13 ms·

Oppenheimer and the Gita (2014)

162 points by benbreen 7y ago

rblion 7y ago
Great article, confirms what I always believed about Oppenheimer and many others in that time. My grandma used to read the Gita to me every day when I was a toddler before I started school. She had a stroke in December and in her final days, I would read verses from the Gita to her returning the favor. Death is the greatest teacher of all, teaches us the value of life and power of decision. Since her passing, I've grown a lot and feel much like Oppenheimer as I work on my 'science project' for the sake of all beings on this planet. It may succeed, it may be ignored. It doesn't matter, I will be dead soon and all that will matter is that I fulfilled my 'dharma'. Gandhi always kept his copy of the Gita with him and it was his guidebook for his satyagraha movement which led to India's independence. Some Gita verses that help me, might be helpful to you too: “It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.” “Show good will to all, Be fearless and pure; never waiver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life. Give freely. Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve. Realize the truth of the scriptures; learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation. Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all. Cultivate vigor, patience, will purity; avoid malice and pride Then, Arjuna, you will achieve your divine destiny.”
- thewhitetulip 7y ago
  Gita means many things when you read it from a perspective It helps you deal with life aka tells you that nothing is more important than Karma and that money/sex/costly things are bad It also encourages familal war. It literally tells Arjuna to wage a war against his entire family "for righteousness". That being said, Gita is great.
  - rblion 7y ago
    It's important, in my view, to not only study but to sincerely experiment and eventually embody the teachings. I also read the Upanishads and the Dhammapada often to get the full message of Vedanta and living in accordance with Dharma. I also study Greek and Egyptian wisdom, it's amazing how much overlap there is when you put all of them side by side. I've spent a good deal of my 20's exploring the American National Parks and Native American plant medicines, the end result brought me closer to Dharma too. This will be a lifelong study and metanoia is an ongoing process as I transform lead (anger, lust, greed, pride, vanity, sloth, etc) into gold (peace, love, creativity, humility, earnestness, etc). Working for the welfare of all by creating economic value for them that is rooted in empathy is, in my opinion, the wisest way forward for capitalism.
    - thewhitetulip 7y ago
      I understand. I have read Gita 2 times, in Sanskrit. The book was an excellent philosophy treatise, it opened my eyes which was rivaled only by Sapiens. But it still depends on the perspective. From one reading it teaches you that you don't need to obsess on material things
    - edmundsauto 7y ago
      Apologies for hijacking, but it's interesting how lead and gold have changed in possible uses in the past couple hundred years. Gold was scarce, and used for decoration. Lead was common, but used for (unfortunately) things like pipes. Now, gold is still highly prized as a store of value, while lead has continued to be found harmful (petrol, etc.) However, gold's electrical properties (and resistance to tarnish) make it a very valuable practical material. No point here, just interesting to think about how our perception of those materials has changed over time. (Kinda like how when aluminum was prized as great utensil material, because aluminum smelting took too much energy for what they had available.)
      - rblion 7y ago
        No worries! I am very fascinated by gold as an element, diamonds too. Buddha's 'Diamond Sutra' is very powerful and literally cuts through illusion. Gold is revered around the world by cultures of all climes and times, scientists and engineers as well. It's really something to marvel at! I find the history of alchemy fascinating too, how it evolved into chemistry as we know it today. Issac Newton was obsessed with it, I know people make fun of him for it but I will always admire his genius and his passion.
    - croh 7y ago
      Well said. Many philosophies are common in between religions. What amazes me how people focus on differences instead commonality. Indeed empathy is most important character.
- ultrasounder 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing your very poignant story!
- bigred100 7y ago
  My question is why as a Western dude who grew up with lots of exposure to Christian scripture and surrounding culture elements or churches I can visit am I gonna try and learn someone else’s religion (with none of those advantages) when even taking the “easy” route is extraordinary difficult?
  - narag 7y ago
    Some of those traditions are previous to Christianism and most likely had a strong influence on it. So maybe for context.
    - bigred100 7y ago
      So reading and learning a bit is cool. But I guess the part I wonder is how you’re gonna use it as a guidebook for life or something if you have none of the context and are kind of just guessing (maybe you’re not). For the record I actually have a similar issue with a lot of American Protestant Christians I’ve seen (have seemingly no connection to anyone but are convinced they can figure out how to successfully apply a 2000yr old middle eastern religious text to modern life on their own).
      - narag 7y ago
        I don't know. I wouldn't use any book as a guidebook for life, either if it was written 2000 years ago or yesterday. Actually most religious people I know have a bond to a community, being The Book kind of an identity "totem" of such community.
  - zahreeley 7y ago
    Hinduism is not a religion instead it’s a Dharma. There is no equivalent English word for it as English has limited vocabulary and fails to describe yogic sciences. Hinduism gives you a way to explore the life and even question the existence of God. Can we redefine God better? Yes we can. Define in a way it works for everybody and removes extremism.
  - justwake 7y ago
j0hnM1st 7y ago
Surprised to see this on HN - excellent promotion of right wing article!
- kranner 7y ago
  As someone who identifies with the left in India (and has always been atheist), I have to say this is unfair and really quite silly. The Gita and other religious and literary texts like it are important cultural artifacts. They have existed since before there was such a thing as left wing vs right wing. They may have been co-opted by particular political parties to suit particular ends, but that doesn't make them the property of those parties. Please don't associate them with politics in this way.
