The terms “Traditionalism” and “Traditionalist” have been gaining currency, reflecting an unfortunate and misleading trend. Presumably used to describe the intellectual ideas promulgated by Rene Guenon, then further developed by Ananda Coomaraswamy and Julius Evola, it instead treats those ideas as merely another perspective or school of philosophy. As such, it would then be subject to criticism and debate at that level.
First of all, it is necessary to be clear about what Tradition is and what motivated Guenon. “Tradition” must be understood in its literal sense as something “handed down” or “given across”, not as the “repetition of the past” for its own sake. What is handed down, then, is a transcendent knowledge which cannot be considered as just another perspective or worldview. In actuality, due to historical contingencies and the resultant isolation of cultures, several traditions have arisen, each reflecting the primordial Tradition.
As such, each authentic tradition is complete in itself. Thus, the “traditional man”, who follows one of those traditions has no need whatsoever to know anything about the teachings or symbols of another tradition. Everything he needs for his own self-development or self-transcendence is already there within his own tradition. Hence, it is absolutely absurd to call him a “traditionalist”, since he is simply a Hindu, or Taoist, or Sufi.
It is only In the modern Western world, which has lost its own tradition, that the question of multiple traditions is forced to arise. Guenon, in his search for authentic tradition in the West, studied the various traditions and noted their commonality – not in their empirical manifestation, but in the transcendent knowledge they carry. Guenon compared this knowledge, hidden in the metaphysics and symbols, of the traditions in his voluminous writings. Nevertheless, not even Guenon was a “traditionalist”; instead he embraced the authentic tradition of a Sufi lifestyle, in his intellectual (not religious) conversion.
As for those who dare call themselves “traditionalists”, Guenon writes:
[“traditionalists” refer] to people who only have a sort of tendency or aspiration towards tradition without really knowing anything at all about it; this is the measure of the distance dividing the “traditionalist” spirit from the truly traditional spirit, for the latter implies a real knowledge …
Ref: Chapter XXXI: “Tradition and Traditionalism” in The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times
@Cologero
I am not saying that Hindus are all knowing and all tolerant! One must remember that modern India is a different place from that of the classical one–it’s a wounded civilization as Naipaul put it. In fact if they were smarter, they would not be in the state they are in, considering they have a unique civilization behind them. Yet despite its bad history with all kinds of invasions with much of the aristocracy constantly killed throughout the centuries, no doubt something remains there, in however strange a form, which I find remarkable, for most cultures would simply not continue to exist in such circumstances.
I like this site because I find that you guys believe in the fact
that not all lifestyles are the same, in this day and age it is difficult for people to realize this. Which is what our upbringing also teaches us…
I pointed out the Coomaraswamy claimed that “Hindus feel at home” when reading Dante and Eckhart, both Christians. Why do you gloss over that?
It is not arguing over terminology. We have many people who understand these matters in the East as well as the West, but we have the sad case in which people and states still fight over religion. Take the historical case of Hindus and Buddhists. What happened to them as a consequence of their innate religious tolerance? You cannot ignore history and you cannot argue that certain religions are simply agressive and remain so. While saints can be found in all religions and some common principles can be seen in them, the essential framework of the world’s religions are not the same, although a perfected Christian has something in common with the perfected Buddhist–different paths might try to lead towards that which is “higher” but they happen to be different paths nevertheless. It is a good idea to see how these paths are different.
If you read the Chinese scholarly accounts of Kashmir, the scholars can hardly distinguish between the Hindus and Buddhists who lived in relative harmony. It is a fact that the ancients never fought over religion in the fashion the abrahamics do. Even Alexander’s conquests were not as disruptive in our parts (look at Bactria in which the Hellenic and Buddhist elements joined, to create something beautiful, I believe it was Nietzsche who hoped the “ideal” of the new type of man would combine the ceaseless activity of the West with the comtemplativeness of the East) in the sense that the Islamic encroachments and later British rule was.
I have merely said that instead of seeing doctrines like Sufism as hermetically sealed and cut off from the character of the peoples that contributed to it, I don’t see why they are not studied in a larger historical sense. If they were, many religious fanatics would see that religions are not hermetically sealed off from each other. In the case of Sufism, if some people see it as complete in itself and if it satisfies them fine, it does not satisfy others who are also the heirs of living traditions not lacking in initiatory aspects in the least. As I said, when I read some of the Sufi authors, I could not relate to the sense of “passion” and “longing”(much of it seems to be a reaction against Islamic orthodoxy, and to me a great deal of it appears repressed (I am not denying the beauty of it in the context in which it appears)). Most of the practices seem nothing new to us at all in terms of what the different schools in our own traditions have taught way before Sufism even existed, so one just leans towards that which satisfies one. Moreover, is what Guenon and the prernnialists saying really new? Is it not already found in the older religious outlook of mankind, which allows for a plural outlook without in the least accepting relativism? This to me is the essence of the Aryan religions.
