Buddhism and Wealth

“For the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, for the welfare of the world …”  (‘Bahujanahitāya bahujanasukhāya lokānukampāya’)
– Anguttara Nikaya 2. 146).

In ancient India, the good life was thought to consist of the pursuit of the “four ends of life” (Skr. purushartha). The four ends of life consisted of:

1. “dharma” (virtue, morality and obligation);
2. “artha” (wealth and material prosperity);
3. “kama” (love and pleasure) and
4. “moksha” (spiritual liberation).

Despite orientalist perceptions of India as a land of ascetics and wandering holy men, most Indians seem to have preferred a worldly existence. Indeed, the institution of the householder (Skr. grhastha), and the associated institutions of marriage and family life,  were considered the ideal to live by.

The Buddha and the early monastic community (Skr. sangha) were forced to confront this basic social and cultural reality. In fact, they realized quickly that a community of lay followers was needed if the Sangha was to survive economically. If only tacitly then, the Buddha accepted the institution of the householder as a legitimate way of life for the Buddhist layperson.

The Buddha was accordingly forced to address questions of family life, wealth and worldly happiness or artha. In one discourse, he speaks of the following four types of worldly happiness: [1]

1. the happiness of acquiring economic security and sufficient wealth through just proper means. (artha sukha);
2. the happiness of spending that wealth liberally one oneself, one’s family, friends and on good deeds (bhoga-sukha);
3. the happiness of saving so one is free of debts (anrna-sukha);
4. the happiness of living a pure and faultless life (anavadhya-jiva).[2]

The following four factors would also help the householder attain that happiness:

1. to work or to be skilled, efficient, earnest and energetic in whatever profession one is engaged, and to know it well (utthana-sampada);
2. to preserve one’s income (arakhsa-sampada), viz. to save that which one has earned justly and through one’s personal efforts;
3. to associate with good company (kalyana-mitraka);
4. to live within one’s means (samajivika).[3]

The pursuit of arthain Buddhism, however, is always subject to the considerations of dharma. That is one’s activities in the world should conform to a moral standard including such values as tolerance, non-violence, and compassion for others.

For instance, wealth is not legitimately earned by:

1. killing or harming others;
2. taking from others what was not freely given;
3. engaging some form of sexual misconduct;
4. false or injurious speech;
5. selling or dealing in intoxicating substances.

In Buddhism then, the pursuit of wealth or artha provides the material foundation necessary for pursuing the good life – pursuing one’s moral and spiritual development for the good of the world.

Notes

[1] Sigala Sutra (Digha Nikaya, 31); Angutara Nikaya (Columbo, 1929), 232-233, 786; Jataka, I, 260, 399; II, 400; III, 274, 320; V, 119, 378 (cited in What the Buddha Taught, the Walpola Rahula, [Gordon Fraser: London, 1959], 78, 82-83, 84-85).

While the Pali Canon was directed mostly towards monastic life, the Buddhist monastic community was quick to recognize the benefits of having a well-off lay community and admitted several prominent householders into its fold while endorsing the legitimacy of the life of the householder (Skr. grhastha).

[2] Angutara Nikaya (Columbo, 1929), 786 cited in Rahula, 81.

[3] Angutara Nikaya (Columbo, 1929), 232-233, cited in Rahula, 82.

 

 

 

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The Beginnings of Hindi-Urdu Literature (Part II: From Delhi to the Deccan)

Early Hindi-Urdu poetry emerged around the 14^th century. During this time, Hindustan (Northern India) was ruled by the Delhi Sultanate. With Persian as the language of the court and classical poetry at the time, Hindi-Urdu developed as an oral art and as a popular poetry of Delhi.

