THE BHAGAVAD GITA
(Transl. Laurie L. Patton, Penguin Classics, 2008)

Plato's Phaedrus (which we read and discussed in July) proposed that wisdom was gained through discussion with others, not in isolation in nature nor via meditation.  Socrates felt that ideas and theories were honed through discussion, by being challenged.  He argues that the quest for Beauty is the quest for the perfect form, for wisdom.  The Bhagavad Gita sets out a different slightly quest.  Wisdom is still honoured but the goal in the Gita is enlightenment.

The Gita describes 3 gitas, or paths towards enlightenment:

Karmamarga - the path of action
Jnanamarga - the path of knowledge
Bhaktimarga - the path of devotion

Jnanamarga would be the path that Plato/Socrates would have followed, trying to understand all the categories of the ancient world, and enumerating everything, in order to then understand the universe (samkhya - the yoga of knowledge).

In the Gita's philosophy, the self (atman) moves from life to life in a cycle of birth and death but ideally always progressing upwards, closer and closer to the Divine.

Krishna (Vishnu), one of 2 main characters in the Gita, does not recommend one particular path over another but stresses that above all one must act without clinging to the consequences (the 'fruits') of the action.

I found much of what was discussed in the Gita to be of current interest, in its discussions of living a thoughtful life, knowing oneself and being true to oneself.

3.35  
Better one's own dharma, 
even if ineffective, 
than the dharma 
of another, practised well!
Better death
in one's own dharma!



Like Plato, Krishna values wisdom

4.38
In this world,
there is no purifier
like wisdom;
in time, one who is oneself perfected
by yoga
finds that wisdom
in the self.

This focus on looking within, of not clinging to 'wordly' things, is repeated over and over in the Gita.  Krishna discusses the 3-fold gates of hell which destroys the self: 
greed, anger and desire.  Whereas

5.24
The one who practises yoga,
who has joy within,
delight within,
and then radiance within,
thus reaches cessation 
in Brahman,
of one being 
with Brahman.

The Gita talks about giving up anger and desire, of giving up purposeful intent.
This is at odds with western civilization and especially North American culture.  Would insulin have been discovered, the automobile invented, would Neil Armstrong (who died this week) have been the 1st man to walk on the moon?  Krishna would argue that all of these are worthless, that a person's life (though he would have said a 'man's life' as women didn't figure much in Krishna's directions about how to live one's life), that a man's life was all about living according to one's dharma, following one of the disciplines (gitas or paths) to eventually achieve release from the cycle of transmigration (moksha).  It wasn't about achieving anything, about improving "man's" life on earth, about searching for happiness.  It was about freeing oneself from the earthly trappings that prevent transcendence into the divine.

We are at an interesting time in the history of mankind where we have knowledge that gives us the power to catastrophically affect the world we live in, yet as a species we have not achieved a broad enough communal wisdom to be able to wield this power (or NOT wield it) for the greater good of the species much less for the environment (meaning the other forms of life on earth but also the universe around us).  I don't know that I can fully subscribe to an ideology that not only does not value expanding our knowledge in order to improve our lot, but one which only values life on earth as something to be shed in such a way as to end up somewhere else.

I do find value in the ideal of not clinging to things, of not giving in to anger, desire, jealousy and all the other base emotions but I also value intelligence, compassion, altruism, honesty, creativity and imagination, I value human energy, and I value those people who don't feel bound by the norms (Plato's 4th kind of madness).  I think the discovery of insulin and penicillin, of robotics, of the magnifying properties of glass, of so many of mankind's achievements are worthy and good.  If these discoveries and the world they have brought us to (2012) had been tempered by some of the values promulgated in the Gita, we might not have the wars, the pollution and destruction, the loss of species, some of the disease, that we have today.
All pieces of the puzzle.