November 1
The Fourteenth Teaching: The Triad of Nature’s Qualities
What binds the eternal soul to the finite, physical body? Lucidity, passion, and dark inertia. Krishna explains what these qualities are and how they act to keep us bound to our particular selves. Also what happens when we feed one, or allow one to dominate in our lives.
Lucidity . . . is untainted and without decay. It binds us with attachment to joy and knowledge. Passion is emotional – it binds us with attachment to action. Dark inertia is born of ignorance – it binds us with negligence, indolence and sleep. Of course it is lucidity that we are to foster and encourage to dominate.
When the light of knowledge
Shines in all the body’s senses
Then one knows lucidity prevails.
Giving oneself over to lucidity means that when one dies, one will “enter the untainted worlds of those who know reality.” In other worlds, one moves up. If one lets passion dominate, greed and activity, involvement in actions, disquiet and longing arise. When one dies in passion, one is reborn into lovers of action – one basically stays at the same level.
But that word “action” is very problematic for me. Because when we look at the third quality, it is clear that Krishna isn’t saying actions are bad, and in fact we already know that because he’s told Arjuna earlier that he must act.
If dark inertia dominates, obscurity and inactivity, negligence and delusion arise. If one gives this quality full run, one will be “born into wombs of folly.” ‘Caught in vile ways, [men of inertia] sink low.” I think we need a different word, maybe. Or maybe we don’t, and I need to just think differently. It is not that we shouldn’t work, say toward achieving social justice; it is that we should not be spiritually attached to the outcome. That’s closer to be being compatible with my belief system, or what I take to be “right.” Still, there is a definite difference – in Judaism and its spiritual children we are encouraged to a passionate involvement with God and the world. Is it semantics? Or truly different goals? Right now I sense the latter.
Arjuna asks what someone would be like, who was dominated by the quality of lucidity, and Krishna’s answer gives us something to go by:
He does not dislike light or activity
Or delusion;
When they cease to exist
He does not desire them.
He remains disinterested,
Unmoved by qualities of nature;
He never wavers, knowing
That only qualities are in motion.
To me this suggests that the point, for Krishna, is not to go about stamping out all tendencies toward passion or inertia. Instead, one practices devotion, and by doing so fosters lucidity, which will come to crowd out passion and inertia eventually. And it is very clear that he considers passion to be better than doing nothing. One may not improve with a life of passion, but a life of doing nothing actually takes you down. Is this a dialectic? Thesis, antithesis and synthesis? Lucidity then not opposed to either one, but a synthesis of both? The movement beyond duality is always encouraged in Hinduism.
The notion that by doing one’s dharma, one’s disciplined practice, the desire for passion and inertia will simply pass away, provides me with hope. Even though my record so far on practicing meditation is abysmal. I put it off every day. Think of reasons why it isn’t a good time, etc. I wonder if it would help me to use an image of God to focus on. I’ll try to force myself tonight.
November 2
The Fifteenth Teaching – The True Spirit of Man. I am really having trouble concentrating this morning. I know it is a reflection of me, not the Gita, that this teaching feels it has little to offer that is new. In it Krishna discusses the tree of life, and that one escapes it by overcoming attachment. But mainly this teaching reiterates the point that Krishna, God, IS the higher spirit of man. That that fragment of God, the Atman, in each of us, is our true spirit. The discipline and the devotion will lead us ultimately to this realization, this stripping away of the delusion that we are mortal, separate, etc. Man has a double spirit, transient and eternal:
Since I transcend what is transient
And I am higher than the eternal,
I am known as the supreme spirit of man
In the world and sacred lore.
Whoever knows me without delusion
As the supreme spirit of man
Knows all there is, Arjuna –
He devotes his whole being to me.
That’s all I can get this morning. My mind, body and spirit are sluggish. My mind keeps returning to my classes and students.
November 3
Wow, we’re nearly through the Gita this first time.
The Sixteenth Teaching – The Divine and the Demonic in Man. Oh boy, this should speak to me. It is pretty short but very specific and descriptive and thus very useful. Krishna lists the divine qualities in men, and describes what those men are like. He also describes the demonic qualities in humans, and what people are like who glorify them – also what will happen to them in future lives.
The divine qualities we’ve seen mentioned before – in fact I guess I am a little surprised at how specific the Gita actually is. I don’t know why, but I guess I supposed it to be more vague. In fact, it reads a lot like Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and many of the other lessons Jesus taught. So when we get back to practice, what people ought to do, we are back on common ground with the Western traditions.
Krishna uses the words “born with” I.e. one is born with either divine or demonic qualities. I think in the context of the whole religion, and the doctrine of karma, that should not be read as predetermination. We have caused ourselves to be born the way we are with our actions of the past. So what are we to avoid?
The three gates of hell
That destroy the self
Are desire, anger and greed;
One must relinquish all three.
