​Shakespeare seen in the light of the bhakti tradition

​Address at World Literary E-conference on the 400th death anniversary of Shakespeare

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
scientific explanation the scientific explanation at the World Conference on Literature as a World Unifier and I’ll be speaking on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare talking about how I as a Bhakti Yogi see Shakespeare. The best of the human spirit is often channeled in literature to be immortalized for all time to come and some of the best literary brains have gifted future generations with their great literatures. Shakespeare in many perspectives reign supreme among the literary giants in the Western world.
I come from a tradition of Bhakti Yoga wherein we focus on devotion to a transcendental person as the process and as the process and purpose of life. I would like to take a few quotes from Shakespeare and a few points from his writings and explain how I see them from the perspective of modern or postmodern Bhakti Yogi practicing in modern and postmodern times. The quote of Shakespeare that resonated with me the most was that the world is a stage and I had read this several decades before I was introduced to Bhakti Yoga and the Bhakti wisdom helped me to appreciate it better.
When we talk about a stage we do talk about the fact that something is being dramatized and depicted on a stage and as has been wisely said fiction is an illusion that illumines reality. Fiction is not true but actually it helps us to understand the truth. Through fiction we can better understand what it is that we are doing that how we can take decisions in our life and how different decisions have different ramifications.
So when we say the world is a stage while some might take it to mean that the world is a false but I take it as implying that the world is an arena for our for our illumination, for our education. There is a depiction there which is meant to uplift. So the stage is where the attention of the audience is riveted and yet the stage is not where the audience belongs.
The audience exists in a separate world different from the stage and they get caught in the stage and when Shakespeare says the world is a stage that from the Bhakti perspective refers to the fact that our consciousness is caught in this world. In the Bhagavad Gita which is a prominent yoga text, specifically a Bhakti yoga text, it is said in the 13th chapter 26 text that Purusha Prakriti Sthohi Bhoomte Prakriti Jaan Gunaan Karanam Guna Sangosya Sada Sadyoni Janmasu that our spiritual essence we can refer to it as soul although this word soul is not a precise translation of the Sanskrit concept of Atman. The word soul has certain connotations which do not apply to the Sanskrit word Atman.
The primary being that the Atman is the essence of who we are and is distinct from the body and the Atman is considered to be a tangible higher dimensional being whereas the word soul is often used as a metaphorical reference to our non-material essence but such nuances apart the self is the Atman is the observer and the Atman gets caught in the things happening in this world because of the desire to delight in whatever is being depicted in this world whatever is playing out on the screen of this world on the stage of this world. Related to the same theme of the world being a stage is another quote of Shakespeare which talks about the incoherence of the world or of life in this world. It says life is like a tale told by a fool with much noise and no meaning.
I’m paraphrasing here but suffice it to say that this can be a jolting analysis of life as we see it of life and yet today with the advent of the postmodern ethos we are being increasingly compelled to recognize how many of the traditional conventional sources of meaning are no longer intellectually satisfactory and thus the search for meaning itself is often deconstructed as covert attempt to gain political or religious or intellectual power by the dispensers of meaning over the seekers of meaning and Marxism which tried to reinterpret all of society in terms of class struggles ended up creating its own classes of the ruled and the rulers. So as Viktor Frankl reveals so movingly in his Man’s Search for Meaning his autobiographical analytic narrative of his experiences as a inmate during the horrendous Nazi pogrom against Jews, he reveals how it is the search for meaning that brings life to life and not just conceptually but literally people who feel that their life has no meaning soon give up life they die faster they wither faster so the will to live is strongly associated with the meaning of life and yet if we see Shakespeare himself does draw elaborate majestic stories which obviously meant something to him and meant something and have meant something for people over the centuries so even in the repudiation of meaning there is underlying it a search for meaning there is an attempt to create meaning in meaninglessness by denying the presence of meaning and as the stories whether they are in fiction or whether they are in real life whether they culminate in anything meaningful or not they progress essentially in a search for meaning and that search is what is crucial for our understanding of who we are and how we can progress move forward within the narrative arc of whether it’s our story or our life. Another motive in Shakespeare stories is of destiny or providence or fate.
