Spiritual Support Systems – Bhagavad Gita

Spiritual Support Systems – Bhagavad-Gita

This essay is part of a series. The first is a post on the psychological effects of the lockdowns, and it is followed by this posts on Stoicism  and a brief post on Stoicism, victimhood and empowerment. I want to start here by recapping the purpose of the entire series.

The past year and a half, with the covid pandemic, lockdowns and unprecedented civil unrest, are enormously stressful for most people. We went into an emergency threat mode at the start of the panic, and for many if not most people we are still locked in emergency threat mode.

At some point I think we need to turn our attention from external threats, and start to deal with the emotional and spiritual effects of the sustained lockdowns on our psyches. The first post talked about that effect, and how we are dealing with a collective trauma and shock. I see it in my own life, and I am increasingly seeing it in the lives of the people I work with as astrology clients.

I think it is time to own responsibility for our interior spiritual and emotional well-being. That is a big part of what I try to do with my clients, and what I am wrestling with in my own life. Putting my life on hold until a return to normal that may never come is just not a satisfying and meaningful way to live.

There is an overall point to all of the spiritual systems I am covering in this series: To really be able to deal with the stress of sustained bad fortune, trauma and stress, just having some tricks or peppy sayings to put yourself in a better mood is not sufficient. You really need a way of looking at the world – a philosophy, a religion, a spiritual system – as an overall framework to make sense of your experience.

I think having a coherent and clearly thought-out philosophy and standard of values is necessary to really being able to live a quality life, and it is especially important when dealing with hard times. Without a stable underlying system you’re building your life on sand, and you have nothing to stand on.

I want to emphasize that these spiritual support systems I am talking about in this series are not mutually exclusive; it is not a matter of choosing one and neglecting the rest. I think a lot can be learned by considering these systems together, to look at how they overlap and interact.

All of these systems I am talking about here have contributed to how I view the world. Clearly, then, this series is not meant to be inclusive; it is deeply personal, and I am speaking out of direct experience.

In this essay I will be talking about one of the great inspired books of India, a book I have treasured and lived with for over fifty years since I discovered it in college – the Bhagavad-Gita.

The Gita is a single small episode out of the long Indian epic, the Mahabharata. The scene is a battlefield with two armies lined up, right before a major war starts. The Gita is a dialog between Arjuna, who is a warrior, and Krishna, who is advising Arjuna and is an incarnation of God – Vaishnava Hindus would say, the supreme incarnation and form of God.

Krishna’s immediate advice to Arjuna is about why he must fulfill his duty as a warrior in the upcoming battle. In a larger sense it is a profound overall guide to the purpose of life and how to live in the most meaningful and powerful way.

KINDS OF YOGA

In reading the Gita it helps to realize that it describes different sorts of disciplines, or yogas, for dealing with the world.

Karma yoga – the yoga of non-attached action – acting in the world in a spirit of service to the world without being attached to the results of your actions.

Jnana or knowledge yoga – Insight into the nature of reality and our place in it. Just knowing and realizing the change of identity, that we are not our perishable bodies, can itself help. You can think of this as enlightenment yoga.

Bhakti or devotional yoga – the yoga of devotion to God. In terms of the Gita that God is in the form of Krishna, but there are other devotional religions, Christianity among them. The focus is on worshipping and honoring God, remembering God, doing all things to serve God.

It is important to realize that these different yogas are not completely separate paths, nor can you effectively practice any one of these without the others. The Gita makes Bhakti yoga, devotion to Krishna, the focal and culmination point, supported by Karma yoga (acting out of service to Krishna without attachment to the result) and Jnana yoga (learning and studying the nature of reality in order to better love and serve Krishna.)

The insights we will be looking at here build nicely on the lessons from the essays on Stoicism.

For the rest of this meditation I will be commenting on quotes, to allow the Gita to speak for itself. The translation I am using is by Dr. Ramananda Prasad. It is available on amazon as a physical book, and as a free pdf download of the Gita here.

To understand our place in the world we have to start with who we are.

