28 September 2007

Philosophy Class (Week 5)

We've spent most of this week talking about the Bhagavad Gita. Interestingly, the subject of caste didn't come up at all, so I may mention it on Monday (we've been instructed to prepare questions/topics for discussion).

The over-riding theme is the "Yoga of Action." Mostly in the west we think of exercise, and maybe meditation in connection with yoga, but it has the same root as "yoke" and is often translated as "union." As an exercise, it's often described as the union of body and breath, or body and mind, or mind and breath... It can also be translated as "Discipline" or "Art." The Gita proclaims that the way to happiness and fulfillment is not to give up action itself, but to renounce its 'fruit.'

The idea is to commit all acts to heaven/Krishna/god, and have no particular attachment to the outcome. As one of the more vocal students pointed out (I think there are five of us who speak up regularly; yes, I'm one of them), this could be taken as justification for being a sociopath, or an instruction to be autistic. My own sense is that this is trying to get at the same idea as the Tao te Ching, of letting go, but from a different angle. I much prefer that description.

The problem with describing it as 'detachment' may be one of translation. In the West, we have some very bad associations with 'detachment.' Mass murderers are described as detached. Fascist dictators are described as 'detached.' Scientists are also described as 'detached,' with various connotations depending on who's doing the labeling. As described in the Gita, it's not intended as a negative label, nor an indifferent one. The final stanza of Chapter 11 reads:

He who acts for my sake,
loving me, free of attachment,
with benevolence toward all beings,
will come to me in the end

Note the implicit irony. The right kind of detachment involves an attachment to Krishna. It also involves benevolence, but that is less problematic. The natural state of humans is towards generosity and benevolence, in my experience. It takes outside pressures to make us otherwise. To be hostile towards someone requires an attachment to that hostility, to something to be gained from that hostility. I know that many would argue the same for benevolence, but benevolence doesn't require effort. Hostility has to be maintained; it's like a tension in the mind. Relax the mind, and the hostility vanishes. At least, it does for me, and I suspect it's similar for most people. This is why I prefer the description of "letting go." There's less room for misinterpretation.

On a tangent discussion, a few biblical issues came up. I found Dr. Levenson's take on the Old Testament to be rather interesting. At the highest level of awareness, God is perfect, etc, but at lower levels he comes across as 'having some problems.' This would imply that the Old Testament was mostly written by people at the lower levels of awareness, who possibly had glimpses of the higher levels. So why not take Jefferson's approach and cut out all the problematic bits, hmmm? Works for me.

Dr. Levenson also made a very thought-provoking comment about Christianity. He pointed out that the Christ figure is one of the most positive religious images, powerfully positive, almost entirely a force for good, and that Christianity also had the most vivid, negative and nasty depictions of hell of any of the world religions. In other words, there always has to be a balance. The stronger the positive images in a religion, the stronger the negative images. It all goes back to yin and yang. It also goes back to the essential neutrality of the world itself. People realize this on some level. So if there's some all-powerful force for good saving people, there also has to be an equally powerful nasty enemy to save them from. A world of superheroes is automatically a world of supervillains.

Note also that the more liberal forms of Christianity, where hellfire and brimstone aren't part of the weekly poison, also tend to come across as rather insipid. Tepid. Bland. They have to. Getting rid of the horrible villain weakens the hero, too. So why not go for a philosophy of balance? Seems to me that it saves a lot of trouble and cuts out a lot of the nonsense.

No comments: