How the Indian tea trade shaped the world
This article is from Justin Rowlatt www.bbc.com and first appeared there.
This is the extraordinary story of the most ubiquitous and familiar Indian street food of the lot.
I say street food, but this is actually a drink, and it is no exaggeration to say it was one of the great engines that drove the globalisation of the world economy. It caused wars and boosted the trade in slaves and hard drugs.
The conditions it is produced under are still so bad that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge decided not to include it in their recent tour of India.
Photo Reuters
Yet it is enjoyed in every country on earth, with India the biggest consumer of them all. And that should be no surprise, because although this product doesn’t come from India, the country has been instrumental in its rise to global popularity.
Yes, you’ve guessed it, today we are drinking tea.
But because this is India, this is tea with a little extra added: this is masala chai. Masala simply means spice. No Indian can live without masala in their lives.
We’ll talk about that later, for the moment let’s focus on the “chai” bit and discover how India – and the world – developed its taste for tea. Chai is the word for tea in Hindi and most other Indian languages, and it begins our journey, because the word itself betrays the original source of these aromatic leaves. Its root is the Mandarin word chá. But the story of how India got its taste for what was originally a Chinese product is far from straightforward.
This shop sells a cup of tea for as little as eight rupees (12 cents) – Photo AFP
Indeed it was the popularity of another commodity – itself first refined in India – that would get the world hooked on tea.
The Chinese had been drinking tea for millennia and tea was one of the first new goods Dutch merchants brought back from their trips to the Far East way back at the beginning of the 17th century. The drink quickly became popular, first as a medicine and then as an exotic new menu item in the coffee shops of European capitals, making its way as far as New Amsterdam (New York). Its popularity grew steadily but for the next century this fragrant but bitter brew was to remain a rare and expensive treat enjoyed only by the elite.
Indian tea is made with milk and sugar – Photo AFP
And so it might have remained had the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors not taken sugar cane to the New World.
Indians were the first to develop a process to produce crystals of sugar, way back around the time Jesus was preaching in Judea. They used juice squeezed from the stems of the sweet grass that had been grown in Asia for thousands of years. But it was only with the establishment of vast sugar cane plantations in America and the Caribbean, based on the sweat and toil of slaves brought from Africa, that sugar began to be produced on a large scale. For the first time it became increasingly plentiful and cheap in Europe.
But how to consume this delicious new product? Someone somewhere had the idea of mixing a spoonful or two into a cup of tea. Then it became fashionable to add milk too. Suddenly what was a drink for connoisseurs became something everyone could enjoy.
This process of “domestication” led to an explosion in the popularity of both tea and sugar.
And if Europe’s taste for sweet tea helped underpin the slave trade between Africa and the Americas, it was just as destructive on the other side of the world.
Millions of Indian begin their day with drinking tea – Photo AFP
It is worth retelling the story of the Opium Wars because they could just as well be called the Tea Wars – they were at least as much about this mild stimulant as they were about the narcotic drug.
That’s because in the 18th century tea was grown exclusively in China.
Britain was buying huge quantities of the stuff – it was top of the national shopping list above other exotic Chinese goods like silk and porcelain. The problem was the Chinese didn’t reciprocate. They weren’t too keen on anything produced in the rainy little island that was the centre of the European tea trade. Then, as now, this was a recipe for economic disaster.
When the British tried to manipulate the market, the colonists in America – another booming market for tea – were not pleased. They famously tossed a shipload of the stuff into Boston harbour, marking the beginning of the end of British control in America.
Boston Tea Party – Photo Wikipedia
And it wasn’t just restive colonists that were getting upset, Britain’s taste for tea was well on the way to bankrupting the entire nation.
Until, that is, the East India Company, which had a monopoly on trade with the Far East, found a product that Chinese did want to consume – opium.
It took control of the market for opium in the Indian state of Bengal, encouraging farmers to grow more, rationalising production and developing new cultivation techniques.
When the Chinese made the trade in opium illegal the Company sidestepped the ban by auctioning its opium off to smaller traders who smuggled it to China.
