June 29, 2007
I guess I have a little more to say about Krishna's life. It's really funny to me how intellectually I find it quite reasonable for God incarnate to have sex, and I have always said it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me if Jesus had been with – especially if he had married – Mary Magdalene. And it makes a lot more sense in a culture where young men are expected to get experience and in which people do not equate sex with sin.
And yet . . . I confess to feeling a little disappointed in Krishna, like he's lost stature or become tarnished by his carnal exploits. Part of it is my culture which reserves sex for marriage. Well, wait a minute. That isn't true at all. My culture doesn't in practice – but it preaches that, still. Part of it is the idea that God should be above mundane sexual seduction. Which is silly. Of course he's above sex. He's above eating and shitting and being a cowherd, too. Isn't that the point about being incarnate? To be human is to become human. And if so, why would one limit oneself to some human things and keep off others? Particularly when you haven't designated any human function as evil? I think it may be that it seems like a weakness to me. And/or like someone using his power to exploit. But that's me not really getting it. Krishna remains celibate even after having sex with an entire village, because the sex was NOT for him, did not grow out of HIS desire, and did no harm that would incur karma.
With the villagers, it was a way to lead the women to total devotion, submitting their egos, their selves into Him. And they became the example of perfect bhakti devotion – so much so that Krishna later sends Uddhava to learn from them. And later, when Krishna returns to his rightful place in the palace, he goes to a courtesan who helped him "in the form with which she approached him." Being a courtesan sex is all she knows, so he comes to her as a sexual partner. In the same way, the scriptures say, that because Kamsa approached Him as an enemy, He came to him as his slayer. Okay . . . but I've become cynical and I see how easily someone could say this, could use it to fulfill their own desires. And if that's true, then Krishna becomes like any conquering hero, and that bugs me.
Especially when we are given to see the pain the gopilas suffer when he leaves them. They moon about, unable to do their daily tasks because everywhere there are reminders of him, and they have utterly lost all sense of themselves as separate without him.
I realize the scriptures are trying to show the truth that we ARE incomplete without Him, that he is our very Selves, and that the goal of human life is to shed our attachment to this ego and merge with Him. But in my culture, that kind of submission to a lover is bad news, a sign of pathology and exploitation. Of course, that's men we are talking about, male lovers – not God Itself, which changes things. I guess I'd feel better if Krishna inspired and expected the same devotion from men.
And I guess he does. Else why send his servant and colleague Uddhava to learn from them? But it seems a different quality. The men get made more themselves, while the women become nothing. They aren't even mentioned by name (except one), even though Krishna promises their names will be remembered forever. Maybe that's my author, though, not the scriptures.
I'm just going to have to keep working on it in my heart. I mean, isn't my goal to get to the place where I can let go of my ego, my self, and merge with Absolute Supreme Reality? That is what I want, what I'm working for in meditation, so why begrudge it to these ancient cow girls? Actually, isn't this what an encounter with the Infinite ought to do? Shatter your social conceptions, your limited, confining views? Just strip them off, one by one?
Maybe this is how Mom feels about all the things Jesus does that don't seem to make sense, that it is God saying "Don't pigeon-hole me! Don't even begin to think you can bind Me with your silly social conventions, your extremely limited view of morality." And maybe one day I'll be able to see Jesus' actions that way, too. Right now I'll stick with Krishna. Obviously I recognized His words as Truth in the two Gitas. I will just have to reconcile my feelings. That's my problem, not God's. Brahman is.
Its back to that mind-blowing idea that Krishna is All, Brahman is All, God is All. God is not an old man, a priest, a celibate, a dead thing on a cross; is not limited in any way. Even the Christian god is limited, required to be "good." Brahman is not so bound, as It is good and evil, is everything. I have to stop using mainstream, American Protestant ethics and morality in my subconcious view of god.
See, I've already learned a ton from Krishna's sexual episode. I believe I've gotten my heart and mind into the right place to learn again from Krishna's dialogue with Uddhava at the end of his earthly life.
Oh – I know now who Uddhava is/was. He was a sage – a jnana yogi – who was part of the court of the Yudavas when Krishna got rid of the evil king, Kamsa, and restored his clan to power. I believe Udhava will play important roles later in the story.
