The Bhagavad Gita

by George Thompson

  14. O Arjuna, encounters with the material world induce sensations of cold and heat and pleasure and pain. They come and they go. They are impermanent. You are a Bhārata! Endure them!

  Ka’s words concerning the impermanence of human life have appeared to many readers to actually devalue life, which, though transitory, is nevertheless precious to most of us. The implications of his view (one of which is to justify war) have long troubled many readers as well. At 11.32, Ka famously says:

  I am time, the agent of the world’s destruction, now grown old and set in motion to destroy the worlds. Even without you, all of these warriors arrayed in opposing battle-formation will cease to exist!

  These words (and in fact all of Chapter 11, where Ka reveals himself as the god of all things) are frequently met with shock or dismay among Western readers unfamiliar with Hindu traditions. They frequently think this stanza is the expression of an almost nihilistic indifference to human suffering and to the perpetual problem of war and violence. But in fact these words and the whole chapter are a profound meditation not on war but on time (Sanskrit kāla), which, like the Vedic god of fire, Agni, consumes all things. The image of time as a huge gaping mouth in which we are all consumed in a blaze of fire is an old and venerable one in India, dating all the way back to the oldest of the Vedas.

  But I think that one encounters a certain terror in the face of time wherever time is examined closely. Saint Augustine, for example, offers profound speculations on the psychology of time, in his exquisite Latin prose, in the Confessions: “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, surely, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who does ask me, however, I do not know.” (Quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio. —Confessions 11.14) And later, he writes: “My mind is on fire to know this most intricate of riddles.” (Exarsit animus meus nosse istuc inplicatissimum aenigma.—Confessions 11.22) Or consider the astonishing, brooding final sentence of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s The Naked Man (volume 4 of his Introduction to a Science of Mythology). The sentence goes on for twenty-two lines, or well over two hundred words, and concludes with these: “[At some future point in time man’s] sorrows, his joys, his hopes and his works will be as if they had never existed, since no consciousness will survive to preserve even the memory of these ephemeral phenomena, only a few features of which, soon to be erased from the impassive face of the earth, will remain as already cancelled evidence that they once were, and were as nothing.”

  Here Lévi-Strauss is clearly contemplating a nuclear holocaust, which these days at times appears to be hurtling toward us at frightening speed. The vision of what will remain after such a holocaust calls to mind the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the celebrated “father of the nuclear bomb” and a brilliant polymath who had studied Sanskrit and Eastern philosophy while a student at Harvard. The philosophy of the Bhagavad Gītā had had a profound effect on him, he told us, and on several occasions, when asked what thoughts had crossed his mind while witnessing the first atomic explosion, he chose to quote two passages from Chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gītā:

  12. If the light of a thousand suns were to suddenly arise in heaven—as at the dawn of a new age—that would be like the radiance of this great soul!

  And then a stanza already quoted above:

  32. I am time, the agent of the world’s destruction, now grown old and set in motion to destroy the worlds. Even without you, all of these warriors arrayed in opposing battle-formation will cease to exist!*

  These stanzas are much quoted in the literature on nuclear weapons, and are well known to students and even to schoolchildren. They reflect Oppenheimer’s awe and deep ambivalence about what he had helped to create, and then witnessed, in that desolate New Mexican desert in the 1940s. Lévi-Strauss’s philosophical reflections, at the end of his lifelong project to understand the workings of the human mind, begin with what Lévi-Strauss refers to as Hamlet’s dilemma: that “man is not free to choose whether to be or not to be.” Awareness of time, the inevitable passing of human time—that little bit of human light between two immense, dark eternities—is, according to Lévi-Strauss, at the heart of all human experience. The author of the Bhagavad Gītā—like the authors of the Homeric epics and of Gilgamesh, like the Romantic poets Keats and Wordsworth and Shelley, and more recently the American Transcendentalists Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau, only a few examples among countless others—all know deeply this truth about time and its terrors.