The British “negotiated” a humiliating peace with China – Photo china-mike.com
When the Chinese emperor protested that the drug was creating millions of addicts, he was ignored. But when, in 1839, he confiscated some 20,000 chests of opium, the British took action. There was little discussion in the mother of parliaments about what needed to be done. Gunboats with a small army were rapidly dispatched to sort the problem out. Their superior arms and equipment ensured a speedy victory for the British who then “negotiated” a humiliating peace with China.
They forced the Chinese to open up ports to British trade in everything – including opium – and to cede the island of Hong Kong to the Crown to boot (it was only returned in 1997).
The Opium trade in China was because of tea – Photo Wikipedia
Meanwhile, though, the bosses of the East India Company were already working on a plan to avoid future disruption of the tea market.
And, once again, India was the obvious place to start.
In the 1830s, the first tea estates were established in the Indian state of Assam, using tea plants brought from China. Just like sugar, growing tea is very labour intensive and the obvious thing would have been to staff them with slaves. But in 1833, slavery was banned in the British Empire. Those clever men at the East India Company needed to find an alternative – and they did. Instead of slaves, tea estates used indentured labourers, free men and women who signed contracts binding them to work for a certain period. But the truth is conditions for these workers weren’t much better than for slaves.
What is more shocking still is the fact that many of the practices and traditions established way back when the estates were first planted continue even on estates that supply some of the world’s favourite brands, as I discovered last year in an investigation for BBC News. That investigation persuaded the team organising the British Royal couple’s tour of India in April this year that a visit to a tea estate would not be advisable. Appalling conditions aside, pretty soon India had become the biggest supplier of the strong black teas now favoured in Britain and Europe.
At first, this valuable commodity was strictly for export, but as production grew and the price fell, Indians began drinking tea too. And, naturally enough, they followed the example of the British and drank their tea with milk and sugar.
Which brings us back to the masala chai that first prompted this reflection. It may have its origins in the drink an English vicar might serve parishioners on a sunny afternoon on the parsonage lawn, but it has been transformed by some subcontinental adaptations and improvements.
Indians often add pounded ginger and crushed cardamoms to tea – Photo AFP
First off, it is much stronger, milkier and sweeter than any British brew.
Chai wallas – the artists who make masala chai – boil strong black tea hard with milk, water and lots and lots of sugar until it is almost a syrup.
Good ones will add a good fistful of pounded adarak – ginger – and, right at the very end, a couple of crushed cardamoms. More adventurous tea stall owners may even add cinnamon and pepper. The resulting sweet, spicy liquor will be drained through a sieve and served piping hot in a tiny glass or, more fun still, an unfired earthenware cup which you get to smash once you’ve finished your delicious and reviving dose of chai.
So why not get yourself up a cup of tea and relax? I’m not expecting you to think about tea’s dark history whenever you drink the stuff – that would be too much to ask. But every now and then, do take a moment to reflect on the momentous global interactions that made the drink you are enjoying possible.
Sometimes, tea is served in clay cups in India – Photo AFP
Because it reminds us that, although the growth of international trade has brought untold wealth to the world, globalisation virtually always leaves victims in its wake. And to drive that point home, what I haven’t yet mentioned is the reason the Chinese had such an appetite for opium. They had adapted the tobacco pipes brought to Asia from the New World and now used them to smoke opium too. The result was a far stronger, and far more addictive, hit.
By the turn of the 20th Century, Britain had become the biggest drug dealer the world had ever known, and China had developed the biggest drug problem experienced by any nation ever. According to official figures, in 1906, 23.3% of the adult male Chinese population was addicted to opium.
One evening I came across an old Indian man who appeared to be stuck in the street. He had one leg out in front of the other, as if he was in mid-stride, but he was going nowhere.
Could he have been doing some sort of penance? I thought. His eyes were half-shut and he was staring into space and drooling a little.
“Are you ok, baba?” I asked after a while. He slurred something unintelligible in reply.