Shobji 7y ago
Great Article
Mugwort 7y ago
Very enjoyable short read. Almost as soon as Oppenheimer Trinity test was a success, Leslie Groves drove him out, revoked his security clearance, called him a communist and he suffered greatly as a result. Oppenheimer lost many of his friends and his career. Because he was portrayed as a communist he found it difficult to get a job or even get invited to conferences. A very sad end for such a great man. One can only gaze in awe at his career, his accomplishments. He even made an important contribution to General Relativity with Harvard graduate student Ryan Snyder that a collapsing star would indeed form a black hole according to GR. Whatever else could be said of him, He certainly fulfilled his Dharma.
Mugwort 7y ago
I've wanted to study Sanskrit for a while now but nobody around where I live can teach it. So I've been nibbling at at occasionally. Some points of pronunication are a bit vague such as there being two kinds of T's and D's which sound almost identical to me. I've read the Gita and the Uphanishad s in English (Eaknath Easwaran's translation). Here's my impression. It's definitely worth reading through a translation. You can read it not as philosophy or religion but simply to read it. That's why I read it. To climb the mountain of life a little bit higher to see more. To see a tiny bit of what men like Oppenheimer, Ghandi, Thoreau and 1.3 billion others have been inspired. I can now read most Devanagari characters, enough to recognize simple words when they appear to me in stores like "Dharma", "Karma" or "Tantra" etc. That said, I identify more closely with Judaism than anything else. You need a place to call home. Still, the Sanskrit language is fascinating and the Hindu scriptures have made a deep impression on me.
- monktastic1 7y ago
  Hindi has basically the same phonemes as Sanskrit. Any Hindi speaker should be able to pronounce the two d's and t's for you. And if you can find one who also speaks unaccented English, they can help you compare them with the English d and t. That said, by far the harder part of Sanskrit will be grammar and vocab.
- nemo 7y ago
  If you know German, Latin, or Greek it helps for understanding inflection in Sanskrit. Otherwise learning the eight cases of Sanskrit nouns is going to be really hard. I studied Sanskrit for a while many years ago in a Classic dept where I'd been studying Greek and Latin (alas, I can barely read Devanagari now), and it was mostly straightforward to understand the structures for the nouns and verbs - learning all the forms takes time and work and you need that to parse the syntax. But it's Sandhi that makes the language unusually hellish. If you've got a critical text or something with the works broken out, it's so not hard to read and get basics of syntax. But the originals of the classics the words are all compressed into long unbroken lines with subtle and difficult rules for joining words.
- canjobear 7y ago
  Check put Winthrop Sargent’s translation. It comes with a transcription and word-by-word gloss of the Sanskrit, so you don’t have to learn Devanagari.
momentmaker 7y ago
Bhagavad Gita is a deep scripture about yogic teachings. The premise of the story is a war between a family fighting for dominance. Arjuna is one of the greatest archer at the time and he was fighting against one side of his family. Both side sought out Lord Krishna for help for their cause. Lord Krishna gave each a choice - His army or Him as a guide. Arjuna chose Him as a guide and majority of the book is about the dialog between them. The scripture is deeply allegorical and metaphorical. Bayasa, the author, wrote it as a guide to live one's life (Self-Realization). The war is actually talking about the "war" every human being is fighting inside themselves. The "good" versus the "bad" or virtues versus vices. That's the whole reason why we suffer. It's all an inner journey :) I'd highly recommend reading The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda as his Master and other great saints explain more about it than I can.
- trianglem 7y ago
  What I took away from the Bhagvat Gita is that it is a treatise on why you should accept, internalize and submit to the role or place that society has assigned you.
  - momentmaker 7y ago
    Yes. Lord Krishna said that to Arjuna that you might fight because it's your "duty". The death blow Arjuna deals to one of his enemy is that that enemy's "karma". Arjuna is merely an instrument/tool of God/Lord Krishna. That enemy is already "dead" whether by Arjuna's hands or another's. That's why Lord Krishna said to Arjuna "Whatever you do, do unto Me." You're not the "doer", the "Doer" is Creation/God/shaki/energy/consciousness that's flowing within your body powering it through power of will. I wouldn't say "society" has assigned to you but more like what Life is has placed. "Why were you were at that exact time and place?" "Why did you encounter every single moment at that time and/or place?" "Why have you met the people you have throughout your life?" Cause-Effect (Karma) Even non-action is action which has its effect. That's why Lord Krishna chastised Arjuna for not fighting(non-action) because his ego didn't want to fight.
    - 7y ago
deepaksurti 7y ago
For a really deep study and interpretation of Gita by M K Gandhi [1] is recommended. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gospel-selfless-action-according-Gandhi/dp/8172291264 https://www.amazon.com/gospel-selfless-action-according-Gand...
WomanCanCode 7y ago
I've been fascinated by Sanskrit because some of the words sound so much like old english/germanic. There need to be more study done on indian languages because there have just soo many of them and every region has their own dialects. It's as if the tower of babel incident happened over there.
- danans 7y ago
  > words sound so much like old english/germanic. The relationship you are seeing was discovered nearly two centuries ago, and has been thoroughly studied since then [1]. > there have just soo many of them and every region has their own dialects. If linguistic diversity is the measure you are interested in, Papua New Guinea [2] and Sub Saharan Africa [3] are orders of magnitude more diverse that Europe and South or East Asia. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guinea https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guine... 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_Africa#Languages_and_ethnic_groups https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_Africa#Languages...
dbKooper 7y ago