Written in the Khari Boli (the dialect of Delhi), Hindi-Urdu poetry was rooted in the metaphors and imagery of Hindustan  – the rivers and meadows of the countryside, the rainy season, the water pots and bangles of girls about the village. It was recited as riddles and proverbs and sung as women’s folk songs at weddings and as qawallis at the shrines of Sufi saints like Nizamuddin Auliya (1238-1325):

By making me drink the wine of love-potion,
You’ve intoxicated me by just a glance;
My fair, delicate wrists with green bangles in them,
Have been held tightly by you with just a glance.
I give my life to you, Oh my cloth-dyer,
You’ve dyed me in yourself, by just a glance.
I give my whole life to you Oh, Nijam,
You’ve made me your bride, by just a glance.

Hindi-Urdu would not remain confined to Delhi. Beginning in the 14th century, it began expanding with the Delhi Sultanate to different parts of India. In 1297, the Delhi Sultanate annexed Gujarat bringing Hindi-Urdu speakers from Delhi into Western India. The invasion and sack of Delhi by Tamerlane (1336-1405) likewise saw an exodus of Hindi-Urdu speakers out of Delhi into Gujarat.

By the fifteenth century, Gujarat had a substantial community of Hindi-Urdu speakers. It was from the descendants of these migrants from Delhi that Hindi-Urdu produced its first historical poet, Sheikh Baha Ud-Din Bajan (1388-1506).

Born in Ahmedabad, Sheikh Bajan was a prominent Gujarati Sufi poet. He wrote and compiled Sufi poetry in his anthology, Khaza’in-e Rahmatullah (‘Treasures of Divine Mercy’). Written in Indic and Persian metres, Khaza’in appealed to the common man in the style of the Bhakti and Sufi poetry of the day:

There’s a frenzied one,
Openly so; another wanders
The desert, mad, unknown.
One, drunk with love,
Raves and yells,
And another falls
Unconscious.
A wandered, with long and
Matted hair, and black
And dark as night;
Another madman gets the
Shivers, shaves his head
And says only Your name.

Other prominent Sufi poets in Gujarat writing in Hindi-Urdu included Shaikh Mahmud Darya’i (1419-1534) and Shaik ‘Ali Muhammad Jiv Gamdhani (d. 1565). Their Hindi-Urdu eventually became known with “Gujari,” a Hindi-Urdu inflected with Gujarati words, phrases and idioms.

Hindi/Urdu Literature in South India (‘Deccani’)

The Daulatabad Fortress

Hindi-Urdu was becoming a cosmopolitan language, transplanting itself in and assimilating itself to the soil of lands far from Delhi. “Gujri” was one such example. Another, was “Deccani,” that Hindi-Urdu of the Deccan which maintained its Khari Boli roots while absorbing words and phrases from languages like Telugu and Marathi.

Like Gujri, Deccani came about through the expansion and conquests of the Delhi Sultanate. In 1327, the Sultan Muhammad Bin Tughluq (r. 1325-51) conquered the Deccan Peninusla and shifted the capital city from Delhi to Daulatabad (present day Maharashtra). In stream upon stream, Delhi’s royal families, armies, traders, administrators and religious preachers flowed into the Deccan.

Crucial to the development of Hindi-Urdu literature in the Deccan was its association with the court. In Delhi, Hindi-Urdu poetry had essentially been the poetry of Sufi shrines and the bazaar. In the Deccan, however, Deccani was patronized as a language of the court alongside Persian. In the process, it absorbed the Persian script, vocabulary and verse forms (like the ghazal and the masnavi).

Deccani began to flourish after the Delhi Sultanate’s withdrawal from the Deccan in 1347. The  Bahmani Sultanate (1347-1527) produced some of the first major works in Deccani. For instance, Kadam Rao Padam Rao was written by Fakhruddin Nizami during the reign of Ahmed Shah Wali Bahmani (1422-1436). Written as a masnavi, Kadam Rao Padam Rao is a Sufi-style magical romance on the journey of a king’s soul to salavation.

One of the great poets of Deccani was Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (r. 1580-1611), a sultan of the Golconda Sultanate.  Qutb Shah wrote ghazals on love, nature, music, and the common people. This marked a turn in Hindi-Urdu toward secular poetry in contrast to its largely spiritual and mystical tone hitherto. Quli Qutb Shah continued the tradition of adapting Persian poetry into Deccani, and is credited with writing the first deewan in Hindi-Urdu on the Persian model.

