War and the Bhagavad Gita

And just to know, in what respect does Jainism become a failed religion. There are about 10 million Jains in India and they are not intolerant ,or consumed by hatred, or in any way propagated war.
The reason why Jainism did not become a world religion could be attributed to the fact that Mahavira did not exhort his followers to engage in active prosleytisation of his teachings. However that doesn't mean that Jainism didn't do its bit for world peace and non-violence.

And what about the Buddha. He too preached non-violence and compassion to all beings. He had exhorted his followers to spread his teachings to all lands, and that is why Buddhism is the dominant religion in Asia. There are also many western converts to Buddhism.

Along with his teachings of non-violence and compassion , there is also a strong element of scientific enquiry and rationalism and independent thought in Buddhism , as can be understood from this quote of his.....

Believe nothing, merely because you have been told it, or because it is traditional or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for your teacher. But whatever after due consideration and analysis you find to be conducive to the good , the benefit, the welfare of all beings, that doctrine , believe and cling to and take it as your guide.
- Buddha

I would like to know of your opinion of Buddha.

And if Buddhism too fails to satisfy you, what about the Bahai religion, which stresses the unity of all religions, and which is against all forms of warfare . Perhaps that might satisfy your ideals.


I have also a healthy admiration for the secular humanism as espoused by Voltaire and Thomas Paine. Would that do the trick for world peace?

 

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That is the sum of the entire body of vedic literature. However, the upanishads in their idealism are inacessible to people. The Gita is a scripture for the common man, to elevate him to a level wherein he can come to see the higher vision of peace.
You have to deal with people at their level of development, otherwise all you have is a beautiful idealistic dream that will never be realized.
How do you think your utopia is going to come about? Do you have any kind of realistic plan? How would you purge hearts of hatred?

Bill, don't be a fool. What the point was is, if war is inevitable, let it be a war of choice and equality, not one that is forced upon others, not one where innocents die.
I hope you enjoy your righteous outrage. Let me point out that it has done absolutely nothing to make the world a better place.

 

There is plenty known in the pauranic and vedic literature, many of the things Niranjan referred - Vishwamitra, Parashurama, Krishna (who was born to a brahmin but took on the role of a kshatriya later in life), etc. show intercaste mobility. And if you say they are spurious legends, then what is the gita that you are so concerned with?

 

I dont agree, I would form a new religion with this one paragrapth and leave it at that. I am sure all our problems would end.


"the chief religious sect of that day, asked Him about the greatest commandment in the Law. His answer stunned them: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

 

What if you believe in the Goddess?

And is warfare compatible with love of one's neighbour? I think probably it is not, as the people who were killed would also be 'neighbours'.

 

I don't think war is inevitable. It's only because of the evil in people that we have it. That evil is not a neccessary part of our being.

Very likely, it will mean the entire spieces evolving to a higher level of consciousness. This in turn will only happen when people move beyond the ineffective religions which in the past have subscribed to and even supported wars.

No doubt I am indeed a fool - no doubt this idea to end war is idealistic. Thats's where change has to begin though, with idleals. And I don't think the ideals of the past which have led us to the curent global disater can really be of much help.

 

Buddhism is, IMO, nihilistic and even anti-life, just like a lot of vedanta. Many Buddhists hold the 'illusionist' view, which as I've said over and over is not something to which I susbscribe.

I don't think religion is the answer. Something beyond religion is needed - just as Sri Aurobindo said. Nione of our present institutions is capable of solving the problems we have collectively created.

The ideas of Voltaire, whilst quite brilliant in many ways, are just another form of rationalism, which again, isn't going to help, because it is too narrow and rejects the spiritual ''en bloc'.

'Not until the last priest has been strangled with the entrails of the last politician will we know peace' - Voltaire. Bring on the guilotine.

 

From Sri Aurobindo -


"Can religion be then be the guide of human life? It is a fact that in ancient times society gave pre-eminence to religion...but on the other hand, humanity - and in particular that portion of humanity which was the standard bearer of progress - has revolted against the pre-eminence of religion.

Very often the accredited religions have opposed progress and sided with the forces of obscurity and oppression. And it has needed a denial, a revolt of the oppressed human mind and heart to correct these errors and set religion right. This would not have been so if religion were a true and sufficient guide of the whole of human life.

