International Journal of Hindu Studies (2021) 25:119–125 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-021-09297-5

BOOK SYMPOSIUM ON INFINITE PATHS TO INFINITE REALITY BY AYON MAHARAJ

A Critique of Some Aspects of Karma, Evil, and God

Arvind Sharma

Accepted: 25 February 2021 / Published online: 7 April 2021 © Springer Nature B.V. 2021

It is a pleasure to respond to Ayon Maharaj’s Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri and Cross-Cultural (2018; henceforth, IPIR). Its four organizing themes—the infinitude of God, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil—are issues I find challenging. The style of the book could be described with the help of two Sanskrit words, sometimes used to describe S´an˙kara’s commentaries on the prasthānatrayī, namely, prasanna (clear or perspicuous) and gambhīra (profound or perspicacious). Due to limitations of space, I will focus here on only one of these themes: the problem of evil (discussed in chapters 7 and 8 of Maharaj’s book). I will begin by briefly raising some points that cannot be elaborated in detail here. Then I will offer some comments on a particular argument sometimes used to defend evil—namely, that evil is necessary in order for us to appreciate its opposite, namely, the good. I will then develop an alternative theodicy in relation to the problem of evil so as to provide a new perspective with which to compare Maharaj’s position, and, finally, I will try to problematize the theistic worldview which undergirds the relevant chapters of the book.

& Arvind Sharma [email protected]

School of Religious Studies, McGill University, 3520 University Street, Montreal, QC H3S 2A7, Canada 123 120 Arvind Sharma

Some Preliminary Considerations

First among the brief points I wish to raise concerns Max Weber’s well-known remarks that the doctrine of karma offers “the most consistent theodicy ever produced by history” (1958: 121) and that it constitutes “the most complete formal solution of the problem of theodicy” (1963: 145; cited in IPIR 262, 262fn39). The statements seem to compliment the doctrine of karma. It is often overlooked, however, that the reason Weber gives for making these remarks may not be so complimentary; namely, that a person who occupies a lower rung in the caste system has her situation explained in terms of her past lives, while her well-being in the future life is said to depend on her accepting the condition in which she finds herself in this life. So, if Weber says that the karma doctrine offers a final formal solution to the problem of theodicy, it must be considered a left-handed compliment by one disposed to take a more progressive view of the situation. Weber also misrepresents the doctrine of karma; he overlooks the fact that if one justifies someone’s position in this manner, then one’s own situation will be similarly justified with equal smugness when one finds oneself on a lower rung. A second point has to do with Ra¯makrsna’s belief in reincarnation. Ra¯makrsna ˙˙˙ ˙˙˙ seems to be more tentative about his belief in rebirth than is apparent from Maharaj’s account in the book. Once, when asked point blank, “Sir, is there such a thing as reincarnation? Shall we be born again?” Ra¯makrsna says: ˙˙˙ Ask God about it. Pray to Him sincerely, He will tell you everything. Speak to Jadu Mallick, and he himself will tell you how many houses he has, and how many government bonds. It is not right to try to know these things at the beginning. First of all realize God: then He Himself will let you know whatever you desire (Gupta 1974: 903). It could be that Ra¯makrsna wanted to draw the questioner away from needless ˙˙˙ speculation about such issues, but one is struck by the contrast between this and Ra¯makrsna’s response to Sva¯mı¯ Viveka¯nanda’s famous query: “‘Have you seen ˙˙˙ God?’ ‘Yes, my son, I have seen God…, just as I see you before me…[,] only much more intense[ly].’” (cited in Rolland 1930: 263fn1). The point appears in even sharper relief when a Bra¯hmo devotee asks him: “Sir, do you believe in the reincarnation of the soul?” He replies, “Yes, they say there is something like that. How can we understand the ways of God through our small intellects? Many people have spoken about reincarnation; therefore I cannot disbelieve it” (Gupta 1974: 84; emphasis added). The point seems to gain further traction when we consider the following remark by Maharaj: “Moreover, he privately told a number of his intimate disciples that he himself was an avatāra, who came as Ra¯ma and Krsna in previous incarnations” ˙˙˙ (IPIR 278). This remark prompts an examination of the two terms: incarnation and reincarnation. God incarnates; human begins reincarnate. Is Ra¯makrsna to be treated ˙˙˙ as a human being or as an incarnation of God? What is striking is that Ra¯makrsna ˙˙˙ makes direct claims about being incarnated, but does not seem to make similar

