Here are the links to reviews in New York Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph.

Some relevant paragraphs from these reviews.

Tim Gardam writes in The Guardian:

Osborne argues that we inherit a long intellectual tradition that has invoked civilisation as some unchallengeable virtue, the golden thread in Western history that weaves together, art, science, architecture, literature and philosophy. It allows us to keep faith in our values without their being tarnished by all the horrors of injustice and suffering that we have inflicted on our ourselves and other cultures. It allows us a false, optimistic narrative of our past so that we believe we can construct a similar story for our future; yet in reality that future is quite uncertain.

The reviewers seem to be somewhat uneasy about Osborne’s skepticism about the self proclaimed superiority of the Post-Enlightenment western civilization and his project to write a popular history from such a skeptical premise. Willam Grimes writes in the New York Times:

As he speeds through the history of the past 20 years, Mr. Osborne goes on something of a rant, teeing off against elitist art, abstract philosophy, the injection of moral categories into foreign policy, privatization of public industries and virtually everything else in sight, including and especially Western rationalism, a guiding light for 2,500 years.

“The fundamental western belief that there are rational ways of organizing the world which will bring benefit to all has been at the root of every human-made catastrophe that has overtaken us,” he writes, “yet many of us still believe that we have a bounden duty to bring our simplistic, universalizing, ‘progressive’ systems of government, economics, education, policing, judiciary and morals to every part of every society on the planet.”

Whew. Only at the end of the book does it become clear that Mr. Osborne has been engaged in a very strange project. While painstakingly reconstructing the imposing, intricate edifice of Western civilization, he has planted a series of explosive charges. And then, when the job is done, he lights the fuses and watches as the entire thing collapses into dust.

OK. Civilization is officially on our reading list.

In the face of Uncle Stanley’s devouring garrulousness, as confirmed and free a bachelor as he is, Jayber always finds himself taking up the defense of marriage. Not so much the defense of any particular marriage - not, by a long shot, of Uncle Stanley’s - but of marriage itself, of what it has come to be, for him, a kind of last ditch holy of holies: the possibility that two people might care for each other and know each other better than enemies, and better than strangers happening to be alive at the same time in the same town; and that, with a man and a woman, this caring and knowing might be made by intention, and in the consciousness of all it is, and of all it might be, and all that threatens it. At these times it seems to Jayber that, of all the men in Port William, he’s the most married - not in marriage, but to this ideal of marriage. He is bound in this way, as he is bound, beyond his friendships and his friends, to an ideal of friendship.

These are the last remainders of Jayber’s ideals. He holds to them against the possibility that life will mean nothing and be worth nothing. He is despairing believer in these things, knowing that everything fails. The ideal rides ahead of the real, renewing beyond it, perishing in it-unreachable, surely, but made new over and over again just by hope and by the passage of time; what has not yet failed remains possible. And the ideal, remaining undiminished and perfect, out of reach, makes possible a judgment of failure, and a just grief and sympathy.

In Port William, or beyond or above it, Jayber imagines a kind of heavenly City, in which each house would be built in a marriage and around it, and all the houses would be bound together in friendships, and friendliness would move and join among them like an open street. His living in Port William has been a bearing of the descent of the town from that ideal - as though at the end of each night, out of his mind and his desire, he gives painful birth to the new real morning and the real town - as though he watches the descent of all things from Heaven, like a snowball, into the aimless gap of Uncle Stanley’s mouth. But he is also the adulterer of his marriage, the servant of opposite houses, faithful to both and unfaithful to both-slipping away from his Heavenly City, to which he has sworn his devotion, to become the lover of all the perishing lights and substances of Port William and of the weather over it and of the water under it. After so long, it seems to him that he is the native and occupant of both places, and passes freely between them, and in serving either serves both.

Last week, as I was reading these paragraphs at the Gaylord’s cafe on Piedmont avenue, I witnessed a moving yet strange meeting between an uncle and nephew. Eighteen year old Melvin was driving on Piedmont Avenue and away from Gaylord. I don’t know what made him turn around and look at the cafe, which was on the other side of the street. But notice he did his uncle whom he hadn’t seen in ten years. So he stopped the car in the middle of the street, came running into the cafe and excitedly introduced himself to his uncle Jim, who couldn’t recognize him. How would he? The Melvin he knew was an eight year old boy.