If religion has failed, it is because it has confused the essential with the adventitious. True religion is spiritual religion, it is a seeking after god, the opening of the deepest layers of life of the soul to the indwelling godhead, the eternal omnipresence. Dogmas, cults, moral codes are aids and props; they may be offered to man but not imposed on him.

Moreover, religion often considers spiritual life as made up of rennunciation and mortification. Religion thus becomes a force that discourages life, and it cannot therefore be a true law and guide of life.

In spirituality then, restored to its true sense, we must seek for the directing light and harmonizing law."

and again -

"It is wrong to demand that the individual subordinate himself to the collectivity or merge in it, because it is by its most advanced individuals that the collectivity progresses and they can really advance only if they are free. But it is true that as the individual advances spiritually, he finds himself more and more united with the collectivity and the All."

"The present evolutionary crisis comes from a disparity between the limited faculties of man - mental, ethical and spiritual - and the technical and economic means at his disposal.
Without an inner change man can no longer cope with the gigantic developments of the outer life."

"If humanity is to survive, a radical transformation of human nature is indispensible."

 

All Im hearing is high talk, a lot of hot air. Show me a plan. I will be the first to support you. Show me a realistic plan that stands a snowball's chance in Rajasthan.

 

I unfortunetely agree a bit... I feel perhaps we must change ourselves first before we can ever change the world... we can keep reaching and reaching... but not all of us can be an MLK or a Gandhiji....and until we're actually doing something...I fear perhaps all we're doing is sitting around and spouting hot air...

First we change ourselves and the world immediately around us..we should have these ideals perhaps for ourselves give this love to our community...and perhaps if enough of us who are unselfish enough to sacrifice for the end of wars and such join together....perhaps then we can truly change it... but if we just sit around coffee shops and the internets complaining about it... I suppose we're just fools to think that it will actually happen.

"The spirit is willing but the flesh is week..."- Jesus

I know usually I'm more idealistic than this.... but perhaps its time for the truth of reality to set in. Let's change our selves first...and become God centered people... ("Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these thing will be added unto you"- Jesus) when we can do this...then perhaps we can change the world for the better.... until then... if we must banter on about peace...may it be in the depths of prayer... when we can find peace as One in our hearts...perhaps then it will be time to tackle the world....our community, then the next, and then the next... nothings going to stop this war machine full of greed and hatred except love. When we can learn to love our neighbors as ourselves .... then we can stop this... and I'm afraid that's a long way off. And there's got to be a different way to go about it...because what happened in the 60s didn't work...and we're not even nearly as dedicated to protesting and the like anyway...

Ok...I think I'm done... its time for me to go to sleep. I'm sorry for being a bit of a downer...things of this world are tough...Perhaps I've lost hope... perhaps I've just given it to Him because frankly I don't know what to make of it anymore. Of people in hatred and ignorance. Of wars and the like. Of Iraq and Darfur.... of how we can even fathom hurting our own brothers and sisters.... for what? Money? Politics? Hmm...perhaps I'm just as confused as Arjuna...may all our confusions be cleared by Lord Krishna. I pray we find Light.

 

Show me a realistic plan of how we can hope to survive another world war.....

Evolution is the only 'plan' I can think of that will work - that includes a higher consciousness. Making people 'religious' won't change a thing.
That's because for all the 'high talk' religion has failed in thousands of years to prevent war or modify the agressive nature of our spieces.

 

Don't loose hope! There is hope, always.
As well as wars etc, we humans do good things too, and perhaps it is only in this age that we can realistically hope to seriously improve things here on earth.

I don't know how it is that people can continue with the hate and so on - you'd think that by now, it would be clear enough that it only leads to more of the same. Perhaps one aspect of a new evolution would be an increase of intelligence - because to me anyway, a lot of the trouble seems to come from stupidity, and identification with ways of thinking which are based upon stupidity.
It seems people are not capable of realizing the true nature of the situation we face.
My argument in this thread is that partly, that's because they have been conditioned to accept war, as well as other major negative things, as normal and inevitable.
I am suggesting that a new cultural blueprint which utterly rejected war etc might be one thing which could help in the longer term.

