The concept of renunciation in
Hinduism has been subject to astonishingly different interpretations. Renunciation
has been thought to necessitate meditation that one’s self is essentially the
same as brahman, which is being itself, which can be realized by focusing
on being conscious, or aware, without distracting thoughts and desires. This is
Shankara’s position, whereas Ramanuja, who emphasized Bhukti devotion to the
god Krishna, saw renunciation as detachment from desires without giving up
action. Detached action or meditation. Which is preferred. In the Bhagavad-Gita,
the former has the upper hand, but that does not mean that the text does not
contain contradicting passages. It may that transcending contradiction lies
above knowledge as well as renunciation in either of its meanings.
In chapter 5 of the Gita,
Krishna tells Arjuna that dispassionate action is superior to renunciation.
Regarding renunciation and Karma-Yoga, “the Karma-Yoga is better than (mere) renunciation
of action.”[1]
In the next chapter, Krishna essentially redefines renunciation as pertaining
to a person “who performs the action to be done, regardless of action’s fruit.”
Such a person is “a renouncer and a yogin.” In contrast, a person who “is
inactive” is not.[2] In
short, not only is karma-yoga better than renunciation of action, the
latter but not the former is actually renunciation. This is antithetical
to Advaita philosophy, so it is difficult for me to conceive of how it
and Gita 6.1 can be reconciled, but why must everything be reconciled in
a religious text, a faith-narrative, if it contains different paths that
lead to the same end even though they jostle for supremacy over the other
means? Historical and form criticism pale in comparison to resisting the
temptation to eclipse the distinctly religious meaning in a
faith-narrative. Hans Frei, in Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative,
advocates focusing on the meaning while reading and studying a religious text.
This approach was arguably the Yale hermeneutical theology, Brevard Child’s
canonical method notwithstanding, during at least the last few decades of the
twentieth century.
Even though Frei’s hermeneutic
is applicable even to Hinduism, positing one, consistent religious meaning onto
the Gita may actually be but a gloss imported from the Abrahamic
religions in place of what are actually several distinct, even contradictory
religious meanings. Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances may be
apt in describing the relations thereof, but even that notion does not account
for contradictions. Foisting one consistent religious meaning on a text may
also be a projection of the rationalist reader rather than being in the text
itself. Lest such a reader be disappointed, liberation (moksa) can be
said to be a Hegelian synthesis at a higher level than either interpretation of
renunciation. Brahman itself, including the consciousness (raw
awareness) that being itself has (or is), transcends pairs of
opposites, whereas the Gita itself does not.
To be sure, that text does
point beyond its internal contradictions, and thus itself. After having Krishna
assert that a person “who does not hate or hanker after (anything) is to be
known as a perpetual renouncer,” the author has that deity state: “For, without
(the influence of) the pairs-of-opposites, [such a person] is easily released
from bondage.”[3] By
implication, Brahman transcends pairs-of-opposites too, a person’s atman
(self) being in reality the same as Brahman. Indeed, yogins
whose “defilements have dwindled, (whose) dualities are destroyed,
(whose) selves are controlled, (and who) delight in the good of all beings”
reach “extinction in the world-ground.”[4]
Transcending dualities in the world ultimate results in one’s very self (atman)
no longer being a distinct entity in brahman, which is being itself.
Even the apparent contradiction in that which has been extinguished being in being
is transcended by a yogin.
Hence, a scripture itself can
imply that the pairs-of-opposites within it can be, and in fact actually are,
transcended by enlightened readers. Moreover, as the example of the
nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Ramakrishna illustrates, scripture itself can
be transcended by genuine religious experience, such as in devotion to a deity.
It is a pity that literalist religionists hold such people back in what
Nietzsche calls the ressentiment of the weak who foist, “Thou shalt
not!” to beguile the strong, free-spirits from confidently exercising their
innate strength. Breathing in bad air can compromise a person’s vitality.
Whether or not to apply philosophical texts in interpreting religious texts is
just one instance of the tension, the strong being bold in drawing on what is
for others exogenous material.
In Gita 6.8, Krishna lauds the yogin whose “self is satisfied with knowledge and worldly knowledge.”[5] Is he referring respectively to scripture and secular book-knowledge? If so, then the earlier verse in which Krishna states that certain “ascetics of severe vows” offer “material-objects as sacrifice, austerity (tapas) as sacrifice, Yoga as sacrifice, and knowledge (gained from) study as sacrifice” seems to be contradicted.[6] But not everything listed is exogenous to religion, as yoga is included. Furthermore, Feuerstein claims that the compound svadhyaya-jnana “could possibly be translated as ‘book knowledge,’ but the phrase could also mean ‘knowledge and study.”[7] Especially the latter translation does not in itself exclude the study of a scriptural text, such as the Upanishads or the Gita. I may have projected the contradiction that exists in historical Christianity, wherein Paul eschewed the knowledge of Athens and yet Augustine and Aquinas drew copiously on Plato and Aristotle, respectively (though not completely respectively). Drawing on Eliade and Geertz, it may be said that knowing the otherness of the other requires bracketing (époché) one’s own background. Adding Nietzsche, it can be said that a sufficient strength of will-power is necessary to master the seemingly intractable instinctual (innate) urges of egotism.
2. Gita 6.1. in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 157.
3. Gita 5.3 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 149. I have changed Feuerstein’s use of brackets to parentheses because in quoting Feuerstein’s text, I use brackets to add words to those which Feuerstein has written. This is consistent with Feuerstein having used brackets to add words to the text he was translating. I submit that this is a legitimate exception to the general rule that that which is quoted should be quoted as is, including the punctuation marks in the text.
4. Gita 5.25 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 155. Italics added to certain English words.
5. Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 159.
6. Gita 4.28 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 143.
7. Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 143n29.
