The Self and the Other

I

The old mountains wake up like children, dazzling and sparkling in the sun. By mid-afternoon, they resume their ancient habits. They smoke their ascetic grass, and daze away into oblivion, within a hazy mist of rain and clouds. This happens every day in the Himalayas. The snow leopard, as shy as a god, also becomes a wraith by mid-afternoon, and the only chance that a traveller has is around dawn — this was told to me when I had arrived at Kedarnath. 

Few kilometres up the Akash Ganga — the mountains which loom over the town, is Chorabari Tal — a lake near a glacier, where the snow leopards come to drink every dawn. It is also said that one can catch a sight of them from a nearby cliff, Bhairav Jhap, where pilgrims used to jump to death for instant salvation — a practice that was banned by the British Government in the 19th century. Death now in Kedarnath only happens unexpectedly, by chance or fate, rather than by human will or intent. The lure of salvation has also lost its charm for the modern day pilgrims; they come here to pray for more mundane earthly desires. 

The shores of the lake where the snow leopards leave their pug marks is nearly 6 km away; one has to start the trek around 2 am in the night and reach before the golden light reflects over the ice waters. It is late September and the bite of the cold winds is becoming fierce every passing hour. I wake up at 1 am after a short sleep, and a dream of a storm in the seas or perhaps, the wings of white owls in flight.

When I venture out, it is so cold that I almost freeze. With a heavy heart, I exhale vapours and abandon my plan to trek up to the lake. I have seen snow leopards in captivity in Darjeeling, but my wish to see one in the wild, has to wait.

I couldn’t go to sleep again, and when the light appeared at my window, I decided to take a walk around the town. I had visited the temple on the very first day. I had felt a strange throbbing in my forehead when I had entered the inner sanctum. I go to the temple again but I feel only a faint throbbing; not as intense as yesterday. It is a curious experience — neither pleasant nor painful — but I have no answers which can explain the occurrence. 

I drink four cups of tea at a shop, warm my hands and smoke a cigarette. The lighter doesn’t work again; there is little oxygen in such an altitude to make it work: I use a match box. Then I wander within the town. 

I feel glad that Kedarnath is still not accessible by road. One has to trek down for 10 km to Gaurikund to catch a transport. This saves the place from excessive human intrusion. But still there are too many people, and I wonder how long the ecological balance can last. 

Then I wander away from the town. I observe the surroundings and gaze at the peaks. The sight of snowcapped mountains always does something to my soul. I feel cleansed from within; I feel happiness in my heart. Then I think, in about three weeks’ time, the town will be abandoned and the temple will close. Everything will be covered with snow — a cold desolate whiteness will push the people to the lower altitudes and increase the territory of the snow leopards. Then the summer will arrive next year; the freeze will recede, the people will be back, so will the pilgrims and the travellers. And the cycle will continue, like it has been, for ages.

I wander back towards the town and I see a crowd murmuring amongst themselves; there is a sudden buzz of excitement. Soon I discover the reason. A Naga sage has appeared. He is sitting about fifty feet away, near a rock and smoking grass. There are known to be fierce, and people fear their curses. They are the ash covered Shaivite sect of sages, clothed in mystery and secrecy; they live as a community at a higher altitude than Kedarnath, which is at 11755 ft. This is first sight of them this year, a man tells me. I ask him whether it is fine to walk up to the sage. The man is startled by my ignorance or stupidity. “He will curse you or may hit you with his trident’’, he says, “No one walks up to a Naga sadhu, except a mad man.”

Only few years later, when Jupiter is in Aquarius and the Sun has entered Aries, I would enter a camp of Nagas from the Mahanirvani Sect at the Kumbh Mela in Hardwar, but then in Kedarnath, it was my first sighting of a Naga sage, and I didn’t want to let go the opportunity to do something more, other than to stare from a distance. 

I didn’t have the courage to do the trek to the lake; the cold was too severe in the night. Instead of a snow leopard, I had even a rarer sighting of another dweller of the “abode of snow”. It was an unexpected gift, and I took a slow deep breath. I was feeling no fear but an unexplained calmness. Decision requires thoughts. It was not a decision but a play of instinct. Without thinking anything, I walked up to the sage, while the people were shouting from behind and calling me back. The Naga sage decided not to notice me and was still smoking his chillum. I could smell the strong marijuana, and sat beside him in silence.

I  shall not reveal in entirety what happened next. Few things he told me destroyed the word that doesn’t really exist — apart from our imagination — “rationality”. I shall keep the parts away which were only meant for me. Those words are still feeding my wonder and I tend to recall them during the usual spells of insomnia. All I can say, I have deep doubts about myself which I tend to know as truths. I also have deep convictions about the truth of my prior selves, which I tend to doubt.

