Mani Rao writes in 'Fair Observer'
It seems odd to think that Krishna would urge anyone to actually kill people.
It was the function of the charioteer to raise the martial spirit of the warrior. Warriors are supposed to kill other warriors on the battlefield.
In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to go ahead and fight, and persuades him that he would not actually be killing anyone, because they are all already dead, and ‘that which has the body’ is immortal. (Arjuna does not ask—if I am really not killing anyone when I kill them, why kill them at all?)
Krishna says he himself is God and is the efficient cause of everything in the Universe. Moreover, he takes on the sins of his devotees. This 'occasionalist' metaphysics is found in other Theistic religions- e.g. Christianity and Islam.
Moreover, Arjuna is asked to fight his friends and relatives, people with whom he has grown up and people he cares about.
Because that is what his true eldest brother- Karna- wants. Karna could end the war by revealing his true identity.
Arjuna’s refusal to fight tells us that he is a sensitive human being who values life and cares for relationships.
No. Arjuna has been given the gift of 'chaksuchi vidya' or second sight. He did not accept the boon but the demi-god who gave him the gift did not take it back either. It only required Arjuna to experience 'Vishada' for that boon to lodge in him. The drama of the Gita arises out of the fact that it is a 'balanced game'. Both Krishna and Arjuna have the boon of clairvoyance. But Arjuna does not want to use his gift though, if he is not master of himself, he will see the future anyway. It is obvious that if you say 'I don't want to fight because I don't want to kill' the other guy will reply 'how do you know you will kill? The other guy will probably kill you. Just try to protect yourself and your comrades as best you can. Krishna can't take this route because he knows that Arjuna has the boon of second sight. In other words, there is no information asymmetry here by reason of Arjuna's Vishada. That is why it can be a 'yoga'. Otherwise, you can remove depression easily by saying 'you think your beloved Juliet is dead. Actually, she has taken a potion so as to appear dead. Rejoice! She will soon be yours.'
The first (and obvious) response to this problem is to recapitulate the narrative context. In the backstory, there has been much injustice. Peace talks having failed, the only way to restore righteousness is to go to war.
No. If Karna reveals his ancestry then Yuddhishtra will obey his orders. He will tell the Pandavas to go conquer some other territory and bring it under the suzerainty of the Kuru Emperor.
Arjuna has to fight his own family members—and this is also a way to illustrate that we must stand up for righteousness even if it means going against people who are dear to us.
Only if that is what we are paid to do or if we are specifically asked our opinion. We don't have to pretend to be police officers with a duty to investigate potential crimes committed by Mummy or Daddy.
Another response to the problem is to think of the war as an allegory. Gandhi had such a point of view: he saw the war of the Mahabharata as the war going on in our selves between the forces of good and evil.
Gandhi had shit for brains. He only wrote a commentary on the Gita because Tilak, etc., had done so. War is waged by trained soldiers who are paid to follow orders. We don't need to chop off our dicks so as to avoid the temptation of wanking. Life is not a battle. It is more like cooking a meal. You avoid using bad ingredients. You try to select the best quality ingredients you can afford. True, if you feel a great temptation to use dog turds in your curry, you may need psychiatric help. Indeed, you may have to be restrained from eating your own poo. But the muscular psychiatric nurses who do so are not soldiers. They are not fighting a war.
My own solution has been to look at what Krishna recommends when he speaks more broadly,
He reveals he is the only efficient cause in the Universe. But this doctrine is only of use to 'agents', not 'principals'. Yuddhishtra is a 'principal'. He only overcomes his Vishada by hearing the Vyadha Gita and learning statistical game theory.
and to look for his assessment of violence.
It is the same as ours. Soldiers are supposed to be violent on the battlefield. They are not supposed to beat their wives or kill their drinking buddies.
What is the sleight of hand that allows Arjuna to fight in battle and yet follow an ideal path?
There is no fucking sleight of hand. The guy is a trained soldier about to go into battle like all the other soldiers.
