#2 The Play of Violence

[Guest guest]

This is the second article. In this, recently wrote for a forthcoming

academic publication by SUNY press, Swami Tripurari discusses violence in

the Bhagavad-Gita.

 

 

 

The Play of Violence

by Swami BV Tripurari

 

 

When we portray violence in a drama none of the actors are actually hurt. It

is only play. Perhaps if we could stand back from the drama of everyday life

and view it as if it were just that, a drama to which we are only a witness,

we could better understand the violence in our lives, and from the vantage

point of the soul we could see that no one really gets hurt. This is

precisely what the Bhagavad-gita advocates, and from the position of

witnessing the human drama rather than being caught up in it, Sri Krsna

invites us to exit the theater of the human drama and accept a role in

another drama--the play of God (lila).

 

The play of God is the larger circle within which the drama of humanity

appears as a smaller circle. However, the larger circle of God's play

occasionally appears within the smaller circle of humanity to convey mystic

insight into the nature of both of these dramas. The Bhagavad-gita is a

prime example of this.

 

Krsna's counsel in the Bhagavad-gita represents the most concentrated

segment of time he spends on directly instructing humanity throughout his

entire play on earth. From it we learn all that we need to know about the

drama of human life. We learn the mystery of how inaction can be action, how

nonviolence within humanity can be violence. We also learn all we need to

know about God's play to prepare ourselves for a role within it, including

the mystery of how action can be inaction, how violence within God's play

can be nonviolence.(1) The mystery surrounding God's descent within humanity

is discussed at the beginning of the Gita's fourth chapter. In his

introductory remarks Krsna explains things about himself that make his

Godhood apparent to Arjuna. Arjuna understands that his dear friend is God

himself mystically appearing within the world as if he were a player in the

human drama. The Gita thus explains the principle of the avatara.

Understanding this principle is foundational to understanding the nature of

the yogic war--the Battle of Kuruksetra--that Krsna implores Arjuna to

participate in.

 

Krsna begins chapter 4 by explaining the history of the science of yoga and

his own participation in its dissemination, which involves his instructing

the sun god Vivasvan thousands of years before. His statement creates a

doubt in Arjuna's mind and thus Arjuna questions his friend and mentor.

 

"Arjuna said: 'You took birth long after Vivasvan was born. How then am I to

understand that you instructed him previously?'"(2) By asking about Krsna's

apparent recent human birth in contrast with the ancient celestial birth of

the sun god at the dawn of creation, Arjuna paves the way for Krsna to

enlighten him about his omniscience, his eternality, and the mystic nature

of his appearance in this world.

 

"The Lord of Sri said: 'Arjuna, both of us have passed through many births.

I know all of them, whereas you, subduer of enemies, do not. Although I am

the controller of all beings, nevertheless, remaining in control of my

material energy, I manifest by my own inner power.'"(3)

 

Here verse 6 is particularly significant. Krsna says that his descent is

under the jurisdiction of his primary potency (atma mayaya)(4) and that when

he descends he remains in control of his secondary potency, material nature

(prakrtim svam).(5) This is significant because it tells us that God, while

descending, remains aloof from the governing influence of the human

drama--material nature. Furthermore, we learn that God has a special mystic

potency that causes his descent.

 

This special potency is God's primary potency that governs all of his

personal activities and those of his perfected devotees.(6) It is his own

personal power constituting his essence or intrinsic nature (svarupa). God's

play comes under the jurisdiction of his primary potency, even when it

appears within the smaller circle of our human drama, and it is never

influenced by his secondary potency over which he has full control. It is

independent of the laws of material nature even when functioning within

nature. From it--God's play--we can expect miracles on earth. As we shall

see, the Battle of Kuruksetra involves such miracles. Arjuna's participation

in it also requires nothing short of a miracle, for he must become God-like

himself.

 

The Bhagavad-gita teaches us what this entails. The starting point is

detachment from the fruits of one's work, because God's play is not based on

the erroneous reading of material manifestations that arises from attachment

to them. The extent to which one is attached to an object is as much as

one's eye of objectivity is obscured. Thus detachment reveals the nature of

the world and the necessity to witness it rather than wallow in it.

Furthermore, genuine detachment arising from mystic insight makes one aloof

from the influence of material nature and it is thereby the basis of

nonviolent life within God's play.(7)

 

Before discussing God's play further, let us first examine the nature of

material attachment within the human drama and how it fosters violence even

when it speaks of nonviolence. We shall also look at the task before Arjuna

in the Gita and see how his initial advocacy of nonviolence actually

constitutes violence. We will discuss how the entire Bhagavad-gita advocates

transcending material attachments and the violence they involve for the sake

of entering into God's play and a life of absolute nonviolence. In returning

to God's play, we will examine the Battle of Kuruksetra in particular, which

is an excellent example of nonviolence within violence under the

jurisdiction of God's mystic potency.

