1158 Renounced Renunciation
I don’t know
Why I renounced
I never understood
What I have renounced
Which one I was searching for
I never understood
Which one I gained
Still it is not clear to me
Something
Beyond me
Pushed me
In renunciation
I won’t say
That it was god
If it is said that it is karma
I won’t accept it
I was searching
For something
But definitely
It was not god
I don’t want
Deceive the world
By saying that
It was Truth
Surely the
Events pushed me (in that)
And the circumstance
Also helped for that
Like a dust
Carried in the current of water
Time has
Carried me
Then I tried
To understand it
I attempted to communicate to others
What I understood
Finally I was defeated
In that also
Then I realized
The truth completely
Once you have renounced
Why need any explanation for renunciation
Why renunciation even
Needs any goal?
The secret
Which one cannot even understand?
What is the need?
To share with others
I renounced somehow
I renounced something
As I have renounced
I renounced even that renunciation
Mathigiri, 21-12-2019, 11.15 p.m.
After reading the following lines I closed the book and began to reflect on this topic ‘renunciation’. I began to contemplate with a question: why I renounced; did I really renounce etc. etc. As the questions began to inspire I wrote this song with the satisfaction that one who renounced need not even understand why he renounced. But he has to finally even renounce the concept of renunciation itself.
It is worth reading what Manu V. Devadevan further says on this subject [A Prehistory of Hinduism, De Gruyter Open Ltd. Warsaw/Berlin, 2016]
Whatever compelled men and women to forsake mundane lives and take to renunciation may be a difficult question to answer in the present status of knowledge. One of the pedestrian notions, widely held but never systematically investigated, is that they were driven by a quest for truth. Truth in this understanding, is not reality or facticity, but the supreme, transcendental determinant of the universe. At least two authorities in recent times, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Clifford Geertz, have tried to reaffirm a place for truth in the sphere of religion. Smith distinguishes between personal and impersonal truths, and tries to make a case for the former, arguing that the latter “handles the natural world well, but comprehends the human world ineptly”. He goes on to write:
Pilate’s unanswered question What is Truth? Whether expressed or latent, haunts every civilisation, and finally, I guess, every man, woman and child. We may hope that our society will not cease to wrestle with it earnestly and nobly. In such wrestling, even if we be maimed by it, there may surely be a blessing. 69
While Smith’s wrestling session differs from the perspective of Mircea Eliade in its approach to religion on many counts, it shares with the latter the emphasis on subjective experiences and their inaccessibility to empirical research. This, then, becomes an easy ground from which claims about truth and its relationship with subjective experiences can be made, and arguments concerning the personal and the inner world of emotions put forward, without finding it necessary to critically explore them. In a very different vein, Geertz writes:70
A man can indeed be said to be “religious” about gold, but not merely if he pursues it with passion and plays it on Sundays: he must also see it as symbolic of some transcendent truths (emphasis added).