Then a guy walked past and told me “Opium. Don’t worry”.
Opium is still a popular drug in parts of India. Heroin, or ‘brown sugar’, is also becoming increasingly popular, especially as a refuge for desperate Indian farmers, who have had a high suicide rate in recent years thanks to hard conditions brought on by then rise in gm crops and companies like Monsanto.
Indian farmers committing suicide because of Monsanto is as logical as to say westerners stole all the high-tech codifications from Sanskrit texts.
Swamishanti, are you left-wing Britisher?
I tend to be more on the centre-left.
But I shake hands with the right hand.
Do you have some support for Monsanto industry, Shantam?
This is you, init, Swami Shanty?
ROTFLMAO.
When you are a cool leftist chap you cannot smile or wear colours and you have to read books all day and watch Andrei Tarkovsky movies all night and the only social media posts you make have to be about Egon Schiele or something you hate or, if you are an advanced level cool leftist chap, about how you hate Egon Schiele.
That sounds like an acquaintance of mine – old lefty, the long beard, reads ‘The Morning Star’, always moaning about the evil bloody Tory government.
Made me roar.
Neil Young wrote a song about kids and drugs, and kids not getting a chance to be cool because of drugs. Really got to me. I made a painting at art school about it.
Venture capitalism?
The drug consumption of 1906 is like a er…vicar’s tea party compared to what`s happening today. Actually, human history is all about drugs.
Anthropologists are coming to agree that the evidence shows that hunter- gatherers settled down, not to rear animals and to grow food – that was a side-effect; what those guys wanted to grow was grain to make booze with! Fact.
Ganga started sprouting like a weed. They started smoking that and it was only when they got the munchies that they started growing peanuts and popcorn and stuff.
This ganja is also known as bhang. During the festival of Holi it’s common in India to have it in a lassi or in mithai/sweet form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhang
The only time I have had it was in May, 1993, it was a very hot summer day & we were having a friend over who was sort of an addict of all things which could give a high; my bf had named him Buddha. This Buddha suddenly had pangs of having bhang-thandai, which is a sweet cold drink made from milk, dry fruits, sugar & bhang, so he went to Yerwada to get bhang and then we made this drink.
It was the first time I had had bhang, I wanted to give it a try, but it was the worst experience I have ever had. I was feeling totally dehydrated and suddenly a great insecurity arose. After going through that, later I realised I wan’t so scared of death but more so of living. It took nearly 4-5 days for me to be my normal self.
I’ve met quite a few Indians who have tried bhang just once and disliked it. I think this is because the ganja in India, Africa etc. is far more powerful than the ganja that is found in the West, so a bhang lassi can really blow your head off.
The weed that is around in the West is generally much milder, plus for the ‘baby-boomers’ it had an anti-establishment aura to it that made them feel naughty and rebellious and made the whole thing more appealing.
Whereas in India it is not an anti-establishment thing at all, old men and and sadhus smoke it, it is offered to the gods in temples as a sacrament and it is just part of everyday life.
I had just one glass of bhang lassi on Shivaatri in Varanasi once and it was very potent. Completely stoned for the whole night.
That reminds me of Michael Eavis (who used to organise Glastonbury festival,his daughter does it now) who tried to experiment with eating some hash for the first time a few years ago, and also didn’t like it.
He didn’t smoke, so he ate it, a much more potent method of delivery (and he would have had the contacts to get good quality too).
Jon Snow, a Channel 4 news presenter, also tried eating some skunk a while back & didn’t like it either.
SS, actually a few sannyasin friends who have been bhang experts, after getting to know my experience, said that bhang was too potent and I should try the refined Banaras bhang to have a good experience, but I was not interested.
My experience was that just being in the company of all kinds of such drug users is enough to give that high!
There is an Indian story:
One day, Shiva left his home after an angry argument with his family. Overheated by the hot sun, he lay down under a large plant and fell asleep.
When he awoke, he noticed the sweet smell of the plant, and decided to eat some. Afterwards, his anger dissipated and he felt relaxed and refreshed, and the marijuana plant became part of his daily diet.
