‘De gustibus non disputandum est,’ or at least so goes the Latin adage, ‘about taste there is no disputing.’ Between competitive taco-eating and the ballet there can, on this pacific view, be no rational adjudication. Indeed, debating their relative choiceworthiness is taken to be pointless on the received acceptation of the adage because of the putatively essential givenness of differing individual preferences; are they not matters of taste? Chicago school economists George Stigler and Gary Becker—before either had (independently) won the Nobel Prize—jointly advanced a rival interpretation of the famous proposition, making the case for modeling tastes as ‘stable over time and similar among people’1 (and not disputing them for just this reason). In doing so, they intrepidly applied their discipline’s zeal for utility maximization to phenomena generally taken to be at variance with the uniformity and stability of preferences. Tackling such ‘opaque and complicated’ cases as addiction and fashions, they arrived at notably different explanatory and strategic analyses of considerably broad applicability.2 For my part, I propose a third, distinct interpretation of the suggestive adage—drawing especially upon the sovereign wisdom of Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib and an eclectic range of sources—particularly as it pertains to the most fundamental relations within and between humans concerning folly, the unsayable sweetness, and the education of volition.
Let us take as our port of departure an instantly memorable concluding line of Gurū Nanak’s from a later pauṛī of Āsā kī Vār, ‘mūrakhae nāli na lujhīae.’3 More than once, I have heard this prudent admonition —‘quarrel not with fools’—mock-smugly commended to a fellow Sikh sharing the speaker’s views when debate regrettably degenerated into brawling. Less frequently remembered in such moments is the preceding line, ‘maṅdā kisae na ākhīae paṛi akharu ēhō bujhīae’—‘call not anyone bad; read these letters and understand.’4 The contemporary gloss on such lines will generally not go beyond endorsing a seemingly harmless, if not particularly interesting, non-judgmentalism. Salutary as the reminder to interrogate oneself rather than speaking ill of others doubtless is for all ego-laden beings, few ideas are more harmful than believing for oneself that no actions are more or less praiseworthy or blameworthy. Fragmentation of traditional religious authority together with its eclipse by positivist natural and social science has resulted in the supremacy of an unreflective, imperious relativism deeply corrosive of the intellectual, moral, and political conditions that open-mindedly entertained its pernicious arguments in the west.
Tellingly, proponents of the non-judgmentalism reading might miss the apparent tension between one line proclaiming an injunction against calling anyone bad and the very next line characterizing some people as fools. Surely the Gurū is not guilty of self-contradiction, and surely enough, the immediately following pauṛī furnishes an important clarification. Its subject is the person of insipid—phikae/phikō/phikā—speech, and Gurū Nanak teaches that such insipid use of language renders the body—tanu—and mind—manu—likewise insipid.5 The person of insipid speech thus becomes the insipid person and accordingly earns a reputation for insipidity, losing honor among men and a position in the court of the One. Such a person is beaten by shoes and spat upon. Mirroring the final line of the preceding pauṛī, the final line of the pauṛī at hand again speaks of the fool. The essential revelation is Gurū Nanak’s categorical equation of the insipid person with the fool, stating this sort of person is to be known as a mūrakhu.6 The Gurū-’s admonition may hence be reformulated: argue not with the insipid person. Rather than merely teaching non-judgmentalism, I propose that Gurū Nanak offers a searing critique of insipidity.
But why, exactly, is insipidity so damning in this world and hereafter? Do we risk perdition in serving phikkī chāha at the Gurdvārā? What does it mean for the body and mind to become insipid? And what has insipidity to do with foolishness? Answering these questions satisfactorily demands laying aside our provisional translations; we must return to the Gurū-’s own utterance, if only to translate back into English anew. ਫਿਕਾ—‘phikā’—receives four senses in Mahān Kōsh.7 The entry may be summarized (and in turn translated) as follows: 1. Bērasa—without rasa.8 Besuāda—without flavor, savor, taste. 2. Badzabāna—foul-tongued.9 3. Kauṛā—bitter, acerbic.10 Rukhkhā—dry, lacking moisture. 4. Shobāhīna—devoid of splendor, beauty, glory. Here, I urge the reader to entertain the different readings of phikā wherever it appears in the pauṛī and to consider alternatives to my translation of the entry from Mahān Kōsh. Across Latin, English, and Punjabi—among many other languages—a rich nexus links our words and concepts for matters of sensory and intellective taste and their privations. Such intimate affinities likewise are discernible across religious traditions: the phikae of Gurū Nanak’s critique are Christ’s “salt of the earth” were they to lose their savor—down to being cast out and battered by shoes11—hence Gurū Gobind Singh’s qualification, ‘jab lag Khalsā rahē niārā…’ in his Khalsā Mahimā.
