Part 3 (1/2)

Dharma Versus Riti and Niti Vishnu is not angry with Ravana or Duryodhana or Duryodhana's commanders, for he can see the roots of their self-obsession and psychological blindness. These come from a sense of isolation and abandonment. They feel they have to fend for themselves and there is no one who can help them; and so, rather than realize their human potential, they regress to their animal nature, focussing on outrunning imagined predators, fending off imagined rivals and consuming imagined prey. When humans behave as animals do, despite the human ability to outgrow animal nature, it is adharma. It evokes compa.s.sion in Vishnu. For him, the villainy of Ravana and Duryodhana is viparit-bhakti, reverse love, born of hunger, fear and a yearning for love.

Arjuna, no one is hurt when you walk this path of humanity; no one is killed; even a little effort helps you fear less.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 40 (paraphrased).

Dharma is more about empathy than ethics, about intent rather than outcome. I follow dharma when I am concerned about your material, emotional or intellectual hunger. I follow adharma when I focus on my hunger at the cost of yours.

You and I can exchange Empathy enables exchange. I can satisfy a hunger of yours and you can satisfy a hunger of mine. This refers not just to physical hunger, but psychological hunger as well. This act of mutual feeding informs the yagna, the ancient Vedic ritual, which establishes the human ecosystem of mutuality, reciprocity, obligations and expectations that we shall explore in this chapter. Yagna is a key theme in chapters 3 and 4 of The Gita. In Vedic tradition, technically, the word 'karma' refers to yagna. Karma yoga begins when we acknowledge that we are always part of an exchange.

Krishna declares that the only action worth doing is yagna. Yagna refers to the Vedic fire ritual, 4,000 years old, nowadays abbreviated to the havan.

Arjuna, all actions other than yagna entrap us. Yagna alone liberates us.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 3, Verse 9 (paraphrased).

The a.s.sociation of yagna with a battle seems strange. However, in The Gita Krishna looks upon it as a metaphor, indicative of relations.h.i.+ps. To appreciate this, we have to look at the basics of a yagna.

He who initiates the yagna is called the yajamana. He invokes a deity (devata) and offers him food (bhog) exclaiming, 'Svaha!', meaning, 'This of mine I give you'. He hopes that the invoked deity will give him what he desires (prasad), exclaiming, 'Tathastu!' or 'So be it'. This indicates an exchange.

Yagna Yagna is a very special form of exchange, where we can give and hope to receive. It is give and get, not give and take. When we take without giving, we become the oppressors. When we give and don't get, we become the oppressed. Feeding the other is dharma. Not expecting reciprocation is nishkama karma.

Arjuna, the wise define renunciation as giving up action and detachment as giving up expectation.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 18, Verse 2 (paraphrased).

The yagna is mentioned in the first verse (rig) of the first hymn (sukta) of the first book (mandala) of the collection (samhita) known as Rig Veda because it is a reminder of our humanity. No animal feeds another except its own offspring; at best, its pack or herd. Humans can feed everyone around them. Humans can also return the favour. To trade is a very unique human phenomenon. Trading behaviour has been doc.u.mented in chimpanzees and vampire bats, but nothing on the human scale.

Exchange creates a network of expectations and obligations. Yagna thus is the cornerstone of sanskriti (culture). This idea echoes the sentiment of modern economists who see the market as the foundation of society.

When humans began exchanging, we stepped out of the animal world. From exchange came ideas of mutuality, reciprocity, expectation, obligation, debt and balancing accounts that shaped culture. Yagna is a ritual reminder of this very human ability.

Arjuna, way back, Brahma created humans through yagna and declared that yagna will satisfy all human needs. Use yagna to satisfy the other and the other will satisfy you. If you take without giving, you are a thief. Those who feed others and eat leftovers are free of all misery. Those who cook for themselves are always unhappy. Humans need food. Food needs rain. Rain needs exchange. Exchange needs action. Exchange began with divinity, that primal spark of humanity. Those who indulge themselves, those who do not repay it backwards, as well as pay it forward, break the chain, are miserable and spread misery.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 3, verses 10 to 16 (paraphrased).