Hinduism and ancient vedas is more of like a open source religion. So called guru's have created various meditation techniques using its knowledge and now selling it to the world. Damn i wish someone can decode it using AI and create an AI meditation guru.
- noonespecial 7y ago
  My Commodore Amiga used to give it a shot now and again.
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
    I nominate you for HN comment of the day!
  - dbKooper 7y ago
    then? What happened?
    - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
      Obviously, the system crashes. For those who didn't get the joke, "Guru Meditation" on Amiga is the equivalent of "Kernel Panic/Oops" on Unix.
lordleft 7y ago
The Gita is a triumph of Indian literature. Intriguingly, Gandhi held the Gita in great esteem and interpreted the warfare it depicts as fundamentally spiritual.
bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
The link to the original paper is dead, here is it. * The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer https://web.archive.org/web/20131126020921/http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/Hijiya.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131126020921/http://www.amphil...
rv-de 7y ago
I know, I know ... deep stuff. But, I read the Gita (German translation) and - frankly speaking - I was quite underwhelmed and didn't see the big deal about it. It's a rather dull and repetitive story about a guy going to war and having a chat over it with some Hindu god. The famous quotes masterfully recited by Dr. Oppenheimer are not being built up to - they just appear out of nowhere. My conclusion is that this pamphlet is rather overrated, though, no doubt plays historically an important role in Hindu religion and philosophy. I know this is an unpopular opinion as among a part of the tech crowd it seems be en vogue to engage in cargo cult spirituality by dwelling on literature which has been endorsed by reputed personalities.
- svat 7y ago
  Thank you for sharing your experience. It may be useful for, say, those writing an introduction to the Gita for certain audiences. Contrary to your impression, the Bhagavad Gita is not a “story”. Although the first chapter (of 18) does have some setting (owing to the place it occurs in the broader epic Mahabharata), when most people talk of the Gita they mean the content of the “chat” itself: what Krishna (“some Hindu god”) said to Arjuna (“a guy”). (Starting with Chapter 2, which is where many commentators began their commentary.) Also, the Gita is in a sense a concise summary of various ideas, also more extensively covered in the Upanishads and elsewhere. As one of the verses often recited before it says “sarvopaniṣado gāvo dogdhā gopālanandanaḥ / pārtho vatsaḥ sudhirbhoktā dugdhaṁ gītāmṛtaṁ mahat” — the analogy is that if you think of all the Upanishads as cows, then the cowherd Krishna to the calf Arjuna gave divine milk by extracting the Gita from them. It is not someone's thesis or argument — Krishna just reminded Arjuna of what he needed to be reminded of (and by extension, what most of us need to be reminded of). So it would make sense that to someone who's already familiar with the ideas, seeing them in one place in the Gita would have a different effect than to someone encountering them for the first time, and (apparently) without context.
bakul 7y ago
I think Wellerstein reads more into what Oppenheimer said (years later) about what he thought when he saw the explosion than what he may have meant. My take is that Oppenheimer was saying the quote from the Bhagvad Geeta accurately described his thoughts at the time. That with the atom-bomb we (the United States) have (the power to) become the destroyer of the whole world. I think what he said about Vishnu and Arjuna was to merely provide the context of the quote. He did not mean imply anything about his own duty. This is borne out by what he says next: “I suppose we all thought that, one way or another”. No matter what their personal motivation may be for working on the bomb, they must all have sensed the enormous destructive power of the bomb.
pravint 7y ago
I would highly recommend reading Bhagavat Gita(and other Vedic scriptures), it’s available freely with translation to many different languages here at [1]. Specific verse in article at [2] [1] https://www.vedabase.com/en/bg https://www.vedabase.com/en/bg [2]https://www.vedabase.com/en/bg/11/32 https://www.vedabase.com/en/bg/11/32
ultrasounder 7y ago
Also discovered this on a previous thread on HN; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940606 https://www.searchgita.com/ https://www.searchgita.com/ A beautiful tool that lets you search for particular cantos from the Tome.
danans 7y ago
The Bhagavad Gita is a bit like Moby Dick in that it is abstract enough that everyone projects their own interpretation onto it, filtered through their own experiences. However, because it is a religious text, people have been fighting over the meaning for millenia, often to justify or motivate one political stance or another, no doubt because motivating the protagonist to political action of physical battle is itself the most concrete reading of the Bhagavad Gita's meaning. But the Gita is just one highly contested chapter of the larger, arguably more interesting epic, the Mahabharata, which is the story of war and conflict spanning generations of an extended clan of warriors. The Mahabharata is a treasure trove of the complex sociology of ancient South Asia, and quite unlike the Gita, it's content is largely non-judgemental and mostly secular. In some traditional families, they actually prefer not to keep a copy of Mahabharata in the home per the superstition that it will engender conflict in the family, instead preferring "thou shalt" texts like the Bhagavad Gita, or Ramayana.
- denton-scratch 7y ago
  All of these long, ancient religious texts are palimpsests (by which I mean simply the work of multiple authors, over a period of time; I know that isn't the strict meaning, and indeed some of them are strictly palimpsests, i.e. documents that have been erased and written over). I don't know for sure that the BV is such a palimpsest; but it is not plausible that the Mahabharata as a whole is a record composed by a single author, at a point in history.
  - danans 7y ago
    > it is not plausible that the Mahabharata as a whole is a record composed by a single author, at a point in history. I agree. I don't think I argued against that? Responding to the wrong comment perhaps? The Bhagavad Gita in particular is a section of the Mahabharata that has seen more revisions over time than the rest of th epic. In fact the name of the purported author "Vyasa" itself means "arranger", implying that he was organizing stories he received from others.
