[Reflection] Putting The "Um?" Back in Human by Studying a Dog
One of my dearest mentors instilled something very valuable in me this year which has simultaneously startled and excited me: thinking. Or, at least, that’s how he put it. Just, “thinking.” I would elaborate on it a little more for clarity and say “being thoughtful” or “critically thinking about things.”
Actually analyzing things and trying to understand them as they are. “Athato brahma jijnasa” is the first line of the Vedanta Sutra, or the summary of all vedic knowledge, or ancient Indian knowledge, and it means “now is the time to inquire about the absolute truth, or, in other words, time to think critically, not just about what you should eat for dinner or what politician you should vote for, but what is actually the cause and reason for everything that is going on in this world and who the self is.
Asking this large question is not an easy thing to do, and, like with many other hard things one can imagine, actual inquiries of this kind are rare in this world. Krishna states in the Gita that: “Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth” (7.3).
Perfection is what everyone is seeking, but it is usually searched for in the wrong places. Being a perfectionist will not make oneself perfect. Expecting perfection in implicitly imperfect things, i.e., matter and a temporal world filled with it, will inevitably lead one unfulfilled. What is it that makes matter imperfect, especially with materialism being a very fashionable ontology these days? Another teacher of mine told me an anecdote about her dog which illustrates why matter is imperfect.
Her family had a beloved pet dog whom everyone would play with and cuddle. One day, her father accidentally ran over the dog while it was sleeping in the driveway and it died. Her family was all very aggrieved about this incident, and when it came time to actually bury the body of the dog, all of her siblings, her parents, and herself were disgusted by the dog’s dead body. The once affectionate family at once lost their affection for their pet once it died. Why is this? The body was there, the atoms and molecules making up the structure of what they called their dog was all still there. Something was missing.
What gave them pleasure from their relationship with their dog wasn’t the skin, fur, paws, poop, snot, and drool of the dog, it was what animated the dog's body and what was left upon being run over by the father’s truck. In Vedanta, this substance which pervades all living things is called the jiva, or the living spirit. Clearly without the jiva present in the dog, there was no attraction to it, like there wouldn’t be for any once-living thing.
This is why matter is imperfect. The pleasure that can be derived from matter is greatly reduced when spirit is removed from it. The spirit is what makes matter attractive in the first place. I am speaking of course, for the sake of relationships. Like my first blog post discussed, the pleasure derived from relationships are the highest in life, and they are only possible with other living things.
The Gita further proposes that spirit is the ultimate source of both of these energies, and that the source of spirit, the source of everything (absolute truth), is Krishna. Perfection is to be found in pursuing Krishna, the source of all spiritual and material things. Break the odds. Don’t be a statistic (one out of many thousands). Inquire into the absolute truth and endeavor for perfection by trying to understand Krishna. If one sincerely wishes to know the nature of reality, its origins, significance, and the ultimate purpose if it all, simply read what Krishna says in the Gita: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/.