In fact, Quli Qutb Shah may be considered the first major poet in the classical Hindi-Urdu tradition. His more secular style of Hindi-Urdu poetry was adapted and polished by Wali Deccani (1667-1707), setting the standard for classical Hindi-Urdu poetry.

Further Reading:

Early Urdu Literary Culture and History (S.R. Faruqi): http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00fwp/srf/earlyurdu/srf_earlyurdu.html

Early Hindi-Urdu Poetry: http://www.angelfire.com/sd/urdumedia/lyrics.html
Quli Qutb Shah (Poems): https://rekhta.org/poets/quli-qutub-shah/ghazals

 

India’s Supreme Court Ruling

On September 6, 2018, the Supreme Court of India ruled that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was unconstitutional. The section – enacted in 1861 when India was still a British colony – effectively criminalized gay sex.

India’s LGBT communities erupted in euphoria. The Indian and international press joined in the jubilation with one BBC headline ringing, “India’s Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Sex … ”

The Supreme Court’s decision marks an important beginning for India’s LGBT and for the country. For India’s sexual minorities, it represents a victory in a long struggle against an inhumane and draconian law. For India, the ruling holds the promise of a new era where India starts to step out from the shadows of its colonial past.

I too was euphoric after reading the headlines only to confront a few sober realities.

First, the Supreme Court of India ruling has not legalized gay sex. It has declared that the law discriminated against LGBT sex is unconstitutional. The law is still in force and cannot be repealed or amended except by an act of Parliament.

Second, as long as it remains on the books, the section will continue to be invoked. Certainly, a better off and well-informed gay Indian will now challenge a policeman who tries to lay a charge. But those LGBT Indians who are poor, working class or villagers are less likely to contest the enforceability of the law.

Third, the ruling leaves untouched the more basic challenges facing India’s LGBT communities. In particular, the ruling does not recognize India’s LGBT communities as legal persons who can claim basic rights or freedoms as any other Indian. It has brought India’s LGBT persons out of the shadow of criminality, without making them persons under the law.

If anything, the Supreme Court ruling stands for the same principle that Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made back in 1967 that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Tushar Mehta, the Assistant Solicitor-General for the Government of India, has otherwise made it clear that the Government of India will construe the ruling narrowly so as not to accord legal status to the LGBT citizens of India in terms of marriage, property rights, government benefits or inheritance.

India’s LGBT communities have just won their first battle against the state, but their war for recognition as equal citizens under the law has yet to begin.

Buddhist Political Philosophy (Karma)

Karma. It’s a word that brings up ideas of cosmic retribution coming to us from past lives. It’s a metaphysical, even scary sounding concept, but not one you’d use to make sense of world affairs.

Personally, I can’t imagine explaining world affairs without karma. Everything in the world arises as a result of a set of causes and conditions and from everything that happens or comes into being, new causes and conditions arise.

Karma is the principle of actions and consequences. From a Buddhist perspective, karma refers specifically to human intention and the action accompanying that intention.

The Buddhist theory of karma assumes that:

1. Human beings have agency;
2. Human beings act by exercising their will;
3. The actions of human beings have consequences for them.

In Buddhism, human will is subject to many physical, mental, emotional and environmental influences. Political entities are even more complex. The nation-state, for example, is made up of territory, population, government and international recognition as such.

It’s government, however, that ultimately influences what the state is and what it does. What government doesn’t affect its own people through its laws and policies? What countries don’t affect others through their choices in foreign policy?

Everything that becomes, or changes must do so owing to some cause;
for nothing can come to be without a cause (Plato).

Karma also explains how the actions of nation-states affect both themselves and the world. The events of 9-11 and the policies of the Bush Administration squashed civil rights at home and devastated Iraq and Afghanistan. The rise of Donald Trump resulted from many conditions, including a severe recession, widening economic disparities, and the American electoral system.