THE IMMORTAL SELF AND REINCARNATION

The Supreme Lord said: You grieve for those who are not worthy of grief; and yet speak words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. (2.11)

There was never a time when these monarchs, you, or I did not exist, nor shall we ever cease to exist in the future. (2.12)

The core of the Gita’s worldview is the immortality of our identity, what Vaishnava teacher Sri Praphupada calls the spirit-soul. There is something of our consciousness that survives death and is eternal. That is a very comforting thought, but also a very sobering one, as it means that what we say and do in this lifetime follows us after death.

Just as the living entity acquires a childhood body, a youth body, and an old age body during this life; similarly, it acquires another body after death. The wise are not deluded by this. (2.13)

The invisible Spirit (Sat, Atma) is eternal, and the visible world (including the physical body) is transitory. The reality of these two is indeed certainly seen by the seers of truth. (2.16)

We have a multi level or dual level self; an immortal spirit-soul, and a mortal body and personality. It is important to realize that our immortal self is a larger identity than the personality we currently identify with here on earth. It is over-simplifying for me to just say that Charlie Obert is immortal and survives death. It is closer to the truth to say that Charlie Obert is one of many, many personalities that my core self, my spirit-soul, that which makes me who I am, takes on and acts through. (I mean, seriously – do I really want to deal with having to be Charlie Obert throughout all eternity? For that matter – do YOU really want to have to deal with having me around forever? Or that neighbor who plays their stereo too loud at night and doesn’t pick up after their dog? God spare us!)

There is more on the dual immortal and mortal levels of being in these following quotes.

The Spirit (Atma) by which all this universe is pervaded is indestructible. No one can destroy the imperishable Spirit. (2.17)

Bodies of the eternal, immutable, and incomprehensible Spirit are perishable. Therefore, fight, O Arjuna. (2.18)

Just as a person puts on new garments after discarding the old ones; similarly, the living entity acquires new bodies after casting away the old bodies. (2.22)

All beings, O Arjuna, are unmanifest — invisible to our physical eyes — before birth and after death. They manifest between the birth and the death only. What is there to grieve about? (2.28)

This multiple lifetime perspective, knowing that this one life is not the end and any suffering is finite in duration, is a great comfort.

This is a change from our usual concept of human identity. I am not the body, the mortal limited person who is experiencing life here. I am the immortal spirit-soul who takes on this body as a vehicle for experience, rather like taking on a suit of clothes, or making up for a role in a play.

I mentioned that we have a multi-level self, an immortal spirit-soul and a mortal body. It is important to emphasize that there is another bridging part of our being, and it is the distinctive identifying faculty that makes us human – our reason, our ability to choose and decide. Sri Prabhupada places a heavy emphasis on that – that humans are the sole creatures on this earth that can choose to live at higher than a strictly animal level. For Prabhupada the purpose of life is to take the focus off our animal natures and place it on the divine in order to “move on” to a higher level in the next lifetime.

You see a very similar emphasis on the role of reason, choice and free will in human life in western philosophies also. It is at the core of stoicism and much other Greek thought, and that ability to reason and freely choose is also at the heart of Christianity.

That is a very, very important insight. We are animals, but we are more than animals because we have our distinctly human ability to reason and choose. Because of that, when we abdicate our moral responsibility and live just from our animal selves, we are the lowest and most degraded of animals.

EVENNESS OF MIND

Given that our spirit-soul is immortal, what is the best and most fruitful way to experience life? The Gita places a very heavy emphasis on evenness of mind, staying calm and not upset by the ups and downs of mortal life.

A person whose mind is unperturbed by sorrow, who does not crave pleasures, and who is completely free from attachment, fear, and anger, is called a sage of steady intellect. (2.56) Those who are not attached to anything, who are neither elated by getting desired results, nor troubled by undesired results, their intellect is considered steady. (2.57)

This life is impermanent; being non-attached to the sensations, and to variations in fortune.

This ties in very well with the attitude and mental hygiene of Stoicism, which I talked about in the previous essays. The world view of the Gita puts an underlying metaphysical system under the Stoic attitude that supports it very well.

