The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 6: Beauty and Duty in the Bhagavadgita

(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)

It is believed that there was a super-mundane manifestation of power in a particular context of an ancient historical period which is said to defy any relevance to mere temporal events and any attempt to interpret all earthly history in terms of an unimaginably super-mundane system of the evaluation of values. It is as if there was a sudden change of the entire administrative system, and a new policy began to give significance to every project, every action and every event. History has to be read in the light of a super-history, a trend of thinking which is not unknown to some philosophers of history these days. There is a non-temporal motivation, evidently, in all temporal processes; otherwise, it would be difficult to explain how there can be any meaning in temporal existence.

It is not difficult to appreciate that the significance of temporality cannot itself be temporal. If some meaning is to be there behind events we call temporal existence, that meaning certainly should be something other than the temporal. This is common sense, and simple understanding. Our life cannot be explained merely by the processes of our life. Life as we live, as we understand, as is recorded in history, cannot be explained by these processes themselves. Our longings cannot be explained and accounted for by the longings themselves. Desire is not the explanation of a desire. The explanation is somewhere else, not in the upsurge of desire itself. The world cannot explain itself. The explanation of the world cannot be the world. There must be something other than the world to explain what the world is. This is to have a logical insight into the meanings behind life's adventures, if meanings are there at all; but a meaning there seems to be. Meaningless life we do not seem to be living. But where is the meaning? To read meaning into something is to discover in it something other than itself. We are not just seeing an object to understand it. We bring into action a principle of operation which explains the meaning of the object.

Now, it appears that sometimes in the drama of the creation of God, in the cosmic history of events, there comes a time – we have to speak in guarded words here because we do not know how to express these events in their proper connotation – there seems to have arisen, and there seems to be arising occasionally, certain circumstances which require an interpretation; else, perhaps, the purpose of creation is not to be served. It is necessary to provide a system of understanding things while it occasionally becomes difficult to understand events in nature, processes in history, and conditions in life.

Today we are in a small gathering, once again attempting to bring to our memories these super-historical mysteries that seem to burst forth in the midst of historical events, the occasions being called in our own language the coming of a Christ, the birth of a Krishna, the advent of a Buddha, the giving of a gospel, the happening of a miracle, or God coming, or a vision being presented before the great saint and sage; it is something which is other than the normal, understanding normalcy in the sense of our acquaintance with the world of sense.

The context of the Bhagavadgita, the occasion for whose delivery we are bringing to our memories today, was certainly a historical occasion. But that historical occasion could not manage itself. People require a ruler, as they are unable to rule themselves independently; and to discover, to find, and to install an administrator or a ruler of people is to endeavour to fix the location of a significance in their own lives. Everyone knows there must be some significance in the lives of everybody, but we wish to see the significance operating actively in our lives. It is otherwise difficult to understand how we require a ruler at all. It is nothing but the requirement of a principle of operation, understanding and action. We are not expecting a person before us. A ruler is not a person. We are also persons; in what way are we less? That is not actually what we want when we appoint a king, a monarch or a chief administrative power. We do not require a person; we require a location of intelligent interpretation of the values of life, an impartial observance and observation of the needs of the whole populace, which is a crude manifestation before us of the need we feel in our lives for something which is other than our own selves, something other than pure nature, pure earth, pure mountains and trees. Every moment of time, every day of our lives, we require, we feel a need, a necessity, to transcend, to exceed ourselves, and to allow the operation of an understanding which is not necessarily our individual understanding as it acts in a discreet manner in each one of us.

Everyone has an understanding. There is no one bereft of it totally. If that were the case, where comes the need for a regulation, a system, an operation? Why should we require any kind of rule, constitution and system when everyone has an understanding, everyone knows what is proper, and no one is the less for it? The need is something beyond ordinary human requirement. It is a human requiring a super-human operation. A regulation of any kind, whatever it be, in any measure, in any percentage, is a super-human invading and occupying, controlling the human and the particular.

The Mahabharata was a big medley of the coming together of individuals, many people joining together and deciding things for themselves – a mob, a crowd gathered together in a field of action, operation, the meaning of which to some extent was clear to each one, but its basic principle was not clear. Some sort of an understanding of every performance in our life we do have, but occasionally we find that this understanding is inadequate. There are knotty, difficult situations in our lives when our usual understanding seems to be inadequate. We have our daily routine which we conduct fairly well with our understanding, and we do not feel that we are inadequate in the understanding of our daily performances, but there are certain occasions when we find that our understanding is not adequate to the purpose. Then it is that we run hither and thither for help from a superior understanding. This superior understanding is not to be confused with any person, though, unfortunately for us human beings, the manifestation even of this superior understanding happens to be through a person only. Sometimes it happens to be in a group of people.

