Body: A locus of beauty and a source of wisdom.

I have often heard from the mouth of some young men who pass comments on the girls passing by – “Kya maal hai yaar!” why are they so obsessed with the body of a woman? Why do young people surf the porn sites so madly to see the naked bodies of women? Why cyber sex is so rampant? Why some movies are so suggestive and filled with so many subliminal messages? Why a body has so much charm? The body is so much glorified and deified today and the degrading of the bodies is also common, no doubt about it.

We need to understand the way we perceive. What about the bodies or how was the body perceived in the early periods of the human history?

Early Greek philosophers glorified the mind and spirit over the body because of the indisputable fact that the body is clearly corruptible, obviously fragile, and ultimately worthless; all of which conditions constituted clear proof to them that life as we know it here is inferior at base. St. Augustine tried to answer the question of human imperfectability with the doctrine of original sin. Since bodies sin, he reasoned, it is the soul that is superior. Even before Augustine, Plato had spoken of the body driven by the black horse and making the liberation impossible. He said that it is through knowledge that we attain liberation. St. Thomas Aquinas said that eggs are eggs to mean that we have to realize being as it is in itself as it manifests itself in itself. He held that the senses are the windows of our souls.

Even in some of the bible passages we see our body as a prison and our soul is imprisoned in our body. Now our understanding of the body needs to be changed. Our body is a source of knowledge for us. We have heard the piece of wisdom in the gospel – “the stone which is rejected by the builders has become the corner stone,” similarly the body which lost its significance in the early days and even now to a large extent, we need to realize that it has to become a stepping stone to the higher truth – realization. Just imagine you doing vipasana meditation, you become aware of the innumerable thoughts that pass through your mind, the sensations that you feel in your body. In doing vipasana meditation you realize that life is transitory, the sensations come and they disappear.

One may even ask me – what about those people who are leading a vegetable life/ who are paralyzed and unable to feel anything in their body. I would say that even this paralysis itself is a realization that body can feel no more (is it not another sensational wisdom leaving for the soul to take care?)

Just examine your own body – I see that everything is in proportion that adds beauty. I do not see that one of my ears is larger than the other, in case it is, it would suggest ugliness. Beauty also can not be limited to the proportionate parts of the body but it consists in the charm it gives out. A thing of beauty is always desirable and when it is desirable it is good. Goodness consists in perfection and desirability. And we read in the beginning of Genesis that God created everything and they were good.

A symbolic journey from-to.

Our life is a personal narrative. In this connection I would like to narrate an experience of a bus journey which I will use to show the reality of our day to day existence with the world, God and others.

Any journey has a beginning, a middle and an end. On the journey we meet with so many things. But always keep in mind the principle – “the first in intention is the last in execution.” I began my journey keeping in mind the stop in which I will have to get down and further go wherever I want to go. To reach the intended final stop, I will have to pass by many other stops.

Now you are not alone in the bus. You are along with the fellow passengers. Now let me put down the several elements of the journey:

The driver: you are just in the bus and you are taken to your destination by the bus driver (who knows the route, the art of driving, he is observant and careful not to meet any hurdles on the way that might risk the safety of the passengers. In a way you are driven – you might not know how to drive even, yet you are depended on the expertise of the driver to help you reach your intended destination). As you are on your journey to meaning, freedom and joy, who or what drives you? What it means to be on a driver’s seat?

The fellow passengers: the circumstances and experiences of the fellow passengers are varied. I noticed the faces of all the fellow passengers. I found that every face was utterly unique and different. They spoke in different languages. I could not understand. They share in different world (here what I mean by the world is the personally constructed world of acquired perceptions and meanings). Some I saw very busy over the mobile phones trying to connect with someone distantly other. There was a drunkard who got in the bus only to find himself again in the place he got in when the conductor told him to be out of the bus. The passengers are mostly the average poor, who do not own the means of travel.

The world seen from inside the bus: the world outside seemed to pass by reminding me of the lines of the poem, “the world is not my home; I am just a passing through”. The world was just a passing reality which you just glance through while you have no real contact except through the powerful way in through your eyes. St. Thomas Aquinas would say that “our senses are windows to our souls.”

Persons and situations

Persons constitute situations or rather situations are depended upon the persons who create uniqueness of the situation. This we see in the exemplary life of Mother Theresa. She saw the poor and the suffering outside the convent walls which gave her a higher calling within her call to be a Lorretto Nun. Many people did not feel in the same way as Mother Theresa did. It was the call of Love that called her to respond in love.

