Krishna’s Dharma: Deconstructing and Reconstructing, Arjuna and Us

Religious texts are volatile. The unpredictable and evocative energy within religious texts provokes believing interpreters to give up their lives for others, and at other times take the lives of others. The Bhagavad-Gita, a poetic interlude within the mythical epic the Mahabharata, is not immune to these diabolically opposed exegetical potentials. The Gita takes up many of the thematic conundrums found in the Mahabharata, but most notably the Gita illustrates the concept of dharma using god-like figures and figurative rhetoric. Sanskrit scholar Barbara Miller mentions in her translation of the Gita that dharma,  “stems from the root word drh, ‘to sustain.’ A concept of complex significance in Indian culture, its basic meaning is ‘that which sustains’”(158). Simple enough, right? The complex ambiguity of Krishna’s dharma within the Gita and how it challenged Arjuna within the Mahabharata’s context has been the source of exegetical debate since the Gita’s conception. Two millenniums later, spiritual, political, and academic interpretations of the Gita still bloom; dharma cannot be ignored as every person, every kingdom, must face the question: How is appropriate inter-action to take place?

Considered an ancient text, the Gita contains many teachings of Krishna that sound all too familiar with rhetoric of current politicians and religious leaders. Krishna’s call to “wage this war of sacred duty” (2.33) is, seemingly, similar to President Bush’s reaction to those behind the World Trade Center towers’ destruction: “Given the nature and reach of our enemies, we will win this conflict…by meeting a series of challenges with determination and will and purpose” (Lincoln 100). Why turn to this religious text within a socio-historical context such as ours when religion is accused of being the source of so much violence?  The answer is in Krishna’s re-visioning of dharma that is found in the Gita—a re-visioning that takes readers beyond the surface scenes within the Gita to reach a dharma that is for Arjuna then, and our present. Furthermore, exploring Krishna’s dharmic teachings for a world-age where adharma is rampant might enable suggestive re-visioning for today. It is to the Song of the Lord, and the Lord of Song, to which we, as a collective Arjuna, now turn.

Now is as Good as Then: Krishna Re-Appearing.

            Hinduism assumes that the cosmos is involved in a continuous cycle of creation and destruction (Gita 9.7), and Krishna’s dharma re-visioning is said to materialize when adharma settles in, when “chaos prevails”(4.7). These periods of adharma are known in the Hindu cosmology as Kaliyuga, which Heinrich Zimmer elucidates as follows: “Egoistic, devouring, blind and reckless elements now are triumphant and rule the day. Kali means the worst of anything; also, ‘strife, quarrel, dissension, war, battle’” (15). Krishna’s dharma is absolutely essential for this period, otherwise destruction and chaos would prevail (Gita 3.23-35). This fits within the larger context of the Mahabharata, as the Gita is situated immediately prior to the Pandavas and Kurus warring one another. That is, Krishna’s re-visioning of dharma is performed in that sacred scene of adharma, where wars over “sacred duty” take place (1.1).

            The appearance of “Krishna” is enigmatic and tricky in itself. “Krishna” is put in quotation marks because clarification of what is meant by this term is needed. It is asserted here, emphatically so, that “Krishna” is a personified archetypal force that is conceptualized in anthropomorphic imagery, referring to what Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj suggests as, “… the indwelling principle within you—the atman, which is given various names” (137). This “indwelling principle” is expanded in the Gita as the indwelling spirit exists within all of nature as it does in humanity: “Learned men see with an equal eye a scholarly and dignified priest, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and even an outcaste scavenger” (Gita 5.18, cf. 13.3, 15.13-15). That is, the world-soul (brahman) and human-soul (atman) are intricately intertwined in matters of dharma for, if dharma is to sustain, then the entire cosmos must function harmoniously in order for nature and humanity to sustain and be sustained. “All this around me, and my own existence—experience within and without—are the warp and woof of the subtle fabric”(Zimmer, 26). This “subtle fabric” appears—in image and teaching—in breath taking and, seemingly, odd fashion in the Gita and throughout history, in different countries, figures and names.