throwaway564678 7y ago
Friendly reminder that, like all known religions, Hinduism fails to fit evidence & loses substantially on Occam's razor. It was most likely a means to preserve social order as society scaled up beyond small tribes. As someone who has deeply studied many of the Hindu religious scriptures when I used to believed in them, I'd say that one should look elsewhere for meaning and guidance and not take books like the Bhagavad Gita seriously at all.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  Occam's razor is a heuristic, not a commandment. The simpler explanation is more likely to be true, but it isn't always.
- edmundsauto 7y ago
  As a counterpoint, I think there are some good points to the book, regardless of anything about its history, or how it was intended. I'm willing to learn from any source, so long as the advice is good. I understand that many people dislike pithy advice, but I find them good reminders to ground myself. (I say this as an atheist, fwliw.)
- dang 7y ago
  Religious flamewar isn't welcome here. Please don't post like that, and please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
croh 7y ago
What I understood from Hindu philosophy - 1. Reality is advaita - it means single being or whole cosmos is one being. 2. Maya or illusion is 'consciousness without above knowledge'. This is a cause of suffering. 3. As long as you're in illusion, you will suffer because you consider yourself different than others. It is called 'I". As long as there is 'I', you're in Maya. 'I' give rise to you/he/she/they/animals. If idea of 'I' is not there then no you/he/she/they. All becomes one. I guess Douglas Hofstadter tried to explain same concept in GEB by using self-referential systems. (I might be wrong as I never able to finish book). 4. Enlightened Guru is very important in journey. Creation is considered as dense forest. Without Guru you can lose yourself. Guru appears when Chela is ready. You have to keep searching truth. 5. Law of Karma - Whatever is your current situation is your karma. How do you react to it is your free will ? 6. Creation is spontaneous per say. There is no reason behind it. 7. People can use different practices as per their nature to reach pt 1. 8. As long as there is desire, reincarnation will happen. Now problem is you may be man/woman/animal/cow in next birth. So treat everyone well (including species other than human being). You come in contact with different people (good or bad)/animals because of some relation (may be in previous birth). 9. Cow is considered sacred as she has human like emotions. She can live happily without human help but still she gives human everything even after treating her bad. It is considered great sacrifice e.g giving milk of your child to other species. What I like most is considering whole universe as family. Sometimes I feel sad as being human. Also I found many stoicism concepts in Hindu philosophy which is very interesting. 2 completely different cultures are on same conclusions.
- PhantomBKB 7y ago
  That's a really good summary of the workings of life and the universe. Learned a good many things from your post as well.
- pavanky 7y ago
  There is no single Hindu philosophy. This feels like a mix and match of multiple different versions.
braindead_in 7y ago
Related thread, the oldest known version of Mahabharata. https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/ddim7e/not_for_the_puranics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/ddim7e/not_for...
amriksohata 7y ago
The Mahabharat, in which the Gita is played out as part of, talks about the Brahmastra. A weapon that can destroy the entire universe. I don't know if this is what Oppenheimer thought he had rediscovered, nuclear power which has the power to destroy vast quantities of land.
cvaidya1986 7y ago
To read and search verses for free SearchGita.com and free on App Store by topics like Meditation, Action http://appstore.com/searchgita http://appstore.com/searchgita
croh 7y ago
This is best summary of the Gita. https://nilayashokshah.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/zzzzz-gita-saar.jpg https://nilayashokshah.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/zzzzz-git...
- LoveDeathRobots 7y ago
  Possible explains this https://www.teoalida.com/world/india/ https://www.teoalida.com/world/india/
  - croh 7y ago
    As I know, India is home of many religions and creeds following different philosophies. So it may not. Housing issue in big cities is too common across the world.(LA, Tokyo). Don't see any relation between religious philosophy and housing issue.
    - LoveDeathRobots 7y ago
      > Don't see any relation between religious philosophy and housing issue. Most of the historical social movements in the west came out of the Christian tradition, whilst the eastern tradition of Karma/Dharma would say leave it, it's the wheel of life or some such.
p2hari 7y ago
I couldn't resist but to comment on this as it is close to me also. The Bhagavad Gita (celestial song) grows on you each time you read and at each age, you read. Let us say you read it this year and again the next, it will have a different impact on you (at least for me.. it grows on me). It is as relevant today as it was at any time in the past and the future. It is not just a dialogue between 2 people but two identities. It can be of a friend, as is the case of Krishna and Arjuna, or can be considered as a conversation between dad and daughter, mother and son, doctor and patient, etc. And each of the Dharma, Karma, jnana(knowledge) and Bhakti(devotion) manifests. So it can be a book that plays a part in psychology, administrative practises, management techniques, political study, yoga, and meditation etc. In the context of the space here and the article I cannot elaborate on those, but yeah it is an absolute good read for anybody and I would suggest it as such. Not getting into the details of the religion etc. Krishna comes across like a great communicator and Arjuna as a great listener raising issues and relevant doubts at the right time/moment so that the rhythm of the discourse is not disturbed.
8bitsrule 7y ago
I suspect that Oppenheimer found, in 'following your duty for the good of your tribe', some justification for his moral dilemma. But the mass destruction of cities full of innocents is not, I think, the intended meaning of this Gita passage. Else, what is the whole point of spirituality? So it ends up as yet another expedient distortion. (Just as the Bible quote 'I came not to introduce peace, but a sword' is -not- about battlefield murders.) I'm sure that, put into a like position, Einstein would not have agreed to 'serve' in the same way. Nor would he have been the only 'refusnik'.

