The Bhagwad Geeta Project (श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता )- I
As a citizen of this cosmic chaos which is our world, you would be living under a rock if you haven’t heard of or read about this mysterious piece of literature which claims to have transformed lives and holds in itself, the simple answers to everyone’s dilemma. If you are an Indian you would have read or heard at least one of the ‘shlokas’ that talks about the immortality of the soul or to only be focused on your work, or rather only hold one accountable for one’s work: rather than the outcome of that work. If you are a curious scholar you might have even read translations and interpretations from it to ease out some of the western gibberish that mostly makes up the food for thought for today’s intellectuals: lying in the periphery of popular philosophical thoughts.
As an Indian living in the modern day India, I am sorry to say that I haven’t read this inviting piece of literature in its entirety; only living on the discussions that my grandparents used to have over the various parts of ‘Mahabharata’: the great epic which contains in itself ‘Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta’. If you too are a non-hermit living under a rock of western philosophy, this series plans to slowly pull you out of that rock and see the mountain of which the rock is a small part. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way bashing the works of various philosophers that have given their views on ‘the human condition’. I, like you have feasted on it for most of my life. This meanwhile, is just an attempt to derive some perspective from one of the oldest text in existence.
Take me for a historian interpreting a text if nothing else.
Mahabharata is another one of the epics I haven’t read, and being a superset of ‘Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta’ it would behoove us if some context is set. I will try to do so quickly, without going into the complexities of the situations leading up to the war. Mahabharata is a tale of complex lineages and traditions, leading up to a great war between different branches of families sharing the same lineage .
Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta’s wisdom is considered to be the discourse of Shri Krishna, a deity in another sense of things, portrayed as a normal human in Mahabharata(Although he shows his true form in one incident). I won’t be elaborating on this because our aim is not to decide on the authenticity of existence of Gods, but to get something of value out of the text. This discourse forms the most part of Geeta, wherein Krishna turns to Arjuna who is conflicted in his choices to wage war against his own blood. This war that is about to start has to be fought between the sons of Paandu, referred to as ‘Paandavas’ and the sons of Dhritraashtra, referred to as ‘Kauravas’. Paandavas are five brothers, namely: Yushdishtir, Bheem, Arjun, Nakul and Sahdev. Kauravas are 100 in number, led by their eldest: Duryodhan. In a turn of events Krishna takes the helm of Arjuna’s chariot in the battlefield, thereby counseling him when this conflict occurs inside Arjun. The whole battle is narrated to Dhritrashtra, the blind father of Kauravas by Sanjay, the son of a charioteer who is gifted with ‘divya-drishti’ or the ability to see the things at distance. So in essence, it is he who narrates the whole of Geeta to us.
Let us then begin with the opening verse in which Dhritrashtra is requesting Sanjay to tell him the on goings of the battlefield. Verses 1 to 20 give us the view of the battlefield and the camps on both the sides, ending on the sounding of conch shells which surprisingly have individual names of their own. This is a standard war-cry and the battle seems to have started. Now is the time when Arjuna requests Krishna to place his chariot in between the two armies so that he can have a view of the people he was fighting against, and get ready for combat. Eager to see who has decided to join the ‘evil’ Duryodhana(who had wronged them in so many ways), Arjun was left a little struck by compassion and the reality of the consequence of this war because among the enemies were his elders, teachers and relatives who had been and still seemed to be family to him. Left incapacitated to carry on due to overwhelming emotions of loss and the meaninglessness of any pleasure or Kingdom derived from killing his own kin, for whom one desires the material pleasures in life; Arjun makes a very good case of not willing to kill; even if it was the enemy’s intent to kill him. The battle for Arjun translates to preserving the values of a family, which would be destroyed by taking arms against his own. He talks about no happiness being achieved by doing so even if it was for ruling all the three worlds(roughly the heavens,the earth and the underground). He further talks about the destruction of righteousness from the society if this war goes on as planned. This is taken to another height when he talks about degradation of womanhood in such a society and the formation of a society in which new-borns do not remember or care about the people that came before them and their heritage. In deep sorrow of the meaninglessness of such a battle, an overwhelmed Arjun casts aside his Bow and arrow and laments sitting down on his chariot.
This marks the end of the first of 72 chapters. The first chapter sets the context and we are given an image of a conflicted Arjun to step into. To a mind shackled by various relations that one is born into or one gains as he/she progresses in their lives, Arjun serves to be a good placeholder. The battle may be a person’s calling and the sacrifice that it demands may be utter devotion to the moment, without any distractions that may stem from the human nature of our existence.
The next chapter introduces Krishna’s dialogue which tries to make Arjun regain some clarity; see you again another day for that.
