Early World Literature 3
Early World Literature 3 THE SACRED / Page 3.2 Life Goes On… and On
Life Goes On… and On By Daniel Lindley
Manuscript illustration of the Battle of Kurukshetra, fought between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, as recorded in the Mahabharata epic.
In the middle of a battlefield at Kurukshetra, barely 100 miles north of what’s now the city of New Delhi, the great archer Arjuna becomes paralyzed. Not by fear of his enemy —though its army is huge and menacing—but by the unsettling task he faces. His opponents, the Kauravas, are evildoers who have relentlessly harassed, cheated, and hounded his family, the Pandavas, for years. They have stolen the Pandavas’ land and dishonored them and their women. But they are also his cousins, acquaintances, and teachers.
Beside Arjuna is his charioteer, Lord Krishna, an avatar of the great Hindu god Vishnu. Krishna has frozen the combatants in time, allowing the two to survey the armies braced
for bloody battle. “Overcome by deep compassion”1—his limbs heavy, his mouth dry, his mind confused—Arjuna slumps helplessly in the chariot and asks Krishna for guidance.
Thus begins the Bhagavad Gita, or Song of the Lord, a tale contained within one of the world’s greatest and certainly longest epic poems, the Mahabharata. Attributed to the divine guru Viyasa but produced over centuries [ca. 400 BCE–400 CE] by numerous authors, the Mahabharata recounts the increasing frictions and ultimate internecine war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, a story likely based on a real battle in northern India sometime in the first or second millennium BCE. This devastating narrative—can there be anything more tragic than war between blood relatives?— describes countless cruel episodes, with Arjuna’s clan typically on the losing end.
The Gita, the philosophical crux of the epic, has come down the ages as one of the most revered texts in India and the world. Also written by multiple authors but likely incorporated as an addition to the Mahabharata, it describes two wars—one physical, on the battlefield where Arjuna and Krishna have stopped their chariot—and another spiritual, within Arjuna and all humans. But the Gita goes beyond mere description; it offers an answer. To resolve those twin conflicts, Arjuna seeks—and gets— enlightenment from his godly mentor.
As a great warrior and archer, Arjuna isn’t physically afraid. The fact that he stresses over whether to fight shows uncommon sensitivity, in fact, given that in previous books of the Mahabharata the rival Kaurava clan had repeatedly wronged the Pandava clan, which includes Arjuna and his four brother princes. The Kauravas, on the other hand, come off as villains who deserve what’s coming to them. The clan’s 100 siblings sprang from a lump of their mother’s hard flesh, the Mahabharata tells us. One, Duryodhana, came into this life “howling like a wild jackal that feeds on carrion, foretelling his own lust for destruction.”2 Later, after cheating Arjuna’s eldest brother in a crooked dice game, the Kauravas exiled the Pandavas from their land for 12 years, only to double- cross them when they returned to reclaim it. Worse, these evil cousins abused and dishonored the brothers’ shared wife, Draupadi.
Nevertheless, Arjuna is wracked by worry over what to do. The Kauravas might be vicious, but they are family. Fortunately, he has God on his side—literally. When Arjuna turns to Krishna in despair, the avatar gives him plenty of reasons, some practical and some spiritual, to fight.
In Indian philosophy, Krishna explains, life is endless, a recurring series of incarnations revolving around the cycle of life and death. Thus, all who die will be reborn—including all the warriors who stand still before Arjuna and Krishna on the battlefield. People are “eternally unkillable,”3 Krishna informs Arjuna; much as one tosses off worn-out
clothes for a new set, a man casts off his body and attains a new one for the next life. Man’s fate is an infinite cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Endless suffering is transcended only by those who achieve ultimate enlightenment; that is, those who cast off corporeal form and become pure spirits at one with the universe.