In another story, the gods and the demons are churning the `ocean of milk` (the milky way) during the creation of the universe, trying to find the nectar of immortality. The gods end up with the nectar, and a few drops of the amrita fall down to the earth, and produce goodies.
One of the goodies is the ganga plant.
Probably this would interest you :
https://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik?language=en
Thanks, Kavita, an interesting talk.
I remember the tale of Alexander meeting the naked sadhu. I think the Greeks called him Diogenes.
Yes, I think so too!
It is an old story. If you want to read all about it in a new, humorous and fascinating context I suggest you read ‘Sapiens’.
“Beautifully written, this book contains one incredible idea: that the success of homo sapiens derives from our inclination to believe in imaginary (i.e. non existent) things, and to act on those beliefs. This insight alone is worth the price of the book.”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0099590085/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1474192156&sr=1-1
That’s an interesting concept.
Strikes a chord.
I’ll get the book.
Have also just ordered it at Amazon – only £4! Cheers, Lokesh.
You can also listen on youtube in TED-talks.com Yuval Noah Harari – the Israeli author about that ‘short story’ of mankind and his view on collectice power and effectiveness of organisation-skills.
When I saw that a while ago I was reminded as often of our all ancestors (not Africa- this time, but the Austalian aborigines, dreaming and singing and wandering their songlines into creation.
I am an incurable romantic, it seems! (Not so much triggered by power and fights of survival by good-war-organisation and similiar, and in money issues and the power gained therewith..).
What a spicy weekend thread that is. Spicy ´late raindrops´ and the wind making music.
Madhu
You guys are in for a treat. If I am mistaken I owe you a drink.
“…the success of homo sapiens derives from our inclination to believe in imaginary (i.e. non-existent) things, and to act on those beliefs. This insight alone is worth the price of the book.”
I had a very similar insight whilst watching ‘Bad Grandad’.
Interesting, watching this guy’s vid:
The idea that humans are powerful because of “fiction” only sounds like a radical idea because of the bias that says “fiction” is less real than “fact”.
What he calls fiction is actually imagination. Are there any human creations that don`t spring from imagination?
I would say that Imagination is a fact – even if its function is to create fictions!
Imagining imagination.
We also turn what we imagine into solid structures.
Problem though, Arps, is that there’s an often overlooked downside to imagination, ie worry, anxiety. It’s a two-edged sword, like many faculties of the mind.
People lacking imagination might be a bit dull, uncreative, but consequently they tend to have one major thing going for them, being comparatively free from that particular mode of self-torture.
P.S:
I speak from experience, including a particularly acute recent bout of – seemingly involuntarily – visualising a worst-case health scenario, which itself undermined my general health and practically ruined a large part of a holiday.
Sure, using whatever insight I might have gleaned from all these years of meditation etc. I did my best to understand the ‘mechanics’ of what was going on during those troubled nights (daytimes were ‘ok’, a relief to get out of bed in fact!) but it was an uphill struggle.
I might add, in keeping with the topic, that at least two cups of tea (green and ‘British Rail’, with honey and lemon juice) – not forgetting a laugh or two – were most revivifying after those broken nights.
SD,
Agreed.
And by way of illustration, the quote from the book review:
“Beautifully written, this book contains one incredible idea: that the success of homo sapiens derives from our inclination to believe in imaginary (i.e. non-existent) things, and to act on those beliefs. This insight alone is worth the price of the book.”
Would be just as meaningful and true if the word “success” was changed to the word “failure” or “problems”.
Yeah, spot on, Frank.
Yes. No arguing with that. Also, I suspect imagination causes problems in many, because some, many don’t realise they are imagining things.
My over-active imagination caused me enormous problems, until I got a hook on it.
Paranoia is negative imaging.
I also recall being on a week’s jury service in the London courts, about 20 years or so ago, having to help decide on the fate of two guys accused of theft, while in a condition of quite acute anxiety concerning whether I’d made an official financial declaration correctly, imagining (grossly inaccurately, as it turned out) the most dire consequences if I hadn’t.
