Devdutt Pattanaik has written a book called 'My Gita'. Every single sentence in it is either false or foolish or both false and foolish. He says-
We never actually hear what Krishna told Arjuna.
Yes we do. The divine author of the Epic stipulates that we hear exactly what was said.
We simply overhear what Sanjaya transmitted faithfully to the blind king Dhritarashtra in the comforts of the palace, having witnessed all that occurred on the distant battlefield, thanks to his telepathic sight.
Since the thing was composed for our benefit, we aren't eavesdroppers. We are hearing what was said, not overhearing anything.
Why is the story framed in this way? The answer is simple. Kurukshetra is holy ground. Blood should not be spilled there. Arjuna, but not Dhritarashtra's son, is the only person who feels that something is amiss. An impious action is about to unfold.
Arjuna's 'vishada'- depression- is however itself a 'yoga'- a means to union with the Divine which is his own highest desire. Sanjaya, like Arjuna and Krishna etc. received a boon of clairvoyance. However Arjuna alone chose not to accept 'chakshusi vidya' from a demi-god. However, due to 'vishada', Arjuna lost control of himself- i.e. became 'asvamika'. This means a boon which had not vested in him could become so because it had not been taken back and thus was itself 'asvamika'. This explains why Arjuna alone intuits that something has gone wrong.
Dhritarashtra's blindness contrasts with Arjuna's eagerness to receive the theophany of the Lord only through the Lord's own gratuitous gift of divine eyes.
The Gita we overhear is essentially that which is narrated by a man with no authority but with a distant sight (Sanjaya) to a man with no sight but with full authority (Dhritarashtra).
Dhritarashtra does not have 'full authority'. It is his son who wields power.
This peculiar structure of the narrative draws attention to the vast gap between what is told and what is heard.
Nonsense! An unimpeachable witness repeats what was said exactly. The framing device adds poignancy to what is related.
Krishna and Sanjaya may speak exactly the same words, but while Krishna knows what he is talking about, Sanjaya does not. Krishna is the source, while Sanjaya is merely a transmitter.
No. Sanjaya has a boon from Veda Vyasa, the progenitor of the Kauravas and author of the Mahabharata. That he is a 'suta'- charioteer- just as Lord Krishna is at Kurukshetra, shows his function is that of Lord Krishna himself. To be clear, it may seem that Krishna only wanted to benefit his friend. But, since Sanjaya relates everything to the father of Arjuna's enemy, we can see that the Divine Teaching is meant for all- sinners and saints alike.
Can we understand what Krishna said? Yes. It may take a bit of effort. Moreover, as we learn more about ourselves and the world, our understanding of it improves or becomes more useful and helpful to us.
True, unlike Arjuna or Sanjaya, we do not receive the divine theophany. But we would not be able to withstand so sublime a vision.
Likewise, what Sanjaya hears is different from what Arjuna hears and what Dhritarashtra hears.
No. It is one and the same.
Sanjaya hears the words, but does not bother with the meaning.
But the meaning is crystal clear! Sanjaya is a highly evolved soul worthy of 'divya drishti' including audience of the 'vishvaroopa' theophany of the Universal Lord. Why pretend he is just some errand boy who chanced to overhear big people talking?
Arjuna is a seeker; and so, he de-codes what he hears in order to find a solution to his problem.
Arjuna is a warrior- a man of action, not an intellectual. Sanjaya is the son of a Rishi. His wise counsel could have saved the Kauravas from disaster.
Arjuna desires to come to know the Lord of Yoga by His Grace alone. Even his 'vishada' and his doubts turn out to be useful to him to achieve his objective.
Arjuna, during the ‘conversation’, asks many questions and clarifications’, to ensure that he properly understands the purport of the ‘discourse’.
What is the result? He not only completes the Divine plan but gains the theophany of the Lord by Grace alone.
In contrast, Dhritarashtra remains silent throughout. In fact, Dhritarashtra is not interested in what Krishna has to say; but, is rather fearful of what Krishna might do to his children, the Kauravas.
Krishna is not a combatant. It is Bhima's killing of his sons which causes the blind King grief.
So he (Dhritarashtra) judges Krishna’s words, accepting what serves him, dismissing what does not.
Dhritarashtra utters no word of judgment. His grief remains with him and turns to anger- as when he crushes the iron statue of Bhima. But, at the end of the day, he too embraces 'sanyaas' and sets off for the forest and the life of the renunciant.
Pattanaik seems oddly unfamiliar with the Mahabharata. Yet he is only a few years younger than me and has always lived in India. Surely he'd have grown up watching the Mahabharat on TV? How can he write such ignorant nonsense? Perhaps the answer is that he is a Doctor by training. It may be that he was too busy studying to have much leisure to watch TV or read the epics.