162 points by benbreen 7y ago

Great article, confirms what I always believed about Oppenheimer and many others in that time. My grandma used to read the Gita to me every day when I was a toddler before I started school. She had a stroke in December and in her final days, I would read verses from the Gita to her returning the favor. Death is the greatest teacher of all, teaches us the value of life and power of decision. Since her passing, I've grown a lot and feel much like Oppenheimer as I work on my 'science project' for the sake of all beings on this planet. It may succeed, it may be ignored. It doesn't matter, I will be dead soon and all that will matter is that I fulfilled my 'dharma'. Gandhi always kept his copy of the Gita with him and it was his guidebook for his satyagraha movement which led to India's independence. Some Gita verses that help me, might be helpful to you too: “It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.” “Show good will to all, Be fearless and pure; never waiver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life. Give freely. Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve. Realize the truth of the scriptures; learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation. Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all. Cultivate vigor, patience, will purity; avoid malice and pride Then, Arjuna, you will achieve your divine destiny.”

thewhitetulip 7y ago
Gita means many things when you read it from a perspective It helps you deal with life aka tells you that nothing is more important than Karma and that money/sex/costly things are bad It also encourages familal war. It literally tells Arjuna to wage a war against his entire family "for righteousness". That being said, Gita is great.
- rblion 7y ago
  It's important, in my view, to not only study but to sincerely experiment and eventually embody the teachings. I also read the Upanishads and the Dhammapada often to get the full message of Vedanta and living in accordance with Dharma. I also study Greek and Egyptian wisdom, it's amazing how much overlap there is when you put all of them side by side. I've spent a good deal of my 20's exploring the American National Parks and Native American plant medicines, the end result brought me closer to Dharma too. This will be a lifelong study and metanoia is an ongoing process as I transform lead (anger, lust, greed, pride, vanity, sloth, etc) into gold (peace, love, creativity, humility, earnestness, etc). Working for the welfare of all by creating economic value for them that is rooted in empathy is, in my opinion, the wisest way forward for capitalism.
  - thewhitetulip 7y ago
    I understand. I have read Gita 2 times, in Sanskrit. The book was an excellent philosophy treatise, it opened my eyes which was rivaled only by Sapiens. But it still depends on the perspective. From one reading it teaches you that you don't need to obsess on material things
  - edmundsauto 7y ago
    Apologies for hijacking, but it's interesting how lead and gold have changed in possible uses in the past couple hundred years. Gold was scarce, and used for decoration. Lead was common, but used for (unfortunately) things like pipes. Now, gold is still highly prized as a store of value, while lead has continued to be found harmful (petrol, etc.) However, gold's electrical properties (and resistance to tarnish) make it a very valuable practical material. No point here, just interesting to think about how our perception of those materials has changed over time. (Kinda like how when aluminum was prized as great utensil material, because aluminum smelting took too much energy for what they had available.)
    - rblion 7y ago
      No worries! I am very fascinated by gold as an element, diamonds too. Buddha's 'Diamond Sutra' is very powerful and literally cuts through illusion. Gold is revered around the world by cultures of all climes and times, scientists and engineers as well. It's really something to marvel at! I find the history of alchemy fascinating too, how it evolved into chemistry as we know it today. Issac Newton was obsessed with it, I know people make fun of him for it but I will always admire his genius and his passion.
  - croh 7y ago
    Well said. Many philosophies are common in between religions. What amazes me how people focus on differences instead commonality. Indeed empathy is most important character.
ultrasounder 7y ago
Thanks for sharing your very poignant story!
bigred100 7y ago
My question is why as a Western dude who grew up with lots of exposure to Christian scripture and surrounding culture elements or churches I can visit am I gonna try and learn someone else’s religion (with none of those advantages) when even taking the “easy” route is extraordinary difficult?
- narag 7y ago
  Some of those traditions are previous to Christianism and most likely had a strong influence on it. So maybe for context.
  - bigred100 7y ago
    So reading and learning a bit is cool. But I guess the part I wonder is how you’re gonna use it as a guidebook for life or something if you have none of the context and are kind of just guessing (maybe you’re not). For the record I actually have a similar issue with a lot of American Protestant Christians I’ve seen (have seemingly no connection to anyone but are convinced they can figure out how to successfully apply a 2000yr old middle eastern religious text to modern life on their own).
    - narag 7y ago
      I don't know. I wouldn't use any book as a guidebook for life, either if it was written 2000 years ago or yesterday. Actually most religious people I know have a bond to a community, being The Book kind of an identity "totem" of such community.
- zahreeley 7y ago
  Hinduism is not a religion instead it’s a Dharma. There is no equivalent English word for it as English has limited vocabulary and fails to describe yogic sciences. Hinduism gives you a way to explore the life and even question the existence of God. Can we redefine God better? Yes we can. Define in a way it works for everybody and removes extremism.
- justwake 7y ago

j0hnM1st 7y ago

Surprised to see this on HN - excellent promotion of right wing article!

kranner 7y ago
As someone who identifies with the left in India (and has always been atheist), I have to say this is unfair and really quite silly. The Gita and other religious and literary texts like it are important cultural artifacts. They have existed since before there was such a thing as left wing vs right wing. They may have been co-opted by particular political parties to suit particular ends, but that doesn't make them the property of those parties. Please don't associate them with politics in this way.

