Even though the Bhagavadgita
is just a small part of the Mahabharata Hindu epic, the popularity of
the former book in Hindu households has led to it being referred to as the
Hindu Bible. This likeness should be taken at face value, for the contents in
the Gita are very different than the theological context of the Bible, whether
just the Torah, the Talmud, or the New Testament. Even though the virtue of kindness
or love issuing out in compassion to other people is a shared descriptor of the
Hindu Lord Krishna, which is the highest god in the Gita, and the Christian
Lord Jesus, the ideational dissimilarities between the Gita and the Bible
should not be glossed over. Put another way, not even the symbol of the mandala,
which Joseph Campbell includes as the religious archetype of wholeness in The
Power of Myth, should dispel the notion that religions contain unique and
thus different philosophical and theological ideas and even just stances.
In the Bhagavadgita, for
example, “(y)oga practices and knowledge of salvation are equated with ritual
performances in which all defilements and desires are offered up in the ‘sacrificial
fire’ (agni) of knowledge.”[1]
In ritual, basic elements on Earth, such as fire, water, and food, which,
astonishingly, are labeled as deities in the Chandogya Upanishad, are related
to, and perhaps even vicariously connect, the cosmos and the human person. Knowledge
of liberation from rebirths (samsara) involves or even necessitates the
sacrifice of desires. The word salvation is extremely salient in
Christianity, and yet is hardly innate to Hinduism; the connotation that being
saved by the vicarious sacrifice (as per Anselm’s theology) of a god-man once
and for all so that any believer is made right thereby with God (i.e.,
justified by faith, as per Luther’s theology) is foreign to Hinduism. To be
sure, the inclusion the element of food in both the Hindu sacrificial ritual
and in the Christian Eucharistic ritual (i.e., Communion) and even that the
food is consecrated in the latter with the real presence of the divine (agape)
and food is labeled at a deity in a Upanishad should not blind a non-Hindu
reader of the Gita into supposing that the book’s paradigm like the one
upon which the Judeo-Christian Bible rests.
Even taking into account
Gnostic Christianity, the emphasis which the Gita places on knowledge, especially
that which Krishna imparts to Arjuna, distinguishes Hinduism from Christianity,
where at least Paul distinguishes theology from philosophy—only the knowledge
of the wise being vain.[2]
This demarcation, and prejudice against philosophy, does not exist in Hinduism.
Malinar, for instance, refers explicitly to “the various religious and
philosophical doctrines presented in the [Gita]” without driving an
artificial wedge between them.[3]
Furthermore, even though
Krishna is portrayed as the high deity and even the portal through which Brahman
itself can be glimpsed in full—as if that were possible for a human being—it is
a mistake to label the Gita as monotheist. Even though Krishna is
portrayed in the Gita as “the mighty ruler and creator of the world and
its dharmic order, as well as the ever-liberated and transcendent ‘highest self’”
and thus as “the most powerful Lord and yogin,” with “power over nature
(prakrti)” and being “the cosmic cause of activity” yet “detached from
the created world, being forever ‘unborn’ and transcendent,”[4]
it is a mistake to conclude that Krishna’s supreme qualities renders the Gita
as monotheist.
As if the Gita were
akin to Hobbes’ Leviathan, Malinar states that the “monotheistic
theology in [the Gita] also offers an interpretation of kingship and
royal power” simply because Krishna is revealed “as the highest god.”[5]
Even in the Hebrew Bible where other gods are referred to, they are not credited
with being real gods, so it is not as though Yahweh is the highest god; rather,
Yahweh is the only god, and thus God.[6]
Also, the accolades that Malinar attributes to Krishna do not make Krishna merely
a manifestation of Yahweh, for the latter did not create a dharmic order and is
not liberated as the highest-self. Although “detached from the created world,
being forever ‘unborn’ and transcendent” also characterizes Yahweh, or God, I
wonder whether Malinar was knowingly or unknowingly drawing on Christian
theology in describing Krishna in such “Western” terms.
Furthermore, I submit that not
even Brahman considered as the highest or supreme god in Hinduism renders the
religion monotheist. One twentieth-century American philosopher, Keith Yandel, erroneously
interpreted the Hindu philosopher and theologian, Shankara (8th century,
CE), as characterizing Hinduism as monotheist simply because, according to
non-dualism, the Hindu deities are merely appearances, or manifestations, of
Brahman. As the ground-being of the world’s multiplicity, Brahman cannot be said
have what we think of as intelligence as it differs from the awareness or
consciousness of being itself qua being. Neither can Brahman be thought of as a discrete
entity, for Brahman is the being of everything—of all existence, or, perhaps more
accurately, of existence itself. It is surely difficult, if not impossible, to
view raw being as an entity; rather, being is the existential basis (rather
than an attribute) of entities. So, I’m not convinced that Brahman can even be
said to be a deity. It is possible that English translators of the Gita (and
the Upanishads) have used a familiar word whose meaning differs from what the writers
of the text(s) had in mind. In any case, when the warrior Arjuna gets a glimpse
of Brahman itself by Krishna revealing himself as he really is, it is not the
Abrahamic deity, or God, that Arjuna sees in his epiphany.
As yet another example of a
leitmotif of the Gita that is not easily convertible into any of the Abrahamic
faiths, Krishna urges Arjuna to engage on the external battlefield with “detached
action” as a way to avoid “karmic bondage” even as Arjuna is active and
performs his social duties.[7]
To be sure, to be detached from sinful desires in Christianity bears a rough
similarity to the “detached action,” but here even the desire not to harm relatives
is a problem. Also, the very notion of “karmic bondage” is utterly foreign to the
Abrahamic religions. In Christianity, for example, the bondage is to sin, whose
basis lies within rather than as actions (even less in the residue of past
actions).
Although religions can be said
to bear Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances” to each other, the urge to
minimize or overlook the differences between religions, as in depicting one in
terms of another (or that another uses), should be checked and corrected for,
lest scholars of religion unintentionally remake particular religions into more
familiar terms. One of the main benefits of studying more than one religion,
especially religions other than one’s own, is the access to different ideas and
theologies/philosophies. A person’s own religious/philosophical paradigm can be
made transparent to oneself even to be seen as an alternative rather than as the
unquestioned and unrecognized default. Unconsciously distorting other religions
into more familiar terms diminishes this realization.
1. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and
Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 4.
2. 1.
Cor. In contrast, the Hebrew Bible contains the verse, “God knows the thoughts
of men.” Paul adapts this to: “God knows the thoughts of the wise; they are vain.”
Jerusalem is fine; Athens is not. Such a dichotomy does not exist in Hinduism.
3. Malinar,
The Bhagavadgita, p. 5.
4. Ibid., p. 6.
5. Ibid.,
p. 4.
6. Also,
whereas Hobbes’ notion of a sovereign power, whether a king or an assembly, has
absolute political and religious (i.e., interpreting divine law) power within a
territory, Hindu kings have traditionally been at least ritually dependent on
the Brahmin priests in the main temple not only for another year of legitimacy,
but also as a means of gaining power by giving land away through the auspices
of the temple.
7. Malinar,
The Bhagavadgita, p. 4.