In Dialogue 14, Krishna provides a lot of information and answers a long list of Uddhava's questions. Big chunks would be good for memorization and meditation, as he repeats and puts into a few words much of what has already been said. One could call it repetitious, but it is very consistent – every text that refers to Krishna's teachings says the same things. There are no contradictions. In fact, what I've read of Patanjali, the Upanishads, and the references to the Mahabarata are all consistent as well. Odd, as it is on the whole not a religion that claims to value consistency. It's fine with everyone that gods have thousand names and a hundred forms; that at one moment Indra is supreme; then Vishnu, or Brahma, or Krishna. None of that matters and in those ways, of course, one would NOT find consistency if one searched for it. But for the core messages, the texts, written over a span of more than a thousand years and by people whose native spoken languages were widely divergent – scattered over an increasingly diverse land mass. One is led from the Western scholars of Hinduism to expect multiple schools of thought and much disagreement. But the reality is that Krishna's message is very simple. It is only the humans, Arjuna, Uddhava, me – that make things more complicated with our questions, because we don't really get it. Much like it seems to me it was with Jesus and his followers. All Jesus really said was "Love." The imperative. "Love yourself. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Love the Lord your God." That's it. That's the whole of the law and the whole of life.
Krishna says, "Recognize that all is god. Even you. Even your enemy. Even your neighbor." But we humans want complicated, detailed instructions. How do I love my enemy? How do I come to see that I am brahman? So in Dialogue 14, Krishna again provides some answers.
He makes clear right off the bat that just philosophizing – the part I'm good at – is not enough. He begins:
The sannyasin who has learned
All that is required
To know the Self
And for whom such knowledge
Is not mere theory but direct experience,
And who knows the phenomenal world
To be an illusion,
Such a one,
Known as a vidvat-sannyasin,
Should surrender all that knowledge
And all that experience,
To Me, the Eternal v.1
Only those who have been purified
Through both knowledge and experience
Know my true and supreme nature.
Truly it is these souls that are my support
And are much loved by me v.3.
Verse 10 contains a prayer for me:
O Great One, lift me up `
For I have fallen into the pit
Of unremitting pain.
Further down Krishna summarizes again the constituent parts of creation. The earliest quantum physics? He says that these parts permeate all of creation, from Brahma "to the smallest ameoba," and that one Supreme pervades them all.
How do you know when you are there, when you really get it? Krishna says – and note this is experiential, not theoretical – that knowledge becomes a realization "When one no longer sees multiplicities pervaded by the One, but experiences the One as the only reality" v.13.
Wow. Can you imagine even truly doing the first – seeing all things and people as pervaded by the One? I especially am going to require grace to see George W. Bush and Karl Rove, Bill Krystol, etc. as part of the same One as Indy, butterflies, puppies, brand new babies, and warm spring breezes. However, reading these stories of evil kings and demons, and Krishna's appreciation for and absorption of them is very helpful on that score. It is very good to have a model for how that kind of love works; especially from a position of strength.
I remember a short story I once read in which there was a machine, or an object of food or something, that allowed a human who used it to perceive the forest around him as one organism (Michael Crichton?). We know that is true, scientifically/ecologically, and biologists now speak of forests and even the planet as one organism. But this guy in the story gets to experience it that way for a moment. Actually 2 guys do, and one goes crazy, catatonic. The other can just barely stand it, but not for long. The complexity and grandeur, the awe of all the bugs (the number and diversity of the insect life alone is enough to send the one over the edge), the dirt, the bark and the sap in the trees, the living branches in every single tree, the leaves, the grass, the shrubs and other plants, the rotting wood, the birds, reptiles and mammals, the fungi, the wind, the dew, the sunlight – all of it not just working together but ONE THING!!! Now imagine not just a little patch of forest but the entire planet, and not just that but the entire universe, and not just that but ALL of the universes (if there are more than one, however many there might be). It does seem too much for the meagre human mind to grasp. This is a good reason for making it difficult to attain. We need time and practice to literally expand our minds enough to hold such an image.
To continue, and begin to wrap up, Krishna says that there are things before us/with us, that can corrobrorate the notion that all is One, before we can fully grasp it. The four most authoritative are: The Vedas which teach it (the Upanishads), direct experience, tradition, and inference.
In none of these can experience
Of multiplicities find support v.17.
Then he gives a long list of activities we can do in pursuit of this Oneness. Finally, a brilliant quote at the end.
What are the definitions of good and evil?
Judging another to be good or bad is evil.
To cease making judgements between good and bad,
That is true goodness v.45.
And yes, I get the irony and hypocrisy of me being gleeful at finding that to pass on to all those I deem judgmental! : ) I am a work in progress.
No comments:
Post a Comment