3.1.1. Introduction to Praise of God (Part 1) – Order in Chaos

The first chapter in Thirukkural is in Praise of God also known as Kadavul Vaazhthu. Tamil books ALWAYS begin with a prayer to the Almighty. There are two ways a prayer can be written: 1) Prayers offered to a God that the poet likes (or) 2) Prayers offered to a God who presides over the subject matter that the poet address in the book (It’s no wonder that there is no dearth of Gods and Deities in Hinduism). Which method of Prayer does Thiruvalluvar follow? Parimelazhagar gives an explanation but we need to understand a bit of science to understand the explanation.

Humans beings like to live in a world that is predictable but Nature keeps throwing surprises at us. Scientists, mathematicians, geologists, sociologists, engineers, economists, meteorologists are all trying to make sense of the chaotic  behavior of  Nature.

Chaos Theory is the science of the unpredictable. Weather, movement of stock prices, population of a country, frequency of earthquakes & floods, are all examples of chaotic systems around us. Even though scientists know the elements that cause the weather, and all of these elements obey the laws of physics, we are still not able to predict weather flawlessly. However, in recent times, researchers have found that sometimes these chaotic systems have an underlying “hidden” order, and Chaos Theory involves figuring out that order in nature.

There is a property called Self- Similarity in Mathematics. If an object exhibits self-similarity, it means that the whole object has the same shape as one or more of its parts. An image that shows self-similarity is called a Fractal.

French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot coined the term “Fractal” in 1975, referring to geometrical figure, where a single simple pattern repeats itself over and over again in a certain way to form a complex image. Here is an interesting documentary to understand fractals, specifically the Mandelbrot set - “Arthur Clarke - Colours of Infinity  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h06_pkTHAME”.

This is the picture of the Mandelbrot set. As complicated as it looks, it comes from a beautiful iteration of a simple equation.

Take the snow flake picture below. Here, a simple triangle is taken and smaller triangles are added to its sides repeatedly. This repetition creates a beautiful snowflake. When looking at the snowflake (for more details, please read on Koch snowflake), it looks very complicated, but when we keep zooming in, we will see simple triangles. At whatever level you zoom, the triangle pattern keeps repeating in certain way. At the most fundamental level, the building block of this snow flake is a simple triangle.  

(Source:Internet)

Nature is full of fractals. The coastline of countries, the veins of a leaf (a single main vein branches out into two parts, each part has two more branches which in turn has two more branches, and so on),  the branching of bronchia in lungs, the branching of a tree, the lines on the sea shells, the Romanesco Broccoli, the structure and working of neurons in our brains seems to be a lot like the working of the Universe etc. Everywhere, we see some basic pattern repeating itself in a certain way.

What I understand from fractals is, a) large complex systems have a basic patterns (fractal) that repeats itself b) large complex systems are actually fully described by just one or two variables. Many applications of Fractals are evidenced in various fields today. I believe that this is the farthest we have come in our modern science, in the area of understanding order in nature.

We have figured out the building blocks of colours, that is, even though there are thousands of colours around us, we have managed to figure out 3 or 4 fundamental colours, which when mixed in varying proportions can generate the entire spectrum. Similarly, we have a good understanding of music. Music is rich and varied, but they all come from the basic seven notes. Our ancestors  identified six basic tastes (sweet, salty, sour, heat, astringent, bitter), from which all other tastes come from. Our understanding of colours, tastes and music tells us that we can get one step closer towards an understanding of the workings of nature, when we identify the smaller building blocks.

Now, a bigger questions is: is it possible to describe the entire world with simple building blocks? Something like this: the whole world is made of elements a, b, c, d and e and when you mix a and b in this proportion you get a chair, when you mix a, b, and c in this proportion you get a human and so on ? (we can say this for colours, tastes, the ragas in Carnatic music). How wonderful would that be?

The world is made of so many things (living and non living), how can we identify a handful of factors that can completely describe all objects? How many factors would we identify? For example, a simple red rose flower has :  1) red petals 2) soft petals, 2) sweet smell 3) green stem 4) prickly thorns. If you take away the red soft petals , it is no longer a red rose, it is something else. If you take away the sweet smell, it is no longer a rose. A small object has four factors already and even then my list is not complete. How then, is it possible to condense all of creation into few simple variables?

Our ancestor philosophers (thathuvalaalar) did just that. They took a different view of the world. They said that instead of saying -  “a rose is made of red soft petals, green stem, and sweet smell” , we will now start seeing the world as “red soft petals, green stem, sweet smell, prickly thorns join together to make an object called rose”. When such a world view was adopted, patterns began to emerge across creation. Now, all of the said features can be boiled down to three fundamental qualities called Gunas  – the Satvik Guna, The Rajas Guna, and the Tamas Guna. The Sattvik Guna  is the quality of being soft, sweet and all the positive ones or more fundamentally the creative qualities in the entire gamut of creation. The Rajas Guna refers to the quality of trying (Muyarchi in Tamil) or the quality of making an effort to do something (the colour red in the rose example), and Tamas represents the negative qualities  (here, the prickly thorn) or more fundamentally the qualities that make one to falsely perceive the truth as false (mayakkam in Tamil). Sleepiness, laziness, anger, lust, greed etc fall in this category. The Universe is a collection of objects, but objects are nothing but a collection of Gunas in varying proportions.