That was enough to ruin what otherwise would have been a rather entertaining few days, as the collection of small-time East End ‘underworld’ characters on trial and giving evidence was a sight to behold and at times, I’m sure, excruciatingly funny, only I was too preoccupied with my own potential ‘guilt’ to relax and enjoy it all.
Einstein said:
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”
Paranoia vs pronoia.
Just deciding probably doesn’t make it a nailed-on cert, but it’s a start. I suspect that our man Yuval Harari is attempting to slip a bit of pronoia into the mix with his writings.
@ frank. 19 September, 2016 at 1:00 pm
His take on co-operation is really uplifting. Good to be led to look at something from a new perspective, and juxtaposed with his references to the most negative aspects of co-operation, sobering.
@ satyadeva.
19 September, 2016 at 1:20 pm
The fathers of baby boomers fought in the 2nd world war. To make a mistake was the most heinous of crimes. Punishment was draconian. They passed that on.
Apropos of his remarks about the useless class…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/19/world-without-work-utopia-hell-human-labour-obsolete
Some years ago, maybe 15, I was walking one evening and became aware that when the pictures in my imagination changed, whatever I was monologuing about internally changed.
I have also ordered this book. The idea which Lokesh has chosen to highlight is very interesting.
In a way, Osho was doing destructive act of pinching needles into religious imagination. No wonder, Jesus as son of Virgin mother has inspired billions, and out of it a new model of living has emerged into the world. The world we see today has the signature of Christian men and women.
I think the ‘never born, never died’ imagination won´t work as disciples in position know quite well their entity is a son of a mother who has given birth to almost a cricket team!
Shantam says, “The world we see today has the signature of Christian men and women.”
Coincidentally enough, ‘Sapiens’ covers why that happened. It was the Roman emperor Constantine’s decision in 400AD that the Roman Empire adopt Christianity that set that particular ball rolling, if I remember correctly.
One of the positive conclusions ‘Sapiens’ draws is that, from a historical perspective, we are now living during the most peaceful era the world has ever known. Yes. I know you would have a hard job convincing someone living in Aleppo that this is true, but from a global perspective it is.
Looks like we gave peace a chance after all.
“…from a historical perspective, we are now living during the most peaceful era the world has ever known.”
In which case, the world’s insanely prolific media have much to answer for, given how they fill our screens, papers and radio waves with endless tales and threats of armed conflicts far and wide.
There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Seneca
Yes, just watched BBC news headline about a lone Afghan whacko letting off a cheapo bomb in the States. Puppet Obama says, “We must not succumb to fear.”
Meanwhile, on RT there are shots of American fighter-bombers taking off from a nuclear aircraft carrier on their way to bomb the shit out of Syria, where the Yanks recently killed 60 Syrian troops by accident.
Anyone who watched the last episode of ‘House of Cards’ can’t have failed to pick up on the ironic closing line from Kevin Spacey, playing the role of American president. He says, “We don’t fight terror, we create it.”
Latest report from a crack team of European Union engineering experts says that The World Trade Centre came down due to controlled detonations. The implications are mind-boggling.
Anyone for a cup of tea?
After watching few videos of Prof. Yuval Harari, to me it seems the original/ancient thought that thought is a creator of the world, is an eternal truth.
In any case, Lokesh, thank you for sharing, so there are more dimensions to the original/ancient thought.
Probably, it’s the journey from here to here which is ever-existent!
A dark history indeed.
I figure human life is not some kind of battle between good and evil as my Methodist preacher told me when I was a teenager, but basically 95% full of greed, selfishness and the blind pursuit of capital. As defined in my terms, evil.
This guy Justin Rowlatt, in this piece, does well in telling it the way it was.
The British Monarchy naturally would not be interested in exposing any kind of truth, why would they bother to promote ‘Tea’ – which is associated with being awake?!
“Greed, selfishness and the blind pursuit of capital. As defined in my terms, evil.”
