The Bhagavad Gita is a Hindu writing of uncertain date, probably written sometime between 500 and 200 B.C.. It is now found in a much longer epic called the Mahabarata. It later became the most popular religious writing in the Hindu tradition. Like all religious writing, it has almost always been read as though it were directly written to give modern readers answers to their particular (modern) questions. It has been read, that is, without regard for its original historical context and purpose.
I think an historical reading is also very valuable, mainly because it helps suggest to us the human, experiential origins of its ideas. These ideas did not fall from the sky, but grew out of specific human experiences and thinking, and reconstructing this experiential background can give us a richer understanding of the ideas themselves. The following is an attempt at an hypothesis about the Gita’s origin, based almost entirely on the character of the book itself.
The general character of the book.
The Gita is an anonymous work. This is true of very many ancient books. The custom we take for granted today, of individual authors writing books to introduce their own ideas to the general public, developed only gradually over time. In the earliest period in most civilizations, communication was mainly oral, and books were written mainly to collect and preserve oral traditions already in existence, and already familiar to the originally intended audience. (This is true of many books of the Bible, of the Chinese Daodejing, etc.)
The Gita explicitly presents itself as an esoteric text, not written for the general public, but only for ascetics (people who practice austerities like fasting, living a simple life, etc.) who are also members of a group of Krishna-worshippers (see 18/67-68). This is important to keep in mind. It means that we ourselves are “outsiders”, peeking in the window, so to speak, trying to understand a writing that was addressed to insiders who already understood much of the background of the ideas mentioned, background that we have to try to piece together for ourselves.
In addition, the Gita gives much evidence of its composite character. Its authors str not writing everything from scratch, but weaving together many traditions that were originally more or less independent of each other.
Three Main Themes.
There are three main themes in the Gita. They are easily separable from each other. That is, they were probably originally separate themes, and the main purpose of the Gita’s author is to try to integrate these themes with each other.
Sankhya (Higher Knowledge)
The first and central theme is a view of the world identified as sankhya. This view of the world is closely related to a meditation practice and probably grew out of it. In this practice, a person cultivates a certain kind of experience, in which she becomes an objective observer of her own emotional and thought processes. Reality seems to be split into an observing consciousness, which has no specific qualities and in which no action takes place, and the rest of the world, including both the external world and all those aspects of one’s own being that have particular characteristics and that are actively engaged with the world. Experiencing the world this way was intensely meaningful, accompanied by a feeling of freedom and bliss. This gave rise to the idea that the pure observing consciousness was something divine, closely connected to or identical with the highest Being, (called “Brahman” in the Gita.) Reality itself is thus split between this unmanifest cosmic Spirit on the one hand, and the entire rest of the world on the other. The Spirit gave rise to the world, and the world will be reabsorbed into it. The Spirit pervades the world, but is not really part of it. This is a doctrine about reality, but it cannot simply be believed in intellectually — one has to engage in meditation until one directly experiences the world in this way. The author knows of some sankhya-devotees who conclude from the sankhya doctrine that one should not participate in traditional religion or perform one’s social responsibilities; these are “worldly” activities. (Part of traditional religion involves ritual sacrifice of animals, according to rituals prescribed in sacred books called the Vedas. See 9/20-21, 6/1.) The author is also critical of traditional religion and of ordinary understanding of social duties, but he is concerned to integrate the sankhya doctrine into a way of life that includes both participation in traditional religion and performance of social responsibilities–called “karma yoga” in the Gita.
Karma Yoga (performance of one’s social duties)
The second theme is the necessity of contributing to society by carrying out one’s social responsibilities. This is called in some places Karma Yoga. (Karma means literally “action”. But it also has special reference to actions in performance of one’s social responsibilities, and to the merit accumulated by performing good works generally. “Yoga” in the Gita refers to any religious or spiritual practice. See further notes on the complicated meanings of these terms in the Glossary below.)
