General

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
-- Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

Thus wrote W B Yeats, when he was sixty-two -- a sort of a complaint, perforce, as he was growing old. Today, things haven't truly changed. Or, have they? Not really. So much so, we could conjure up images of such a Yeatsian metaphor. Like the abundant sexuality of our young populace, the profusion of city folks, if not fish tribes, and the neurosis in our society -- "whatever is begotten, born, and dies."

Agreed that the great Irishman was growing old himself -- but, in reality, the dissimilitude betwixt sexuality and the ageless had been a fundamental component in his thought since he was very young -- in heart and spirit. One that is akin to the India of our age, or the times we live in, today.

Yeats' idea of sensual music was something that more than meets the eye, or the ear, and/or even conventional thought and wisdom. It is an extremely disturbing aspect of what is often forgotten in the reckless quest of sexuality. So also Yeats' "monuments" of the word, intellect. Yeats does not, of course, relate to practical intellect -- the reasoning power of the scientist. What he tries to connect is the spiritual intellect -- the intellect of Dante's Divine Comedy, or in our context, the intellect of great saints like Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Chaitanya, or Kabir. It is also the intellect of Plato and Plotinus: of what the spiritual intellect creates does not die. It is something that is imperishable. Or, quite simply, permanent.

Yeats never believed in the language of the absolute vis-à-vis sensuality and spiritual intellect. He thought of the two parallels as day and night, and vice versa. He often talked of what is so easily forgotten in different cultures, East or West. Yeats' spiritual intelligence was based on sensuality, on which everything else rests.

Be that as it may, in the India of today, or any other milieu, not many care about the afterlife. As a perceptive writer once remarked jocularly: "Now that no one believes in the afterlife, everyone writes." The inference is obvious. Many of our attempts have been geared to create an "immortality" without the help of the immortals, because most of our forebears lived in simple communities, but built enormous, permanent mansions, or nectars in stone, for the gods. Today, we seem to build such "castles" for financial wizards.

There's an old belief that says that whenever one makes a decision, one should think of its effect down to the seventh, or eighth, generation. This may, quite neatly, be linked to "Yeatsian" reflection. Of what is called as vertical thought. Of a positive effect in a chaotic world that is also planet Earth's endowment in the new millennium. Vertical thought is just the opposite of what would often be a decision made based on short-term profits -- in other words, a refusal to invest in the unit, or in the people who work in it.

In vertical thought, there's no disparity between men and women. Because, one automatically becomes an elder when one learns to think vertically. As a matter of fact, vertical art is very much similar to imagining the patterns of water flowing under your feet -- of monsters exploding out of Earth's waters and rising into the clouds. It's also something similar to the vast distances between the stars. As Mirabai related, speaking of her, dear Lord, Krishna [This is a longing of the vertical gaze -- something that is identical to Saint Teresa and Saint John -- both great travellers, and yet neither of them "arrives" first].

My friend, I went to the market and bought the dark-faced one.
You claim by night, I say by day.
Actually I was beating a drum all the time I was buying him.
You say I paid too much; I say too little.
Actually I put him on a scale before I bought him.
What I paid was my social body; my town body, my family body, and
All my inherited jewels…
The Holy One is my husband now.
Be with me when I lie down; you promised me this in an earlier life.

Today, more than anytime before, we are all struggling with moral questions. They are also moral dilemmas that not only define how we live, but directly affect other people's lives. Moral questions, in any age, past or present, are often difficult. They  involve risk and daring. They can lead to discomfort, just as much as they can lead to the deepest kind of comfort when you feel that you are an upright person, a person of integrity -- not a politician.

In the modern world, such decisions involve specific situations: to spend more time at home, or work; to muster the courage to oppose conflicts -- environmental and social issues, or human rights in society -- or, keep silent. Put simply, moral life is a constant backdrop in our personal and social lives. Its implications may call us to comply with or defy cultural parameters, or even definitions. It is, therefore, lived in the particular, and in the imminent challenges of our everyday lives.

These decisions in today's framework also call upon personal qualities like courage, responsibility, empathy, humour, integrity, and even generosity. Words full of meaning, yes; but, totally neglected where they matter most. Yet, one primal fact remains: they are often tested through moral action. While it's agreed that it is possible for one to have a general set of guiding moral principles, the practical implications of thought and action are not served well through an overly simplistic attitude, or a black-and-white approach to morality.

We live in a time when moral questions are being raised with a great sense of urgency. We still have too far to go in achieving moral integrity as a society and as citizens in it. More so, in the present dispensation, where more and more youngsters are being brought up by a surrogate mother or "Emp[ty]TV," not MTV, or call it what you may, diet. On the bright side of it, as has been history's theme song, human struggle between self-interest and human interest is forever inspired by the imaginations of the intellect, by our artists, and our imaginations.

Yet, the equation isn't simplistic. Our imaginations today are occupied by fear and culpability. The results, therefore, have been devastating. Still, there's hope. Because, the human mind is always wont to depend on hope. The deduction is apparent. When human beings are informed by love that is religious or secular, it envelops reverence for all living things. When we reach such an elevation, our imaginations become the driving force of moral action, not otherwise.

Let's go back to Yeats again -- in the aftermath of every political, racial, ethnical, religious, militant/terrorist, sectarian, or geographical, imbroglio. Yeats' meditations on the horrors of war, and the need for healing in morally uncertain times are as relevant today than ever before. Seamus Heaney calls Yeats' work, "necessary poetry." He adds: "Yeats touches the [very] base of our sympathetic nature while taking in at the same time the unsympathetic reality of the world to which [that] nature is constantly exposed… to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they too are an earnest of our veritable human being."

The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact can be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

The deepest and most personal moral concerns, today, coincide with a period of profound moral reassessment in our society. We are in conflict about what we expect of our young and our old, what we expect of employers and employees, how we assess rights and responsibilities, and how we value the lives of the poor and the otherwise needy. It is surely a moral failing.

The task is difficult, all right. But -- not impossible. As Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated that the most he could say of his life was that he was steadfast in his commitment to understand truth and help make it manifest in the world. It is a perfect call to reassembling what has been scattered in the India of our age, and beyond. It is also something that tells us not about just being right, but about being awake -- wakeful to suffering around us and aiming to reduce it, and not add to it.

It is a formidable task, because the complexity of contemporary life does not yield itself to elementary formulaic solutions. More so, because we live in a great deal of our imaginations. In other words, the ideas we unravel can free or imprison us. How we approach these ideas and how we act would, therefore, define who we are, and what kind of society we live in. To quote Robert Browning:

The common problem, yours, mine, everyone's
Is -- not to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be -- but finding first
What maybe, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means.

The onus is on us all -- a call that seeks ways to reaffirm our faith in the ability to live in harmony with ourselves, with each other, and Mother Earth.

It's a simile Yeats would sure acquiesce to.