But karma isn’t just something that happens to nations; it’s something that nations create. Getting the causes “right” moreover, produces the right effects. Economic growth and development in China, for example, came through a well-planned economic policy and strategy.

The state can produce good karma, that is it can act morally and produce positive consequences, e.g. prosperity, peace and stability at home and elsewhere. In Buddhism, this comes through the state following its dharma, that is in fulfilling its moral purpose of relieving people of distress and enabling their well-being.

The Beginnings of Hindi-Urdu Literature (Part I: The Delhi Sultanate)

I. The Historical Context

In 1001, the Turkic ruler, Mahmud of Ghazni, invaded Northern India. The sultan of an empire centered in Afghanistan, Mahmud’s invasion of India marked the beginning of the Turkish era of Indian history.

The Turks were a nomadic people originally from the steppe of Central Asia. In the eight-century, many of them began migrating to the great Islamic empires of the Middle-East. There, they served as slaves and soldiers (Mamluks) under the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) and the Seljuk Empire (1037-1114).

With the decline of the Baghdad Caliphate in the ninth century, many of the Turkic Mamluks began establishing their own kingdoms or sultanates. Mahmud’s father,  Sabuktigin (942-977), was just one example.

The Turkish invasion of India culminated in the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Delhi Sultanate united Northern India for the first time since Emperor Harsha (r. 606-647). It integrated India into the international trading networks and cosmopolitan civilization of the Islamic world and made Delhi one of the great capitals of the world. The Delhi Sultanate also introduced new ideas in art, architecture, law, economics and religion to India as well as paper-making and cotton-spinning technology.

II. The Delhi Sultanate and Indian Languages

During the Delhi Sultanate, the regional languages of North India began developing into their modern form. The decline of Sanskrit saw these regional languages (Hindi, Punjabi, Kashmiri) develop their own literatures. The Bhakti Movement, for example, stimulated new poetry in these languages and the Sufis (who entered India during this period) began writing the first poetry in Punjabi and Khari Boli (the Delhi dialect of Hindi-Urdu).

The language of these poets was remarkable. In his poem Zihal-e-Miskeen, Amir Khusrow (1253-1325) wrote one couplet in Persian, another in Khari Boli and another in Braj Bhasha. In the Guru Granth Sahib (compiled 1604), the first five Sikh Gurus wrote in a Khari Boli blended with Braj Bhasha and Punjabi:

“Shaban-e-hijran daraz chun zulf,
Wa roz-e-waslat cho umer kotah.
Sakhi piya ko jo main na dekhun,
To kaise kaTun andheri ratiyan (Khusrow).”[1]

Hindi-Urdu ultimately became a cosmopolitan literature and the lingua franca over much of India. How this happened under the Delhi Sultanate will be explored in the second part of this essay.

[1] Long like curls in the night of separation
short like life on the day of our union.
My dear, how will I pass the dark dungeon night
without your face before.

 

Madonna Turns 60

On August 16, 2018, Madonna turned sixty.

My first memory of Madonna was watching her “Like a Virgin” video when I was five years old. I remember my sisters performing dances to “Into The Groove” and “True Blue” in our living room. It was only after the “Like a Prayer” era, however, that her impact on me began.

I was one among many gay men who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s feeling like they inhabited a world of darkness. I was in high school in the mid-90s and I remember that it was a very lonely time. This was compounded by the Indian culture I grew up with at home, in which homosexuals weren’t even supposed to exist. There was no one out there saying it was okay to be gay – no one, on the scale of Madonna, that is.

Sexuality was never openly discussed at home, in school or even in public. So, Madonna became my secret teacher and mentor on the subject. Even before I had the courage to say who and what I was, she gave me the words. In her songs, videos, concerts and interviews, she unabashedly celebrated sexual diversity and exploring one’s sexuality.

