In Search of the Good Life: A Pedagogy for Troubled Times

2. Walking Humbly with Your God: J

40 2. Walking Humbly with your God Jñanadev and the Warkari Movement from afar (o so far) I begin to see the city of Pandharpur. —Vasant Sawant Coming from the West, the contemporary traveler to India often has the sense of visiting another planet. many customs and practices seem alien or remote, as do the underlying beliefs and motives. If this is true of contemporary India, how much greater would this sense of distance be if visiting medieval India? That place, with its philosophy, literature, and religion, would seem like a lost city, surrounded by nearly impenetrable underbrush. How would one approach such a place, from our modern angle, without disrupting or violating its intrinsic order? Clearly, if such a visit were attempted, one would have to approach not as a conquistador but rather as a student, eager not to impart instruction but to receive it. These considerations guide my steps as I seek to encounter and interrogate one of the great and justly revered figures of medieval India: the marathi poet-saint and thinker Jñanadev (1275–1296). (His name is often rendered dnyanadev or dnyaneshwar, and he was a near contemporary of Saint Bonaventure .) accordingly, the tenor of my comments throughout is that of a commemorative search—a search for whatever Jñanadev may have to teach a visitor coming from my time and place. even at first glance, Jñanadev’s lifework is enticing and impressive . In his short life, he managed to compose a major philosophical treatise (the Amritanubhava), a large number of religious poems Jñanadev and the Warkari movement 41 (so-called abhangas), an extensive poetic commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (titled, after his name, Jñaneshwari or Dnyaneshwari), and a number of shorter works. appreciation and admiration are bound to deepen by a closer reading of these texts. despite a diversity of genres, Jñanadev’s writings are held together or animated by a common theme. This theme—which may well be Jñanadev’s chief legacy to modern visitors like us—is the centrality of love, or bhakti. Here, bhakti does not mean an emotive sentimentalism but rather a genuine turning-about of the whole being (including mind, heart, and senses). In this respect, his outlook stands in sharp contrast to that of Western modernity, which in large measure has been wedded to a “cognitive ” project conducted chiefly under scientific auspices: the project of rendering everything “known” and hence amenable to (technical) control. Without spurning knowledge, Jñanadev’s voice reaches us on a different level. faithful to the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, he gives pride of place to bhakti marga, without dismissing the other paths, or margas. although of a subtle mind (and despite his given name), Jñanadev is not primarily a devotee of jñana, if by that term we mean an abstract reasoning seeking to gain universal knowledge of things. Similarly, he is not simply a doer or a political activist, if (for the moment) we translate karma yoga in that sense. Still, over the centuries, his life and work have inspired a large group of followers in his homeland, with concrete practical consequences. for present purposes, I focus my discussion on three main topics: the lifeworld of Jñanadev as the nourishing soil of his writings; the central direction of his philosophical thought, as revealed chiefly in the Amritanubhava; and the so-called Warkari Panth, a popular movement largely inspired by his work and centered around periodic pilgrimages to the sacred city of Pandharpur. An Outcaste Brahmin although distant in time and place, Jñanadev’s work is not entirely inaccessible to us because, by his own admission, his poetry has always been anchored in the concrete life experience of an ordinary human being who was not given to exotic flights of fancy. Hence, no visit to this medieval saint could be fruitful without some acquaintance with 42 Prominent Searchers in the Past the fortunes and misfortunes of his life. although surrounded by legend , much of his actual life story—including his genealogy—has been transmitted over the centuries more or less intact, with only minor variations. my point here is not to recount the details of his life story or his ancestry—something that has been done repeatedly by experts on medieval India. Instead, I want to recall, in the spirit of this commemorative search, some particularly striking or revealing aspects of...