11 ms·

War and Peace in the Bhagavad Gita

88 points by benbreen 12y ago

rohunati 12y ago
For those interested, I highly recommend "The Difficulty on Being Good: The Subtle Art of Dharma" by Gurcharan Das.
machineage 12y ago
Sure... religious/political discussion forum
- dang 12y ago
  It's easy to see how this post is of intellectual interest and therefore in scope for HN: it's a substantive review of a scholarly work on one of the most influential texts ever written. The topic also has religious and political implications, but that doesn't make it off-topic. It does mean that we should be extra careful to post only thoughtful comments and edit out flamebait. Not every such thread degenerates, and HN has penalties for the ones that do.
  - jblow 12y ago
    Is there an underlying presumption that smart hacker-type people do not have spiritual interests? I think a lot of smart hacker-type people would disagree with that.
    - dang 12y ago
      > Is there an underlying presumption that smart hacker-type people do not have spiritual interests? It's unclear to me where you sensed that presumption—in my comment, the community, HN moderation, or some other place. My comment didn't mean to imply that. I was just writing about garden-variety flamewars—because from experience, there were flammables afoot. Such a presumption may exist in segments of the community. Personally I think it's wrong. If the corpus of HN discussions counts as evidence, it's almost certainly wrong. From an HN moderation point of view, there's no reason why spiritual and religious matters should be off-topic. They're part of the great traditions and excite intellectual curiosity just as lots of other things do. They also excite dogmatism, including unconscious dogmatism, and incivility, and those things are problematic here. So while intellectually substantive stories on those subjects are not off-topic (which is why the OP was welcome here), empirically those threads tend to violate the site guidelines more and so get penalized more.
dharmach 12y ago
The article reads so convoluted being in English, like reading an article about latest computer technology in pure Hindi.
sremani 12y ago
"Gandhi ignored the warrior Gita at his peril: the man who killed him was driven by it. " Quite a thoughtful assessment.
- unhappyhippie 12y ago
  Don't want to prompt unneccesary debate, but her understanding of Gandhi and his assessment of the Gita is incomplete. Gandhi has written explicitly about (what she calls) the "warrior Gita". Moreover, her demarcation of the "Two Gitas" is something not a lot of people would agree with. Personally, I've read a lot of commentaries and evaluations of the book, including the orignal, and I've found Gandhi's version to be the most powerful.
- tn13 12y ago
  Again an false assessment. Nathuram Godse was not driven by Gita to kill Gandhi the way ISIS is driven by Koran to kill people. Nathuram Godse and his co-conspiring brother gave elaborate testimony in court and through a book as to why they killed Gandhi. Neither of them driven by religious ideology to kill Gandhi. They goal was political and tied with protecting interests of Hindu community from Gandhi's fundamentalist non-violence. Geeta is a fairly open ended book. Prior to Gandhiji, Bal Gangadhar Tilak (a philosopher, mathematician and politician) had written his very popular interpretation of Gita where he essentially calls for an armed rebellian agains the British oppressors. Wendy is being notorious.
  - selimthegrim 12y ago
    I don't seem to recall ISIS citing the sword verses explicitly? How can you say Godse did not take inspiration from Gita? The other thing I don't get is that how RSS types of Partition time seem to understand that apparently it's OK for _them_ to differ with Gandhi, but Muslims, because of not joining some Congress monolith, are to be punished for...wait for it...differing with Gandhi (say over Quit India)
    - srean 12y ago
      tn13 is correct actually. I think he is saying the ISIS arent violent because of Koran but because of their political aspirations (at least the way I parsed it, only th13 can clarify that part). About the rest, the source of the confusion is Hindutva, a political narrative that champions Hindu supremacy started formally by Savarkar (who snitched like canary to the British, excuse my hashed metaphor) and Hinduism the religion. The Godses were motivated by the former. [I am going to burn some serious karma here, you see Savarkar is a golden hero to the RSS]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
xx223 12y ago
Seems that NYTimes forgot to mention that the Indian PM Modi has unleashed murderous mobs on innocent people in the past. For those are unaware, Modi and his government of extremist Hindus have murdered thousands of people in his state. Some reference: http://www.tehelka.com/the-sting-in-the-story/ http://www.tehelka.com/the-sting-in-the-story/
- cma 12y ago
  New York Review of Books is unrelated to NYTimes.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- sremani 12y ago
  xx223, You are doing a disservice to the article by veering away from the thoughtful parts of the article. There is some discussion about "Warrior Gita" and Hindu-right, but nothing to imply about Gujarat riots. I would be more than willing to debate about the whole episode, especially about the initial part where 50 Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive in a train by Muslims, but I am fully aware this is not the forum for that.
  - ameen 12y ago
    There is a clear contrast to what xx223 says and what you imply, and in that unravels a lot that doesn't need to be said. He says extremist Hindus and you said just plain Muslims. I'm an Indian Muslim and myself and others that I know would never think of such an act, yet I'm being grouped with the miscreants just because of association by religion. Evil doesn't need a religion, what happened in Godhra was the triumph of evil over not just good, but basic humanity.
    - vaishaksuresh 12y ago
      If you're really going to talk about semantics, xx223 says 'Modi and his government of extremist Hindus'. There is no evidence to back the point that the entire government is made up of extremist Hindus.
