At one video store I asked for a video of the Mahabarata, and the shopkeeper recommended I try watching the three episodes comprising the Bhagavad Gita first. I brought the disk home and popped it in the dvd player. The Geeta starts quite promising if you're expecting an action movie, with two armies replite with silver and golden chariots swiftly approaching each other across a desert plain. The armies come to a stop facing each other across a no-man's land of at most 100 yards. That was the one and only action scene of the movie. From that point on, there is only talk. The leader of one army begins to have doubts about the appropriateness of going to war against his uncles and cousins leading the other army, and talks his charioteer's ears off trying to get around the moral puzzle. The charioteer would also rather talk than fight, apparently, and the viewer is confronted with two hours of chat about how it is or it is not ok to do unto your brother as he has done unto you. The movie ends just as the hero Arjun picks up his bow and is about to let the slaughter commence.
In spite of myself, I did learn a little about Indian cosmology during the two-hour debate. The main point of the charioteer's lecture was that you have to do your duty, and not worry so much about your doing your duty will affect others trying to do their duty. If you show up to the field as a warrior and leader out to right a wrong, then get on with the war and right some wrongs. Don't get all caught up with whether your opponents have been good to you in the past, or if you would feel bad afterwards having killed some people. If you are a warrior, fight. Duty is what should guide you, not emotions like happiness or sorrow, fear or pride, gain or loss. Do your duty in the pursuit of justice. Besides, souls are eternal, so you might kill the body, but that was going to die anyway. The soul will live on, so don't worry about killing others, as long as it is your duty carried out in pursuit of justice. Arjun was just a bit too sentimental, and it's a good thing his charioteer was there to talk some sense into him.
Its not a bad philosophy. It means you can do what you set out to do without having to worry too much about what others might think or how it will affect them. It allows the application of enlightened self interest. Its all in the name of justice. Its a bit different though than the pursuit of happiness outlined in our Declaration of Independence. I am not sure that leading a just life will guarantee you happiness, except in the most abstract sense.
Oh, and the charioteer was Krishna, so you know what he said was right. During the whole lecture, Krishna had this half smile half smirk on his face, as if to say "I know what you're thinking, and you should just not worry so much and get on with doing your duty."
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If you think of the pursuit of happiness, hopefully for others just as for yourself as your duty - there is not a contradiction - that is the beauty of interpretive belief systems - a non-literal view of the philosophy reveals its relevance through space and time. Whether you call it duty or one's role and responsibilities that is just semantics - I have personally found Krishna's Geeta philosophy applied all around me.
ReplyDeleteFor those who understand this reference - as planners in the United States, we do not call an application complete until it is complete simply out of concern for the effect on an applicant's finances that a resubmittal would cost him/her money - we can't worry about that. I would say, as planners it is our Public Service responsibility (duty?) to guide and help the applicants give us the information we need to call an application complete, but we would not just say the app is good to go until that is what it is.
In thinking about this, one has to wonder whether the fighter pilots of 'Shock and Awe' in Iraq not so long ago were at liberty to worry about the effects of their bomb dropping on people on the ground getting hit - all the collateral damage, if you will. That was the job (duty?) of the Commander in Chief and the Congress, and the army men and women could not question in it in their role as such. Had they questioned or ignored the directive - could they have stayed in the army?
I doubt very much if post traumatic syndrome sourced to the battlefield makes for happiness for a returning soldier. However, imagine a situation where in a society which needs and wants an army for some reason - let us say protect its freedom - it were to be par for the course accepted practice for enlisted army people to renig on delivering on the role (duty?) for which they enlisted and refuse to go to battle when needed, simply because their happiness lay in staying home with their families.
It is quite true that Krishna's philosophy does not make for ease and advantage for self or some limited special interest at all times if that is what happiness is, but if understood correctly it can and does make for a clear direction in life and the larger good, which is bigger than any one person or special interest that may be.
Now I stop, because my comment is turning out to be like a blog post by itself - sorry Steve, I talk too much.
Enjoy
One thing I do like about the Geeta is that in following it I feel more free to pursue my own objectives even if they might not further someone else's objectives. In such a positive and broad example such as Pursuit of Happiness, its easy to see that doing things that make me happy might make others happy as well, or at least will not affect them in any way. Also, doing things that make others happy, such as volunteering for a good cause, can end up making me happy too.
ReplyDeleteThe tougher cases are where the objective is not directly the Pursuit of Happiness. The example of a planning project is a great one, because it is clear that the immediate objective of the middleman between project designer and zoning ordinance is one of regulation, and the happiness that results from good regulation is spread out in so many tiny pieces across so many people and projects that it is tough for anyone to notice the incremental happiness that is generated by consistent preservation of front setbacks. That lack of immediate positive feedback to regulation makes the Geeta valuable - it is our duty to make sure the project is done right, because in doing my duty here, a greater good is furthered.
You mention war as a tough case to apply the Geeta, and the Geeta itself was composed on a battlefield. I don't think Arjan's conflict was with the kind of fighting that we might call self-defense or self preservation, nor was that specifically what you where getting at in your example. Self preservation should be considered a duty according to the Geeta. The concept of self can be extended to include family, friends, and tribe, and nation, and I suppose one day all humanity will think of itself as one, and then we won't have so much violence.
Arjan's conflict was in part because he had family on both sides of the conflict, so he didn't know who to protect, and how. That's the dilemna Krishna helped him resolve. But this elevation of duty over reflection on a potential greater good is where one has to be careful in applying the Geeta. The duty you are to be carrying out must be in the pursuit of a greater good (justice?). and each soldier should be convinced of that greater good, or else concienciously object. The Nuremburg defense ("I was just following orders") was discredited in World War II, and Robert Oppenheimer is said to have quoted from the Geeta upon the successful test of the first atom bomb: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds".