Sri ArunShourie’s book “Does He know a mother’s heart? – How suffering refutes religions” is praised not just by his usual nationalist admirers but from many quarters. It is not just a moving account but a questioning of the explanation of suffering various religious philosophies offer.
M Pramod Kumar critiqued the book in his article “Of course, He knows every Mother’s heart”. Indeed, I would not be feeling like making a comment on the book but for this rejoinder. While Mr. Pramod makes factual refutations, his judgment of ArunShourie as making “sweeping accusations and distortions found in his book” looks quite harsh to me. Given ArunShourie’s scholarship and the objectivity with which he poses the questions, leisure with which he seeks to refute the answers he comes across, that can hardly be a fair evaluation.
Besides, Pramod does not end up giving the explanation for suffering. Rather he says Sri Shourie fails to survey Hinduism sufficiently, and limits his inquiry to karma theory and mAyavAda. But Sri Shourie does actually go into sources like Bhagavad Gita which Pramod says ‘explains sufficiently’ all the questions raised by the formerand rejects Sri Kane’s explanation – “When we use the word Karma it corresponds to no reality and is a tacit confession of our ignorance and inability to state the cause or causes of what has happened”. Regardless of the validity of the argument (the claim of karma is not to let you know the cause of what happened but to establish that there is a cause, to reason that present is caused by past and future is effectively being caused by present) Gita and Upanishads he does explore, and he cannot thus be accused of not surveying the original sources of Hinduism.
However the primary purpose of this write up is to not find faults with either argument. Taking the question of explaining human suffering, I want to comment on the canvass that Sri Shourie explored, which is itself, in my view, insufficient to give a convincing answer.
Causation
Sri Shourie meticulously explores the various explanations of suffering – inherent in human life, it improves us, a test of character, teacher, caused by identification with unreal to mention a few. However he explores primarily, besides the arguments of contemporary teachers, the Vedantic texts – Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads. In reality Vedanta is Brahma MImAMsa, not Viswa MImAMsa. No single Indic tradition ever says suffering is part of the absolute nature of the world (brahman). Suffering is essentially part of the phenomenal world, not its absolute essence. Thus to begin with, Vedanta is the wrong place to look for – and it is, as the book becomes an illustration, unlikely that one can arrive at any convincing explanation!
Human life alone?
My first observation of the book in question is that it talks mostly if not entirely, about human suffering. In reality, human suffering is only tip of the iceberg. Pain, misery, suffering and helplessness is vast and a majority of it is visible outside human species. One might ask how it should matter, does human suffering get a better explanation if we consider a bigger range of creation. Yes, it does. It helps us put suffering in its real context.
Why should food chain involve violence at all?
Arun Shourie while acknowledging the traditional explanation that violence and suffering is inherent in the very food chain of nature, questions the logic behind it – as to why it should have been designed that way in the first place. Of course, a question is a question whether or not there is an alternate view presented (for instance how else it could be and still make logical sense).
Attempting Answers
Having pointed out why his line of inquiry does not find the answer to questions posed by the book, a brief attempt at how answers are to be found.
Texts and Subject of Choice
The subject of Vedanta (Upanishads, Gita, Brahma Sutras) is brahma vidya or brahma MImAMsa – not vishwa MImAMsa. Brahman is the remainder of the world, and thus an explanation of phenomenal world needs to be done from the viewpoint of viSwa mImAMsa – sankhya for instance which deals with the qualities of world. Nature of suffering is not sufficiently explained by brahma mImAMsa, it is only taken as a known phenomenon which is sought to be transcended.
sAmkhya for instance, says phenomenal experiences are threefold: sukha (pleasure), dukha (suffering) and moha (delusion). These three are forms of bhoga of a being. In turn, bhoga is one of the threefold experiences of a being: bhoga (phenomenal), swarga (heavenly) and apavarga (liberation from the states of being and all phenomenal experiences). The three primal natural qualities satva, rajas and tamas result in the three kinds of phenomenal experiences (sukha etc). The source of suffering is thus clearly known. The rationale for suffering is not, apparently. However, there can be an inconvenient counter question raised here: why do you only want to know the rationale (or reason for existence) for suffering and why do you not want to know the rationale for pleasure? Thus the book makes a very partial inquiry into truth, and does not hence qualify for a convincing answer. If the questioning is of the rationale for all the three phenomenal experiences and not just one of them, the rationale is not unmentioned in sAmkhya. The jIva seeks all the three experiences offered by nature, whether or not the mind and body seek them. It is the fullest experience of life and world that the being seeks, across lives. The substratum of craving all the experiences is the craving for Ananda, the rasa underlying all rasa-s.