While studying situation ethics, I was perplexed by the convincing arguments that it puts forward. But I was also confounded with a concrete experience or a situation that confronted me. I saw a lady, who seems to have nothing to say as her own. She is mentally sick and often hurls abusive language to those who passes by her. Even at times she bursts out into fits of temper and runs around very wildly. The society and even I name her as a public nuisance. Nobody is moved like Mother Theresa to respond to this woman in need.

Just take into account the possible way of her being-in-the-world. First of all she is definitely born out of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, She must have been abandoned by everyone in her family since they found out that she was good for nothing; she is vulnerable to all possible kinds of physical/ external abuses not even with an exception to sexual abuse;

Now the concern is- She is a human person with her own dignified existence. Now when the situation ethics upholds that we have to respond to situations in love, how can I be practical in attending to a woman who is deemed to have a vegetable existence or that of a stray dog? Joseph Fletcher in defending his positions on love, he gives the examples of homosexuality and premarital sex (in both the kind of practices, the form of love is not the agapeic love but merely erotic). Then how can Fletcher justify his position?

He seems to me as a philosopher who proposes a philosophy to justify all actions which are conveniently done and not out of love in the form of seeing the good of the other.

The Scholastic Argument for a TEACHER

Question one

First Article

WHETHER ANYONE ON EARTH CAN BE CALLED A TEACHER?

Thus we proceed to the first article:

Objection 1: It seems that no one on earth can be called a teacher. Now the definition of a teacher holds that he/she is a knowledgeable person. But the ultimate knowledge is God, for He is Omniscient. Therefore no one on earth can be called a teacher.

Objection 2: Further no one on earth can be called a teacher. For Jesus himself says “Do not call anyone on earth your teacher for you have only one teacher.”

On the Contrary: The Sloka goes thus, “Gurur Brahma, Gurur Vishnu, Gurur Devo Maheshwaraha, Guru sakshaat Parabrahma tasmai sri guruve namaha.”

I answer that, it is evident that God is the source of all knowledge since He is All-Knowing. But God shares His knowledge with the rational creatures though not in its essence. A being receives the knowledge not essentially but by participation in the Divine Knowledge. Now, a being participates according to the mode of its existence. Just as anything on fire is not fire itself but fire by participation, we find on earth some people who are more attuned to the Divine Knowledge and participate in it in a deeper manner. Such people are held to be teachers. Therefore someone on earth can be called a teacher.

As it is said above one is called a teacher in as much as one is also able to direct the student towards God. Sant Kabir Das says that it is the Guru (teacher) who shows God to the student. Now all the teachers through the participation are blessed with the grace to lead their pupils to the Supreme Knowledge i.e. God. This is a sufficient reply to objection one.

Reply 1: God’s knowledge is infinite and that of his creature’s finite, the gap was bridged by the second person of the Trinity who as a mediator brought the knowledge of God to earth and made available to the creatures. He passed on the God’s Knowledge to the Apostles. Thus one is also a teacher in as much as one shares in the teaching ministry of Christ, the teacher of teachers. Since all our professors here share in this sacred ministry of imparting God’s Knowledge primarily they are called teachers.

Published with permission from William D’Souza SDB (this is an intellectual property of William)

Meaning through symbols and metaphors

Let me clarify what is meant by symbols and metaphors. A symbol does the function of ‘pointing to something’; for example a dove symbolizes peace, two hands holding each other would symbolize a relationship or responsibility. A metaphor on the other hand is a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity; for example the expression “the Lord is my Rock” would say that the Lord is my refuge and strength.

Most of the time in our lives we build our convictions through metaphors and symbols. Just glance through the way we grew from the childhood – we were taught the initial vocabularies while we saw what denoted those words. A mother teaches her child the names of the bodily parts while showing the child in reality. She shows ‘eyes’ and makes the child repeat eyes. The learning may begin from him or from outside him. On the other hand the child will not know to name a thing which it has not seen. It is very true that the philosophers had great questioning on the question as to which is prior in the order of existence – is it the concept prior to being or being prior to concept. In order there to be a concept the thing must actually exist. Therefore, being is ontologically prior to any idea.

We see the actual and then comes the expression to capture what has been seen. Our mind is able to grasp different aspect of the truths and the expressions to enunciate the truths will definitely vary in terms. Jesus used parables and stories to teach; this tells the fact that human mind is more akin to understanding through what is seen or imaginable than abstraction.