Alternatively, his English may be poor. Instead of saying 'we disagree on what Krishna meant', he says 'we disagree on what Krishna said'.The quest for objective truth (what did Krishna actually say?) invariably results in vi-vaad, argument, where you try to prove that your truth is the truth and I try to prove that my truth is the truth.
There may be some discussion as to what is or isn't an interpolation in the Gita. But that is a matter for philologists. For the rest of us, we know what Krishna said and we know what he meant. We may still debate whether our present context is one where the Gita is relevant and can be meaningfully applied.
My assertion is that the Vyadha Gita & Nalopkhyanam, which together dispel the Vishada of Yuddhishtra, are applicable to those of us who are principals- i.e. autonomous- whereas the Bhagvad Gita is relevant only to dispel the Vishada of agents- i.e. the ethically heteronomous whose duty is ultimately dictated by another.
This is not a 'controversial' view. Arguably, if you say 'God exists', then you ought not to want to be a principal. You ought to want to be an agent serving the Lord wholeheartedly. However, Yuddhishtra has to learn and practice statistical game theory- of a type not specified- so as to achieve ataraxia. But this means acting autonomously. In the end Yuddhishtra rejects the ethics of Dharma- his own Divine father. We are entitled to acknowledge God but reject his creation. Game theory has considered 'Newcombe' problems. The Kavka's toxin of atheism may be the cup we must not less pass from our hand ad maiorem dei gloriam- for the greater glory of God.
The quest for subjective truth (how does The Gita make sense to me?) results in sam-vaad, where you and I seek to appreciate each other’s viewpoints and expand our respective truths.
Subjective truth is just whatever you believe to be true. Blurting it out may be a good thing because only when you hear yourself do you realize that your views are crude or incoherent.
It allows everyone to discover The Gita at his or her own pace, on his or her own terms, by listening to the various Gitas around them.
Generally speaking, when we discuss a matter with people we like, our minds automatically seek out 'Schelling' focal solutions to our coordination problems- i.e. we gravitate to a lowest common denominator of understanding. Thus we may say 'Gita says be good, do good.' This is quite anodyne but it is better than getting into complicated questions of whether it is okay to eat onions or put garlic in the sambar.
Objectivity is obsessed with exactness and tends to be rather intolerant of deviation, almost like the jealous God of monotheistic mythologies.
No. Objectivity is scientific and has a mathematical representation. As maths has advanced we have learned that some things which must exist have no exact or precise representation. Thus there is an objective way of determining when the fault of 'akreibia'- attempting greater precision than the subject matter permits- arises and causes us to babble nonsense.
Game theory as applied in the Life Sciences has shown that homosexuality is perfectly natural. That is a genuine advance, ethically speaking. We now know that if doesn't matter if you are gay or straight or left handed or right handed. Previously, even good people didn't want to commit to the validity of Homosexual marriage etc just in case God wanted to play a nasty trick on gay people.
But meanings change over time, with the personality of the reader, and with context. Subjectivity challenges the assumption that ideas are fixed and can be controlled; it celebrates the fluid.
So does telling lies and believing in magic. Objectivity, if pursued with mathematical rigor, enables us to make ethical advances as important as those of a scientific or technological nature. Suppose I have a gay grandchild. Thanks to game theoretic evolutionary biology, she will face very little hostility or discrimination. There already are Arya Samaji priestesses who will perform her marriage ceremony. By the time she is grown up most Churches and Hindu Marriage Halls will be competing to perform such ceremonies.
Modern global discourse tends to look at truth qualitatively: it is either true or false.
No. We now have a variety of different logics and mathematical axiom systems. Intuitionist systems reject the law of the excluded middle. Other more complicated dialethic or para-consistent logics can be used. Plenty of people already use 'fuzzy logic' based rice-cookers etc. More generally, we prefer graph theory or sequent calculi though we would also seek a category theory with univalent foundations. These are complementary approaches. This is an exciting time to read the Gita because of the rapid advances in mathematics. Yuddhishtra was fortunate to get that type of knowledge as a boon. It is only now- or over the last few decades- that this aspect of the Mahabharata has been clarified for us. Robert Aumann finds game theory in the Talmud. Our useless Professors can only find stupidity in the Gita.
That which is objective is scientific and true.
No. Scientific propositions await falsification. They are hypotheses which have not yet been sublated.
That which is subjective is mythic and false.
No. It is subjective- i.e. what the subject says it is.