The oddity of such perennial materialization, however, is due to the nature of its context; that is, the peculiar dharma forcefully appears when adharma is rampant. Krishna is notorious in Hindu mythology for disrupting social norms and notoriously well loved for doing so. Discussing Hindu stories that involve the thievery of Krishna, John Hawley notes that, “Krishna doesn’t use force, but his skill in stealing away what people hold dear is unparalleled; and he doesn’t kill, but he manages to unburden people of their ordinary lives” (163). As Ruth Katz points out, Krishna’s character in the Gita is marked as, “…a playful trickster…Krishna’s trickery implies an open defiance of traditional morality…” (241). Arjuna’s dilemma, to defend dharma (1.37), is seen in his reticence to kill his fellow kinsmen (1.28-31). Deciphering dharma is tricky when adharma is rife, let alone when family is involved. It is only fitting that Krishna would be seen as a trickster in a period that is replete with disorder and evil; truth, peace, and acceptance are certainly antithetical to social norms in such periods. It is not surprising, then, to see that Krishna’s presence in the Gita functions as a shocking implosion of Arjuna’s presuppositions. It takes a persona such as Krishna—or Jesus, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, et cetera—to awaken dharma, reverse social adharma and re-verse perennial truths that lead to restoration (4.8).

Krishna’s reorienting of Arjuna’s disillusionment takes up more than just the convoluted confusion of whether to engage in war; according to the Gita, the fundamental purpose of dharma is, “To protect men of virtue and destroy men who do evil” (4.8). The enactment of dharma is the internal renunciation of all fruits from action (2.55, 2.71, 5.21) and the carrying out of one’s personal dharma (2.31, 2.33) for the sake of social and cosmic welfare (3.11-16). As Jacqueline Hirst says in her contribution to The Fruits of Our Desiring: “Order in human society is, from the beginning, grounded in cosmic order and taught as such” (52). Arjuna is told to give up his previously embraced notion of dharma and find solace in the dharmic re-presenter who appears in Kaliyuga periods (18.66).  For Arjuna, in the larger context of the Mahabharata, this meant seeing through his attachment for his kinsmen and performing actions that seemed all together adharmic. To see through such horrific scenes is never easily accepted, as Krishna must repeat himself time and again for Arjuna to renounce the attachments that are seemingly normative when performing actions (examples—2.15, 2.22, 2.48, 2.55).

Set in the mythical context of the Mahabharata, the Gita presents this dharmic dilemma in hyperbolic settings so as to portray the difficulty in ascertaining how to uphold dharma. The Gita should be seen, however, more like a springboard than a bed to snuggle into, for the Gita and its dharmic teachings should be understood as recontextualizing previously held dharmic perspectives. Dharma, then, is a fluid concept and allows its applicability to twist and turn given the context in which it is being ascertained. Krishna’s archetypal reappearances and re-visioning is summed up by Ruth Katz: “God, then, is seen as the protector of dharma even as he acts within the yuga structure, changing with the shifting environment” (231). Krishna then will appear quite differently than Krishna now, but there will be an aura of familiarity, which will be spelled out later.

Speed up two millenniums. Today, Western culture is inundated with so much “war” rhetoric—from the war on drugs to the war on terrorism—that Michael Hadley writes, “War, in short, is now a ‘way of being’” (190). Put simply, since 9/11 the West’s mythic perception is constructed by a notion that took place on September 11^th, 2001: we are at war—militarily, economically, ethnically, and religiously. The evening news is sated with vivid images of violence, chaos, and hatred—at home and abroad. All the news reports confirm Zimmer’s definition of Kaliyuga, the age of adharma, the age when, supposedly, Krishna’s revelatory dharma is suppose to manifest.

Krishna’s Re-Visioning

Dharma, according to the Gita’s Krishna, is the detachment approach to reality where individual, social, and international boundaries are transcended (3.7, 3.25, 4.10, 5.11). As stated above, Arjuna’s dharmic visioning was deconstructed and the restructured dharma is one where brahman and atman are intimately interconnected. Within this interconnectivity, though, the individual is not lost.  As Krishna is quoted in 3.35, “Your own duty done imperfectly is better than another man’s done well. It is better to die in one’s own duty; another man’s duty is perilous” (cf. 18.47). Thus, when Krishna admonishes Arjuna to “Look to [his] own duty” (2.31) and to “stand up and resolve to fight the battle!” (2.37), Krishna is upholding the warrior’s dharmic role while redefining Arjuna’s presumption of social dharma. Individual duty and social duty are not so cleanly dichotomized in such re-visioning. In fact, while non-attachment to consequences is Krishna’s advice, this does not infer an amoral or entirely relativistic ethic. Nicholas Sutton notes that, “…it is only right action that is to be executed without desire” and the continuance of this is, “…entirely to do with the welfare of this world” (329). Thus, non-attachment is explicitly concerned with nourishing this tangible world, verses a transcendental world, and the non-attached motive is to be enacted in behavior that has trans-personal consequences.

