LATEST RELEASE BY HARDEEPAK SINGH
Echoes Of Humans:
Beliefs And Perspectives
With over 900 quatrains, the poem embarks on an
unprecedented journey into the key foundations of human thought. These are the five major religions (often referred to as the ‘Big Five’) of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—along with the ancient Greek and Chinese philosophies.
EXCERPTS FROM ECHOES OF HUMANS: BELIEFS AND PERSPECTIVESS
CH 1: THE
DAY BEFORE
Before Time and Space, in an instant, were sired?
Did it only begin with the Singularity that hid the cosmic heirlooms,
Letting forth quarks and photons in fiery plumes?
Was it something subtler than thought and consciousness?
Or was there some sulking remnant of infinite denseness?
Big Bang is science’s god, it posits a beginning from almost nothing,
But was it a rebirth of Time and Space in a never-ending coming.
Everything in creation is equally old; the rocks, the plants and us;
All exist from the beginning in flighty forms in the universe;
In this medley of transitions, we too are eternal in our presence,
It is another matter if this enforced eternity is of any consequence?
We are so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled in a series,
That our every atom has possibly travelled through millions of species;
We are all reincarnations; when we die our atoms disassemble,
They move off to find new abodes in a restive scramble.
Is the living but dead knocking and slamming at each other?
And the dead but living but just in greater torpor?
All beings and non-beings are atoms in different animations,
Life and death, a sideshow to nature’s articulations.
Some two hundred thousand years ago were homo sapiens born,
In fecund wilderness of Africa was our earliest morn;
From Herto, Omo, and Laetoli came the first human cry,
A precocity that no other species could now defy.
Homo sapiens is currently the only member of the genus Homo alive,
Not so three million years back when the genus first came to thrive;
About fifty thousand years ago, Sapiens and Neanderthals were both at the borderline,
And then the Sapiens pushed the Neanderthals out of the bloodline
Just as algae can scarce make out human life,
There could be a species beyond our ken and eyes;
That hopscotches across galaxies in blithe leaps,
And ties knots of light and space in tidy heaps.
But was birth of religion a moment of liberation or of servitude?
Or was it that awe added to fear a new magnitude;
Before the great religions began their sway over mankind,
The question even then was how to calm the trepidations of human mind.
CH 2:
HINDUISM
Where the lower and mid-latitudes became a home to this endeavor;
The rest of the world was undiscovered or covered with watery main,
And where the humans were, life itself was too challenging to sustain.
For the faithful in all religions, the revelations hold the highest place,
The Vedas, the Torah, and the Quran occupy this sacred space;
Below the revealed religion, come other sacred texts,
Myths, rituals, liturgy and other devout quests.
Hinduism is a system of multiple beliefs and sprites,
Its vast awning gives shade to sundry acolytes;
Here, monism, theism, and even atheism find free expression,
Though henotheism might be its most apt description
In Hinduism, the transactional nature of Man-God relationship is well understood,
The Hindus believe they are uniquely configured to discern god’s every mood;
Thousands of gods stand ready to serve the pelf and abatement of suffering; But their minutest whim must be met before we can send them bustling.
The oblations comprise the triad of prayers, liturgy, and sacrifice,
A shrouded world of smoke and oil, sound and guise;
Finding something fitting for the sniffing gods is not an easy quest,
Only then bargains can be struck and fiery spirits put to rest.
Hinduism has coursed through centuries like the ebb and flow of a river,
Powerful movements like Buddhism and Jainism may have caused it to dither;
Islam may have enjoyed success under royal patronage and fervor,
But each time, Hinduism has found a way to survive and prosper.
The Rig Veda says who knows for certain whom creation obeyed,
Whether heaven and earth were made or self-made;
And He who looks at us from His heavenly chambers,
Only He knows or perhaps He knows not, these matters.
The Carvakas railed against the tradition and fabric of Hindu society,
The irrepressible sexual desire made one question even a caste’s purity;
In any lineage, betrayal in the long chain of ancestors is always a possibility,
Since copulation is a brief encounter eyeing just an opportunity.