In the Kalpa-sutras, which elaborate Vedic household rituals, the yajamana is advised to perform five yagnas (pancha-yagna) to feed everyone around: the self, the other, family, birds and animals and ancestors. When we do that, the boundary between family and stranger is removed. As the Upanishads say: the whole world becomes family (vasudaivah kutumbakam).

Yagna for Relations.h.i.+ps In most writings, yagna is translated as 'sacrifice'. This translation came from the European Orientalists of the eighteenth century who never really conducted the ritual or witnessed it. They probably equated the yagna with the blood sacrifices seen in tribal communities around the world to appease fearsome spirits, or even with the sacrifice of Abraham's son demanded by Abraham's G.o.d as a mark of love and obedience.

Later, scholars realized that there was another word for sacrifice in the Vedic texts, bali, and that yagna was clearly a larger concept. Historians drew attention to the practice of honouring deities (puja) with food, flowers, incense and lamps, that became popular in Puranic times. This had its roots in the Vedic practice of pouring ghee into fire. Both are acts of invocation and libation. Yagna came to be seen as an earlier form of puja. So yagna was then translated as 'wors.h.i.+p'.

But the Puranas show yagna in a very different light. In the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, kings perform yagna to get children. Mantras chanted yield instant results: a G.o.d is obliged to give a woman a child, or turn an ordinary arrow into a deadly missile. Yagna thus a.s.sumes expectation and obligation, giving in order to get. Yagna is clearly an exchange.

The word 'exchange' is rarely used to explain yagna. It is problematic. It lacks n.o.bility. We have learned to valourize sacrifice, where there is giving without getting. We even celebrate wors.h.i.+p, where getting is a surprise, a bonus, not the outcome of any expectation. This, despite the fact that the last hymn of every yagna and puja is always the chant of expected outcomes (phala-stuti). Perhaps we have been conditioned to be ashamed of human yearnings, maybe by mendicants of the Buddhist, Jain and Hindu orders who chose to renounce the world. Perhaps our preference for socialism in the post-Independence era made us frown upon the idea of exchange, as it reeks of a trader mentality. How can we trade with the divine?

By calling the battle at Kuru-kshetra a yagna, Krishna indicates that Arjuna is part of an exchange. Either he is the yajamana who will please his brothers, or he is the devata who has to repay the debt he owes his brothers. The Pandavas depend on him, and he is indebted to the Pandavas. To deny these dependencies, these expectations and obligations, is to deny humanity.

The monastic order rejected the yagna. In essence, they rejected the other. For yagna is all about paying cognizance to the hunger of the other. The other is both an individual (para) as well as the collective (param). Yagna is about the relations.h.i.+p between the individual (aham) and the other (para/param) through exchange.

In the s.h.i.+va Purana, when the hermit s.h.i.+va beheads Daksha and destroys his yagna, all the G.o.ds beg him to give life back to the yajamana and restore the yagna, for without it they will starve. Thus, the devatas depend on the yajamana as much as the yajamana depends on the devatas. There is interdependence at play here.

Arjuna, those who offer food to the G.o.ds and survive on the leftovers find brahmana. Not those who offer nothing. Different yagnas are thus laid at the mouth of the brahmana. It all begins with choosing an action. Rather than choose to give up the world, choose to understand the brahmana, which demands action, hence yagna. Thus, informed by the wise, you will see all beings in yourself, and all beings as part of me. There will be no confusion.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 4, verses 26 to 35 (paraphrased).

In Puranic lore, he who gives upon getting is a deva; he who seeks retrieval of what he thinks has been stolen is an asura; he who grabs, takes without giving, is a rakshasa; he who h.o.a.rds is a yaksha! He who does not partic.i.p.ate in the yagna, does not give or want to get, is a shramana or tapasvi, the hermit, much feared in the Puranas as the cause of drought, hence starvation. Within us is the yajamana, the devata, the asura, the rakshasa, the yaksha and the shramana. They manifest in different interactions.

Brahma's Sons Once, as s.h.i.+va was pa.s.sing by a yagna-shala, where a yagna was being conducted, the wives of the yajamanas, the yagna-patnis, ran after him, begging him to satisfy them. The yajamanas got upset and created, out of the yagna, a whole bunch of monsters. s.h.i.+va destroyed all the monsters and then began to dance. He used various gestures of his hands and feet to convey the wisdom of the yagna that escaped the yajamanas, that the yagna existed to satisfy the yearnings of those around them, not to create monsters to defend themselves.

A similar story is found in the Bhagavat Purana, where Krishna, while tending to his cows, comes upon a few yajamanas performing yagna and asks them for food. They ignore him. So he goes to their wives and the yagna-patnis feed him all the offerings they had prepared for the yagna. The yajamanas are furious but then realize that their wives look content, while they feel angry and frustrated. The yagna had yielded results for their wives, not them, for the yagna-patnis had fed the hungry and discovered the true meaning of the yagna.

Arjuna, like a well surrounded by water, hymns and rituals are of no value to the one who has understood the meaning.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 46 (paraphrased).

Human hunger is not just about food. We seek emotional and intellectual nourishment too. We seek meaning, validation, significance, value, purpose, power and understanding. We seek ideas about wealth, power, relations.h.i.+ps and existence. We seek entertainment. We seek food to liberate us from the fear of the predator, security to liberate us from the fear of the prey and meaning to liberate us from the fear of invalidation. This transforms every meeting into an exchange. Lovemaking is yagna. Child-bearing is yagna. Child-rearing is yagna. Feeding is yagna. Teaching is yagna. Service is yagna. War is also yagna. Exchange can be used to satisfy our desires, or repay our debts. It can entrap us, or liberate us. It depends not on the action, but on the thought underlying the action.

A wish (sankalpa) always precedes a yagna. It is about asking for whom are we performing the action: for the benefit of the self (aham) or the benefit of the other (para)? Who is the beneficiary (aradhya)? And who is merely the instrument (nimitta)? In nishkama karma, the devata is the aradhya and the yajamana is the nimitta.

Approach to Exchange In the Ramayana, disruption happens because characters act for their own pleasure at the cost of others and resolution follows when Vishnu acts for the pleasure of others, not his own. It is Dasharatha's desire for sons, Kaikeyi's desire for the kingdom, Surpanakha's desire for pleasure and Ravana's desire for domination that cause disruption. Ram works not for his personal happiness, but the happiness of Ayodhya. In the Mahabharata, it is Shantanu's desire for a young wife, Dhritarashtra's desire for the throne and Yudhishtira's desire not to lose a gamble that causes disruption. Krishna works not for his personal happiness, but for the happiness of the Kurus.

Krishna asks Arjuna to fight the war not for his own sake but for the sake of others. He has to consider himself merely the instrument, for the karma-bija of the war has already been sown and the karma-phala of carnage is inevitable.

Arjuna, I am time that destroys worlds. Even without you, these warriors are doomed to die. So arise and fight; destroy your opponents and claim your success. It is I who has already killed them. Make yourself merely my instrument.-Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 11, verses 32 and 33 (paraphrased).

To do yagna is to recognize that we live in a sea of a.s.sumed expectations and obligations. You and I can h.o.a.rd, grab, give in order to get, get before giving or simply withdraw from the exchange. We can act out of desire, duty or care. We can choose to expect or control outcome, or not.

You and I withdraw in fear What stops us from empathizing and exchanging? What makes us want to control the other, or simply withdraw, find peace in the isolation of the cave? The process of discovering the source of disconnection is called yoga, though the word yoga itself means 'to connect'. It involves moving through the many containers that const.i.tute deha in order to discover dehi. Krishna starts speaking of yoga in Chapter 5 of The Gita, elaborating it further in Chapter 6. Yoga is what we will explore in this chapter. With this, we move from the outer social world to the inner psychological world, from karma yoga to bhakti yoga.

