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The Bhagavad Gita analysis
Reflection about bhagavad gita
The Bhagavad gita
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In the following Hindu reading, the Bhagavad Gita is a sacred spiritual text that has uttermost meaning in the religion of Hinduism. Krishna’s teachings in the Gita helps resolve tensions between dharma, which is moral obligation, and moksha, which represents “release”, spiritual freedom from life with the association of bhakti, which represents devotion. In the Bhagavad Gita, the concepts of dharma and moksha are unclear until encountered with each other.
Accordingly, in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna must avenge Dhritarashtra’s because he is passing the kingdom to his own son instead of Arjuna’s brother Yudhishthira who is the rightful king. While god Krishna drives Arjuna into the battle and as he prepares to fight, he recognizes his family within
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The experiential dimension relates to devotion, liberation and inner peace. This explains how Arjuna needed to have an ongoing faithful relationship with Krishna in order to perform his duties without having remorse. As presented, Arjuna is faced with choosing between dharma and moksha. He feels that he must follow his dharma and by doing so he must fight in the battle against his family. Alongside, Krishna tells Arjuna that his dharma in life is to be a warrior and rightfully fight for the kingdom and restore the right balance of karma in his life. However, Arjuna states, “I see no good in killing my people in battle.” He feels like he is violating his dharma because he will be killing his own family members. Also, this affects Arjuna’s ability to have devotion, liberation, and inner peace because he does not feel right about the duties he needs to fulfill. Therefore, this demonstrates the experiential dimension of religion because he is afraid about the effects of his actions. However, Arjuna must fulfill his duties in order to restore the right balance of karma in his life. Thus, while Arjuna is facing a dilemma between choosing to kill and not to kill, Krishna offers him a third alternative, which is Bhakti, meaning devotion. “Krishna is a god with qualities, whom Arjuna can love and through whom he can achieve union with the god without qualities (nir-guna), the world-soul (brahman),
From the beginning of humankind, people have constantly had to deal with inner battles. Many of these issues cease to exist as time goes on, while new ones arise to take their place. There is one issue, however, that has remained consistent throughout time – morality. For centuries, humans have fought against the outside world and themselves to keep their morals properly aligned. The issue of morality is so dominant that it is still plays a vital role in today’s society. This can be seen in wars, law systems, codes of conduct, and religious texts. An example of a religious text where this can be seen is in pages 185 - 188 of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna, also referred to as “The Blessed One”, guides Arjuna through his inner struggles between
Hinduism is a broad and encompassing religion. Due to such, the study and answer of any specific question in this religion is difficult. In order to adjust for this, I am going to look at the gunas, the various life goals, life stages, and social castes and see the specific impact that each of these have on morality and ethics in Hinduism.
Conflict is constant. It is everywhere. It exists within one’s own mind, different desires fighting for dominance. It exists outside in nature, different animals fighting for the limited resources available, and it exists in human society, in the courts. It can occur subtly, making small changes that do not register consciously, and it can occur directly and violently, the use of pure strength, whether physical, social, economic, or academic, to assert dominance and achieve one’s goals; this is the use of force. Yet, with the use of force, the user of force is destined to be one day felled by it. “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.”
But Lord Krishna says to Arjuna “If you turn from righteous warfare/your behavior will by evil/for you will have abandoned both/your duty and your honored name”, meaning that Arjuna’s cowardice will bring evil and his “honored name” will be lost and forgotten (Bhagavad Gita 1290). Arjuna is in fear of ending their lives, a plaguing uncertainty that is his fault they’ll perish away at his sword and he’ll just be as evil as the men who stole the throne away from his rightful claim. Lord Krishna is saying that it is Arjuna’s duty to fight for virtuous and moral reasons and forsaking his post to fight against the evil, and Arjuna will become what he is fighting against – evil. Arjuna’s external and internal actions are plaguing his eternal being at stake, as Lord Krishna continues with “People will speak of your disgrace…suffers a fate much worse than death”, meaning that shame will carry on in the next life he lives, forever haunted by the
Hinduism focuses on liberation from the realm of samsara, the cycle of rebirth and death, while Confucianism focuses on the Dao, the correct way to act for society, and ren, or benevolence. Both religions have religious texts that reflect these ideals, the Bhagavad-Gita belonging to Hinduism, and the Analects belonging to Confucianism. While these two texts originate from two distinct religions, the two have some similarities and differences. Both the Bhagavad-Gita and the Analects address the proper way for one to act; however, they differ when it comes to heaven and the main concern of each text. The main concern of the Bhagavad-Gita is a personal journey, achieving moksa through devotion to Brahman, and the main concern of the Analects is a communal journey, maintaining social propriety through the five relationships.
The Bhagavad Gita is perhaps the most famous, and definitely the most widely-read, ethical text of ancient India. As an episode in India's great epic, the Mahabharata, The Bhagavad Gita now ranks as one of the three principal texts that define and capture the essence of Hinduism; the other two being the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras. Though this work contains much theology, its kernel is ethical and its teaching is set in the context of an ethical problem. The teaching of The Bhagavad Gita is summed up in the maxim "your business is with the deed and not with the result." When Arjuna, the third son of king Pandu (dynasty name: Pandavas) is about to begin a war that became inevitable once his one hundred cousins belonging to the Kaurava dynasty refused to return even a few villages to the five Pandava brothers after their return from enforced exile, he looks at his cousins, uncles and friends standing on the other side of the battlefield and wonders whether he is morally prepared and justified in killing his blood relations even though it was he, along with his brother Bhima, who had courageously prepared for this war. Arjuna is certain that he would be victorious in this war since he has Lord Krishna (one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu) on his side. He is able to visualize the scene at the end of the battle; the dead bodies of his cousins lying on the battlefield, motionless and incapable of vengeance. It is then that he looses his nerve to fight.