Like the unity that exists as multiplicities, and the multiplicities that form unity (11.5-7, 13.30, 14.4, 18.20), the specificity of “non-attachment” and “right action” is ambiguously applicable. Thus, the Gita’s context makes Krishna’s admonition to fight understandable. To read this too literalistic, though, is to miss the point. The point is that dharmic re-visioning consists in disrupting the Kaliyuga disruption as a means of seeing clearly, of seeing through to the welfare of the world (12.4, 12.12). The Gita presents Arjuna seeking the council of Krishna as Arjuna questions how such a horrendous crime against honor in warring against family can be committed (1.34, 37). Arjuna’s difficulty is not only in killing his kinsmen, but this is coupled with the fact that to do so would be antithetical to his sense of dharma, the underlying order of the cosmos that is to be harmoniously engaged with. Hence, Krishna’s advice is ultimately directed towards the following: how to exist and engage with the order that sustains the cosmos—both on social and individual, macro and microcosmic levels. The vague applicability of dharma calls for constant conscious awareness of one’s historical context and how to behave in a dharmic manner, a manner that is fundamentally concerned with the sustenance of the world at large.

Krishna, Dharma, and…Us?

            To insert a concept like dharma in a postmodern, post-9/11 world—rife with chaos, pluralism, and violence—is capable by the very nature of Krishna’s visionary re-visioning found within the Gita. As Jacqueline Hirst notes, “[The Gita] may ask us…to go beyond our initial understandings of dharma, discarding or recontextualizing them as we go, to that which is truly dharmic” (55). What is dharmic has been repeatedly summarized with “sustaining the welfare of the world.” Considering the nuclear, environmental, ethnical, and biological threats facing the modern world, it would do well to offer some suggestive ways of recontextualizing dharma in our own Kaliyuga.

Literalistic readings of the Gita are, unfortunately, all too popular in recent and contemporary history. It is well known that the Gita was dear to Richard Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb. Mark Juergensmeyer notes that members of the Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP have defended several acts of violence by quoting from the Gita (95).  The Gita is far from being an exception in matters of violent religious interpretations. The rise of current religious violence is coupled with an intense upsurge of globalization, providing a contemporary scene where national and hemispherical boundaries are transcended daily.

The sustaining of one country ultimately depends on the sustenance of other countries in relation—economically, ecologically, politically, and in matters of human rights. Krishna’s restructuring of Arjuna’s concept of dharma is, for readers today, an international—indeed a cosmic—restructuring. Contemporarily, Arjuna is seen in each individual, and as a collective whole, as there is collective hope for a Krishna re-visioning that enables each country  to establish dharma nationally and internationally—those two so inherently entwined in our day. Problems arise, though, when the order that is sought is re-visioned in such a radical way that it implodes the anticipatory expectations clung to. While there are many examples of contemporary adharma in our Kaliyuga, a suggestive dharmic re-visioning towards the cacophonic relationship between the West and the Middle East will be focused on. This indicatory re-visioning will explore how the dharmic teachings in the Gita might provide insight for a world where the field of dharma is truly cosmic in scale. If such re-visioning does not take place, Agni might make an appearance in a nuclear way that would truly put an end to the chaos—once and for all.

As noted above, individual dharma is to function conjointly with cosmic dharma to “lead to freedom” (Gita 11.5) and is for “sustaining this entire world” (10.42). Unfortunately, since its imperialistic inception the West has characteristically been demonic: “[the West has said] I have gained this wish today, and I shall attain that one; this wealth is mine, and there will be more. I have killed the enemy, and I shall kill others too; I am the lord, I am the enjoyer, successful, strong, and happy.” (16.13-14). The West, specifically America, flourishes in its economical surplus and political might, all the while sustaining an adharmic identity that caricaturizes “divine traits that lead to freedom” (16.5). Focusing entirely on the interests of sustaining our national welfare, the United States has failed to harmonize its dharma with global dharma. Such national-centrism has resulted in a Kaliyuga that infiltrates in nearly every darkened corner of the world.