Each of the eighteen chapters of The Gita is t.i.tled 'yoga'. These are then bunched together to give us three types of yoga: behavioural (karma), emotional (bhakti) and intellectual or cognitive (gyana). So what does the word 'yoga' exactly mean?

Colloquially, Indians use the word 'jog' for yoga. In astrology, jog means alignment of the stars that results in favourable conditions for an activity. From jog comes the word 'jogadu', the resourceful individual, a word typically used in the eastern parts of India for one who is able to create alignment and connections in a world full of misalignment and disconnections. The word 'jogadu' has given rise to the words 'jugad' and 'jugadu' in the northern parts of India, where it means improvisation and even by-pa.s.sing the system. Sadly, today, jugad is used in a negative sense, for it is practised for the self at the cost of the other, in the spirit of adharma, not dharma.

The word 'yoga' has its roots in the sound 'yuj' which means to yoke, like a horse to a chariot. The word 'vi-yoga' refers to disconnection or separation. Thus, 'yoga' has something to with binding things together, or connecting things.

Traditionally, yoga has been used as a complement to sankhya. Sankhya means enumeration and refers to a.n.a.lysis, the tendency to break things down into their const.i.tuent parts. Yoga is its complement and refers to synthesis, the tendency to bind parts to establish a composite whole. In art, sankhya is visualized as an axe (parashu), used to slice things into parts, while yoga is visualized as a string (pasha), used to tie things together. Ganesha, the scribe of the Mahabharata-and hence The Gita-holds these symbols in his hands to remind all of these two techniques of enquiry. Krishna uses both sankhya and yoga to solve Arjuna's problem. He establishes boundaries using sankhya and then dissolves them all using yoga.

Arjuna, practise yoga with conviction and without dismay, for it will connect you with that from which you are disconnected, and unhook you from your sorrow. -Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 6, Verse 23 (paraphrased).

a.n.a.lysis and Synthesis Nature is full of discrete units: planets, stars, rocks, rivers, plants, animals and humans. These units are naturally drawn together or pulled apart by certain forces of attraction or repulsion. In the physical world, these forces have been observed at inter-planetary as well as sub-atomic levels. In the biological world, they manifest as animals seeking opportunity, such as food and mates, and shunning threats, such as rivals and predators. This attraction (raga) and repulsion (dvesha) is part of life.

RagaDvesha Yoga enables us to be aware of these natural forces of attraction and repulsion, and not be swept away by them. Krishna equates the senses to cows (indriya-go-chara) that graze on the pasture made of various kinds of stimuli. Yoga turns our mind into the cowherd who determines what the senses should or should not graze upon. Thus, yoga has much to do with the mind, and it complements yagna that has much to do with society. Yagna is the outer journey, while yoga is the inner journey that Arjuna has to undertake.

Yoga and Yagna Arjuna feels that if he withdraws from the battle, all problems will be resolved and there will be peace. However, not fighting a war does not tackle the underlying hunger and fear. It simply denies and suppresses the hunger and fear and the consequent rage, which then ends up festering secretly as people 'pretend', awaiting to explode more intensely at a later date. Outer peace does not guarantee inner peace. Further, it does not take into consideration the other's thoughts and feelings. Arjuna's desire for peace, howsoever n.o.ble, may not be shared by Bhima or Duryodhana, who are ready for war. Forcing his n.o.ble view on them would be judgement, devoid of empathy, hence adharma. Arjuna may not want to do yagna, but he cannot stop others from doing so. Our decision to act or not act cannot be insensitive to the feelings of those around us. Hence, any discussion on yagna is complemented with discussions on yoga. While yagna focusses on tangible giving and getting, yoga focusses on discovering intangible thoughts and emotions of the yajamana as well as the devata, the boundaries that we create and use to include some as family and exclude others as enemy.