Renunciation: Renunciation connotes a caring attitude towards all living

beings without any selfish motives. It is seen in the austerity, self-control, and
selflessness of a person.

In religion, renunciation often indicates an abandonment of pursuit of material

comforts, in the interests of achieving spiritual enlightenment. It is highly practiced
in Jainism and Hinduism. In Hinduism, the renounced order of life is sannyāsa; in
Buddhism, the Pali word for "renunciation" is nekkhamma, conveying more
specifically "giving up the world and leading a holy life" or "freedom from lust,
craving and desires". In Christianity, some denominations have a tradition of
renunciation of the Devil.

Renunciation of citizenship is the formal process by which a person voluntarily

relinquishes the status of citizen of a specific country. A person can also renounce
property, as when a person submits a disclaimer of interest in property that has
been left to them in a will.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is widely believed in India that voluntary renunciation is how one gains power,
for whatever purpose. In South Africa (1893-1915) Gandhi tried many spiritual
practices and experiments, almost all of them including a component of
renunciation, based in the practice of Sannyasi. After reading Unto This Last by
John Ruskin in 1904 he redoubled his commitment to gain greater control over
self, increasing his capacity to work for the common welfare and find a greater
sense of oneness with others. The ultimate renunciation is of self, one's
separateness from others and the world.

Christianity

In some Christian denominations, renunciation of the Devil is a

common liturgical rubric. This is most often seen in connection with the sacrament
of baptism. In the Roman Catholic church a baptism usually contains the "Prayer
of Exorcism". Later in the ceremony, the parents and godparents are asked to
publicly renounce the devil.

The Church of England dismissed this rubric in a 2014 renewal of liturgy.

According to The Independent, this was done in an attempt to "widen the appeal"
of the rite. A prior report for the Church's Liturgical Commission stated that "[f]or
the majority of those attending, the existing provision can seem complex and
inaccessible."

In the Church of Norway, the public renunciation of the Devil is an obligatory

element in the Main Service. It is stated by the congregation before the profession
of faith (usually the Apostles' Creed, as the Nicene Creed is largely reserved for
special observances). When performed in a service which includes a baptism, it is
also considered an extension of the testimony given by the sponsors, as they are
required to confess to a denomination which does not reject the Apostles' or the
Nicene Creed, nor rejects infant baptism.

Renunciation explained
The primary focus of the Bhagavad Gita is on highlighting the fact that
no one can give up action; all of us are compelled to act while we live.
But the value of renunciation — giving up the fruits of action is hailed as
the sure path to salvation. The ultimate preceptor Lord Krishna is ready
with unambiguous answers to those innumerable pertinent doubts and
questions that His omniscience easily anticipates, not only from Arjuna

 who hesitates to take up arms right at the time when open war is about to
commence but from future generations who would also face such
stringent dilemmas in life.
The Lord establishes beyond doubt the finer shades of differences
between the apparently synonymous terms Sanyasa and Tyaga in this
context, pointed out Swami Parthasarathi in a lecture. It is shown that
Tyaga is the renunciation of the fruit of action, while Sanyasa is the
renunciation of the desire in action. If the former is the cause, the latter is
the effect. By practising Tyaga you become a Sanyasi.
Differing views on action, renunciation, relinquishment, non-attachment,
etc., have always influenced individuals who are forced to act and live in
this material world with all its attractions, joy and sorrow, and the Lord
analyses them.
Some sages advise giving up of actions driven by desire and are for wish-
fulfilment. Some others advise giving up the fruits of all actions. Another
viewpoint stresses that all actions are binding and hence have to be given
up; while yet another opinion encourages acts of sacrifice, penance and
charity as these are useful in bringing about a spiritual betterment in us.
Finally, the Lord states that these ordained duties are of two kinds —
daily routine ones (nithya) and occasional special duties (naimittika).
These have to be done by all but it is the attitude behind the acts that
matters. One does not long for the fruit of action and does the act with no
habitual likes or dislikes. Also the feeling that it is he who is doing it
should be absent. This is the most difficult idea to understand. This
attitude demands giving up the ownership or the ego sense.

