Vedantic Outreach

Editorial Vedantic Outreach According to Swami Vivekananda, “Expansion is life; contraction is death.” He felt strongly that a narrow interpretation of Vedantic spirituality had been deadly for India, and he sought to correct that situation with a new, vigorous, creative form of Vedanta that, building on what was strength-giving in its past, would reach out and share its insights with other civilizations and at the same time learn and assimilate whatever was good in other traditions. He did not want either his Eastern or Western followers to forsake their own traditions and cultures but rather to learn and assimilate what was best in the whole human heritage. Indeed, as pointed out in Sister Gayatriprana’s book review in this issue of American Vedantist, Swamiji’s ideal for each human being was to expand toward universality, developing equally the emotional, intellectual, active and contemplative sides of one’s nature, and supplementing one’s own spiritual tradition with insights from other traditions. With Swamiji’s vision in mind, we present articles in this issue of American Vedantist that relate Vedanta to three important figures in the Western tradition: the Biblical saint Job, the American Transcendentalist Emerson and the European psychologist Carl Jung. Other offerings present a Hindu view of interfaith relations and ongoing discussion of Vedanta and scientific evolution. Vivekananda’s revitalized Vedanta also emphasized reaching out beyond the struggle for personal liberation and serving those in need as a spiritual practice, revering them as living images of God. We present a continuation of the discussion begun in the last issue of how to meet the needs of elderly Vedantists. We hope more of our readers will write to us with their own suggestions on how to address these needs. —The Editors 1 Job Revisited: A Vedantic Reading Charlie K. Mitchell They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Brahma,” 1856, 1857 Emerson’s omnipresent Deity allows, or even causes, terrible things to happen. What faith can one have in the goodness of this Being? How to reconcile undeserved suffering with belief in God: that is the Job Problem. Decades ago when I was an undergraduate in college without a religious thought in my over-academic head, the story of Job held a magnetic interest for me. In part it had to do with its gorgeous poetry and profound subject matter all culminating in what I viewed as a banal, unsatisfying ending. But mainly I was stuck on the vexed question of faith. Job, the finest and most noble man in all the world, gets drowned in death and destruction because, it seemed to me then, Satan successfully tempts God. Job is given the counsel of despair by his wife (“curse God and die”) and finger-pointing explanations by three friends who have come to comfort him.1 But Job keeps the faith, and in the end God sort of restores his family (some new kids to replace the dead old ones) and his cattle and his money—and then gives Job twice as much worldly stuff as he had before. Big deal. Such cosmic trials, such empty compensation. Has Job’s tremendous faith amounted only to this? How Can One Reconcile Injustice, Suffering and Faith? So I wondered at the frustrating ending, and I sensed that I was missing something. Now, after 35 years of studying and practicing Vedanta, it occurs to me to go back and take another look at this beautiful, perplexing story/ poem/play. What does the story of Job suggest about the nature of God? How can one reconcile injustice, horror, suffering and faith? Why is the tale of Job told at all? Vedanta teaches that our real and most basic nature is divine. Something in us yearns constantly, achingly, to reach this divine core. Whether we 1. I omit discussion of a fourth person who appears clumsily near the end of the story. He is not introduced as are the others, and his language is dramatically inferior in both tone and content. I view him as an interpolation by a later writer of lesser skill. 2 worship a being we call “God,” or whether we rigorously analyze the unreality of the material world, it makes no difference. Each of us, in our own particular way, struggles to experience the divinity that we sense is our ultimate goal. Each of us has a unique, utterly personal, approach to it. If we follow the path that our own nature has laid out for us (swadharma), we will succeed. As Swami Vivekananda insisted, Vedanta “must allow [for] infinite variation in religious thought” (CW I, 390, Mayavati Memorial Edition, 1970). “Whatever path people travel is My path,” says the Bhagavad Gita, “No matter where they walk, it leads to Me” (IV, 11). As I re-explored the Book of Job, I found these Vedantic truths and more, set like jewels in the pain and beauty of human experience. In the beginning, it is quickly established that Job is “perfect” in God’s sight and confident in his own goodness. He is innocent of wrongdoing, and he knows it. Though he is rich and comfortable he is ever vigilant to remain righteous, constantly mindful, praying unceasingly. But unknown and unknowable to Job, Satan gets God to wager that Job will not lose his faith if all his worldly comfort is destroyed. God lets Satan wipe him out. From the outset, suffering happens for reasons mere human beings cannot hope to understand. It is in the nature of things, in the tension and interplay between good and evil, the pairs of opposites that dominate the human mind in the material world. Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward [5:7]. Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down. [14:1]. Rejecting the Prevailing View of Affliction The prevailing theory of divine providence at the time of Job was that affliction is punishment for wrongdoing. This is what Job’s three friends will argue later. But Job says it’s not, and he is right. He prays only to understand the wrong that has been done to him. In this argument, Job borders on blasphemy—accusing God of inflicting undeserved suffering—but again he is right. And he is also right to hold fast to his faith that he will ultimately be redeemed. I think the secret to the Book of Job lies near the very beginning, in the first words Job speaks. Job’s sons and daughters, servants, cattle and wealth are all destroyed in Chapter One. Job says simply, “the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away” [1:21]. (This is the first and only time that this saying occurs in the Bible.) In Chapter Two the “perfect and upright man,” the best in the all the world by God’s own account, is smitten with boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. He heaps ashes upon his head and scrapes at 3 his rotting skin with the fragments of his former life. At this point his wife counsels him to curse God and die. Job replies: What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? [2:10] God is the only doer.2 Job’s very first words, and this elaboration on them, say the same thing. Whatever it is, God did it. Mysteriously, at least to me, the Judeo-Christian world seems to have missed completely this vital point. Job understands God! His wife does not. As the story develops, it also becomes clear that his three friends (his “miserable comforters”) do not. They are just regular, garden-variety friends parroting the regular, garden-variety theology of their day. They do not have, as Job has, and cannot even imagine, a particular, personal relationship with God. I was raised with the standard Christian idea that there was an almighty God and an almost equally almighty Satan, God’s enemy. It was he, the Devil, who caused suffering and grief and made me do bad things. But the Book of Job flatly rejects this notion. One way or another, it is all God’s doing. The author of Job says point-blank at the very end that Job suffered from “all the evil the Lord hath brought upon him.” And God himself says that his servant, Job, has “spoken of me the thing that is right” [42:7]. God, the Author of Everything Job’s revolutionary understanding is that God and only God is the author of everything. He—It—is both good and bad, oxymoronic. True enough that in the poem/play that is the Book of Job, Satan tempts God and seems to get away with it. They actually make a bet! They interact, they play! It is easy to see in this the idea of a divine and good spirit coexisting with an evil one. But Satan is one of God’s sons in the Book of Job. He is not simply an evil being opposing a good one but a member of the immediate family, a creation of God. God is the author of Satan. Good and evil are a pair of opposites, arising together. The idea of Christ automatically gives birth to the idea of the Antichrist. While it isn’t God who smites Job, it is with God’s permission that Satan does it.

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