Three Indian Princes: to embrace or not to embrace the world

Prince Hamlet, a Danish prince (William Morris Hunt, 1864)

In Indian society every individual had a duty to follow (svadharma) according to their social class, caste or natural disposition.

“Better one's own duty though deficient
Than the duty of another [caste] well performed.
Better is death in one's own duty;
The duty of another invites danger.” (BG 3.35)[1]

The individuals of all castes have an “embodied Self” (dehī), eternally indestructible (BG 2.30), and, perceiving their own caste duty, they “should not tremble” (BG 2.31). No temporal incarnation (caste- varṇa, birth group - jāti) is to be mourned as long as Tradition/Dharma is upheld. The roles are fairly distributed thanks to Transmigration and Karma, and whatever an individual’s newly acquired caste duties, they ought to be followed. This is true for śūdras, the lowest class of laborers, but also for the higher classes they serve: the brāhmaṇas, kṣatriyas, and vaiśyas.

The kṣatra-dharma constitutes the duties of the kṣatriya caste of rulers, administrators and warriors. For doing their duties, the kṣatriya will be welcomed in Indra’s world after their death, and share in all the enjoyments of Indra, including his celestial nymphs (apsaras). By the numbers of kṣatriya flown in by apsaras[2], Indra knows whether kṣatriyas do their duty and if the Tradition is properly upheld. Sometimes he notices the number of kṣatriyas are dwindling.

“Those law-wise kings of the earth who fight risking their lives, and at the appointed time go unflinchingly to their death by the sword, theirs is this world forever, their cow of plenty, as it is mine! But where are the heroic barons now? For I do not see any kings coming as my favorite guests’ (MBh. 3.51.17, translation by J.A.B. van Buitenen)

Celestial nymphs, Apsaras, Bayon Temple, Cambodia, Musée Guimet

Arjuna statue in Bali (photo: Ilussion)

Prince Arjuna

As told by the Mahābhārata, at that time the kṣatriyas were too busy courting princess Damayantī. No war, no battles, no kṣatriyas slain on the battlefield, no entrance in Indra’s Heaven (Vīra-loka, Svarga/Indraloka). When the kṣatriyas don’t do their duty on Earth, the celestial nymphs can’t do theirs in Heaven.

In the first chapter of the Bhagavad-Gītā, Prince Arjuna is depressed and wonders about fulfilling his duties and killing his own friends and family. He is lucky to have Kṛṣṇa as his charioteer, who has been missioned as an avatar of Viṣṇu, to advice Arjuna and bring him back to Tradition and the duties of his caste. With his 16.100 junior wives Kṛṣṇa was no ordinary charioteer.  

“These bodies inhabited by the eternal,
The indestructible, the immeasurable
embodied Self,
Are said to come to an end.
Therefore fight, Arjuna!” (BG 2.18)

“He who imagines this (the embodied
Self) the slayer
And he who imagines this
(the embodied Self) the slain,
Neither of them understands
This (the embodied Self) does not slay,
nor is it slain.”(BG 2.19)

“Neither is this (the embodied Self)
born nor does it die at any time,
Nor, having been, will it again come
not to be.
Birthless, eternal, perpetual,
primaeval,
It is not slain when the body is slain.” (BG 2.20)

“He who knows this, the indestructible,
the eternal,
The birthless, the imperishable,
In what way does this man cause to
be slain, Arjuna?
Whom does he slay?” (BG 2.21)

“It is said that [the embodied Self] is unmanifest,
Unthinkable, and unchanging.
Therefore, having understood
in this way,
You should not mourn.” (BG 2.25)

“This, the embodied Self, is eternally
indestructible
In the body of all, Arjuna.
Therefore you should not mourn
For any being.” (BG 2.30)

“And if by good fortune they gain
The open gate of heaven,
Happy are the kshatriyas, Arjuna,
When they encounter such a fight.” (BG 2.32)

“Now, if you will not undertake
This righteous war,
Thereupon, having avoided your own
duty and glory,
You shall incur evil.” (BG 2.33)

As the members of all castes will incur evil through not following the duties of their respective castes in supporting the righteous wars of the higher castes, these verses of Bhagavad-Gītā were not only a source of inspiration for members of Indian society, but for all those aspiring to do their real or imagined kṣatriya duty heroically for a greater cause going beyond the fate of individuals[3].

