He was very pure and tolerant. Pius Adesanmi based this piece on Orunmila’s ethos. ENJOY people.

Live And Let Live, by the Late Pius Adesanmi was published on the 27th of Jul, 2011

If you are Yoruba and you are older than the Facebook or Twitter generation of Nigerians, if you are struggling to cope with expressions such as LOL (laugh out loud) , LMAO (laugh my ass off) OMG (Oh my God), and 9ja (Naija) in emails and texts you receive daily from Nigerians in their teens and twenties, chances are you grew up in a village in Yoruba land where life is suffused in culture, tradition, and a panoply of ancestral rituals and spiritual observances, all instances of man shaping order out of primordial chaos.

Chances are, growing up, you partook – as audience or celebrant– in a very colourful tapestry of ancestral liturgies: Ogun festival, Sango festival, Imole festival, Egungun festival, and, of course, Oro festival, the fear of which is the beginning of wisdom for Yoruba women.

Chances are you enjoyed the atmospherics of these observances, partook of propitiatory offal, sang, and danced to a host of inspirational choruses and processionals welcoming the ancestors and the orishas into the realm of unworthy mortals at each spiritual enactment.

Chances are you remember the sombre baritone of the officiating Ifa priest chanting: “Orisha Yoruba o, e ma ku abo o”; you remember him chanting: “Aji gini, arin gini, l’oruko Orunmila, Orunmila Baba Ifa, Ifa la o pe, Orunmila la o bo”; chances are you remember the solemn chimes of his bell as he intones: kango kango, mo ma gb’ohun agogo, kange kange mo ma gb’ohun orisha o;chances are you remember one of the most famous of these inspirational choruses: the processional canticle of Oro:

Oro ile wa la wa nse o (2x)

Esin kan o pe (oh eh)

Esin kan o pe ka wa ma s’oro

Oro ile wa la wa nse o

It’s been years now and memories flood through the grey mist of time as you remember these hymns. You know that you dare not insult any of the hymns with a translation into English. No European language is deep enough to bear the full weight of these songs without doing irreparable damage to them. After all, the poverty of the English language is what made Wole Soyinka abandon his dream of translating all of D.O Fagunwa’s novels.

The poor Soyinka held a rapid dialogue with his legs after translating only one of them! But you know that the Oro canticle is too crucial to the lesson that the belief system of the Yoruba has to teach contemporary Nigeria to be left untranslated. You know you must attempt to capture the soul and spirit of the hymn, while hoping that the ancestors will not fine you twenty-five cows for this miserable result in English:

Behold Oro! The ritual of our forebears!

Oro hampers no faith

Let no faith hamper Oro

Behold Oro! The ritual of our forebears!

You probably sang this song throughout your childhood and early adulthood; you got acquainted with new versions of it that were mainstreamed into Yoruba popular culture by the likes of Alhaji Chief Professor-Master General Kollington Ayinla, Alhaji Agba Chief Dr. Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, Ambassador Oodua Abass Akande omo Rapala, and so many other fuji musicians; you sang versions of it that were funkified by your kegite “Il y a” while you were a “wokedly carried” undergraduate savouring “holy water” on campus without the knowledge of your parents.

But through all these renderings, not once did you ever pause to examine the song for its philosophical ramifications. Not once did you really listen to what it tells you about the cultural fount from which it sprang. You never analyzed the hymn because you are probably not used to doing a close reading of your culture. You probably never even thought of it as a hymn. Right now, if you are a Christian, you are probably wincing in horror at the “blasphemy” of my calling a “pagan” Oro song a hymn or an inspirational chorus.

If your ecumenical anger allows you to continue reading, consider this powerful line in the hymn: Esin kan o pe k’awa ma s’oro. I have translated what it says and what it leaves unsaid but implied: Oro hampers no faith. Let no faith hamper Oro. Here, we encounter the first indication of the intrinsic humanism of Yoruba spirituality: the valuation of pluralism. We encounter consciousness and validation of the spiritual essence of the Other. Indeed, we are in the presence of the accomodationist ethos of the Yoruba worldview.