It was very strange to listen to them. Here is a middle aged blackman, sitting in a cafe with his Powerbook and it was obvious that he had kept his distance from all his relatives. Apparently, Jim had fought with his sister but it was clear both he and Melvin liked each other and wanted to be in touch. They had spent the last ten years living in Oakland, within a twenty block radius of each other. I bet they both knew that too but seemed to have reconciled to never meeting. How the hell does that happen? What kind of disfunctional communities do we live in and why do we make peace with that?

Sure, Berry’s Christian roots are very obvious in the last paragraph but what I find striking about Port William and its inhabitants is a simple sense of worthiness and a commitment to keep it. It’s hard to describe it but i surely don’t use worth here either as something quantifiable nor merely in a limited sense of self worth. In Berry though, worth is quite organic and is tied to land, community and work. It seems to me that we quite often compromise on our own quest to achieve worth. May be, it’s hard both in Baghdad and in Oakland. The real rears its ugly head all too frequently but should we lose our ‘despairing belief’ in the ideal?

I don’t want to belabor this point. I just thought these paragraphs from Berry are perhaps worth reading, especially this weekend.

On this theme of celebration/rethinking, Rajendra Chenni has an interesting essay entitled Time to rejoice or rethink in the Deccan Herald. He rightly points out:

The Kannada cosmos is so rich, varied and plural that no intelligent, sensitive, Kannada speaking individual would ever feel maimed or incomplete for being a part of it. This should be reason enough to celebrate Kannada Rajyotsava with confidence and a sense of belonging.

Amidst all our anxieties and challenges, this is worth remembering.

Chicago witnessed the largest demonstration in its history. Deputy Supt. of Police Charles Williams estimated 400,000 people participated in the rally. Organizers claimed half million or more. But today was a day when numbers didn’t matter. What was significant was the act of coming out, by people who weren’t seen, who had chosen to hide and who had just worked and served quietly.

Immigration debate is a hot political wedge issue. It has already been framed in legalistic terms, as a citizenship and national security issue that American nation has to deal with. But it is more complicated and actually has the potential to engender a new debate that could prove to be as influential and significant as the Civil rights moverment.

I have been following the political manouvering on this issue for a while. Politicians and media seem to be intent on making either a legalistic argument that is bent on providing / denying some legal status or an instrumentalist argument, which seeks to demonstrate the value of these illegal aliens to the economy. Unfortunately only the Christian Churches and organizations point out how we all seem to deny dignity of illegal aliens. As I listen to politicians and pundits, I can not help but wonder how frequently we deny the humanity of many, whom we see everyday and who make our lives comfortable.

This ought to be a moment of reflection for America, to think about its present and future. That, however, cannot be only in legalistic terms. America needs to ask itself how it wants to treat its janitors, fruit pickers, nannies, mechanics, construction workers and such, regardless of their status, citizens, legal or illegal aliens. Today’s demonstration has to be about asking that question.

In the days to come, let us talk more on the contours of this debate.

Aside: I will post some photos of the rally tomorrow.

Aside 2: Well, let me just steal Sepoy’s photos for now.

As Desiknitter recently admitted, kneading has its benefits for academics, to take out their frustrations. Sepoy and I though prefer soft Sqaush ‘yellow dotted’ balls and like to hit them against the wall for an hour, with all our might. But we don’t do it as often as we should; instead, we end up in Foster 103 or such workshop - seminar venues at the University of Chicago, where often visiting scholars become targets of our venting.

But for my money, kitchen is the true site where the best of civilization emerges. I don’t mean only the finest of culinary delights but actually the best of the human qualities. Cooking, whether it is for oneself or (especially) for others, demands such care and aesthetic finesse, it brings out refinement, sensibility and devotion in all of us. Think of our mothers.

Those of us who have had the good fortune of eating in hostel messes (appropriately named) may respond quite violently to my rather poetic cahracterization of cooking here. To them, I can only say I share your pain (a la Bill Clinton fashion) but please don’t despair. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

As I attend a workshop on ‘Assessment’ at Indiana University, I am reminded unlike our classrooms, civilizations do not accept the lowest common denominators. We can and must aim for something higher. Our mothers and kitchens demand that of us.

Aside: I was at Nick’s Pub in Bloomington last night, to get a sandwich and was delightfully surprised to see water, beer and cocktails being served in glasses, which can only be described as glass jars/bottles. In India, fruit jam or pickles would be bottled in such jars/bottles. I was rather preoccupied with writing a blog posting on a new conversation that we began in Chicago this week on language instruction and pedagogy. So my ethnographer’s cap wasn’t on and I didn’t ask the waitress for an explanation.