As Sri Aurobindo said in the piece I quoted - 'a new consciousness is indispensible' - so that's what we need. I agree with him on that.
Cultivating our own spiritual consciousness has to be the first step - but that is not to say we need to accept everything in the old religions non-critically.

What was good enough in the past, just won't do under the changed conditions we now face.

What won't work is a passive approach which says 'just leave everything to god'. The forms of spirituality which could perhaps help would have to be dynamic -monks sitting in cells are not going to change a thing beyond their own tiny circle.

 

Step 1 might be to convince the people's of Rajasthan that the ideas which justify hate and war with which religious and other authorites have programmed them are wrong and should be rejected.
Step 2 might involve ensuring that the rising generation of children are not programmed with this stuff.

That sort of thing might help.

The fact is though, that if I suggest that the Koran or even the Gita might have to go, I'm immediately a 'demon' - that's because of the programming once again, and placing an inordinate value on scriptures.

'you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one'.

 

In my opinion, the problem here is that we are suggesting change when people are unwilling to do so. According to modern conception of human rights, one cannot hinder another's right to self determination, whether this be at the domestic level or the international macroscopic level. Telling them to let go of Koran or Gita will be thought of as a hindrance to Muslim or Hindu rights.

You see you may think that Koran is supporting war, that is because you are seeing it that way, although you won't care, because it is truth to you... it may not be in accordance to what another person sees to be true, and both of these people with different viewpoints may not be in agreement with what the problem is in reality.

Hence, when we try to impose our self formed notions of what "might be true" to solve problems , we will make a mess more often than not. Therefore BBB, the best solution here is to leave these fixer-upper jobs to the mind of God.

Sarvam Sri Krishnarpanamastu

 

Gandhi had a well-chisseled character, no doubt about that. But he was not an enlightened master, and he is not a great scholar.
There is an another side to the coin. Osho, who was an enligtened master, and who definetely have far better intellectual and scholarly credentials than Gandhi, had stated that the Mahabharatha war is genuine.

Recent excavations in Cambay in the sea of Gujarat , has revealed a submerged city within the sea, and pottery and some other articles have been recovered from it. This is eerily similar to Dwaraka, which is situated in Gujarat, and which according to the Mahabharatha , was swallowed by the sea after Krishna's death.

However more important than the arguments or debate or theorising on whether the Mahabharatha war is genuine or not, is Krishna's life and his message of non-attachment.

Krishna,if you view his life in general, is a far cry from the other prophets like Buddha, Mahavira, Muhammad ,Jesus, Moses who lived an austere life of self-denial.

The charecterestic of Krishna's life is his many-sidedness. He was great as a musician, as a scholar,as a yogi, as a dancer, as a poet, as a soldier, as an administrator, as a philosopher and spiritual master, and as a gentleman.

Krishna , through out his life was known for his cheerfulness and his funloving nature and mischief . He stole the butter and ghee of the gopis, teased them and flirted with them, stole their clothes while they were bathing, sang songs in the moonlight(which he loved) and danced with them. He was also known for his sense of humour and cracked jokes spontaneously.


Can you imagine the Buddha dancing gaily with young women, or Jesus playing a flute or Muhammad singing songs in praise of nature and life or Moses cracking jokes?

And even though Krishna's life was a tragedy, he always faced life with non-attachment and equanimity, and a perpetual cheerful smile in his face to the very end.

As Osho says in his classic "Krishna :The man and his philosophy", Krishna represents a new order of humanity, Krishna combined in himself the spiritual charecterestics of Buddha, and the materialistic charecterestics of Zorba the Greek. He was himself steeped in non-attachment,yoga, equanimity of mind, spirituality and at the same time he enjoyed life to the maximum.He was in short Zorba the Buddha.

Krishna was the personification of his teaching,"The wise man is he who is intensely peaceful in the midst of intense action, and intensely active in the midst of intense peace."


Sri Dutta Gurumali, an Indian spiritual master, has stated that Kriishna was the greatest yogi the world has ever known, and the greatest bhogi(enjoyer of life) too that the world has ever known, in the last 5000 years.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, an Indian enlightened master, and who is the creator of the Art of Living, bases his institutions philosophy on this trait of Krishna, and has stated "God loves fun."