Je meurs dans la foi de la ‘Bhagavad-Gītā’ et du ‘Zarathoustra’: c’est là qu’est ma verité, mon credo.’ Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Journal 1939–45: 380.

“Let us then shuffle off this mortal coil whenever it becomes necessary, and not raise a grunting voice against the fates. . . . Resting in this conviction, Buddhists carry the banner of Dharma over the dead and dying until they gain final victory[4].” DT Suzuki, inspired by the Bushidō code.

Prince Gautama Siddharta (photo: Buddha Art)

 
Prince Gautama

According to the Buddhacaritam written in classical Sanskrit by the Brahman Aśvaghoṣa in the early second century CE, the future Buddha was born a prince in a kṣatriya clan. In other sources, when the Buddha himself talked about his own past he said:

“Later, while still young, a black-haired young man endowed with the blessing of youth, in the prime of life, though my mother and father wished otherwise and wept with tearful faces, I shaved off my hair and beard, put on the yellow robe, and went forth from the home life into homelessness[5].”

The Buddhacaritam would become the official version of the Buddha’s last life on Earth. Unlike Prince Arjuna and Prince Rama, Prince Gautama would abandon the kṣatra-dharma/Kṣatriya Ethos, and became a renunciate (śramaṇa). His charioteer Channa was an ordinary individual, and no avatar stopped Gautama from renouncing his caste duty, even though Channa gave it a last try by driving the Buddha to a forest, where women, beautiful like heavenly nymphs (apsara), were gathered (at what occasion?), who tried to bring Gautama to other ideas through their powers of seduction[6].

“4.54. But although thus attacked, he, having his senses guarded by self-control, neither rejoiced nor smiled, thinking anxiously, ―One must die.’ ”

“4.98. ―But I am fearful and exceedingly bewildered, as I ponder the terrors of old age, death, and disease; I can find no peace, no self-command, much less can I find pleasure, while I see the world as it were ablaze with fire.”

“5.12. ―It is a miserable thing that mankind, though themselves powerless and subject to sickness, old age, and death, yet, blinded by passion and ignorant, look with disgust on another who is afflicted by old age or diseased or dead.”[7]

The order that the Buddha started would initially live at the margins of society and was open to renunciates from all castes. The renunciates were to address each other as “Friend”. Was this ever really the case? We don’t know, but the caste society of the ecosystem never disappeared, and Buddhism continued to be influenced by Brahmanism, and vice versa in a continuous dialogue[8] until Buddhism’s disappearance from the subcontinent.

As can be expected, the influence of Brahmanism on Buddhism was vast and deep. A new dharma and conduct was developed for the “Sons of the Victorious One” (jinaputra), or Bodhisattvas, better reflecting and fitting the needs of brāhmaṇas, kṣatriyas, and vaiśyas than the ethos of renunciates. In the Mahāyāna sūtras and even more so in Buddhist Tantras, the Buddha became indissociable from a cakravartin, a cosmic ruler and his various circles of power in Heaven and on Earth, a model for Buddhist theocrats. This allowed for the kṣatriya ethos to slip back into Buddhism, if it had ever been completely lacking… Ascetics and warriors tend to share “manliness and valour” (pauruṣa: “size of a man with his arms and hands uplifted” Kavya glossary, "manspreading?). 

Nāgārjuna and the Madhyamaka approach that followed were often considered too nihilist, not only for the Indian ecosystem, but also beyond. Madhyamikas had not much time and room for hierarchies, castes, Families (kula, gotra, clans), avatars and nirmāṇakāyas, etc. The dialog with Buddhist Vijñānavādins, Yogācārins, Cittamātrins, Dhātuvādins, “Garbhavādins”, Vajrayānists, etc. was a lot more fruitful. It allowed for some sort of accomodated Embodied Self and for the valorisation of hierarchies between Bodhisattvas and beings “to be converted, tamed” and trainees (s. vaineya t. gdul bya)[9], Yogis and “children”, Wise and foolish, or in the case of Dharma kings (dharmarāja), theocrats and their subjects, the rulers and those to be ruled.

