‘Bring Me Thy Failure’

‘BRING ME THY FAILURE’

“Nityam kuru karma tvam,” is the gospel of work which constitutes the kernel of the Gita teaching. “Do thou thy allotted work,” is an imperative which knows no compromise. Arjuna’s lost nerve is sought to be restored by an appeal to his sense of duty, Svadharma. The Lord enunciates His famous theory of work without concern for the results, the spirit in which all work should be performed and not shunned. In that famous 47th verse in Chapter II, He lays down: “To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction.” This is the refrain of the Song Celestial. The Lord is never tired of repeating that moral action is action from which the idea of its fruits is ruled out, before as well as during the act. Attachment to the fruits of one’s actions is not conducive to the achievement of equanimity, balance of mind or Samatva, without which the very bone of moral action would be broken. Where Samatva is absent, quarter is given to self-interest, and where that is allowed to have a sway over the mind it may well blind one to what is right. “And even when we succeed in choosing the right deed, undue eagerness to secure its fruits may induce us to swerve from the path of rectitude.” An eloquent description of this Samatva we have in the words of Hamlet when he speaks of Horatio as:

“…..for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast taken with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please…..”

“Nityam kuru karma tvam”–Do thou thy duty, and that oblivious of the consequences. What noble precepts! And what challenging relevancy have they for us in this critical juncture of our country’s life? Work, more work, and yet more work might as well be inscribed alongside ‘Satyameva Jayate’ on the national emblem. Work imbued with the Gita spirit, work regarded not as God’s curse, but as that having divine sanction behind it. “There is not for Me, O Partha, any work in the three worlds which has to be done nor anything to be obtained which has not been obtained; yet I am engaged in work.” That should serve as an antidote for what is derisively, and no doubt somewhat truly, described as oriental inertia. If you do not want to put the country’s clock , you shall do your allotted work; you shall not grouse and whine; you shall not pursue petty and selfish ends that conflict with the commonweal. You shall not, for instance, seek promotion by inaction masquerading as action; or by action of the -door variety which gains despicable currency in a degenerate society. ‘Copy-book maxims indeed’, cries the cynic, who might turn round and ask: Are conditions congenial to the discharging of one’s duty regardless of consequences? Under conditions where “preferment goes by letter and affection,” where many a conscientious worker wakes up in the morning only to find some unworthy toady jumping over him to positions of eminence not commensurate with his calibre, is it not too much to ask of the former to keep on doing his duty automaton-like? If that be the sad tale of the conscientious individual’s endeavour with reference to his allotted work, how much sadder and more chilling would be the task of the social uplifter whose mission is ‘lokasamgraha’? Activist morality nerved by a crusading spirit must needs have a faith, faith grounded in reason, if it should get a move on in the right direction, if it should not falter and flinch in the holy task set before itself. Does the Gita supply the right ballast of the right brand to keep the average man and the crusader at once strenuous and serene in the pursuit or their ideals?

The question needs a little elucidation. Considering the general apathy to duty, duty for duty’s sake, rigorous as it is, sounds too academic and grandiose to merit general adherence. What guarantee is there, one may well ask, that the dutiful man’s honest endeavours are not doomed to frustration in times when expediency, ‘prudential algebra’, line of least resistance, are proved to pay richer and quicker dividends in the day-to-day struggle? And on a grander scale, how does a social reformer’s manly effort in the service of humanity fare in the long run? You need only open your eyes and look around to be struck by the number and enormity of social evils that plague our society today. The widening gap between the rich and the poor, tyranny of rank and office, corruption of different shades and kinds, practical denial (contrasted with theoretical avowal) of elementary rights of man-hood and such other endless examples of social inequities and heartless abuses stare you in the face. Short of supine acquiescence in them, every man who has a sense of duty and social sympathies must feel that the evils constantly challenge him to take up the ‘flaming sword’ and fight them. But what are his chances against what may well be super-human odds? To what extent can the crusader draw moral sustenance from the thought,

‘They are fools who dare not be
In the right with two or three’?

Perhaps that by itself does not long sustain the ‘flaming sword’, for to align himself with the right though they are a minority and not to go with the throng, what is necessary is, not merely the belief in the foolishness of the fools, but a faith, a reasoned faith in the rightness of the right, in its cosmic significance. A deeper analysis is therefore necessary to discover if there is anything in the nature of reality to assure him regarding the attainableness of his ideals. May it not be just a wild-goose chase, a juvenile reaching out to an ever-receding rainbow on an ever-receding horizon?

Before we proceed to answer that question we should ask ourselves the justification for such a question. The question ‘what chances’ implies the forbidden question ‘what results’, and is that not ruled out by the Gitaic injunction that detachment from all concern about the fruits of action is a condition of ideally good conduct? A question which has no moral justification has no truly rational answer. But a proper assessment of the consequences does have a place in moral action. It is morally self-evident that where there is a conflict between responding to the call of duty and following the line of least resistance, it can never be right to weigh the consequences of the alternatives so that a choice might be made between them. The imperiousness of duty does not brook sordid calculations. The path of duty is the only path, and therefore in deciding whether to do the right, consideration of consequences ought not to enter one’s deliberations. But in the very different question of what in particular it is right to do, such a calculation is not only desirable, but necessary.

