Lord Krishna in the Bhagavadgita

The Hindu myth, the Bhagavadgita, is typically regarded as placing the god Krishna above not only the other Hindu gods—here rendered merely as Krishna’s various functionalities—but also Brahman, which is being and consciousness themselves. As Krishna is incarnated in human form, placing him at the peak of the Hindu pantheon—in fact, even reducing the latter to the extent that Hinduism can be regarded as monotheist—compromises the wholly-other quality of the divine that is based on it extending beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion. In other word, the importance of Krishna’s role in the Gita comes at a cost. Depicting Krishna as the “Supreme Person” connotes less transcendence than does depicting Brahman as being and consciousness (of the whole). In going against the grain by making Brahman the basis even of Krishna, Shankara, a Hindu theologian, philosopher, and ascetic of the eighth century, CE, restores transcendence to its importance in not only Hinduism, but also religion itself as a distinctive domain of human endeavor distinguished by its unique element of transcendence.

According to Shankara, Lord Krishna is born “in order to safeguard the spiritual power in the world,” which can also be expressed as “the state of Brahmanhood.”[1] Such safeguarding is especially valuable when cravings dominate and a decline of “discriminative knowledge” impair those people who would otherwise be practitioners of Dharma, the law of righteousness.[2]  Besides promoting prosperity, that law is oriented to the “emancipation of living beings,” for being liberated from samsara is the summum bonum for a human being.[3] Shankara states that “the purpose of the science of the Gita is to set forth the summum bonum, which consists in the total cessation of the transmigratory life and its causes.”[4] Transmigration does not take place in the world; the term is inherently spiritual, or religious, because it takes place in a realm between death and birth, and thus not in the world that we inhabit during a lifetime.

Although Shankara claims that the “unborn, immutable, Lord of beings, and, in essence, eternally pure conscious and free” Brahman becomes manifest in being “embodied and born as a man, for ensuring the welfare of the world,” I submit that for “the well-being of all living beings” is a more accurate description because whether or not an atman (self) is reborn or not is not contained in the world, but, rather, transcends it.[5] Even just trying in vain to imagine what it means for Brahman to be “eternally pure conscious” goes inherently beyond the limits of human cognition and perception. The Vedic law that is oriented to balancing embracing works with embracing cessation or renunciation pales in comparison to the extent that promoting balance in the world is taken as an end rather than as a means toward liberation from the world. Shankara’s stance that maya is merely illusion rather than being the causality by which Brahman emanates multiplicity in the world can itself be taken as an admission that the ways of Brahman are wholly other and thus not readily translatable into terms that we can fathom. Hence the Gita lauds whoever “is quiescent, firmly seated, silent, not thinking any thought.”[6]

In so far as the Vedic law of works is viewed in terms of promoting prosperity in the world—which is to say, “done with desire for fruits” rather, or even more, than in “dedication to God and without expectation of rewards,”—practicing the law does not even indirectly subserve “the attainment of emancipation” though admittedly such practice “leads its practitioners to the higher stations of heavenly beings.”[7] Madhusudana Sarasvati, another commentator of the Gita, claims that the first step in the “disciplines for Liberation” as presented “as the purpose” of the Gita, is “the performance of selfless work (niskama-karma) by rejecting rites and duties meant for personal gain (kamya-karma) and the prohibited actions (nisidha-karma).”[8] Of course, Shankara’s interpretation hardly promotes a worldly orientation. In fact, a proclivity in favor of the transcendent is implied, especially as “desire for fruits” can be included in cravings. Be in the world but not of it, Augustine warns Christians. Similarly, Shankara claims that the science of the Gita “is aimed at emancipation,” which characterizes an individual atman going back into unmanifest Brahman; hence Shankara also claims that the science “sets forth the ultimate Truth that is synonymous with Vasudeva, the content of Supreme Brahman.”[9] Having come from Brahman, an individual atman is sustained by Brahman in life and at death goes back into Brahman; the welfare of the world in which we live is thereby relegated, especially when an atman is liberated from this cycle of samsara and remains unmanifest in Brahman. Madhusudana Sarasvati’s description of the Unitive Vision as the “immediate Knowledge of the identity of Brahman and the Self”[10]—an identity that is certainly not lost on Shankara—anticipates the final fulfillment of an atman retiring in Brahman. This summum bonum, rather than the desire for earthly treasure and even religious ways to promote it, and even the achievement of balance in the world, grounds the Gita as distinctly religious in nature, and thus as firmly classifiable within the domain of religion.

1. Shankara, Srimad Bhagavad Gita Bhasya of Sri Samkaracarya. Trans. A. G. Warrier (Madras, IN: Sri Ramakrishna Math), p. 2.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 4.
5. Ibid., p. 3.
6. Ibid., p. 4.
7. Ibid., pp. 4-5.
8. Madhusudana Sarasvati, Bhagavad-Gita. Trans. by Swami Gambhirananda, p. 22.
9. Shankara, Srimad Bhagavad Gita Bhasya of Sri Samkaracarya, p. 5.
10. Madhusudana Sarasvati, Bhagavad-Gita., p. 23.