Hindu thought, however, looks at truth quantitatively: everyone has access to a slice; the one who sees all slices of truth is bhaga-van.
No. Hindu thought holds Truth to be identical with Being. A viewpoint is not a truth. It is merely a viewpoint. It may be that Truth and Being are wholly beyond language. However, there is an instrumental value in our distinguishing things which really exist from things which are merely 'mithya'- Meinongian objects which can be named but not found, e.g. the hare with horns or the mountain of gold.
Limited truth is mithya.
No. Mithya is mythical or imaginary. Our partial knowledge of the world is called 'Maya'- delusion.
Limitless truth is satya.
No. Satya coincides with Being. It may be finite but unbounded. It may be infinite but bounded. But, equally, it may be wholly outside language.
Satya is about including everything and being whole.
No. Satya is about not telling stupid lies or finding less and less stupid lies to help you on your way.
The journey towards limitless truth expands our mind.
Though saying things like this gets easier as I.Q drops and ignorance prevails.
The Gita itself values subjectivity: after concluding his counsel, Krishna tells Arjuna to reflect on what has been said, and then do as he feels.
Which is what happens anyway. People do what they want. You can admonish them till the cows come home but that will still be the outcome. Getting people to want to do the right thing, by the folk theorem of repeated games, is how any coercive outcome for a Society can be achieved completely non-violently and on the basis of pure voluntary choice for all agents.
Even Sanjaya, after giving his view on what Krishna’s discourse potentially offers, concludes The Gita with the phrase ‘in my opinion’.
No. 'Mati' is a technical term used for the assurance arrived at after due deliberation by one proficient in Shastras.
Traditionally, The Gita has been presented as a text that focusses on self-realization.
No. It has been presented as a devotional text. As the popular Bhaja Govindam has it-
The Mahabharata is for householders and poorer people or the uneducated. They can't up-sticks and go off to the forest.
This suits the hermit who isolates himself from society. This is not surprising, since most early commentators and retellers of The Gita, such as Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhwa and Dyaneshwara, chose not to be householders.
But the Gita was transmitted originally by sutas- bardic charioteers or wandering minstrels. Ascetics wrote commentaries on it to promote their own philosophies.
The original Buddhist monastic order may not have survived in India, but it did play a key role in the rise and dominance of the Hindu monastic order.
But monastic orders existed before Buddhism came into being.
The monastic approach willy-nilly appeals to the modern individualist, who also seeks self-exploration, self-examination, self-actualization and, of course, selfies.
Nonsense! Monks aren't running around in yoga-pants posting selfies on Instagram.
But the Mahabharata is about the household, about relationships, about others.
No. It is about Kings and Sages. Only in the Vyadha Gita do we hear about how the vast majority of the people live. It turns out that if you are a good and reputable butcher or meat vendor, then you can live in a fine house and look after your own aged parents as if they were gods. Pundits and Princes are no concern of yours. You can gain the honeyed wisdom of the Chandogya despite pursuing a trade looked down on by vegetarians.
It is essentially about a property dispute.
No. It is about Karna wanting the war to go ahead though all he has to do is reveal himself to be the eldest brother of the Pandavas after which he can order his brothers to return to the forest. The odd thing is that Arjuna fulfils his eldest brother's wish and slays him in a state of Manyu (dark anger) without knowing the truth. This is a highly dramatic situation. The Mahabharata survived because its plot was very finely contrived.
Arjuna’s dilemma begins when he realizes that the enemy is family and he fears the impact of killing family on society as a whole.
So, Arjuna is as stupid as shit. The guy grew up knowing that the Kauravas were his cousins. What's more he was trained from boyhood in killing people. Only at the last moment does he put two and two together. 'OMG! Being a soldier means killing people! If I fight my cousins, I will be killing members of my own family! Why did nobody explain this to me?'
Indians like believing all other Indians are as stupid as shit. The result is that they themselves write stupid shit.
What is the cause of Arjuna's vishada when he sees the assembled armies? Well, he has an intuition that some madness has seized the Kshatriya race. They are about to desecrate the holy teerth of Kurukshetra. Unlike Duryodhana who feels no qualm even in the presence of his Guru, Arjuna does feel an ethical pang. Why? He is in the presence of the greatest of Gurus, the Lord of Yoga.
This Pattnaik dude hasn't read the same Gita I and millions of Hindus have read or heard recited. He doesn't understand that Princes kill their cousins- but often also their brothers or even fathers- in wars. Till quite recently, a King would go join his army and share the risk of sudden death. Princely cousins- scions of Kaisers, Tzars and Emperors of India- might fall on opposite sides on the same battlefield.