Having navigated our way to the savorless harbor, let us embark again, this time in search of the rasa whose absence renders one an insipid fool. Among the richest and most multifariously12 employed terms within Indian aesthetic theory, rasa-’s plainest everyday usage is related to the word rasnā—tongue. Rasa in this literal sense is the ‘juice,’ ‘flavor,’ or ‘taste’ the rasnā tastes. More abstractly, rasa may denote the characteristic flavor or essence of not just foods and drinks, but of particular works of drama, poetry, music, dance, and painting. Philosophical treatises written in Sanskrit beginning in the third century13 have ventured theoretical accounts of rasa, at times postulating and debating lists of the basic rasa-s—affects or species of “aesthetic delight”14—and wherefrom each rasa arises. Returning to the pauṛī-s under consideration, it seems unlikely that Gurū Nanak is declaring that all non-aesthetes are fools unworthy of passionate dialectical engagement. In fact, there exists a key distinction between Hari rasa and ana/āna rasa within Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib—between the savor of the verdant One and all other flavors.
Gurū Arjan Dev catalogs worldly pleasures from youth’s vitality to riding under umbrellas of gold to the beauty of countless women; such illusory flavors of māiā may entice one into heedless acts of corruption.15 Christianity offers a tripartite classification of lusts. As found in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, these are the libido sentiendi, libido sciendi, & libido dominandi—respectively the lust of the senses, for knowledge, and to dominate.16 “You have a way of mixing politics and passion,” Caesar (Rex Harrison) says to Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) in the eponymous 1963 film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. “Where does one begin and the other leave off?”17 The collusion of such lusts for ana rasa-s are most fearful; concatenation of the latter two in the wrong hands could result in thermonuclear annihilation. As such, the right ordering of volition is in more than one sense a matter of ‘existential’ import.
Later in the same sabad, Gurū Arjan Dev proclaims ‘Hari rasa binu sabhi suād phikarīā—absent the savor of the verdant One, all flavors are phikarīā.18 The translations and glosses I have come across take ‘phikarīā’ to be a form of ‘phikā,’ hence reading ‘insipid’ for ‘phikarīā.’ While the reading this produces does cohere with similar propositions from Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib—and all earthly goodness does, of course, derive from the One’s goodness—such a reading provides no explanation for the presence of the ‘ਰ’—the ‘r.’ This assimilation of ‘phikarīā’ to ‘phikā’ strikes me as bizarre, since ‘phikarīā’ contains the word ‘phikara,’ meaning ‘anxiety’ or ‘concern.’ Accordingly, ‘productive of anxiety’ seems to me the more natural reading. ‘Phikara’ in this sense is indeed employed in Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib, and my interpretation is, in turn, confirmed by another sabad of Gurū Arjan Dev:
‘No matter how many other rasa-s you may taste,
Your thirst will not depart for even a moment;
When you taste the rasa of the verdant One—
While tasting it you will remain in amazement.
Quaff the divine nectar with your tongue, beloved;
Imbued with this rasa, you will be contented. [Dwell].’19
Where indulging in ana rasa-s dissipate body and mind, provide no lasting satiation, and lead to further anxiety, drinking Hari rasa elevates one to abiding wonder and satisfaction, rendering one immune to the self-defeating lure of the ana rasa-s. Where is this transformative elixir to be found; who knows how to taste it? According to Gurū Nanak, ‘One facing the Gurū is dyed in the Sabad,20 delighting night and day in Hari rasa.’21 How, precisely, does one come to be dyed in the Sabad; by what virtue may one partake of divine nectar? ‘Nanak, one facing the Gurū receives Hari rasa, living in singing the One’s virtues.’22 What may have seemed a tortuous interpretive voyage gains solid land in the characteristically pellucid words of Gurū Amardas: ‘Burn the duality-enamored tongue; it savors not Hari rasa, speaking phīkā.’23 Crucially, Gurū Ram Das notes that those who know Hari rasa are like the mute incapable of verbally expressing a confection’s sweetness.24 Although one who tastes Hari rasa genuinely possesses knowledge of this unsayable sweetness, uttering its virtues nonetheless transcends the eloquence of all created tongues. If the prolificness of the Gurū-s’ revelatory songs is not proof enough, it bears emphasizing that the muteness of all human speech before the profoundest of mysteries is not to be mistaken for a blanket suspicion of language or propositional thought, much less a terminal solipsism of idiosyncratic, unverifiable qualia. After all, Sikhs are to sing in Gurū Arjan Dev’s Sohilā each evening, ‘Whoever is awakened to quaff Hari rasa knows the ineffable discourse.’25
By now, the diligent reader has doubtless arrived at some intimation of my promised interpretation of our instigating adage. So why must one refrain from quarreling with those ignorant of Hari rasa? I hold it is for precisely the same reason that one is not to dispute matters of taste: tastes are for tasting, not debating. Words cannot directly produce mental experiences of which the reader does not have any prior, relevant acquaintance.26 Gurū Nanak Dev and his fellow authors within Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib did not merely preach about the divine attributes; they glorified the One by participating in the One’s glory, instructing all humans to quaff the very same elixir. The Gurū-Sikh relation is predicated on the experience that what is most essential may be taught, learned, and savored across persons and ages. At least in this regard, Stigler and Becker were correct—albeit in quite another sense. As Spinoza writes in the final sentence of the last scholium of his Ethics, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”27 From the vantage of Bābā Nanak’s uncompromising criterion, we are all born fools, but we also are all born with the opportunity to partake of the highest state. Our capacity to recognize any virtue without exists by virtue of a corresponding seed of virtue within. By singing the revelatory songs, we may come to know the ineffable discourse of unsayable sweetness; this is volition’s education, whereby all may learn to will and walk in harmony with the divine will and all creation.
