Monday, May 11, 2009

XXVIII. The Scientist-Saint in the Indian Tradition

No matter what the pursuit, a limber mind is an important asset. Seekers of deeper truths may be, and indeed often are, technically excellent at one or a few things. Furthermore, as long as we live on this material plane there is a need to do things, make things happen, do what humans do: build! However, for these seekers the capacity to be technically expert is not the goal. Expressing technical excellence is the vehicle, or means, to a worthy end. These special people are able to evince and impart extraordinary grace in combining their sense of life’s deeper purpose with the imperative to serve both material and spiritual needs. My experience of such people is that they are mischievously clever, possess great senses of humor, and have the equanimity to live life with great joy and to convey this to others along the way.


A scientist is, at heart, a skeptic. Spirituality is, by definition, not of this material plane and therefore not “knowable” through the agency of our five senses. The process of scientific enquiry exercises the mind and that may (or may not) lead to pondering life’s deeper purpose or meaning. I tend to think that a scientist’s mind, like that of a yogi, is built to wander in the direction of deeper purpose. When it does, the inevitable question arises: Why? I like to think of this as a many-layered question. In raising a child (and teaching graduate students) I found this to be an especially valuable opportunity to look at such questions as a way to explain (as much to myself as the student) purpose, function, structure, meaning, and worth.


Hemali and members of her extended family, with whom I shared those days at the wedding in Delhi and in Nanital, explain that there is a scientific basis to Jainism. It is borne of careful observation over 2500 years. The Jain religion and philosophical orientation to life is contemporaneous with Buddhism and shares many concepts, including Ahimsa (a commitment not to harm living things). Christianity is newer, but many of its tenets are similar, if not identical (even if many organized Christian religions have drifted far from these fundamental beliefs).
All of these religious paths are consistent with general Eastern philosophical tradition that accords predominance to recognizing Truth as imminent and thereby ascribes central significance to careful observation (including ones own actions and their effects on other people and things). The vast majority of epidemiologic studies on which I have worked (including the Mumbai Cohort Study and other major cohorts and case-control studies) are observational in nature. So, I have chosen a field in which there is an imperative to watch, measure, and understand what “causes” sickness and health in the chaos and messiness of human lives. Patience does not come naturally to me; so, being forced to pay attention to things that can happen only in and through time has been a gift in more ways than just professionally.
India and the United States are different and similar in ways that are not revealed through casual observation. I will talk more about these dissimilarities and similarities later. One tradition that is unique to India is that of Sannyasa. After doing ones duty to career and family a person is free to pursue a spiritual path that may entail service at a level and in a manner not possible under the constraints of having to attend to the demands of professional advancement and acquiring wealth to provide for a family. While not everyone does this and those who do take myriad paths, there is a tradition stemming from a widely held view that doing so is a personal and societal “good.” Even if the Sannyasi suffers material hardship and may become obviously poor, he or she is held in very high regard in society – especially in the places where he or she performs service. This is a picture of Lochan Vishal Sharma, of Jodhpur, taken when I visited him for the first time in 1977 and whom Jane, Christine and I visited on my last sabbatical in 1997-8. He was a civil servant before retiring, can speak five languages fluently, is a mathematical wizard, and was taking care of two mentally ill men and providing water to the people on a daily basis.
Combining the widespread appreciation of spiritual and scientific development with social welfare, has produced some remarkable results. When I am in India I come face to face with people who embody such traits and tendencies. While these people are usually very accomplished professionally, that alone does not set them apart from their peers professionally. I have talked a bit about Dr. Prakash Gupta and his leadership in both epidemiology and in directing anti-tobacco efforts both here in India and globally. Dr. Rajiv Sarin and I are exploring how “big” (well-funded, highly cited) science is tackling the “big” problems of over-population, global warming, and as-yet unanticipated health effects of worldwide environmental change. In his role as the Director of ACTREC, the issue of humane and efficient treatment of cancer patients also figures prominently in planning how to use scarce and precious resources.
Dr. SS Badrinath and Shankara Nethralaya in Chennai are living examples of the scientist-saint and his creation. Shankara Nethralaya is a striking illustration of a first-class eye hospital providing a wide array of services in South India (and into Central India) to the full range of people, from the very wealthy to the utterly destitute. Its outreach includes some of the most amazing telemedicine on earth. It also conducts some exemplary basic science research spanning a broad continuum from the genetic control to environmental epidemiology of eye diseases. Along with Dr. Harris Pastides and other visitors from University of South Carolina a little over a year ago I was introduced to Dr. Badrinath and Shankara Nethralaya by Dr. Meera Nirasimhan, a similarly inclined colleague who grew up in South India, is now a faculty member at USC (in Psychiatry), and performs one month of service/year at a rural hospital in Andhra Pradesh. Since that first introduction I have returned to work with the Shankara Nethralaya team on the trip to Chennai that I talked about in XII. Teachers. Over this time I have learned that Shankara Nethralaya and Dr. Badrinath are nearly household names throughout India – testimony not only to their accomplishment, but to a society that deeply values such work.
I would like these examples to inspire our work in the Cancer Prevention and Control Program. The Scientist-Saint tradition of India is something to which people anywhere ought to aspire.

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