Now it is true that in non Kshatriya families which practice peaceful trades, it seldom happens that a dispute ends up with cousins shooting arrows at each other or trying to chop off each others heads. On the other hand, now guns are relatively cheap and much more accurate, the Indian middle class is catching up with the Wild West in this regard.
Krishna’s discourse continuously speaks of yagna, a Vedic ritual that binds the individual to the community.
No. It binds the sacrificer to the Gods or, in the Upanishads, it is itself the chaste seeking of spiritual truth which yields knowledge of the soul.
Yagna may be familial and sometimes may extend to a communal purpose- e.g. persuading the rain clouds to appear and shower down upon the parched earth. However, what binds individuals to communities is 'dharma' which includes niyama positive injunctions and nisheda proscriptions.
In Chapter 5, Verse 13, of The Gita, Krishna describes the human body as a city with nine gates: two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, one mouth, one anus and one genital. A relationship involves two bodies, two people, the self and the other, you and me, two cities—eighteen gates in all.
I have a lot of relationships which don't involve my anus or my genitals. On the other hand, on being introduced to a Japanese business contact, I carefully insert my fingers into his nostrils while he does the same. I avoid business relationships with Indians because they want similar treatment for the other seven gates.
That The Gita has eighteen sections, that it seeks to make sense of the eighteen books of the Mahabharata—which tells the story of a war between family and friends fought over eighteen days involving eighteen armies—indicates that the core teaching of The Gita has much to do with relationships. It serves the needs of the householder rather than the hermit.
Nonsense! There are plenty of 'householders' who are doing pretty well without ever having heard of Gita or Sita or Cheetah. The truth is, I grew up in a household where the Gita was read but nobody monkeyed around with my nine gates. True, at a later point I had relationships where a certain type of gate was much in use. I may have wanted access to one or two other gates but seldom got that favour unless it was my birthday.
Admittedly, I'm not a very strict Hindu. But very few of us are constantly using all nine gates or getting our nine gates used.
Why is Pattnaik telling such ridiculous lies about a text most Hindus are quite familiar with? The answer is that this fool is posing as some sort of Guru who babbles nonsense.
Traditionally, a guru would only elaborate on a particular verse or a set of verses or a chapter of The Gita at a time.
Yup. A lot of gurus are lazy. But then guys who go to gurus are just virtue signalling tossers. They don't want to use their brains.
It is only in modern times, with a printed book in hand, that we want to read The Gita cover to cover, chapter by chapter, verse to verse, and hope to work our way through to a climax of resolutions in one go.
This is silly. There were traditional performances of the Gita which even kids found engrossing. They started to appear in films as well before I was born. Maybe, Tamil Cinema was ahead in this regard.
In any case, educated Indians were reading the Gita cover to cover in Arnold's translation back in the 1890s.
When we attempt to do so, we are disappointed. For, unlike modern writing, The Gita is not linear: some ideas are scattered over several chapters, many ideas are constantly repeated, and still others presuppose knowledge of concepts found elsewhere, in earlier Vedic and Upanishadic texts.
So what? The narrative is gripping. It builds up to a spectacular finish. True, in later life we find more and more when we return to it but the thing gripped our imagination from our childhood onward.
In fact, The Gita specifically refers to the Brahma sutras, also known as Vedanta sutras, said to have been composed by one Badarayana, sometimes identified with Vyasa. Further, at places, the same words are used in different verses to convey different meanings, and at other instances, different words are used to convey the same idea. For example, sometimes the word ‘atma’ means mind and sometimes soul; at other times other words like dehi, brahmana and purusha are used for soul instead of atma. This can be rather disorienting to a casual reader, and open to multiple interpretations
Casual readers don't know Sanskrit. They pick up a translation into their own language and face no great hermeneutic challenge.
The Mahabharata is linear and carefully built up on the basis of symmetrical situations and characters. The Gita is very effective because of its dramatic content. It builds up suspense. The theophany- as terrible as it is sublime- is cathartic. But the whole thing is wasted on this cretin. Yet his book on the Gita sells like hot cakes while nobody buys my much more pornographic tome. All is fault of karma only. In last life I must have used wrong nine or eighteen or thirty six or seventy two gates. On the other hand, maybe I didn't concentrate on telling stupid lies about the Gita. That's why nobody wants my book.
If I wanted to succeed I should have written 'Bhagvad Gita is about social distancing due to COVID. It teaches that you should open some of your nine gates and micturate and defecate and weep copiously as you do so. This will cause people to give you a wide berth. Thus you will be saved from the virus while everybody else dies of black fungus.'
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