Path of renunciation

If Adi Sankara’s life typifies the true import of renunciation as stressed in

the sastras, his works are equally helpful guides that initiate one towards
seeking salvation, pointed out Nannilam Sri V. Rajagopala Ganapadigal
in a discourse. It is held that Siva incarnated as Adi Sankara for the
purpose of imparting the highest knowledge by which man can attain
salvation from the cycle of births. Adi Sankara accepts sanyasa at a
tender age and shows through example how to tread the path of
renunciation. Through Viveka Chudamani and other granthas he tries to
dispel the ignorance that binds mankind to samsara. It is only natural to
seek happiness in life and worldly attractions beckon all people to seek
the joy and happiness in these. But if one spends his lifetime in seeking
these such as name, fame, wealth, relationships, etc, then it is all the
more difficult to give up all these.
Since it is a great challenge to give up the different kinds of happiness
that life affords, scriptures and sacred texts reinforce the truth that these
joys that we expect or experience are full of faults. Unless one
understands with full force this truth, it will be difficult to renounce
these. For instance, if one sees a lizard in the food he has been looking
forward to eat, would he have any second thoughts in rejecting the food?
Being aware of the ephemeral quality of life’s joys can help one to
cultivate the spirit of renunciation. With this knowledge one can cultivate
detachment to objects, places and people and gradually learn to renounce
these. The knots of desires that spring in the human heart are only the
effects of ignorance. So the important factor is to cut off desire. Then the
senses can be subdued. The end of renunciation is when the desires that
have already subsided do not rise again as also the sense of I and Mine.

 True Renunciation is Enlightenment

Spiritual life is a movement in the direction of God, which means a movement in

every direction. It is not moving in any particular direction, such as east or west,
because God's comprehensiveness is a directionless existence. Therefore, in our
search for God, we are searching for a way in all the directions of the world.

The spiritual movement towards God is not a linear movement. It is a multi-faced

approach in respect of all things which may be considered as the faces of God. This
is one aspect of spiritual life. The other aspect is that the movement towards God
is, in some sense, like going from one country to another country.

What do we have to do when we leave one country and go to another country? We

have to apply for a passport. But the passport will not be issued so easily, because
our obligations to our country have to be cleared before the Passport Officer
concedes to our request. He will ask us to produce the Tax Clearance Certificate,
because the country would not wish that we skip over our dues to it in our
aspiration to move to another country. We would also make some provisions and
arrangements for our family and see that everything is stable in the environment of
our house before we take a passport or a visa to the other country. Sometimes the
Passport Officers even insist on what is called a Police Clearance; and any other
dues which we owe to our nation are cleared first before we are free to go.

In a manifold manner are we connected to this country of ours; and anyone is so

connected to his or her own country. At a moment's thought we will not be able to
make a list of all our relationships to our country, to our society. They will all come
up one by one, as the occasion arises. Similarly, we cannot know how many desires
we have in our mind. At the present moment here, seated in a hall, it may look like
we have no desires at all; we are completely free. But this is not a fact, because this

 is not the occasion for the desires to manifest themselves. Just as a seed sprouts
only under suitable conditions—when the earth is soft, and the rain falls, and the
climate is favourable—in the same way desires, which are equally intelligent, will
not manifest themselves when they know that their asking will not receive a
response.

Likewise is our understanding of our relationships to things. Sometimes we may

believe that we are totally free. People sometimes say, “I have no encumbrances. I
am collecting my pension. I am a retired man, and I have no obligations.” This is a
straightforward statement of an intelligible mind, because a clear insight has not
been gained into the inward subconscious or even unconscious tentacles with
which we are connected with the nether regions—not only of our psychic world,
but also of the social and physical world outside.