Krishna presses his argument in more practical terms. People will talk: refusing to fight will make Arjuna seem cowardly, a concern for anyone, but a graver one for a renowned Pandava warrior. “People will recount your limitless disgrace,” Krishna informs Arjuna, for shunning his “inherent duty and renown.”4
The avatar then returns to matters more spiritual. The path to enlightenment, he explains, is reached by performing one’s duty without attachment. Since attachment to things and to others is the main cause of suffering, to be detached is to liberate oneself.5
Arjuna responds with a logical question. How, he asks, can Krishna reconcile the seeming passivity of detachment with the very active process of attacking and killing his relatives?
Choosing not to act is itself an action, Krishna says. Moreover, action makes the world go round. “Always do whatever action has to be done,” Krishna commands in the third chapter of the Gita. “It is through acting without attachment that a man attains the highest.”6 As a god, Krishna himself doesn’t need to act; but without his action, the world would slip into anarchy. Arjuna has his own responsibility to act. “Freedom,” Sanskrit scholar Barbara Stoler Miller wrote, “resides not in renunciation of the world, but in disciplined action.”7
One’s passions generate misguided action, but intellect and right thinking govern proper action. Arjuna is here for a reason: to take definitive action. He must take karmic action and do what has to be done, though without attachment to his passions or even the outcome. Arjuna will not save the Kauravas from death by refusing to fight them—he will just delay it. Thus it is better for all if he does his duty now.
Many have cited inspiration from the Gita, and figures as diverse as Ralph Waldo Emerson and J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, have drunk from its wells of thought. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of the Gita’s power in our own age has been the example of Mahatma Gandhi, who put its words into action to overcome British colonial rule. How to reconcile Krishna’s apparent acceptance of war with Gandhi’s nonviolent strategy of overcoming oppressors? Gandhi, one of many who have translated the Gita from the original Sanskrit, explained that “under the guise of physical warfare, [the Gita] described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind.”8 The work’s real point, he wrote, is the “self-realization” of man, who “is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God.”9 The path to self-realization “is
renunciation of the fruits of action.”10 “After forty years’ unremitting endeavor fully to enforce the teaching of the Gita in my own life,” he concluded, “I have, in all humility, felt that perfect renunciation is impossible without perfect observance of ahimsa [nonviolence] in every shape and form.”11
Late in the Gita, at Arjuna’s request, Krishna reveals himself in his godly form, “divine, infinite, facing in every direction,” brighter than “the light of a thousand suns.”12 Here is ultimate and literal enlightenment—the truth of the universe so enlightening that it’s unbearable for mortal man to behold. In taking the form of the almighty Vishnu, Krishna shows Arjuna what no man has seen: the awful eternity and impassivity of the universe in its infinite cycles. The vision of Vishnu is so overwhelming that Arjuna has to ask Krishna to retake human form.
While he’s regarding this terrible sight, however, Arjuna says that he still doesn’t understand. The reply is at once terrifying and enlightening: “I am time run on, destroyer of the universe, risen here to annihilate worlds.”13 Arjuna is a mere speck in the universe and time, both beyond the understanding of mere mortals; regardless of what he does, Vishnu will annihilate all in the continual cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The ultimate sacrifice, he informs Arjuna, is to devote himself entirely to him—without passion, anger, or hatred, but with love and self-sacrifice. Only then can he transcend the confines of mortality.
1 The Bhagavad Gita, trans. W. J. Johnson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008),
5 [I:28].
2 Barbara Miller, Masterworks of Asian Literature in Comparative Perspective: A Guide for Teaching (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), 126.
3 Bhagavad Gita, 9 [II:30].
4 Ibid, 9-10 [2:34; 2:33].
5 Wilfried Huchzermeyer and Jutta Zimmermann, The Bhagavad Gita as Living Experience (New York: Lantern Books, 2002), 54.