ubasu 12y ago
Wendy Doniger is known to have an interpretation of Hindu texts that is hostile to traditional understanding of the texts [1]. Some specific examples in this particular article are: 1. The Bhagvad Gita is commonly understood to be a discussion of appropriate duty. In this case, Krishna's argument was it is Arjuna's duty to go to war, considering that all other peaceful solutions had been explored and rejected by the Kauravas (Arjuna's opponents)[2]. In fact, Krishna himself had acted as peacemaker, and asked Arjuna to take take up arms only when that failed. The use of the Gita by Indian Nationalists fighting for Indian independence from the British has to be understood in this context. 2. Doniger says that the war was "lawless", but the Mahabharata war was an attempt at a "just" war, as understood in its contemporary context. Deviations from just behaviour are noted and held up as examples of unjust behaviour. 3. The so-called "Doomsday" manifestation of Krishna is in fact him showing his universal form, which is supposed to be beyond the capacity of ordinary humans to visualize, which is why Krishna had to grant Arjuna divine vision to be able to comprehend it. Doniger's use of the Abrahamic term "Doomsday" is loaded, because the understanding of comprehensive destruction or "Pralay" [3] in Hinduism is very different. Sure Doniger understands the difference, since she is a professor of Religious Studies. 4. She seems to be applying guilt-by-association by tying the Gita to the RSS and the assassination of Gandhi, and she criticizes Richard Davis for being too respectful of Hindu understanding of the Gita. Overall, the impression is that her anti-Hindutva agenda is spilling over into being an anti-Hindu agenda. [1] http://creative.sulekha.com/risa-lila-1-wendy-s-child-syndrome_103338_blog http://creative.sulekha.com/risa-lila-1-wendy-s-child-syndro... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_War#Krishna.27s_peace_mission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_War#Krishna.27s_pea... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pralaya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pralaya
- dharmach 12y ago
  being christian fundamentalist, her stance is obvious.
  - tn13 12y ago
    She is Jew.
ankushnarula 12y ago
Let me qualify that I'm an American Born Confused Desi (born of Hindu parents). I never quite understand why ANY Hindus should get upset when our religious/philosophical texts are scrutinized and contextualized. Of course, all interpretations are subjective. But if nothing else we should all embrace the notion that there is no such thing as a Hindu heretic or apostate. What matters (and has always mattered) is how we live and act. As such, I would emphasize that it is also important to keep an open respectful dialogue without alienating people from the discussion.
- ubasu 12y ago
  While such generic calls to decorum are always welcome, the specific issue here is that Doniger seems to be selectively and willfully misinterpreting the text to advance her own agenda. Most prominently, she declaims the Gita as a warlike-text, ignoring the clear context of the Mahabharata that war is inevitable in this situation when all attempts at a peaceful resolution have been rebuffed. (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8664662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8664662) One may adopt a position of Gandhian non-violence and say that war is not justified even in that context, thus disagreeing with the philosophy of the Mahabharata, and that is OK, but misrepresenting the text is not.
- srean 12y ago
  Upvoted your comment it was grayed out by downvotes at that time. You raise important questions and that gladdens my heart enormously. It is surprising how rare this is. Usually I see most fall for the Hindu supremacist narrative cloaked in various shades of PC (I say this as an athiest hindu, I am not religious and yes that is not a contradiction once you dig into hinduism). I understand why this happens, the expat generation wants to be in touch with their roots and want their kids to be aware of those roots. A perfectly noble emotion, but what happens is that groups with vested political interest barge in to make a make a killing out of this opportunity. A section of the Hindu right has been trying for years to churchify Hinduism, organize it into a centralized political power. Thankfully this has not happened but not for lack of concerted effort and resources. They are quite livid because the Muslim right got an upper hand over their own country, Pakistan, whereas they themselves got saddled with the moderates who dont want their country to be based on a religious identity. This grates at them continuously. I wont impose one view or the other about the nature of the religion and the discourse because I trust skeptical curiosity more than anything else. Be skeptical, be questioning you will find a fascinating story built around deep human thought originating almost from the birth of civilization, organization, politics and propaganda. I see Gita as propaganda and persuasion at its finest (I say this as respectful "I am wow'ed" acknowledgement, not as disparagement, it is a masterpiece): how to build a irrefutable logical system that makes people do your bidding out of their own volition. I am yet to see a more refined and subtle tool for mass control: dont question, just do what you are supposed to, but never for the pleasure of doing it. How is one supposed to know what I am supposed to do, there it goes vague. I know I am repeating myself but it is just a masterpiece and so cleverly and persuasively argued. Any form of central governance would love to have something like this. This is certainly not all that is there to Gita, it is a piece that deserves many reads and lots of reflection. For me, some parts resonate. If you do get a chance I will highly recommend reading Mahabharat and from as close to the source as possible. If you want an English text you cannot go wrong with Rajagopalachari's translation, the English is a tad dated but on purpose. He has a kids version but get the real