The ancient masters, in India especially, have conducted a threadbare analysis of

the conditions to be fulfilled by a seeker of Truth. It is not a sudden wrenching of
ourselves from relations when we move towards God; rather, it is a fulfilment of
relations. The idea of abandonment, which many a time obsesses our mind, is a
partial truth of the matter. Often there is a dual urge that operates in us when we are
fired up with a spirit of renunciation. A feeling of the reality of the sorrows and
sufferings of life and a simultaneous feeling of the need to free ourselves from
these sorrows and sufferings is a mistake we commit with these peculiar attitudes
of ours. If the sorrows and sufferings are unreal and they have no substance—they
are really not there—our anxiety to free ourselves from them is un-understandable.
But if they are really there as meaningful connections which we have established
with our atmosphere, a severing of our connections with them is, again, very
unthinkable. The spirit of vairagya is a difficult atmosphere of the human psyche.

We have been told, right from our childhood, that the love of God is in some
measure a dislike for the world. Though the word ‘dislike' has a connotation of its
own and people interpret the spirit of vairagya in a nobler environment, the dislike
aspect does not completely leave us. Religious instruction, at least to the extent we
have been able to understand it, has been a double-edged sword which operates in
two ways: in the direction of the world, from which we have to free ourselves, and
in the direction of God, in relation to which we have to connect ourselves.

It was mentioned earlier that a thread in a cloth is connected to the cloth in a very
peculiar manner. This analogy was brought forth to explain our relationship to
things. When a thread wishes to free itself from the cloth into which it has been
woven, it is actually attempting a freedom from an all-round relationship that it has
established with the entire fabric. Our connection to the world cannot be fully
explained by this analogy. We are not merely like a thread in a cloth, because the
connection of the thread to the cloth is purely mechanical; there is no living
relationship of one thread with another thread. But there is a very forceful, soulful
and living connection of ourselves to every soul of this cosmos.

So when we free ourselves from the world in our attempt at the practice of
renunciation, or vairagya, for the purpose of God-realisation, we are wrenching
ourselves from the whole body of relations, which are a living connection wholly
spread out through space and time, and we are not moving to God like a single
individual. Many times we may be forced into the feeling that we individually
move towards God, leaving all people here with whom we no longer have any
connection: neither are we connected to our family, nor to the world; we are related
to God in the heavens, so we move like a rocket—independently, individually,
unrelated in any way to anyone and anything in the world at any time.

This idea is not true. Such a movement to God is not possible, because the world is
woven into our personality and, vice versa, we are woven into the very structure of
the world. When we lift ourselves from this world, the whole world will come with
us, so that there is no such thing as individual salvation. This is a statement which
has to be understood in its proper meaning. Neither is there anything called social
salvation of all people together, nor is there anything called individual salvation.
What we call moksha, or liberation, is neither social nor individual. It is a mystery
by itself. Man is not given to understanding what it means.

Another analogy may give you a little insight into this difficulty. When you wake
up from dream, what is it that comes with you into waking life? “I have woken up
from dream. I have come out of the world of dream into waking existence.” What
about your friends and relations, and the world, and your office work, and all your
obligations and commitments in the dream world? You have brought them all
together with you. It is not that you have left your office and your friends in the
dream world and have individually come up to the waking life. You do not say,
“My friends are still there inside, and I have got uncompleted and unattended work
in the dream world.” When you have woken, the whole dream has woken. All your
relationships, likes and dislikes, obligations, duties to be discharged, debts payable
—all things are together with you, as your legs go wherever you go. You cannot
leave your legs behind and go to some other place.

This illustration of the total world moving with you when you wake up from dream
into this present consciousness will, to some extent, explain how you move
towards God. It is not one Mr. so and so moving to God. Such a thing does not
exist, because your relations are not artificial relations, but vital connections.
Outwardly, empirically, from the spatio-temporal point of view, your relationships

may look artificial, a make-believe. Therefore, it is called maya. But inwardly you
are connected to things in a more significant manner.