The Gita encourages reacting to good and bad fortune with equanimity, neither getting too enthused about good fortune nor too depressed about bad.

In this view of the world any events that help you to break your attachment, your investment in physical existence, is a good thing. Ultimately the goal is to transcend this level material. In that case, what we call good fortune would likely ultimately negative in effect since it increases our attachment to life here. Bad fortune would then ultimately have a good effect as detaching us.

You see that emphasis in some Indian or Vedic astrology. The two nodes of the Moon, Rahu and Ketu have a positive and negative polarity. In Western traditional astrology the North Node is considered to be of the nature of Jupiter and is fortunate, while the South Node is of the nature of Saturn and is considered unfortunate. In Vedic astrology Rahu, the North Node, tends to attach you more to earthly experience, while the suffering of Ketu, the South Node, tends to help you become non-attached – so in the larger picture Rahu is unfortunate while Ketu is fortunate!

KARMA YOGA

Karma yoga is the action side of non-attachment. It is action in the world without attachment to its outcome. This is related to evenness of mind, but takes it a step further. Our responsibility here is to act in the best way possible, but to focus our attention on our work and not on how it turns out. Our job is to do what we can; we have no control over the outcome, so, as in Stoic philosophy, we let go of our investment of what we cannot control.

You have control over your respective duty only, but no control or claim over the results. The fruits of work should not be your motive. You should never be inactive. (2.47)

Do your duty to the best of your ability, O Arjuna, with your mind attached to the Lord, abandoning worry and selfish attachment to the results, and remaining calm in both success and failure. The calmness of the mind is called Karma yoga. (2.48)

This brings in the notion of duty. We have work that we are obligated to do.

This non-attachment to the results of our work is really hard; if you care enough for a cause to work diligently for it, it is very hard not to be attached to the outcome. But, doing just that, acting without investment in the outcome, is a logical part of the Gita’s philosophy and of Stoicism. If you thoroughly think it through it makes sense, but it takes work to internalize that attitude emotionally.

Work done with selfish motives is inferior by far to selfless service or Karma yoga. Therefore, be a Karma yogi, O Arjuna. Those who work only to enjoy the fruits of their labor are, in truth, unhappy. (2.49)

This widens the focus. We are not here just for ourselves, and our own pleasure and well-being. We are here as part of a larger whole, and we have a responsibility to serve our part. It follows that acting selfishly isn’t just neglecting our duty, but it also makes us unhappy. Being selfish is ultimately self-negating.

A Karma yogi becomes free from both vice and virtue in this life itself. Therefore, strive for Karma yoga. Working to the best of one’s abilities without becoming attached to the fruits of work is called Karma yoga. (2.50)

Wise Karma yogis are freed from the bondage of rebirth by renouncing the selfish attachment to the fruits of all work; and attain a blissful divine state. (2.51)

One who controls the senses by a trained and purified mind and intellect, and engages the organs of action to selfless service, is superior, O Arjuna. (3.07)

This quote ties together keeping an evenness of mind with the emphasis on selfless service without focusing on the outcome.

Perform your obligatory duty, because working is indeed better than sitting idle. Even the maintenance of your body would be impossible without work. (3.08)

Human beings are bound by work (Karma) that is not performed as a selfless service (Seva, Yajn). Therefore, O Arjuna, becoming free from selfish attachment to the fruits of work, do your duty efficiently as a service to Me. (3.09)

MORE ON KARMA

We need to look at the notion of karma here since it is easily misunderstood or over-simplified.

The idea of karma is double edged sword. Part of it is the idea that whatever happens to you now is a result of past actions of yours. On the one hand it helps to get past the feeling you are being victimized or that your situation is unfair. On the other hand, if you do it wrong, an overly narrow concept of karma can lead to guilt, blaming yourself for any bad fortune you experience. Life doesn’t work that way.

This oversimplified notion of karma doesn’t take into account the dimension of what astrology calls fortune – what you could call the Roll of the Dice of events. There is a lot about human experience that is just bigger than us, and blaming yourself for everything that happens to you makes things worse.

