One thought I had on finishing this book was that humans are very fond of tradition and will countenance ideas they would otherwise reject, simply because they are old and venerated. As social animals, this kind of conformity is not exactly unexpected but religious texts do seem to show its extent in startling terms. Equally, humans are so afraid, or ashamed, of some aspects of their character that they will believe in almost anything that promises them salvation from themselves or the pain of the world. To my mind, these promises are empty and specious because what does it mean to be a human if not to struggle with the duality of one’s nature? Desires to be freed from ‘evil’, a very slippery and subjective concept itself, and suffering amount to little more than a desire to be special, to be chosen, to be superior to one’s peers. This desire strikes me as cruel, elitist and at variance with most religious texts professed teleos; in Hinduism, oneness, or in Christianity love and forgiveness. The Bhagavad Gita contains a very good passages on how shitty we are as humans (16:12 - 16). But I was left confused as to how this cycle of shittiness is ever going to be broken if the omnipotent Krishna insists on not saving those with ‘demonic tendencies’ who are abandoned to ‘fall lower still’ (16:19-20). As with almost all religious texts I’ve read, I start to wonder, ‘what kind of God is this?!’; more on this later. Another major problem that follows is, ‘how did these ancients have such a personal relationship with the divine and why are they so conspicuously absent from life today?’ Of course, the language and narratives can be read metaphorically but the problem still remains as to whether they contain any more valuable knowledge than say, a Shakespeare play or a George Eliot novel. Perhaps it’s just because of my cultural background and impoverished knowledge of Vedic traditions and texts but my opinion is that they contain a good deal less wisdom and are much less enjoyable to read. For a start, what modern author would be taken seriously if they went about purporting to have intimate knowledge of the divine and the nature of the universe? This is the stuff of charlatans and snake oil salespeople and does not correspond with my experience of the human condition at all.
With reference to the format of this edition in particular, I disliked the introduction and ‘explanations’ that preceded each chapter. I would have preferred the material here to focus on the textual history of the Bhagavad Gita, it’s earliest known version (15th century, apparently), how it changed over the years, how it has been used by the communities that have preserved it etc. Instead, what you get is someone telling you what it means, which begs the obvious question of why the text can’t speak for itself concerning meaning? Clearly, a glossary of some of the terms that may be unfamiliar to the Western audience this book is aimed at is helpful. But given that each reader will, and should, have an individual response to any book I found it annoying that someone was trying to preface my interpretation and tell me what to think. I stopped reading them after the first couple of chapters.
Much of what is contained in the book I would describe as wishful non-thinking or fantasy. For example, 6:22 states of enlightened people, “they desire nothing, and cannot be shaken by the heaviest of burden of sorrow”. I wonder if anyone has ever attained this state and, even if they had, is it even desirable? What kind of person would be left unaffected by the death of a loved one? It seems to me that this level of detachment would rob the practitioner of the rich variety of life. Is it possible to love without the pain of loss? Here the text seems to gloss over the fundamental duality of human experience in a rather glib and unconvincing way.
Another issue, which I alluded to earlier, is the idea that there can be a hierarchy of human souls while simultaneously claiming that everything is one and that the ego is an illusion. For example, 12:6-7: “But they for whom I am the supreme goal, who do all work renouncing self for me and meditate on me with single-hearted devotion, these will I swiftly rescue from the fragment’s cycle of birth and death, for their consciousness has entered into me.” Not only does this strike me as contradictory given the claim that everything is one and depends on the creator, it also seems very petty and human in its conception. At its centre are the desires to be different from one’s peers and to be part of a special elite that will receive better treatment. 7:17-18, 9:22 and 9:33 would all serve equally well as an examples. What kind of omnipotent, all loving creator would indulge in such childish ‘them and us’ thinking? But Krishna goes even further than this in 16:19-20 saying, “Life after life I cast those who are malicious, hateful, cruel, and degraded into the wombs of those with similar demonic natures. Birth after birth they find themselves with demonic tendencies.” What kind of creator would do this to people? Certainly not one that I would dedicate myself to. Why can’t he save these people too? They seem more in need of salvation than the kind of emotionless sycophant that Krishna seems to want for devotees. To me, all humans are simultaneously the saved and the damned in varying degrees. Here I would quote Aleksander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago when he writes, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (p75). To me, there is more wisdom and understanding of humanity in this than the whole Bhagavad Gita.
