The Right View As An Equanimous View: A Philosophical Treatise to Move From Rushing to Reaching

Babasaheb B. R. Ambedkar is becoming a central figure in mass movements, as evidenced by his widespread presence in the recent agitation for educational reforms. This trend symbolises a decentralisation of his iconic presence across various social spaces. However, it also highlights certain philosophical contradictions. While these movements may popularise him as a symbolic figure, they reproduce the political, ideological, and philosophical negation to his ideas. This essay argues that such negation and absence arises from the philosophical conditioning of movement operating under a “rushing model” for sudden change. In contrast, Ambedkar critiques such rushing models calling them detrimental for any social good and encourages progressive movements to adopt a “reaching model” for fundamental transformation. A reaching model, as sourced from a hermeneutical exercise of Babasaheb’s writings, demands one to engage in a spiral dialectical elevation from the immediate to the substantial; and from the substantial to the equanimous. To present an example of the reaching model, this paper discusses one of the conceptual formulations called right view positioned within a Sramanic perspective.

Exordium

I read two articles from Bahiskrit Bharat, the first one published on October 4, 1929 and the second published immediately in the next issue, that of November 15 1929¹. The first titled Adhi kalas mag paya (First the dome and then the foundation), and the second was Kranti kashyala mhnataat? (What to call revolution?). However, I have only quoted the latter, since the reference itself quotes the former.

In both of these pieces of writing, Babasaheb Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, at their depth, in my understanding, notes an assertive propositional difference between Kranti (revolution) and Utkranti (evolution). As I read it in the times we are now, it meant in retrospection, he is probably suggesting that every progressive movement needs to begin first by employing a right view for ‘reaching’ at fundamental material and metaphysical questions, could be perceived as evolutionary [slow] progress; instead of 'rushing' directly in changing the reality in an instant revolution. This suggestion resonates in the movements quite a lot even today, after a hundred years of Babasaheb. Not because his suggestion is atemporal or acontextual, but probably because we still lack the right view in realising the significance of evolution through reaching.

Reaching to the Right View

The world that we live in today has shown us time and again that we rush into thinking, feeling, living, observing, in taking and not taking stands, in seeing and not seeing the nature of reality around ourselves. We do not really sit back, think and contemplate. Some of us are structurally so bound in surviving that our reflexive and imaginative capacity has been muted, as it had been historically mutilated. However, if we hold on with a thought, we may observe a systemic devolution of these fundamental human faculties as we fall for rushing. This rush, as Babasaheb also recognises, is detrimental to any progressive movement, and I emphasise here as it is more dangerous to anti-oppression movements like anti-caste, feminist, and partly subaltern and decolonial. The rush offers less potential and more threat for transformative and anti-oppressive politics. In contrast, it reproduces invisibilization and negates the historical, material and metaphysical nature of inequality, injustice, subjugation and exploitation.

Taking cue from this, I want to argue out three tentative propositional questions offering a distinct explanation using the Sramanic perspective² to arrive at one of its concepts ‘right view’. Because the right view demands for one to first reach the fundamental material and metaphysical nature of reality, as we take a processual act of changing it. Here, I am taking the concept, right view or Samma Ditti from one of Babasaheb’s most profound philosophical treaties, ‘Buddha and His Dhamma (1957)’. Besides, I also want to state this with a ‘conscious will’ that this dialectical abstraction and theoretical contemplation is not merely a creative critical exercise for me, which it is for sure, but it is more notably a moral responsibility for someone who carries the burden of the oppressive history (Guru, 2012, p. 28)³.

In understanding the concept, the right view, the questions I am taking up in this short piece are as follows: What is reality/what exists in reality? Second, how do we know it? And third, what is the value in knowing the existence in reality? The way these questions are arranged, the structure resonates very much in consonance with none other than the Greeks, who formulated their most logically coherent philosophical-methodological trinity of ontology, epistemology, and axiology⁴. Each of these is the broader domain of the field investigating the nature of existence, knowledge, and value, respectively.