‘Kim karma kim akarma’ti
Kavayo’py atra mohitab’, –what is doable (right action), and what is not-doable (wrong action) is a question which puzzles even sages. Life is so complex and human intelligence so limited, that it is not always given to man, not even to the morally sincere and earnest man, to know for sure what the specific path of duty is under a given set of circumstances. What at a given time and place is the right way to behave is sometimes a genuine, though pardonable, perplexity. All the same he is so earnest about his ideals that there is no wavering in his resolve to do only the right. It is precisely because he is earnest that it is his imperative obligation to act in such a way that his ideals are most effectively realised. “Therefore, utility–not selfish utility but ethical utility–is a part of the meaning of the right and the good. An action can never, it is true, be right simply because it is useful. But at the same time no action can be right unless it is ethically useful–unless it promises to be more serviceable than any alternative way of acting to the ends which we have learned to count morally precious.” And it is here that a due consideration of consequences has a relevancy, for without such a consideration we might be expending our moral and spiritual resources on ends of dubious value. Which of course is not morally right.

Modern science does not hold out much hope for the moral activist. Some cosmic catastrophe or other, such as has happened before to many a heavenly body, which might wipe out the human race in a trice is not so remote a possibility as to be dismissed as a theoretical and morbid guess. Chances of human survival, let alone the furtherance of human values and ideals, seem to get thinner and thinner amid the ominous calculations of nuclear arithmetic. Scientists talk as if the doom were just round the corner. At all events the physical universe does not seem to have any special tenderness towards human ideals.

“Streams will not curb their pride
The just man not to entomb,
Nor lightnings go aside
To give his virtues room;
Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man’s barge.”

Nevertheless, the prophets of gloom, however weighty on their premises their verdict be, need not unduly depress us. Immanuel Kant has once for all demonstrated that moral insight rather than scientific understanding is the faculty that affords to man his most penetrating glimpse into the nature of the real. Cosmic history begins to surrender its secret, its inner meaning, when, in the course of time, it evolves the human moral consciousness The revelation is made more to moral reason than to scientific understanding. It would therefore be instructive to turn to Kant for light on this question.

“Two things fill the mind,” says Kant, “with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the greater and the more steadily we reflect on them: The starry heavens above and the moral law within.” The moral law within is an inner urge of tremendous force, a sense of obligation which expresses itself in a categorical imperative–Thou shalt. Thou shalt do thy duty whatever be thine particular likes and dislikes. The question of one’s not being able to do one’s duty does not arise, as Kant says in a thrilling aphorism, “The ought implies the can.” While the law of prudence is hypothetical–if you want pleasure, do this–moral reason commands categorically: Thou shalt do thy duty.

“The categorical imperative of duty, Kant suggestively maintains, is at once the most astonishing, the most self-certifying, and metaphysically the most illuminating element of our common human experience. It is astonishing. For how can a short-sighted, impulse-ridden creature of a day like man have knowledge of, or even be able to imagine an eternal, universal and absolute obligation? It is self-certifying. For when conscience is really awake, it speaks with a majestic authority, before which all doubt shrivels up, and we know that we are in the presence of an absolute right and good. And this astonishing, but self-certifying categorical imperative is metaphysically illuminating. For by that augustness of majesty which is too self-evident for honest doubt, duty betrays the transcendent nature of its sources.”¹

Duty has the authority of an imperative, an authority that does not condescend to convince you by ratiocination. It is Kant’s conviction that duty must be rooted in reality to have about it such an imperious ring. If it were not a matter of cosmic significance but only a matter of man’s not always impeccable notions of right and wrong, Duty should not have that air of augustness it has. If anything, duty expresses the immanent purpose of the real. Moreover duty would not be duty, would not speak with that august grandeur, “if it were not so grounded in the real as to carry the sure promise of victory.” “In its very accent of authority the insight of moral reason can detect the tone of promise.”

From this it follows that the moral activist is bound to succeed in attaining his goal so long as he remains convinced of the real, intrinsic goodness of that goal. What enables us to affirm this is the faith, the reasoned faith that what is truly right and good must have the whole universe on its side, for is not the real rational, orderly and coherent? Moreover we can go a step, further and assert that the more certain he is of the true goodness of what he strives for, the more certain he is entitled to feel that on the side of the accomplishment of his ideal there are ranged the deepest forces of the universe. Those who sacrifice their all for duty are conscious that “in being loyal to what is highest in themselves, they are being loyal also to what is deepest in the eternal nature of the real.” And so they wage their battle for the good in the reasoned faith that reality is their ally.