Furthermore, it seems highly plausible to me that, like all important, powerful texts, this one has been created by a ruling elite or, at least, heavily redacted by one. “Devote everything to me”, it says, but of course there are no Gods on earth so this equates to, “give everything to this institution, which happens to be run by some humans”! I’d rather work the world out from my own experience and the experience of other humans rather than rely on make believe stories and imagined Gods. As an example, ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ by Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave me a far more moving and nuanced account of humanity without appeal to fanciful ideas and transparent attempts to control the thoughts and actions of the readership. For a document purporting to be divine, the Bhagavad Gita struck me as laughably human in its conception and aims. A good example of this is Krishna’s proud claim that the caste system came from him (4:13). This is a system that most people would now see as racist and abhorrent.
Another contradiction I found in the book was the idea that no one is responsible for their actions because it is all controlled by ‘gunas’ (3:27-28). Nonetheless, the whole book is peppered with calls to certain types of action for example only a few lines later (3:31-35). How is this possible if it is all controlled by ‘gunas’? Surely, humans either have agency and can be expected to act and discriminate or they do not. It is not immediately obvious to me how both can simultaneously be true. Again, these calls to a certain type of action or behaviour have the strong scent of humans who want to put themselves above other humans and to have privileged access to some kind of special knowledge. For example, “I will give you the secret of action, with which you can free yourself from bondage” (4:16). To me, life is not bondage and no one has the secret to free anyone from it except perhaps death, which no living person would be able to comment on. This kind of thinking belongs in the realm of fantasy. Examples are myriad, the end of fear with all action devoted to the holy class (6:14), the end of sorrow through meditation (6:17), attaining perfection (7:3). The contradictions are just as numerous. Later in the same chapter that introduces the fantasy of a life without sorrow we are told, “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union” (6:32). If someone has moved beyond sorrow, how can they treat someone else’s as their own? This seems problematic for many reasons. First, Spinoza tells us that self-interest is the most powerful force in the universe. Second, from my own experience, I don’t believe there can be a life without sorrow nor that it would be desirable. Third, the text seems to be contradicting what it said only a few lines earlier. It simultaneously says, ‘you can get beyond sorrow and this is the highest aim’ and ‘experiencing sorrow is the highest aim’. Compared to the volumes of the thoughtful, coherent prose that one can read on the human condition, the Bhagavad Gita reads like confused gobbledy-gook!
The second aspect of the book I mentioned in the introduction - that people are afraid of their nature and want to be saved from it - is eloquently expressed in this book, especially chapter 16. Krishna gives a description of the two paths - the ‘good’ path of unity with him and the ‘bad’ path of rebirth. He says if we want to be good we should, amongst other things, not harm any living creature even though he has told Arjuna he is free to kill his enemies because he is only an instrument (11:33). However, the ‘bad’ path, to me, is really just a description of what it means to be a human. For example, “hypocrisy, arrogance, conceit, anger, cruelty, ignorance” (16:4) are listed as things that make a human more ‘inhuman’; but which human doesn’t have these qualities in some form? I would argue these are the very characteristics that make us human, even though that may be an unpleasant truth. What the Bhagavad Gita attempts to do in this chapter is to describe some of the less attractive aspects of humanity, 16:13-16 is another great example, and hold out the totally false idea that a person could escape being like this if they would only dedicate themselves to Krishna. To me, this is totally erroneous and misplaced. Humans must come to terms with the good and evil that run through all of us and I cannot see how it can be helpful to fantasise about attaining perfection when it has no basis in reality. The understanding of ‘evil’ presented is facil in the extreme. I prefer the nuance and acknowledgment of limitation described in works of literature like Shakespeare, “there is nothing good nor bad, lest thinking makes it so” (Hamlet), or Tolstoy, “it's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong” (War & Peace). The highly simplistic presentation in the Bhagavad Gita is, to me, a marketing trick to make people feel bad about themselves in the hope they will then join the cult. This kind of understanding of the human condition is absurdly basic and lies firmly in the realm of fantasy.
My final complaint are the unsubstantiated, petty claims the book makes about things humans could never know anything about. These struck me as little better than tarot card readings or astrology. 8:6 tells us that whatever we think about when we are dying determines “the destination of the dying”. Not only did I think this was silly and arbitrary, it also seems to contradict 2:20 when Krishna tells, “you will never die”. Not to mention the fact that I don’t believe that any human has any knowledge about what happens when you die. Chapter 14 splits everyone on earth into three types and claims you can identify them based on what kind of food they eat, I thought I may as well be reading a fucking horoscope! For me, there is such an abundance of good literature out there it’s a waste of time to bother with stuff like this except from a historical or anthropological perspective where I would agree it could be seen as a fascinating text.
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