seasons, or doing service to rivers, forests and other ecological centre-points of nature: these are all activities that restrain the mind from adultery.

I use the word "adultery" in its widest possible sense here. It is a split in the cosmic timelines of the different observers in a society, when they no longer care for each other. This is what happens when Dharma disintegrates. Now we see why family is the foundation for Dharma.

To conclude this thread, I have to answer why pouring oil on the body is dissuaded for a person practicing Brahmacharya. This is connected to the 3 Dōshas of Āyurveda: Vāta, Pitta and Kapha. Oil aggravates the Kapha Dōsha in the body, which is the most severe for Brahmacharya.

This is related to the five elements in the hierarchy of sensory experience, and how polluted they are prone to become from the true experience of Purusha. The Kapha Dōsha is related to the elements of water and earth, which are the furthest from Purusha.

https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1041408450666946560

Whether one agrees with these philosophical systems or not, one should give the respect the cultural practices that they engendered. They are rooted in an ideal for promoting Dharma: virtue in a cosmic scope, for bigger than how the school of western liberals understands it.