One time, I remember watching the Girlie Show on Much Music in front of my dad and uncle. It was the part where “Justify My Love (The Beast Within Remix)” was playing. As Madonna recited from the Book of Revelation, two male dancers violently and passionately groped one another on stage. My uncle and dad watched with puzzled faces. I felt embarrassed but couldn’t change the channel. There, in our living room, Madonna was breaking boundaries.

Like many gay men, I had to conceal the truth of my sexuality for many years, at great personal cost. On this her 60th birthday, then, I want to say thank you to this remarkable woman, if for nothing else, then for recognizing that we exist, for making us visible and for not giving a fuck. Thank you, Madonna, for being the person I could always look to and remember myself.

 

The Gay Faqir

Shah Hussain was a gay Punjabi poet of the 16^th century. He loved a young man, Madho Lal. The two are buried next to one another at Shah Hussain’s shrine in Lahore. They are known to eternity as “Madho Lal Hussain.”

As a gay Punjabi-Canadian man, reading Shah Hussain‘s poetry gave me a sense of pride and belonging to a culture I’d long grown alienated from. I was then (not so) surprised to see Naveed Alam trying to deny Shah Hussain’s sexuality in Alam’s introduction to his translation of Shah Hussain’s verse.

According to Alam, Shah Hussain couldn’t have been gay, because:

1. Shah Hussain’s poems make no overt references to homosexuality;
2. Shah Hussain’s love for Madho Lal was platonic;
3. Shah Hussain wrote in the feminine voice in keeping with Sufi tradition (where God’s devotee refers to himself in feminine terms).

Alam’s first point makes no sense. He claims that a poet like Shah Hussain cannot be gay unless he overtly expresses his homosexuality in his poetry. By this logic, a poet cannot be heterosexual either unless his heterosexuality is overtly expressed in his poetry.

In any case, Shah Hussain probably didn’t express his sexuality overtly in his poetry for good reasons.

According to the platonic love theory, Shah Hussain and Madho Lal were master and disciple respectively and their love should be seen in that context.

The problem is that there is no proof that Madho Lal (a Hindu Brahmin) was even a follower of Shah Hussain or that he was part of a Sufi order. In fact, had Madho Lal been a disciple, then it would’ve been he who was expected to write poems in praise of his master, not the other way around.

Shah Hussain wrote otherwise:

My lover grabbed my arm
Why would I ask him to let go?
Dark night drizzling, painful
The approaching hour of departure
You’ll know what love’s all about
Once it seeps into your bones…
(trans. N. Alam)

Hagiographic accounts also tell us about Shah Hussain’s love for Madho Lal:

When he looked at Madho, he signed painfully and said: ‘Friends, take heed. This boy has set my heart out of control. With one look he has made my heart restless. With one look he has taken away my heart. Taken the life out of my heart, and the soul out of my body. What should I do, friends? What should I do to make him fall in love? Friends, I’ve become a prisoner of his love. I shall not find peace till I see him” (Haqiqat al-Fuqra (‘Truth of the Saints’), c. 1660).

In another account, one of Shah Hussain’s followers spies on Madho Lal Hussain:

You [Hussein] are taking a glass of wine from Madho and kissing Madho on the forehead and the Madho is also kissing Hussein’s forehead … Madho again gives a full glass to Shah Hussein, stands and greets him respectfully. Hussein also gets up and greets Madho respectfully. The two friends remained busy in this matter, and kept kissing each other like milk and sugar … and then the two friends become one.

As for the feminine voice, Shah Hussain uses it even when not speaking to God. Shah Hussain refers to himself in feminine terms when sitting at the spinning wheel, taking part in women’s folk dances and sharing secrets with his girlfriends. This feminine voice is Shah Hussain’s soul speaking as a gay man.

In Shah Hussain, Punjabi and Pakistani gay men can hear their own voice, songs and verses singing back to them. The light and passion in his poems is smothered by people foisting their own culturally acceptable interpretations onto it. Shah Hussain’s love for Madho Lal comes alive when we embrace it fully for what it is.