There is a dual relationship of ours, again, with the world around us—a tentative
relationship and a real relationship. Teachers of the art of yoga and adepts in
spiritual life tell us that our relationship to things is twofold. A father has a
relationship to his son, a husband has a relationship to his wife, etc. This is a very
difficult thing to understand. A son is an independent individual by himself, yet he
appears to be somehow connected to his father, and the father seems to be
connected to his son by a bond of emotion and feeling. The father sees in the son
something which he cannot see in other people—though other people are, for all
practical purposes, physically speaking, exactly like his son. The wife cannot see in
other people in the world what she can see in her own husband, though her
husband is not in any way superior or inferior, or different in any manner from
other people in the world.

Here we have a double relationship with things. In Sanskrit, this is called the
distinction drawn between Jiva Srishti and Ishvara Srishti. The son as such or the
father as such is Ishvara Srishti, God's creation. The son has not created the father,
and the individuality of the son is a status by itself which cannot be absorbed into
the individuality of the father. The son is not a satellite of the father. He has an
independent existence of his own. Yet there is a peculiar emotional bondage. This
feeling in respect of things with which we seem to be emotionally connected or
instinctively related is called Jiva Srishti, or the individual's reaction to the
structure of things in their social, instinctive connections.

But things are also as they are. Trees are trees, wherever we go. Wherever we go,
whether to Kashmir or the United States, we see trees, but a tree in our own garden
is different from a tree in the wilderness. A plant that we have tended with affection

is different from the wild growth in the forest. Our relationship, too, is different.
This relationship of ours to our own tree, our own plant, our own garden and our
own property is Jiva Srishti—an individual, psychological connection—which can
be regarded as an artificial connection because it will not stand always. When our
mind undergoes a transformation, our feeling in respect of things will also change.
But the plant is a plant, the tree is a tree, even if we have no connection with it.
That is Ishvara Srishti.

God has created the world, and the world is called the kingdom of ends. A kingdom
of ends is a kingdom of independent status maintained by each individual, each
atom, each molecule in the world. Everyone is independent. Nobody is a servant of
another. There is no subservience of any particular thing to any other thing in the
world. Nobody can be exploited by another, because one does not belong to
another as a property. So each one is a status by himself, herself, itself. This is the
kingdom of ends. Each is a self by itself. Even an ant is a self by itself. An atom is
a self by itself. It works as if it is an independent thing. A solar system is an
independent structure. You are an independent structure. We assert ourselves, and
we do not wish to abolish our individuality or our personality in the interest of
another—because a self cannot become a not-self.

This is the truth of things. That we really do not belong to another and anything
cannot belong to us is the truth of the matter. But we somehow appear to be related
to another, and things are possessed by us and connected with us in an artificial
arrangement in society, emotionally required and instinctively demanded. This is
the distinction that obtains between Ishvara Srishti and Jiva Srishti—God's
creation, or metaphysical existence, and psychological relation.

We have to understand both these things correctly in our approach to God—and,

therefore, God's being escapes the grasp of our understanding. Inasmuch as it

eludes our grasp, we find it difficult to tread the spiritual path. We have often been
very emotional, over-enthusiastic, fired up by instincts and sentiments; and often
we are also unconsciously impelled to shirk our duties in the garb of a renunciation
to attachments to the world, because renunciation is always applauded and
attachment is condemned. So it is very easy for people to go with the garb of
renunciation, though secretly it is a shirking of duty and a feeling of
irresponsibility in regard to all those things which give pain in this world. Hence,
our fear of pain may look like the spirit of renunciation.

Here we have to be judges of our own selves. The spirit of renunciation is not the
spirit of the fear of sorrow. We do not renounce the world because it is giving
sorrow and pain to us. That is not the reason. The reason is that we have fulfilled—
not merely cut off—our connections with the world.

Spiritual life is a growth of our spiritual personality, and not an amputation of our
spiritual limbs. And so, renunciation is not a cutting off of certain limbs of our
psychic world, but a complete healthy growth of our connections—which have to
be transmuted from the form which they have taken as Jiva Srishti into Ishvara
Srishti. We have to be able to look at things as God sees, instead of as a father sees,
mother sees, son sees, daughter sees, husband sees, or wife sees.