123 A Critique of Some Aspects of Karma, Evil, and God 121 claims about reincarnation, unless I have overlooked some crucial piece of evidence. The third point that I wish to discuss is the claim made by Maharaj that “on the Indian view, then, no suffering is truly dysteleological, since all suffering is governed by the law of karma”(IPIR 305). This view is not described as the Hindu view, but as the Indian view. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are also , but they do not accept the doctrine of karma so probably what Maharaj has in mind is what we might call an Indic view, the term now usually used to refer to the four religions of Indian origin: , Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. It is, therefore, relevant that at least once, in the Pali canon, the Buddha denies that all suffering is governed by karma. The passage is found in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, which is also cited in the semi-canonical text, the Milinda Pañha, which consists of the dialogue between King Milinda and the Buddhist sage Na¯gasena. King Milinda wants to know how the Buddha suffered an attack of dysentery if he had no bad karmas left. Sage Na¯gasena answers as follows: [The] illness of dysentery, sire, that arose in the Lord was not an illness that arose because of anything (he had) done earlier; it arose simply in connection with the union of the humours of the body. None of the bodily illnesses that arose in the Lord, sire, was produced by kamma but from one or other of these (remaining) six origins. This too, sire, was said by the Lord, the deva above devas, in an explanation to Moliyası¯vaka in the splendid exposition, the Saṁyuttanikāya: “Some things that are experienced here, Sı¯vaka, arise originating in bile; and this is to be understood for oneself, Sı¯vaka, that some things that are experienced here arise originating in bile. And this too, Sı¯vaka, is agreed upon by the world as the truth, that some things are experienced here arise originating in bile. As to this, Sı¯vaka, those recluses and who speak thus and are of these views: ‘Whatever this person experiences, whether pleasant or painful or neither painful nor pleasant, all that is due to what was done earlier,’ go beyond their personal knowledge and they go beyond what is agreed on by the world as the truth…” (Horner 1963: 191–92). One could probably get around this piece of counter-evidence in at least two ways: one, by distinguishing between pain and suffering, and, second, by distinguishing between what may be called dysteleological and what may be called collateral. A distinction can be drawn, on the basis of Buddhism, between pain and suffering, when the distinction rests on the fact that pain is physical and suffering is mental in nature. If karma is connected only with suffering and not with pain, then one could argue that the discomforts referred to in the above passage pertain to the body, and, therefore, do not constitute suffering. The passage itself, however, makes no such distinction. One could also maintain that the suffering involved is not dysteleological but collateral in the sense that the discomfort mentioned in the passage was collateral with the fact that one possesses a body, and the possession of a body is not dysteleological. So, the “suffering” involved in this passage is not truly dysteleological. It would be interesting to hear Maharaj’s response to this.

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A Criticism of Rāmakṛṣṇa

At one point Maharaj quotes Ra¯makrsna as follows: “That is God’s līlā. The glory ˙˙˙ of light cannot be appreciated without darkness. Happiness cannot be understood without misery. Knowledge of good is possible because of knowledge of evil.… Both are necessary” (IPIR 256). It is true that happiness and misery, good and evil, light and darkness, are often paired, and in order to know one, some idea of the other is necessary. The question that such an explanation raises is this: Is it necessary to experience the reality of the antonym, would not having an idea of it suffice? For instance, if I am well-off, then does it not suffice for me to be able to imagine what not being well-off might be like, rather than my having to undergo the experience in life of not being well-off, to appreciate being well-off? Is it necessary for the opposite to manifest itself in reality for us to appreciate it? What if an exercise of the imagination could suffice? We could have a world in which there is only light, happiness, and knowledge, but in which one could imagine darkness, misery, and ignorance. Thus although Ra¯makrsna seems to imply that both members of the pair must be ˙˙˙ experienced at the same level, one must ask if this is necessary. An example is provided by the experience of childbirth. Must one experience it to realize what it might be like? Isn’t there a C-section option?