Why do places like Kashmir where the Sufis copied the HIndus and Buddhists initially in their practices turn suddenly radicalized all of a sudden? Could it be that one cannot overlook the larger religious context in which Sufism operates and is a part of? Why is it that Sufism is dying out in many Islamic countries?
These are also questions to consider.
As for Evola, I agree on his understanding of the Greco-Roman world: this is exactly the way most educated Hindus see it. Hindus feel at home when they read about the Greeks, and even the Romans, although I wonder if certain aspects of the contemplative civilization of the Greeks was not lost due to the Roman conquest? As for his ideas of reviving that tradition in the West, I am not one to comment on it: the East still has living traditions from the oldest religious fount of mankind of which we are the direct heirs. It is the West that has hijacked certain terms such as Aryan and what not for political purposes, not us, so that the original sense of the terms have been tainted.
As for the new right, I wholly agree with their reading of Greece and Rome. But I doubt that it is an effective political movement as the memory of what they are trying to recover has been lost to a great extent to the lay public in the West due to their Christian heritage–only people with a great deal of learning and knowlege of Greece and Rome can really understand it and recover it for themselves: it requires a great deal of scholarship and knowledge of ancient languages, so you see people like Arturo Reghini, Evola, Neitzsche and others can explain it.
Generally movements on the right are reactions. I don’t like to comment on them as different societies opt for politics which suit their particularities.
However, it does get on my nerves when people start comparing the Gita to the “greater and lesser wars” without understanding the proper context. Even the Vedanta is but a tiny part of Hinduism, does not do justice to all of it…
For the West and the Abrahamic world, the perennialist attitude is perhaps the way to go, as it can bring them beyond their dogmatic traditions…
Well, you get the point, so I won’t quibble over terminology.
Well said. I addressed some of these issues in an earlier post – http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=632
For what it’s worth, I prefer the term perennialism over the much abused “traditionalism” because I think it is necessary to make ease of reference what is no less than a “school” just as in Platonism or any other categorical distinction. When one reads perennialist authors one cannot help but notice the unity of their views and this unity is made even more solid by the fact that there exists real initiatic lineages descending from certain perennialists such as Schuon and Lings.
On the other hand, what strikes me as absurd are those who usually refer to themselves as “radical traditionalists” but who are radically different from any perennialist I know in that they merely have read a few books by Evola and having cherry picked his ideas have distorted them into their own brand of “esoteric neo-nazism” and the “new right.”
That being said, Guenon forces us by his intellectuality to reclaim from error important terms such as intuition, intellect, tradition, principle, etc., and traditionalism is just another one of those terms that people need to be re-educated on.
Re Kashmiri Shaivism: one that comes to mind is Lakshmanjoo who died recently…
there is a Kashmir Shaivism group on facebook!
there was a graphic exhibition on the exodus of HIndus from the valley, but I am no fan of Shankar shown here:
http://refugees-in-their-own-country.blogspot.com/2008/05/blog-post.html
http://kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com/
Regarding Kashmiri Shaivism, will ask father in law who is quite into it. I am sure most scholarly sources written before 1950 are generally reliable, as is my general rule of thumb for reading Indian history! The new writings on India are mostly Marxist-Leftist-Liberal white-washed history…
My husband is from Srinagar. I am also from the Himalaya region but not Kashmir. We are both Brahmins and interested in our history. I have been greatly disturbed by the plight of the Kashmiri Hindu community which was forced to flee from their centuries of habitat after the start of terrorism there (around the time when Americans left Afghanistan). It is hard to have a distinct culure left when you are scattered as a community and have no homeland anymore. The history of the Hindus in Kashmir is tragic, and even the Muslims there are faring badly today due to the terrorism, and I feel sad for them as well. Here is an amateur site that contains some info about Kashmiri Hindus and their traditions; I do not believe that they should have a separate homeland but that they should be allowed to live in the valley as they have always done…I will try to find some good sources on Kashmiri Shaivism. Probably Aurel Stein is a good source on anything from there as he translated the first history of Kashmir from the Sanskrit which is the Rajatarangini. It is sad what this beautiful place has turned into…My husband has resigned himself to the fact that this is lost now forever, but I am still disturbed by what happened to the HIndus there. This was a highly educated community so they have been successful wherever they emigrated (even though the government did not help them in any way), as a consequence even resettling people back there is a problem. We can only weep at this loss, and hope to teach these traditions to our children…
http://www.panunkashmir.org/
http://www.siraurelstein.org.uk/
Also, you mention that you are from Kashmir. Do you have any experience with the tradition of Kashmir Saivism? I would like to learn more about it.