How would God see? You have not seen God, and you cannot even imagine how
He could see things. But by an inference and a logical deduction of consequences
which follow from a dispassionate study of things, you can place yourself in the
context of an impartial visualisation of things. The vision of God, or God's vision
of things, is a totally dispassionate and impartial universal outlook where one thing
does not hang on another thing, one thing does not depend on another thing, and
one thing does not belong to another thing. Such a state of affairs is difficult to
conceive for ordinary people. Therefore, spiritual life is so hard.

Now I am coming to a very important aspect of the problems of spiritual living—

namely, our misconception of the very structure of spiritual life. Again, to reiterate,
we have been brainwashed into the feeling that God is not in this world. God is
above the world; God is the creator, and the creator is always outside the created
object, like the carpenter is outside the table that he has made or the potter is not
inside the pot. How could the manufacturer be inside the object that he has
manufactured? This is our way of looking at things; and God is, thus, outside the
world. Hence, we conclude that a forceful rejection of the world by asceticism is
the requirement of spiritual living. We throw off our garb, cut off our connections,
and live in a geographical corner of the Earth, not knowing that we are still on
Earth only—just as an ostrich hiding its head in the sand is under the impression
that nobody sees it because it does not see anybody. This psychological difficulty
may pursue us wherever we go. Therefore, our movement in the religious field
may turn out to be a movement from one sorrow to another, rather than a
movement from one joy to another joy.

Spiritual living is not a painful, agonising process but a delightful and joyful
experience. In the movement on the path of the spirit, or religion, you move from
one state of joy to another state of joy. If you are happy now, the next moment you
are happier—not less happy. You should not feel you have lost something when
you have relieved yourself from the responsibilities of the world. Yet, your mind
may be thinking of the condition of your daughter in the house of her in-laws,
though you may be a hermit in the Himalayas. You may always be remembering
your son in the United States who is an engineer: “His letter has come to me. He
has requested me to see him. It is many years since he has left the country.” These
ideas will persist in your mind though you are a hermit, because psychic
relationships cannot be easily cut off. The emotional bondage is the real bondage,
and physical disassociation from apparent connections will not be a real

disassociation from emotional connections. The movement towards God, as I

pointed out, is a wholesome, or rather a wholesale movement of the whole world—
to which you belong, in which you are situated, and with which you are connected.

Now, what is the world in which you are connected or situated? It is a double
world of emotional connections and metaphysical relations. You are in Ishvara
Srishti; you are also in Jiva Srishti. The first step is to dissociate yourself or, rather,
sublimate your relations in the emotional world. You have come to an Ashram; you
are in a holy temple. Perhaps you have embraced the order of Sannyasa. What
about your emotional reactions to things? Do you like something? Does it mean
that a Sannyasin has no likes and dislikes? Are there no emotional, instinctive
reactions to the world outside? Is he dead to all events?

It is not that you are to be dead to things. But you are to be aware of the nature of
the true causative factors behind the operations of things— namely, the Ishvara
Srishti behind the Jiva Srishti has to be visualised. The first step in spiritual life is
an understanding of the various forms which the Jiva Srishti takes—which means
to say, the forms in which you are connected to things emotionally, instinctively,
personally, and socially. After you free yourself from these relationships, you enter
into the real arena of spiritual living. You enter into the true world, the
geographical world. The world in which you are living now is not the geographical
world. It is a family world, social world, political world, emotional world,
instinctive world. The geographical world is underlying it. Though you are walking
physically, geographically, on this ground which is the substance of the Earth, you
are actually affected not by the physical condition of the Earth, but by your
emotional relationship to it. “This is India, my land, my country. I am a patriot of
this nation. And now I tread on a foreign land.” Though you are treading on the

same Earth, you have the feeling that you are treading on native land, foreign land,
etc., though such distinctions do not operate with the Earth itself taken as a whole.

