Killing these
Must breed but anguish, Krishna! If they be
Guilty, we shall grow guilty by their deaths;
Their sins will light on us, if we shall slay
Those sons of Dhritirashtra, and our kin;
What peace could come of that, O Madhava?1
For if indeed, blinded by lust and wrath,
These cannot see, or will not see, the sin
Of kingly lines o’erthrown and kinsmen slain,
How should not we, who see, shun such a crime—
We who perceive the guilt and feel the shame.
—Bhagavad Gita 1:382
Mohandas Gandhi called the Bhagavad Gita a book of priceless worth.3 He referred to it for guidance and recited certain verses from it as daily prayers. He first encountered the Bhagavad Gita in 1889 when he was twenty years old while studying law in England. Fellow students introduced him to Sir Edwin Arnold’s English version of the Bhagavad Gita, The Song Celestial. The Bhagavad Gita quickly found its way into Gandhi’s heart and became part of the inspiration for his teaching of nonviolence, even though the Bhagavad Gita seems to advocate fighting. Gandhi took the Bhagavad Gita as a metaphor, without denying that a historical battle may have taken place. Gandhi asserted that although the Bhagavad Gita is set at the beginning of a war, and that the opening chapters clearly speak in favor of war, its teachings when practiced lead unquestionably to nonviolence, peace, introspection, honor, devotion, and selfless service. Gandhi read the Bhagavad Gita in the context of its time when war was a standard method of resolving disagreements. He thought that the idea of war might seem brutal to some today, just as the habit of drinking milk today might seem cruel and barbaric to some in future generations. The question of how to conduct oneself in each age, he believed, must be answered within the norms of that age.
Even though Lord Krishna urges Prince Arjuna to do his duty as a warrior in a time of war, the Bhagavad Gita moves swiftly away from the subject of warfare and offers neither military strategy nor combat advice. Instead, it delves into spiritual ethics, the practice of devotion, and knowledge of the Divine. It is indeed, as Gandhi suggests, difficult to imagine how studying the Bhagavad Gita could lead to violence. How, then, do we reconcile its message of union with the Divine and its placement on the eve of a fierce battle? Eknath Easwaran argues that the Bhagavad Gita is not properly part of the Mahabharata. Instead, he asserts that it was likely inserted into the epic poem, and that its message does not develop the story of war but is somewhat at odds with it.4 Notably, the outcome of the battle is not happiness but loss and regret. So, if the Bhagavad Gita is to be taken as in favor of war, it is important to consider the heartbreaking outcome: the destruction of almost everyone. In that regard, its message may be thought of as a warning about the tragedy of war.
The battle in the Mahabharata may also be thought of metaphorically as the war taking place within an individual and the Bhagavad Gita as the spiritual manual that—when followed—changes our inclination from struggling with our lower urges to pursuing the highest that is within us. For the modern reader, the question is less about whether to wage war in today’s world and more about how to navigate through the competing powers of darkness and light in our own lives. The Bhagavad Gita explains that, when swayed by obsession, greed, or anger, we begin a downward-spiraling journey away from our true nature. It advises us to be disciplined and to turn away from our lower urges, fixing our mind on love and doing what is ours to do as an offering of devotion to the Creator. In this way, rather than as a guide for how to engage in war, the Bhagavad Gita is a manual for developing a peaceful mind by disengaging from unhealthy obsessions and the desire to control life.
We may not be in the habit of physically assaulting others, but war may be waging in our minds where our thoughts are fleeing from fears; wrestling with suspicion, jealousy, and envy; or being tempted by the impulse to retaliate, just like the characters in the Mahabharata. When we become mesmerized by lower thoughts—such as pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth—we find ourselves harvesting the yield that matches these powerful urges. Suppression of such inner battles can’t be accomplished by a strict act of will alone or through self-condemnation. It comes, the Bhagavad Gita says, through yielding to and serving Divinity, dwelling on Divinity, and then acting appropriately.
