Closing Thoughts
Welcome to the epilogue 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:
Closing Thoughts
That was an interesting document. Compared to the Bible
and the Qur’an it was mercifully short, but of course what I’m essentially
doing here is taking the edited highlights out of a much longer document, kind
of like reading the Gospel of Mark and taking it to be the Bible as a whole.
That said, it sums up its philosophy in a nicely succinct
fashion. It’s interesting that in this particular representation of Hinduism
that the morality of actions is determined by cosmic forces, or is inherent to
the performer of those actions. Even Krishna is bound by the same laws; unlike
the Abrahamic faiths where God/Allah seems incapable of being wrong, because He
*is* rightness. Which them leads to logical absurdities where God kills cities
full of people, but that’s “right” because God does it. The Bhagavad Gita
solves the Euthyphro dilemma – Krishna likes things that are Holy; they aren’t
Holy because Krishna likes them (although the sense I get is that the approval
of the god reinforces the holiness of the action).
This really boils down to the three ghunas, which play a bit like Aristotlean (and Confucian) virtue
ethics. In order for an act to be “good”, the intent behind the act must be
“good” as well. Accidentally doing the right thing when you’re in reality
trying to cheat, doesn’t count. An action must proceed from sattva in order to be good; but the
Bhagavad Gita seems to go a step further. Unless
an action proceeds from sattva, it
will go awry. At best you will get the neutral rajas result, which isn’t bad for anybody, but also does nothing
for the spiritual advancement of the performer. At worse, you get the tamas version, which causes harm to
others, and also damages the performer.
Stripped of the mysticism, this seems like a good
framework for morality. I think it’s also flexible enough to accept that not
all actions really benefit from a virtuous intent (although the Bhagavad Gita
does exhort the reader to consider Krishna, and thus aim for the sattva outcome, even when going to the
toilet). It also feels to me like a system that would be willing to admit that
not every action is going to benefit everyone. The utilitarian concept of the
“maximum good” is one that breaks down quite quickly when applied to anything
complex (like real life).
The flip-side of that is that it’s pretty clear from the
conclusions of the Bhagavad Gita, evidently a parenthesis in the Mahabharat
where Arjun is going into battle, that fighting wars and killing your enemy can
still be a “holy” thing to do, if that’s what you are meant to do. And from
that notion spins out the potentially harmful caste system concept, where
people are allotted roles in life where they must stay. I’m not sure that the
Bhagavad Gita really supports the notion of a rigid caste system (although I’m
interested if it was written in a society that already had a caste system);
more the notion I took from it was that each has a lot in life, but this is
something known to Krishna, not imposed by humans. I’m not sure on that one,
though; more data required.
I think, at some point, I’m going to explore some more of
the Hindu scripture. Whether I’ll do a series on this blog, I don’t know. I’ve
done a lot of the Sacred Text work, and the next one I do (the Buddhist
Dhammapada) I plan to be the last for a while. But never say never.
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