India Lost Gita, West Got Gita
Questioner: So thank you for organising this session. So, talking about Bhagavad Gita is important so I was just reading about one American naturalist named, Henry Thoreau. He says that every morning I bet my intellect in the stupendous philosophy of Bhagavad Gita in comparison with our modern world and its literature, seems trivial.
So, I think that Western world has acknowledged the importance of Bhagavad Gita a bit more than Indians have. I may be wrong on this but that’s my one observation.
Acharya Prashant: You are right, when something is too close to you, you just somehow lose measure of its importance.
Because the Gita happens to be a commonplace thing in India, a household name in India, therefore it is evident that it has ceased to mesmerise Indians. Familiarity someone said breeds contempt. So, if not contempt then at least indifference. If you become familiar, too familiar to greatness, greatness ceases to dazzle.
The west encounters the Gita with relatively fresh eyes, the west does not rush to worship the Gita. It says, “Wow, here we have a piece of text literature let me look at it objectively, afresh.”
When you look at the Gita that way, that’s when it reveals its riches to you. I’ve been lucky in that regard. I could play with the Gita because I was not introduced to the Gita in a traditional way. Nobody told me that you should go and take a bath before touching the Gita or that you should sit, or squat facing in one particular direction if you’re reading the Gita, or that you should not be lying in your bed, while reading the Gita.
I have done all of that. There have been nights when I have dozed off with the Gita lying on my chest. I have not read the Gita in any kind of structured or sequential way. I would just open the book randomly and allow the verses to captivate me. I have also not felt obliged to go by the conventional meanings of the verses.
So, it helps if you can look at the world or anything with unconditioned eyes. If you approach something with predetermined respect, you lose the thing. When you turn something into organised religion, you lose touch with its underlying beautiful philosophy.
So, the Gita became a small part of a huge religious complex for Indians.
For the west it didn’t turn into religion, it remained philosophy and that’s why the west seems to be able to penetrate relatively deeper into the Gita. You named Thoreau, there are several other examples and we have more examples coming up every decade. India that does not quite seem to be happening. See the Gita is not tradition, you have been to a Hindi course as well. You very well know that the Gita is an active destroyer of convention, tradition, myth, belief and such things.
And that aspect of Gita has hardly ever been brought out. If you see Arjun stand for, Krishna is representing an attitude that can very truthfully be called as very modern, no? And because modernity first came to the west, therefore the west is naturally more likely to resonate more closely with the Gita.
Questioner: What I have observed that people here are afraid of condemning or saying anything against Gita even if they don’t feel right about it, whereas in west for example Gene Paul, he started condemning that, not condemning, but he said that I didn’t like the fact that Krishna was pushing arjun to fight though he corrected himself later but I was saying that..
Acharya Prashant: He was critiquing, he was critiquing.
Questioner: So he was not afraid of critiquing..
Acharya Prashant: Yes, the same thing I found myself in the same situation i recall that, many a times.
So I would pick up a particular verse and vividly remember one day, father was on the dining table and I go rushing to him and say, “ye toh koi baat nahi hui” and I was pointing at a particular verse, what is this written, what is Krishna saying here ? Those are my words — ye toh koi baat nahi hui.
So, I was lucky, I could have that freedom to openly dissent against even Krishna. And had I not had the right to dissent, I would also not have the right to love. Both require freedom, no? there can be no dissent without freedom and there can be no love, without freedom. So, Gita can be read only in freedom. When you make the Gita a part of your religious complex, when you turn it into obligatory reading, then there is no freedom.
Questioner: So talking about that from verse one, I took two inferences about that, I would like to share it with you.
Dhritarashtra — the scripture starts with a blind man’s question. I mean that is a rightfully good thing because only a blind man should question. A person who sees I mean he won’t have any requirement to ask anything and hence there would be no need of a scripture.
Second thing is, Dhritarashtra was blind and it was seen that his sons were all behaving blindly.
It seems as if In Ishavasya Upanishad we say fullness gives right to fullness the reverse of that is happening, blindness gives rise to blindness.
Only a blind men can reproduce 100 confal, I mean 100 children.
Acharya Prashant: Kabir sahab says “andha andhe thaliya”.
And if you want to extend the whole thing a bit, when the very genesis of the battle was in those words of Draupadi that pointed at the same thing.
Questioner: She said, “Andhe ka beta, andha.”
Acharya Prashant: That’s what exactly you are saying.
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: So you take all of that together and it’s all, it’s all quite full of symbolism and significance.
Questioner: So in verse four actually when you see two parties fighting, suppose two parties are fighting. Generally, we’ll find that one party is, you know, condemning the other, bad things about others.
But here we see a strange thing, Duryodhana instead praising Pandavas. That is a strange discrepancy which I found.
Acharya Prashant: Because these are not two parties fighting each other. This is one party fighting the truth. Duryodhan wouldn’t have been found in that kind of trembling condition, were he facing the Pandavas sans Krishna. It is the presence of Krishna on that side, that is making Duryodhana go so unhinged. The words are utterly loose.
Questioner: So I remember that even in chemical equations, even in science, there are two chemicals but there is the requirement of a catalyst here. Catalyst here is a Shri Krishna, catalyst is not an active participant in the battle, in the reaction, but catalyst is something whose presence is mandatory for the reaction to happen. So, Shri Krishna is something like a catalyst.
Acharya Prashant: You could say that, you could even say that Krishna is the very laboratory within which the reaction is taking place.
A catalyst is just an enabler, Krishna here is a more than enabler. He is the very foundation on which all this is happening, but that’s another level of description. What you have said is just alright.
Questioner: And final thing, if I ask you, “Can you name one person, one fighter, who is the biggest fighter in Pandavas, who will that be?”
Acharya Prashant: Fighter in what sense? Skill, experience in what sense?
Questioner: If I ask who is the biggest fighter in the Pandavas group then who would you choose ?
Acharya Prashant: Arjun.
Questioner: Yes, now everybody says like that, but if you look at verse number 4, Duryodhan takes the first name of Bheem, not Arjun.
Acharya Prashant: That’s because the Bheem was leading the army from that side.
Questioner: Okay.
Acharya Prashant: Bheem is Bhishma’s counterpart from the Pandavas’ side, that’s the reason.
Questioner: So what I thought is, maybe because you need somebody like Bheem, who can easily be bondaged in a woman’s in white promise.
Acharya Prashant: You could say that, or you could say that when it comes to a personal centre Duryodhan was not too likely to face Arjun in the battle.
There were others, who were going to take Arun on, right? You would have Bhishma, you would have Dron, then Karn, these were the people who are going to match Arjun in archery.
Duryodhan would have a personal duel with Bheem and Duryodhan knew it was coming and it indeed did come, right? So, you could say that that’s the reason Duryodhan is more likely to remember Bheem.
See it’s like if you are an opening batsman, when you look at the 11 players on the other side, you are most likely to look first at their opening bowler.
Because he is the one you are going to face and dread, righ? As an opening batsman, why would I think too much about let’s say, let’s say their spinners? Opening batsmen hardly get to face spinners, but then I know that the pitch would be fresh and raw and that tall opening bowler, he is going to have a good go at me.
So, if I am to talk off one face, as representing the opposing team I would name their opening baller so, that kind of a thing. But here even that is probably not applicable, it says that Bheem is leading the side.
Questioner: And Vedant also says that, we look at our counterpart in the world. We always find out from the entire view, we always find which is my dual counterpart
Acharya Prashant: that’s the nature of the ego. Yes.
Questioner: That is being explained, thank you so much. Thank you.
