On understanding the "nature" of religion
The viewpoint of the observer/interpreter is reflected in the way very basic terms are defined. The term “religion” is no exception. In fact, it may be presumptuous to use the term “religious” to speak of the manifold expressions of “religion” in the Indian subcontinent, inasmuch as the term “religion” has Western origins and is not indigenous to India.
Deriving as it has from the Latin religare, meaning “to be incumbent upon” or binding, and from religio/nes as an act directed to the Roman household deities, it has nonetheless come to mean a great many things in Western discourse. At the very least, theories and definitions of “religion” as much reflect the world and cultural/religious orientation of the theorist as they do that of the people they purport to describe. Two theories of religion will illustrate this difficulty.Rudolph Otto, a Lutheran theologian, writing early in the twentieth century, became interested in comparing the “essence” of religion across cultures.20 Starting with his own reading of the Hebrew Bible and Lutheran theology, he was intrigued when studying the Bhagavadgita by what seemed to him to corroborate his view as to what was at the heart of religion. There was Arjuna, hesitant to go to battle, being instructed by Krsna, his charioteer and a manifestation of the divine; Krsna offered an epiphany to Arjuna, revealing himself in all his glory; Arjuna was overwhelmed, and with goose bumps prostrates himself.
In this, Otto perceived the essence of religion as the experience of the “numinous” - that which is “wholly other,” “Holy,” beyond words. Arjuna’s experience seemed to match that of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Luther. Ironically, the “numinous experience” is indeed not far removed from the experience of Arjuna and the idea of a “numen,” a “wholly other” to which the mystic responds, is not inconsistent with the idea of brahman, the cosmic essence of which the Upanisadic thinkers spoke.
What then is the problem with Otto’s view of “religion”? First, it is derived from his own tradition and applied post facto to another. Second, it may do justice to the Upanisadic mystic but it is not fair to the classical Buddhist, who denies the existence of brahman or anything numinous or “wholly other.” Third, most religious persons on the Indian subcontinent have never had the intense mystical experience of which Otto wrote, but rather express their religious commitments in household rituals, temple visitations, or in a host of other relatively routine ways. Should one say of them they are not “religious”?A very different understanding of religion is that expressed by the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz.21 Geertz, after years of studying religion and culture in Southeast Asia and the Islamic world, suggested that religion is a symbol system that is created by human beings in such a way that it is modeled from the social reality and becomes a model for the social reality. This symbol system, he added, pervades human moods and motivations and becomes one of the ways by which human beings find meaning in times of crisis, such as when confronted by their own mortality or intellectual or moral bafflement. Human beings then clothe this “symbol system” with an aura of ultimacy to give it legitimation.
Suggestive as these ideas are, some religious people will have trouble conceding that the idea of ultimacy or of the divine is a human construction. Nonetheless, in both Otto’s and Geertz’ systems there is the insistence that there is much about religion that expresses the human situation. In Otto, for example, every perception or thought one has about the numinous is an “ideogram,” a human perception or creation.22 Hence, everything one says or thinks about the divine is a human thought or expression. There is something humbling and constructive about remembering that about our religions - at the very least, they are a creative and fascinating expression of the human spirit.
Religious ideas, practices, phenomena etc. are not derived in a vacuum, but do reflect the social and cultural situation in which they arise. That is one reason it is necessary to view the development of various religious expressions in India in their historical and social, even political context. At the same time, we do well to remember that in all such study, there is apt to be a “more than” that transcends our interpretations.In contrast to Western theorists, were one to ask a Hindu as to the nature of religion, an answer one is very likely to receive is that it is dharma. The term dharma, derived from the Sanskrit dhr, implies a sense of reciprocity between the cosmic process as a whole and each individual within the cosmos. Dharma is doing that which maintains cosmic “balance.” As such, it is a “way of life,” the fulfilling of social, legal, and ritual obligations in a way that does not disrupt that balance. Dharma is not so much a belief in a deity or the performance of weekly rituals so much as it is a total orientation, a way of being in the world.
One implication of this discussion is that the study of “religion” in India should cause us to rethink continually some of the basic paradigms and assumptions we make. We will need to adjust our understanding of what “religion” is,just as we will need to readjust our lenses - our images and presuppositions. That task alone is an exciting yet challenging opportunity.