All the religious preaching and teaching revolves around turning these evils into saintliness. Many people collected around Osho were motivated to live life of sharing and sanity. On creative level, this was the main work of Osho, to create some kind of new prototype of living where love is more precious than power, sharing is asked for and not accumulation, work was for meditation and not vice-versa.
I don´t count oratory as main work of Osho. Thanks to science, all his talks can be fixed in UBS Stick and still much space will be left for all the world´s spiritual blah blah!
I am gratefull for the tea plantations.
Osho said that a Buddhist monk invented tea by chopping his eyelids off and throwing them, where a tea plant grew. I think it was Bodhidharma.
Green tea is high in anti-oxidants, but apparently African Roibosch tea is even higher.
Yes, SS. The only tea that I drink is Rooibos, I think originally from South Africa. To me, better than green tea. Cheers!!
This educational video is vital viewing to anyone interested in the history of ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N_RO-jL-90
Awesome. LOL
Fun and hip…hop.
That’s funcky, B.Frank!
Imagination mentioned a lot here, though not sure what it has to do with tea and opium!
Imagination used to be praised in the grammar school English teachers of my generation (maybe still is?). But I never got that feeling when I visited different Masters later in life. All had different languages and vocabulary to describe it, but I had the feeling from many that imagination was just to do with ‘Mind’, and best done without.
This may explain why when some litterati, when visiting spiritual masters, come away with judgements like “I thought he seemed just a blank, or just like a black hole, etc.”
Being free of imagination seems to be more or less the same as being free of mind, but an active imagination leads, as SD indicates here yesterday, to, for example, dysfunctional sleep patterns and therefore being dysfunctional in life. That is apart from the spiritual injunctions to be rid of it.
Actually, I would say that imagination is an indication of an ‘overactive’ mind, and the origins of such need really to be found out by thorough psychoanalytical exploration of the unconscious, if nothing else works!
Perfectly correct. Parmartha!
It seems that you have finally embraced the wisdom of mighty Bhorat! These western grammar school baboons do not realise that imagination is simply mind which is nothing but mind!
Imagination and mind, as you clearly point out, are best done without! And it is clear from your comments that you have followed the spiritual super-injunctions of the masters and are doing without!
These fools who support these dysfunctional activities such as writing, music, literature, poetry, art and cricket etc. must be given therapy at the hands of a system that has not been concocted by the imagination at all – like psychoanalysis – and cured of their perversions!!
If psychoanalysis fails and nothing else works and their dysfunctional sleep patterns, thought patterns and depraved ideas persist, then they should be given electro-shock treatment by masters whom you have visited whom you have a feeling about!
It is my dream and Osho`s dream that everyone be totally devoid of imagination so as we can all join Swami Bhorat and your good self in the blank black hole of mindlessness that the literati are afraid of, but where you have fearlessly made your home!
Yahoo!
Hari Om!
Imagination, mind is beautiful. Creations that flow through the mind are beautiful. Billions of electric pulses pass through the brains of our species and we have created great things, not just art but contraptions too.
But somehow we have been asleep to our true nature.
The mind/pulse imagination activity machine continues for enlightened ones. The bodies keep cycling. Except they have become liberated from identification with name and form.
The quote below is taken from the ‘Mahanirvana Tantra’, chapter 14, ‘The Consecration of Shiva-linga and Description of the Four Classes of Avadhutas’,
as translated by Arthur Avalon.
Shiva is answering Parvati`s questions.
“By action men enjoy happiness, and by action again they suffer pain. They are born, they live, and they die the slaves of action.
It is for this that I have spoken of various kinds of action, such as Sadhana and the like, for the guidance of the intellectually weak in the paths of righteousness, and that they may be restrained from wicked acts.
There are two kinds of action – good and evil; the effect of evil action is that men suffer acute pain.
And, O Devi! those who do good acts with minds intent on the fruits thereof go to the next world, and come back again to this, chained by their action.
Therefore men will not attain final liberation even at the end of a hundred kalpas so long as action, whether good or evil, is not destroyed.