Roy asserts that people’s fears of upsetting the power balance based in the caste system often leads to a blind acceptance of the status quo and a continuous sense of self-deprecation by individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy. When Velutha’s father fears that his son’s affair with a Touchable will have potentially disastrous consequences for him, he serves his own self-interest and is willing to endanger is son. He exposes the affair to the grandmother of the woman his son is having an affair with, revealing the extreme degree to which caste and conforming to societal norms drive the behaviors of individuals in Indian society; “So Vellya Paapen had come to tell Mamamachi himself. As a Paravan and a man with mortgaged body parts he considered it his duty…they had made the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible really happen…Offering to kill his son. To tear him limb from limb” (242). His fear of disrupting the status quo (i.e. the Indian social hierarchy) is so great that he is willing to sacrifice his own son’s life to protect his own. Rather than considering the genuine...
Arjuna gives up now, he will be full of shame, and a man who has given up
A large amount of ancient texts contain themes relating to violence, power, and war, while others, such as The Bhagavad Gita and Confucius’ Analects, focus on individual and collective development through a series of selfless acts. The two texts provide an in-depth system of duties and learning created to provide direction for the betterment of the self, as well as society as a whole. The Bhagavad Gita places a greater focus on the duties of individuals that must be fulfilled to achieve an enlightened state with the divine forces. Contradictory consequences are presented for those who choose to act in an egotistical manner and deny their duties. Confucius’ Analects, on the other hand, places its main focus on collective development and responsibility
Karma and rebirth were used to reinforce the responsibility of each caste. When Arjuna had uncertainty about whether or not to fight against members of his family, Kṛṣṇa attempted to persuade him that “No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul” (2.17) because “For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time” (2.20). The Hindu religion believes that the body is just temporary for t...
In so doing he encourages us to see a different world? a world in which obedience is paramount and in which authority figures can never be questioned. He shows us the problem that surfaces when people who are trained to be obedient are confronted with orders that, if analysed and considered, can be clearly seen to be an affront to all human values and decency. People can happily obey?The Fury?... ...
It is through his massive affection for his father that causes Amir to put his self-independence at stake since his constant worship of Baba “with an intensity approaching the religious,” further strengthens his insuppressible desire to emulate the success of his father. Amir’s affection for Baba begins to suddenly shift towards a more prominent, prideful worship of his father.
The Bhagavad-Gita teaches many things, and amongst these, morality and moral law are developed for the Hindu religion. What Krishna, the primary Hindu god, declares in this somewhat epic poem to be the "basis of good in this world" (stanza 3, pg. 620 of text) is for people to take action. Action, as he goes on to state, is within the very nature of our beings to do. Krishna even states that "without action you even fail to sustain your own body" (stanza 8, pg. 620 of text). Thus, Krishna feels that action is very important and key. To take this concept as a relation to ethics, Krishna tells Arjuna, the warrior he is talking to in this poem, that "Action imprisons the world unless it is done as sacrifice; freed from attachment, Arjuna, perform action as sacrifice!" (stanza 9, pg. 620 of text). Thus, Krishna is prescribing that, in order for an action to be considered good, the good that he already declared to be the basis of all good in the world, one must detach himself from the action being performed and perform the action sacrificially. The detachment aspect is incredibly important to Krishna, for he proclaims that in "performing action with detachment, one achieves supreme good" (stanza 19, pg 620 of text). By doing this, Krishna believes that the world is preserved, for other people will follow the warrior's actions and imitate them in their own lives. A leader, such as a warrior or king, "sets the standard for the world to follow" (stanza 21, pg. 621 of text), as Krishna says and thus must take whatever action is necessary for the world to not be destroyed, to set examples of goodness and right in his own actions. By separating himself from these actions, thus becoming detached, he can achieve this. Another main reason that Krishna feels detachment is necessary is this: "You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty." (Bhagavad-Gita 2.47). Thus, so long as one does not profit from his own actions, the action itself is good. And, this is Krishna's prescription for leading a life of morality and duty is the moral law to follow in order to achieve this.
The Gita is based on this prima facie school of thought. When Arjuna is skeptic about waging war against his own family, Lord Krishna explains the importance of abiding by one’s own karma (duty). The person following karma marga surrenders himself to the brahmana, in this case his duty, job or something he is doing, something he believes in. For example, a soldier fights a battle, a teacher teaches in an impoverished country, a firefighter fights against all odds. He may believe throughout his life that God is doing things, God is thinking for him, and God is feeling for him.
Rama demonstrates how one should behave within the hierarchy of one’s family. He is unconditionally loyal to his father to the point that he no qualms over remaining in exile for fourteen years in order to preserve the sanctity of his father’s word, thus protecting his father from “damming himself in this and other worlds” (Narayan 45). Protecting the value of his father’s promise takes precedent over Rama’s other duties as a son, like, for example, partaking in his father’s funeral