Our ancestors did wonders with this understanding of Gunas. Any object can be described using these gunas. Eg: A white coloured pencil – it has hardness (rajas), smooth surface (tamas), white colour (satvik), sharp point (rajas). A human body can also be described using Guna. The portion from our head to neck contains all five organs of intelligence (gnanendriyam) and is rightfully classified as Satvik , the torso upto the hip, is the region responsible for digesting food and thereby drives us to seek wealth, is classified as Rajas, below the hip we have the organs of elimination and procreation and so is classified as Tamas.
The early time period of our lives which is spent in educating ourselves is the Satvik portion, the middle time period where we undertake materialistic pursuits is the Rajasic portion and the Retirement time period is the Tamasic portion.

Specific colours were assigned to the three Gunas. White represents Satvik, Red represents Rajas and Black is the colour of Tamas. A single day exhibits these three qualities. When the sun rises, and you close your eyes you will see the colour white. This is the Satvik part of the day, when in the noon you close your eyes, you will see the colour red, this is the Rajas part of the day, and in the night it is black and so the Tamas part of the day.

When the Guna transitioned from Satvik to Rajas and Rajas to Tamas, educators  (Brahmans) and even Kings  usually engaged in prayers to enable smooth transition. This practice is called Sandyavandanam. Just by understanding the light and dark, our ancestors understood that a month gradually transitioned from Satvik to Tamas properties (from Full moon to New moon).

We experience the qualities of tri-gunas in our minds every day. The gunas strike the mind at different times. A calm mind, where we feel peaceful and want to do good things is Satvik mind, a mind to go and work hard to finish a deadline or to close a deal  is the state of Rajas mind, sleepiness, being tired, sexually aroused are all qualities of Tamas. We need a Satvik mindset for creative works (acquiring knowledge, creating a work of art etc) a Rajas mind for performing our duties in the office. We need Tamas for relaxing and procreation. Interestingly, mood swings happen because of the changing guna of our mind. We feel like we are not steady minded, but in reality it is the changing guna that makes us feel like this. A person in control of his/her gunas can achieve great success in life.
Fortunately, our ancestors went a step ahead and gave us two ways to control the guna of the mind a)by food and b) by controlling our breath.

The entire system of Siddha and Ayurveda has identified foods as belonging to these three qualities. What we eat, the corresponding guna we will acquire. So the food was eaten according the Guna that was needed for a job. That’s the reason why educators avoided certain Tamasic foods (meat, potatoes, garlic, onion). A protector was given Rajasic diet (ghee, meat, other fats). So, when going for an exam if we eat fried food, we will not be in the mind to perform well, we will only sleep. Guna cannot be tested in a lab (atleast not yet) so we know how to cook for the taste and health reasons, but our ancestors cooked taking into consideration the Guna as well. That was our culinary system.

They also found that, at any time in a day, our breathing is dominant in one nostril. The dominant breath in right nostril gave Rajas qualities, the left gave tamas qualities and an equal breath in both nostrils gave satvik qualities to a person. So they employed the techniques of Pranayama to control the gunas using our breathing. In an advanced form of Pranayama (called Karana Pranayama) Yogis will inhale and hold their breath for even 100 years. They learned to change their carbon-di-oxide into oxygen and circulate it internally. There is no need to exhale the CO2 and inhale fresh oxygen. That’s how they survived in deep jungles and caves without food and water. I believe that understanding Gunas takes us one step closer towards understanding the working of nature.

To make people understand the concept of Gunas, they assigned a God to each Guna. Lord Brahma was assigned for Satvik Guna, Lord Vishnu was assigned for Rajas and Lord Shiva was assigned for Tamas Guna (Different sects of Hindus have different beliefs in this regard. Some attribute Satvik qualities to Vishnu). Brahma’s consort Goddess Saraswathy is dressed in Satvik white saree and she sits on the white Lotus and is the Goddess for Education (Education comes from Satvik quality). Goddess Mahalakshmi is the wife of Vishnu, is clad in red saree and is placed on a red lotus . She is the Goddess of wealth (Wealth creation comes from Rajas quality). Shiva’s wife is Shakthi and is the Goddess of Tamas, she is the Goddess of power, beauty and Love (Love and Pleasure comes from Tamas quality).

Now coming back to Thirukkural. The first chapter is a prayer for the entire book. Parimelazhagar explains that the book has three main sections that address Aram, Wealth (Porul), and Pleasure (Inbam). Aram relates to Satvik qualities, wealth relates to Rajas qualities and pleasure relates to Tamas qualities. We know that the Gods associated with the Tri Gunas are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva respectively and therefore Thiruvalluvar has written the prayer to all three Gods. Because prayers are offered to corresponding subject addressed by the poet, Thirukkural’s “Praise of Lord” is a prayer of the second kind.

Parimelazhagar explains all of this (minus the bit on Fractals, that’s just my understanding) in one neat paragraph at the beginning of the Chapter.

Understanding Gunas is an important step in understanding Creation. It doesn’t give a complete picture, but we are definitely one step closer. We, (modern humans in our current civilization), have only just in the late 20^th century, had a glimpse of the patterns in nature. I am in awe of our ancestors who have seen the pattern across creation. They have not only seen the pattern, but have given us  a way to manage the Gunas to make our lives better. One way to go about with this information is to spend resources and re-invent these things in a lab. In the meanwhile, it would be wise to take their ideas and build on top of that.