In Mahabharta, gods and humans are in constant strife,
A harrowing tale of boons and curses and the puzzles of life;
Deceit and nobility, valor and cunning, all have a role to perform,
The triumph of the good leaves us happy; yet perplexed and torn.
The uneasy duet of religion and libido exists in all faiths,
The scriptures try in vain to tame the bonobo in us;
This is one aspect that knows little or no obedience,
Masterful in fantasy and act, our most unruly inheritance.
It is a moot point as to why in the Adam and Eve story?
Of all the temptations of which our mind is the repository,
The Satan chooses nakedness of human body to deceive,
Leaving Adam with little chance before the beguiling form of Eve.
The Kama Sutra of Vatsayana is a well-known treatise in this respect,
Though art of living well is also its important aspect;
Its postural confections are more of an introductory sideline,
As in full ecstasy, it believes, there can be no textual guideline.
CH 3:
JUDAISM
They have experienced slavery, occupation, exile, and anarchy;
This has given them a different perspective on religious life and conflict,
In every era, their struggle to protect their tradition is manifest.
The first of these plagues was when Yahweh struck at the waters of Nile,
The great river turned into blood, all curdled and vile;
The bloated fish perished and there were no waters to wrest,
No luscious saps could now flow from Nile’s mighty breast.
The idea of Yahweh stood firm even as other Semitic gods disappeared,
He did not need a companion to be adored, worshipped or feared;
Nor was he contemptuous of humans as Marduk, the Babylonian deity,
Yahweh saw in erring humans an ultimately redeemable entity.
This came to be called the Axial age which laid the foundation of modern thought,
From Socrates to Plato in Greece to Zoroaster, who in Persia taught;
From Confucius and Lao-Tze in China to the Hebrew prophets in Judah,
From the mysticism of Upanishads to the Four Noble Truths of Buddha.
There was also a sense of belonging to larger realities,
A new pondering over the purpose of life and its possibilities;
Propitiation of tribal deities could no longer hold back human abstraction,
The genie had escaped the bottle, however puzzling, its dimension.
So early in Hebrew thought, Amos saw God as God of all history,
God willing to share with all, his omnipotence and mystery;
God saved Israelites from Egypt and brought them to Canaan to persevere,
But he had also saved the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.
But the people rose against Jeremiah just as they had once spurned Moses’ writ,
Moses had been cast into water and now Jeremiah was thrown into a pit;
In anguish, Jeremiah wished his mother’s womb was his grave,
He called Yahweh a deceitful brook whose waters had failed.
The destruction of the First Temple was the darkest moment for the Hebrew people,
A faith, though not fledgling, was completely dependent on the great Temple;
Now, there was no Ark of the Covenant, no genealogies, and no seat of mercy,
No place for sacrifice to atone for sins or seek succour when feeling unworthy.
In exile, there was the painful question of Yahweh’s earthly residence,
Only Jerusalem was thought to be appropriate for his hallowed presence;
In exile, however, the synagogue was born and Yahweh became peregrine,
No longer bound to any place, He could still dictate and intervene.
Of the wisdom literature, Book of Job, and Ecclesiastes are considered prominent,
Book of Job deals with the coexistence of God with undeserved punishment;
It challenges the idea of retributive justice; the heart of moral coherence,
It dwells on intrinsic righteousness that exists without recompense.
Job confesses his ignorance about knowledge that overarches human condition,
Of things that lie beyond man’s limited grasp and recognition;
The way the dice is rolled, suffering and redemption come at their own accord,
Facile it is to say that every action is followed with its own reward.
CH 4:
ANCIENT CHINESE PHILOSOPHY
They were the ultimate principles that ruled the cosmos in every measure;
Yin was the receptive feminine principle and Yang, the active one,
Through their balanced inequality, the great cosmos was run.
In this China, kings could be overthrown if they lost the mandate of Heaven,
Heaven’s displeasure was known through the occurrence of flood and famine;
This was a signal for rival dynasties to take over and mitigate popular dissent,
It was a democracy made not by people but by Tian’s intent.