  In India, however, and in the Bhagavad Gītā, time is cyclical and thus unending, but also therefore dreadfully repetitive. A well-known aphorism from the Mahābhārata goes something like this: “Brahma said, ‘Well, after hearing ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, But an intelligent man needs only two thousand five hundred.’”* In a few words, this charming and amusing aphorism (of which there are many in the Mahābhārata) illustrates “the long view” of time that is adopted widely in India and, in the Bhagavad Gītā, by “that man who stands on the mountaintop” (Sanskrit kūastha), alone, aloof, abiding in eternal Brahman. This long view of time can be maintained, it seems, without renouncing a good sense of humor.

  The central figure of the Bhagavad Gītā is Ka, “the Blessed One” (the Sanskrit term is bhagavant, from which the form bhagavad of the Gītā’s title is derived). With a few important exceptions, the Bhagavad Gītā is largely a monologue in which Ka not only urges Arjuna to resume his duty as a warrior but, much more important, introduces Arjuna to a truer, higher, reality: Ka himself as he really is. In much of the rest of the Mahābhārata Ka is portrayed simply as a human being, Arjuna’s companion and charioteer. But in the Bhagavad Gītā Ka becomes the central figure, the central reality, and Arjuna comes to realize that he has been behaving rather too casually toward his so-called charioteer. In Chapter 11, where Arjuna describes the great theophany of Ka, which no one before him had been able to see, Arjuna’s relationship with Ka takes a dramatic turn. Ka is no longer Arjuna’s companion; no, he is Arjuna’s god. At 11.39–40, Arjuna is scarcely able to say much at all to Ka beyond stammering “Homage, homage” repeatedly. This Sanskrit form of address, namas, which is more like a gesture of obeisance, occurs no fewer than six times here:

  Homage to you, a thousand homages to you! And again homage to you!

  Homage before you and homage behind you, let there be homage to you, the all, on all sides!

  And immediately after, at 11.41–42, Arjuna apologizes profusely to Ka:

  Whatever I may have said impulsively, thinking “This is my friend,” addressing you “Hello Ka, hello Yādava, hello my friend!” unaware as I was of your true greatness, whether out of carelessness or affection,

  and if while joking I have said something offensive, while relaxing or resting or sitting or eating with you—whether alone or publicly—immeasurable Ka, I seek your forgiveness.

  At this point Arjuna is the subordinate companion. In fact, he has become Ka’s prostrate devotee. And Ka has become Arjuna’s awesome and terrible god and teacher.

  In this role, Ka introduces Arjuna to the new devotionalism. Two important features of the new spirituality should be mentioned: the traditional school of Hindu philosophy, Sākhya, and another that is closely associated with it, yoga. Besides being a song of devotion to Ka, the Bhagavad Gītā is also a somewhat unsystematic synthesis of many popular and influential contemporary schools of thought. The Sākhya school is basically a naturalistic, nontheistic philosophy. The term sākhya literally means “enumeration, classification.” Its primary focus is on characterizing and classifying cosmological and psychological processes, the processes of the natural world (prakti). It examines the network of interactions of the three “qualities” (guas) of nature. Cosmologically, these guas refer to the conditions of nature. They are sattva (clarity, integrity, purity), rajas (passion or energy), and tamas (darkness or inertia). All of the things of nature consist of these three qualities in varying measure. Psychologically, they refer to a person�
�s natural tendencies or inclinations, to mental dispositions. Thus one who is inclined toward a sāttvic (Sanskrit sāttvika) temperament will display the virtues of clarity, integrity, and purity; one inclined toward a rājasic (Sanskrit rājasa) temperament will display great energy and passion; on the other hand, one who is inclined toward a tāmasic (Sanskrit tāmasa) temperament will wallow in laziness, sluggishness, and inertia. There is also a fundamental dualism in Sākhya, a division between nature (prakti) and spirit (purua). The Bhagavad Gītā makes use of this dualism in its characterizations of the relationship between the individual soul (ātman), which is ultimately identical with Brahman, and the material world, which is not. In the process, the Bhagavad Gītā modifies Sākhya thought so that it too reflects a more fundamental driving force: the Bhagavad Gītā’s theistic, devotional focus on Ka.

