Asian Religions, page 14
The Bhagavad Gita
The organization of the Hindu tradition into three aspects, the Trimarga, is based on a Hindu scripture entitled the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita is among the most important and the most widely read, recited, and translated of all Hindu scriptures, though it is not a “holy book” in the Western sense of the term – not a “timeless” or “revealed” scripture, as we think of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or the Qur'an. The honor of being “eternal” or revealed is reserved for the Vedas and the Upaniads, the closest Hindu equivalents of the Abrahamic scriptures.
The Gita, itself divided into 18 chapters, is actually part of a much longer work called the Mahābhārata, an epic novel akin to the Odyssey or the Iliad. It recounts a great war that divided a single clan into two warring factions. The story tells of many heroes, but the one featured in the Bhagavad Gita is an archer named Arjuna. Arjuna's exploits, especially with the bow and arrow, are legendary, and he was regarded as the greatest warrior of his time. But, when faced with a final battle that will pit members of a single family against one another, Arjuna is overcome with grief and doubt. On the night before the great battle, he asks his charioteer to take him for one last look at the armies arrayed on either side of a temporary divide, soon to be filled with the blood and cries of mortal combat. Looking across to the “enemy,” Arjuna sees nothing but family and friends – the cousins he played with as a child, the uncles he grew up to respect and admire, even his own archery master. Having a well-earned confidence in his own abilities as a warrior, he knows that he will be the agent of their deaths. Conscience-stricken, he sets down his bow and scabbard and announces to his charioteer: “I will not fight.”
The remainder of the Gita is a discussion between the warrior Arjuna and his charioteer about Arjuna's duties as a warrior and about the tragic nature of life itself. The charioteer persuades Arjuna that he must go to war, and his message is based upon three arguments that correspond to the three margas of duty (karma), wisdom (jñāna), and devotion (bhakti). At the conclusion of their discussion, the charioteer reveals his true identity to Arjuna: he is none other than the great god Krishna (Figure 14.1). Krishna's sermon, seemingly about a warrior's ultimate destiny, is in fact a lesson about life itself, which is always and for everyone a struggle between wrong and right, between ignorance and understanding, between fatalism and self-determination. We will look at the specific forms of Krishna's advice in the ensuing chapters.
Figure 14.1 Mural painting depicting Lord Krishna with Arjuna. Patora, Orissa, India. © Frederic Soltan / Corbis.
It is notable that the Bhagavad Gita is set within a context of war and that Krishna's literal advice to Arjuna is that he should go into battle. Comparatively, we may note that many of the world's religions are seemingly focused on conflict, even on bloodshed, in their foundational scriptures; this theme ranges from the many battles of the Hebrew Bible to the jihadist exhortations of the Qur'an; and even Jesus, the “Prince of Peace,” bears a sword (Matthew 10: 34–39). These coincidences have led some critics to conclude that religion is, by and large, steeped in blood and not only condones but advocates violence.
This issue deserves a larger and more focused discussion, but it may be instructive to look briefly at how Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) approached the Gita. In spite of fierce resistance from British colonial forces in the 1920s and 1930s, Gandhi and his Satyāgraha Movement (“holding on to truth” through peaceful non-cooperation) appealed to the conscience of the world and attained India's independence from British rule.
In a talk he gave in 1926, Gandhi described the Bhagavad Gita as the most inspiring of all the Hindu scriptures. “Even in 1888–1889,” he said,
when I first became acquainted with the Gita, I felt that it was not a historical work, but that, under the guise of physical warfare, it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind, and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring … I find a solace in the Bhagavad Gita that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad Gita. I find a verse here and a verse there, and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies – and my life has been full of external tragedies – and if they have left no visible or indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavad Gita …1
The Three Margas as Religious Discipline (Yoga)
In the three chapters to follow we will examine the three paths (Trimarga) as three forms of discipline (yoga). The word yoga is the origin of the English words “yoke” (a harness or frame) and “to yoke” (to guide, harness, or control). One employs a yoke to tame an animal and to channel its energy. Similarly, one practices yoga in order to tame the ego and to channel its energy. Here what is meant by “ego” includes the elements of an individual personality that we consider to mark a person's identity: one's body or physical appearance, thoughts, desires and motivations. Though we think we should be in control of these dimensions of ourselves, too often the reverse is true: instead of me controlling my body, it is my body that controls me (often because I am feeling physical pain or discomfort, or because I am overcome with sexual desires, hunger, and other needs that “take over” my mind). Instead of me controlling my thoughts, they “run away,” they “wander,” they are unfocused; instead of me controlling my desires, they control me (I am overwhelmed by disappointed wants, or distressed by failure in love). In the absence of yoga – that is, in the absence of spiritual discipline – it is the ego that controls the self, like oxen that go whichever way they choose. The purpose of yoga is to reverse this pattern of control, so that “I” am in control of my body, thoughts, and desires, rather than vice versa. An analogy employed in the Hindu tradition is that of a charioteer in control of the horses pulling the chariot. Clearly the Hindu tradition distinguishes between the “ego,” which is associated with my individual personality, and some deeper “I,” some deeper dimension of the self.
