By
Dr. Stanley Sfekas
Professor of Philosophy
University of Indianapolis
Hinduism is a diverse system of thought with beliefs spanning
monotheism, polytheism, henotheism, monism and atheism. In this paper,
I shall strive to indicate certain structural affinities between the ideas of
Liberation from Bondage found in theistic Hinduism and Salvation in
History found in Christian thought. This entails an elucidation of the
meaning of Moksha, the Hindu counterpart of salvation.
One of the significant features of Hindu thought is a polarization of
two standpoints: the theistic and the absolutist. This polarity must be
recognized in order to understand Hinduism. Absolutist Hinduism is
characterized by its view of Liberation as liberation from Time, the
World and all that has been conditioned by time. Absolutist Hinduism
declares the world to be a Falsity. Theistic Hinduism, on the other hand,
has been shaped by the stimulus of the challenge of Buddhism and its
concern with the suffering of this world. Theistic Hinduism of all shades
stands defined by its readiness to affirm freedom, love, personality,
community, history and moral obligation, and to rediscover their spiritual
significance for man. Their positive role in the service of mans freedom
from the thralldom of unfreedom can be duly appreciated once man is
liberated from the penumbra of illusion, or Maya. There is a spiritual
purpose to history: to reclaim man estranged from himself and from
others in consequence of his estrangement from the ground of his very
being. Gods cosmic function is to help us grow into full spiritual
realization through the historical process. History, as the sphere of mans
conscious, deliberate and collective striving, is what makes possible the
realization of his values. This is not itself viewed as an accomplishment,
but as an aspect of cosmic history.
Two kinds of eschatologiesunder the categories of bondage
and liberationare used. There is a continuity between the two.
Bondage, or samsara, includes the conception of an after-life which
remains on the same level as the present life and is grounded in moral
responsibility. The corollary to this after-life concept is karma. The
individual continues from life to life in an embodied existence, the
contents and forms of his life dependent on what the individual has
performed in former lives, yet affording some scope for growth and
gradual perfection by the performance of meritorious actions. This is the
sphere of dharma.
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teacher must supply the condition as well as the truth. This particular
teacher can only be God. He acts in history, confronting man in an I and
Thou personal relationship and investing time with decisive
significance. His action gives the temporal eternal significance. Man, tied
to the temporal, is redeemed in time at the appropriate moment, a
moment which is filled with the significance of the eternal.
Moksha, then, implies the eternal conquest of the negative.
Bondage is a privation of ones will, a thwarting of compliance with
ones own unrestrained will which fulfills itself by conforming to the
divine will. Liberation, therefore, is a privation of this privation, a
thwarting of the thwarting of will, or, positively, a free, unhampered
exercise of will as in Thy will be done, which is joy itself.
There is a basic polarity in the meaning of moksha between its
positive and negative aspects. Negatively, liberation is liberation from
pain, suffering and loss. From estrangement of every kind. From the
vulnerable character of human existence. But in its positive aspect, it is
liberation or freedom to do. The free man, theologically speaking, is one
who is unhindered in his freedom of volitional conformity with the
Divine. It is the freedom of attaining union with God. Bondage is a
thwarting of ones will, and liberation is a thwarting of bondage. The
liberating agent merely arrests the arresting of the constraint or opposes
its opposing. This freedom from impediments permits the will to
experience bliss.
The second polarity of meaning that gives substance to the
theistic understanding of moksha is the polarity of the divine and the
human, of Divine Grace vs. human freedom. Acknowledging the one
without the other leads to a view of moksha either as a prize to be won
entirely by ones efforts or as a gift freely given but not earned. This
conflict runs throughout Indian culture and is even more intensely present
in Christianity in the form of opposition between grace and self-reliance.
The Christian debates concerning the Pelagian heresy, or effectual vs.
prevenient grace, have their parallel in Hindu theology.
In theistic Hinduism, grace supplies the transcendental element,
but it does not present itself as irresistible. Rather, it is received as
awaited, aspired to, and craved for with the whole of the centered self.
There is, therefore, a polar relation between self-effort and grace that is a
key characteristic of moksha. It enables the avoidance of moral legalism
and graceless moralism, on the one hand, and amoral lawlessness or else
a supra-ethical mysticism, on the other hand. Much like the polarity St.
Paul confronted in the contrast between his letters to Galatians and
Corinthians. Moksha, therefore, understood from the perspective of the
striving seeker is not exclusively Gods work utterly apart from mans