Who is this gentleman? Is it Wrong? Or is it Kong, by any chance?Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1936
Letter ID: 1614
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
April 27, 1936
Again “What poem?” strange, strange, very strange! Didn’t you receive a carte blanche from me day before yesterday? Perhaps you will ask “What carte blanche?” and I will utter – “Oh Fate! If guru is so forgetful, the shishya can be worse.”
And didn’t I tell you that it was an extravagant and unwarrantable idea to demand a poem for such a grammatical purpose and I kept the carte blanche that I might use it for other purposes? What’s this shishya who doesn’t read his guru’s objurgations however illegible?!
Somebody writing the biography of Confucius in Bengali says: “Why do the Dharmagurus marry, we can’t understand. Buddha did and his wife’s tale is হৃদয় বিদারক...”1
Why? What is there বিদারক in it?
He goes on: “Sri Aurobindo, though not Dharmaguru, has done it too, and can be called ধর্ম পাগল.”2 Well, Sir?
Well, it is better to be ধর্ম পাগল than to be a sententious ass and pronounce on what one does not understand.
“We feel so sad about his wife, so too about the wife of Confucius.”
Poor sorrowful fellows!
“It is the same about কং.3 He had even a son and two daughters.”
[Sri Aurobindo put a? above “কং”.]
Who is this gentleman? Is it Wrong? Or is it Kong, by any chance?
“So we don’t understand why they marry and why this change comes soon after marriage.”
Perfectly natural – they marry before the change – then the change comes and the marriage belongs to the past self, not to the new one.
“The wives of Buddha and Ramakrishna felt proud when they were deserted.”
Then what’s the harm?
“If married life is an obstacle to spirituality, then they might as well not marry.”
No doubt. But then when they marry, there is not an omniscient ass like this biographer to tell them that they were going to be ধর্ম গুরু [dharma guru] or ধর্ম পাগল [dharma pāgal] or in any way concerned with any other ধর্ম [dharma] than the biographer’s.
So according to this biographer, all of you, except Christ, showed a lack of wisdom by marrying!
Well, if a biographer of Confucius can be such an unmitigated ass, Confucius may be allowed to be unwise once or twice, I suppose.
I touch upon a delicate subject, but it is a puzzle.
Why delicate? and why a puzzle? Do you think that Buddha or Confucius or myself were born with a prevision that they or I would take to the spiritual life? So long as one is in the ordinary consciousness, one lives the ordinary life – when the awakening and the new consciousness come, one leaves it – nothing puzzling in that.
B finds that the power of his glasses has to be increased. Shall I take him to the hospital? He will bear the cost of the glasses. But the power will go on increasing steadily.
Yes; you can get him examined and take the expert’s opinion. One can react against the necessity of increase.
What do you think of Bates’ system? Shall we try it for B?
No. Bates is successful when done “under” a Bates man or with a conscientious perseverence and intelligence, but it doesn’t succeed with many under other circumstances.
1 hṛday vidārak: heart-rending.
2 dharma pāgal: mad about religion
3 Con: short for Confucius.