It is said that pain and pleasure are two sides of a coin and you can’t ask for just one. But balance is not really what is sought in life between what is wanted and what is unwanted. It requires more explaining as to why the unwanted is present in the first place. The explanation is that the “unwanted” (suffering in this case) is not really unwanted from a witness point of view (the sAkshI), it is only unwanted from the consumer’s view point (the bhokta). Both these are two consciousness states of the same being, so the same experience is not really unwanted for the being as it is assumed.
Mother Goddess Missed
While the book talks about God, it more or less misses out the feminine aspect of divinity and its inherent implications on our understanding of the world. The book asks whether God understands a mother’s heart, but a mother’s heart is not the abode of unwillingness to suffer but of an infinite willingness to suffer to ensure the offspring comes into being, to ensure it is nourished and becomes capable of experiencing the world. So from where does the question of suffering refuting religious philosophy, even arise?
The very birth of offspring happens out of pain, resulting in pleasure both for the mother. The mother only desires lack of suffering for the offspring, and for fulfilling such desire the mother herself undergoes infinite suffering. The undesirability of suffering and the questioning of its rationale by the book hence, is a very partial inquiry even into suffering. Suffering is not really as undesirable from an objective viewpoint as it is from a selective representation of experience of the world. There are in fact many cases in the world like that of mother, where suffering is embraced willingly, not just because it is inevitable but rather because it yields fruits that are far more desirable. In a simplistic sense the notions of pain being teacher or suffering hardening a person can be rejected as not sufficiently explaining suffering, because a hypothetical “why not otherwise” can always be raised. But when they form part of explaining the entire realm of experiences out of which suffering is essentially not undesirable but only phenomenally (that too partially) undesirable, the question of rationale itself does not arise.
Divine is worshipped in Hinduism equally as God and Goddess. The bhakta-devata relation is full of love and compassion. The world itself, is said to be a creation out of bliss and for the purpose of three-fold experience.
God (I do not prefer using this vague word, just using what Sri Shourie uses in his book) is as much a mother, who brings into existence the phenomenal world, permeates it and experiences through each being all that is experienced by all beings as the witness. Is suffering one of them and if it is, why is it even desired to be seen or undergone if that is not an undesired experience?
Full life spectrum not just human
In my limited study of the subject there is no better explanation of suffering I came across than a commentary of Durga Saptasati written by ‘Sriyanandanatha’ Sri Iswara Satyanarayana Sarma with the title “sAdhana sAmAgri”. Suffering is not just an unwanted experience but one that shapes evolution. But again, suffering in itself cannot be explained without counting all the three forms of phenomenal experiences. The three together shape the evolution of beings, give them the fullest knowledge of world and reality. Suffering inspires action as much pleasure does. And both inspire action towards experience of happiness. This is true not just of humans but of all forms of life.
Seeing suffering as a consequence is quite different from seeing it as a permanent presence.
Experience and Suffering
Of all that is termed suffering, it is difficult to really ascertain what is and what is not. Because it is, most of the times, dependent on the state of being, the forbearance, and positive/negative sense in which experiences of life/world are perceived. What is suffering for a frail body is not really for a strong body. While no being says it doesn’t have suffering, the perception of what suffering is, is quite variable and in many cases the one experiencing doesn’t treat as suffering what the onlookers think it is (and vice versa).
This means that the question posed by the book doesn’t stand a consistent ground as to what is the rationale for suffering, because what constitutes suffering doesn’t have a universal definition. It can be rephrased from “why is there suffering in the world” to “why do beings suffer”. The latter is experience-centric, not phenomenon-centric. Again, this is a short version of the longer question “why do beings suffer and not have only pleasant experiences”, a partial inquiry and has similar defects mentioned above. It indicates the inherent craving of beings for happiness, and what darSana-s lay down is precisely the path to that.
Ananda and Rasa
What Sri Shourie also misses in the book is the survey of human experiences from the aesthetic viewpoint. In rasa siddhAnta the fundamental flavors of human experiences are enlisted, and the goal of aesthetics and works of art is to achieve resonance of those experiences in the audience. The essence of all these experiences is the juice of existence. The substratum of all these is happiness or Ananda. The famous navarasa listing (SRngAra, hAsya, raudra, karuNa, bhIbhatsa, bhayAnaka, vIra, adbhuta) needs to be surveyed to get an idea of how Indic traditions view human experiences. They do not really categorize these experiences as pain or pleasure, but as different colors which in their intensity lead to the same substratum underlying all experiences. Maslow comes close to this by invoking the moments of peak human experiences. The aesthetic moods depict the states of mind, and regardless of their outward “desirability” or “undesirability” their intense pursuit results in the same peak experience of rasa. karuNa, the empathy towards suffering, results in as much a strong human experience as does SRngAra or raudra. Seen from this viewpoint the question of suffering is rather superficial. How does suffering then, refute Hindu traditions?
bhAratIyata 