For what this Oro canticle hints at and acknowledges is the presence of other faiths in its own spiritual space of actuation. Oro is demonstrating its awareness of the politics of otherness unleashed by the intrusion of two foreign faiths into the Yoruba world. Oro is acknowledging the presence of Christianity and Islam. These two newcomers are the “esin kan” that are being subtly referenced and advised to live and let live and not hamper older forms of spiritual expression. Oro will not bother you for there is room enough in the sky for birds to fly without colliding. Oro is extending an olive branch to one religion that claims to be a religion of peace and another that claims to have been founded by the prince of peace himself.

From their history – or, rather, the history of how their pacific essence has been twisted and bloodied across centuries by ignorant and intolerant adherents – we know that Christianity and Islam are strangers to the cosmopolitan and accomodationist graciousness of this Oro processional. For no sooner had the two religions been “let in” – a la Stanley Meets Mutesa – than they began to invest in a sanguinary politics of otherness in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

One began to manufacture infidels who must be put to the sword via purificatory jihad and the other, tolerating no alternative paths to spirituality, decreed itself the way, the truth, and the light. The draconian take-no-prisoners philosophy of these two religions could, of course, only eventuate in their total blindness to the accomodationist humanism of Oro.

Because Christianity and Islam insist on spiritual rebirth as the only path to God and Allah, forgetting is a fundamental element of their creed. Forgetting is, in fact, the most significant aspect of their faiths that haughty European and Arab invaders sold to Africans as they scrambled to win “pagan” souls all over the continent.

That newly-minted born again Christian or Moslem must forget his or her former “pagan” and “fetish” self. Where the Christian forgets to forget the old self, Enoch Adeboye and Chris Oyakhilome are on hand to remind him of the importance of forgetting: “for old things have passed away and all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Only this new self, born in Christ or Mohammed and approved by Europe or Saudi Arabia, is worth remembering. Nigerian Christians go a step further. This new creature must be as white as snow in the burning tropical heat of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway where he constitutes a nuisance to public order.

What kind of self did the born again Yoruba Christian or Moslem have to forget in order not to come short of the glory of God or Allah? The cosmopolitan, pacifist, and accomodationist self in that Oro processional hymn is what is forgotten and sacrificed. Centuries of pluralism and communalism went into the cultural construction of that self. That self was raised by a culture that taught it to always see the humanism of the other as an extension of its own humanism. That self was socialized by ancestral sayings and adages that always celebrated difference and privileged pluralism. That self was taught that several roads lead to the market. As that self was being socialized into adulthood, no elder in the village ever told it that there is only one way, truth, and light leading to the market of spiritual efflorescence.

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/12/01/the-philosophy-of-orunmila-is-always-live-and-let-live-by-pius-adesanmi/

Esin kan o pe k’awa ma s’oro .

Where's muttleylaff self?? Come and receive wisdom.

Come to think of it, I ahave particularly been interested in the African spiritualism. I think to know omeself, one must know where one came from. If only, if only a teacher is available. How the Gods of Universe got replaced with jehova nd allah still beats me...

kkins25:
Where's muttleylaff self?? Come and receive wisdom.

May the gentle prof's soul RIP.

Another RIP prof, Prof Sofie Abosede Oluwole, said of Socrates, unarguably, the father of western philosophy and Orunmila, the Yoruba father of wisdom had modes of philosophising that had similarities and that their philosophising were aimed at solving problems in their locate environments that also have universal application.

MuttleyLaff:
May the gentle prof's soul RIP.

Another RIP prof, Prof Sofie Abosede Oluwole, said of Socrates, unarguably, the father of western philosophy and Orunmila, the Yoruba father of wisdom had modes of philosophising that had similarities and that their philosophising were aimed at solving problems in their locate environments that also have universal application.

why do you abandon the wisdom of our forefathers for that of your slave master

kkins25:
why do you abandon the wisdom of our forefathers for that of your slave master

If the wisdom of our forefathers have any theme of righteousness and practicing good moral behavior in it, then its untrue and disingenuous of you, to come and say that I've abandoned their wisdom.