Kadambari – It is interesting to read about your first-hand experiences in areas that people like myself have only read about. In regards to whether or not all traditions are ‘the same,’ I think it is a matter of there being one metaphysical and supreme reality which the different religious traditions are expressions of. So while they are, in a sense, the same in origin, they are not the same in form. That which is the same is most apparent in the greatest minds and souls – so while there is great difference between Buddhism and Christianity, there is not so much between Buddha and Meister Eckhart. While there are the differences you mention between Hinduism and Islam, these differences melt away in someone like Kabir. There is a great line from one of his poems where he says: “The Hindu says Ram is the Beloved. The Turk says Rahim. Then they kill each other. No one knows the secret.”
Keep in mind also the difference between a tradition in its ideal form, and its actual, worldly form, which will always be tainted by human folly, since traditions exist in part to purify that folly.
In regards to D.T. Suzuki, he was a fierce Japanese nationalist, and this perspective informs his work. Some people feel that his writings on Zen are distorted by his nationalism, but personally, I don’t find it problematic, so long as one keeps it in mind.
It is probably human nature not to want to admit borrowings and influence even when they are apparent. Sufism did not arise out of the blue–the home of Sufism was Balkh (current day Afghanistan), where there was a confluence of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Brahminism, before the area got converted. So it is easy to see how the Aryan mysticism penetrated a matter of fact religion like Islam enriching it with Sufism–after all the Sufis were mostly Persians and it was their Persian mysticism that flowed out despite their conversion to an Arab religion, enriching that religion itself. Even my educated Iranian friends see it this way. It not without a reason that Sufism did not arise in the deserts of Saudi Arabia (where Wahabism is popular–different peoples, different ideals, different aesthetics). So to ingore these kinds of subtleties is to deal with half-truths.
I guess it is human nature. I was reading a book by Dr. Suzuki on Buddhism where he says the Japanese understood nature much better than the Indians historically! When? Japan became Buddhist relatively recently. As they practised Shinto, they understood nature as did the American Indians, it would be more appropriate to say, no better no less. So even men of high calibre are wont to make such assertions.
I have a hard time believing that all traditions are the same. Excuse my ignorance. For example, a great deal of what you find in Sufism seems to be lifted and plagiarized from the older traditions–namely, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Brahminism. Especially in our regions, the Sufis were known for trickery (in Kashmir) and pretended to be like HIndus and Buddhists to win them over so they would think that Sufism was just based on the same principles on which the various Hindu and Buddhist sects were based on, which indeed fooled a lot of HIndus and Buddhists who then became Sufis without realizing this is a tradition based on an entirely different religion which is quite at odds with theirs. It was a kind of stealth conversion and something Muslims actively engage in to gain converts and is allowed in their religion–callled takiya or deception. So I for one am deeply skeptical about the notion that all traditions are founded on the same principles. It would be absurd not to recognize the borrowings from other traditions, especially in the case of the upstart newer traditions. I think even Evola would agree with this! I do not doubt the Sufi can be as spiritual as the HIndu, but why ignore historical differences in traditions? When I read the Christian philosophers like Augustine, Aquinas they appeal to my better self. Yet I am fully aware that they are operating from an altogether different religious background which is not the same as the one I am familiar with. Why lump everything together as one and not recognize qualitative differences between traditions? I am sure if the Sufi’s ancestors had not been converted at the point of a sword of a Turk, he would be a practising Zoroastrian.
And, Sir, what do we do until that Summa of the Philosophia Perennis is completed?
Is not the Vedanta a Tradition complete in itself? Is it lacking something that only Sufism or Taoism, for example, can fulfil?
Fear expressed here is not ingenuine.It is apparent clearly that forces have been vigerously active to hijack the whole issue to get certain perspective authenticated and supported. The vision of perennis which AKC had in mind has been universal and against any particularization as evident from the following para from the last note on the last page of his Hinduism and Buddhism. He writes,”In deed ,the time is coming when a Summa of the Philosophia Perennis will have to be written,impartially,based on all orthodox sources whatever………………
to emphasize that the Philosophia Perennis, Sanaatan Dharma,Akaaliko Dhammo, is always and everywhere consistent with itself…Citations …. not made as a contribution to literary history,we do not suggest that borrowing of doctrines or symbols have been made in either direction,nor that there has been an independent origination of similar ideas,but that there is a common inheritance from a time long antedating our texts,of what St. Augustine calls the “wisdom that was not made,but is at this present,as it hath ever been,and so shall ever be” (Conf.IX.10).
As lord Chalmers truly says of the parallels between….”there is here no question of one creed borrowing from the other;the relationship goes deeper than that”(Buddha’s Teachings.HOS.37,1932,p.xx).