Shobji 7y ago

Great Article

Mugwort 7y ago

Very enjoyable short read. Almost as soon as Oppenheimer Trinity test was a success, Leslie Groves drove him out, revoked his security clearance, called him a communist and he suffered greatly as a result. Oppenheimer lost many of his friends and his career. Because he was portrayed as a communist he found it difficult to get a job or even get invited to conferences. A very sad end for such a great man. One can only gaze in awe at his career, his accomplishments. He even made an important contribution to General Relativity with Harvard graduate student Ryan Snyder that a collapsing star would indeed form a black hole according to GR. Whatever else could be said of him, He certainly fulfilled his Dharma.

Mugwort 7y ago

I've wanted to study Sanskrit for a while now but nobody around where I live can teach it. So I've been nibbling at at occasionally. Some points of pronunication are a bit vague such as there being two kinds of T's and D's which sound almost identical to me. I've read the Gita and the Uphanishad s in English (Eaknath Easwaran's translation). Here's my impression. It's definitely worth reading through a translation. You can read it not as philosophy or religion but simply to read it. That's why I read it. To climb the mountain of life a little bit higher to see more. To see a tiny bit of what men like Oppenheimer, Ghandi, Thoreau and 1.3 billion others have been inspired. I can now read most Devanagari characters, enough to recognize simple words when they appear to me in stores like "Dharma", "Karma" or "Tantra" etc. That said, I identify more closely with Judaism than anything else. You need a place to call home. Still, the Sanskrit language is fascinating and the Hindu scriptures have made a deep impression on me.

monktastic1 7y ago
Hindi has basically the same phonemes as Sanskrit. Any Hindi speaker should be able to pronounce the two d's and t's for you. And if you can find one who also speaks unaccented English, they can help you compare them with the English d and t. That said, by far the harder part of Sanskrit will be grammar and vocab.
nemo 7y ago
If you know German, Latin, or Greek it helps for understanding inflection in Sanskrit. Otherwise learning the eight cases of Sanskrit nouns is going to be really hard. I studied Sanskrit for a while many years ago in a Classic dept where I'd been studying Greek and Latin (alas, I can barely read Devanagari now), and it was mostly straightforward to understand the structures for the nouns and verbs - learning all the forms takes time and work and you need that to parse the syntax. But it's Sandhi that makes the language unusually hellish. If you've got a critical text or something with the works broken out, it's so not hard to read and get basics of syntax. But the originals of the classics the words are all compressed into long unbroken lines with subtle and difficult rules for joining words.
canjobear 7y ago
Check put Winthrop Sargent’s translation. It comes with a transcription and word-by-word gloss of the Sanskrit, so you don’t have to learn Devanagari.

momentmaker 7y ago

Bhagavad Gita is a deep scripture about yogic teachings. The premise of the story is a war between a family fighting for dominance. Arjuna is one of the greatest archer at the time and he was fighting against one side of his family. Both side sought out Lord Krishna for help for their cause. Lord Krishna gave each a choice - His army or Him as a guide. Arjuna chose Him as a guide and majority of the book is about the dialog between them. The scripture is deeply allegorical and metaphorical. Bayasa, the author, wrote it as a guide to live one's life (Self-Realization). The war is actually talking about the "war" every human being is fighting inside themselves. The "good" versus the "bad" or virtues versus vices. That's the whole reason why we suffer. It's all an inner journey :) I'd highly recommend reading The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda as his Master and other great saints explain more about it than I can.

trianglem 7y ago
What I took away from the Bhagvat Gita is that it is a treatise on why you should accept, internalize and submit to the role or place that society has assigned you.
- momentmaker 7y ago
  Yes. Lord Krishna said that to Arjuna that you might fight because it's your "duty". The death blow Arjuna deals to one of his enemy is that that enemy's "karma". Arjuna is merely an instrument/tool of God/Lord Krishna. That enemy is already "dead" whether by Arjuna's hands or another's. That's why Lord Krishna said to Arjuna "Whatever you do, do unto Me." You're not the "doer", the "Doer" is Creation/God/shaki/energy/consciousness that's flowing within your body powering it through power of will. I wouldn't say "society" has assigned to you but more like what Life is has placed. "Why were you were at that exact time and place?" "Why did you encounter every single moment at that time and/or place?" "Why have you met the people you have throughout your life?" Cause-Effect (Karma) Even non-action is action which has its effect. That's why Lord Krishna chastised Arjuna for not fighting(non-action) because his ego didn't want to fight.
  - 7y ago

deepaksurti 7y ago

For a really deep study and interpretation of Gita by M K Gandhi [1] is recommended. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gospel-selfless-action-according-Gandhi/dp/8172291264 https://www.amazon.com/gospel-selfless-action-according-Gand...

WomanCanCode 7y ago

I've been fascinated by Sanskrit because some of the words sound so much like old english/germanic. There need to be more study done on indian languages because there have just soo many of them and every region has their own dialects. It's as if the tower of babel incident happened over there.

danans 7y ago
> words sound so much like old english/germanic. The relationship you are seeing was discovered nearly two centuries ago, and has been thoroughly studied since then [1]. > there have just soo many of them and every region has their own dialects. If linguistic diversity is the measure you are interested in, Papua New Guinea [2] and Sub Saharan Africa [3] are orders of magnitude more diverse that Europe and South or East Asia. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guinea https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guine... 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_Africa#Languages_and_ethnic_groups https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_Africa#Languages...

dbKooper 7y ago

Hinduism and ancient vedas is more of like a open source religion. So called guru's have created various meditation techniques using its knowledge and now selling it to the world. Damn i wish someone can decode it using AI and create an AI meditation guru.

