The ancient Indian culture is one of humanity’s sources of wisdom that has survived almost unchanged for millennia. Their sacred texts continue to generate great interest because their message has a lot to do with us. We live in a false reality or maya, being what we think. We generate reality from a dispersed mind and in view of this, Indian philosophy proposes to calm the waves of mind and understand that the divine is within us. Indian culture comes to comfort our spiritual emptiness with an inclusive vision.
This is one of the bases of the Bhagavad Gita that has just been republished (Kairós), in a new Sanskrit translation by Òscar Pujol. Among the novelties, in a Buddhist key, include The Last Days of the Buddha by Aleix Ruiz (Trotta) or The Buddhist Enneagram by Susan Piver (Kairós). As books that offer a panoramic view, we have La mente diafana by Juan Arnau (Galaxia Gutenberg) or the synthetic Namasté by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles (Uranus). The thought and the ancient Indian philosophy seem called to solve some of our contemporary existential problems.
The sacred texts refer us to the original sources in Sanskrit, a language currently in disuse like Latin. Before Òscar Pujol, Joan Mascaró was the great reference who, from his exile in Cambridge, was in charge of translating into English the Bhagavad Gita (1962), some of the most important Upanishads (1965) or the Dhamnapada (1973), for the penguin publishing house The first translations of the sacred texts of India were into French, English or German, so many of them have come down to us indirectly. Today, we have more and more publications that translate from Sanskrit –such as Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras or Òscar Pujol’s Bhagavad Gita– or from the Pali language used by Buddhists, such as Aleix Ruiz’s Mahaparinibbanasutta.
To get into Indian wisdom, the Bhagavad Gita is undoubtedly one of the most beautifully simple and revealing narratives. In his introduction, Pujol gives us up to ten reasons that make it such a popular and important text. His style is simple, built from the dialogue of two charismatic characters. The contents are practical and appeal to a technique to free oneself from the ties of the world, without having to give it up. It is not addressed to saints or ascetics, but to conventional people. Despite being more than two thousand years old, its message is still valid and it is not dogmatic or intolerant. His wisdom allows multiple versions. From seven hundred stanzas spread over eighteen chapters, the god Krisna converses with the young warrior Arjuna, so that he understands his dharma, which involves facing relatives on the battlefield. His speech synthesizes a triple spiritual path that integrates action (karma), knowledge (jnana) and devotion (bhakti). Do not pursue the fruits of action, believe in a personal god and live in devotion.
The text is dated from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD. and dazzled intellectuals like Aldous Huxley, Thoreau, Emerson, Carl Jung or Herman Hesse. In this new translation, Òscar Pujol presents a useful summary of each one of the chapters, as well as a rigorous gloss, word for word. The translation is fluent and the language updated. “He whose deeds are devoid of desire and intentionality and whose karma has been devoured by the fire of knowledge is called a pandita by the knowers…Satisfied with what he finds at random, beyond duality, free from envy, equanimous in the face of success and failure, even if he acts, is not tied to his actions.”
Those who want a more luxurious edition can go to the version by Juan Arnau edited by Atalanta (2016). The text is faithful without being literal, and is impregnated with the spirit of the poem. Its author has also made a selection of various Upanishads (Upanisad, hidden correspondences, 2019) for the same publisher. These texts, also treated by Pujol in The wisdom of the forest (Trotta, 2003), are the culmination of Vedic thought that comes from the primitive Aryan civilization that formed the foundations of Hinduism (approx. 1200 BC). Here the key concept is to understand the gnosis between atman and bráhman. As Arnau puts it “atman means the self, the body or the essence of something. The upanisads take the last step and identify that atman with brahman. The ultimate essence of the individual coincides with the ultimate essence of everything. Joan Mascaró said that the Upanisads were the gospel of Hinduism and explained the previous concept by saying that “the kingdom of God is within you.” Undoubtedly, this marks one of the great differences between Eastern and Western thought.
