Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 371

BRAHMANISM
eration everything beyond the range of his own limited personal vision.
Nescience might be called the short-leggedness of man-in contrast to the reach of the divine Cosmic Man, Vişnu, who with three gigantic strides created Earth, Atmosphere, and Firmament, simply by setting down the sole of his foot, at each stride, in what was empty space. The cosmic dynamism of which we ourselves are minute manifestations cannot be fitted to the dimensions of our brain, any more than to the brains of ants; for the universe is the holy revelation of an absolutely transcendent essence. We can be glad to understand it even a little, in terms appropriate to the range of our egocentric sensual and mental faculties. Though characterized every moment by perishableness, the universal whirling process in itself is everlasting, even as is the hidden power from which it derives. It is everlasting, indecd, through the very transiency of its continually appearing and vanishing phenomena-all these evanescent forms. And precisсly because these break, it is everlasting. The cloud-shadows of death and bereavement darken the face of the world every second; these race across the moonlit, sunlit scene --but they do not outbalance the light, the fulfillment of life's joy in the perpetual begetting of new forms. The world, in spite of its pain, is as it were enraptured by itself, and does not count the hurts that go with the procedure: as though lovers in their rapture should mind whether the kisses hurt, or a child eagerly swallowing ice cream whether the chill was a little painful. Everything depends on where one puts the emphasis. That of the Hymn of Food is on the dionysiac aspect of the world. A continuous blending and transformation of opposites through a relentless vital dynamism-even asking for pains, to balance and enhance the intensity of delight-goes spontaneously, powcrfully, and joyously with this terrific Oriental acceptance of the whole dimension of the universe. And this wild affirmative is one that is eminently characteristic, as we shall find, of Hinduism.
850