Karma Doctrine Criticized

In the previous sections I raised some minor points. I will now raise some more substantial points which seem to undermine the karmic worldview on which Maharaj relies. One way to question it in the present context would be to draw a distinction between māyā and līlā. There are two main approaches used in Veda¯nta in the context of the nature of the relationship between the ultimate reality and the universe in which we live. These two approaches broadly correspond to whether one accepts the ultimate reality as nirguṇa or as saguṇa brahman. If we accept nirguṇa brahman as the ultimate reality, then the preferred explanation seems to be rooted in māyā, to explain the way nirguṇa brahman serves as the ground for the “cosmic illusion.” Just as a rope serves as the basis for the appearance of a snake, nirguṇa brahman serves as the basis for the cosmic illusion. If we take the ultimate reality to be saguṇa brahman or¯ Is´vara, then the universe appears as the līlā of God. Sometimes this līlā represents the magic show of God, where māyā becomes the power by which the supreme magician puts on the show of this universe (Hiriyanna 1949: 164). Whether māyā offers an explanation of the universe in terms of nirguṇa brahman or in terms of saguṇa brahman, māyā, after all, represents appearance and not reality. And the karma doctrine tries to establish some consistency in this māyā, which by definition is indeterminate or inconsistent because it is merely an appearance and an appearance is not under the same obligation as the reality to remain self-consistent. The reality must always be real, or, to put it another way,

123 A Critique of Some Aspects of Karma, Evil, and God 123 self-consistent, but the karma doctrine is located within māyā, yet insists on a kind of consistency. Another objection could be raised to a theodicy based on karma in terms of a theistic theodicy, as developed in the chapters dealing with theodicy in Maharaj’s book. It is best to present this argument by developing an analogy. Let us imagine a novelist writing a novel. The novel is the creation of the novelist, and one could assume that she stands in relation to it just as God would stand in relation to His creation. Thus the various characters of the novel are like you and me in this world. Could it not be argued that any attempt to find a relationship between the moral character of a figure in the novel and the vicissitudes of her life in the novel is potentially misleading, in the sense that the entire life of the figure in the novel is really the work of the author of the novel and not of the character? We could then be like someone who does not know that one is in a novel, and therefore tries to figure out how the things happening to one are somehow related to what one is, to one’s moral character, when it is really God alone who is responsible for all that is happening to us. One might even make plausible connections between what a person does morally as a figure in the novel and what the person experiences in the novel. But this whole effort to look at the life of a character in terms of karma in the novel is clearly, in some sense, a fatuous exercise, because what goes on in the novel has really little to do with the doctrine of karma. The causes and the effects, both of them are entirely the product of what the author, that is God, wishes to accomplish. If we now imagine not one but a series of novels, in which the same character figures, then even rebirth can be reincorporated in this example. But the point is that it is really the will of the author which is prevailing throughout. It could be that the author wants to imbue what happens to the character with a moral hue, but that is up to the author. The example of the novel opens up another possibility. Let us suppose that the novel has no end and that the series could go on forever. If such is the case, then an author could always develop a scenario in which everything which appeared unjust in the course of earlier novels is rectified later by developing a series of events in the next novel which justifies everything morally. The point is that if any sequence is endless, then things can always be made to conform to justice of a karmic kind in the long run. This is another way in which one could have a theodicy—one involving perennial postponement of the dénouement. How such a deferred theodicy affects the conclusions of the book would be an interesting question.

