Chapter Three:
The Yog of Action (Karm Yog)
A Little Bit Freud, A Little Bit Aristotle.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts
(Bhagavad Gita).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the
Bhagavad Gita, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as
literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2XAch2A
For the online Bhagavad Gita that I use, see here https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/
And now:
“Arjun
said: O Janardan, if you consider knowledge superior to action, then why do you
ask me to wage this terrible war? My intellect is bewildered by your ambiguous
advice. Please tell me decisively the one path by which I may attain the
highest good.”
I’m glad Arjun thought Krishna’ advice in the last chapter was
contradictory as well, makes me feel less stupid. I looked up “Janardan”, and this seems to be a poor
transliteration for what ought to be “Janardana”,
meaning something like “One who inflicts
punishment on evil men” or “He to whom all devotees pray for worldly success and
liberation” (which is quite a
different pair of meanings). It’s another name for Krishna, anyway, in case you
hadn’t figured that out.
First of all, replies Krishna, there are two
Paths to Enlightenment to suit different temperaments – one of Knowledge (the jñāna-yogena) and
one of Work (the karma-yogena). But you kind of have to
do both, because you can’t gain enlightenment without performing any kind of
action (but see later), neither can you do so without stopping to contemplate.
Furthermore, all things are inclined to action by their natures (quite
Aristotelian there).
These “three natures” are known as the gunas. They’re not described in this chapter, so I went and looked
them up. They are sattva, which is a
kind of positivity, compassionate, goodness and so on. Conversely, tamas is the dark and destructive side
of one’s nature. Finally rajas is the
ego-driven, the balance between sattva
and tamas, the drive to act.
This has echoes of Plato, with his three parts of the soul – the
appetitive, the spirit and the reason, which broadly correspond to tamas, rajas and sattva
respectively. Likewise Freudian psychology with id, ego and superego once again
respectively. It’s not a good mapping though, as unlike reason or the superego,
sattva is a passive element, it’s
more like the capacity to do good vs.
the capacity to do bad in the form of the tamas,
and the rajas is the reasoning part
that chooses between them. That’s how I read it anyhow.
It gets more complicated. Buckle up.
The Vedas, says Krishna, contain instructions for the correct
kinds of actions for each man (echoes of the Hindu caste system here), but
doing the work in and of itself is not enough. Work must be performed as an
offering to the gods, a yajna. If
people perform the roles allotted to them, as a form of worship, then the gods
are pleased and grant life-giving rains and plenty for the people.
Interestingly, even Krishna seems to be bound by the notions of
Vedic karma and yajna. Partly because, as He points out, rulers have a duty to lead
by example, fulfilling their roles as yajna
so that their subjects will do so as well. And if a king has this
responsibility, a god even more so – “For
if I did not carefully perform the prescribed duties, O Parth, all men would
follow my path in all respects.” But more than that, there’s a suggestion
that Krishna’s duty prevents the world from collapsing into chaos - “If I ceased to perform prescribed actions,
all these worlds would perish. I would be responsible for the pandemonium that
would prevail, and would thereby destroy the peace of the human race.”
There’s a bit of a get-out clause for truly enlightened people not
to have to act in the world, because they’ve freed their minds from an
attachment to work. But also, the notion of performing work as an offering is
to distract the mind from thinking of it as an end in itself, and to remove attachment
from one’s achievements – “Those who are
deluded by the operation of the guṇas become attached to the results of their
actions. But the wise who understand these truths should not unsettle such
ignorant people who know very little.”
Arjun asks Krishna “Why is a
person impelled to commit sinful acts, even unwillingly, as if by force, O
descendent of Vrishni (Krishna)?” I love the poetic simile of Krishna’s
answer, that it is desire that acts like something that obscures a person’s
ability to see what is right – “Just as a
fire is covered by smoke, a mirror is masked by dust, and an embryo is
concealed by the womb, similarly one’s knowledge gets shrouded by desire.” Once
again we see an urge to remove attachment. By removing desire we clear the
smoke and the dust and our knowledge becomes more clear – “Thus knowing the soul to be superior to the material intellect, O
mighty armed Arjun, subdue the self (senses, mind, and intellect) by the self
(strength of the soul), and kill this formidable enemy called lust.”
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