deal. Where this epic looms over others (just in my opinion and taste) is that the story is so modern, the characters so realistically gray. There is absolutely no one character there who can claim moral high ground. Likewise, no one is really unmitigated evil, their actions (for the most part) are indeed sensible from their point of view, but their actions come to bite them all, be it Krishna too. [Contrast this with Rama of Ramayan. Rama could do no wrong, whatever he did it was just papered over but from a position of moral superiority. Burned his wife, no problem there is a reason, mutilated a woman who proposed to his brother no problem there is a reason...] Read Mahabharat first just as a fascinating story, without the religious and historic baggage. After that you can re-read it and you will find layers and layers of abstractions. One such interesting layer is that it is really a contest between two master schemers of the highest order: Shakuni (a member of the Afghan royal family, Kandahar to be precise, and an in-law of the Delhi based Kauravas) and Krishna. Shakuni wants to destroy the Kauravas from the inside (for due reasons), Krishna joins willingly from the outside but wants to protect the Pandavas perhaps to have influence over the Delhi based powerhouse. What would be much harder, and I am not there yet, is to read the sanskrit version. It is said that there is ample evidence that it has been written over years, accumulating new verses on the way (there is nothing controversial about this). This is based on the style of sanskrit in use, for example the verses that talk about Krishna's exploit (for example the Draupadi stripping incident and verses from Gita too) seem to be in much more modern sanskrit, rhyme, meter (relatively speaking) than the rest and many believe that these verses were included later. There is still a lot of Mahabharata that exist in a form that are called srutis (oral tradition: stories, ballads, folk songs, plays) that you wont find in the sanskrit sources.
tn13 12y ago
Wendy Doniger is a Jew and not christian. A lot of Hindu right wingers incorrectly associate her with "Christian attempt" to malign Hinduism. I am born Hindu and atheist. I have studied both Sanskrit and Religious texts like Gita in both religious and completely academic setup. For me, Wendy's interpretations comes as a shoddy work of an incompetent scholar. I do empathize with her attempts to provide a drastically different interpretation of Hindu texts, but I do not think using falsehood is an acceptable way to do it. I think her understanding of Sanskrit is poor. She probably relies on some sort of dictionary which gives translation of words without context. She linking Krishna's "Vishwarup Darshana" (World encompassing existence view) as doomsday is utterly rubbish. "Krishna manifests his universal form, the form in which he will destroy the universe at Doomsday" She is probably too influenced by "Judgement Day" sort of ideas here. The original lines are here [1]. The Hindu worldview believes that world has several starts and several ends, there are million worlds which are born and destroyed a million times. There is no fixed beginning and fixed end. Krishna is using this argument to tell Arjuna that his attachment to things is pointless because all the existence is far too tiny. To give an appropriate context this might be very similar to what Rose Tyler saw in Doctor Who. The entire time vortex in her head. All existence, all life, destruction and entire vastness of time all in once place. [Just to give a context.] Also, linking Splendour of thousand suns with Atomic Bomb and destruction is Oppenheimer's own creative liberties and has nothing to do with the interpretation of Gita itself. The idea of Sun in Hindu philosophy is very different. For Wendy it might seem like "explosion" but Hindu texts use Sun as a symbol of human intelligence (so-hum), these ideas were borrowed and made more popular by Buddhism (om namo amituo fu, om mani padme hum). The thousand suns is not a giant explosion causing destruction but magnificence of the reality. The "thousand suns" analogy is used to convey that what Arjuna is watching is beyond human comprehension and is simply blinding. See this remarkably notorious translation by Wendy: "Stop acting like a kliba; stand up!" (Kliba is a catch-all derogatory term for a castrated, cross-dressing, homosexual, or impotent man, here used as a casual slur, “not a real man.”) This sort of translation makes me question her motive. She is trying to portray Geeta as homo-phobic in some sense and as if Krishna is someone who despises Homosexuals. In reality Krishna invites a certain cross-dresser/transgender to kill an important warrior later as part of his strategy [2]. Arjuna himself was a cross-dresser before the war [3] and Krishna too was a cross-dresser. Krishna's cross-dressing romance with his girlfriend Radha is subject of several songs. The word Kliba is neither a slur nor has multiple meanings. "Kliba" is a person incapable of having sexual intercourse either because of lack of erection or castration. Kliba is not transgender, it is certainly not homo-sexual and unless you are high on pot it can not be translated to cross-dresser. The specific usage in Gita is merely a metaphor. It is common even in todays world to use impotence as a metaphor for cowardice. I am not upset because Wendy is giving negative publicity to my religion. I am upset that her work is not subjected to the same level academic scrutiny as any other academic criticism of religious texts and people who try to do that a summarily rejected as "Right wing Zealots trying to stigmatize a scholar." [1] http://www.bartleby.com/45/4/11.html#44 http://www.bartleby.com/45/4/11.html#44 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikhandi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikhandi [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihannala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihannala [4] http://bit.ly/1uXWxTr http://bit.ly/1uXWxTr
dang 12y ago
We've closed this thread to new accounts to put out an off-topic political-religious flamewar.
Jacky800 12y ago
dont waste time.

88 points by benbreen 12y ago

rohunati 12y ago

For those interested, I highly recommend "The Difficulty on Being Good: The Subtle Art of Dharma" by Gurcharan Das.

machineage 12y ago

Sure... religious/political discussion forum

dang 12y ago
It's easy to see how this post is of intellectual interest and therefore in scope for HN: it's a substantive review of a scholarly work on one of the most influential texts ever written. The topic also has religious and political implications, but that doesn't make it off-topic. It does mean that we should be extra careful to post only thoughtful comments and edit out flamebait. Not every such thread degenerates, and HN has penalties for the ones that do.
- jblow 12y ago
  Is there an underlying presumption that smart hacker-type people do not have spiritual interests? I think a lot of smart hacker-type people would disagree with that.
  - dang 12y ago
    > Is there an underlying presumption that smart hacker-type people do not have spiritual interests? It's unclear to me where you sensed that presumption—in my comment, the community, HN moderation, or some other place. My comment didn't mean to imply that. I was just writing about garden-variety flamewars—because from experience, there were flammables afoot. Such a presumption may exist in segments of the community. Personally I think it's wrong. If the corpus of HN discussions counts as evidence, it's almost certainly wrong. From an HN moderation point of view, there's no reason why spiritual and religious matters should be off-topic. They're part of the great traditions and excite intellectual curiosity just as lots of other things do. They also excite dogmatism, including unconscious dogmatism, and incivility, and those things are problematic here. So while intellectually substantive stories on those subjects are not off-topic (which is why the OP was welcome here), empirically those threads tend to violate the site guidelines more and so get penalized more.

dharmach 12y ago

The article reads so convoluted being in English, like reading an article about latest computer technology in pure Hindi.

sremani 12y ago

"Gandhi ignored the warrior Gita at his peril: the man who killed him was driven by it. " Quite a thoughtful assessment.