Texts like the Devi Mahatmya (Kairós) are less transcendental, but point out interesting and lesser-known aspects of Hinduism. It is a recitation that praises the power of the great goddess, understood as the supreme transcendental reality of the cosmos, made up of the shakti feminine principle. Its translator, Ana García-Arroyo, had previously written the History of the Women of India (Laertes). This text is part of the Markandeya Purana and as its author explains, just as the Aryan Vedas were reserved for the high castes, the Puranas are the texts of the people that everyone could hear and recite. With them, they learned the dharma teachings so necessary to go through the Kali yuga in which evil reigns and the cosmos goes into decline. Devi-Mahatmya celebrates the victory of the Goddess in her fight against the great demons that stalk us. Only those who develop an internal look and an attitude of introspection will be able to perceive the revealed and hidden truths.
Buddha was one of the first dharma vagabonds, someone who had to wander and strip himself of everything, to understand that his life purpose was to achieve enlightenment and transmit his teachings for the good of humanity. Life is suffering and its cause is due to attachment and desire. Tempering the mind and finding balance is the middle path of Buddhism. Neutrality and detachment, in a doctrine concentrated in the eclectic Pali canon that includes the Buddha’s speeches, after a long oral tradition. The anthology presented by Abraham Vélez, Aleix Ruiz and Ricardo Guerrero, based on the version (2005) of Bhikkhu Bodhi (In the words of the Buddha, Kairós), is exemplary due to the organization of its contents. What normally appears as a conglomerate, here takes on a sense in which the Buddha’s message unfolds little by little, from the simplest and most elementary, to the most difficult and profound. The structure is organic, touching on themes such as resignation, liberation, relationships, mastery of the mind or happiness. The way of the Buddha is to persist in goodness, acting in accordance with the dharma, doing right, and doing good as well as beneficial deeds.
For his part, Aleix Ruiz translates from Pali the oldest testimony on the death of the Buddha, in what is considered the oldest prose narrative in Indian literature. The Last Days of the Buddha is a logbook centered on the theme of the teacher’s traumatic demise and the challenge of keeping his teaching alive.
Very different and more contemporary is the approach of the American Susan Piver. The Buddhist Enneagram is a reinterpretation of Buddhism, fused with the Enneagram theory proposed by George Gurdjieff and developed by Claudio Naranjo. In her book, the personality enneatypes become nine facets of a warrior (effort, love, achievement, clear vision, magic…). The Buddhist enneagram thus becomes a path to discover our type of personality.
If what we are looking for is to know the Indian culture in broad strokes, a good approximation goes through the classic readings of the sixties by Alain Daniélou, reissued by Atalanta, Gods and Myths of India or While the gods play. Daniélou is an adventurous character that he knows from the experience of having lived in India for more than fifteen years. He is not a scholar but a romantic preserver of an ancient culture. His emphasis resides in the polytheism of a territory where time recovers its infinite form. He enthusiastically narrates the myths and the personality of the multiple gods of him that are still fully valid today.
Another more recent and profound compendium of Indian spirituality is Hindu Spirituality (Kairós) by Raimon Panikkar. According to this sage in comparative religions “Hindu spirituality lives human life as a liturgy in which nature, man and the gods cooperate to maintain the universe.” For his part, Juan Arnau in La mente diafana (Galaxia Gutenberg) covers more than two thousand years of Indian thought. It is necessary to empty the mind, abstain from certain thoughts and deal with the three poisons that corrupt it: greed, hatred and stupidity.
In a much more everyday setting, just like a few years ago Álvaro Enterría showed us La India por dentro (Olañeta) or Octavio Paz enlightened us with his Glimpses of India (Seix Barral), today Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, authors of the best seller Ikigai, counterattack with Namasté (Uranus), a guide to connect with the Indian way of happiness, fulfillment and success. A personal growth book that condenses part of Indian culture and its practical sense into synthetic sections. Being in non-duality or understanding that breathing is living.
They say that India changes us all. Perhaps it is because knowing her and delving into her culture constitutes a return to the origins. To that place from which we all come.