After I had finished writing this article, I read an interview Bush gave to Indian journalists prior to his departure to India and here is one response that struck me as remarkable.

“Q Mr. President, what is your earliest memory of India?
George W. Bush: Gandhi, …..”

Alright, here is the full version that the readers of TOI didn’t get to read.

If Bush met Gandhi

“We wage a war to save civilization, itself. We did not seek it, but we must fight it – and we will prevail.”

As President Bush visits this week that cradle of an ancient civilization, South Asia, a simple question springs to mind: what is civilization according to George W Bush?

A related question might clarify my focus on civilization: how does Bush perceive and engage with the world? Candidate Bush projected himself as a plain spoken, even incurious, regular Texan, who urged America to be a ‘humble nation’ and not get involved in nation building. 9/11 transformed him into the most Wilsonian of American Presidents, seeking to spread liberty and transform the world.

If in his nomination acceptance speech in 2000, he spoke of ‘occupying the land with character’ and responsibility, four years later in the second inaugural, he argued that the ‘survival of liberty’ and ‘expansion of peace’ in America depended on the expansion of freedom everywhere. Even in 2001, he had characterized democratic faith as the ‘inborn hope of our humanity’, a trust ‘we bear and pass along’. But a coalescence of radical ideology and technology (using planes as weapons) on 9/11 compelled Bush to come to terms with a new threat that doesn’t have borders and isn’t localizable, with a global civil war in the horizon. Absent a moral milieu, the world now is in a state of anomie and suicide (bombers) aren’t merely deviant, but destroy civilization itself. For Bush, reinstituting order everywhere could only happen with democratizing the world through elections and integration into a global economy.

But how does he understand liberty? Note Bush’s repeated invocation of liberty as Almighty’s gift to mankind and as a universal aspiration, yet it manifests in his worldview primarily as Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty, as freedom from coercion. While he speaks of rule of law, freedom of speech, assembly and worship and a free economy, consider his restrictive examples: opportunity to pursue a profession and raise a family, or allowing women to work and sending girls to school. In practice, thanks to the war on terror, even this negative liberty has turned into what Blair characterized as ‘freedom from harm’. In pursuit of this ‘most fundamental of all liberties’, Bush would cut any corners, thus turning a blind eye to the evil that lies within. Recall, Bush’s enthusiastic ‘bring them on’ invitation or Rumsfeld’s ‘Stuff happens’ to explain torture.

Clearly, Bush is no Lincoln attempting to ‘achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace … (for) all nations’ with malice toward none and with charity for all. However, beyond his questionable and inconsistent campaign to spread democracy, a more positive conception of liberty is evident in his notion of civility: ‘Civility isn’t a merely tactic, but a determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.’ But Bush assumes that this civility has already been achieved, whereas both the conceit of his moral certainty (recall, repeated assertions to God being on the side of justice and order) and the reality of the world should make us realize civility (and civilization) is fragile and ought to be conceived as a reneweable endeavor, as Gandhi believed.

Understood thus, how can Bush advance civilization’s cause, as he travels to Gandhi’s land? What can Bush learn from Gandhi about freedom and civilization to engage an authoritarian Pakistan and a nuclear India?

Gandhi characterized civilization as that ‘mode of conduct, which points out to man the path of duty’, the duty being striving to ‘know ourselves and attain mastery over mind and passions’. What is achieved through such striving is freedom, conceived as Swaraj (self-rule), which for Gandhi is not Almighty’s gift or something imposed from above. It is achieved and experienced as self-realization, through truth and non-violence by each person, whose only entitlement is to ‘determined effort’. Even if any conception of personal freedom that Bush subscribes to is absent, note how Gandhi empowers human agency. Further, such self-realization is not experienced in subjective privacy but in an ethico-political life of which Gandhi himself was a great practitioner and in a community of self-governing people. Thus, Gandhi traverses beyond the binaries of positive-negative liberty and the consequent focus on individual wants, offering Swaraj as a democratic ideal.

If Bush had met Gandhi, he would have pointed out this civilizational legacy to South Asians this week and compelled them to embark on a truly democratic project, as he himself would have done in America. Then his stated objective to ‘save civilization’ through democracy and liberty would have been more meaningful. Even when faced with the spectre of radical terror armed with WMD and a global civil war, if Bush’s quest to save civilization has to go beyond his present solution of ‘creating the other in the image of the self’, one of these days he needs to meet Gandhi.

