(In)herent Truth: The Path of the Devotee
At some point in time, as individuals and as a society, one comes to the depressing realization that life is fraught with nothing but repetition, futility, death, decay and suffering. Buddha would come to recognize this as the first noble truth: all is suffering. The biblical tradition would similarly describe this as hebel, “a metaphorical kernel of fog, mist or vapor… (it) acquires a derived sense of emptiness” (Frye, 123). This is translated as ‘vanity,’ and expressed most clearly in Ecclesiastes 1.14 as “I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.” This represents one of the most obvious and accessible examples of skeptical wisdom in the Bible. The book shifts its tone from history, ritual and worship to a dark questioning, a questioning of the very meaning of existence. This questioning of meaning, of inherent truth, is present inside all humans, and serves as a jumping point as to how we might live our lives. Some choose to ignore questions in favor of doctrine, others look inside themselves for the answer, some choose to find no answer, and still others turn to devotion to answer the question. The path of the devotee is but one way to realize the non-inherent beauty of life, and is at times one of the most overlooked.
The redactor of Ecclesiastes who added to the end of the otherwise skeptical book, “Fear God and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of everyone” (Ecc 12:13), would choose the path of ritual, law and habit. He gives the question of suffering no more thought than a cursory glance, afraid of what he might find, and returns instead to the known path of worship. A second reaction to the questions raised in Ecclesiastes is an overt renunciation of all things holy and inherent. As a nihilist, one has asked the questions, and decided them to be too hard to answer. Thus one concludes there must be no answer. He is the one who, in the midst of wavering between faith and despair, was caught on the side of gloom.
Another option is the path of devotion. Devotees give utter submission to their god, but not in the sense of subservience. Instead, the worshipper comes to love the god, as the god loves her. In the Hindi tradition, this is exemplified in the deity Gopala-Krsna, an avatar of Vsnu. He lives in Vrndavana, a fanciful mountain village, frolicking with the gopi maidens and playing his flute. He turns the traditional roles of deity and devotee on their head, asking his worshippers to approach him as a lover, rather than a servant. His worshippers praise him as a god, as a lover, and as an answer.
“Into my vile body of flesh, you came, as though it were a temple of gold, and soothed me wholly and saved me, O lord of Grace, O Gem Most pure. Sorrow and birth and death and illusion you took from me, and set me free. O bliss! O Light! I have taken refuge in you, and never can I be parted from you.” (Kinsley, 59)
Krsna offers escape from societal norms and dharma, while providing a life filled with fervent love and fierce admiration. He inspires his followers, in his fierce loving and childlike nature, to understand the world in a more innocent manner. His devotees shed doubts and fears of death and life, finding joy in simplicity.
In the Christian tradition, this devotion is placed upon Jesus Christ. He is a reaction against the strict Old Testament laws and wrathful Lord. He serves as a contrast to the Nihilists, who so easily lose hope. The devotional figure in any tradition offers himself as the reason for living, and this is popularly taken in two contexts.
The first is the traditional reading of the bible, an idea of inherent love and reason. In this interpretation, Jesus is quite literally the son of God, sent to earth to die for our sins and show us a better way to live. He offers a break from the ritual sacrifice and offerings to the lord, saying “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:12). He unabashedly reproached priests who prescribed ritual over virtue, and came to be loved for it.
Jesus preached loving thy neighbor as thyself, but he further represented the price one must pay for sin. He recognizes that sin is not hard to commit, nor is it objective. Yet, Jesus believed there are some things one must come to understand, and this can be regarded as metanoia, a “change of outlook, or spiritual metamorphosis, an enlarged vision of the dimensions of human life” (Frye, 130). Translated in the bible as “repentance,” metanoia represents the ultimate broadening of horizons and recognition that there is a kingdom of heaven, and a way of attaining it. Traditional readers understand this to be the world that will be revealed at the end of times, after the apocalypse. In Frye’s analysis, attaining the kingdom of heaven does not rely on an apocalypse in the physical sense, but rather in a mental state.
To achieve mental apocalypse, one reads the Bible something short of literally. It no longer matters whether Jesus was or was not the son of God, or whether or not there is a god. There may be no inherent purpose or love, but it is enough that we do love. This resembles nihilism at first glance, but where nihilism falls short, devotional traditions provide an ultimate reason, one hinted at by Frye when describing the first, metaphorical phase of language. “All words in this phase are concrete…this shows how intensely physical such conceptions as soul, mind, time, courage, emotion or thought are” (Frye, 7). What Frye is alluding to is the telling power words and ideas have on the psyche, and beyond that, the real world. This idea is, ironically, hard to express. It requires a return to thinking of metaphors as reality, as simultaneously existing paradoxes that do not truly conflict. Although a fruit tree and Jesus are two physically distinguishable and separate objects, because the Bible proclaims them to be the same in some deeper sense, they are. The impact of words is not measured in their validity, but rather in their power. Even if Jesus was not the son of God, he is a son of a god, and further than that, the impact of his story is powerful whether or not it is credible. In the absence of proof, we have faith. In the absence of faith, we can still have meaning.
A second result of the metaphorical devotion to Jesus is the shift from an imminent and upcoming apocalypse to an every-day realization, or, realized eschatology. This is the theory that the world has already come to an end, and continues to do so every day. It is only us who are not aware of this fact. It alludes to the idea of anamnesis, of “recollection, the recognizing of the new as something identifiable with the old” (Frye, 81). In and of itself, there is no revolutionary thought process in deciding that what has happened before will happen again and continue to happen in the future. In fact, this type of thinking easily loses sight of devotion and turns again to the question. An ingredient is still missing, and this is the idea of the proclamational figure who declares “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).
A declaration of this sort is not simply predicting an end to the world as we know it. Instead, one has experienced anamnesis; they know what it is to live a life of repetition. Jacob in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Slave has come to understand this truth: “Everything remained the same: the ancient love, the ancient grief. Perhaps four thousand years would again pass; somewhere, at another river, another Jacob would walk mourning another Rachel” (Singer, 279). Further, the devotional figure (Jesus, God, Krsna) understands and relates the idea that “the mere attempt to repeat a past experience will only lead to disillusionment, but there is another kind of repetition” (Frye, 82). This biblical repetition serves as the unveiling, the apocalypse. There is no fire from heaven nor otherworldly beasts required. All that is needed is the recognition that this world, even if not inherently meaningful, has meaning in its smallest bits, in its simplest joys. This is the disappearance of the ego, encouraged by a divine muse. Through both his teachings and his passion for life, Jesus became the muse.
Thus the promise to make all things new contains three important conditions: first, one must understand the idea of anamnesis, of recognizing the new as old. Second, one will seek an inspiring devotional figure with which to reconcile the idea of repetitious behavior and ultimate truth. Third, one realizes this repetition is not mundane nor cause for suffering. Devoting oneself to Jesus or Krsna is only one way to recognize this truth.
We choose many different ways to deal with the question of why, the question of why me, the question of why anything. Some turn to ritual and habit to drown out the humdrum, others revert to nihilistic tendencies that obscure any meaning at all. Some look inside themselves rather than out to find meaning. In the devotional traditions, man is given a good, inherent or not, that he may come to love. This figure provides both and inspiration and an outside source of strength to draw upon and love. In this loving, the apocalypse will be realized. Depending upon interpretation, this unveiling will come in the future, it will come hard and fast and physical, and it will make up for all that has been done wrong. In another tradition, the apocalypse is synonymous with the disappearance of the ego, and comes every day.