To accomplish this spiritual approach to life, the Bhagavad Gita emphasizes the importance of managing the mind, which it acknowledges is indeed capricious and difficult to manage. In chapter four, verse thirty-four, Arjuna describes the mind as being as impossible to control as the wind. Lord Krishna agrees but assures him that it can be done. He says that inner turmoil ceases for the one who has appropriately controlled their thoughts, reactions, and compulsions. The practical instructions in the Bhagavad Gita on how to achieve this stability of mind are less detailed than one might expect. Perhaps precise instructions were not deemed to be necessary because the original early reader was already familiar with the practice of sitting in meditation. Lord Krishna’s sparse instructions, which I expand upon in my book The Power of Meditation: An Ancient Technique to Access Your Inner Power, are to select an appropriately clean and quiet place, sit straight, keep your eyes from wandering by focusing the gaze on the tip of your nose, and become engrossed in the Divine. This practice, Lord Krishna says, will dissolve all fears and integrate all the parts of your being for lasting joy.
And the Bhagavad Gita does issue a stern warning, that failure to address the inner battle of our unruly minds and lowest urges will lead to disastrous results. In a surprisingly harsh tone, a switch from the typical intimacy and warmth throughout, chapter sixteen spells out the danger of succumbing to those negative tendencies that lead us downward and away from our spiritual selves. Perhaps these competing tendencies—one leading us upward to freedom and the other leading us downward to bondage—are like the warring families of the Mahabharata. One is noble, governed by duty and honor; the other is ruled by competition, power, and is willing to abandon honor to succeed. Two families sharing one origin—in other words, both good and evil from the same source, turning the winner into the loser and vice versa.
As mentioned before, the language in this chapter is sharply different in tone, possibly to emphasize the serious consequences of following our lower impulses. As a remedy, it lists details of the virtues that must be embodied to displace tendencies which, in various editions of the Bhagavad Gita, are described as deadly sins, demonic natures, or the degenerate destiny. Stephen Mitchell, in his notes to the introduction of Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation, suggests that chapters thirteen to eighteen do not match the poetry and spirituality of the rest of the Bhagavad Gita and may be a later addition, either written by a different author or for reaching a less spiritually mature audience with practical guidance for self-improvement.
The Bhagavad Gita offers fearlessness, purity of heart, dedication, generosity, truthfulness, and sincerity as the antidotes to hypocrisy, pride, arrogance, and harshness. The three gates, the Bhagavad Gita says, by which we enter self-destructive behaviors are desire, anger, and greed, which, when succumbed to, lead in a progressively intensifying downward spiral to a delusional hell of our own making. The way out of such a degenerate destiny, the Bhagavad Gita advises, is to turn away from desire, anger, and greed; to be firm in spiritual study; to pursue the understanding of what Divinity is; and then to let your choices and actions be guided by that understanding. In other words, freedom comes from giving up trying to manipulate the outcome of the duties you perform in life, not in the sense of being indifferent to what happens but in the sense of putting your trust squarely on the inherent holiness at your center and having faith that serving it will produce peace and right results.
In my opinion, applying the lessons of the Bhagavad Gita cannot lead to war. Yet some people have indeed focused on the instruction to fight in a literal sense. Wendy Doniger, a professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, wrote that Gandhi ignored the warrior-encouraging Bhagavad Gita at his peril, because the man who killed him was driven by the Bhagavad Gita. That man was Nathuram Godse, and he shot two bullets at point-blank range, tragically killing Gandhi. Doniger writes, “Two days before his execution, Godse wrote a final letter to his parents in which he argued that ‘Lord Krishna, in war and otherwise, killed many a self-opinionated and influential persons for the betterment of the world, and even in the Gita He has time and again counseled Arjuna to kill his near and dear ones and ultimately persuaded him to do so.’ Evidently, Godse concluded that Krishna would have wanted him to assassinate the ‘influential’ Gandhi for the betterment of the world. Like the revolutionary Khudiram Bose,5 Godse carried a copy of the Gita on the morning of his execution.”6