Ebook: Coomaraswamy, Volume 2 : Selected Papers : Metaphysics

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, scholar/philosopher/ art historian, had complete mastery of dozens of languages, including ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Pali, as well as expertise in arts produced by dozens of ancient and medieval cultures and civilizations. The way Coomarasawmy's writing fluidly combines insights and quotes from such sources as the Rg Veda and the Upanishads, Buddhist and Jain scriptures, Plato and Aristotle, Eckhart and Ruysbroeck, to name several, is truly remarkable. This volume of his writing edited by Roger Lipsey and published by Princeton University Press contains 27 essays with titles such as `The Vedanta and Western Tradition', `Sri Ramakrishna and Religious Tolerance', `Measures of Fire', `The Tantric Doctrine of Divine Biunity', and `The Meaning of Death.' For the purposes of this review, I will focus on 2 of the essays noted below.

`Lila' is the Sanskrit word describing any kind of playing. The following is a quote from Coomaraswamy's essay on `Lila': "Here we shall be chiefly concerned with the reference of Lila to the divine manifestations and activity thought of as a "sport", "playing," or "dalliance." . . . The emphasis is, we realize, always upon the idea of a "pure" activity that can properly be described as "playful" because the game is played, not as "work" is ordinarily performed, with a view to secure some end essential to the worker's well-being, but exuberantly; the worker works for what he needs, the player plays because of what he is. The work is laborious, the playing hard; the work exhausting, but the game is recreation."

Reading Coomarasway's essay, we come to see how, in many respects, this playing, this spiritually-infused way of living, is a crystallization from the world's wisdom traditions. Indeed, the author underscores how a spiritual playing is not uniquely Indian; rather, Coomaraswamy includes quotes from Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhm on spiritual playing as the highest form of living.

Keeping this idea of lila in mind, we now turn to Coomaraswamy's last essay in this collection, "The Seventieth Birthday Address" where he gives warm thanks to all of those individuals and organizations who provided him generous support in his 30+ years as director of the Indian collections in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He then goes on to say, "Looking at the works of art that are considered worthy of preservation in our museums, and that were once the common objects of the market place, I could not but realize that a society can only be considered truly civilized when it is possible for every man to earn his living by the very work he would rather be doing than anything else in the world - a condition that has only been attained in social orders integrated on the basis of vocation, svadharma." Thus we have Coomaraswamy's severe assessment of modern civilization: an entire world society where the vast percentage of the population is forced to work as joyless drudges, employed in jobs that are tedious, frustrating, grueling and spiritually vapid.

Coomaraswamy ends his address by emphasizing that he has never created his own philosophy or desired to establish a new school of thought; rather, he has always sought to understand what has been stated in such texts as the Rg Veda, Upanishads ,The Bhagavad Gita, The Dhamapada, and by such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Plotinus and Meister Eckhart. And what was Coomaraswamy planning when he retired from his professional position as author/scholar/museum director? He said he would return with his wife to India to seek more direct and all-encompassing spiritual enlightenment beyond the sphere of the logical, rational and scholarly.

What a man, what a life, and fortunately for us modern readers, what a body of literature. I couldn't imagine a finer collection of essays bringing together the treasures of the world's wisdom traditions. Fiat Lux.