The English word “to yoke” also means to bring together, to join together (as in harnessing two oxen by the same frame, so that they can work together as a team). Yoga “yokes” by bringing together the “I,” the true self, with something more eternal, a greater “I,” a cosmic “I,” a sacred reality. Just as the true self is not limited to my individual personality, the cosmic “self” is not limited to the vast assembly of physical things in the universe. In Sanskrit, the true self is called Ātman and the cosmic self is called Brahman. We will explore these spiritual concepts further in Chapter 16. The great problem addressed by Hindu spiritual self-cultivation is our tendency to identify ourselves purely with our bodies, thoughts, and unconscious desires and to be ignorant of the deeper self within. Similarly, we tend to see the world in purely material terms, as consisting of a great multitude of things and persons, and we fail to see their underlying interconnection or unity. This is ignorance – literally, in Sanskrit, “blindness” or “not-seeing” (avidyā). Yoga – that is, the three margas – gives us the spiritual tools to “see” ourselves as we truly are, to see reality as it truly is, and to harness physical, psychological, and emotional energies in a way that is constructive and spiritually ennobling. It allows us to take control of our lives. So, in the chapters that follow, we will examine the three margas as three forms of discipline and control: the disciplining of action, the disciplining of the mind, and the disciplining of the emotions.
Note
1 John Strohmeier, ed., The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009), p. xvii.
15
Karma-marga
One of Krishna's first lessons when addressing Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita is that his concern for others actually masks an even greater concern for himself, that is, for his ego, which is willful and self-centered. Arjuna's refusal to fight arises from his excessive concern for the “fruits of action.” He is overly worried about the consequences of his actions as they will reflect on himself. He should focus his attention instead on his duty alone, without attachment to consequences. To “do his duty well” and fulfill the role that society expects of him is selfless (ego-less) action. This is karma-yoga, the discipline of action.
What is the Hindu conception of karma, of action and its consequences? How do the consequences of action impact oneself, as well as the world? What is duty, and how do duties vary from one person to another? What duties are appropriate for me, in my station and my stage of life? In this chapter we will examine Hindu ideas of karma and rebirth, and the law (dharma) of personal responsibility, which is based upon one's caste and stage in life. This is a moral system that Hindus refer to as varna-āśrama-dharma. Then we will return to Krishna's advice to Arjuna on selfless action as a path of spiritual discipline.
Action and Its Consequences
The Hindu concept of rebirth or “reincarnation” has impacted virtually every culture of South and East Asia. It is a belief not limited to Hinduism; it extends to Buddhism as well as to Chinese and Japanese religions, and it is part of an almost universal understanding of the consequences of action. The “law of karma” is simply a law of moral cause and effect, a pattern of action that impacts others but also reflects back upon oneself, both in this life and in lives to come.
In itself, karma means nothing more than “action” and its consequences. It is certainly not “fate,” though it is undoubtedly “inevitable” that actions have consequences and that these consequences are seen and felt both transitively (by others) and reflexively (by oneself). Not all action is karmic – only intentional action is; hence motivation is crucial. Notice that, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is not concerned about Arjuna's acts themselves, but about his thinking about action and inaction – his motives. Similarly, when the Buddha spoke to his disciples about karma, he said: “It is intention, oh Monks, that I call karma; having willed, one acts through body, speech, or mind.”1 Actions motivated by greed, hatred, or delusion generate negative karmic consequences; actions motivated by non-attachment, benevolence, and understanding generate positive karmic consequences.
As long as there is karma, there is rebirth. Karma is the “energy” that spins the wheel of rebirth: this ever-turning cycle of rebirths is called in Sanskrit sasāra, the spinning wheel of existence. Sasāra is our world of everyday experience, fueled by karma and governed by moral laws of cause and effect. At the personal level, sasāra describes the individual's path of innumerable rebirths, through many lifetimes, in its spiritual journey. Cosmically, sasāra describes innumerable rebirths of “worlds” – that is, the cosmos itself, which goes through vast ages of existence, degeneration, eclipse, and regeneration over eons and eons of time. The world as we know it, the age in which we live (and have lived for millennia) is in the kali-yuga (the “rust age”), an age in which injustice often prevails over justice, in which the world is beset by warfare and violence, and in which greed is a primary motivation for individual action. In such an age the individual must struggle against a destructive, immoral, and competitive environment and must resist the temptation to lead an equally self-centered life. This is our primary ethical task as religious persons.
The idea of sasāra and the cyclical conception of time and existence contrast fundamentally with the Western conception of time, which is linear. Western religious traditions see history as progressing along a single line, as having a beginning (God's act of creation, as recounted in Genesis) and, perhaps, an apocalyptic end – a conception that, if shorn of its supernatural elements, parallels the scientific view that the cosmos began with a Big Bang and is likely to end in a cosmic collapse, some millions of years in the future. Within this context human life is also linear, resembling a mathematical vector, with a point of origin at conception or birth and one of two possible outcomes: eternal reward in Heaven, or eternal punishment in Hell. We might call this the “double destiny” conception of the soul.