  The last six chapters of the Bhagavad Gītā tend to be far less poetical or religious or philosophical, and far more formulaic and mechanical, than the earlier chapters. They summarize the traditional Sākhya doctrine that was popular at the time and tend conspicuously toward a style of Sanskrit—the sūtra style—that, although composed in verse, tends to be terse, even to the point of lapsing into simple lists and catalogs. The Bhagavad Gītā’s overview of the Sākhya school of philosophy is fairly faithful to the spirit of Sākhya as we find it in its later classical form. But this summary does not seem integral to the overall aim of the Bhagavad Gītā, which is profoundly theistic and adamantly devotional, ultimately focused on Ka. Elsewhere in the Bhagavad Gītā, the primary focus of discussion is always on Ka and always culminates in Ka. In these later chapters, however, Ka is more or less absent, and relatively little reference to him is made until the final concluding sections, which attempt to tie the pieces of the Bhagavad Gītā together.

  Yoga, on the other hand, is an utterly central notion in the Bhagavad Gītā from beginning to end. It is considered to be a traditional school of philosophy largely because of its association with the more theoretical and classifying Sākhya school. Nevertheless, as a practical spiritual discipline, yoga is as fundamental to the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gītā as Ka himself is. Yoga is, after all, the vehicle by means of which one attains to Ka, by means of which one truly comes to know him. Through yoga one gains true knowledge of the self, or the ātman, which is ultimately not engaged in the perpetual turmoil of time and the natural world. Yoga is the vehicle by means of which one accomplishes renunciation (sanyāsa) and the abandonment (tyāga) of the fruits of one’s actions. In the Bhagavad Gītā, the word yoga occurs roughly 150 times—far, far more often than any of its other key terms. Clearly, yoga is in the Bhagavad Gītā the most basic tool of spiritual development.

  Besides introducing a hierarchical classification of the types of yoga (karmayoga, “the yoga of action”; jñānayoga, “the yoga of knowledge”; bhaktiyoga, “the yoga of devotion”), the Bhagavad Gītā offers yoga as a resource to everyone, no matter what their caste or station. Remarkably, the Bhagavad Gītā asserts that the yoga of devotion, bhakti, is the best yoga, because it is the most accessible form of yoga—available to as many people as possible. This gesture toward even the lowest castes makes the Bhagavad Gītā a very desirable alternative, for Hindus of all castes, to the anticaste spirit of the heterodox traditions like Buddhism and Jainism, which in fact had made great headway against Brahmanical, caste-conscious Hinduism before the Bhagavad Gītā itself was composed.

  Within its historical social context, the Bhagavad Gītā successfully defended traditional Hinduism against the incursions of anticaste traditions like Buddhism and Jainism by offering yoga to absolutely everyone. Made available to one and all, yoga enabled an individual to cultivate a detached state of mind under any and all circumstances. It equipped the individual to perform the obligatory duties that inevitably called him away from his own individual liberation. Traditionally, all Hindus, following in the footsteps of the high-caste Brahmins, are obliged to pass through four stages of life, without skipping any of them: that of the celibate student (brahmacārya); that of the householder (ghastha), who makes a family and also the money to support it; that of the hermit or forest-dweller (vanaprastha), who, having provided well for his family, can now say goodbye to it with a good conscience; and finally, that of the renouncer or renunciate (sanyāsin), who is ready to prepare himself seriously for the final reality. To abandon any one of these life-stages prematurely, without regard either for one’s ancestors or for one’s future progeny, in order to selfishly secure one’s own liberation, as Buddhism and Jainism urge, was generally viewed as unacceptable within traditional Brahminical society.

  Thus the Bhagavad Gītā effectively resolved the tension between two opposed sets of values. It preserved the caste-oriented social institutions that held the culture together and, at the same time, allowed an individual to seek salvation outside of them. This was a brilliant and effective resolution of an enduring tension between the aims of the individual and the obligations and sacrifices required by a rigid caste-governed society. This was one of the Bhagavad Gītā’s greatest and most enduring achievements and is a reason that it continues to have great appeal to people in so many other cultures even now. Along with the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, the Bhagavad Gītā is a major source of insight into the contemporary practice of yoga all over the world.