unhappyhippie 12y ago
Don't want to prompt unneccesary debate, but her understanding of Gandhi and his assessment of the Gita is incomplete. Gandhi has written explicitly about (what she calls) the "warrior Gita". Moreover, her demarcation of the "Two Gitas" is something not a lot of people would agree with. Personally, I've read a lot of commentaries and evaluations of the book, including the orignal, and I've found Gandhi's version to be the most powerful.
tn13 12y ago
Again an false assessment. Nathuram Godse was not driven by Gita to kill Gandhi the way ISIS is driven by Koran to kill people. Nathuram Godse and his co-conspiring brother gave elaborate testimony in court and through a book as to why they killed Gandhi. Neither of them driven by religious ideology to kill Gandhi. They goal was political and tied with protecting interests of Hindu community from Gandhi's fundamentalist non-violence. Geeta is a fairly open ended book. Prior to Gandhiji, Bal Gangadhar Tilak (a philosopher, mathematician and politician) had written his very popular interpretation of Gita where he essentially calls for an armed rebellian agains the British oppressors. Wendy is being notorious.
- selimthegrim 12y ago
  I don't seem to recall ISIS citing the sword verses explicitly? How can you say Godse did not take inspiration from Gita? The other thing I don't get is that how RSS types of Partition time seem to understand that apparently it's OK for _them_ to differ with Gandhi, but Muslims, because of not joining some Congress monolith, are to be punished for...wait for it...differing with Gandhi (say over Quit India)
  - srean 12y ago
    tn13 is correct actually. I think he is saying the ISIS arent violent because of Koran but because of their political aspirations (at least the way I parsed it, only th13 can clarify that part). About the rest, the source of the confusion is Hindutva, a political narrative that champions Hindu supremacy started formally by Savarkar (who snitched like canary to the British, excuse my hashed metaphor) and Hinduism the religion. The Godses were motivated by the former. [I am going to burn some serious karma here, you see Savarkar is a golden hero to the RSS]

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

xx223 12y ago

Seems that NYTimes forgot to mention that the Indian PM Modi has unleashed murderous mobs on innocent people in the past. For those are unaware, Modi and his government of extremist Hindus have murdered thousands of people in his state. Some reference: http://www.tehelka.com/the-sting-in-the-story/ http://www.tehelka.com/the-sting-in-the-story/

cma 12y ago
New York Review of Books is unrelated to NYTimes.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sremani 12y ago
xx223, You are doing a disservice to the article by veering away from the thoughtful parts of the article. There is some discussion about "Warrior Gita" and Hindu-right, but nothing to imply about Gujarat riots. I would be more than willing to debate about the whole episode, especially about the initial part where 50 Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive in a train by Muslims, but I am fully aware this is not the forum for that.
- ameen 12y ago
  There is a clear contrast to what xx223 says and what you imply, and in that unravels a lot that doesn't need to be said. He says extremist Hindus and you said just plain Muslims. I'm an Indian Muslim and myself and others that I know would never think of such an act, yet I'm being grouped with the miscreants just because of association by religion. Evil doesn't need a religion, what happened in Godhra was the triumph of evil over not just good, but basic humanity.
  - vaishaksuresh 12y ago
    If you're really going to talk about semantics, xx223 says 'Modi and his government of extremist Hindus'. There is no evidence to back the point that the entire government is made up of extremist Hindus.

ubasu 12y ago

Wendy Doniger is known to have an interpretation of Hindu texts that is hostile to traditional understanding of the texts [1]. Some specific examples in this particular article are: 1. The Bhagvad Gita is commonly understood to be a discussion of appropriate duty. In this case, Krishna's argument was it is Arjuna's duty to go to war, considering that all other peaceful solutions had been explored and rejected by the Kauravas (Arjuna's opponents)[2]. In fact, Krishna himself had acted as peacemaker, and asked Arjuna to take take up arms only when that failed. The use of the Gita by Indian Nationalists fighting for Indian independence from the British has to be understood in this context. 2. Doniger says that the war was "lawless", but the Mahabharata war was an attempt at a "just" war, as understood in its contemporary context. Deviations from just behaviour are noted and held up as examples of unjust behaviour. 3. The so-called "Doomsday" manifestation of Krishna is in fact him showing his universal form, which is supposed to be beyond the capacity of ordinary humans to visualize, which is why Krishna had to grant Arjuna divine vision to be able to comprehend it. Doniger's use of the Abrahamic term "Doomsday" is loaded, because the understanding of comprehensive destruction or "Pralay" [3] in Hinduism is very different. Sure Doniger understands the difference, since she is a professor of Religious Studies. 4. She seems to be applying guilt-by-association by tying the Gita to the RSS and the assassination of Gandhi, and she criticizes Richard Davis for being too respectful of Hindu understanding of the Gita. Overall, the impression is that her anti-Hindutva agenda is spilling over into being an anti-Hindu agenda. [1] http://creative.sulekha.com/risa-lila-1-wendy-s-child-syndrome_103338_blog http://creative.sulekha.com/risa-lila-1-wendy-s-child-syndro... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_War#Krishna.27s_peace_mission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_War#Krishna.27s_pea... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pralaya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pralaya

dharmach 12y ago
being christian fundamentalist, her stance is obvious.
- tn13 12y ago
  She is Jew.

