The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 5: The Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata

There is a tremendous tension of enthusiasm, as we may call it, in the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata. When a function is to take place on a crucial occasion, important enough to attract the attention of the whole community, of all people, a kind of emotional tension rises to the surface: “Oh, the jubilee is coming!” Day and night great preparations are made, and it is seen that everything is done precisely, meticulously, to perfection. Such interesting, stirring and active descriptions we have in the Udyoga Parva of the jubilant, vigorous, virile preparations, raising our hair on end. The word udyoga means intense effort, preparation, toil, and making things ready with energetic motivation. All this is suggestive of the word udyoga.

This particular book, the Udyoga Parva, is a classic in a very important sense. There is high literary beauty in the style of writing, and the poet's outlook rises to its pinnacle of perception, as it were, because it is the aim of a crucial action that is contemplated and is to take place. The mind is up in arms before the body is active. The mind has already started doing what the body has yet to do. That is the psychological background of the great battle to be narrated in several books which follow the Udyoga Parva.

The descriptions are breathtaking. Every kind of dramatis personae is brought into the picture of this description, God included. However, we shall not, in the light of what we are interested in considering, go into details of the literary aspect of the dramatic grandeur of presentation of this book of the Mahabharata.

Everything is ready. We have only to utter the words 'one, two, three', and one bursts into action. One is just in the field of activity, not merely preparing to do something. The field is displayed before our mind in the Bhishma Parva, which is the Sixth Book of the Mahabharata, in which the Bhagavadgita occurs.

It is difficult to fully appreciate the interesting and complicated background of the context of the Bhagavadgita gospel unless we know the whole background of the Mahabharata epic because, as I mentioned, it looks as if the whole Mahabharata is the body, of which the Bhagavadgita is the soul. The Bhagavadgita is the theory; the Mahabharata is the theory put into action. Being and doing seem to be the forte of the Bhagavadgita and the Mahabharata narration.

We are basically persons occupied with a notion that the salvation of the soul is the goal of life. Liberation is our main objective in living in this world. Freedom it is that we really seek. We have to work hard for this great attainment, and everything necessary for the realisation of this ultimate objective is to be done as early as possible. We know what it is all about, and what things are necessary as a preparation for this contemplated achievement. Now, the crux of the matter is that we have already a clear plan, and know what is necessary for the fulfilment of this aspiration. These backgrounds of our premeditation, prior to our actual engagement in this task, are important enough.

There is a personality called Arjuna in the history of the Mahabharata battle, and we know what this name signifies – a brilliant person, a youthful, well-balanced personality, highly educated, mighty in the execution of deeds, capable in every sense of the term, with power and knowledge combined, and with enthusiasm motivating every contemplation. He was an ideal man, to say the least, a blend of every virtuous character, with a coming together of properties which contribute to make the human personality a logical perfection. We do not have such perfect human beings easily available in the world. There is something lacking in everybody. But here is the poet's presentation of an ideal human being before us. Arjuna lacked nothing politically, socially, economically, intellectually, and in every sense which we in the world may regard as significant or meaningful. So he was the chief spokesman, we may say, in the context of the great battle of the Mahabharata.

Sometimes a sincere question is raised: How can a gospel which has an eternal value, which seems to be a permanent message coming from a divine source, be associated with a peculiar human context which we call a battle? Often, in moods of partial understanding and on the basis of an emphasis of one aspect of the matter, the Bhagavadgita is called a war gospel. It urges us to act by raising arms and taking up cudgels, but it can be understood in any other way also. There are many standpoints from which we can photograph different kinds of pictures of this Bhagavadgita context. It is not a war gospel, though it looks as if it is that from the point of view of a surface reading of the grammatical meaning of the language used. But it is naturally, and perhaps very rightly, a gospel which has relevance to the inner meaning of what we call a battle, a war.

What exactly is meant by the words 'battle' or 'war'? We have our own prosaic, human, political and historical ideas about this very unpleasant event which has always been part and parcel of history and human existence. But while it is true that people engage themselves in battles and wars to solve a particular problem or a situation prevailing at a given moment of time, it is not the intention of the Bhagavadgita to say that any problem of human existence can be solved merely by reading the historical aspect of the human side of empirical existence.

We never do anything unless we are sure that our doing is going to solve a particular problem or necessity in our life. If a necessity does not arise, we will not budge an inch, and we will not act. There is a need felt for action, and that need is commensurate with a difficulty behind it. What is meant by 'a need' or 'a necessity'? It is an urge to set right a particular condition that is prevailing at present, implying thereby that the present condition is not a happy, perfect, expected condition. A finitude of the prevailing situation, an irregularity of it, an oddness about it, an unhappiness that is attached to it, may be considered as what we call the need of the hour.

Now, our actions are actually a kind of movement on our part to solve a situation which has to be understood very carefully in its subtle, threadbare meaning. It is a state of conflict, a kind of confrontation in which we find ourselves every moment of time, practically every day, in a situation when we are face to face with some circumstance with which we cannot reconcile ourselves as it looks on its surface, or as it is capable of our understanding in our present state of intellect and mind. We have to understand here again the subtle shade of meaning behind the word 'conflict', which enlarges itself into the cruder meanings of what we call battle and war, etc. They all mean the same thing finally, though the dimension they take may vary, and their grossness or subtlety may also be different.

There is a difficulty. We have a difficulty always, and there is not a single moment when we are not in some difficulty because if there is no difficulty of any kind, in any sense of the term, at any place, in any aspect of our life, it would be difficult to imagine that we would be living and doing things in the manner that we do now. There is perpetual motivation in some direction in our life, and our life is a complicated network of involvements and relations. What is meant by 'our life'? It is a large web of interrelations where everything is connected in some way, in some proportion, in some emphasis of intensity. It is my particular need or necessity felt at this hour, but my need or necessity is not unconnected with the environment in which I am living, and it is not possible to assure myself that I am totally free from any kind of association with my environment outside.

