Chapter Four:
The Yog of Knowledge and the Disciplines
of Action (Jñāna Karm Sanyās Yog)
A Taoist, a Buddhist and a Christian walk into a bar… only to find
that the Hindu had got there first.
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:
“The
Supreme Lord Shree Krishna said: I taught this eternal science of Yog to the
Sun-god, Vivasvan, who passed it on to Manu; and Manu in turn instructed it to
Ikshvaku.”
Arjun questions Krishna about how he can have taught Vivasan (the
sun-god), if Krishna came after the sun god. Krishna explains how he transcends
time through living many lives (as has Arjun, he says, the difference between
the man and the god is that Arjun has forgotten his former lives whereas
Krishna remembers them all).
Krishna explains how he appears in every age when righteousness
diminishes and unrighteousness increases, “To
protect the righteous, to annihilate the wicked, and to reestablish the
principles of dharma I appear on this
earth, age after age.” I like that image, a cycle of time when the god
arises to put things right again.
Any people who come to understand the nature of Krishna “upon leaving the body, do not have to take
birth again, but come to my eternal abode”, which all sounds like something
that would be attributed to Jesus. As does “Being
freed from attachment, fear, and anger, becoming fully absorbed in me, and
taking refuge in me, many persons in the past became purified by knowledge of
me, and thus they attained my divine love”
and “In whatever way people
surrender unto me, I reciprocate with them accordingly. Everyone follows my
path, knowingly or unknowingly, O son of Pritha”. Well, maybe not the son
of Pritha bit (that’s Arjun again).
But really – gaining divine love through “taking refuge in me”, reciprocating to anyone that follows
regardless of the route they get there, coming into “an eternal abode”. I (mostly jokingly) pondered if Jesus had been
exposed to Buddhist ideas, but it seems like they’re earlier than that,
stemming from Hindu concepts. Which surely, surely, must have travelled to the
Near East by the time of the Roman Empire. Or perhaps it’s a case of convergent
thought.
But then we get to something that sounds more like the Tao
Te-Ching, wherein Krishna talks of the paradox of action through inaction, and
inaction through action – “What is action
and what is inaction? Even the wise are confused in determining this. Now I
shall explain to you the secret of action, by knowing which, you may free
yourself from material bondage.”
There is “recommended
action, wrong action, and inaction”, and the trick seems to be to act
without concern for the outcome, at least as far as expecting some kind of
material reward goes. “Free from
expectations and the sense of ownership, with mind and intellect fully
controlled, they incur no sin, even though performing actions by one’s body”.
The work is “consumed in the fire of
divine knowledge”, so to speak. By becoming free from the envy and material
attachment, the work instead is done as a kind of sacrifice, and by doing so
they see the divine in all aspects – “For
those who are completely absorbed in God-consciousness, the oblation is Brahman, the ladle with which it is offered is Brahman, the act of offering is Brahman, and the sacrificial fire is also Brahman. Such persons, who view everything as God, easily attain him.”
Having said that, Krishna goes on to expound how anything can be done for of sacrifice –
this is the jñāna, which I have no
idea how to pronounce. It could be material offerings, it could be the sense of
self, it could be offering wealth, it could be austerity as a form of
sacrifice, even breathing exercises can be done as a form of sacrifice, and I
think by this point it’s not so much “sacrifice” as we would understand, but an
offering to the divine nonetheless. Interestingly there is also mention of an “eight-fold path”, which is another thing
evidently co-opted into Buddhism.
Divine knowledge acts like a purifying fire (another very Biblical
sounding metaphor), burning away doubt, uncertainty, and attachment to material
things.
There’s a lot more here, and the philosophy is either subtle or
muddled, I’m not sure which, but to really make a full understanding of it
requires more time and space than I have here, sadly. It’s intriguing how other
religions and philosophies intersect, but perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising,
with India sitting between the Middle-East and China, that some
cross-fertilisation of ideas should occur. Or we could consider that all these
traditions draw similar conclusions because all humans are ultimately the same.
Or, if you like, perhaps they’re all inspired by the same God. Truly something
for all inclinations.
Having explained how work and action can be works of worship and
sacrifice, even leading to purity if done in the right way of thinking, Krishna
tells Arjun to buck up and get on with the battle (essentially).
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