Līlā Versus Karma

This idea of līlā is potentially even more subversive of karma. Let us suppose that the universe is the līlā of God. It is then a kind of display which could lead to the experience of many emotions. These varieties of aesthetic experience could be called rasas. Traditional Hindu aesthetics talks of nine rasas: śṛṇgāra, hāsya, karuṇa, raudra, bībhatsa, bhayāna, vīra, adbhuta, and śānta. Many of them do not require that karma should even out; in fact, karuṇa rasa may be experienced precisely because in some cases karma does not even out. 123 124 Arvind Sharma

If the purpose of lilā is to entertain us with these various experiences and to induce these various rasas in us, then the apparent inconsistencies which create the problem of theodicy tend to dissolve. Then the cases of Bambi the fawn, who gets burned to death in a forest, and Sue, the five year old girl, who gets raped and killed by the mother’s boyfriend, mentioned in the book, would be meant to arouse the sentiment of tragedy in us and need no further explanation. It is significant that justice is not a rasa. We might wish to argue that it could be one. But this rasa—let us call it nyāya rasa—would be only one of many rasas. Could we be living in a world in which we have completely misconstrued the situation, when we look for justice in it, just as when we watch a drama our main referent is not the moral experience of life but aesthetic experience of life? I do not know if any attempt has been made to develop such an aesthetic theodicy. It is still a theodicy because it offers an explanation of suffering. It is not a moral theodicy, but it is a theodicy, an aesthetic theodicy.

God and Karma

I offered some of my own responses in the previous sections. In this last section, I would like to address some issues which have already been identified in the case of karma from a theistic perspective. For instance, God is described in the Upanisads ˙ as karmādhyakṣa, or the supervisor of karma (Śvetāsvatara Upaniṣad 6.11). God’s position as karmādhyakṣa could be viewed in two ways. God could just be an umpire. The umpire in a cricket match is seen as totally unconcerned with what is happening in terms of the score or the players. She just decides when somebody is out and when somebody is not. But supervision with the power to intervene could also be involved, as when a squabble breaks out on the field between some players and the umpire adjudicates among them, continuing her role in this sense as an umpire. The question arises: In which of these two ways are we supposed to understand God in relation to karma? Such questions point to a larger issue which is identified by Mysore Hiriyanna in the following somewhat lengthy but useful quotation with which I would like to conclude: Thus to view it as representing a theistic ideal: There is the well-known difficulty—to mention only one—of reconciling God’s assumed goodness and power with the presence of physical and moral evil in the world. Even supposing that evil exists only from our standpoint and not from that of God or I¯s´vara…, the theistic position does not become fully comprehensible. We cannot, for instance, understand why God should have created the world. To ascribe a motive to him would be to admit that he has ends to attain; and that would be to question his perfection or all-sufficiency (paritrptatvam). To deny a motive and ascribe the work of creation to his intrinsic nature or to some sudden impulse in him would be to reduce God to an automaton or attribute caprice to him; and either way his supposed omniscience is compromised. There are solutions of such difficulties suggested in the Advaita as in theistic doctrines generally; and these attempts at justifying the ways of God to man

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are not without their appeal to the religious mind. But, as S´am˙ kara observes, they are not final because they “have reference to the world of names and forms founded upon ¯.” In other words, such solutions, like the problems they solve, keep us tied to the realm of relativity and, as the essence of the relative is to point beyond itself for its complete explanation, the theistic conception cannot be regarded as ultimate (1932: 368–69).

References

Gupta, Mahendranath. 1974 [1942]. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (trans. Sva¯mı¯ Nikhila¯nanda). Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math. [Originally recorded in Bengali and published in book form in five volumes as Śrīśrīrāmakṛṣṇakathāmṛta between 1902–1932.] Hiriyanna, M. 1932. Outlines of . London: George Allen & Unwin. Hiriyanna, M. 1949. The Essentials of Indian Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin. Horner, I. B., trans. 1963. Milinda’s Questions. Volume 1 of 2. London: Luzac. Maharaj, Ayon. 2018. Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. Rolland, Romain. 1930 [1929]. The Life of Ramakrishna (trans. E. F. Malcolm-Smith). Almora: Advaita Ashram. Weber, Max. 1958 [1916–17]. The Religion of : The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism (trans. and eds. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale). Glencoe: Free Press. Weber, Max. 1963 [1922]. The Sociology of Religion (trans. Ephraim Fischoff). Boston: Beacon Press.

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