Geeta Notes (Chapter One)

Introduction

This is a very rough and approximate translation of the sacred and mighty Geeta . Perhaps I could be a little less irreverent and more religious in my language. But then these notes are not an outpouring of an entranced devotee. If anything, I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to be more religious, more devout and more like my parents, sibling, spouse and wider family when it came to matter of religion but I’ve failed miserably. But that is another story and we will revisit it some day.

Here I want to tell how Geeta entered my life (after several failed attempts earlier and which failed entirely due to my shortcomings) and that now it has a permanent place regardless of whether I behave properly or not. I think this smacks of arrogance!

So where did we meet? My place of work is located in South Mumbai and I have about 2 hours of commuting each day. From the terminal station (called Churchgate) I often walk to my office- a walk of some 15 minutes. Enroute is a landmark-Flora Fountain and in the nearby public space some two years back the Gandhi Foundation people had set up a small stall selling Gandhian literature. As is my wont, I stepped in and was casually browsing looking for something about Gandhi, his thoughts and people he knew or something that I had not already read. My eyes fell upon this petite book in Hindi- Geeta Pravachan (tr. Geeta Discourse) by Vinoba Bhave. Till that point my knowledge about Vinoba was confined to the fact that he was a prominent Gandhian and that he led some sort of land donation (Bhoodan) movement. When and how this movement started I had no idea. But the book appeared promising and I bought it for Rupees Eighteen (or less than 50 cents). Part of the promise I saw in the slim volume arose from the fact that buying Geeta was, or so I convinced myself, the right thing to do in terms of my religious doctrine. And of course, the remaining reason and perhaps more compelling one at that was it was slim and so could be read easily during my commute. Thus, I came in to possession of my Geeta which I am proceeding to translate in to English entirely for my own pleasure.

I have no delusions of rendering a faithful or a masterful translation of this ancient masterpiece. There are enough and quite impeccable ones available. What follows now is I reading and discussing Geeta with myself and for myself. I am not going to list reasons for why I feel motivated to do so. Do I see this as my calling? Do I think I have understood the divine message in the Geeta perfectly and this is an attempt to circulate it amongst the heathen? Do I believe that Geeta has transformed me and that I am now what Geeta describes a human being should be? Would I claim this translation as my intellectual copyright and use it for any commercial purpose? Do I intend to send links of this document to people I know and try to impress them? There could be many more similar questions but answer to all the questions is a very unequivocal NO.

So without further ado I start with the First Chapter.


FIRST CHAPTER (PRATHAM ADHYAYE)

ARJUNA’S LAMENTATION


Dear Brothers (as narrated by Vinoba),


My relationship with the Geeta is beyond any logic or reason. As my body has been fed and nourished on my mother’s milk so have my heart and mind been even more nourished by the essence of the Geeta. When it comes to the matters of the heart, logic is not enough. Going beyond reason and relying on the twin wings of faith and practice I seem to fly in the vast skies of the Geeta effortlessly. I live in the environment created by the Geeta and it is my life source. When I speak to people about the Geeta it is akin to going in for a swim in this vast ocean of nectar and when I am alone I plunge in this ocean’s depths and stay there.

Mahabharata and Ramayana are our national epics and the characters described therein have become an integral part of our lives. Rama, Sita, Dharamraja, Draupadi, Bheeshma, Hanumana and other characters in these two grand epics have enthralled us through the centuries. While Ramayana is a wonderful verse describing the path of righteousness, Mahabharata is a gigantic and comprehensive treatise on social living. In the latter, Lord Vyasa has composed hundred thousand chronicles with innumerable images, characters and characterizations all of which merge in to a saga without a parallel in human history. Just like we find perfection only in our Creator, similarly we also realize that all human beings have some trait or the other which redeem them despite their numerous failings. This message is clearly brought forth by Mahabharata. Thus while on one hand we see obvious flaws in the divine characters like Bheeshma and Yudhishtira we are also witness to some lofty and redeeming traits in clearly evil characters like Duryodhana and Karna. To me the Mahabharata is an inexhaustible goldmine which we should all loot to our heart’s content for our own spiritual enrichment.