For the first ten minutes, he didn’t acknowledge my presence. I sat silently and looked away from him. I didn’t notice that I was feeling warmer. He was a thin person, but I was not certain about his age. He could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, or even more. He was naked, covered in ash with matted locks of grey hair and beard. The thick layers of ash over his arms had cracked and looked white. He had pierced his penis with an iron ring — that denoted his vow of chastity. He carried a bag made of old cloth or animal skin. He had a metal trident. His eyes were unusually bright — they were sparkling due to effects of the marijuana of the Himalayan wilderness. 

He was taking deep long drags from his chillum, and exhaling very little smoke. Then quite unexpectedly he asked me something; but I couldn’t understand his dialect. He had spoken in Hindi and there was nothing unusual about his voice. He was perceptive; he repeated the question, more slowly. “Where is your village?”

He had never heard of Calcutta, not even the Hindi name. When I said, “Bangal”, he seemed to recall something faintly, and nodded more to himself, than to me. 

What he told me next, explained the strange dialect of Hindi, he was speaking. He said, he was born in a village of Haryana. He no longer remembers his family. All he remembers, that since his childhood, he knew that he was a Naga. When he grew up to boyhood, he knew he had to go to the Himalayas. He caught a bus to “Dilli”, and made his way to here. He was found by another Naga, and he initiated him. And since then, he has never again gone down to the plains, and never will. 

I was immediately struck with the idea of his inborn self-identity. “I knew I was a Naga,” he said. But he never said, “I wished to become a Naga.” He was born as one. No other self-identity mattered to him.

Borges in The Personality and the Buddha quotes Oldenberg who had observed that “India is the land of generic types, not of individuals”. The observation was made in relation to the vast works of India which are ‘of a collective or anonymous nature.’

The Naga sage, representing a tradition, had held on to an identity of a generic type. Or in other words, his personality of self was connected to a group with a unique set of characteristics. But what made him exceptional is that he had renounced individuality or a personal ego entity.

This I found out when I asked him his name. He looked at me with a hint of contempt. “I don’t have a name. It is not real. I gave it up.” 

Then he added, “Neither do you have a name. You have a unique marking of light. But you think you have a name. That is just a word, a thought, nothing else.”

II

I  have titled this piece after a collection of poems by Borges, and this is by design. There is no other author and poet in the history of literature, I know of, who has delved more into the mystery of the human self and the mystical sense of being an “other”, than Borges. (However, Dostoevsky also comes to mind).

I wish to recall only few of Borges’ works on this subject, and begin with his non-fiction piece, The Nothingness of Personality, written in 1922, when he was 23. 

In this piece, Borges wished to “prove that personality is a mirage maintained by conceit and custom, without metaphysical foundation or visceral reality”. He quotes authors and works which only Borges could have read. For example, Kabbalist and astrologer Agrippa of Nettesheim, who in “the disillusioned latter days of his life”, said in a very memorable line, “I am philosopher, god, hero, demon and the whole universe.” 

The young Borges argues to negate the self, not to discover. He quotes Whitman, Schopenhauer and Macedonio Fernandez, who said, “Reality works in overt mystery.”

Borges’ fascination for Buddhism is also apparent, a fascination that continued throughout his life. He quotes from a work on Buddhism by Grim, takes a precept quoted in the text, and elaborates on it. He concludes by arriving at a point where both Schopenhauer and Grimm arrived, and concluded by saying, the self is a “mere logical imperative, without qualities of its own or distinctions from individual to individual.” This conclusion, we know instinctively, is only a fragment, not the whole, and so does Borges, in his later years. 

In The Dialogues of Ascetic and King, Borges quotes from Milinda Panha or The Questions of Milinda — an anonymous text (1 BCE) that is like a novel, where the Bactrian King Milinda/Menander has a dialogue with Buddhist Monk Nagasena. The Sanskrit original is lost. Borges read the English translation by Rhys Davids from Pali that also features in the Sacred Books of the East series edited by Max Mueller. 

Borges writes, “The King asked him his name. Nagasena replied that names are mere conventions that do not define permanent subjects. He explained that, as the King’s chariot is neither the wheels nor the chassis, neither the axle, the shaft, nor the yoke, so man is not matter, form, perceptions, ideas, instinct, or consciousness. He is neither the combination of these parts nor does he exist apart from them.” 

The above quote Borges has used in several of his other works. We understand why; Nagasena’s explanation cannot be refuted. 

In Katha Upanishad — a text that Borges might have not known — we also find the famous “chariot simile” — spoken by Death to Nachiketa that outlines the self.