Chaitanya Charan spoke at
Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025 about action and transcendence in the Bhagavad-gita.
Arjuna faces adversity even though he is a good. That life is suffering is a
Noble Truth in Buddhism. Why noble? Even suffering can be ennobling. That life
can be unfair is a given in the Gita. Getting less than we think we
deserve can be from our bad karma in a previous life. So, we can’t really know
what we actually deserve, so it is important to accept results. They aren’t in
our control anyway, whereas our present karma is. So, the advice is to be
committed to doing your best in acting, but with detachment on whatever results
from the action. I contend that detachment from pride and especially arrogance
goes automatically with the transcendence of detachment from not only the
results of one’s actions, but also from the created realm itself, which by
analogy looks smaller and smaller as the planet Earth does from a spacecraft on
the way to the Moon.
Acceptance and commitment to acting
lead to transcendence, spirituality goes from being an anchor to being an
airplane. In terms of bhukti devotion, Krishna is the higher reality. As
a person grows spiritually, the deity becomes more important and the world’s
importance becomes less. Transcendence is a matter of being more oriented to
“another reality” than to the world, and thus such a person might seem to be not
fully “here” in conversations with other people. Differing somewhat from Charan’s
interpretation of the Gita, I contend that the higher “reality” in the Gita
can be understood to be a deity itself, as in bhukti devotionalism, or,
as Shankara claims in his commentary on the Gita, reaching the higher
reality can be thought of as an ongoing realization that a person can
have that one’s self (atman) is really the very same as brahman,
which is conscious, limitless, powerful, and blissful being. In bhukti
(i.e., devotion to a deity), according to Charan, a deity as a higher reality
that is to be the primary focus even while the person is committed to actions
in the world. Charan pointed out that bhukti
devotion does not mean that a person should not be fixed on a goal, for a goal
is held before acting whereas results are afterward.
In the Gita, according to Charan,
Arjuna is initially perplexed. If he does not fight, disaster on the
battlefield would be likely because the other side, which has unjustly cast out
Arjuna and his brothers from a share in rulership, would win. If Arjuna does
fight, he might kill his teachers and even one of his grandfathers. The Gita
is essentially a call to action; the philosophical basis for acting is not
the point in the Gita. Act, but with detachment from whatever results.
Act with wisdom; act with a higher consciousness, which, means transcending
attachment to things of the world to a higher realization.
Whether in being oriented to Charan’s bhukti higher reality personified as Krishna or Shankara’s impersonal brahman, that the process of transcending the world shifts a person’s orientation such that the world looks smaller and the higher reality looks larger is decisive in Charan’s view of spirituality gained from having studied and meditated on the Gita text. He did not mention, however, the compatible idea that a natural or automatic sense of humility is an important inherent byproduct of shifting (and then holding) one’s primary focus to a reference-point that is by definition, according to the Christian theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius, beyond the limits of human thoughts, perception, and emotions. Even in the realization that one’s atman is identical to brahman, a person’s ego cannot be front and center if the reference point (i.e., brahman) is not sourced in and thus limited to the world in which we live (i.e., the created realm, whether it is created by brahman or Krishna). Being limitless is a quality of brahman.
Human beings are so steeped in pride (i.e., the presumptions of ego, as if deserving to be on stilts during a flood) that the byproduct of having a qualitatively unique kind of orientation (i.e., in terms of religious transcendence) is crucial not only to being able to be at peace, but also for interpersonal relations to be so as well. A focus on Jesus or the kingdom of God can serve the same purpose for a Christian even without taking into account the leitmotif of humility in the Gospels. In fact, that humility is a byproduct of maintaining a transcendental orientation even while performing actions in the world and relating to other people is especially valuable precisely because intending to be humble can be such a weak motive in human nature. I suppose that relying more on a natural byproduct of a distinct kind of orientation than on an intention to have the byproduct itself as a quality may be Taoist in nature. In other words, it may be more natural to human nature to assume an orientation to a transcendent referent point or entity than it is to try to be humble, given the gravitas of the human ego. This is not to say that valuing humility highly as a virtue is not another means by which a person can be naturally humble.