The author, a devotee of Sankhya spirituality himself, seems to know some other Sankhya devotees who think that performing one’s social responsibilities is a sign that one has not yet become liberated from active involvement in the world. This is one of his main concerns: That Sankhya spirituality will undermine people’s desire to carry out their social responsibilities, and so lead to social chaos.
He is anxious to criticize this interpretation of Sankhya, and to replace it with another: One shows one’s detachment from active engagement in the world by not being attached to success in one’s actions. But one still performs the duties themselves. This is important in order to set an example for those (‘unenlightened”) people who do not understand the sankhya doctrine, and so to prevent chaotic social anarchy (3/21-26).
For purposes of these essays, the most important point here is that the Gita’s author recognized a problem that almost immediately occurs to most beginning students of Sankhya and of early Buddhism: These teachings do undermine many of those kinds of desires and attachments that normally motivate people to interact well with each other and contribute to their society. Will this spirituality leave people with no motivation at all to interact well with others and contribute to their society? The author is extremely concerned with this problem, and proposes a solution to it that involves positively replacing normal kinds of self-centered motivations with other kinds of motivations. The author’s thought stands at the beginning of a long tradition in both Hinduism and Buddhism, on which I rely elsewhere in these essays, describing Buddhist spirituality as “replacing a needy relation to the world with an expressive relation to the world.” That is, one’s contributions to society should not be motivated by an insecure “need” to have some external signs of success to bolster one’s self esteem. They should instead contribute just to expressing a purely outgoing generosity toward others, expressed for its own sake, not motivated by a need to get something out of it.
(Note: Karma-yoga is connected in the Gita with two other topics fascinating to modern readers and easier to understand than Sankhya-spirituality, but related to Hindu “religion” rather than “spirituality”: Reincarnation, and the Indian caste system. These essays are on on Hindu personal spirituality rather than Hindu communal religion. This also follows the BG’s main focus: It does not have to teach its audience about karma as it relates to reincarnation and the caste-system. It mentions these as things they already know about. Its main concern is the danger that Sankhya spirituality might undermine people’s desire to carry out their social responsibilities, and it is anxious to introduce to his audience some new ideas about how Sankhya can be combined with Karma-yoga.)
Bhakti (personal religious devotion to a god)
The third theme is the importance of devotion to the god Krishna. Emotional religious devotion to a personal god is called bhakti in Hinduism. Krishna was one of many gods worshipped by Hindus of this period (about 500-200 b.c.). (There may not have been organized sects or “churches” with exclusive membership. There would rather have been shrines, festivals, ceremonies, etc., connected with various individual gods and goddesses, and people might visit or participate in several of these as they wished. Worship of such gods at local shrines was probably different from the Vedic sacrifices conducted by the priestly caste. I believe that the Gita makes most sense if we suppose it originated among a group of people specially devoted to the god Krishna, but also devoted to Sankhya spirituality.
They developed a new, esoteric interpretation of Krishna, which made him identical with the highest unmanifest Spirit of the sankhya doctrine, called “Brahman” in the Gita. (The sankhya doctrine was a rather esoteric philosophy understood and believed in only by relatively few. It is unlikely that it originally had any connection with popular religious traditions involving Krishna, as understood by the masses of the people.) We can probably see in the Gita a process of formation of a particular religious sect with exclusive membership. That is, members of this sect are people who understand Krishna in a different way than the majority of Krishna-worshippers do (see 7/24-25, a criticism of people who do not realize Krishna’s connection with sankhya doctrine). And the author insists that Krishna worship (of his particular kind) is superior to the worship of other gods (worshippers of other gods are not completely wrong, but they don’t fully understand that the real object of their worship is the unmanifest Spirit, identical with Krishna. See 7/15,20-23.) The author seems to assume an (“enlightened”) audience who are mainly devoted to the sankhya doctrine. He can take this for granted. This audience needs to be reminded, however, of the importance of Krishna worship (see 5/1-5, where “renouncer” describes a sankhya-devotee; see also 9/11).
Glossary of some key terms in the Bhagavad Gita (BG)
Atman
Prakriti
Gunas of Prakriti.
