Chapter 4 Summary: Order and Chaos

Chapter 4 - Order and chaos
a. In this chapter, the author discusses how dharma is flexible with chaos whereas westerners feel uncomfortable and scared in a "disorderly" situation.
b. Decentralization: Sri Aurobindo is quoted "Unity we must create, but not necessarily uniformity." He adds that "nature can afford the luxury of infinite differentiation since there is always the secure basis that the underlying immutability of the eternal always remains unaffected."
The author cites a brilliant example "India's kumbha mela amply demonstrates that diversity can be self-organized and not anarchic, even on a very large scale. There is no central organizing body, no `event manager' to send out invites, nobody in charge to promote it, no centralized registration system to get admitted. Yet it the world's largest gathering of people from all strata."
c. The dialectic nature of western discourse:  The author quotes directly from the bible "let there be light/ and there was light."(1:3) It further says "and god saw that light was good." (1:4).
Hence, "god establishes the binary categories of light and dark. Genesis then offers a slew of opposites: above and below; sea and dry land; sun and moon; good and evil, etc."
"The mutually exclusive categories of believer/heathen, true religion/false religion, deity/idol, history/myth etc.. are similar in that the first option in each pair is absolutely and exclusively valid, whereas the second option is absolutely dangerous. Not only is it negative, but it must be completely eradicated to restore order."
It is further explained that "The drastic either/or choices characteristic of western thinking mirror the exclusivism of the Abrahamic faiths, stretching back to the first of the Ten Commandments: `Thou shall have no other gods before me'."
Roddam Narasimha is cited to articulate this point "The history of western science is shot through with the idea of theories and models and of fraud. Galileo, Newton, Mendel, Millikan, Ptolemy and many others were accused of fraud…. This can be traced to the faith in two-valued logic, namely the idea that answers have to be yes or no; models have to be true or false: there are no other options."

On the contrary, "Dharma deals pragmatically with behavior in particular circumstances rather than universal moral principles. Krishna deviates from the accepted norms when required to achieve the overall good of humanity. He suggests killing Drona, Karna and Duryodhana by means that would be unjust under normal circumstances."
The author later quotes Lannoy "Indian inclusiveness operates at a deeper level than the polarities of good and evil. In Indian ethics, good and evil are always relative, and a precise definition of intrinsically good or bad deeds is avoidable."

d. Finally, the author gives a brilliant analogy of the difference between India and the west in terms of "dharmic forest and judeo-christian desert".
"Desert people crave greenery so much that it is their sacred colour (as in Islam). The oasis – a small life sustaining forest in the midst – is their destination. All their notions of eternal paradise are forests. But the converse is never true: forest cultures do not crave deserts. Forest-dwelling civilizations did not turn into world conquerors looking for alternative pastures; they found contentment at home."

The author further elaborates "The forest functions well as a metaphor for context-based cultures, revealing why people living in dharmic cultures are more comfortable with cognitive complexity. Of course, those who love the desert believe it can inspire awe and worship. Still, for many, it is easy to see the desert as a place of extremes – deep cold or burning heat, hunger or food, water or sand."

KK


**************************************
http://beingdifferentbook.com/
To join the Yahoo egroup that has been set up specifically to discuss this book, send an email to: RajivMalhotraDiscussion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
**************************************