From Immediate to Substantial

Concerning the nature of reality, we live in a world where we see violence taking place almost everywhere, carrying multiple dimensions and contradictions based on ethnicity, nationalities, citizenships and so on. The politics of the extreme right is at its peak in almost every nook and corner. There is an exploitation of nature, sentient and non-sentient beings, in the growing centralisation of humans over everything else in totality. Within human society, specifically in our context, there is a continuation of oppressive historical structures with their subtle and new forms. Slavery has become a normalised phenomenon in the competitive and corporate market. Racism and misogyny continue to be reproduced through popular humour and stereotypical constructions. Caste and more aptly untouchability remain the same in local configurations of rural and feudal settings, while it has taken new forms in the cosmopolitan capitalist settings.

The popular sources of knowledge in our times have been reduced to mass media (social media, television, over-the-top, and user-generated audiovisual) in ways that are rationally inconsistent, rhetorically manipulative, and morally corrupt. They are run by majoritarian-competitive-stimulation, mostly led by algorithms and bots. At a micro scale, they harm inferential ability and ethical agency of an individual; while imposing hegemonic worldview at macro scale. Artificial intelligence (AI) is another popular and proclaimed source of knowledge which has almost colonised the minds of the new generation, creating complexity in the old. It has been turning a thinking human being cognitively mechanistic, emotively universalistic, and volitively passive. Other forms of knowledge, like print (books, journals and research papers) and archival sources (museum, historical sites), even though they exist as exceptions, have largely been either referred through shortcuts using AI or media sources, or left untouched due to a reduction in attention span across the general masses.

Through these sources of knowledge, the notion of value in knowing what exists is being captured by questions of safety, security, anxiety, and uncertainty. Additionally, there is also an explosion of therapeutic tools that navigate in neutralising guilt and normalising enslavement, which makes the notion of value superficial, individualistic, meaningless, unpurposive and unprofitable for the good and just of all, especially those at the margins. All these processes in both an immediate and substantial realm are erasing the energy and energetic action, which is a prerequisite for seeing value in something.

From Substantial to Equanimous

Looking at the nature of existence, the source of knowing the existence, and the value in an immediate sense might seem pessimistic. However, if we engage with Babasaheb, not in an immediate or even substantial manner, but more in a fundamental, processual and equanimous sense, he has so much to offer and the right view is one of such offers.

As it appears in Babasaheb's writings, speeches, and activities, he offers an alternative and wholesome perspective about where to begin. He draws from his rigorous philosophical scholarship of both the western and Sramanic thought. To blend it in consonance with the object of this article, I would only present some of his propositions on the three questions mentioned before (what exists, how to know what exists, and why there is value in knowing existence). Though they have not been mentioned directly in any single text of Babasaheb, rather they have been taken with a temporal, critical and consistent philosophical reading of multiple texts produced by him, one among the prominent is the Buddha and His Dhamma.

Taking a cue from the Buddha, the contradictions in reality, for Babasaheb, were historically embedded in questions concerning the religious, ideological, material, and metaphysical nature. He summarises the nature of existence with two simple yet profound propositions. (a) There is Dukkha (suffering) for every individual as they experience different socials, hence the suffering is also social in nature and (b) There is a way out of suffering as the individual [part of social] discovers Anicca (impermanence) and cultivates Anataa (selflessness).

For knowing the existence, he refers to epistemological methods like rational investigation through proof and inferences, direct observation through Samadhi (concentration) and Satipathana (awareness) and the knowledge practices tempered by principles like Pradnya (wisdom), Sheela (moral structure) Karuna (compassion) and Maitri (loving kindness). I will probably write about each of these methods later, but that's really not the central purpose at this moment; the right view is.

For Buddha in Babasaheb’s writings, the suffering comes from moving towards extremes of self-gratification and self-mortification. These extremes reproduce desire, attachment, passion, conflict, inequality, and hierarchy among individuals and social classes. Therefore, to seek enlightenment as social liberation as an utmost value of existence, he suggests three middle paths: The path of Panchasheela (five precepts of purity), Asthangika Marga (noble eightfold paths of righteousness) and the Ten Paramita (paths of virtues). These middle paths are righteous, virtuous, political, and moral, and they abide by the good for everyone, including sentient and non-sentient beings.