The intriguing aspect is that Lord Vyasa wrote such a grand epic and yet it is not clear if there’s a direct message from him somewhere in it. Throughout the epic we find scores of references to fundamentals of knowledge and philosophy, numerous lectures on morality but is there any part of the Great epic which literally contains the essence of this entire saga? The secret key to the reason for the existence of Mahabharata, does it lie anywhere in the depths of the Mahabharata? Yes, it does. He has placed the essence of the entire Grand epic in the Sreemadbhagvadgeeta or (for us) the Geeta. Since ancient times, Geeta has been considered as the first among the Upnishadas. In fact, the Lord appears to have captured the essence of all the Upnishadas in the form of the Geeta and presented it to the entire world through the medium of Arjuna. Any conceivable thought that enables us to be better human beings and lead improved lives figures in the Geeta. Many a great observer has referred to the Geeta as a treasure trove of righteous living (Dharamgyana). The Geeta itself might be a small part in the vast body of sacred Hindu scripture but it enjoys a position of unchallenged supremacy.

Everybody knows that Krishna narrated the Geeta to Arjuna. It is said that listening to this Great Teacher Arjuna was completely lost in Him that he became undistinguishable from Him. Lord Vyasa while describing this celestial enthrall himself got lost in the message of the Geeta that he too came to be known as Krishna. Thus, the Teacher, the student and the scribe all of them merged in to a trinity that could only be called Krishna. All three entered the state of Samadhi. The readers and followers of the Geeta need to achieve similar concentration.

Some people mistake Arjuna’s distraction or the sudden awakening of filial love and Krishna’s attempts to shake it off as being the main reason for Krishna revealing the Geeta to him. This is too narrow a reason for the revelation of this supernova of wisdom. Arjuna was an accomplished warrior and no one including Krishna had any doubts regarding his martial capabilities or his certain victory in the battlefield. Nor was any non-violent propensity on part of Arjuna led Krishna to attempt to shake off the former’s sudden contraction of cold feet. In reality, when Arjuna led by his charioteer Krishna finds himself in the center of the battlefield surrounded by four generations of his family members, comrades in arms all willing to cut down each other, he is overcome with a great affection for all these people and in turn starts providing Krishna a critique of war itself in terms of its disastrous consequences for family and society at large.

I am reminded of an anecdote here. There was a very eminent judge who had sentenced scores of criminals to death by hanging. One day his own son was convicted for murder and stood before him for sentencing. All of a sudden the clear and straightforward justice starting citing numerous reasons against death penalty! Hanging is an inhuman form of punishment, such a punishment does not do credit to our society and by executing the convict we summarily eliminate the possibility of improving him and rehabilitating him back in the human society and similar reasons flowed in a torrent from the lips of the learned judge. Not only that, he almost started to defend the convict by suggesting that , “it was a crime of passion” and that, “hanging this man after he has expressed remorse for his deed is a blot on mankind” and so on so forth. Had his son never appeared before him the venerable judge would have continued to mete out the death penalty merrily as before but the moment his son was in the dock he did a 180 degrees turn. This was not based on any noble principles to which the judge was beholden, it was merely his affection for his child that drove him to deliver such polemic against the death penalty and stray from his swadharma.

Arjuna found himself in a similar predicament. Not that the reasons offered by him against war and killing were irrational but at the same time they were not his innermost convictions based on foundations of some core philosophy (darshana). He was merely indulging in dialectics to turn his back on the impending carnage. Krishna was more than aware of this inherent contradiction in Arjuna’s arguments and without reasoning with him point for point he started directly attacking his manifest affection for his family. Had Arjuna turned a complete non violent, he would have not fought despite the revelations but this is one of those ifs which is not answered in the Geeta. Thus we are left with the inescapable conclusion that Arjuna showed signs of irrational filial affection and had he succeeded in warding off the battle he would have only delayed it perhaps with even greater consequences. Krishna’s message and the Geeta is a direct attack on this affectation displayed by men in times of adversity and internal upheavals.

As if it was not enough, Arjuna started talking about renouncing the world and taking to the jungles. But would he have made that transition as easily as he thought? Donning the garb of a sanyasin does not make one and for all we know he would have easily taken to hunting innocent animals in the forest. As a result, Krishna pointed out to him, “Arjuna you are only fooling yourself by saying that you won’t battle. All your life you have fought and won battles without pausing to reflect on the loss of human lives so why today? You are meant to battle and you won’t be able to live without battling. It is your nature and your righteous duty (swadharma).”

In course of his lamentation Arjuna started seeing complete lack of merit in the concept of swadharma. Vinoba states that whether one sees merit in swadharma or not it is in the interest of the individual to still exercise it as it alone is the path to one’s development in a holistic sense. Would such an adherent of swadharma be termed as arrogant? Arrogance in the form of clutching on to some innate idea of swadharma. According to Vinoba, no, such a person is not arrogant. Swadharma is not a good that we may accept it if we see merit in it and discard it if we don’t. In fact, it is as per the person’s size (in terms of his character) . Everyone has their own swadharma. Not only does it change with time, what I perceived as my swadharma ten years ago is not so anymore and ten years later I will have different understanding of my swadharma. Contemplation and experience alter our attitudes and with time we tend to leave behind our older swadharma and acquire new swadharma. Holding on to what I see as my swadharma once and forever is simply being stubborn and is ultimately self defeating.

