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

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PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE
paying him reverence as an embodiment of the divine learning to be imparted. For the teacher is a mouthpiece of the higher knowledge and a master of the special skill. The pupil in his religious worship must become devoted to the presiding divinity of the department of skill and wisdom that is to be the informing principle, henceforward, of his career. He must share the household of the tcacher for years, serve him in the home and assist him in his work-whether the craft be that of priest, magician, ascetic, physician, or potter. The techniques must be learned by constant practice, while the theory is being taught through oral instruction supplemented by a thoroughgoing study of the basic textbooks. And most important of all, a psychological "transference" between the master and pupil has to be effected; for a kind of transformation is to be brought to pass. The malleable metal of the pupil is to be worked into the pattern of the model teacher, and this with respect not only to matters of knowledge and skill but also, much more deeply, to the whole personal attitude. As for the life and morals of the guru himself: it is required that there should be an identityan absolute, point-for-point correspondence-between his teachings and his way of life; the sort of identity that we should expect to find in the West only in a monk or priest.
No criticism, but a gradual growing into the mold of the discipline, is what is demanded. The training is accepted and followed, as it were, blindfold; but in the course of time, when the pupil's grasp of his subject increases, understanding comes of its own accord. Such blind acceptance and subsequent intui. tive comprehension of a truth through the enactment of its corresponding attitude is known to Europe primarily in the practice of the Roman Catholic church. In one of the novels, for example, of Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet, the case is described of two freethinkers, disappointed with their way of life, who, following an attempt at suicide, become reconverted to the faith of their childhood and early peasant environment.
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