How is this destiny determined? For purposes of comparison with the Hindu tradition, we can survey the Christian response. Christians have been divided doctrinally over two positions: that one's ultimate destiny is determined by “works” – that is, the sum of one's moral and immoral acts – or that it is determined by “faith” (a doctrine of salvation by faith alone). While most Christians today would emphasize the dimension of faith, the idea that good and evil actions determine one's eternal fate is still widely held. In 1999, when a group of United States soldiers admitted to having participated in a massacre of defenseless refugees during the Korean War some fifty years before, one of the vets expressed his remorse: “That old boy upstairs is going to do the judging on it. And so if you've done wrong, you don't stand too good a chance of getting up there … I ain't figuring on making it.”2 Regardless of whether one's destiny is determined by acts or by faith, it is eternal, so the decisions that one takes and the actions that one conducts in this finite life have infinite importance. We have but one life to live, and how we live it has eternal consequences.
From a Hindu point of view, this double destiny conception of the soul is morally repugnant. First, it is morally repugnant because it is immensely disproportional: not only do finite acts determine an infinite future, but the relative weight of one's moral and immoral acts is lost in the infinitude of Hell. Second, it is morally repugnant because it allows for no redemption or relief; few Christians have asserted the possibility of the salvation of beings in Hell, and those who have done so are associated with fringe religious groups. By contrast, the Hindu solution to this problem affirms not only that reward and punishment are proportional, but that they are also finite – one can learn from one's moral errors in future lives and redeem oneself by acting in accordance with duty in spite of one's earlier wrongs.
The doctrine of karma is not fatalistic. On the contrary, it proposes that I am the author of my own destiny. It is I – not God, not fate, not some random set of causes beyond my control – who has produced the set of circumstances in which I now find myself: the conditions of my birth, my social status and family identity, my gender, my physical appearance, my intelligence and physical capacity or incapacity, unconscious aspects of my character and personality, fortunate or unfortunate events that might befall me, successes and failures, and the conditions of my death. The questions that should govern my life are these: Given the circumstances in which I have placed myself, how can I make best use of this life? It is I who placed myself here: for what purpose? What is it that I can learn from this particular embodiment, this life experience? How should I behave in the roles that I have chosen? What are my duties and responsibilities? How can I best insure that my next rebirth will be a fortunate one?
Critics of this religious and moral system, both in India and outside it, have argued that the doctrine of karma holds individuals to be solely responsible for their conditions, no matter how unpleasant. It is a system, they say, in which the larger society is absolved from the moral need or responsibility to address conditions of poverty, to care for persons who are mentally or physically challenged, to address gender inequalities, to reform political institutions, and so on. And there can be no doubt that this doctrine has had a conservative effect, maintaining social hierarchies for generations. Twentieth-century reformers have condemned the karma doctrine as the remnant of a feudalistic, socially oppressive past, and they have proposed a social ethics of responsibility and care for society's least fortunate individuals.
These are valid arguments and, partly in response to them, India has developed social welfare programs, affirmative action policies, and democratic political institutions in contrast to traditional patterns, which simply “blamed the victim.” Still, the doctrine of karma remains fundamental to Hindu and Buddhist self-understanding. Why?
Certainly one reason why the karma doctrine has survived is the sheer weight of tradition; it has worked as a deep-seated principle of moral cause and effect for centuries of cultural history.
The karma doctrine affirms self-transformation: though I may not be able to change the conditions of my present life, I have ultimate control over the conditions of my future lives.
The doctrine reinforces moral responsibility: the effort to do good and to fulfill one's social duties is rewarded – good accrues to the giver as well as the receiver.
Karma inspires self-reflection and provides answers to questions of personal identity: Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Why do I think and act as I do? What unconscious motivations (which are thought to be derived from thoughts and behaviors in a prior lifetime) predispose me to think and act as I do in this life?
The doctrine encourages the individual to seek moral and spiritual lessons from present circumstances, none of which are the result of random chance; life as a whole, in all its details, is packed with meaning and significance; in terms of my deeper self, the self that persists through innumerable lifetimes and transformations, what can I learn from this experience: as a woman, as a laborer, as one born into poverty, as one born into wealth? All of these experiences contribute to the deeper wisdom of the unfolding self.
Varna-āśrama-dharma
My duties and responsibilities in this life are based upon my caste or social position (varna) and my stage in life (āśrama). That is, ethical duty is situational and determined by one's specific identity. The phrase varna-āśrama-dharma means generally “duty” and, specifically, “duties determined by my caste and my stage in life” – duties determined, as we have seen, by karmic laws of moral cause and effect.
Traditionally, varna was associated with occupations. Today caste is related to social, ethnic, family, and community identity, though it can still be occupationally restrictive. In the Laws of Manu, an ancient collection of moral rules and social values, four major castes were identified. (Lower still was a group of casteless individuals, and later on these became known as “untouchables” because of the ritually unclean work they performed.) The four castes and their primary roles and responsibilities are listed below from low to high:
