12/24/2023
THE BHAGAVAD GITA AND FIGHTING FOR LOVE (latest blog)
Lately Iâve been thinking and writing a lot about holiday stress, family, conflict, and self-regulation through yoga. Which brings to mind my protracted ambivalence about the Bhagavad GiĚta. Sometimes I wonder if Vyasa had a big, noisy, combative family and wrote the Gita as his way of processing it â âIâll create a fantasy novel and kill them all off in my imaginationâŚâ
Or maybe he foresaw the Bhagavad GiĚta as a spiritual manual for dealing with your family during the holidays đŹ.
Iâve read several versions and commentaries of the Bhagavad GiĚta and two versions of the MahaĚbhaĚrata (my fave is Chitra Banerjee Divakaruniâs creative retelling in The Palace of Illusions). Reading the MahaĚbhaĚrata gave me more context for the Bhagavad GiĚta, which is a relatively small didactic text sandwiched in the middle of the massive epic.
I understand that the MahaĚbhaĚrata is mythic â full of metaphor, lessons, wisdom and deep meaning â but, on the surface, itâs about a war between an extended family. Itâs a timeless issue â families trying to cope with each other â why else would tv shows like Succession be so popular?
Both times I read the MahaĚbhaĚrata I came away with the feeling that the whole thing was a colossal waste of time â I mean, couldnât you all just chill out? Get some mediation? Compromise? A part of me wants Krishna to play his magic flute, fix everything, and prevent the war. Instead everyone dies.
The story is bursting with moral ambiguity and conflicting perspective and itâs never entirely obvious whoâs right. The Pandava brothers are the sons of the heir to the throne, Pandu. But Pandu was cursed with the inability to bear children so his wives pray to the gods and subsequently produce 5 sons - so they are not technically his. But Panduâs excessively fertile younger brother DháštarÄᚣášra, who has 100 sons, is considered unfit to rule because heâs blind. So, his childrenâs inheritance of the throne is also questionable.
Then thereâs the whole rigged game of dice thing where the Pandavas lose the kingdom due to their eldest brotherâs gambling issues. As pay back they have to forage in the forest dressed in bark for 12 years. When they emerge, they want their kingdom back. (Really? Even after 12 years of itchy bark you still canât let it go?)
Krishna tries to negotiate a solution and fails.
Arjuna is compelled to kill the people he loves and respects.
Panchali gets a nasty case of PTSD.
Victory ultimately lands with those who are most ardently devoted to Krishna. But that doesnât really make sense either since just about everyone loves Krishna â even Gandhara, the mother of all the 100 slaughtered brothers, is enamored and politely asks him if she can curse him for killing them all.
I resonate with Yoganandaâs interpretation of the MahaĚbhaĚrata as a metaphor for the internal fight up through the chakras and our mental/emotional issues towards self-realization (I think itâs in God Talks with Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita). And wouldnât life be pleasant if the only war that human beings ever had to fight was the internal one? Against our own demons? Wouldnât it be nice if we knew how to keep our swords in our pants?
I once met a yogic monk in India who smiled all the time. I asked him why he was so happy. He said, âI am happy outside because Iâm always fighting myself inside.â
I wonder if one reading of the MahaĚbhaĚrata is as a metaphor for the inevitability of having to deal with war on all levels â between countries, within countries, between families, within families, and of course within ourselves. As the current wars rage and devastate itâs easy to dissolve into cynicism. Havenât we learned anything yet? Why do we still engage in senseless, barbaric, unnecessary, horrible violence? War is not animalistic... itâs much, much worse.
Perhaps itâs our family conflicts, microcosms of larger conflicts, that teach us how to withstand and navigate bigger battles. Perhaps families are the kuru, the practice battlefield for learning to fight â to fight for, and to fight against.
Once I asked a friend who had recently lost an adult son with a disability how she was doing. She said, âI miss him. I loved being his mother. He taught me how to fight.â She explained that by being his mother, she learned how to fight for him to get the services he needed and in that process, she learned how to wield her own power.
In families (when we can stand to) we learn to disagree, argue, debate, stick up for ourselves, stick up for others, compromise, not compromise, stand up, sit down, give, and take. And hopefully we also learn self-restraint. Hopefully we learn about fighting and resolving without violence.
My prayer this holiday season is for humanity to outgrow its dysfunctional bloodlust. I wish that we could learn to internalize the fight, like the yogic monk I met. I wish that we would learn to fight only cognitively, in ways that celebrate difference, not traumatize entire cultures and generations. If we need to be physical about it, then wrestle or play other sports - fairly, with rules.
I wish that we would learn to access the deeper meaning of the Bhagavad GiĚta â because in the end, when you get down to the bare bones meaning of existence, the lasting victories can only ever be the internal ones.
(art from Ramesh Menon's book, The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering, Vol 1)