6 Bhagavad Gita, 16 [III:19].
7 Barbara Miller, The Bhagavad-Gita (New York: Random House, 2004), 9.
8 Mahatma Gandhi, The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2010), xvii.
9 Ibid., xviii.
10 Ibid., xix.
11 Ibid., xxiv.
12 Bhagavad Gita, 49-50 [XI:11, 13].
13 Ibid., 51 [XI; 32].
Early World Literature 3 THE SACRED / Page 3.3 Bhagavad Gita: Ch 3
The Bhagavad Gita Translated by W.J. Johnson
Editor’s note: The Bhagavad Gita begins with a description of a chaotic battle that is about to begin. Two rival groups of cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, are nearly upon each other. On both sides there are archers, charioteers, and warriors, many of them “battlehardened combatants, armed to the teeth.” To the audience, it seems like a bloodbath is about to ensue. Just before the clash, however, the Lord Krishna intervenes, invoking his godly power to freeze time (and all of the warriors assembled on the battlefield). He directs his attention to the Pandava warrior Arjuna, who, deeply reluctant to shed his cousins’ blood, drops his bow and refuses to fight. Through the pair’s exchange, Krishna presents his sacred wisdom.
Two brief pointers about the epic’s narration, which can be tricky to get a handle on: 1) though the Gita focuses on the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna, the epic is actually narrated by a sage named Sanjaya, who is relaying details of the battle (and Arjuna and Krishna’s exchange) to a blind king named Dhritarashtra, the father of the Kauravas. 2) Additionally, Krishna and Arjuna are often referred to by various names and honorifics (“Son of Kunti” and “Partha,” for example, are common for Arjuna). Don’t worry too much, however, about keeping all of the names straight. The heart of the Gita lies more in its ideas than its specific details.
Chapter 3
Arjuna said: (1) Krishna, if it is your belief that the way of intelligence is superior to action, then why do you enjoin me, Keshava, to this terrible undertaking?
(2) With such equivocal words you seem to confuse my intelligence. Describe clearly an unambiguous way through which I may attain what is best.
The Lord said: (3) Blameless one, I have taught of old that in this world two ways are open: the discipline of knowledge for Sankhya theorists, and the discipline of action for yogins.
(4) A man does not attain freedom from the results of action by abstaining from actions, and he does not approach perfection simply by renunciation.
(5) For no one ever, even for a moment, exists without acting; everyone, regardless of their will, is made to perform actions by the constituents which originate from material nature.
(6) The man who, having restrained his action organs, then sits with his mind preoccupied with sense objects, is called a self-deluding hypocrite.
(7) But the man who, controlling his senses with his mind, undertakes through his action organs the discipline of action without attachment, distinguishes himself, Arjuna.
(8) You should perform enjoined action, for action is better than non-action; even the minimum of bodily subsistence would be impossible without action.
(9) The entire world is bound by actions; the only exception is action undertaken for sacrificial purposes. Therefore, Son of Kunti, free from attachment, you should perform that kind of action.
(10) When he created creatures in the beginning, along with the sacrifice, Prajapati said: ‘May you be fruitful by this sacrifice, let this be the cow which produces all you desire.
(11) ‘You should nourish the gods with this so that the gods may nourish you; nourishing each other, you shall achieve the highest good.
(12) ‘For nourished by the sacrifice, the gods will give you the pleasures you desire. The man who enjoys these gifts without repaying them is no more than a thief.’
(13) The virtuous who eat the remainder of the sacrifice are released from all faults; the wicked who cook for the sake of themselves consume impurity.
(14) Beings exist through food, the origin of food is rain, rain comes from sacrifice, sacrifice derives from action.
(15) Know that action originates from Brahman—Brahman whose source is the imperishable. Therefore all-pervading Brahman is eternally established in the sacrifice.
(16) Whoever in this world does not turn the wheel thus set in motion, Partha, lives in vain, making a pleasure garden of his senses, intent upon evil.
(17) But it is clear that, for the man who delights in the self, and is satisfied with the self, and fulfilled only in the self, there is nothing that has to be done.