Here the critic may turn round and ask: “Your anxiety for an assurance as to the outcome of your moral endeavour sounds like bargaining. Are you not cutting the moral ground from under your feet?” Kant is anxious that it should not be understood that duty could not be done where such a guarantee were not forthcoming. While our first and foremost business as autonomous, but not heteronomous individuals is to do our duty, a salutary fillip is given to the doing of it, if it were possible to have faith that our moral purposes were capable of fulfillment, as the universe is not alien to human ideals. It does not at all mean that we are not going to do our duty unless we get a guarantee of an eventual consummation. We are not to make bargains in obeying the moral law. We are to give, asking for nothing in return. “For, if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?” And so, such disinterested action implies necessarily trust and faith in the consequences of our actions. “The faith is the outcome of the action, not its determining ground; but it is not an accidental outcome. The action implies the faith.” ²

An illustration should make this point clearer. When we are acting morally we are not acting in a vacuum or in isolation. Moral acting is action along with, and having respect to, other people. Each one of us acts as a member of what Kant calls a ‘Kingdom of Ends’. Since moral action is action along with other people, the latter have something to contribute to it. Hence the realisation of what we aim at is, normally, not entirely in our power. We do our part in a co-operative enterprise, trusting that others will do theirs. Let us take a simple duty as truth-speaking or keeping of a promise. When you do this it is implied that others should speak the truth and be honest, for, if you knew for certain that no one else could do the same, the situation would be impossible. But that does not mean that you refused to speak the truth or keep a promise, unless you got a guarantee that everyone else would do the same. That would be a clear violation of the moral law. We are to do our part trusting that others will do the same. This implies that we must, for right action, have faith in something that is not within our power, and yet that we must not demand that that faith should take the form of certain knowledge.

A tall claim is made that on the side of the victory of the good there are ranged the deepest forces of the universe. As a possible inference from this claim is that an unqualified assurance is given that victory is certain, are we not thereby robbing the moral adventure of its thrill of venturesomeness? Firstly it should be borne in mind that an element of contingency characterises the temporal process, and the course of history is never rigidly predetermined. It is this that makes the struggle for worthy causes a real battle, the course of which depends as much on the warrior’s own mettle and faith as on the worthiness of his causes. Secondly when it is said that in genuine moral endeavour Reality itself is our ally, and on the side of the victory of the good there are ranged the deepest forces of the universe, it does not for once mean that the cosmic forces have such safeguards as to exclude the occurrence of the evil and the wicked. What is meant is that Reality is so fundamentally good that “there cannot possibly enter the temporal and contingent process any evil which is not capable of being converted into the purchase price of some surpassing good.” The evil and the wicked are not invincible; they only constitute a challenge which can be faced and dealt with successfully and transmuted into a compensating good. This significant point can best be illustrated by an incident which is narrated in the Gospel of St. John. In the course of their wanderings Jesus and his band of disciples encountered a congenitally blind man. So shocking a spectacle as that set the disciples digging for its possible causes, while Jesus with his characteristic insight and forthrightness sought for an adequate divine purpose. The phenomenon was meant to be a challenge to the afflicted as well as to his fellowmen. The purpose of the Heavenly Father in so creating this man was nothing but to challenge him and us “to win from that evil some good which was worth such a cost, and which could be had in no other way.” And that is what is meant by saying that Reality at the core is so good that any evil that way enter into it can be transmuted into some surpassing good.

Thus the gallant soul’s acceptance of the gauntlet thrown across by the temporal process is no foolhardy bravado. In that grand adventure he is not a lonely wayfarer plodding on in indifferent weather. His banner bears the hues of the Heavens, his ‘flaming sword’ is hewn from the rock of ages, and he is the spearhead of the cosmic purpose. Seeming and transitory set-s need not deter the pursuit of an ideal, for “what ought to be done is what is in harmony with the cosmic purpose.” What better ballast is there for the crusader’s spirit than what the Lord’s sportive offer affords,

‘But, if in this
Thy faint heart fails, bring Me thy failure’? ³

It is therefore well to remember, time and time again, that Reality is the good man’s ally to such a magnitude that it would not grudge interceding in his behalf, should there be a necessity. Fortified by that faith, a faith that moves mountains, the good man goes ahead. And this, to my mind, is what the Lord meant when in Chapter IV, Verse 8 He said:

“Paritranaya Sadhunam
Vinasaya cha dushkrutam
Dharmasamsthapanarthaya
Sambhavami yuge yuge.”

¹ The challenge of the Temporal Process’ by Prof. A. G. Hogg.
² ‘Kant’ by A.D. Lindsay.
³ This passage is not in the original Gita, but finds a place in Edwin Arnold’s ‘The Song Celestial’, Chapter XII. It was pointed out to the Editor of Triveni by the late Sri C. Jinarajadasa in 1932. For many years after that, the Editor adopted it as the Motto for his ‘Triple Stream’ (Editorial Notes).