We feel we are in our house and not in somebody else's house, and we are putting
on our own clothes and not somebody else's clothes. We eat our own meal, not
somebody else's food. These are very subtle operations of our mind. There is no
such thing as ‘our own'. But it is hard to get out of this idea. It is like peeling one's
own skin, which is an impossible affair. To peel out of our psychic personality the
emotional relationships with which we are connected to things is like tearing our
flesh. No one can easily do that, because our flesh is not merely a physical
substance. It is the mental stuff with which we are connected to our relations of
love and hatred.

Loves and hatreds, likes and dislikes, are the stuff of our world. It is not atoms or
molecules that constitute the world of our existence. The joys and sorrows of life
are not born out of molecules, atoms, brick and mortar of the things around us. Our
joys and sorrows arise from the mental connections, the psychic operations, the
emotional flow from ourselves in the direction of that which we like and dislike.
Hence, vairagya, renunciation, taking to religion, practising spirituality, is all a
consequence of our freedom from, and not a rejection of, our emotional contacts.

When this is achieved, we will find that the world is our family, and we will not be
able to recognise only a group of people as belonging to us. Then true renunciation
springs up automatically; and then it is not to be defined by the word ‘renunciation'
but, more properly, to be called ‘enlightenment'. We have not renounced the wealth
of our dream world when we have woken into the substance of our present life. We
may have been a millionaire in dream. Now, have we renounced that wealth when
we have woken up? The question of renunciation or relinquishment does not arise,
because we have been enlightened into a new order of things.

In this new order of enlightenment called waking life, our likes and dislikes of the
dream world convey no meaning at all. Hence, detachment from them, or even
attachment to them, is a meaningless statement. So would be our delight and
upsurge of satisfaction when we enter into the world of the creation of God. We
may say, “I am even now in the creation of God.” But it is not true. We are in our
own psychic world. We are not living in the creation of God, though it may appear
that we are treading on the Earth, on which everyone is also treading—which we
have not created and, therefore, is to be treated as created by God. We are living a
mental world, not a physical life.

This treading of our path in the direction of the spirit is, therefore, the treading of
the different stages of our connection with the densities of relationship in which we
are involved. The psychic involvement is the hardest thing to understand. No one
ever believes that he or she can be in the wrong. How could you persuade yourself
that you are in the wrong? It is always taken for granted that we are harassed by
people outside, people around us are idiotic, and our position is always justified.
This is a persuasion within ourselves which we cannot escape because we think
that we are always truthful, while others are mostly untruthful. This is a
psychological malaise which can pursue us wherever we go on account of our not
being able to assess ourselves in the light of Ishvara Srishti, or God's creation. The
trouble does not arise from trees and mountains, the sun and the moon and the
stars. The trouble arises from our emotional, instinctive and psychological
involvement with things.

This is the first step in religious or spiritual life—to free oneself from these
psychological, emotional and instinctive involvements, not by severing them with
a sword but by fulfilling their requirements, as when we are sick we do not kill our
body so that we may be free from the illness, but we fulfil the needs of the body by

taking medicines. There are two ways of killing the disease. We kill the body itself;
then the disease is also killed. But this is not what we are attempting to do. We are
trying to rejuvenate our personality and fulfil the needs of the personality in the
attempt at regaining health, rather than severing ourselves from the body which is
ill. When we cut off our connections with a sick body, we are no more sick, so why
not abolish our physical individuality and life by dealing a single stroke to our
body because we are sick?

Such a stroke should not be dealt at our psychological existence, which is a

mistake many seekers commit under the impulse of a spirit of renunciation or a
Godly urge. We are in a double difficulty because of the pull of the instincts from
one side and the urge towards God on the other side. We are religious and
irreligious at the same time. This is why many a time we have a new type of
hardship before us. Why do we say that we require a Guru? It is because we cannot
know our own involvements. Why do we go for a medical examination under an
expert physician? Why don't we study a Materia Medica, purchase some medicines
from a chemist shop, swallow some pills and be relieved of our illness? This is not
done because the diagnosis is very important. And only a Guru can diagnose the
illness of our psychophysical individuality. We cannot study ourselves, just as a
patient cannot treat himself. Therefore, a Guru is necessary. This Guru is a person
who has trodden the path, who has gone above us and beyond us and knows the
pitfalls, and who has studied all the points that are to be considered in one's
movement towards God.