ankushnarula 12y ago

Let me qualify that I'm an American Born Confused Desi (born of Hindu parents). I never quite understand why ANY Hindus should get upset when our religious/philosophical texts are scrutinized and contextualized. Of course, all interpretations are subjective. But if nothing else we should all embrace the notion that there is no such thing as a Hindu heretic or apostate. What matters (and has always mattered) is how we live and act. As such, I would emphasize that it is also important to keep an open respectful dialogue without alienating people from the discussion.

ubasu 12y ago
While such generic calls to decorum are always welcome, the specific issue here is that Doniger seems to be selectively and willfully misinterpreting the text to advance her own agenda. Most prominently, she declaims the Gita as a warlike-text, ignoring the clear context of the Mahabharata that war is inevitable in this situation when all attempts at a peaceful resolution have been rebuffed. (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8664662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8664662) One may adopt a position of Gandhian non-violence and say that war is not justified even in that context, thus disagreeing with the philosophy of the Mahabharata, and that is OK, but misrepresenting the text is not.
srean 12y ago
Upvoted your comment it was grayed out by downvotes at that time. You raise important questions and that gladdens my heart enormously. It is surprising how rare this is. Usually I see most fall for the Hindu supremacist narrative cloaked in various shades of PC (I say this as an athiest hindu, I am not religious and yes that is not a contradiction once you dig into hinduism). I understand why this happens, the expat generation wants to be in touch with their roots and want their kids to be aware of those roots. A perfectly noble emotion, but what happens is that groups with vested political interest barge in to make a make a killing out of this opportunity. A section of the Hindu right has been trying for years to churchify Hinduism, organize it into a centralized political power. Thankfully this has not happened but not for lack of concerted effort and resources. They are quite livid because the Muslim right got an upper hand over their own country, Pakistan, whereas they themselves got saddled with the moderates who dont want their country to be based on a religious identity. This grates at them continuously. I wont impose one view or the other about the nature of the religion and the discourse because I trust skeptical curiosity more than anything else. Be skeptical, be questioning you will find a fascinating story built around deep human thought originating almost from the birth of civilization, organization, politics and propaganda. I see Gita as propaganda and persuasion at its finest (I say this as respectful "I am wow'ed" acknowledgement, not as disparagement, it is a masterpiece): how to build a irrefutable logical system that makes people do your bidding out of their own volition. I am yet to see a more refined and subtle tool for mass control: dont question, just do what you are supposed to, but never for the pleasure of doing it. How is one supposed to know what I am supposed to do, there it goes vague. I know I am repeating myself but it is just a masterpiece and so cleverly and persuasively argued. Any form of central governance would love to have something like this. This is certainly not all that is there to Gita, it is a piece that deserves many reads and lots of reflection. For me, some parts resonate. If you do get a chance I will highly recommend reading Mahabharat and from as close to the source as possible. If you want an English text you cannot go wrong with Rajagopalachari's translation, the English is a tad dated but on purpose. He has a kids version but get the real deal. Where this epic looms over others (just in my opinion and taste) is that the story is so modern, the characters so realistically gray. There is absolutely no one character there who can claim moral high ground. Likewise, no one is really unmitigated evil, their actions (for the most part) are indeed sensible from their point of view, but their actions come to bite them all, be it Krishna too. [Contrast this with Rama of Ramayan. Rama could do no wrong, whatever he did it was just papered over but from a position of moral superiority. Burned his wife, no problem there is a reason, mutilated a woman who proposed to his brother no problem there is a reason...] Read Mahabharat first just as a fascinating story, without the religious and historic baggage. After that you can re-read it and you will find layers and layers of abstractions. One such interesting layer is that it is really a contest between two master schemers of the highest order: Shakuni (a member of the Afghan royal family, Kandahar to be precise, and an in-law of the Delhi based Kauravas) and Krishna. Shakuni wants to destroy the Kauravas from the inside (for due reasons), Krishna joins willingly from the outside but wants to protect the Pandavas perhaps to have influence over the Delhi based powerhouse. What would be much harder, and I am not there yet, is to read the sanskrit version. It is said that there is ample evidence that it has been written over years, accumulating new verses on the way (there is nothing controversial about this). This is based on the style of sanskrit in use, for example the verses that talk about Krishna's exploit (for example the Draupadi stripping incident and verses from Gita too) seem to be in much more modern sanskrit, rhyme, meter (relatively speaking) than the rest and many believe that these verses were included later. There is still a lot of Mahabharata that exist in a form that are called srutis (oral tradition: stories, ballads, folk songs, plays) that you wont find in the sanskrit sources.