What joy do you find in service to others and not merely in the pleasure that connects you to your body?

Last night, Cornell West left us thinking about this question, in an inspiring talk on the relationship of morality to power. I do not remember the last time I felt this way at the University of Chicago. Rajeev and I truly enjoyed the content of his speech but it was the spirit that was moving, as West rocked an unusual audience at Mandel Hall, full of community members and faces that one wouldn’t’ see at any University of Chicago event.

The occasion was the annual George E Kent lecture, organized by the Organization of Black Students, University of Chicago. The title of the talk was Democracy Matters. In thinking about morality and power, West’s two other questions were the two bookends for his talk: ‘where do we find ourselves’ and ‘who do we choose to be’?

West sharply pointed out something that the advocates of democracy often forget in their certainty of its virtues: democracy’s fragility. He began by alerting us to a lack of and perhaps even the difficulty of Socratic questioning in contemporary America; a questioning that ought to form the core of democratic practice. This lack, for West, is a civilizational problem, for it characterizes the nature of American civilization, which is a ‘hotel’ civilization, where lights are always on and the quest is to deny and dodge death. America is not a civilization that wrestles with self-questioning and self-criticism.

The metanarrative of democracy that West offered has this civilizational critique at its core. Not surprisingly, he characterized American democracy as immature and lacking in integrity. West produced a stinging critique of the post-9/11 obsession with terror by mocking it as the Negroization of America. The question that every American seems to be asking now has been a historical question for every African American: why am I being hated for being who I am? What Black people have confronted in the form of psychic, physical and political terror in their every day life has now become the reality for all Americans today.

Yet, what has been the Black response to American terrorism, to acts of violence perpetrated by White Supremacists? Is there a lesson for America? West located the African American response in the intersections of Socratic questioning and a prophetic vision. He argued that African Americans forged a distinctive form of Socratic questioning, without giving into a Nietzschean ‘ressentiment’, even when the American Constitution too approved of slavery; revenge and hatred were not the motivating forces in their demand for justice. The source of the prophetic vision, West argued, comes from a tragicomic sensibility, where one is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, where the insight that disappointment is a constant companion is never forgotten. In that deep flow of tears, in a deep sadness was born the capacity to withstand barbarity and violence, especially in the 19th-20th centuries, when the dominant were speaking of Progress of mankind, while perpetrating acts of violence.

The legacy of African Americans to America to build a broader vision of democracy is this combination of Socratic questioning and prophetic vision.

West contended that democracy is fragile and civilization is thin. They need to be forged, renewed and strengthened in what will be an everyday endeavor, by each of us. Hence, I think the opening question is the key question of democracy. Gandhi also in redefining the project of democracy through his notion of swaraj shifts the focus to self realization, putting the onus on ‘determined effort’ by each of us and not accepting liberty as either Almighty’s gift (as George Bush does) or imposed from above (again as George Bush does). While West didn’t go as far as Gandhi does in this regard, he forcefully demanded: who do we choose to be? what causes are we serving and what legacy do we want to leave behind?

West asked: How are we preparing for death, a question philosophy meditates on.

Listening to West was important for me. In my report on the SAGSC yesterday, I shared my uneasiness about the nature of our intellectual inquiry and the questions we ask; that uneasiness found a voice in West last night. There is an urgency with which we need to engage with the critical political questions of the day much more self consciously.

Two days ago, I heard Tariq Ali speak and came away very disappointed about radical left. West in some ways restored my faith in the possibility of radical dissent and in the role of public intellectuals.

Last week, I saw ‘Beyond Green: toward a Sustainable Art’, an exhibition at the Smart Museum, Chicago. Guided by the notion of a sustainable design (one that attempts to address the needs of the present without compromising those of future), the exhibition explored how such a design philosophy manifests in the work of 13 Euro-American artists, ‘who combine a fresh aesthetic sensibility with a constructively critical approach to the production, dessimination and display of art’. See the list at the end for details on the artists.