Now I come back to the point from where I began. The movement towards God is
a movement in every direction. Who can move in every direction? Which person
can do that? How can we think all things at the same time? When we are seated in
a bus, can we think of the four sides of the bus, the top and the bottom, and the

movement of the bus all at the same time? This is an illustration of what scientists
sometimes call a four-dimensional way of thinking. We can think of the movement
of the bus in only one direction, not in all four directions at the same time, and the
people around, and all things connected with it.

An all-round fulfilment is what is required of us in our spiritual aspirations and

religious calls. All religion, all forms of spirituality, are stages of fulfilment and not
rejection. Life is full, and full with everything, even with obligations. So the life of
religion and spirituality is a positive living and not a negative wrenching. It is not
an abandoning, but an acquisition. It is a growing into a higher dimension and not a
losing of what we had earlier.

When you advance on the spiritual path or in your practice of religion, you are not
losing the lower things in the interest of the higher things— just as when you are
promoted to a higher grade in your office you have not lost your lower cadre. You
don't cry, “Oh, my lower salary has gone because the higher salary has come!” The
lower is included in the higher. So in the abandonment or the renunciation that
religions require of you, you are not renouncing the values of life or the
worthwhile things in existence, but are sublimating them, fulfilling them in a
higher acquisition and, therefore, it is a movement from a lesser joy to a greater
joy, not from sorrow to sorrow. “Oh, what a difficult thing is this life! How
difficult it is to sit in asana, how difficult to concentrate, how difficult to study the
Bhagavadgita! Everything is difficult. There is nothing pleasant in spiritual life.”
This is a very sorry state of affairs, and it is because the conditions of spiritual
living have not been properly understood, the obligations to the world have not
been properly discharged, and there has been unnecessary enthusiasm of emotion
rather than a true devotion to God.

So, my dear friends, it is better to go slowly and take a firm step, even if you take
only one step in one year. There is no necessity to take a hundred steps and then
retrace your steps because you have taken a wrong step. It is quality that is
required of you, and not the quantity of your achievements. It is not that a
thousand malas of beads are to be rolled; one bead is sufficient if the whole of your
mind, the whole of your spirit, your entire soul is associated with the single bead.
Even if you chanted only one mantra for a moment only, it is sufficient provided
your whole soul has welled up in its direction rather than counting one thousand
beads with a distracted mind, with sorrows, agonies, unfulfilled and frustrated
ambitions, and so on.

Thus, again I come to the point. You require a guide. Unaided, without a support,
you should not attempt at standing on your own legs, at least at the present
moment. Maybe a day will come when you are absolutely competent to stand on
your own legs, God willing; but just now it is not possible.

So a great vigilance is necessary, and a series of graduated steps has to be taken—

no sudden jumps. And again, remember that religion, spirituality, is a fulfilment of
your obligations in all the realms of being, and not a shirking of duties or a
rejection of values or a denial of your obligations in any existence. Spirituality, or
religion, is wholly positive in every stage of its performance. This is very
important to remember.

Renunciation and Societal Life

A third axiom is the presumed value of asceticism and renunciation. From as early
as the Upanishads (600 BCE) a valued strand in the Hindu tradition has been the
life of renunciation and asceticism. It is impossible to know how many Hindus
actually renounced family life and set out on a full quest for enlightenment
(moksha). The search for enlightenment and release from the rounds of birth and

death was seen as a strenuous undertaking, often accompanied by ascetic practices,

