This blog was originally penned on 24 October 2008. It is one among many dozen blogs that have not been released publicly on the Web. I will be gradually refreshing and releasing all those unpublished blogs on this website. They are generally short and tightly focused pieces of writing, readable in a few minutes. Where possible, I have retained the original contextual immediacy and topical relevance. I have used the IAST transliteration scheme for the Sanskrit terms; consult the link for the correct pronunciation.

The upshot of this blog is that caste is internal and spiritual in nature, and that all individuals may exhibit all four castes at different times—according to attitude to action—regardless of birth or occupation.

House cleaning before Deepavali

This is Deepavali week. We are also having dinner guests tonight. So, I spent much of the day sprucing up the house from front porch to back toilet while my wife looked after the more essential culinary side.

When I was doing the cleaning chores, I asked myself why was I doing them. As different answers flashed in my mind, I realized that they were all applicable, but each flavour of answer held within itself a secret: it determined the caste of the action. Since we are talking about caste à la Hinduism, I will first explain caste before telling you my tale of today.

The Four Castes

The ancient wise people of India discerned that there were four great goals of life. They called these puruṣārtha. These four great goals are:

1. fulfilment of desire or kāma;

2. acquisition of wealth or artha;

3. establishment of righteousness or dharma; and

4. quest of spiritual liberation or mokṣa.

Humankind was also partitioned or classified according to which of these four major goals predominated in their individual lives. The caste linkage was so:

1. kāma <=> śudra

2. artha <=> vaiśya

3. dharma <=> kṣatriya

4. mokṣa <=> brāhmaṇa

This is the logical origin of the four castes.

The Spiritual Meaning of Caste

It is the mental attitude rather than the physical body that determines caste. It is not the birth-pedigree, but the operating system of the mind, that determines caste. Caste is not rigid and restricting, but is instead fluid and freeing, based on one’s own choice.

Moreover, because the mind constantly fluctuates with time, and because human aspiration and motivation oscillate with time and deed, the caste of a person changes accordingly. It is not fixed for all time but varies with mood, moment, and movement.

Why clean house?

Now, back to my cleaning chores. I asked the question, “Why am I cleaning house?” My mind reflected back many answers from which I have distilled these four archetypes:

1. Because I want to impress the guests that we keep a very clean house.

2. A clean house and a clean bathroom will encourage guests to leave everything as clean as they saw it: so the house will remain clean after the event.

3. Cleanliness promotes health and well-being. My guests should not suffer allergic reactions from dust and dirt.

4. My guests are representatives of the Almighty. Therefore I must show my devotion and reverence to the Almighty by cleaning the house.

These four attitudes of mind correspond respectively to the śudra, vaiśya, kṣatriya, and brāhmaṇa states respectively. The action has not changed; it remains the same. But the mental attitude or underlying motivation is different in each case. It starts out by being wholly self-centred and changes shade by shade into an action that is totally selfless.

Caste and Action

Caste is not dependent on action but on the attitude to action. To ligate caste to activity and make each trade or profession into a caste is to grossly distort caste and its spiritual purpose and meaning. There is no leather-working caste and no medical-doctor caste any more than there is a thinking caste or a breathing caste. There is only attitude to action, and that attitude determines the “instantaneous” caste of the person performing that action.

It is in an attempt to make brāhmanas of us all—who will find ultimate freedom—that Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa has graciously said in the Bhagavad Gīta [9:27]:

yat karoṣi yadaśnāsi yaj juhoṣi dadāsi yat
yat tapasyasi kaunteya tat kuruṣva mad-arpaṇam

Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer in sacrifice, whatever you donate
Whatever austerities you practise, O son of Kunti, do that as an offering unto Me.

Epilogue

Galileo’s Thermometer

Galileo’s Thermometer is an ideal metaphor for my idea of caste. The device is the same, but different temperatures result in different bulbs rising to the top or falling to the bottom. The rising and falling of different bulbs represents the changing caste of a person performing the same action, even as his or her attitude to that action changes.

If you are intrigued by the Galileo Thermometer per se, you can see a short video here [1] and a long video here [2].

Other viewpoints

My interpretation of caste in this blog has been wholly abstract, philosophical, and spiritual. I consider caste as ever-changing, like a quantum fluctuation. Some might call such a view unrealistic or Utopian.

Caste is embedded in the social and economic fabric of contemporary India at a very deep level. It has been tied to birth and to hereditary occupation. Several eminent social thinkers do not see it as an evil, but rather as the gluon that has kept and still keeps Indian society together. Intellectuals like R Vaidyanathan [3] and Gurcharan Das [4] have examined caste from a broader perspective, and the interested reader is referred to works such as theirs for a different—and more pragmatic—take on caste in India.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to “Plow and Hearth” for permission to use their magnificent image of a Galileo’s Thermometer in this blog.

Feedback

Please email me your comments and corrections.

A PDF version of this article is available for download here:

References

•  Bhagavad Gita (1)
•  caste (1)
•  Hinduism (1)