The Bhagavadgita, therefore, goes to the root of human involvements, and conflict is    just this peculiar inability on the part of an involved individual to properly assess the nature of its relation with the environment in which it is involved. I am in a particular environment. Firstly, it is difficult to fully understand what this environment is. Secondly, it is also difficult to understand what my connection with this environment is. A twofold difficulty is there facing us every day. I would not be so foolish as to imagine that I have nothing to do with anything in the world. I seem to have some connection with things, but what are the things with which I am connected? A purely parochial outlook, which emphasises only a blinkered attention of the mind in a given direction, will say that this is the thing in which I am involved, and this is the thing with which I am connected as, for instance, when a person is up in arms against somebody, or against some circumstance.

Very rarely does a human being find it possible to take all the factors involved in the circumstance into consideration, because we have a capacity to be prejudiced, and we are not incapable of that state. We are capable of a prejudice which is motivated by sudden sparks of emotion. We are not always judged by or motivated by an impersonal rationality of approach. It is true that we have reason, and that faculty is a blessing. But there are other forces operating within us, and we find that it is not always possible for us to blend these potentialities within us. I made a reference to this difficulty sometime back. Always we are laying emphasis on one side of the issue. A total picture rarely presents itself before our minds.

It is up to each person to appreciate why this situation arises, why mostly people are incapable of a balanced outlook in anything. There is always a spurt or a pressure of a particular aspect of our psychic personality. It is not that all the soldiers within are arrayed in a perfectly logical fashion to form a beautiful, artistic pattern. It is a hodgepodge of arrangement, a jumble, as it were, of our internal faculties, a chaos. It is not a good regiment that is within us. It is a crowd of clamorous powers, naughty children, an uncontrollable mob making a loud noise, as it were; we do not know who starts the noise, and what is actually the meaning of this noise. A loud noise from inside us says “Do this. I want this”, and then we feel that we have to do something in answer to this noise. If a large crowd shouts “We want this”, we do not know who is saying that. Everybody seems to be saying it, though someone may be shouting at the top of their voice. Our personality is mostly imbalanced. We are not psychically balanced. This is the reason why we have physical, social, and sometimes even psychological difficulties. We are restless. This is the conflict in which we find ourselves every day.

The conflict of the actual historical battle is, no doubt, a conflict, and it is also to be taken into consideration, but it is not outside the environment in which human beings are involved. We are not always judicious to appreciate that even a historical battle is not purely historical. It is not a political event as it appears on the surface. It is a deep secret of the human psyche affecting a larger atmosphere, the whole world, and it may even reach up to the skies. Even the stellar regions may be involved in exerting some influence in the action of a single man on Earth. It may be an emperor, a dictator, an administrator, a major general, a businessman – any person does something, and he or she is convinced that only that person is the motive and the impulsion behind the action. Sometimes a group of people believes that the group is the impulsion, and a nation believes that the nation is the source. They may not be wholly correct in this opinion because, on a very in-depth analysis, it is difficult to believe that events occur in one particular place. It is perhaps not entirely true that actions are local actions. It does not appear that any event is connected with that particular apparent locality only, as a boil on the foot does not appear to be an action of the foot only. There seems to be some trouble in many other places manifesting in a particular locality of the body. Every conflict is a kind of irreconcilable illness, a morbid condition; but where is its source?

Now, in the finding of an answer to this question as to where the source of this conflict is, we are likely to make a mistake in thinking that other people – so-and-so, this person or that country – is the enemy and they are the causes of the conflict.  We have such answers easily available. But man, being finite even in his understanding, seems to have finite answers to these questions.

The Bhagavadgita wants to be your good friend. The Bhagavadgita wants to be a good physician of your illness. The Bhagavadgita does not want to make money off of you as a patient by giving you one tablet for your headache and saying, “Quit, now you are okay.” It wants to diagnose your entire disease and say, “My dear friend, this is the difficulty.” A holistic interpretation of medicine is the proper way of treating an illness, as people say nowadays. It means that you have to consider the whole being of the person when you treat that person for any particular illness. It is not the leg or the nose or the head or the throat that is ill; you are ill. This is what expert medical men tell us.

The Bhagavadgita tells us, my dear friend, that the war is not taking place in the Kurukshetra field. It is not taking place, it never took place, and it is not going to take place in any country. It is not caused by this person or that person; it is not the fault of this community or that community. It is a complicated situation, into which you have to go deep to solve the problem, if your intention is really to solve it. If you want only to do a patchwork and imagine that you have solved the problem, well, do it. There will be a cessation of the battle; there will be peace, as it were, and after a few years it will burst forth into action once again because it was not a peace, it was a tentative, disgruntled truce. Actually, it was not peace at all.

So, the great solution coming from a great being, Sri Krishna, the mastermind who is at the back of the Bhagavadgita, tells us that even a little event in our daily life – it may be an event in the kitchen, not necessarily in a huge administrative complex – is an action that has to be understood in its proper setup, in its proper relationship to the whole environment. This you will not be able to appreciate properly because you are thinking you are inside the building and it is outside, and you are a private body, you have connection with only a few people, and all events are locally conditioned. These ideas of localisation, parochialism and pinpointed events to geographical conditions and national occasions are the effect of the finite mind thinking. The human problem is not a finite problem, it is an infinite problem. Infinite is man's problem. It is not a national problem, it is not a political problem, it is not mine, it is not yours, and if you take these things in that light, you will never solve any problem. Therefore, a universally oriented understanding had to come into action to solve this great problem of human life. That is the task of the Bhagavadgita.