and always over a long period of multiple lifetimes. Hindu ascetics were
called sadhus (‘good’ or ‘pious’); they renounced the householder’s life and
p r a c t i c e d ta p a s . E v e n s o m e o f t h e g o d s , m o s t n o t a b l y S h i v a ,
practiced tapas. Tapas means ‘heat,’ then the pain that comes from heat, and then
suffering in general, particularly when it was self-inflicted on the path to
enlightenment. Such a vision of the good might not only involve practices in which
the body was mortified, but also certain clear ethical principles as well.
No community carried the value of renunciation further than the Jains (dating from
Mahavira, fifth century BCE). They emphasized the principle
of ahimsa (noninjury) to such an extent that it influenced when and where they
traveled (so as not to tread on living organisms), made them strict vegetarians, and
resulted in particular care in putting away unused food. They also took a vow of
truthfulness that necessitated that they never speak without careful deliberation, a
vow against taking what is not one’s own, and a vow upholding chastity and
renouncing of all attachments to pleasant colors, sounds, and smells. Such a
renunciant was a homeless wanderer, dependent upon alms giving for food and
carrying a bare minimum of possessions.
Alongside this value placed on renunciation, ordinary society continued to exist,
without which there would be no one to give alms to renunciants. How was one to
reconcile the obvious needs of society with this value placed on renunciation? The
most common way was through the fourfold class system and the four stages in
life. These are important for they make it clear that some principles are universal
only on the sense that they cover all persons at a certain stage in life. What was
expected of an individual in terms of ethical action came to be
called dharma. Dharma means law, custom, or appropriate action. It suggests that
one’s dharma is always appropriate to the way the universe is. There is a

certain dharma for each stage in life and for each class. At any one point in time,
then, one’s svadhamra (own dharma) is determined by these two grids of four.
As for the classes, Brahmins are intended to be the spiritual leaders and to meet the
religious needs of the people. Even though it was probably never the case that all
Brahmins were priests or teachers, that was considered good or appropriate action
for them. The second class were Kshatriyas. These were kings and warriors.
The Bhagavadgita, a highly influential religious text, begins with the moral
dilemma of the warrior who does not want to kill because he sees members of his
extended family in the opposing army. Krishna, the teacher who is understood to
be god as the text unfolds, offers a variety of reasons why the warrior should fight.
One of those is that as a Kshatriya it is his dharma to do so. While, then, it might
be inappropriate for a Brahmin to march into battle and inflict death on the enemy,
the Kshatriya is duty bound to do so. The Hindu tradition, then, although it
values ahimsa or nonviolence, did not promote pacifism.
The Vaishya was the business and economic leader and therefore, however strong
the urge to renunciation might be, it would not be appropriate for the Vaishya. The
Shudra was a servant who did menial tasks. All such activities were considered
good, however, since they were appropriate to the given class into which one was
born. In time certain groups of persons were considered outside this system,
partially because of occupations that rendered them impure. They came to be
called untouchables.
In addition to the four classes, there developed a scheme that divided life into four
stages. An individual lived as a student until marriage when one entered the life of
a householder. Then, when one’s first grandchild was born one had the option of
becoming a ‘forest-dweller’ and seeking to strive toward enlightenment with more
intensity. This state and the final one intersects with the goal of renunciation. The

final stage was one who was beyond the stages or ashramas, and such a person
wandered homelessly. Such persons were later called sannyasins.
In this way, the Hindu tradition continued to place value on renunciation while
making place for ordinary social and economic existence. While it might not be
appropriate behavior for a Brahmin renunciate to accumulate material goods, it
was certainly quite appropriate for the householder and particularly the Vaishya. If
activity connected with death, leather, or human excrement would defile the
Brahmin and would therefore be unacceptable behavior, there were always the
Shudras or untouchables to carry on such activities. In spite of the inevitable
pollution, it was their dharma to do such work. And, as the Bhagavadgita taught, it
is better to act out one’s own dharma, even if imperfectly, than to seek to imitate
the dharma of another. By attending to one’s own svadharma or own duty one was
likely to elevate oneself in the next life to a more advantageous class. That
different expectations attach to different persons and different stages in life is not
merely a theoretical scheme, but again a cultural value that bubbles up and is
invoked for purposes of explanation and legitimization from time to time.