These three terms need to be understood together.
Atman (usually translated “Self”) is a concept used to interpret meditation-experiences. If a person concentrates for prolonged periods on just being aware of her own inner being, this produces a feeling of deeply satisfying peace (“bliss”), and this is thought of as experiencing and uniting with one’s Atman. The Atman is a perfectly free being, self-contained, and independent.
Prakriti refers to everything that is not Atman, which the person identified with Atman wants to be liberated from. Prakriti is the world as an impersonal machine, run by impersonal stimulus-response mechanisms. The Gunas of Prakriti are the basic elements and forces that constitute and run this impersonal machine. When a person is deeply and inflexibly independent on specific conditions in the world, this causes un-free, involuntary reactions to Guna-caused changes in these external conditions. These reactions themselves are attributed to other Gunas which are part of this person’s internal psychology. This is described as “gunas acting upon gunas” – impersonal gunas in the external world causing involuntary reactions in impersonal gunas that are part of the person’s psychological makeup. “Gunas acting upon gunas” describes pure stimulus-response mechanisms – a person simply responds to external stimuli however she is “programmed” to respond. She has the illusion she is freely deciding how to respond, but she is really being “helplessly driven by the gunas of prakriti.”
Insofar as a person defines her identity in relation to some particular conditions in the world (a job, achievements, etc.), she is making the mistake of identifying herself with the world of Prakriti, and subjecting herself to being deeply disturbed by changes in the world beyond her control. Identifying herself with her Atman (through meditation) instead will put her in a deeply satisfying state beyond all disturbing change. It would make her free of all involuntary responses. Achieving this state is the #1 priority in life, and this is expressed by saying that there is no being higher than the Atman. Atman is the spiritually supreme being, expressed by saying that Atman is the same as Brahman.
Brahman is the Supreme Being in the Gita. Brahman is like the Christian “God,” but not a person, and not a powerful creator who governs events in the world.
Karma. The root meaning of karma is “action.” It came to be specially associated with action carrying out social responsibilities, which is therefore called karma yoga. It also came to be associated with the merit associated with being a good member of society, merit that will bring about rewards in a future reincarnated life, hence the idea of “accumulating good karma.”
This root meaning of karma as “action” is invoked in some BG passages combating the view that “in-action (a-karma) is superior to action (karma).” In the Sankhya philosophy, Atman is considered to be peacefully “inactive” (a-karma) and conversely, “action” (karma) is attributed to the gunas of prakriti. The BG is combating the views of some people who interpret the Sankhya philosophy to mean that the person identified with her Atman would refrain from all karma – i.e. would refuse to carry out any social responsibilities.
In opposition to this interpretation of Sankhya, the BG wants to show how identifying with Atman can be integrated with karma yoga, to which it attaches great importance. On the other hand, it basically agrees that a person fully identified with Atman would not take it as a major goal to attain a better life in a future reincarnation. The person identified with Atman and Brahman would be beyond all karma in this sense. At death she would merge completely into Brahman and would not be reincarnated at all, not on this earth and not in any “heaven.” This idea is responsible for the negative meaning that karma sometimes has in Hindu and Buddhist writings. A person concerned to better the external conditions of her life, either in this life or a future life, is said to be “bound to the wheel of karma,” from which the wise person wants to be liberated.
Sankhya. In the BG, Sankhya is used as the name of particular philosophical theory and meditative practice associated with it. The key doctrines of this philosophy are 1) the contrast between Atman (Self) and Prakriti (the world as an impersonal machine), and 2) the identity of Atman with Brahman, the highest being. These are not isolated doctrines to be believed in by blind faith, but are an interpretation of experiences associated with a certain meditation practices.
Yoga. In the BG, the word yoga is used to refer to any religious practice, including meditation practices, carrying out one’s social responsibilities (karma yoga), ceremonies honoring a god or goddess (bhakti yoga). Posture-based practices which most Americans associate with the word “yoga” (hatha yoga) developed in India at a much later time.
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