In Confucius, China found one of its greatest minds and inspiration,
A quality of thought upon which could rest an entire civilization;
From being a part of the Chinese culture, it became its near-essence,
It may have ebbed and flowed but never experienced obsolescence.
The relationship of Ren and Li to Righteousness is one of subtle balance,
No unbending Righteousness but how Ren and Li meet a particular circumstance;
No egoism, no obstinacy, and no predetermination,
But through a right admixture, thread the eye of good fortune.
Tao is unseen but not transcendent; its reach stretches across all distance,
There is no primer for Tao, the great Tao stamps all existence;
It is everywhere, to the left, to the right, above and below,
With no controlling center, its influence has a prescient flow.
A cavernous hall is built with rammed earth, stones, and wood,
A claypot is fired till its final shape is secured;
But it is the emptiness inside that defines their real state,
Opacity, on the other hand, violates Tao and its mandate.
Unlike Confucius, who, on the issues of moral and personal duties, pondered,
Becoming one with Tao, Zhuang Zi favored;
When offered a royal post, he declined it without demur,
To him, the joys of free will were more important to savor.
Mozi felt that the natural grain of human personality was benevolent,
Like fire turning upwards, and water, downwards, in their movement;
Man’s mind was like pure silk on which ideograms could be written,
Its final form depended on which dye was allowed and which was forbidden.
The ministers by their very position are filled with an urge to betray,
The slightest weakness of the king is enough to get treachery underway;
Their failure to eliminate the sovereign is only a sign of insufficient preparation,
The desire still looms; only there is uncertainty about others’ participation.
Han Fei advised that people should not be allowed to go beyond their call of duty,
As this would open the door to a feeling of false piety;
An exaggerated sense of self-worth would make people’s behavior reptilian,
And prepare their minds for what they would see as ‘righteous rebellion’.
There is no benevolence in heaven and earth and there is no god,
Men are like tumbleweed being blown about in waste untrod;
Yang Zhu rejected Confucian propriety and Mozi’s utilitarian approach to mind,
The moral norms were only a ruse to manipulate the purblind.
CH 5:
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Ancient Greece was the first in the ancestry of modern European thought,
In three mesmerizing centuries, thinkers from Thales to Aristotle, it begot;
Laying the foundations of science, philosophy, and rationalism,
From men like Diogenes Laertius, we learn of this dynamism.
In the Homeric world, the earth seemed to be ruled by caprice,
Death was caused by the arrows and hunting knives of Artemis;
Storms were brought upon by the wrath of Poseidon, and love by Aphrodite,
Battles were lost or won by the whims of Ares’ might.
The thought in Thales’ mind was to link water with the idea of life,
Food and slime, semen and sweat, all were with moisture rife;
Nourishment is moist, even the hot is born from the wet,
The site of life is a damp warmth where the saps of creation met.
The shape of sphere intrigued Parmenides and generally, the Greek mind,
What impressed them was the perfection of the sphere or even that of a circular line;
Both could turn back on themselves, any point could be a beginning or an end,
They believed that in such shapes was hidden a mystical content.
Socrates’ dialectical method was aimed at establishing truth by elenchus or refutation,
It was set in motion by a series of questions leading to the previous hypothesis’ elimination;
At each step, the gross was discarded and the subtle was sought for,
This was done with the idea of gaining knowledge not suspected before.
When Dionysius I of Syracuse died and his son became the supreme ruler,
Plato was invited to Syracuse to teach philosophy to the young Emperor;
As was to be expected, the experiment was a total disaster,
The guile of the princely chambers was beyond the reach of the master.
In Symposium, Eros is recognized not only for love but also courage and strength,
It seeks to overcome every kind of foreboding including the fear of death;
The impulse to produce offsprings is masterful, a seeking of foreverness,
This is the only form of immortality that mortals can access.
Later, thinkers like Monod criticized the urge to seek purpose in every exigency,
Monod dubbed it as man’s desperate desire to deny his own contingency;
Religions and philosophies try to shore up this lamentable delusion,
Even when pure chance is at the root of all evolution.