Another avatar of Viṣṇu, Kalki, "an eminent Brahman of Sambhala village" will appear at the end of the Kali age, in order to "destroy all the Mlechchhas and thieves, and all whose minds are devoted to iniquity [dasyu]" and "give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita age, or age of purity". (Viṣṇu Purāṇa, Book 4, chapter XXIV). The coming of "Kalki", and Shambala, are central to the Kālacakra Tantra, that was a source of inspiration to some illuminated minds and inspired Chogyam Trungpa to create his own enlightened kingdom in the United States.   

Prince Rāma and his brother at the top left of the battle scene, Sahib Din, British Library

Prince Rāma

Bodhisattvas would progressively become less like the Buddhacaritam’s or the Pāli Prince Gautama, and more like Prince Arjuna and Prince Rāma. If instead of trying to find the Truth for himself Prince Gautama would have listened to a ṛṣi or other sage, he would perhaps have been able to come out of his depression and return to the duties of his caste.

We know prince Rama from the Rāmāyaṇam. When Rāma is 16, the ṛṣi Viśhvāmitra arrives at his father’s court to search for help against demons (yakṣī) disturbing sacrificial rites. To cut a very long story short, after 14 years Rāma returned to Ayodhya with his wife Sita and was crowned king; his rule was just and fair.

But the Rāmāyaṇam was to have a “spin-off” (10th century) in the Mokṣopāya(śāstra) or later the Yoga-vāsiṣṭham alias Mahā-Rāmāyaṇa, inserted at the moment where we find Prince Rāma at  the age of 16 in the middle of a serious depression. The ṛṣi Viśhvāmitra invites the ṛṣi Vasiṣṭha to serve as a therapist to Prince Rāma, and what a wonderful therapy the Mokṣopāya is! It is quite an eclectic and inclusive work that wants to focus on “engaged” emancipation (mokṣa). Its “philosophy” or position (s. siddhānta t. grub mtha’) is “the position of all positions” (sarvasiddhāntasiddhānta)[10]. In her thesis (2023), Yoga in the Mokṣopāya, Tamara Cohen, qualifies the Mokṣopāya as follows

“I suggest that the Mokṣopāya is a Yoga text grounded in a unique and idiosyncratic nondual Sāṃkhya system of knowledge with a strong Yogācāra Buddhist influence and similarities to early Haṭha Yoga. In fact, I suggest that a similar historical context could have led to the development of both Haṭha Yoga and the Mokṣopāya since many common elements are found between the two traditions. Specifically, the Mokṣopāya shares elements with Haṭha Yoga that include the raising of kuṇḍalinī, the intonation of the syllable OṂ, the central focus on prāṇa and kumbhaka, a doctrine of siddhis, a goal of jīvanmukti or embodied liberation, a notion of immortality in the body, a practice of conscious Yogic dying, a doctrine of the prāṇa-sun which is fire that consumes the apāna-moon which is water in a centre in the core of the body, and descriptions of yogins retreating to clean and beautiful but simple Yogic huts or caves to practice nirvikalpa samādhi on animal skin seats in the lotus posture with the openings of the body closed off to keep the flow of prāṇa inside.”

Indrabhūti with Lakṣmīṅkārā on the lap, Virūpa to his back to the left and,
possibly Padampa Sangye to the right Wanla Interior Christian Luczantis p107

Lakṣmīṅkārā and King Indrabhūti

The Mokṣopāya seems to reflect its era (10th century) and a convergence, or the shared use, of various means to a sometimes differently defined ultimate goal (mokṣa). This is also the era of the legendary royal couple of Oḍḍiyāna, King Indrabhūti and his sister Lakṣmīṅkārā, if they ever lived... Lakṣmīṅkārā was the first one to search for mokṣa, and inspired King Indrabhūti to do the same, i.e. to practice absorption in the natural state (sahajasamādhi). He relinquished his kingdom, and practiced “Mahāmudrā” for twelve years in his palace. That’s Abhayadatta’s version[11]. Lakṣmīṅkārā gives a different version in the Sahajasiddhi-paddhati[12]. There we learn that King Indrabhūti abdicated because of Lakṣmīṅkārā, and became a Buddhist monk: the popular Guru Suptabhikṣu (Kambala/Lvavapa). He received the instruction from his sister Lakṣmīṅkārā to go and practice in a carnal ground, in order to escape the many students that had followed their king as a guru.