(Analogy) As a corollary, swadharma is non-transferable. In other words if I perceive someone else’s swadharma as being superior to mine and thus attempt to acquire it I would end up nowhere. Let’s say I admire the Sun. Sunlight is beautiful and empowering. I worship the Sun. Yet if I decide to leave Earth and try to reach the Sun I would soon be vapourised. On the contrary if I continue to inhabit the Earth and try to actualize my swadharma it would lead to my salvation and ennoblement. And of course ensure my survival!

There’s another corollary. If I find another’s swadharma as easier to exercise that too should not tempt me to abandon mine and long for the other. As a householder if I find the burden of raising a family too much I should not seek escape in renunciation of the world. What would happen if I did? I would run away to a forest and there I would start living in a cottage. Soon I would start adding to my comforts there, like a protective fence, a better bed and so on. Thus, I would soon recreate conditions from which I had been meaning to escape all the time. In fact, if I had exercised detachment in my mind in the first place, I would have never felt the need to run away despite all the burdens of domesticity. Ultimately what matters is the attitude, the innate vision with which I see my world around me.

This last illustration begs the question: why did Krishna not lead Arjuna towards the path of renunciation (sanyas) if this is most superior of duties? Of course, the Lord could have done that for what is impossible for Him? Yet he did not simply because such an act would have rendered Arjuna’s human efforts in seeking his kalyana (salvation / ennoblement) defeated. We need to appreciate the fact that Lord has granted us free will. And it is in the interest of each individual to exercise his / her free will and work towards the goals set in this process. Little kids enjoy drawing and painting. They do not like it if a grown up were to draw for them or improve their creations. Similarly, if the teacher were to solve all the problems for the pupils wherefrom would they learn to solve problems, how would they develop their intelligence? Parents and teachers are meant to just offer suggestions and general guidance. And Lord does the same from inside- guide us. That is all he does, nothing more. If like a potter who by heating and tapping the vessel from all sides ensures that it is fit for use, if the Lord too set out to create perfectly intelligent humans then existence would be quite drab. We humans are not earthen vessels, we are sentient beings.

From the above discourse we can safely conclude that the Geeta took birth essentially to vanquish the distractions that we all encounter in the pursuit of our swadharma. Arjuna too suffered from the same malady of refusing to see his swadharma. Thus, after Krishna has concluded his revelations, he asked Arjuna, “Arjuna, have your distractions left you?” Arjuna replies, “Yes my Lord, my affectation has left me and I can clearly see my swadharma.” Whether it is the Geeta’s prologue or its epilogue, the gist is crystal clear- destroy your affectation. And indeed this is the gist of all Mahabharata. Lord Vyasa has indicated in the beginning of the epic, “I am lighting this immortal lamp to vanquish vain distractions and affections from the public sentiment.” What a vision and what stupendous success it has achieved that thousands of years after it was written, imperfect and misguided souls like mine seek and find such clarity and direction in its words.

Arjuna’s role thus becomes very important for us to understand the Geeta. But we have to be grateful to him in more than one way. Arjuna offers us an unique launch pad from which we can seek the Lord’s guidance. Literally translated Arjuna means the possessor of humility (perhaps even naivete). Arjuna did credit to himself by honestly revealing the upheavals in his heart to Krishna. Not a shred of his dilemma (as perceived by himself) he hid from the Lord. This complete surrender actually served to lead him in to Krishna’s sanctuary. To think of it he was already under the Lord’s protection. No sooner had he offered the charioteer-ship of his chariot to the Lord he had in effect handed over the reins of his sensibilities to Him. Lets all too do the same. Let’s not bemoan that Arjuna had Krishna but what about us? Where are we going to find Him? This is not the point. In fact let’s not even debate whether someone called Krishna actually existed or not. This is an infructuous historical discussion. In reality Krishna resides in each and every heart. He is actually closer than we can imagine. He is right here and right now. So let us all stand before Him and humbly declare the filth that is in our minds and hearts and beseech Him – Lord! I am at your mercy; You are my Master and Teacher. Show me the right Path. Whatever Path you show me I shall embark on it and no other. If we were to do this, then that Lord Parthasarathy will become our charioteer too and from his Holy lips he will reveal the Geeta to us and lead us to Victory.

(Vinoba on Sunday, 21st February 1932 & sid on Sunday, 31st May 2010)


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