An Atheist Explores the Bhagavad Gita Part 13: Ride The Rapids With Krishna (The Yog of Devotion (Bhakti Yog))

 Chapter Twelve: The Yog of Devotion (Bhakti Yog)

Ride The Rapids With Krishna

 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:

 Bhakti Yog

“Arjun inquired: Between those who are steadfastly devoted to Your personal form and those who worship the formless Brahman, who do You consider to be more perfect in Yog?”

 Arjun asks Krishna who is better – those that worship Krishna directly or those that revere Brahman, the unmanifest aspect of godhood. Perhaps not surprisingly, Krishna thinks that “Those who fix their minds on Me and always engage in My devotion with steadfast faith, I consider them to be the best yogis”. Well, I suppose He would say that, wouldn’t He.

 Brahman, He explains, is “the imperishable, the indefinable, the unmanifest, the all-pervading, the unthinkable, the unchanging, the eternal, and the immoveable” aspect of the Absolute Truth, but because “worship of the unmanifest is exceedingly difficult for embodied beings”, it’s harder to come to Krishna through worship of Brahman, but it’s a path nonetheless.

 “Fix your mind on Me alone and surrender your intellect to Me. There upon, you will always live in Me. Of this, there is no doubt,” says Krishna, sounding an awful lot like Jesus talking about being the “Way” and the only route to eternal life. Once again I find myself wondering if there was cross-pollination of Indian philosophy into 1st Century Judea, or if it’s a case of independent but convergent ideas.

 If you can’t fix your mind on Krishna, the god says, then remember Him with devotion. If you can’t do that, perform works in His name. And if you can’t do that, try to renounce the fruits of your actions. All of these, separately and independently, are routes to Krishna (one would have thought that being able to do all of them is better, perhaps, but I guess it’s like the route via Brahman above – you still reach the same destination but the road is longer and more difficult.

 The chapter finishes with a list of characteristics of which Krishna says, in a repeating refrain, “such devotees of Mine are very dear to Me”. These are people who have renounced attachment, who are calm, serene, compassionate, but predominately in a state of “balance”; for example those “who are alike to friend and foe, equipoised in honor and dishonor, cold and heat, joy and sorrow, and are free from all unfavorable association; those who take praise and reproach alike, who are given to silent contemplation, content with what comes their way, without attachment to the place of residence, whose intellect is firmly fixed in Me”.

 Here the philosophy sounds a little like Taoism, with its emphasis on “action through non-action” , finding the point of balance between opposing forces where you don’t need to fight to maintain integrity, but can just allow yourself to “be”.

 Funny, this also reminds me of white-water canoeing, where if you observe the flow of the water and position yourself in the right position, you don’t need to fight against the current but can move with very little effort.

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