If we fail to relinquish them, we live lives of hypocrisy, insatiability, pride, self-aggrandizement, confusion, delusion, violence, arrogance, obstinacy, dishonesty. And at the end of life, we’ll be reborn into “demonic wombs” and a lower life next time. This feels self-evidently correct. All of the world’s wisdom traditions say essentially the same thing.
Desire is the really hard one to beat. Our capitalist system exists by creating desire, our notions of progress are so material. So I get trapped in the desire for things – clothes, shoes, etc. More dangerous for me is the desire for a different job, better students, more time, more sleep, reasons to be lazy. Many of these things are not wrong in themselves, but the power of my desire for them causes me to live in the future and neglect the present. I see the danger in wanting different circumstances so much that I fail to see the opportunities before me to practice all the divine qualities. This is something I must work on, and I can, by simply stopping myself. Every time I begin living in the future, I can remind myself to look around me right now and see what needs to be done. This doesn’t mean one can’t plan for the future – I can see how people might see this as fatalism; simply accept where you are and don’t think about the rest. But that doesn’t seem right. I think it just means don’t live there; don’t let visions or plans for the future obscure what is here, now.
My habit of thinking I’ll do better at communicating with and showing my love to my family at some future time when I have more money and more time is a good example. I don’t think it is good to give myself a guilt trip about not calling or writing more often, but I should live in the now and say hey, I have ten free minutes, why not write a card?
I always feel so tired, and some of that I may not be able to fix, but some of it might be relieved if I didn’t always feel the weight of things left undone. If I did more of those things, I might be able to let the rest go. Or it might give me the energy I need to do those other things. I’ll keep trying. Really it is a battle to not let it all overwhelm me. I look at my to-do list and it seems so long and impossible that I feel hopeless, give in to despair. Each one thing I do is good – focus on it while I’m doing it and don’t worry about the rest. Now it is time to get showered and ready for the day, and attempt to live it one moment at a time.
November 4
. . . Maybe we can go downtown, sit out on the patios one last time before winter comes. I feel so ambivalent . . . on the one hand, I’m eager for the semester to be over. On the other, I’m not sure I’m ready for the long months of cold. But see how silly that is? Why waste time and energy wondering such a thing? What difference could it possibly ever make? I can’t speed up time or stop winter. It is a good example of the habit of mind to avoid living in the present. So, I’m going to the Gita.
The Seventeenth Teaching: Three Aspects of Faith. Okay, this is another hard one. Not intellectually; I guess it makes sense and builds on the last teachings, but it is more difficult to see how to apply it to my life.
Krishna says that there are three forms of faith and sacrifice that grow out of the qualities of lucidity, passion and dark inertia. To me, the examples of dark inertia seem so far-fetched, so extreme, that it is hard to imagine any but the very few, most twisted human beings having to worry about. They are those who “practice horrific penances,” crave foods that are “stale, unsavory, putrid and spoiled,” perform sacrifices that are “full of self-mortification or sadism.”
[It is so funny that I missed this then - since I was busily practicing horrific penances full of self-mortification!]
I do recognize myself in the description of the passionate. The descriptions of behaviors – sacrifice and penance and food – are so culturally contextual that one has to stretch to feel the relevance. Of the passionate, Krishna says of food that we crave excitement – sour, bitter, salty, harsh, pungent, hot. Judging from the Indian cuisine I’ve had, I’d be in good company there with other passionate types. Sacrifice is performed by the passionate “focused on the fruit, and hypocrisy is at play.” Isn’t that just what I was saying about myself the other day? That even while trying to find God, and to live a good life, in accordance with the instructions of the wise, those who have found God, there is a part of me that does it for the reward, the fruit; that wants to be seen as spiritual and faithful.
Wavering and unstable
Performed with hypocrisy
To gain respect, honor and worship
That penance is called passionate.
That hits very close to home for me. I am working on it. Trying to be aware and then arrange things so as to minimize anyone’s knowledge of what I’m doing. Hard to prevent Jim from knowing I’m reading the Gita and writing about it. But if I can ever get myself meditating on a regular basis, I’ll keep it to myself.
One of the thoughts I had about passion and social justice and the difference between East and West is this: What if the Hindu point of view comes from having lived hundreds of lifetimes and remembering them? I mean, if I could remember working my hardest to improve conditions for all people, with perfect dedication, a hundred times, wouldn’t I also come to see such efforts as futile? They’ve had so much longer to view the world – even if it isn’t individual memory, there are 7000 years of institutional memory.
Maybe the Western traditions are just young, and make the mistakes of youth. You figure – Islam is a baby, only 1400 years old. Christianity only 2000. Judaism, being generous, about 4000. So Hindu practice and thought has been developing almost twice as long as that.
That fits with what Hinduism itself says – passion and action-for-fruit aren’t really wrong, just misguided. And we aren’t to take their word for it and rush through, but to live each stage fully until we re ready to relinquish it. Relinquish is the word used, not renounce. In the translator’s notes, to relinquish is always seen in the Gita as the higher way. To me that means: Learn for yourself. It won’t necessarily do me much good to try to convince myself that passion won’t get me anywhere. Maybe I have to learn by experience. I can, however, try to weed out hypocrisy and greed and anger – work towards a purer passion, at least.
