Dharma

[Sanjay Krishnaswamy]

Hey, all, sorry for the diminishing Pynchon relevance -- Gonna quote Andrew
Dinn here though there's been a lot of interesting stuff said.

>which seemed pretty much akin to Karma or phenomena as seen from the
>perspective of unfolding cause and effect. And yes Karma was used to
>bolster the caste system in India, although it should be noted that
>Buddhism and the Dhamma rejected the notion of caste for most of the
>religion's history, both inside and outside of India, providing an
>escape route for many Indians from an oppressive system. Also, for a
>long period Buddhism was a dominant force in `Indian' culture and
>politics (in so far as there was a single `India'), it's high point
>being under Emperor Asoka.

Karma means "action."  That's pretty much the besy way to translate it in
general, because "karma" and a hell of a lot of related words appear in the
Sanksrit lit. quite a lot as the verb "to do" and related verbs/nouns.
Making the definition more complex will cause you great translation
problems in general!

Re the caste system, it is unobvious that Hinduism is a "repressive
system."  Some old texts suggest that caste is not a judgement on the
intrinsic worth of an individual -- simply a method of bookkeeping as it
were and of keeping people off each other's toes, guaranteeing mutual
respect of rights.  There are some scholars who feel that this
intrerpretation represtents the essence of the system and that some texts,
esp. the _Mahabharata_, have gone through extensive revisions by th
unscrupulous to exalt their positions.  One positive effect of the caste
system is that Hinduism has been, until recently, an apolitical religion,
and even emperors like Asoka (who converted to Buddhism) maintained Hindu
ministers; sim'ly for Muslim rulers.  
	Karma as justification for caste system?  I assume you're thinking,
something like, you done wrong, so now you're pissed on.  Maybe but again
not quite fair.  Karma becomes an important idea with Krishna's
_Bhagavadgita_, a lecture on action and its consequences.  This text is in
many ways very anti-Brahmin or anti-ritualistic; Krishna really takes
morality out of the hands of the priests and introduces an idea called
karmayoga -- dicipline-of-action. Difficult to summarize but the idea is,
yes, you can attain salvation through meditation, listening to the priests,
ritual.  Or, you can attain salvation though simply doing, through action,
involvement.  _Bhagvadgita_ demystifies a lot of religion his way.  What
sort of action and involvement?  Well, those which you have to do --
Krishna lays a lot of grounswork here for respecting others' beliefs etc.
by freeing the individual from the necessity of deciding what is good or
evil and even really denying the existence of those things as absolutes.
How do you know what you have to do?  Well, that's "dharma" -- I usually
translate it "truth" for my friends, maybe those of you familiar witht his
stuff would say "Tao" but I don't quite like that.  "Dharma" implies a
pattern, an imperative, to be followed.  But it is not a moral term per se
-- some of the worst villians in Hindu mythology supposedly attained
salvation through the perfection with which they played their roles, as it
were.
	Re Buddhism -- some would say (Tibetan -- NOT Zen!) Buddhism _is_
Hinduism; certainly I see much overlap between the two ways of thought and
certainly there are _many_ who practice both (in fact many texts list the
Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu come to disseminate truth, replacing
Krishna's brother Balarama) (caveat: it gets weirder, some small number of
Hindus then go on to say, yes, Buddha is Vishnu, but spreading lies to test
the faithful, etc -- it's pretty twisty).  Seeing Buddhism as an
alternative to Hinduism is probably misguided in my opinion; the two can
exist separately or symbiotically and are informed by one another's thinkers.

	Thanks for the bandwidth y'all.  When do we vote on whether or not I save
my money, reread _Mao II_, and wait for _Underworld_ to come out in paperback?

					SK
____________________________________________________________________________
Sanjay Krishnaswamy
sanjay at visidyne.com