This morning I woke up early to try to get my meditation practice going again, and afterwards, to keep with the theme and try to keep myself motivated, I decided to read a bit of the Bhagavad Gita. It\u2019s short, I\u2019ve read it a couple of times before, but have never really studied it per se. I\u2019ve found lots of parts that resonated with me, but for some reason, this morning more than ever, just the story of it really struck me as almost overwhelmingly poignant.<\/p>\n
Here you have Arjuna, the leader of an army of men on the battle field, facing off against an army that from a human perspective looks just about like his own army.\u00a0\u00a0He is in a chariot with Krishna and they\u00a0ride out between the two armies, surveying the situation. Not only does he know personally many of the men in his own army, but he recognizes men from the opposition, knows them by name and knows that many of them\u00a0are related to his own soldiers. It reminded me a bit of the American Civil War in that sense. Upon seeing this, he is struck with crushing sorrow at the impending loss of life of his friends on both sides.
\n
\nHe talks with Krishna, explaining that though his army is not the aggressor, the men he will be fighting aren\u2019t bad, they\u2019re just blinded by greed. He wants to know how he can commit the travesty of leading his men into battle? How can he justify the slaughter of so many people? He is so overtaken with emotion that he falls to the bottom of the chariot and can\u2019t bear to face the scene before him.<\/p>\n
What made it hard for me to get into this story before was this desire to analyze\u00a0it for historicity. There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which I will maybe get into later, but it also happened that this morning I was thinking about another word, epokhe<\/b>. This is a Greek word that I learned while reading the Stoics\u00a0that means\u00a0\u201cI suspend judgment.\u201d I hope that that word, that idea, becomes a theme of this blog. That temporary suspension of disbelief brought the story of Arjuna home to me.<\/p>\n
Anyway, so Krishna is able to explain to Arjuna why he should go ahead into battle despite the death. This is really, as I see it, one of the main points of the Gita. It\u2019s part of understanding non-attachment and the somewhat complex relationship between performing actions (doing stuff) and yet not becoming attached to them. It also has a lot to do with the idea of non-dualism (we\u2019re part of the same One) and to the idea of reincarnation. My understanding of all of the above is fairly limited, so I\u2019ll quote a bit from the\u00a0David Mitchell translation of the Gita<\/a>\u00a0and let Krishna use his own words to explain. First, he give some big-picture perspective:<\/p>\n If you think that this Self can kill or think that it can be killed, you do not well understand reality\u2019s subtle ways. It never was born; coming to be, it will never\u00a0not\u00a0be. Birthless, primordial, it does not die when the body dies. Knowing that it is eternal, unborn, beyond destruction, how could you ever kill? And whom could you kill, Arjuna?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Then, he explains why Arjuna needs to head into the battle:<\/p>\n Blessed are warriors who are given But if you refuse the call And finally, a bit about non-attachment:<\/p>\n You have a right to your actions, Self-possessed, resolute, act This is just the surface of what I\u2019m discovering to be a surprisingly, refreshingly powerful story. Hopefully I\u2019ll be able to suspend judgement just a bit more as I delve into the rest of the Gita.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This morning I woke up early to try to get my meditation practice going again, and afterwards, to keep with the theme and try to keep myself motivated, I decided to read a bit of the Bhagavad Gita. It\u2019s short, I\u2019ve read it a couple of times before, but have never really studied it per […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[89,90,91,92,68,93],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-bhagavad-gita","tag-books","tag-hinduism","tag-mysticism","tag-religion-2","tag-stories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/images\/krishna-arjuna2.jpeg?fit=1694%2C1388&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppj2P-6P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":444,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcusvorwaller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe chance of a battle like this,
\nwhich calls them to do what is right
\nand opens the gates of heaven.<\/p>\n
\nto a righteous war, and shrink from
\nwhat duty and honor dictate,
\nyou will bring down ruin on your head<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nbut never to your actions\u2019 fruits.
\nAct for the action\u2019s sake.
\nAnd do not be attached to inaction.<\/p>\n
\nwithout any thought of results,
\nopen to success or failure.
\nThis equanimity is yoga.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n