As a man is bound, be it by a gold or iron chain, so he is bound by his action, be it good or evil .
So long as a man has not real knowledge, he does not attain final liberation, even though he be in the constant practice of religious acts and a hundred austerities .
The knowledge of the wise from whom the darkness of ignorance is removed, and whose souls are pure, arises from the performance of duty without expectation of fruit or reward, and by constant meditation on the Brahman .
He who knows that all which is in this universe from Brahma to a blade of grass is but the result of Maya, and that the Brahman is the one and supreme Truth, has this.
That man is released from the bonds of action who, renouncing name and form, has attained to complete knowledge of the essence of the eternal and immutable Brahman .
Liberation does not come fram japa, homa, or a hundred fasts; man becomes liberated by the knowledge that he himself is Brahman .
Final liberation is attained by the knowledge that the Atma (Soul) is the witness, is the Truth, is omnipresent, is one, free from all illuding distractions of self and not-self, the supreme, and, though abiding in the body, is not in the body .
All imagination of name-form and the like are but the play of a child. He who put away all this sets himself in firm attachment to the Brahman, is, without doubt, liberated .
If the image imagined by the (human) mind were to lead to liberation, then undoubtedly men would be Kings by virtue of such kingdoms as they gain in their dreams.
Those who (in their ignorance) believe that Ishvara is (only) in images made of clay, or stone, or metal, or wood, merely trouble themselves by their tapas. They can never attain liberation without knowledge.
Can men attain final liberation by restriction in food, be they ever so thin thereby, or by uncontrolled indulgence, be they ever so gross therefrom, unless they possess the knowledge of Brahman? .
If by observance of Vrata to live on air, leaves of trees, bits of grain, or water, final liberation may be attained, then snakes, cattle, birds, and aquatic animals should all be able to attain final liberation.
Brahma-sad-bhava is the highest state of mind; dhyana-bhava is middling; stuti and japa is the last; and external worship is the lowest of all .
Yoga is the union of the embodied soul and the Supreme Soul,” Puja is the union of the worshipper and the worshipped; but he who realizes that all things are Brahman for him there is neither Yoga nor Puja.
For him who possesses the knowledge of Brahman, the supreme knowledge, of what use are japa, yajna,” tapas, niyama, and vrata? .
He who sees the Brahman, Who is Truth, Knowledge, Bliss, and the One, is by his very nature one with the Brahman. Of what use to him are puja, dhyana, and dharana? .
For him who knows that all is Brahman there is neither sin nor virtue, neither heaven nor future birth. There is none to meditate upon, nor one who meditates .
The soul which is detached from all things is ever liberated; what can bind it? From what do fools desire to be liberated? .
He abides in this Universe, the creation of His powers of illusion, which even the Devas cannot pierce. He is seemingly in the Universe, but not in it.
The Spirit, the eternal witness, is in its own nature like the void which exists both outside and inside all things, and which has neither birth nor childhood, nor youth nor old age, but is the eternal intelligence which is ever the same, knowing no change or decay .
It is the body which is born, matures, and decays. Men enthralled by illusion, seeing this, understand it not.
As the Sun (though one and the same) when reflected in different platters of water appears to be many, so by illusion the one soul appears to be many in the different bodies in which it abides .
As the void inside a jar remains the same ever after the jar is broken, so the Soul remains the same after the body is destroyed.
The knowledge of the Spirit, O Devi! is the one means of attaining final liberation; and he who possesses it is verily – yea, verily – liberated in this world, even yet whilst living, there is no doubt of that.
Neither by acts, nor by begetting offspring, nor by wealth is man liberated; it is by the knowledge of the Spirit, by the Spirit that man is liberated.”
From ‘Mahanirvana Tantra’
Do we not have to make friends with our minds, including the imagination aspect (right brain activity) rather than verbal left brain activity, help those two sides become friends before we can transcend the mind and all its aspects?
Arps,
I would say so.
Osho said the mind is a tool and you have to use it right. He didn`t give clear instructions other than meditate. There doesn’t seem to be a user manual.