Chapter 16, where Krishna describes divine and demonic natures, provides clues. Stanzas 16.1 to 16.3 are one unit:
śrībhagavānuvāca
abhayaṃ sattvasaṃśuddhirjñānayogavyavasthitiḥ |
dānaṃ damaśca yajñaśca svādhyāyastapa ārjavam || (16.1)
This translates to: Fearlessness, goodness, purity, steady with knowledge and yoga, charity, self-control and yajnas, self-study, austerity, uprightness…
ahiṃsā satyamakrodhastyāgaḥ śāntirapaiśunam |
dayā bhūteṣvaloluptvaṃ mārdavaṃ hrīracāpalam || (16.2)
This translates to: Non-violence, truth, lack of anger, renunciation, pacifism, non-slander, compassion for all living beings, absence of greed, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness…
tejaḥ kṣamā dhṛtiḥ śaucamadroho nātimānitā |
bhavanti saṃpadaṃ daivīmabhijātasya bhārata || (16.3)
This translates to: Radiance, endurance, courage, purity, non-betrayal, not too much pride—these are the assets/wealth of those who are born to a divine destiny.
Nope. These are godly, not divine, qualities. A godly man is not a God- though in this case Arjuna is indeed a partial incarnation of a God who was notoriously lacking in some good qualities- at least, at certain times.
It is clear from the above stanzas that the Gita considers non-violence divine, and violence, demonic.
No. The Gita, like most sensible people, saw that there are godly and ungodly- even Satanic- qualities or characteristics.
How, then, is it possible for Arjuna to be asked to go to war?
He is a soldier. That is what he does for a living. True, like Krishna's elder brother, he can say 'sod this for a game for soldiers' and depart with a pot of wine on one shoulder and a plough on the other.
Is he being asked to be demonic?
No. He is also not being asked to be a cat.
Krishna spells out the duties of each varna, and says that kshatriyas do not flee in battle.
Which is ironic because Hindus know one of the Lord's epithets is 'he who fled the battlefield'.
śauryaṃ tejo dhṛtirdākṣyaṃ yuddhe cāpyapalāyanam |
dānamīśvarabhāvaśca kṣātraṃ karma svabhāvajam || (18.43)
This translates to: Heroism, radiance, courage, skill, not fleeing in battle, charity, and the spirit of being in charge—these are the natural duties of kshatriyas.
They are qualities not duties.
Arjuna is a kshatriya, a warrior, and participating in a war is his duty. However, he is also told how to participate in battle. The answer to this is throughout the Gita, in the idea of conducting one’s duty without attachment.
niyataṃ saṅgarahitamarāgadveṣataḥ kṛtam |
aphalaprepsunā karma yattatsāttvikamucyate || (18.23)
This translates to: The action that is controlled and detached, done without desire or hatred, with no wish for results, that is a sattvic action. An elaborate system of ‘gunas’ (qualities) is presented in the Gita. The material world is made of a combination of the qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas. People’s characteristics depend on which guna is predominant in them—and everything from diet preferences to kinds of rituals and charity are governed by these gunas. Among the gunas, sattva leads to happiness. Krishna asks Arjuna to leave aside feelings of hatred and violence, to not seek the fruit of action, and to do his duty. These are sattvic according to Krishna’s own exposition, even though Arjuna was born in the kshatriya varna.
We know this argument was spurious. Arjuna kills Karna while in the grip of dark anger. It is obvious that attachment to non-attachment is still attachment. Theism is thus better, at least for 'agents' as opposed to 'principals', than an atheistic type of Samkhya theory.
A reader may be troubled by these concerns and choose to reject the Gita entirely.
Which is the case if you don't actually convert to Vaishnavism.
However, considering the depth of wisdom and the range of ideas contained in the Gita, I believe, such a rejection would be a colossal loss.
This stupid woman can't understand any of the ideas in the Gita. She is a colossal waste of space.
Especially because Krishna says that his message is not a commandment or decree.
Save to his devotees. It is obvious that whatever message your spiritual preceptor imparts to you is indeed a commandment or decree for you to follow. Otherwise you aren't really a good disciple at all.
NOT A DECREE
At a public forum, once, someone in the audience asked me if I thought Gita was authoritative, and if yes, how did I reconcile the statements about varna. I explained my reasoning, and finally added—if you think God gave us an authoritative Gita,
If you are not a Kshatriya by descent and aren't a devout Vaishnavite you are welcome to completely ignore the Gita. The drunken reprobate can follow an 'easy' (Sahaja) path of relying wholly on God's grace.
did he also not also give us the intelligence to think?
This lady is not intelligent. It is obvious that there are many different types of Yoga. Pick one that suits you- or don't bother. Get a nice hobby or just do well at work and use the rewards to create a happy home for your family. This is what the Vyadha (butcher) in the Vyadha Gita does.