I had occasion sometime to mention that the beauty of a painting is not in the ink and the canvas, though the painting contains nothing but the ink and the canvas. You would be wondering, “What is beauty if not the presentation of the pattern of the ink on the canvas?” It is not possible for anyone to clearly say what beauty is. It is a super-personal manifestation in the context of the personality of the ink and the canvas. That is why it is so attractive that we go on gazing at it and are drowned in its perception. Beauty is inexplicable. That is why it is so attractive. We go on gazing at it and are drowned in its perception. It is not capable of understanding through mathematical equations. Mathematically it is very easy to understand what a painting is – so much of ink and so much square feet of canvas; so much area it occupies geometrically, and so it is easy, mathematically very simple to understand. But beauty is not mathematics, and duty is also not mathematics.

There are two great difficulties in life: the understanding of duty and beauty. Neither of these will be clear to our minds, though only these two things control our lives. There are only two things that pull us vehemently in their direction: beauty and duty. We cannot escape the call of duty, nor can we escape the call of beauty. Neither of these can be really understood, however much we may wrack our heads.

In the Bhagavadgita we have the presentation of a great beauty, and also the explanation of a great duty. Both these things are there. God is the centre of the supreme duty incumbent upon everyone in creation, and God is also the greatest beauty. The cosmic form, the Visvarupa Darshana, was the pinnacle of beauty, grandeur, and magnificence. It was also the explanation of duty. In that picturesque miracle which is feebly explained before us in the words of the poet, a staggering reality is envisioned. 'Staggering' is the only word I can use, because our heads will become giddy thinking that. We will become giddy if we begin to think what beauty is. We will also become giddy if we begin to know what duty is. These are the two things which will make our heads reel. A person who is absorbed in the true conception of duty ceases to be an ordinary human being, and one who knows what beauty is also is not an ordinary individual.

Poets and sages, therefore, are superhuman. They do not speak an ordinary human style, though it appears they employ the medium of human expression through a brush or through a pen. Whatever be the medium that they employ, it matters not; their intention is the same. So the human crowd of individual understanding that brought about that gathering of people in the battlefield of Kurukshetra found that it cannot explain itself. It appeared that everything is clear. In the earlier stages, everything seems to be fine. Yes, we understand, but when we are face to face with a dark screen or thick wall, we find we cannot penetrate through it.

So everything was clear to everybody; otherwise, why should they gather there in such a large crowd? But when the inward constituents of human nature were brought to the surface of direct action, they told each individual, “You are not intended to understand us.” A confused presentation of ideas is the picture of the First Chapter of the Bhagavadgita – an individual man speaking, and an individual speaking his ideas of some situation which is not necessarily human and individual.

A superhuman difficulty was there. The question was a simple one, namely, the question of the methodology of the battlefield. But that little question actually rose and blossomed forth into another question altogether: the question of mankind itself. One little man's problem dug out the problem of everybody. It was originally one person's problem, and it could have been answered then and there by somebody else, but the problem of that one person was so deep that when one had to go to the bowels of that little question of one man, the deepest roots of it, it was found that it touched the problem of everybody. As we go deep into the root of a single wave in the ocean, we seem to be touching the whole ocean. So one question, a little thing of a simple matter, actually brought into the field of action a terrible consequence of the need to solve the whole problem of creation itself.

It appears the Bhagavadgita, in that attempt to solve the mystery of the whole creation of duty and beauty, and many more things, lays down the central constitution of the cosmos, and inasmuch as this central constitution enactment, ordinance and law cannot avoid referring to the Supreme Creator, He is also brought into the picture.

So it is a wonder of wonders that has been bequeathed to us, the coming of the Bhagavadgita; we may call it the coming of the rule of God. We do not know what it is that actually came – a miracle coming and transporting our hearts, burning and burnishing our understanding, thrilling us through the pores of our body, bringing our soul into action to the surface of consciousness, and making us for the moment super-individual, and perhaps divine.

May this message be in our minds that a super-individual and superhuman principle is operating from moment to moment, even now, even in the midst of our earth-earthly humdrum activities in this world. Such a message is of the Bhagavadgita. It is ascharya, in the word of the Bhagavadgita itself. Āścaryavat paśyati kaścid enam āścaryavad vadati tathaiva cānyaḥ, āścaryavac cainam anyaḥ śṛṇoti, śrutvāpy enaṁ veda na caiva kaścit (BG 2.29): Nobody can explain what it is because it is a wonder, and if anyone can speak it, that also must be a wonder. If anyone can understand it, that also must be a wonder because what is so conveyed is also a wonder. We hear of it many times, yet nobody really understands it fully. So says this verse of the Bhagavadgita. But we shall understand it if we are receptive to the inflow of that super-mundane into this mundane outlook of our human personality. God bless you.