November 6
[after writing about interest shown by various jobs I’d applied for . . .]
For now, I think its time to turn to the spirit side, so I don’t get too caught up living in the future.
The final, Eighteenth Teaching – The Wondrous Dialogue Concludes. Oh good! Arjuna begins by asking the question I’ve been asking myself – What is the real essence of renunciation and relinquishment? Krishna states the learned arguments and then his decision about them.
Creatures of nature cannot avoid action. Seeking to do so, even in pursuit of holiness, will lead one to dark inertia. Actions that are based in sacrifice, charity, and penance are to be performed. And later he reminds us that all of us have particular actions to perform based on our station in life. It is better to do our own job poorly than another person’s well.
So it is not action but the fruit of action that we must relinquish. The teaching, and the dialogue, conclude with Krishna’s promise that if we do all of what he as prescribed, if we even make a sincere attempt, we will come to Him. He reminds Arjuna that he has told him all of this for his good – he wants what is good for us because he cares for us; he loves us. So there is a notion of grace, that Lord Krishna will meet us part way, that if we put ourselves in his hands, take refuge in him alone, relinquish the fruit of all action to him, he will assist us and we will come to him.
It is a very beautiful dialogue, and in the end sounds much like what Jesus said. It makes me wonder, again, if Hindus really are right about everything; in this case that when times are rough, God incarnates to remind us of his message, of the pathway that we’ve forgotten is there. Again, see the quote below – same message.
[bottom of page says: “Then they said to Him, ‘What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.’”]
For me, I’m not sure what to do next. I’d like to move on to something different and then come back to the Gita again. But what? Maybe Alan Watts? Its been nearly 20 years since I first/last read him. 15 at least.
November 18
I’ve been kind of short on profundity lately. I had intended to share what Mom told me when I spoke to her Wednesday. I was feeling very much at the end of my rope, and she said that she was praying that I would find a way to lean on God, to let him carry a part of this burden. I told her that I don’t know how to do that. She said it wasn’t so much a matter of learning a strategy, or a skill, but that it kind of happens naturally from pursuing a relation-ship with Him. I told her that I’d been finding myself praying a lot, out of pure desperation, and that belief no longer seemed to matter. Someone, probably many people, have said that pain and desperation make believers out of all of us. For me, it isn’t so much that it has made me believe, so much as it has made belief irrelevant. I need there to be a God who cares, who can act as a source of strength and comfort. As I said yesterday, my inner reserves are gone, but there are still so many things I have to get done. I have to be able to draw on something, and so I suppose I am leaning on God, whether or not He exists.
November 24
I have general feelings of disgust for my fellow Americans. We are screwed up in so many ways. My gripe of the moment is the greed. Yesterday the stores were mobbed already, and people were already mean. I smiled at a couple of people and got such dirty looks that I made it an experiment. I smiled at everyone who passed me, and NOT ONE single person smiled back. The store advertising was repetitive, as usual, and this year the theme is “buy one as a gift, and one for yourself.” People have always probably bought things for themselves while shopping for others. I know I have. But we don’t have to cater to and expand that behavior.
Then this morning, the paper is at least triple its normal size, full of ads. We’ve made it a ritual to spend what used to be a day of thanks thinking about all the things we want for Christmas. It’s pretty disgusting. What’s really sad is that at base we are no worse than any other people, but we have allowed ourselves to be mesmerized, mostly by the TV. We let it tells us what to think, what to think about, and mostly it tells us to think about all the things we don’t have. How we are entitled to them. The constitution-granted right to pursue happiness has become, in people’s minds, the right to have a lot of consumer goods. How can we not be disgusted by our own behavior? As with a spoiled child, I really believe that we as a people need to be told “No!” firmly and repeatedly, for our own good. A couple of spankings would also be in order. Hurricane Katrina was one such spanking, but it didn’t affect enough people hard enough. Maybe the avian flu really will be the dreaded epidemic. They are predicting that if it manages human-to-human transmission it will kill 50 million people worldwide. Maybe 6-7 million here in the U.S. I realize I often sound a little gleeful when thinking about these potentially catastrophic events, but it is based on a deeply rooted conviction that real hardship is the only thing that can save us, as a nation. So maybe in the long run Bush will be good for us, by being so bad. I really don’t think we’ll snap out of it any other way.
December 31
We saw “The Chronicles of Narnia” yesterday. It was done really well. It is too bad that I can no longer accept the majority of Christian dogma, because it would have been even more powerful. Mom and her friend were really moved by Aslan’s sacrifice, and I was too, but not to the extent I would once have been. It did remind me, though, of why the story of Jesus does affect people the way it does; how beautiful to believe God would sacrifice himself out of love for you personally. More on that another time.
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