CH 6:
BUDDHISM
By this was facilitated the birth of the Harappan civilization, the Vedas, and the Buddhist religion;
Stretching over a millennium was the growth of Buddhist philosophy,
Firmly set in the wider context of Indian philosophical inquiry.
He taught that neither things exist forever nor are now-existent,
They are like a red leaf which upon a green leaf is dependent;
Neither entirely different nor ever wholly the same,
All things arise in dependence, as flame upon a flame.
According to Buddhism, the true cause of suffering is not sin, but ignorance,
Unlike other faiths, where it is the willful abandonment of Providence.
In Buddhism, the focus on Karma shifts away from physical action,
It is intention alone which has a moral character that sets off reaction.
For Nagarjuna, Emptiness itself is an abstraction, an epistemological ultimate,
Thus, Emptiness itself is Empty without having any superior mandate;
The phenomenal world cannot be dignified with anything but a provisional existence,
Its characters always reeling without the holding hand of Permanence.
Before Madhyamaka, the doctrine of Emptiness was only to not-Self referred,
Now the domain of Emptiness expanded and all phenomena were included;
This was a radical step and it is hard to imagine its revolutionary importance,
The idea of Dharmas, dependent but existing, was reduced to just a reference.
But who knows how the historical Buddha would have reacted to this kind of content?
Metaphysics was not dear to him and Sunyata was a metaphysical concept;
Buddha did not seem to regard metaphysics as conducive to holy living,
For him, Nagarjuna’s interpretation may have even seemed forbidding.
Nagarjuna’s reductio ad absurdum was somewhat similar to Socrates’ elenchus,
But unlike Socrates, he offered no escape; at each step, he asserted Emptiness;
In contrast, Socrates’ method, at least, led to an improved state of not knowing,
Each premise was refuted but successive outcomes carried greater meaning.
This peaceful nature of Buddhism’s spread in Asia is without a peer,
Its philosophy was welcomed as something that did not aggressively interfere;
Even Hinduism which saw it as a rebel could not ignore its attraction,
By the sixth century, Buddha came to be recognized as Vishnu’s incarnation.
CH 7:
CHRISTIANITY
Palestine, where Christianity first made its appearance, was a land of disputes,
Situated as it was at the cross-roads of great trade routes;
Egypt, Assyria, Asia Minor, Arabia- all on this transit point relied,
Empires came and went but not without casting a covetous eye.
Along with the Apostles, Paul was perhaps the most influential Christian personality,
He helped complete the break from Judaism; he is said to have ‘invented’ Christianity;
For some, the Apostolic Council may only have been an ecclesiastical event,
But for others, the acceptance of Paul’s position put Christianity in the ascendant;
If Paul had failed, Christianity may have dwindled into a minor persuasion,
Doomed to be strangled by the mainstream faith and then forsaken.
Constantine, the man behind the Edict, was a slave to signs and omens,
He believed that the imperial insignia of Chi-Rho brought him luck in key moments;
He had used it when he vanquished Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge,
Chi-Rho would go on to become the Christian Cross, signifying avowal and pledge.
Next to Paul, who shaped the basic Christian theology, was Augustine of Hippo,
He made an unrivalled contribution in strengthening the Christian credo;
He came to be referred to as the dark genius of imperial Christianity,
The creator of church-state alliance and of mediaeval theology
He rejected the idea that original sin was some dark implacable force,
That cast its long shadow across life filling it with endless remorse;
When we are baptized, the guilt from our past sins is washed away,
We can make a fresh start and it is for us to keep the sin at bay.
The centerpiece of struggle in early days was the Trinity defining Nicene Creed,
The Council debating this was partly affected by Constatine’s need;
His primary interest was the unity of his Empire rather than God’s unity,
Keeping this in mind perhaps, he suggested Consubstantiality to secure amity.
What Nicene Creed was to Trinity, the Chalcedonian Creed was to Christology,
It defined the parameters of Christological orthodoxy and heresy;
It postulated that Christ was perfect in Godhead and perfect in human capacity,
One Christ in two natures-consubstantial with both the Father and humanity.
