11-26-10

Carvaka: a philosophical school of circa 600 BCE India (disappeared 14th century CE), which taught that life is material only, and that pleasure is the highest goal. Carvaka attacked the Vedic religion, with its priests and rituals and scriptures, as a grand scam to control people, and which prevented them from enjoying this brief life. It advocated the search for greater and higher pleasures, aesthetic as well as sensual, and denied the gods or any supernatural entities.

Carvaka takes its name from its alledged founder, Carvaka, author of the (now lost) Barhaspatya Sutras. It is also commonly called Lokayata, or Material World-ism. In its pleasure-based ethos, Carvaka resembles Greek Hedonism and especially Epicurean philosophy. An oft-cited Carvaka saying has it:

While life is yours, live joyously;
None can escape Death's searching eye:
Whence once this frame of ours they burn,
How shall it e'er again return?

This follows closely the Biblical saying (1 Cor 15.32):

Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.

The one difference, of course, is that the Bible condemns hedonistic behavior (cf. Isa 22.13) as offensive to God and worthy of judgment; Carvaka commends it as the raison d'etre. Now after half a lifetime of religious practice, including 10 years as a Bible-bellieving Christian and more as a practicing yogi, and with all due respect to patriotism and the Constitution: after all of that searching for truth, for meaning in life, I will go with Carvaka. I have also my own verse, adapted from the hoary Christian burial service:

Ashes to ashes; dust to dust:
Savor the food; embrace the lust!

So I began with strong Christian religion, then traveled through yoga and Buddhism. Yet, always guided by science, I was not satisfied with the gods and their "laws".

I beheld that life ends; we try to live, as everything tries to live, from the smallest microbe to the greatest whale: and that at last we all fail. As soon as a ball flies up in the air, it begins to fall, and even a baby is moribund.

There is not one speck of solid evidence for anything supernatural; deprived of hope, what shall I do? Shall I hope in humanity, in doing good deeds for others? They also perish! Shall I help the whole earth? The earth also perishes! As the song has it, "everything is dust in the wind".

What is the hope of this dust? Can this little temporary bundle of dust, this fancy mudpie, even speak of hope? Absurdity and obscenity! Religion and patriotism, all the pretenses of Great Principles, are adult fairy tales (unfortunately, not erotic ones), or like worshipping bones. Should I worship bones?

If people insist that the world and all beings were created in six days, by an invisible and inaudible God, or that we humans did not evolve from apes, and that somehow we are above nature- which is the basis of all religion, that we are supernatural- if they insist on the imaginary and absurd, why should I not worship bones?

At least, unlike supernatural symbols, bones remind me of what I really am: thinking matter. And bones are beautiful- especially with young female flesh growing on them!