noonespecial 7y ago
My Commodore Amiga used to give it a shot now and again.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  I nominate you for HN comment of the day!
- dbKooper 7y ago
  then? What happened?
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
    Obviously, the system crashes. For those who didn't get the joke, "Guru Meditation" on Amiga is the equivalent of "Kernel Panic/Oops" on Unix.

lordleft 7y ago

The Gita is a triumph of Indian literature. Intriguingly, Gandhi held the Gita in great esteem and interpreted the warfare it depicts as fundamentally spiritual.

bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago

The link to the original paper is dead, here is it. * The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer https://web.archive.org/web/20131126020921/http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/Hijiya.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131126020921/http://www.amphil...

rv-de 7y ago

I know, I know ... deep stuff. But, I read the Gita (German translation) and - frankly speaking - I was quite underwhelmed and didn't see the big deal about it. It's a rather dull and repetitive story about a guy going to war and having a chat over it with some Hindu god. The famous quotes masterfully recited by Dr. Oppenheimer are not being built up to - they just appear out of nowhere. My conclusion is that this pamphlet is rather overrated, though, no doubt plays historically an important role in Hindu religion and philosophy. I know this is an unpopular opinion as among a part of the tech crowd it seems be en vogue to engage in cargo cult spirituality by dwelling on literature which has been endorsed by reputed personalities.

svat 7y ago
Thank you for sharing your experience. It may be useful for, say, those writing an introduction to the Gita for certain audiences. Contrary to your impression, the Bhagavad Gita is not a “story”. Although the first chapter (of 18) does have some setting (owing to the place it occurs in the broader epic Mahabharata), when most people talk of the Gita they mean the content of the “chat” itself: what Krishna (“some Hindu god”) said to Arjuna (“a guy”). (Starting with Chapter 2, which is where many commentators began their commentary.) Also, the Gita is in a sense a concise summary of various ideas, also more extensively covered in the Upanishads and elsewhere. As one of the verses often recited before it says “sarvopaniṣado gāvo dogdhā gopālanandanaḥ / pārtho vatsaḥ sudhirbhoktā dugdhaṁ gītāmṛtaṁ mahat” — the analogy is that if you think of all the Upanishads as cows, then the cowherd Krishna to the calf Arjuna gave divine milk by extracting the Gita from them. It is not someone's thesis or argument — Krishna just reminded Arjuna of what he needed to be reminded of (and by extension, what most of us need to be reminded of). So it would make sense that to someone who's already familiar with the ideas, seeing them in one place in the Gita would have a different effect than to someone encountering them for the first time, and (apparently) without context.

bakul 7y ago

I think Wellerstein reads more into what Oppenheimer said (years later) about what he thought when he saw the explosion than what he may have meant. My take is that Oppenheimer was saying the quote from the Bhagvad Geeta accurately described his thoughts at the time. That with the atom-bomb we (the United States) have (the power to) become the destroyer of the whole world. I think what he said about Vishnu and Arjuna was to merely provide the context of the quote. He did not mean imply anything about his own duty. This is borne out by what he says next: “I suppose we all thought that, one way or another”. No matter what their personal motivation may be for working on the bomb, they must all have sensed the enormous destructive power of the bomb.

pravint 7y ago

I would highly recommend reading Bhagavat Gita(and other Vedic scriptures), it’s available freely with translation to many different languages here at [1]. Specific verse in article at [2] [1] https://www.vedabase.com/en/bg https://www.vedabase.com/en/bg [2]https://www.vedabase.com/en/bg/11/32 https://www.vedabase.com/en/bg/11/32

ultrasounder 7y ago

Also discovered this on a previous thread on HN; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940606 https://www.searchgita.com/ https://www.searchgita.com/ A beautiful tool that lets you search for particular cantos from the Tome.

danans 7y ago

The Bhagavad Gita is a bit like Moby Dick in that it is abstract enough that everyone projects their own interpretation onto it, filtered through their own experiences. However, because it is a religious text, people have been fighting over the meaning for millenia, often to justify or motivate one political stance or another, no doubt because motivating the protagonist to political action of physical battle is itself the most concrete reading of the Bhagavad Gita's meaning. But the Gita is just one highly contested chapter of the larger, arguably more interesting epic, the Mahabharata, which is the story of war and conflict spanning generations of an extended clan of warriors. The Mahabharata is a treasure trove of the complex sociology of ancient South Asia, and quite unlike the Gita, it's content is largely non-judgemental and mostly secular. In some traditional families, they actually prefer not to keep a copy of Mahabharata in the home per the superstition that it will engender conflict in the family, instead preferring "thou shalt" texts like the Bhagavad Gita, or Ramayana.

denton-scratch 7y ago
All of these long, ancient religious texts are palimpsests (by which I mean simply the work of multiple authors, over a period of time; I know that isn't the strict meaning, and indeed some of them are strictly palimpsests, i.e. documents that have been erased and written over). I don't know for sure that the BV is such a palimpsest; but it is not plausible that the Mahabharata as a whole is a record composed by a single author, at a point in history.
- danans 7y ago
  > it is not plausible that the Mahabharata as a whole is a record composed by a single author, at a point in history. I agree. I don't think I argued against that? Responding to the wrong comment perhaps? The Bhagavad Gita in particular is a section of the Mahabharata that has seen more revisions over time than the rest of th epic. In fact the name of the purported author "Vyasa" itself means "arranger", implying that he was organizing stories he received from others.