The absorption in the natural state (sahajasamādhi) referred to in the Sahajasiddhi-paddhati, is grounded in the most Tantric setting, but is presented at the same time as its apogee and a natural, spontaneous, innate state, requiring no effort (yoga). As long as there is any effort, “it can not be called the natural state”[13], Lakṣmīṅkārā keeps reminding us. Her message is very similar to that of Saraha, as interpreted in the Dohākoṣahṛdayārthagītāṭīkā (Do ha mdzod kyi snying po don gi glu'i 'grel pa D2268, P3120) by Advaya-Avadhūtipa. Absorption in the natural state (sahaja-stha) is also to be found in the Amanaska Yoga. There seem to be shared interests between the Mokṣopāya or Yogavāsiṣṭha, the Amanaska(-yoga), the Sahajasiddhi(paddhati), and Saraha’s Dohākoṣahṛdayārthagītā for a state not unsimilar to that of a jīvanmukti, a “continuous absorption in the natural state”, in one's natural body, that allows a yogi, or anyone thus inclined, to remain active in our world, without abandoning one’s “kingdom”. All this will need to be further explored.

***

[1] Sargeant, Winthrop. (2009). Baghavad Gītā, Sunny Series

[2] This aspect of a hero's end bears similarity to the end of heroic Yogis, carried off by khecarī (apsaras) to a Khecara. See my French blog Rapide survol de l'évolution du transfert de "la conscience" 29/09/2023

[3] Figueira, Dorothy M. (2023). The Afterlives of the Bhagavad Gita: Readings in Translation, Oxford University Press. Chapter 8 The Nazi Kṣatriya Ethos: Hauer and Himmler.

“ [Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881–1962, the most prominent historian of religion in National Socialist Germany) would contribute to the seriousness of the Ahnenerbe by devoting his scholarship to showing Germans how their forebearers, the Indo-Aryans, accepted their destiny and acted in fulfilment of their duties (Alles 188). From 1934–58, Hauer published three almost identical versions of his essay on karmayoga in the Gītā. The first iteration in 1934, which we will examine here, Eine indo-arische Metaphysik des Kampfes und der Tat ‘validated the bellicose aims of the National Socialists in power’ (Benavides 263–4). It was the task of the modern German to fulfil his heroic duty violently (Benavides 264). This was the central theme of the Gīta for Hauer, its core that all other translations heretofore had failed to discern. It was necessary for modern Germans to access this message, since it preserved a significant phase of their Indo-German religious history, even though it had been diluted by other influences.

[4] Suzuki, DT. (1906). “The Zen Sect of Buddhism,” Journal of the Pali Text Society, p. 34.

[5] M26 Ariyapariyesanā [Pāsarāsi], and in several other suttas, e.g. M36 Mahāsaccakasutta.

So kho ahaṃ, bhikkhave, aparena samayena daharova samāno susukāḷakeso, bhadrena yobbanena samannāgato paṭhamena vayasā akāmakānaṃ mātāpitūnaṃ assumukhānaṃ rudantānaṃ kesamassuṃ ohāretvā kāsāyāni vatthāni acchādetvā agārasmā anagāriyaṃ pabbajiṃ.

[6] Cowell, Edward B. (2005). The Buddha-Carita, or The Life of Buddha by Aśvaghoṣa, Book IV: [Strīvighātano] [The Women Rejected].

[7] Ibid. Book V: [Abhiniṣkramaṇo] [Flight]

[8] Bronkhorst, Johannes. (2011). Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism, Brill.

[9] Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra, chapter 41

[10] “In the Mokṣopāya we find a unique nondual idealist philosophy that teaches that the entire world is a dream of the cosmic mind— nothing is fundamentally real—and professes to convey the ultimate truth of all established philosophies while adhering to none in particular.” Tamara Cohen, presentation of her thesis.

[11] Robinson, James B. (1979) Buddha’s lions, The Lives of the Eighty-Four Siddhas, Dharma publishing. Translated into Tibetan by sMon grub Shes rab (Grub thob brgyad cu rtsa bzhi’i lo rgyus).

[12] Vriens, Joy. (2017) Sahajasiddhi-paddhati, Le Guide du Naturel, Tsadra, Yogi Ling, p. 115

[13] De ni lhan cig skyes brjod min/