relaunch: the pagan post/issue one/soul rebels
Hello!
It's been a few months since I’ve sent out a newsletter. I got busy with travel and work, but I also took some time to rethink why I wanted to start writing to you in the first place.
I started working on The Pagan to inspire myself and others to read more Indian philosophy, because I believe that it deserves the same respect given to other major philosophical traditions. Challenging myself to write long essays definitely achieves that goal for me personally, but this kind of writing reaches mainly those who already know (and love) the tradition. Also, I'm not a professor or a serious researcher - I’m just someone who is discovering most of this stuff for the first time. I want to reach people that are in a similar place to me.
So, starting with this issue, I'm going to switch to shorter posts designed to inspire further reading. Each newsletter will revolve around a specific theme, and there will be links and book references for those who want to explore further.
The theme of this first issue is 'Soul Rebels', a little tribute to those who push philosophy and religion forward by questioning dogma and thinking for themselves.
Debate and disagreement are intrinsic features of Indian philosophy. Hinduism has no singular book, set of beliefs, or rituals. Instead, it is a philosophical system that has evolved through centuries of lively arguments and challenges.
Our rebels are features, not bugs.
Let me know what you think of the new format, and thank you for reading!
- Sandeep
Soul Rebels: Quotes
The Hindu attitude to the Vedas is one of trust tempered by criticism, trust because the beliefs and forms which helped our fathers are likely to be of use to us also; criticism because, however valuable the testimony of past ages may be, it cannot deprive the present age of its right to inquire and sift the evidence.
- S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Such flowery words they declaim, these
Ignoramuses! Delighting,
Partha, in the letter of the Veda,
Saying there is nothing else.
Desire in their natures, heaven-bent
And holding out rebirth as work’s fruition,
They act out many different rituals
With the goal of glut and grandeur."
- Bhagavad Gita, 2.41-42 (as translated by Amit Majmudar in Godsong)
Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be. Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue back. 😂
- Ram Mohun Roy
(I pulled this quote from the introductory essay of Amartya Sen's "The Argumentative Indian" - perfect reading for today's theme)
Soul Rebels: Jiddu Krishnamurti and Bruce Lee
"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path."
- J. Krishnamurti
In 2017, renowned Tai Chi master Wei Lei fought the MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong.
The fight was a huge moment for fighting: centuries of esteemed tradition vs. what most at the time saw as theatrical cage fighting.
Tradition came crashing down in about ten seconds, which is how long it took the cage fighter to leave the Tai Chi master bleeding in a heap on the floor.
(the actual fight goes from about 1:30 - 1:40)
Lee Jun-fan, aka Bruce Lee, realized where martial arts was headed decades earlier. Lee openly challenged the orthodoxy and developed his own style of fighting, based on what he tested in the ring.
He believed that Kung Fu had become “flowery and ornamental”, more like a complicated form of dance than a true fighting style. He blamed the masters for this devolution, saying that they were more interested in cult worship and silly formalities than they were in the art of fighting.
In 1970, Bruce Lee was laid out with a serious back injury, during which he had months to do nothing but read and think. This is when he discovered a kindred spirit in Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti's deep influence on Lee is most clearly illustrated in the way Lee's writing echoed the Indian philosopher - here are a few examples (there are many more here).
Both Krishnamurti and Lee were rebelling against traditions that had lost their way.
In Krishnamurti's case, that tradition was called Theosophy, a religion invented in the late 1800s by a Russian occultist, Helena Blavatsky. The religion, and Blavatsky herself, was a parody of new age stereotypes. Theosophy is a mishmash of Eastern traditions and occultist magic tricks. Yet, over the course of a few decades, it attracted elite followers from all over the world - in fact, it was at a Theosophical Society meeting in London that a young Mohandes K. Gandhi was first exposed to the Bhagavad Gita.
In the early 1900s, the leaders of the Theosophical society were searching for a young person they could groom into their leader. There's no other way to put it: they were literally recruiting a messiah.
It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely candidate for this role than a young Krishnamurti. He was a shy, sickly boy from a poor family that lived in a Madras suburb. In 1909, he was sitting by the seashore on a hot evening, when a leader from the Theosophical Society "noticed something special about him".
On a pure whim, the Theosophical Society adopted Krishnamurti, literally raising him to become their “World Teacher” or Messiah. Unfortunately for them, they never saw who Krishnamurti really was…a soul rebel to his core. At an early age, he began to doubt the strange, contradictory things he was being taught.
This tension culminated on August 3, 1929 in the city of Ommen in the Netherlands, the day Krishnamurti officially became the movement’s leader. For his first official act, he symbolically burned the organization to the ground.
Throughout history, there have been many eloquent speeches that rail against organized religion, but in this case, the voice railing against a faith was its own Messiah.
Three thousand devoted followers watched, slack-jawed, as he delivered rhetorical fire:
I have decided, as I happen to be Head of the Order, to dissolve it…this is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.
Here is the full speech.
Krishnamurti spent the next 50 years dedicated to dialog in the pursuit of truth, continuing to shun all forms of dogma. He has inspired countless soul rebels around the world, including fighting legend Bruce Lee.
Wow, this is awesome.
Congrats on the relaunch - liking the new style. It seems to me that although Krishnamurti claimed to be speaking from a universalist position, that the idea of "Truth being a pathless land" seems fundamentally dharmic. Abrahamic and Western thought (with post-modernism being a possible exception) often pushes the idea of a singular salvation, whether religiously or politically.
For example, very famously Gandhi said "I am a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Christian, a Jew, and so are all of you", to which Jinnah replied "Only a Hindu could say that". Do you think that's true or do other spiritual traditions also have this thread of thought?