The Bhagavad Gita, a verse poem composed about 200 BCE and divided into 18 books, is considered a monument of the human mind and heart, testifying to man’s quest for truth and wisdom.
In contemporary life the insights of the Bhagavad Gita continue to confront the problems of the 21st century, speaking to issues such as choice, duty, and purpose.
Many great men have extolled its virtues.
“When I read the Bhagavad Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous,” said Albert Einstein.
“When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita and find a verse to comfort me,” said Mahatma Gandhi.
In the world of yoga the Bhagavad Gita is both seminal and revelatory because it is through Arjuna’s questions and Krishna’s answers that the underpinnings and practice of yoga are revealed. Although yoga has much to do with physical and mental well being, in the Bhagavad Gita the original spiritual purpose of yoga, connecting one’s consciousness to the supreme consciousness, is the nexus of the ideas of the poem.
Everything else is coincident to controlling one’s body, mind, and senses for the purpose of uniting with the divine.
The Bhagavad Gita is not without its problems, however, among them its Homeric sub-text, its wild inconsistencies regarding non-attachment, and top-down rationale for ordering human affairs.
One of the most vexing problems is how to take Krishna. Is he the avatar of yoga’s most abiding and sublime motifs, such as vairagya and ahimsa? Vairagya, or non-attachment, and ahimsa, or non-violence, are two of the basic precepts present in nearly all forms of yogic thought.
Or is he a monster who advocates war for his own unspeakable reasons, justifying fratricidal war with specious arguments about the meaninglessness of physical existence?
The problem comes to a boil in Book 11.
As Book 10 ends Krishna declares that he is so vastly great that just a single fragment of him is enough to “support the entire universe.“ Despite this declaration, Arjuna says to Krishna that though he doesn’t doubt his godliness, he would still like to see first-hand what it amounts to.
“I want to see for myself the splendor of your ultimate form.”
Krishna grants Arjuna divine sight for a few minutes so he can transcend his mortal vision and see Krishna for what he really is. What follows in Book 11 are six omniscient narrative stanzas and seventeen stanzas spoken by Arjuna describing what he is seeing.
Arjuna’s eyewitness account makes up the salient stanzas, beginning with “I see all gods in your body.”
Krishna is described as being everything and everywhere, without beginning or end. At the same time, he is described as sitting on a lotus throne, wearing a crown, and bearing a mace and a discus.
The discus is a symbol of the knowledge of truth and the mace is a symbol of the power of knowledge
Krishna is everything, but at the same time is the King, or Lord. He knows what the truth is, being everywhere and everything, and as the King or Lord, wields the power of that knowledge.
Arjuna goes on to describe the angels and demons that gaze at Krishna in amazement, the chants all the sages sing to him, and how the “innards” of mortals tremble at the sight of him.
Since Krishna is said to have “billion-fanged mouths blazing like the fires of doomsday,” we should not be surprised at the bellyful of distress mortal men might feel at the sight of him.
The next lines are the crux of problem.
They describe the two opposing armies on the battlefield of Kuru, those of the Pandavas, led by the virtuous Arjuna, and those of the Kauravas, led by the one hundred sons of a blind, evil king. They are both being swallowed up indiscriminately by the voracious Krishna, who Arjuna is seeing in the guise of his real godliness.
“Rushing headlong into your hideous, gaping, knife-fanged jaws. I see them with skulls crushed, their raw flesh stuck to your teeth,” Arjuna says.
“As the rivers in many torrents rush toward the ocean, all these warriors are pouring down into your blazing mouths. As moths rush into a flame and are burned in an instant, all beings plunge down your gullet and instantly are consumed.”
It is a godless Gita as Krishna goes about his business.
The Hebrew god Yahweh of the Old Testament is often described as angry and cruel. He has nothing on the Hindu god Krishna. Not once in the 6, 519 sightings of the god in the Old Testament is Yahweh ever described as having “gaping, knife-fanged jaws.”
If the Bhagavad Gita is a recruiting poster for Krishna’s promotion of the war, which is his often-stated and explicit intent throughout the poem, the slogan “I Want You” takes on a sinister double meaning.
Regardless of what side they stand on, all the warriors on the battlefield of Kuru are grist for the mill. All of Krishna’s reasoning, arguments, and commands are to one purpose, which is to get the detritus of war to pour down the craw of his rapacious mouth.
In Greek mythology Kronos, the Titan god of time, devoured his children for fear that they would one day overthrow him. In the movie King Kong the big monkey tried to use Fay Wray as a toothpick.
Neither self-survival nor the niceties of gastronomy seem to motivate Krishna. He is the great maw that must be fed and sated, although from all accounts in the Bhagavad Gita it is doubtful that Krishna can ever be sated, given his enormous appetite and preoccupation with the eternal.
Krishna does not explain himself other than to say he is death, annihilating all things, the shatterer of worlds. He bluntly declares that both armies will perish with or without Arjuna, and echoing Homer again, specifically the Illiad, urges Arjuna to fight and win everlasting glory.
It is a harrowing picture.
Krishna then blandly advises Arjuna to not be frightened anymore and see him as he was before. When he does, Arjuna is put at ease. It is an extraordinary recovery after seeing the shatterer of worlds gobble up thousands of warriors like so many French fries.
Krishna explains the merits of living in the now for most of the Bhagavad Gita. At the end of Book 11 he has apparently succeeded. Arjuna says his “mind has regained its composure” and it is on to the next thing.
Arjuna has moved forward from one now to the next now without any thought of repercussions or consequences. Every now is now the same as every other now.
In Book 1 Arjuna catalogued his many valid reasons for not going to war, not including ahimsa, which is never mentioned. Be that as it may, Krishna has won the day.
Arjuna says at the end of the Bhagavad Gita: “I have no more doubts. I will act according to your command.”
Like a lamb going to slaughter he consents to Krishna driving his chariot back into the god-ordained fray. It is unclear how this decision to go to war on the battlefield of Kuru dovetails with uniting to the divine, the supposed purpose of Krishna’s yoga lessons.
The poem ends with the poet Sanjaya, who is reciting the poem as we read it, saying that he has seen “splendor and virtue and spiritual wealth.” This may be right, especially in Books 2 through 8, but it cannot be right when seen in the light of Book 11, in which Krishna reveals his true nature, which is self-serving and spiritually bankrupt.
Practicing nonattachment in order to apprehend the divine, as Krishna advises at the beginning of Book 7, may be the way to go about living the yogic life, but when Krishna adds the epithet that it requires “surrendering yourself to me,” I believe it may be time to speed-dial the 911 emergency services.
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