Bhagavad Gita: A Message To Modern Man - Alan watts

the bhagavad-gita or Bhagavad the Lord Gita song the song of the Lord it is spelled b-h-a-g-a-v-a-d Bhagavad Gita g i t a song of the Lord the Lord in this case being SRI Krishna who in Hindu mythology is regarded as an Incarnation and embodiment in the Sanskrit language an avatar are Vishnu the Supreme Lord the personification of the Ultimate Reality underlying this universe the bhagavad-gita was probably compiled about the 5th Century BC and it forms a part of a great epic called the Mahabharata it's attributed to a sage by the name of vyasa and contains

a complete epitome of the whole Central doctrine of Hinduism known as the vedanta it's very fascinating and to us puzzling fact that Gandhi preeminently the man of non-violence in modern times was so devoted to this book because the scene with which the book opens is a Battlefield the field of Kuru where a young prince by the name of araduna is riding in his Chariot and SRI Krishna the Incarnation of Vishnu is his charioteer as the opposing armies face each other and the battle is about to begin and Arjuna is faint in heart oppressed with the

senselessness of this struggle and of internation Warfare and the Gita says in the first chapter he was overcome with great compassion and uttered this in sadness my mouth is dry my body trembles my boo slips from my hand uncle cousins and nephews and the rule of my teacher they are all there I can't bring death to my own family my resolution is gone I can't defend myself I will wait here for death what is this mad and shameful weakness stand up and fight I'm in Angus I can't see where my duty lies he's speaking to

Arjuna what is he saying he's telling Arjuna that Victorian defeat are the same he's urging him to act but not to reflect on the fruit of the ACT he says to him seek detachment fight without desire you say forget desire seek Detachment yet you urge me to battle to Massacre Krishna tells him don't withdraw into solitude pronunciation is not enough you must act yet action mustn't dominate you in the heart of action you must remain free from all attachment there's another intelligence beyond the mind [Music] primarily arjuna's objection to taking part in war is a

Sentimental one he is unwilling to fight in the battle because of his depressed emotions in regard to slaying his Kinsmen or we would say in regard to slaying one's fellow man [Music] if if one would be a pacifist because one is merely squeamish and is the kind of person of whom one would say well he couldn't even hurt a fly then surely there is something phony about such pacifism because it is sentimental this does seem to be origin as objection and this is why Krishna says in effect your objection to slaying is a fear of

slaying a squeamishness to slay and because of this you do not have a genuine objection to slaying if you refrain from taking part in battle because you are frightened of so during or because you are sentimental you are not the kind of person who really has a right to abstain from Battle now why does he say this the reason is that to the Hindu mind [Music] one who abstains from what might be an evil action through fear has not really liberated himself from evil vishna would say that so long as our conduct is motivated by

fear on the one hand or by desire on the other we are incapable of performing a truly moral action only those actions are truly moral which are unmotivated because if you are motivated to do good by fear your good name under other circumstances be evil this is the case with origina he wants to refrain from War for the same reason for which many other people would engage in war many people engage in war because they're afraid and not at all because they hate the world situation at the present time might be said to be a

situation of mutual fear who are the only reason why someone might start a war would be for fear of the other side starting it first after all we all know now that Modern Warfare [Music] is something in which neither side wins it is then fear more than anything else fear that the other fellow should send the Bombs Over first is what starts a war and thus you see fear is no deterrent to war at all the principle you see which he enunciates is to act without attachment to the fruits of action to do what you

have to do without seeking either evil or good from it now this is simply another way of saying to act without motive seems of course from our point of view impossible that a human being should act without motives in our Western way of thinking about ethics we judge the quality of an action by the quality of the motive and the whole notion of an action without a motive at all seems to be extraordinarily foreign to us but as a matter of fact if there is no such thing as an action without motive there is no

such thing as a free or moral action because so long as we have a motive our actions are not actions they're simply reactions surely it's obvious that our motives are determined by our conditioning by our environment our heredity our social structure they give us motives and these motives of the past determine the way in which we Act now it's my motive for doing good is for the sake of some sort of a reward whether it's in the ancient sense of going to heaven or the modern sense of being a real person or a regular guy

or whether it's fearing the ancient sense of going to hell or in the modern sense of being a cad I act motivatedly and therefore the things which I Do by way of moral action are not actually free if as we in the west have rather inconsistently but nevertheless rightly insisted a moral man must be a free man a free man must be an unmotivated man how can one reach the truth if one is born in illusion slowly through all the fibers of his spirit he showed him the deepest movements of his being and his true

Battlefield where you need neither Warriors nor arrows for each man must fight alone it's the most secret knowledge he showed him the whole of Truth he taught him how the world unfolds tell me who you are I'm second to the depth I'm afraid I am all that you think all that you say everything hangs on me like pearls on a thread I am the Earth sent and the fires he I am appearance and disappearance I am the trickster's hoax I am the radiance of all that shines I am time grown old all beings fall into

the night and all beings are brought back to Daylight I have already defeated all these Warriors he who thinks he can kill and he who thinks he can be killed both mistake no weapon compares the life that informs you no fire can burn it no water can drains it no wind can make it dry have no fear and Rise Up because I love you now can dominate your mysterious and incomprehensible spirit you can see its other side act as you must act I myself am never without action rise up my illusion is dissolved I hear

a destroyed by your grace now I'm firm my doubts are dispersed now it's obvious I think to those of you who have listened to any other of these programs what Shri Krishna is talking about here when I was talking to you about the upanishads I explained at several points the fundamental doctrine of the Hindus and that is that the innermost reality of man is not quite quite what we who have been brought up in a Christian tradition called the soul we have an inherited teaching of course of an immortal and individual soul which is the

root principle of every human being but in the Hindu doctrines the soul is not individual the soul is Supra individual or as they would say in their technical language the Atman the soul or self is really a better translation than so the Atman is identical with Brahman and Brahman is the name which they use for the Ultimate Reality which underlies this whole universe [Music] now I don't want you to think of Brahman as a sort of vast blob of perfectly transparent Jello which penetrates the whole world I I think that's what many people imagine when

they hear this kind of thing the whole point of the Brahman idea is missed when you form any image of it in your mind at all even Jello even empty space or boundless light Brahman is what we ourselves really are what this whole universe is fundamentally and actually there is no way of thinking about of imagining that a very simple reason that as water cannot rise higher than its own level thought cannot think what is higher than thinking it cannot conceive the mind which thinks and still less the power which generates the mind our symbols

for uh ideas about the Supreme reality are Vegas and voidish not at all because that reality is vague and void but because thought and Imagination are annihilated in trying to grasp it and thus it is through the realization that he is that Eternal now not his past that araduna is able to act in a free way in an unmotivated way and thus go into battle not because he is moved to fight by Hate by squeamishness or fear but because he carries out his appointed place in a society in which it's his vocation to be a

warrior we may think it regrettable that societies exist in which there is a vocation to be a warrior but let's not be sentimental in this respect also because every one of us is unable to live at all without killing something some of us would like to rule out altogether the killing of our fellow men but you see in the Hindu view of life there isn't this rigid distinction between man on the one hand and animals and plants on the other which exist for us in the West therefore there are times in the Hindu view when

killing is an unavoidable condition of being alive and this is one of the problems which the Gita sets itself to solve [Music]