Within this larger philosophical and methodological framework, we see the right view as one of his formulations on the path of righteousness, or Asthangika Marga. The right view or the ‘Samma Ditti’ etymologically derived from two Pali words⁴: ‘Samma’ means ‘thorough, right, accurate, proper, well, real and true’, (Ambedkar, 1998: 323); ‘Ditti’, on the other hand means a ‘a view, sight, an eye, heresy and the doctrine’ (Ambedkar, 1998: 110). In apposition to this, i.e. ‘Miccha ditti’, ‘Miccha’ means ‘a wrong, false, myth and belief’ while ditti is the same above (Ambedkar, 1998: 208). The right view comes in the Buddha’s philosophical expedition as he explains it to the first five Parivrajakas in his sermon at Sarnath. The excerpt from the first sermon of the Buddha reads:

The right view is unattainable when a person is ignorant of the nature and root cause of suffering. It requires them to develop a scientific justification grounded in facts and/or experiences, informed by an open mind and independent thinking. This process involves rejecting the idea that texts are infallible and debunking the belief that superstitions, supernaturalism, and speculation constitute truth.

For Babasaheb, the right view, though it encapsulates reality in totality, is not universalistic; rather, it is equanimous. In the domain of philosophy and methodology, the right view need not be taken as a prescribed law that cuts across time, space and context like the gravity or electromagnetic force in science. Whereas the right view engages with the universality of scientific law in a dialogical conversation, it elevates to equanimity which is processually arrived at, experientially discovered, inferentially realised, and morally acted upon.

The very equanimous view of the right view from Buddha in the writings of Babasaheb also resonates with the concept of Sunyata⁷ from Kabir’s and Satsar from the Phule⁸, while all three constitute foundational teachers of Babasaheb. For him, they form an embodiment of what he could become for the whole of his life. In his speech delivered at a conference organised by Scheduled Caste Federation in 1954⁹, he recognised the nature of Anaata [selflessness] in the teaching from these teachers. He calls himself as the embodiment of the confluence, constituting what he could become from the learnings from his three Gurus (Buddha-Kabir-Phule) and three idols [Vidya-Swabhiman-Sheel/Knowledge, Respect, Moral structure]. Kabir’s version of the right view is in the realisation of Sunyata (non-duality). He articulates it by using a metaphor of burning self and others who choose him. In his couplet, he says.

His move of burning of the self and the external need to be thought through, in the context of his rejection of entities that claim to have constructed the self and the reality, such as a creator and the creation as binary. For him, the reality is non-dual or Shunya, where nothing exists. In this line of thinking, he comes to realise that since the latter does not exist, neither does the former. For Phule, on the other hand, the right view lies in reaching the essence of truth, or Sastar. For example, he notes that Dharma should be based on truth, but it was manipulated so that Shudras came to believe that serving Brahmins was their divinely ordained duty.

Phule's insistence on truth in the context of the two issues that he published in defending the positions of Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai’s, two critical writers, on the Dharma. For him, the existing Dharma produces and reproduces hierarchy and inequality between men and women, of one caste and another. He finds Dharma is constructed for vested interest of Shetaji (feudal) and Bhataji (priest), while truth is equanimous, to which one reaches through consistent rational and moral reasoning. In a nutshell, the right view varies from one context to another, and also requires one to build a capacity to reach equanimity that is tempered by interconnectedness and good for everyone, including the sentient and non-sentient beings.

Coda

For Babasaheb, revolution through rush is a fatal mistake for any transformative progress. Even though he is not against it, he, however, provides a better alternative, the more appropriate and right one, i.e. of reach through evolution. For one to realise the non-contradictory nature of the former and the latter would require reading Babasaheb from a Sramanic perspective, where there is a methodological and hermeneutical space. Through this space one could move in a spiral fashion from rejecting the unscientific, infallible, and supernatural to reach at a dialectical and scientific. There is a further spiral space for one to move, even from relational, binary-based to arrive at equanimous, non-dual and emptiness (and probably the quantum realm as described in contemporary physics).