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II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF INDIAN
PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy as a Way of Life
IN ANCIENT India each department of learning was associated with a highly specialized skill and corresponding way of life. The knowledge was not to be culled from books primarily, or from lectures, discussions, and conversation, but to be mastered through apprenticeship to a competent teacher. It required the wholehearted surrender of a malleable pupil to the authority of the guru, its elementary prerequisites being obedience (śuśrūşa) and implicit faith (śraddhā). Šuśrūķā is the fervent desire to hear, to obey, and to retain what is being heard; it implies dutifulness, reverence, and service. Sraddhā is trust and composure of mind; it demands the total absence of every kind of independent thought and criticism on the part of the pupil; and here again there is reverence, as well as strong and vehement desire. The Sanskrit word means also "the longing of a pregnant woman."
The pupil in whom the sought truth dwells as the jungletiger dwelt within the cub 1 submits without reserve to his guru,
1 Supra, pp. 5-8.