tn13 12y ago

Wendy Doniger is a Jew and not christian. A lot of Hindu right wingers incorrectly associate her with "Christian attempt" to malign Hinduism. I am born Hindu and atheist. I have studied both Sanskrit and Religious texts like Gita in both religious and completely academic setup. For me, Wendy's interpretations comes as a shoddy work of an incompetent scholar. I do empathize with her attempts to provide a drastically different interpretation of Hindu texts, but I do not think using falsehood is an acceptable way to do it. I think her understanding of Sanskrit is poor. She probably relies on some sort of dictionary which gives translation of words without context. She linking Krishna's "Vishwarup Darshana" (World encompassing existence view) as doomsday is utterly rubbish. "Krishna manifests his universal form, the form in which he will destroy the universe at Doomsday" She is probably too influenced by "Judgement Day" sort of ideas here. The original lines are here [1]. The Hindu worldview believes that world has several starts and several ends, there are million worlds which are born and destroyed a million times. There is no fixed beginning and fixed end. Krishna is using this argument to tell Arjuna that his attachment to things is pointless because all the existence is far too tiny. To give an appropriate context this might be very similar to what Rose Tyler saw in Doctor Who. The entire time vortex in her head. All existence, all life, destruction and entire vastness of time all in once place. [Just to give a context.] Also, linking Splendour of thousand suns with Atomic Bomb and destruction is Oppenheimer's own creative liberties and has nothing to do with the interpretation of Gita itself. The idea of Sun in Hindu philosophy is very different. For Wendy it might seem like "explosion" but Hindu texts use Sun as a symbol of human intelligence (so-hum), these ideas were borrowed and made more popular by Buddhism (om namo amituo fu, om mani padme hum). The thousand suns is not a giant explosion causing destruction but magnificence of the reality. The "thousand suns" analogy is used to convey that what Arjuna is watching is beyond human comprehension and is simply blinding. See this remarkably notorious translation by Wendy: "Stop acting like a kliba; stand up!" (Kliba is a catch-all derogatory term for a castrated, cross-dressing, homosexual, or impotent man, here used as a casual slur, “not a real man.”) This sort of translation makes me question her motive. She is trying to portray Geeta as homo-phobic in some sense and as if Krishna is someone who despises Homosexuals. In reality Krishna invites a certain cross-dresser/transgender to kill an important warrior later as part of his strategy [2]. Arjuna himself was a cross-dresser before the war [3] and Krishna too was a cross-dresser. Krishna's cross-dressing romance with his girlfriend Radha is subject of several songs. The word Kliba is neither a slur nor has multiple meanings. "Kliba" is a person incapable of having sexual intercourse either because of lack of erection or castration. Kliba is not transgender, it is certainly not homo-sexual and unless you are high on pot it can not be translated to cross-dresser. The specific usage in Gita is merely a metaphor. It is common even in todays world to use impotence as a metaphor for cowardice. I am not upset because Wendy is giving negative publicity to my religion. I am upset that her work is not subjected to the same level academic scrutiny as any other academic criticism of religious texts and people who try to do that a summarily rejected as "Right wing Zealots trying to stigmatize a scholar." [1] http://www.bartleby.com/45/4/11.html#44 http://www.bartleby.com/45/4/11.html#44 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikhandi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikhandi [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihannala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihannala [4] http://bit.ly/1uXWxTr http://bit.ly/1uXWxTr

dang 12y ago

We've closed this thread to new accounts to put out an off-topic political-religious flamewar.

Jacky800 12y ago

dont waste time.