Since the Gulf War of 1991, the United States has sustained harsh sanctions on Iraq, “…which [have] caused widespread misery, including the deaths of over half a million Iraqi children, [and] were ‘worth the cost,’ as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously put it” (Loy 96). The following list, far from exhaustive, exhibits the overwhelming adharma enacted by the U.S. government:

            …in 1965, the United States sponsored or assisted a military coup

            in Indonesia that involved the deaths of over half a million people…

            in the year 2001 alone the United States refused to join 123 other nations

            in banning the use of production of antipersonnel bombs and mines…

            Bush declared the Kyoto global warming protocol “dead” and refused

            to participate in revising it, because that might harm the U.S. economy…

            the United States was the only nation to oppose the U.N. Agreement to

            Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms…In addition, the

            United States ha not ratified the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban

Treaty, signed by 164 nations but opposed by Bush (Loy105).

 

Given the unavoidable globalization that is in motion, the question is not whether or not the West should be internationally involved. The question is: what is the West’s dharmic role to enable international harmony where each country focuses on its own dharmic responsibility (Gita 3.35, 18.47) in such a way that will bring global peace (12.12)? In a country that promotes its motto as “liberty and justice for all”, violence has been the action taken in hopes of securing this nationalistic attachment. Two and a half centuries after America’s inauguration, two and a half centuries of working towards liberty and justice for all, the one thing that has been attained without failure has been violence—within and without national borders.

The Gita provides a disarming portrait of dharma. Recall that dharma essentially means “that which sustains” (Miller 158). In the wake of our Kaliyuga, the destruction of the cosmos has never been more perceivable and there are no lacking options that can be taken to actualize this. Violence has proven, it would seem, to be ineffective in creating global dharma. Hence, what if what the Mahabharata calls the highest dharma, that of ahimsa (non-violence), were attempted? What if the re-contextualizing of dharma in our age was to retract from our nationalistic attachments and seek a global dharma where countries work together for peace, compassion, and sustenance for all creatures (Gita, 12.4, 12.12-13)? Contemporarily, re-visioning dharma would call for a global paradigm shift, one where nuclear, military, and imperialistic weapons of mass destruction implode on themselves along with the present adharmic vision that poses itself as dharmic.

Concluding…for now.

In the Mahabharata Arjuna follows Krishna’s advice and the Pandavas defeat the Kurus. However, the Gita is ambiguous as to who or what Arjuna is to fight. This ambiguity is heightened considering Krishna’s teachings of how brahman and atman are so intricately intertwined, thus one should treat all creatures equally (4.35, 5.7, 6.29-32, 13.28). Who then is Arjuna to fight? “Great Warrior, kill the enemy menacing you in the form of desire!” (3.43). Arjuna then, and Arjuna now, is to fight against desires of attachment. The attachment of the West to attain nationalistic ideals while ignoring international needs is analogous to the short-sided disillusionment of Arjuna that Krishna deconstructs. To promote non-violence in an age of extreme violence would certainly be tricky, but the warning signs seen on every 6 o’clock evening news report suggest that such trickery is imperative if our world is to be sustained.

The entire scenario is left to interpretation, and the Gita, like any ancient extant text, has its fair share of interpretations. The current international situation will have future historians performing their own interpretations of how dharma was incorporated, and sadly often ignored in our Kaliyuga. A re-appearance of Krishna is most certainly needed, but are we willing to embody Krishna today? This exploration opened with a question, implying a need for an answer. The answer just might lay in the questioning – by breaking the bonds of present attachments, the West can enable questioning to happen, which will open up opportunities to view things anew. This question must first be addressed: Is the West willing to actually question their current sense of dharma? May the evening news’ one day report, like that of Sanjaya, that there was rejoicing, for dharma was actualized in an adharmic age. May history say, on a global scale, that for a time, “fortune, victory, abundance, and morality [did] exist” (18.78).

 

 Works Cited

 

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Hawley, John Stratton. “The Thief in Krishna.” The Inner Journey: Views from the Hindu Tradition. Ed. Margaret H. Case. Sandpoint, ID: Morning Light Press, 2007. 162-171.

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Columbia, SC: South Carolina UP, 1989.

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Hirst, Jacqueline. “Upholding the World: Dharma in the Bhagavadgita.” The Fruits of Our Desiring: An Enquiry into the Ethics of the Bhagavadgita For Our Times. Ed. Julius Lipner. Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 1997. 48-63.

Maharaj, Sri Nisargadatta. The Nectar of Immortality: Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s Discourses on the Etnernal. Ed. Robert Powell. San Diego: Blue Dove Press, 1996.

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