Reason has a respectable place in the Gita. There are many words for the mind in Indian conceptions—buddhi, chitta and manas are some of them. ‘Buddhi’ is typically associated with reason, the rational mind, and with commonsense. Gita also mentions samkhya, which is one of the schools of Indian philosophy. Stanza 2.39 first introduces the term ‘buddhi’ as part of ‘buddhi-yoga’.
eṣā te’bhihitā sāṅkhye buddhiryoge tvimāṃ śṛṇu |
buddhyā yukto yayā pārtha karmabandhaṃ prahāsyasi ||
This translates to: This is declared in samkhya to you. But listen to this, about buddhi-yoga, Arjuna: When you are joined with buddhi, you avoid the bondage of karma.
This only applies to bone-headed 'agents'- like Arjuna, who quickly forgets everything Lord Krishna said in the Gita. The Nalophkhanam, which together with the Vyadha Gita, Yuddhishtra has to master so as to be released from Vishadha, shows you have to use statistical game theory to make good decisions. Alternatively, if that is too much trouble, just imitate what the smart people are doing.
Here, the reader may jump to the conclusion that everything that has been said up until then refers to samkhya, and that now Krishna is about to impart something about the path of ‘buddhi-yoga’. A quick review of samkhya philosophy, however, reveals that it does not really seem to have much to do with explaining the nature of atman. Instead, it is a dualistic system that explains the material world as the result of the interaction of ‘purusha’ and ‘prakriti’—and this concept is, in fact, covered later in the Gita. Moreover, samkhya does not call for the presence of a divine entity, Ishvara, and that again seems at odds with the Gita. A simple way to understand the reference is that it could have been an early form of samkhya philosophy, or simply a more generic word that means ‘philosophy’, one which Arjuna would have studied.
Nope. The actual Samkhya is the statistical game theory of the Nalophkyanam. But only smart 'bosses' need bother with it. Just do what you are paid to do and look after your family. Incidentally, statistical game theory is very useful to explain evolution- it may be even the evolution of the Universe.
Understood this way, we are no longer caught up in the specifics of the reference. Instead, we begin to understand it as an official and formal system of philosophy or doctrine, and by contrast, ‘buddhi’ becomes an active application of Arjuna’s own intellect.
The guy is stoooopid. That is what provides the comic relief. Still, Arjuna has something better than buddhi. He has luck.
This also works within the context of the next few stanzas, 2.42 to 2.46, in which Krishna speaks about the limitations of vedic information.
There are no such limitations. Vedanta is part of Veda. Purva Mimamsa however is more subtle than Kshatriyas need to know. It is obvious that warriors should be good at fighting. They shouldn't waste too much time performing rituals to defeat the enemy. However, to raise morale or to send a signal re. higher resource endowment or commitment, such rituals and their 'flowery language' have their uses.
This section ends with:
yāvānartha udapāne sarvataḥ saṃplutodake |
tāvānsarveṣu vedeṣu brāhmaṇasya vijānataḥ || (2.46)
This translates to: As much use there is for a well when water is plentiful everywhere; similarly, in all the vedas, for a brahmin who knows.
Among Vedas, Krishna is the Changogya which is for udgatrs (cantors). This is because we require them to have melodious voices, not bulging brains.
‘Vijānataḥ’ is also derived from ‘jñā’ (to know), and here, Krishna has pointed out the difference between samkhya and the application of one’s own mind, and Vedas and the person who already has knowledge.
No. He has merely said, if you arrive at the same destination without using certain specified means, the purpose or goal of those means has yet been attained.
Simply put, Krishna is asking Arjuna to think for himself.
No. If he was he'd say 'figure it out for yourself'. He'd then stop talking.
Krishna then proceeds to talk instead about a focus on action without the desire for the results of actions.
Which is what warriors need to do. You have to be 'in the moment'. Figure out how to kill the guy who is trying to kill you. Don't start day-dreaming about the fantastic victory parade the folk back home will arrange to celebrate your return.
Those who think for themselves ought to figure out that the consequences and results are not in their control anyway.
Yes they are. When fighting you are in control. You need to defeat the enemy's tactics. If you are fatalistic rather than alert, you are likely to get killed.
DO AS YOU WISH
Finally, despite all of Krishna’s exhortations and recommendations, he gives Arjuna the choice to accept or reject them in 18.63—‘yathecchasi tathā kuru’ (do as you wish).
Because a soldier who wants to fight is likely to put up a better show than a guy who feels he is being forced to go through the motions. That was the problem with Bhishma and Drona. The Pandavas had more 'will-to-win'.
The Gita is not a decree or a commandment.
Which is why it isn't a 'Smriti' or Vyavahara Sutra. This woman is truly as stupid as shit.
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