Education for Sthitha Prajna?

D. Raja Ganesan Ph. D

Introduction

Philosophy has been defined as the cultivation of a particular mode of being. Students of philosophy of education know that philosophy and education are two sides of the same coin. Thus education also, by implication, is concerned about inculcating a particular mode of being. The international commission on education constituted by the UNESCO some three and a half decades ago under the chairmanship of Edgar Faure rightly titled its report, Learning to Be - using 'be' as an intransitive verb: yes, it is not being a boy, being a girl, being rich or poor, being young or being old, being an American or Indian. It is 'being' per se, stripped totally naked of all adventitious post-natal identities that is denoted in this rare mode of use of 'be'that prima facie violates the rules of English semantics. Being an international commission it was concerned with arriving at a normative prescription of how one should be, with what is ultimate and universal in human nature as the foundation. The subsequent UNESCO report on education submitted a decade ago titled its report, Learning: the Treasure Within. While this later report widened the scope of its coverage to 'learning to learn', 'learning to do', 'learning to live together', it retained 'learning to be'as the last but not the least pillar for education.

If an individual does not learn how to be he or she is totally without anchorage and will be lost like a ship sucked into a tempest-- whatever else he or she may have learnt - throughout his or her life-course: because it is the ultimate stance one takes vis-à-vis one's cosmic environment that determines one's destiny. 'Cosmic'environment connotes both the microcosmic and the macrocosmic dimensions. It is worth recalling here that the Kothari Commission pointed out more than four decades ago that though man had conquered outer space he has not conquered the inner world and recommended that this dimension be addressed seriously by our education. Whereas the vector of western worldviews and their thrust is outwards that of Indian worldviews is inwards. Without a strong and sound inner anchorage one cannot engage the world without. And education by its very nature is concerned with the world within. It must also be noted that the Delors'report to UNESCO submitted about a decade ago, Learning: the Treasure Within -- views learning as a treasure 'within' rather than a treasure in the macrocosmic world out there. The Kothari Commission1 also pointed to the wide range of resources and myriads of soft technologies available for cultivating the unique Indian mode of being which give greater importance to the inner, microcosmic dimension. This unique and fundamental Indian mode of being is sthitha prajna. We will return to this concept after making a quick global survey of modes of being commended by various thinkers.

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1. Education for National Development. Report of the Kothari Commission (1964-1966). New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India.

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A Survey of Fundamental Modes of Being

This fundamental mode of being is determined very early in the life cycle of any and every individual. Yes, the die is cast even before the Oedipal stage to which Freud traced the origins of the neurosis of his patients and generalized as critical in the formation of the personality of all human beings. Subsequently the 'object relations'school of psychoanalysts traced the coordinates of this fundamental mode of being beyond and behind the Oedipal stage to the constellation of human relations into which the individual was born and spent his or her earliest days. Erik Erikson reduced the wide but indeterminate range of modes of being available to an individual at the earliest stage of development to two mutually exclusive alternatives: trust versus mistrust.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche exhorted the being of man to be completely exorcised of any and every notion of God and to 'live dangerously'. Yes, he wanted risk and adventure to become the fundamental characteristics of man's mode of being. Another German philosopher Martin Heidegger wanted man's mode of being never to forget that it is in and on 'borrowed' time and thus be characterized by an unremitting awareness of its fragility and finitude. In other words, Heidegger wanted man's mode of being to have as its epicenter an awareness of death - its mortality. The existentialist theologian Paul Tillich commended the 'courage to be' as an appropriate, fundamental stance. The atheistic existentialist philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, an awardee of the Nobel Prize for literature, commended the experience of untrammeled 'freedom' as the appropriate mode of being. He declared 'freedom' lies coiled in the very heart of being and we must live in such a way that we facilitate the unfolding of this freedom.

J. G. Arapura, in his seminal book Religion as Anxiety and Religion as Tranquility, which distilled the essence of the worldviews of the East and the West, pointed out that the three major religions of the Biblical tradition exhort man to an active mode of being with an anxiety to complete God's scheme of creation within the horizon of history as its unremitting ontological undercurrent. On the other hand, Arapura highlighted, the major religions of the Indian tradition - Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, exhort man to adopt a contemplative mode of being as the fundamental one with imperturbable tranquility as it foundation. The Indian mode of being contemplates the turbulence of history from the tranquility of eternity. Sthitha prajna is precisely the cognitive component of tranquility.