How does it happen that the mind/imagination comes out with a good song or comes up with a concept like Zorba the Buddha, instead of forcing you into a sleepless night because you`re worrying about your tax returns?
How to ‘use’ the mind right to get it to work like Osho said of Gurdjieff`s idea that “people are food for the moon” (“he had a very fertile imagination”) instead of getting an anxiety attack about losing your wallet?
One of the most popular ways is to be unenlightened, ie ‘in the mind’ and then start berating others about being in ‘the mind’. It`s pretty daft, although, to be fair, those Xmas-voting turkeys are good for a laugh.
I had an epiphany in London one morning in 1984, when I realised how I judged myself about everything. What I did, what I didn’t do, say, think, feel; and I started to shake myself, sometimes literally. Saying to myself, “You’re doing it again.”
Was a turning point. Took a long time, and I look back on some of it – and talk about making mountains out of mole-hills. (There was a lot else going in. Not as simple as that).
I also stopped feeling hung-up about hang-ups. That’s very helpful; so I have a pretty decent relationship with my internal life now.
A good song, or a ‘concept’ like Zorba the Buddha comes when the mind is switched off in the ordinary sense. How many times do you hear authors, songwriters, etc. say “it just came to me”?
It was said of Shakespeare he “never blotted out a single line”, his unconscious, or whatever you might call it, just had done the work…
There’s no point in squabbling about words, imagination could easily be seen as something beyond the normal processses of mind, and not tainted by the churn of anxieties, etc. depending on one’s definitions.
In a season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness” we can say that Keats clearly had moments when his mind was not obsessed by the fact he was dying of TB.
Big P, you say:
“How many times do you hear authors, songwriters, etc. say “it just came to me”?”
That`s true, yet, generally speaking, songs come to songwriters, poems come to poets and Zorba the Buddha comes from a guy with a well-documented passion for Kazantzakis and old Buddhist writings!
I suspect that ‘imagination’, the ‘unconscious’, is actually part of the body. Like the body, you have to get your extraneous ideas of how it should be acting out of the way, so as not to disturb its function.
Trust is an important part of health. If you try and beat it into submission, condemn it and control it, you`ll probably end up as the mental equivalent of those yogis who batter their dick and bollocks into a mush and think it’s spiritual!
Frank boy, your last paragraph:
“Trust is an important part of health. If you try and beat it as submission….”
How beautiful and true!
I just had to point it out! XXX
I picked up on that remark as well, Tan.
“Trust is an important part of health.”
Frank, expand on this. Really interesting remark.
I suppose it`s just that the function of your body is, for the most part, beyond conscious volition. Like the rest of Existence.
Which is probably why these mystic chappies say stuff like “You are the universe.”
Here`s a good one:
If you don`t trust your body, how/why do you trust the ‘you’ that is doing the distrusting?
Frank boy, let’s look at it slowly.
You say: “…function of your body…beyond conscious volition…”
Or would be mind volition?
How you see the difference between mind and conscious, in what you said? Cheers!
Tan:
It`s very hard to have any fixed definitions about words like ‘mind’ and ‘conscious’. They both mean so many different things in so many different contexts.
The kind of thing that I`m on about is, for example:
‘You’ don`t beat your heart or operate your liver or kidneys or make your eyes see. It happens.
This is in spite of the fact that we say “my” heart,”my” liver, “my” kidneys, “my” eyes etc.
I wonder how much else in life is like that, without us noticing.
Here`s a groovy old version of it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYXL2WwQn1I
This is you, innit Frank?
@ frank .22 September, 2016 at 10:11 am.
A fascinating notion.
Free will. Phooey!!
There is no ‘me’, the heart is just beating, the blood is just circulating on its own and everything is just happening on its own accord – its all been programmed and I’ve totally dissolved, man, I’m surrendered.
But if you hit the guy with a sledgehammer ‘he’ will very quickly be there…
and the surrender is not so easy.
Even Osho got pissed off one night and left the auditorium because someone was laughing too much in Buddha Hall….