We all don't need to be staunch followers of Krishna, but let us assimilate this beautiful trait of Krishna, namely Zorba the Buddha.

 

I know this. That's why I said...unless we're actually doing something...there's no use in sitting here arguing about what we wish would happen. And you can most definetely be active and leave everything to God... submitting yourself to His Lotus Feet does not necessaryly mean sitting in a cave somewhere forever...


I also agree with Jedi in a bit. Because you have to look at this anthropologically....not just ethno-centrically... half the problem is because we fail to see things from eachother's point of view. We just walk around that our high horse it right and so on. Though the Gita and the Koran may be misunderstood sometimes...it may also offer great strength and love of God for some people...you can't take that away...the scripture isn't the problem... its our lack of understanding of eachother. We all assume things about eachother....and so we take these ethnocentric tendencies and jump on what we supppose about other peoples without sometimes even meeting them...this is why I say we follow spiritual path and learn to love our neighbors..because once you can put yourself in someone else's shoes and see the things you have in common...then you can begin to work our differences of opinion. It would take a long time before we would perhaps stop wars but you never know.

I don't know...sometimes it feels like a better approach. I went to a peace ralley for an Israeli Palistinean peace allience and there was a documentary about their peace movement and that's what happened over there... the people of Israel and Palistine had never actually met eachother and when they did they realized that their hardships were the same (they never actually like each other or agree with their differences of opinion) and therefore decided to unite together to work to stop the wars and such in their area....

 

Jedi - it's not only that I see the koran as supporting war - so do the Islamist hate merchants. That's the problem.

I'm not saying we should force people to re-consider their beliefs, I am suggesting that the masses of humanity are, as Voltaire said 'apt for every yoke' - ie that they believe what those they regard as authorities, be they religious or secular, tell them to believe.

In this age, I think it is dangerous for people to believe that god sanctions warfare, because the consequences of big wars now are so devastating.

I don't know how the negative cycle of each new generation recieving the same brainwashing as their predecessors can be interupted - probably only through a process of education and gradual change.

God didn't personally write any of the worlds's scriptures. They are the work of human beings - perhaps they were inspired by some higher intelligence - but what they wrote was fitted to the age in which they lived. Under the present conditons, to continue with the old values seems suicidal.

Perhaps the human rights issue has to be seen in another light.
Maybe in this instance something like the Benthamite principle of utility has to be brought into play -'the greatest happiness for the greatest number' - if the so callled 'human rights' of a minority of believers have to be breached in order to change things, then perhaps there is no choice. It is less of an abuse than allowing further religious violence. They have no consideration of human rights when they send out a suicide bomber. Only the 'rights' of those who believe as they do.

 

Right - I guess that partly the reason they've never met and realized they're all the same is due to entrenched cultural identities and so on. Partly, that comes from having these competing religions - but in the Israel/Palestine case, as in many others. religion is used as a screen for what are basically territorial conflicts.
What I'm trying to get at is that the Koran CAN be interpreted to support war - maybe the Gita could too.
If we could draw a line under these old religions which have not brought peace in thousands of years, and have different scriptures which totally reject war, then the possibility of such twisting of the positive message could be avoided in future.

On the basis of the Koran, it is possible to convince a person - a young man with a young family even - to go out and kill both themself and others indisciminately on the grounds that Allah desires such things, and that the bomber will go straight to an exalted position in paradise.
Remove the underlying script for this - ie the scripture which is obviously open to such an interpretation,, and it wouldn't happen.

But in the case of Islam it's worse than that, because shia and sunni muslims seem to have no problem in killing each other as well as unbelievers, with the same belief that it's doing god's will for which they will be rewarded.

 

There's only a limited amount any idividual can do. But at least we're discussing these issues, and maybe somewhere it might make someone think.......

I don't do much - I am in Amnesty International, I support anti-war campaigns and so on, and speak out where I get chance. I try to be positive, and empathize with others....wish I could do more, but can't see what.

If we can get really tuned into the real spiritual energy, that will make us filled with love, and then we won't want to go out and harm anything....and I wonder if sometimes, religion doesn't actually keep us from that, rather than being the means by which it can be done. Certainly, something like a warrior's code has no place in such a scheme as far as I can see.