Notions like these are Semitic in origin. That God and the world He created are characterized by transcendental truths that must be known is an idea that springs from the foundations upon which Semitic religious traditions are generally based. In saying so, we are certainly not proposing to identify an entity called Semiticism or essentialize it by disregarding complexities and diversities, for the Semitic traditions also produced the Sufis and the Gnostic authors of what survives in the form of the Nag Hammadi library. Our purpose, rather, is to argue that the notion of truth is not an essential component of religion. Truth as a transcendental category was rarely (p. 21) invoked in early Indian thought, or in practices of asceticism and renunciation.71 The word for truth, satya, had different meanings in different contexts….. {Buddha, Sankara, Nagarjuna, Upanisads, Nathas, the Viraktas, the Arudhas, etc.}
The problem we are trying to grapple with has occupied some of the finest minds of our times. A satisfactory consensus is yet to emerge.72 Ours is an attempt to offer (p.22) an empirically verifiable description, drawing upon the proposition that asceticism, renunciation, and religious practices need not be—and cannot always be—understood in terms of truth. We need a cause that is more compelling, more consistent, and more convincing, one that does not yield to the rhetoric of subjective experiences and their inaccessibility. Is suffering one such cause? Perhaps yes. Our emphasis, though, is on perhaps, not on yes. In the current state of knowledge, we cannot be firm like Friedrich Nietzsche, who in one of his later writings observed, rather emphatically: “ You have no feeling for the fact that prophetic human beings are afflicted with a great deal of suffering; you merely suppose that they have been granted a beautiful “gift,” and you would even like to have it yourself.”73—p-p. 21-23
69 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1997. “A Human View of Truth”. In Joh W. Burbridge (ed.) Modern Culture from a Comparative Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 99-119, 119
70 Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. 98
71 In the interest of conceptual clarity, we propose to make a distinction (after Thapar 2010a) between the ascetic and the renouncer, although it is not of consequence to the present study. Writers Thapar: “The renouncer is identified not necessarily with a religious sect but with an order constituting an alternative life-style, in many ways contradictory to that of his original social group. Thus he cannot observe caste rules….The ascetic on the other hand lived in isolation, observed the fod tabus….A further and fundamental distinction between the two was that whereas the ascetics were figures of loneliness working out their salvation each one for himself, the renouncer was concerned about other people and this concern was expressed in his desire to lead others along the path which he had found.” (Thapar 2010 “Dissent and Protest in Early Indian Tradition”. In Idem. Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pp. 213-234. 877)—p. 22 [In the notes the year is mentioned as 2010a, but in the Bibliography as 2000—db]
72 Thapar, Romila. 2010a: 876-913 makes the interesting suggestion that renunciation involved dissent, which she however notes, was articulated rather ambiguously. The renouncer, according to this view, as trying to establish ‘a parallel society’ or ‘a counter-culture.’. See also Dumont, Louis. 1960.— “World Renunciation in Indian Religions”. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 4, pp. 33-62.p. 22
73 No. 316, Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix in Songs. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House.
1158 துறவையும் துறந்தேன்
எதற்க்காய்த் துறந்தேன்
தெரியவே இல்லை
எதனைத் துறந்தேன்
புரியவே இல்லை
எதைநான் தேடினேன்
அறியவும் இல்லை
எதனை அடைந்தேன்
விளங்கவே இல்லை
என்னையும் மீறி
ஏதோ ஒன்று
என்னைத் துறவுக்குள்
தள்ளியே விட்டது
இறைவன் என்று
சொல்லவும் மாட்டேன்
கருமம் என்றால்
ஏற்கவும் மாட்டேன்
ஏதோ ஒன்றைத்
தேடினேன் நானும்
நிச்சயம் அது
இறைவன் இல்லை
உண்மையைத் தேடி
என்றே சொல்லி
ஊரை ஏய்க்க
விரும்பவும் இல்லை
நிகழ்வுகள் நிச்சயம்
உந்தியே தள்ளின
சூழ்நிலை அதற்கு
துணையும் நின்றது
நீரின் போக்கில்
போகும் துறும்பாய்
காலம் என்னை
கடத்தியே சென்றது
அதன்பின் அதனை
புரிந்திட முயன்றேன்
புரிந்ததை பிறருக்கு
சொல்லிட நினைந்தேன்
ஆயினும் இறுதியில்
அதனிலும் தோற்றேன்
அதன்பின் அந்த
உண்மையை அறிந்தேன்
துறந்தபின் துறவுக்கு
விளக்கம் எதற்கு
துறவுக்கு இலக்கு
ஒன்றும் எதற்கு
தனக்கே புரியா
இரகசியம் அதனை
பிறருக்குச் சொல்லும்
அவசியம் எதற்கு
எதற்கோத் துறந்தேன்
எதையோத் துறந்தேன்
துறந்ததால் அந்த
துறவையும் துறந்தேன்
மத்திகிரி, 21-12-2019, இரவு, 11.15