Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Reading the Bhagavad Gita, Chapters 15-16

Chapter 15: We start with a similitude:

“Lord Shri Krishna continued: This phenomenal creation, which is both ephemeral and
eternal, is like a tree, but having its seed above in the Highest and its ramifications on this
earth below. The scriptures are its leaves, and he who understands this, knows.
Its branches shoot upwards and downwards, deriving their nourishment from the
Qualities; its buds are the objects of sense; and its roots, which follow the Law causing
man’s regeneration and degeneration, pierce downwards into the soil.
In this world its true form is not known, neither its origin nor its end, and its strength is
not understood., until the tree with its roots striking deep into the earth is hewn down by
the sharp axe of non-attachment.
Beyond lies the Path, from which, when found, there is no return. This is the Primal God
from whence this ancient creation has sprung.
The wise attain Eternity when, freed from pride and delusion, they have conquered their
love for the things of sense; when, renouncing desire and fixing their gaze on the Self, they
have ceased to be tossed to and fro by the opposing sensations, like pleasure and pain.
Neither sun, moon, nor fire shines there. Those who go thither never come back. For,
O Arjuna, that is my Celestial Home! "(p.41)

In terms of writing, I think this is a really good passage.  Take a familiar yet complex object, assign mystical meanings to the parts, and strike a good balance of language between rich description and stark action.  In terms of meaning anything to the real world, I'm still waiting on Krishna to offer any concrete evidence.



Chapter 15 is short, and we spend the rest of it on Krishna laying claim to being everything, the source of everything, and the Supreme God:

"He is the perception of the ear, the eye, the touch, the taste and the smell, yea and of the
mind also; and the enjoyment the things which they perceive is also His.
The ignorant do not see that it is He Who is present in life and Who departs at death or
even that it is He Who enjoys pleasure through the Qualities. Only the eye of wisdom sees.
The saints with great effort find Him within themselves; but not the unintelligent, who in
spite of every effort cannot control their minds...
I am enthroned in the hearts of all; memory, wisdom and discrimination owe their origins
to Me. I am He Who is to be realised in the scriptures; I inspire their wisdom and I know
their truth...
There are two aspects in Nature: the perishable and the imperishable. All life in this world
belongs to the former, the unchanging element belongs to the latter.
But higher than all am I, the Supreme God, the Absolute Self, the Eternal Lord, Who
pervades the worlds and upholds them all."(p.41-42)

Chapter 16: This chapter is entirely taken up with the apologetic of "you cannot be good/have morality without god" argument.  Krishna espouses the dichotomy:

"All beings are of two classes: Godly and godless. The Godly I have described; I will now
describe the other."(p.43)

The godly: 
"Fearlessness, clean living, unceasing concentration on
wisdom, readiness to give, self-control, a spirit of sacrifice, regular study of the scriptures,
austerities, candour,
harmlessness, truth, absence of wrath, renunciation, contentment, straightforwardness,
compassion towards all, uncovetousness, courtesy, modesty, constancy,
Valour, forgiveness, fortitude, purity, freedom from hate and vanity; these are his who
possesses the Godly Qualities, O Arjuna!" (p.43)

The godless:
"The godless do not know how to act or how to renounce. They have neither purity nor
truth. They do not understand the right principles of conduct.
They say the universe is an accident with no purpose and no God. Life is created by sexual
union, a product of lust and nothing else.
Thinking thus, these degraded souls, these enemies of mankind – whose intelligence is
negligible and whose deeds are monstrous – come into the world only to destroy.
Giving themselves up to insatiable passions, hypocritical, self-sufficient and arrogant,
cherishing false conception founded on delusion, they work only to carry out their own
unholy purposes...
Caught in the toils of a hundred vain hopes, the slaves of passion and wrath, they
accumulate hoards of unjust wealth, only to pander to their sensual desire.
This I have gained today; tomorrow I will gratify another desire; this wealth is mine now,
the rest shall be mine ere long;
I have slain one enemy, I will slay the others also; I am worthy to enjoy, I am the
Almighty, I am perfect, powerful and happy"(p.43)

But he who neglects the commands of the scriptures, and follows the promptings of
passion, he does not attain perfection, happiness or the final goal.
Therefore whenever there is doubt whether thou shouldst do a thing or not, let the
scriptures guide thy conduct. In the light of the scriptures shouldst thou labour the whole
of thy life.”(p.44)

Paraphrasing this chapter: "Without god you are by definition bad and cannot ever be good because everything good is of god (and is god) and you have to do what my holy books/people say!"  As Steve Shives likes to phrase it, "Checkmate, atheists!"

Some points I would ask about:
  • Krishna, dude, you just told Arjuna back in chapter 11 to rise up and kill his cousins so he can be king!  So much for harmlessness and renunciation of worldly stuff for the godly, and slaying and hoarding for the godless!  You're god (you claim) and you're endorsing the slaying and being king!  It's not a good sign that you're just as hypocritical as you accuse your opponents of being.
  • Which god(ess)(s)?  Quetzalcoatl?  Crom Cruach?  Amaterasu?  Padmasambhava?  Haile Selassie?  (And I can keep going for a very long time with other claimed gods(esses).)  No one can agree, and no can present any evidence that their god actually exists in this world and is a god in any measurable way.  (Since we do have good evidence that Haile Selassie existed, but he vigorously denied he was god and presented no evidence to the contrary.)  Until we have extraordinary, repeatable, public evidence commensurate with the claims of a religion, we are justified in not believing or following that religion.     
  • Desires of various types are deeply part of most of us.  As long as we're not hurting others, what's the harm in enjoying the one life we have any evidence of?
  • Just because something is an accident does not mean it's worthless.  Penicillin, anyone?
  • Just because you are not a puppet in someone else's story does not mean you are worthless.
  • Just because something does not last forever does not mean it is worthless.  To the contrary, in fact: our lives and our loves and our universe are no less precious because they will not last forever. 
    “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

          ― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
  • Just because we can explain the natural world without needing the hypothesis of "god(s)(ess) did it," does not mean we cannot still find beauty and wonder and joy in the things we explain.  To the contrary, understanding our world is a great source of joy to many
  • The Euthyphro dilemma is still relevant.  If a divine command is good intrinsically, we will be able to measure/test its goodness in the real world and need no divine command to determine morality.  If a command is good simply because it is divine, then morality is arbitrary and determined by the culture that made up the god.  And this second part of the dilemma is what we see right here in the Bhagavad Gita: women are not people, and war is fine if Krishna endorses it, no matter what he says elsewhere about being harmless.  We can explain morality through the social demands of living together, game theory (here's one good discussion of one scenario), and compassion, which seems to arise in in many branches of the tree of life.  
"The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine."
                                                                                               ―Penn Jillette

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