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1George J. Stigler and Gary S. Becker, “De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum,” The American Economic Review 67, no. 2 (1977), 76.
2Ibid., 89-90.
3Gurū Nanak Dev: Ang 473, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
7Bhāī Kanh Singh “Nabha,” Gurshabad Ratnākar Mahān Kōsh – Encyclopedia of Sikh Literature, Revised Large Edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Amritsar: Bhaī Chatar Singh Jeevan Singh, 2004), 611.
8For reasons that will become apparent shortly, I will only transliterate ‘rasa‘ (of which ‘bērasa‘ is the privation) for the time being.
9It is unclear from the not-so-illustrative usage excerpt whether the blame denoted by the first phoneme arises from considerations of a primarily other or self-regarding nature. This ambiguity—in turn denoting the messiness of their interrelation—may be largely use-dependent and may even contribute to the word’s potency. While the former admittedly may bear the signification of the non-judgmentalism reading I aim to move beyond (i.e., ‘argue not with the fool who is foolish on account of calling others fools,’) it strikes me as insufficiently noteworthy to bother unraveling the labyrinth of ambiguity and contradiction.
10As with its English translations, ‘kauṛā’ evocatively admits of both literal (gustatory) and figurative (expressive) readings, doubtless indicating their keen phenomenological relatedness. The illustrative example here is reasonably enough the previously translated proposition that phikā speech make the body and mind phikā. Proponents of the non-judgmentanlism interpretation must again grapple with the apparent paradox: is it not acerbic to call people fools? Relinquishing the low-hanging, abstract, and premature commitment to non-judgementalism, I submit, allows us to venture deeper and better ascertain the profound coherence of Gurū Nanak’s critical vantage. Cf. the final salōku, Gurū Nanak: Ang 470, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
11Matthew 5:13 (Authorized King James Version).
12Singh “Nabha,” Gurshabad Ratnākar Mahān Kōsh – Encyclopedia of Sikh Literature, 757-758.
13Sheldon Pollock, A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics, Reprint Edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 1. [Pollock’s major undertaking reflects his Sanskrit language expertise, understandably placing the wealth of Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib on the topic of rasa beyond the scope of his work. Given the ambition of his reader’s subtitle—as opposed to say, ‘Classical Indian Literary Theory’—his near total omission of rasa as theorized in the context of saṅgīta and his summary explanation of the same are, however, less understandable. It is thus unsurprising—especially in light of the former lacuna—that his introductory discussion of ‘Rasa and Instruction’ (pp. 31-34) presents an explanatory rather than pedagogical—and what is more, a theologically fatalistic—account of the purpose of ‘rasa theory.’ My treatment of the topic in GurSikh terms arrives at a considerably more hopeful view as to the possibility—and necessity—of all humans cultivating the right orientation to rasa. It is furthermore distinct from Richard Rorty’s position in Pollock’s presentation—empathizing with fictional characters as sparking ethical self-examination.]
14Śārṅgadeva, Saṅgītaratnākara of Śārṅgadeva: Text and English Translation, ed. Prem Lata Sharma, trans. R.K. Shringy, vol. 1, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2018), 427.
15Gurū Arjan Dev: Ang 385, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
16Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Riverside Press, 1924), 138-9.
17Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Cleopatra (20th Century Fox, 1963).
18Gurū Arjan Dev: Ang 385, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
19Gurū Arjan Dev: Ang 180, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
20I have previously discussed ‘Sabad’ and the path of GurSikh mysticism at length in the pages of The Vital Anjan. My account of ‘volition’s education’ presupposes the understanding of ‘Sabad’ I elucidated in ‘Sabad: The Mint of Angels.’
21Gurū Nanak Dev: Ang 63, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
22Ibid.
23Gurū Amardas: Ang 158, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
24Gurū Amardas: Ang 310, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
25Gurū Arjan Dev: Ang 13, Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib.
26c.f. Plato’s Meno, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 2.2,1103a25-b25.
27Baruch Spinoza, Ethics in Spinoza: Complete Works, ed. Michael L. Morgan, trans. Samuel Shirley, First Edition (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002) 382.
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Nihal Singh