Both the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue emphatically state that the objective here is to move beyond green art and environmental concerns towards a more holistic and new aesthetic of sustainable art. Stephanie Smith, the curator of the exhibition, says in the catalogue:

“This exhibition focuses on only one strand of this art by presenting objects, structures, and processes/networks that use aspects of sustainable design to metaphoric, practical, speculative, ironic, and playful ends.“

Well, we don’t want to leave out anything, do we? In particular, the art presented in the exhibition has this dual commitment: to its ‘speculative and discursive function within the museum and also its application outside’. Thus, the exhibits here go beyond incorporating token environmental consciousness; artists exhibited here seek to transition from mere engagement with land and recycling to serious engagement with social issues through production of aesthetic objects and discourses. Curated with such an brief, the range of the exhibits is quite impressive: (videos on) modified boats and mopeds; banners for urban intervention; producing compost from kitchen and yard waste; recycling paint; shelters for homeless; solar panels inside garments or bags to charge cell phones and MP3 players and so on.

Both Stephanie Smith and Victor Margolin (who wrote an introductory essay entitled ‘On Art and Sustainability’) are concerned with the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of sustainability and hence, particularly stress on the political and activist dimension of this art. Defining sustainability Margolin states:

‘My own definition of sustainability follows in principle the statement in Our Common Future that “the strategy for sustainable development aims to promote harmony among human beings and between humanity and nature.” However, I choose to put the Brundtland Commission’s connection between the social and the environ- mental into a sharper political focus by substituting the term “social justice” for “harmony among human beings” and “environmental justice” for harmony ”between humanity and nature.” Sustainability and the methods of achieving it are inherently political and, thus, contestable. Therefore, its definition should emphasize the need for struggle to achieve sustainable goals.’

The emphasis on ‘justice’ seems to be somewhat of an overkill and in fact, I believe ‘harmony’ is a much more civilizationally grounded value due to its holistic approach in incorporating non-human living beings as well. I also do not understand why achieving harmony among all living beings isn’t a political end, even though, I grant, it is difficult to take out a protest march in favor of harmony, while justice and struggle go hand in hand. What this illustrates for me is a much bigger problem: even as we remain sympathetic to the struggle that Margolin proposes and also towards the exhibits on display (in particular their critical and constructive role in proposing alternatives), yet, the direction of journey is from aesthetics towards life and not the other way around.

What are the consequences? Let us focus on one of the highlights of the exhibition – paraSITE, by Michael Rakowitz (check out his neat, minimalist website), which is proposed as a temporary shelter for urban homeless and is illustrative of the approach adopted here. paraSITE proposes to use the exterior ventilation systems of large urban buildings and apartment complexes. Rakowitz collaborated with homeless and built seven prototypes in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1998, using plastic bags and tape, readily available on the streets. These shelters are inflated with the waste heat vented from buildings, and when deflated could be carried in a light carrying case. Sure, the shelters were functional and used as temporary shelters especially during winter months but they were meant to be powerful statements of dissent, and a refusal to surrender. The artist, curator, art critic and the user are all clear that this shelter is not an alternative proposal for affordable housing; rather, it is a symbolic statement on survival within the city.

It seems to me that paraSITE makes the critique itself the focus, and while I wouldn’t want to belittle the value of such critique, I do want to express my skepticism about its force and effectiveness. Do discourses on sustainable art appear to lose focus in such exercises? How about a reversal of approach? If we choose to move from life towards aesthetics, what kind of objects would we create or indeed, find amidst us?

As I watched the exhibits and thought about the thinking behind these creations, I was reminded of Anand Coomaraswamy, the great Sri Lanka born art historian and curator. Trained in England as a geologist in the 1890s, Coomaraswamy developed an interest in art, influenced by the writings of William Morris and John Ruskin. When he returned to Sri Lanka and traveled allover as part of his professional life, Coomaraswamy also came across objects of everyday use in rural Sri Lanka and India, in the huts of farmers and artisans. In a series of essays published under the title ‘Art and Swadeshi’, Coomaraswamy wrote about the beauty of everyday objects, found in the huts of poorest craftsmen and farmers. Unlike Gandhi, who is often oblivious to aesthetics as a facet of everyday life, Coomaraswamy is not only the chronicler of the intrinsic excellence of everyday objects but also a theoretician of swadeshi as a religious, spiritual and artistic ideal. Swadeshi (self rule), to remind ourselves, is the political ideal of self sufficiency that Indian nationalists, primarily Gandhi, offered in their quest to overthrow colonial rule. Coomaraswamy demands that our art create an environment - indeed life - that is aesthetically and spiritually superior.