If you read it carefully the Gita does not teach this sort of notion of karma. What it does emphasize is that whatever you dwell on in this lifetime, especially whatever you are focused on at the time of death, determines the form of the next lifetime. So it is more a matter of, whatever you focus on, that you become.

Bad fortune may not be punishment; it may be simple bad luck, or it may be that what we view as bad fortune is the best possible thing that could happen to us. The best approach is to let go of any sense of guilt, and to deal with life situations as they are and take responsibility to how we respond. In that sense it is identical with the stoic attitude.

THE CYCLE OF BEING AND OUR PLACE

This next series of quotes expands the concept of service to place us all within a larger community of cycle of being.

Brahman, the creator, in the beginning created human beings together with selfless service (Seva, Yajn, sacrifice) and said: By Yajn you shall prosper, and Yajn shall fulfill all your desires. (3.10)

Nourish the celestial controllers (Devas) with selfless service (Seva, Yajn), and they will nourish you. Thus nourishing one another, you shall attain the Supreme goal. (3.11)

The celestial controllers (Devas), nourished by selfless service (Seva, Yajn), will give you the desired objects. One who enjoys the gift of Devas without offering them anything in return is, indeed, a thief. (3.12)

Our sacrifice, our service, is not just to the world around us, it is to the demigods or celestial controllers above. The demigods are connecting links in the great chain of being leading all the way up to the supreme highest God. We are nourished from above, and we in turn owe a debt of sacrifice to those above. Without that sacrificial giving, we are taking without giving back. It breaks the chain of being and stops the flow.

The righteous who eat the remnants of selfless service (Seva, Yajn) are freed from all sins, but the impious who cook food only for themselves (without first offering to Me, or sharing with others), in truth, eat sin. (3.13)

The living beings are born from food grains; grains are produced by rain; rain comes (as a favor from Devas) if duty (Karma) is performed as a selfless service (Seva, Yajn).

Duty is prescribed in the Vedas. The Vedas come from Brahman (Eternal Being). Thus the all-pervading Brahman is ever present in Seva. (3.14-15)

One who does not help to keep the wheel of creation in motion by sacrificial duty (Seva), and who rejoices sense pleasures, that sinful person lives in vain, O Arjuna. (3.16)

DEVOTION TO THE LORD

This series of quotes takes things to a culminating level, and focuses all on devotion to the supreme God. Everything else – evenness of mind, selfless service, giving back to the world – flows from that devotion and returns to it.

One who does all work as an offering to the Lord — abandoning selfish attachment to the results — remains untouched by Karmaic reaction or sin as a lotus leaf never gets wet by water. (5.10)

Those who perceive Me in everything and behold everything in Me, are not separated from Me, and I am not separated from them. (6.30)

The non-dualists, who adore Me as abiding in all beings, abide in Me irrespective of their mode of living. (6.31)

One is considered the best yogi who regards every being like oneself, and who can feel the pain and pleasures of others as one’s own, O Arjuna. (6.32)

Therefore, always remember Me and do your duty. You shall certainly attain Me if your mind and intellect are ever focused on Me. (8.07)

By contemplating on Me with an unwavering mind that is disciplined by the practice of meditation, one attains the Supreme Being, O Arjuna. (8.08)

Whosoever offers Me a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water with devotion, I accept and eat the offering of devotion by the pure-hearted. (9.26)

O Arjuna, whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer as oblation to the sacred fire, whatever charity you give, whatever austerity you perform, do all that as an offering unto Me. (9.27)

One who does all works for Me, and to whom I am the supreme goal; who is my devotee, who has no attachment, and is free from enmity towards any being — attains Me, O Arjuna. (11.55)

Ultimately we are happiest and most fulfilled when we let go of narrow self interest and put all our focus on loving and serving God through serving all the world around us.

It sounds so very simple when you state it like that, but it takes an enormous amount of focused self-work. I am thankful that the Gita points to a series of lives, because this is not a task that can be completed in a single lifetime.

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Image by Bishnu Sarangi from Pixabay