Calvin asserted the idea of total depravity and unconditional election,
As a consequence of his fall, sin has crept into man’s predilection;
But God has also made a choice of persons whom he will never disown,
This is not based on virtue, merit, or even faith but on His mercy alone.
CH 8:
ISLAM
The Arabs also believed that Kaaba was home to a brutal tale,
It was the place where God ordered Ibrahim to sacrifice his son, Ismail;
Seeing Ibrahim’s prompt willingness, God relented and gave a commitment,
That like Isaac, Ismail too would sire a great settlement.
Before the rise of Islam, the Arabs were taunted for being left out of the divine plan,
But in 610 CE, all this changed during the course of a single night in Ramadan;
This was the night when Muhammad was visited by Jibril at Mount Hira,
He heard the first words of the Scripture and thus dawned the Quranic era.
Yathrib became Medina or the ‘City of the Prophet’ and an example for a perfect Muslim society,
People were now bound together not by blood but by a shared ideology;
This was an astonishing innovation for a people who held blood ties to be sacred,
For these diverse tribal groups, Muhammad now became the indisputable head.
Before 624 CE, the Muslims prayed facing Jerusalem to meet their obligations,
By this, they were meaning to turn their backs on Kaaba’s pagan associations;
But in 624 CE, Muhammad made them turn around and pray facing Mecca,
This was a declaration of independence and not just a change in direction or qibla.
In 661 CE, Muwaiyah began to rule as the first Umayyad Caliph,
Transferring the geopolitical center of empire from Medina to Damascus;
The transfer to an ex-Byzantine land gave Islam a new imperial frame,
The importance of Medina now lay only in the spiritual domain.
Then, on the plains of Karbala, an event having great historical bearing, occurred,
Husayn and his men were surrounded by the Umayyads and massacred;
The burgeoning sectarian tendencies in Islam now began to culminate,
The Second Fitnah, or civil war, marked the end of the Islamic proto-state.
Mahdi or the Hidden Imam is believed to be present in the minds of Shiites for introspection,
Shias believe it will remain so until the day of Resurrection;
The concept of Occultation, the divine incognito, is essential for prophecy,
This hands to Mahdi the closing argument in Shia eschatology.
With the expansion of Islam, new spiritual and intellectual demands arose,
That called upon the Arabic mind to challenge itself and repurpose;
Answers had to be found or attempted, to deal with this new reality,
Especially, in areas where the sacred law chose to hold back its precise authority.
This was unlike the earlier times, when the Bedouin tribes roamed the Arabian desert,
When the highest charm was the Ghazwa and the intellectual treasures were modest;
At that time, the relatively distant towns of Basra and Kufa were the chief centers of culture,
Where the Persians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews rubbed shoulders with one another.
Prior to Muhammad, the Arabs had proceeded no further on the path of thought,
Then propounding enigmas related to life and the attendant oddities this brought;
And when the available texts got too complex or hazy to understand,
The Arabs yielded without resistance to the inscrutability of Fate’s hand.
Ghazali denied the necessary connection between the cause and the caused,
Things may seem to happen routinely but cannot happen without the will of God;
God is able to overturn eventualities and create uncaused paths,
Altering the sequence of events by the application of His impenetrable laws.
EXCERPTS FROM HIS RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOK- APHORISMS FOR ALL
It is desire, not intellect, which shapes perfection
The next best thing to having money is to have contempt for it
Morality is a necessary element in all great manipulation
The art of politics lies in making statesmanship unnecessary
The most irritating people are the ones with positive attitude. These boors spoil our daily party over misery
To be strong enough to bear the contempt of the wise and the adulation of the foolish
The best works on death are created by young people because death is the opposite of youth, not of life
Lakhs of priests and preachers litter the world trying to knock back the venom of the genitals
Woman, being more of a tactile creature, belongs more completely to her immediate environment than man
Excellence is the worst form of elitism
A touch of fallibility lends charm to greatness