Sthitha prajna which can be roughly translated as 'stable consciousness'2 will lead to moksha or liberation which is the ultimate goal of human life in all major Indian philosophies. In the Indian way of thinking the goal of education and the goal of living are identical: the world is a school for the soul where it can and must learn the lesson of liberation. The goal of education and of living are liberation. Though sthitha prajna and moksa are closely related concepts they are not identical. Sthitha prajna is the means and moksa is the end.

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2. A more accurate but less literal translation would be'transparency of consciousness'. This 'transparency of consciousness' has been paraphrased by a modern Indian philosopher as 'choiceless and effortless awareness'. It is different from the state of 'nirvikalpa samadhi' (state of contentless consciousness) which is the goal of one school of meditation.'Transparency of consciousness' does not involve sublating - emptying - the contents of consciousness, but rendering them fully 'visible'. The average human consciousness ranges from dense opaqueness to translucency of various degrees. Chaotic and overlapping threads of memory in interlocked spools stick, to change the metaphor, to the interior of consciousness, like a dark, viscous and turgid tar. Achieving transparency of consciousness is keeping such contents in tact but being able to see through them and negotiate appropriate decisions and actions through them.

Sthitha Prajna

What is sthitha prajna? How are its dimensions conceptualized? What does one who has stitha prajna think about the ultimate nature of reality? Should a sthitha prajnan necessarily believe in a transcendent God - a God, as Swami Vivekananda put it, 'sitting behind the clouds and answering individual prayers?' And in the scriptures? By the way, it is worth recalling here that the Bagavad Gita, which has sthitha prajna as the axial concept declares that the scriptures and rituals are like a tumbler of water for a man who is surrounded by floods. And Swami Vivekananda has said that so long as one believes in a personal God who can be invoked to come to one's rescue in his cannot attain moksa - that is, liberation!

Does sthitha prajna is a mode of being completely devoid of emotions? If not, how does a sthitha prajna feel in the various contexts of his life? How does he act? How does he react? How does he interact? How does he enact his various roles in life?

The Bagavad Gita has given a brief description of what the life-world of a stitha prajnan is like. It is a moot point whether this concept is relevant in the context of modern worldviews implied in science and the one indicated by post-modern chaos theory. Prima facie, the concept of sthitha prajna seems to be more pertinent to the worldview derived from chaos theory than ever before. As for emotions, the sthitha prajna is not one who is devoid of emotions. He does experience emotions but they do not overwhelm him. When he is swept off his feet by a flood of emotions say, during bereavement, he quickly recomposes himself and resumes his roles and responsibilities. Of course, the ideal would be for him to continue to perform his duties concurrently even when he is experiencing overwhelming emotions. In other words, emotional resilience and not catatonic reification - a frozen consciousness desiccated and devoid of any emotion-- is integral to the concept of sthitha prajna.

At the level of action, nishkamya karma, action without expecting its fruits, is the derivative of sthitha prajna. Again, there is a sharp and deep difference between purposeless and indifferent action on the one hand and action without expecting its fruits. An action like fighting in the battlefield, to which Krishna exhorted Arjuna, cannot be done without a goal, an aim. But that is a proximate aim. It should not spring from personal desire for aggrandizement, gratification or enjoyment. It calls for intense instrumental and exclusive concentration. One should expunge from one's consciousness every thought except winning; no, neither hope of success and the benefits that flow from it nor the fear of failure and the train of disastrous consequences that will follow should be left as abetting, facilitating reinforcements for that action. It is an 'Action for action sake'attitude. One acts as if that action ahead is the only thing one has to do in this world. In this respect, the concept of sthitha prajna differs from the construct of achievement motive, popularized by the Harvard psychologist David C. McClelland: McClelland's schema gives about a third of the weightage for cognitive anticipations and positive and negative emotional reinforcements in the conceptual content of achievement motivation.

Questions for Research about Sthitha Prajna

Is the concept of sthitha prajna gender-free? In other words, should women also cultivate sthitha prajna? Are there gender-specific nuances in the concept of sthitha prajna? When should the exercise of cultivating sthitha prajna begin? Is it relevant for all life-phases or is it relevant only for old age or, perhaps, are there different nuances for different life-phases and life-contexts - ranging from marriage and nuptials to death and bereavement? Can we inculcate sthitha prajna in our schools and colleges within the prevailing secular framework? My own answer is that we can because this concept is a version of the secular psychological concept of achievement motivation shorn of some of its anticipatory and emotional elements. There are as yet no ready-made answer for many of the other questions and they merit research.

Copyright © D. Raja Ganesan