Many of the actions of the characters may even seen from today’s perspective seem fatalistic as when certain characters wonder to do or not to do as the famous quote to try to change things or to try to accept things and Shakespeare’s writings demonstrate a wide variety of responses but the majority of the responses do gravitate towards an acknowledgement sometimes unspoken sometimes verbalized that human will is ineffectual against destiny. In the Indian bhakti tradition there are also classical stories which are called the epics the Ramayana which is the description of the story of the descent of Ram who is considered an incarnation of God descended to the earth and there is the Mahabharata which is also the story of God in his manifestation as Krishna and his devotees the five warrior heroes known as the Pandavas and therein at one particular point when the villain or the villain’s blind father to be more specific who is blinded by his attachment to his villainous son when Dhritarashtra tries to rationalize his inaction by ascribing the course of events to destiny the will of destiny his younger brother who is a wise insightful seer cuts through the blind Kings rationalization and states that destiny determines the consequences of our actions not our actions themselves so that means that whether Romeo or Juliet meet or not if we take this theme of destiny determining the consequences of our actions not our actions themselves then we could apply it that whether Romeo and Juliet are ultimately able to unite or not that will vary from that will vary depending on the will of destiny but their endeavoring to meet that is up to their individual initiative and the misunderstandings that may separate them that cause them that cause their budding and then in blossoming love to end tragically is that destiny are the misunderstandings that cause the separation and cause their ultimately the tragic end of the story there is a development of emotions throughout and there is the understanding that if things could have worked differently then the results would have been different that is that if those who were in the know of things so they had been a little more alert they could have changed and Romeo and Juliet could have well have been united if only the messengers had reached on time their messages had not been misunderstood so destiny although Shakespeare does acknowledge it plays a role and if we look at our own lives we live in an ethos where the fruits of human endeavor are vividly manifest to us through the say the products of science and technology and these fruits while impressive no doubt they may numb us or blind us to the reality that human will is not omnipotent that even with the best of our efforts there can be things which are not in our control and Shakespeare’s talking about destiny enables us to recognize that I am not omnipotent I am not God I am not the controller of everything and rather than being disempowering this understanding this right understanding of our place in the overall scheme of things is actually empowering therefore if we understand who are in the truth of who we are in the light of what we love lies the deepest fulfillment of the innermost core of our being the bhakti tradition explains that at our core we are spiritual beings and we are meant to love the supreme spiritual being and this love between the soul and the supreme is the eternal spiritual romance that is being played out in a world beyond this world beyond the stage of this world in Shakespeare’s terms is the life eternal in the real world and loving exchanges between the supreme and the soul between the supreme consciousness and the infinite consciousness in the finite consciousness they have been in the bhakti tradition the staff of some of the most exquisite works of art be the literature or poetry or architecture and as a bhakti yogi I cannot but fondly wish that if Shakespeare had known about the ancient histories of India if he could have used his literary creativity and literary and linguistic expertise his mastery which he used for retelling ancient Greco-Roman sagas such as those surrounding Julius Caesar and others if he had brought his skills to play in depicting say the in retelling and depicting the stories of Ram or Krishna what are told in the Ramayana the Mahabharata the world would have been blessed with an extraordinary synthesis of literary creativity used to convey vivid spirituality there have been many memorable works of literature of devotional literature with profuse uses of literary ornaments which is Sanskrit. Sanskrit has been the main language of the intellectual tradition little intellectual literary tradition of India and within that there are also very beautiful figures of speech which are categorized into two categories called Shabda Alankar and Artha Alankar there are the ornaments literary ornaments centered on the words the sound of the words the phonetics and the semantics and their literary ornaments centered on the meaning of words Artha Alankar and these have been profusely used in the devotional poetry that has been literature written poetry and literature that have been composed in the Indian tradition one example of the stunning impressiveness of the Sanskrit poetry is a book-length version of palindrome palindromes are examples wherein the same word when seen in reverse comes out to either be the same or as a variant of palindrome we could have something which has its own meaning something which you read in the reverse way also has meaning able was I ere I saw Elba is a famous saying attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte when he was incarcerated in Elba Shakespeare uses palindrome Shakespeare uses various literary devices extensively and there is in the Indian tradition a whole book-length work which when read in front to back tells the story of Ram and when they read from back to front tells the story of Krishna it’s a work of breathtaking literary creativity and fortunately unfortunately such devotional creativity is as of now unavailable to the world because Sanskrit is not such a well-known language the bhakti tradition was popularized in the Western world by the spiritual master of my spiritual master Shila Prabhupada and he inspired millions of people all over the world to spiritualize their talents and while reminiscing about the achievements of Shakespeare on this anniversary occasion I can only fondly hope that what Shakespeare did in English to tell and immortalize the many of the Greco-Roman stories that some one in future will do for do for the stories of the bhakti tradition in English that would be if a retelling artistically appealing poetically surcharged literally scintillating presentation of these epics in today’s lingua franca English would be a remarkable marriage of the East and the West and the bhakti tradition all of one’s talents are meant to be the creativity is perfected when used to glorify the supreme creator and with this fond hope that a memory of Shakespeare’s creativity will fuel the desire for a fragment of similar creativity being used to channel the beauty of the conception of spiritual love and the conception of the love between the finite and infinite consciousness that is the heart of the bhakti tradition that that love will be conveyed in the English language with that aspiration I would like to end this recollection this meditation on Shakespeare from a bhakti perspective.
Thank you. Should birthday celebrations for devotees children