throwaway564678 7y ago

Friendly reminder that, like all known religions, Hinduism fails to fit evidence & loses substantially on Occam's razor. It was most likely a means to preserve social order as society scaled up beyond small tribes. As someone who has deeply studied many of the Hindu religious scriptures when I used to believed in them, I'd say that one should look elsewhere for meaning and guidance and not take books like the Bhagavad Gita seriously at all.

amanaplanacanal 7y ago
Occam's razor is a heuristic, not a commandment. The simpler explanation is more likely to be true, but it isn't always.
edmundsauto 7y ago
As a counterpoint, I think there are some good points to the book, regardless of anything about its history, or how it was intended. I'm willing to learn from any source, so long as the advice is good. I understand that many people dislike pithy advice, but I find them good reminders to ground myself. (I say this as an atheist, fwliw.)
dang 7y ago
Religious flamewar isn't welcome here. Please don't post like that, and please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 7y ago

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croh 7y ago

What I understood from Hindu philosophy - 1. Reality is advaita - it means single being or whole cosmos is one being. 2. Maya or illusion is 'consciousness without above knowledge'. This is a cause of suffering. 3. As long as you're in illusion, you will suffer because you consider yourself different than others. It is called 'I". As long as there is 'I', you're in Maya. 'I' give rise to you/he/she/they/animals. If idea of 'I' is not there then no you/he/she/they. All becomes one. I guess Douglas Hofstadter tried to explain same concept in GEB by using self-referential systems. (I might be wrong as I never able to finish book). 4. Enlightened Guru is very important in journey. Creation is considered as dense forest. Without Guru you can lose yourself. Guru appears when Chela is ready. You have to keep searching truth. 5. Law of Karma - Whatever is your current situation is your karma. How do you react to it is your free will ? 6. Creation is spontaneous per say. There is no reason behind it. 7. People can use different practices as per their nature to reach pt 1. 8. As long as there is desire, reincarnation will happen. Now problem is you may be man/woman/animal/cow in next birth. So treat everyone well (including species other than human being). You come in contact with different people (good or bad)/animals because of some relation (may be in previous birth). 9. Cow is considered sacred as she has human like emotions. She can live happily without human help but still she gives human everything even after treating her bad. It is considered great sacrifice e.g giving milk of your child to other species. What I like most is considering whole universe as family. Sometimes I feel sad as being human. Also I found many stoicism concepts in Hindu philosophy which is very interesting. 2 completely different cultures are on same conclusions.

PhantomBKB 7y ago
That's a really good summary of the workings of life and the universe. Learned a good many things from your post as well.
pavanky 7y ago
There is no single Hindu philosophy. This feels like a mix and match of multiple different versions.

braindead_in 7y ago

Related thread, the oldest known version of Mahabharata. https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/ddim7e/not_for_the_puranics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/ddim7e/not_for...

amriksohata 7y ago

The Mahabharat, in which the Gita is played out as part of, talks about the Brahmastra. A weapon that can destroy the entire universe. I don't know if this is what Oppenheimer thought he had rediscovered, nuclear power which has the power to destroy vast quantities of land.

cvaidya1986 7y ago

To read and search verses for free SearchGita.com and free on App Store by topics like Meditation, Action http://appstore.com/searchgita http://appstore.com/searchgita

croh 7y ago

This is best summary of the Gita. https://nilayashokshah.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/zzzzz-gita-saar.jpg https://nilayashokshah.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/zzzzz-git...

LoveDeathRobots 7y ago
Possible explains this https://www.teoalida.com/world/india/ https://www.teoalida.com/world/india/
- croh 7y ago
  As I know, India is home of many religions and creeds following different philosophies. So it may not. Housing issue in big cities is too common across the world.(LA, Tokyo). Don't see any relation between religious philosophy and housing issue.
  - LoveDeathRobots 7y ago
    > Don't see any relation between religious philosophy and housing issue. Most of the historical social movements in the west came out of the Christian tradition, whilst the eastern tradition of Karma/Dharma would say leave it, it's the wheel of life or some such.

p2hari 7y ago

I couldn't resist but to comment on this as it is close to me also. The Bhagavad Gita (celestial song) grows on you each time you read and at each age, you read. Let us say you read it this year and again the next, it will have a different impact on you (at least for me.. it grows on me). It is as relevant today as it was at any time in the past and the future. It is not just a dialogue between 2 people but two identities. It can be of a friend, as is the case of Krishna and Arjuna, or can be considered as a conversation between dad and daughter, mother and son, doctor and patient, etc. And each of the Dharma, Karma, jnana(knowledge) and Bhakti(devotion) manifests. So it can be a book that plays a part in psychology, administrative practises, management techniques, political study, yoga, and meditation etc. In the context of the space here and the article I cannot elaborate on those, but yeah it is an absolute good read for anybody and I would suggest it as such. Not getting into the details of the religion etc. Krishna comes across like a great communicator and Arjuna as a great listener raising issues and relevant doubts at the right time/moment so that the rhythm of the discourse is not disturbed.

8bitsrule 7y ago

I suspect that Oppenheimer found, in 'following your duty for the good of your tribe', some justification for his moral dilemma. But the mass destruction of cities full of innocents is not, I think, the intended meaning of this Gita passage. Else, what is the whole point of spirituality? So it ends up as yet another expedient distortion. (Just as the Bible quote 'I came not to introduce peace, but a sword' is -not- about battlefield murders.) I'm sure that, put into a like position, Einstein would not have agreed to 'serve' in the same way. Nor would he have been the only 'refusnik'.