  On the Organization of the Bhagavad Gītā

  Chapter 1 begins with a catalog of names, just like the catalog of ships in the Iliad. In epic traditions it was obligatory to list the names of the heroes and heroic families who participated in epic wars. The singer of epic tales almost everywhere, it seems, was obliged to name the significant figures who participated in the war that the epic celebrated. Such catalogs will no doubt seem tedious to most readers, removed as we now are from the original historical events that inspired them. But we should try to understand the purpose of these catalogs. They confirm that a specific hero or clan participated in a given historic war, and they assert that this participation should be remembered. This is not very different from the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., which lists the names of all of the U.S. soldiers who died in the Vietnam War. Though we are separated by more than two thousand years from the events described in the Bhagavad Gītā, we nevertheless know the names of the most significant actors on the battlefield of Kuruketra. This would no doubt please the author of the Bhagavad Gītā and his aristocratic patrons, who took the trouble to preserve the names of the heroes of this family tradition from the beginning of Indian history. That we are still seeing their names, not only in India but everywhere the Bhagavad Gītā continues to be read, is a measure of the continuing success of its author. And whoever he was (tradition knows him as Vyāsa), he knew what he was doing and was very good at doing it. In terms of genre, the Bhagavad Gītā is not only an enormously influential religious song (gītā). It is also a fine piece of epic poetry.

  The author of the Bhagavad Gītā impersonates Ka throughout much of the text. This author is in fact anonymous, since Vyāsa is simply a traditional name for anyone who has contributed to the collected wisdom of the Mahābhārata. It may be helpful to take a closer look at what this anonymous poet-bard is up to in the Bhagavad Gītā.

  The basic dialogue form of the Bhagavad Gītā is framed by the external narration of Sajaya, a bard and charioteer (like Ka himself throughout much of the Mahābhārata), who narrates to the blind king Dhtarāra what he observes taking place on the battlefield. Because he has received a “divine eye” from Vyāsa, Sajaya can see things taking place at great distances, and he can magically hear all of the intimate details of the long conversation between Arjuna and Ka, as they stand on the battlefield of Kuruketra, the field of the Kurus. Sajaya thus functions as the Bhagavad Gītā’s “omniscient narrator.”

  Beyond this omniscient narrator, Sajaya, who occasionally intercedes to set the scene, the Bhagavad Gītā is basically a dialogue between Arjuna and his charioteer-bard (sūta), Ka. However, given that Ka is
the supreme god of the Bhagavad Gītā, we could say that the author of the Bhagavad Gītā basically plays two roles: when he speaks in the role of Arjuna, he impersonates Arjuna, and when he speaks in the role of Ka, he impersonates Ka.

  Although it does not use the term avatāra (Sanskrit avatāra literally means “descent”), the Bhagavad Gītā implicitly recognizes the avatāra doctrine, the view that Viu descends to earth at various times to be embodied in a number of incarnations. Thus Viu is traditionally recognized to have descended and made himself manifest in such forms as a fish (Matsya) and a tortoise (Kūrma) and a wild boar (Varāha). He also took on human forms such as a dwarf (Vāmana) and a man-lion figure (Nsiha). Other traditionally well-known figures were considered to be avatars of Viu as well: Vyāsa, the compiler, himself was considered to be one of Viu’s avatars, as were Rāma of epic tradition, the Buddha, and Ka.*

  In the development of classical Hindu tradition, three gods came to stand out from the rest. These three are Brahmā, Viu, and Śiva. Together they form what in Sanskrit is called the Trimūrti, the three supreme forms of God. Conventionally, Brahmā is characterized as “the Creator,” Viu as “the Preserver,” and Śiva as “the Destroyer.” At the time when the Bhagavad Gītā was composed, all three of these gods were already widely worshipped throughout India. But not one of them is mentioned frequently in the Bhagavad Gītā. Ka would eventually become one of the great avatars of Viu, like the hero Rāma of the Rāmāyaa. That the Bhagavad Gītā is familiar with the avatāra doctrine is evident from the fact that it alludes to it, without using the term avatāra, at 4.7–8, where Ka says:

  Whenever religious duty [dharma] wanes, Arjuna, and its opposite, chaos [adharma], waxes strong, then I release myself into the world.

  In age after age, I manifest myself in order to protect the virtuous, to destroy those who do harm, and to reestablish religious duty.