What is the thrust of the contrast that I am trying to propose here? While being appreciative of the art on display at the ‘Beyond Green’ exhibition, I still wonder about our predicament, wherein paraSITE is our most effective agitational device, to raise consciousness of urban dwellers about homelessness. Is paraSITE then also the metaphor for our limit to imagine new horizons, to go beyond a critique and embed our creative activities in a constructive manner? It seems to me that sustainable art has already been embedded civilizationally in large parts of non-modern, non-urban world, where the excesses of modern, urban living are absent and where a minimalist approach to life and harmonious relationship with nature had already been established, historically.

Urban modernity has disturbed that harmony in large parts of the world, without proposing sustainable alternatives. I do not want to lament on what we have lost but as a historian merely point out the obvious: most of our cities now require heating and airconditioning primarily due to the kind of structures we build and live in, whereas even hundred years ago an ordinary mason in a city like Delhi would have known how to regulate the circulation of heat. Today, though, if some folks possess HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) systems, then others will use paraSITES to continue their parasitic existence. What is the way out? As a paradigm, ‘Beyond Green’ didn’t hold out much promise.

Contributing artists and artists’ groups from the United States and Europe included Allora & Calzadilla; Free Soil; JAM; Learning Group; Brennan McGaffey in collaboration with Temporary Services; Nils Norman; People Powered; Dan Peterman; Marjetica Potrc; Michael Rakowitz; Frances Whitehead, WochenKlausur; and Andrea Zittel. The exhibition included existing works, commissions, and previously presented work that had been “recycled”.

Both Dasimayya and Allama obviously belong to a pre-ropeway, pre-railways era, when pilgrimage represented a long, often difficult journey. The following vacanas contain reflections on both pilgrimage and the nature of devotion itself.

Dasimayya, 94

What does it matter
if the fox roams
all over the Jambu island?
Will he ever stand amazed
in meditation of the Lord?
Does it matter if he wanders
all over the globe
and bathes in a million rivers?

A pilgrim who’s not one with you,
Ramanatha,
roams the world
like a circus man.

Dasimayya’s fox at least does the pilgrimage the hard way and actually visits the punyaksetras (sacred spaces) even if it doesn’t have the capacity to stand in amazement and meditate. How many of us, devotees visiting Tirupati, can with a clear conscience say that our devotion isn’t instrumental and the objective of our pilgrimage is to meditate at that sacred place, to seek to be one with the lord.

Dasimayya, 42:

A man filled grain
in a tattered sack
and walked all night
fearing the toll-gates

but the grain went through the tatters
and all he got was the gunny sack.

It is thus
with the devotion
of the faint-hearted

O Ramanatha.

Not only do we go to Tirupati to bribe our gods and seek favors, our devotion itself is suspect. Dasimayya’s wonderful image of an empty sack aptly characterizes our journey through life. Our fears are anxieties over insignificant demands that life makes on us, be they taxes and tolls. As Dasimayya and Allama repeatedly say if we do not seek to be one with Siva, then all our rituals and pilgrimages do not matter. I would in fact extend this argument and suggest that same quest should be our goal within human society too.

Dasimayya, 98

To the utterly at-one with Siva

there’s no dawn,
no new moon,
no noonday,
nor equinoxes,
nor sunsets,
nor full moons;

his front yard
is the true Benares,

O Ramanatha.

It is here that Dasimayya makes a radical suggestion: for a true devotee, his front yard itself would be Tirupati or Benaras. He needn’t go anywhere else.

Allama, 959

Feed the poor
tell the truth
make water-places
for the thirsty
and build tanks for a town -

you may then go to heaven
after death, but you’ll get nowhere
near the truth of Our Lord.

And the man who knows Our Lord,
he gets no results.

Like Dasimayya, Allama too consistently argues for an advaitin position: to realize the unity of jiva (living being) with Siva. Here he isn’t speaking of pilgrimages but in fact Allama is even suspicious of all acts of charity and compassion that all religions valorise. He doesn’t believe those acts - and even being truthful - would enable a devotee to understand the truth of Siva. Allama advocates attaining a state of being where the knowledge of the truth of Siva takes us beyond all results. That is, a devotee who understands the truth of Siva doesn’t care about results.

To me, this represents a simple quest: to overcome instrumentality in our lives. Our ideals and actions aren’t motivated by a desire to attain anything. We don’t tell truth, build tanks or quench the thirst and hunger of the needy to attain any merit. Allama completely rejects the premise of Karma theory. For Allama, doing the right thing isn’t the path that leads to the truth of Siva. Moreover, the devotee who has the knowledge of Siva has already moved beyond results.