 

While God's play involves detachment, the human drama is based on

attachment. According to the Gita, attachment to the fruit of one's work is

the basis of exploitation and thus violence.(8) In this condition, the soul

thinks itself to be the doer of acts that are in reality performed by

material nature.(9) Thus it lives in a virtual reality under the stern hand

of the karmic law that governs both the psychic and the physical plane. It

is the soul's material desire or attachment that causes material nature to

react and imprison the soul in its karmic web.

 

Attached to and thus identified with matter, units of consciousness imagine

necessities that in fact are only relative to matter. While the soul is

eternal, it struggles with the threat of death when identified with matter,

for the material manifestation it has identified with is not enduring. Under

karmic law the soul moves out of a necessity born of material

identification.

 

Because the body has needs, those who identify with it feel needy

themselves. We live in the human drama at the cost of others. Here everyone

is on the take. One living being is food for another. Short of realizing

this predicament and making a comprehensive solution to it, our giving is

tinged with getting, our nonviolence with violence. In this plane we must

kill in order to live, however politely.

 

In the human drama, people are their attachments. Desire makes the world of

samsara go 'round. The task that the Gita lays before us is to slay our

attachments and extinguish the material desire that generates the human

drama. It asks us to die an ego death to live without struggle, to be free

from violence and all forms of exploitation. Our identification with matter,

our material ego, must die if our soul is to have a life of its own. This is

what Krsna asks of Arjuna: to slay his material ego. While Arjuna, due to

his material attachments and subsequent identity based on those attachments,

hears Krsna asking him to fight against his own relatives, in reality Krsna

asks him to slay his attachments and thus free his soul.

 

Arjuna speaks eloquently in the first chapter of the Gita, advocating

inaction and nonviolence in the face of a great fratricidal war. But before

doing so, he asks Krsna to drive his chariot between the two armies so that

he can see who has assembled to fight. Krsna does so, commenting that both

armies are one--Arjuna's relatives, the Kurus.(10) Krsna stops Arjuna's

chariot in front of Bhisma and Drona for good reason. These two personify

Arjuna's greatest attachments. They represent his entire martial career and

his closest family ties, Drona being his military guru and Bhisma his

grandfather who took the place of his deceased father in raising him. By

stopping Arjuna's chariot in front of these two warriors whom Arjuna will

have to fight against, Krsna, in his first act of the Gita's drama, speaks

loudly to us about the nature of material attachment and its power to

distort reality. All of Arjuna's arguments for nonviolence, however

well-reasoned and however valid under different circumstances, amount to a

grand rationalization arising from material attachment. He is unwilling to

dismantle his identity within the human drama when the time to do so arrives

of its own accord on God's schedule.

 

Arjuna speaks of compassion and despair at the thought of the violence such

a war will entail. The thought of fighting with his relatives makes him feel

as though he is losing his mind. He does not see how any good can come from

the battle. He feels that while others may be overwhelmed by greed for a

kingdom and thus prepared to fight, he is not. He argues on the basis of the

importance of preserving family tradition, religious principles, and so

on.(11) He concludes that pacifism is the best course: "It would be better

to be killed unarmed and unresisting."(12) Again, all good points, were they

not raised in this particular context.

 

The context is that Arjuna is seated before God in the midst of his play

intended to deliver Arjuna from the illusory human drama. Appropriately,

God's play places Arjuna before all of his material attachments that make up

his role in the human drama. Arjuna is the military disciple of Drona and

the grandson of Bhisma. Materially speaking, we are our attachments, and

slaying them is what is involved in dismantling our illusory, fleeting,

material persona, which is a prerequisite for landing our role in the

eternal play of God.

 

Arjuna's reluctance to fight and advocacy of inaction or nonviolence are not

only grand rationalizations for maintaining material attachment, from the

vantage point of God's play they are an expression of violence. His overt

inaction and nonviolence are subtle forms of passive aggression. They are

violence to the soul because they implicate him further in karmic bondage.

Everything belongs to God, and when we imagine things as belonging to

ourselves, we not only deny the proprietorship of God, we turn others into

objects of our sense indulgence and emotional needs, viewing them through

the lens of our imagined mental/sensual identity. We reinforce the illusory

roles we and other souls play in the human drama at the cost of

self-realization and a role in God's play.

 

>From a purely spiritual perspective, the human drama is ultimately

self-destructive. While consciousness animates matter, the subsequent

movements of matter obscure the fact that consciousness is its animator.

Consciousness is thus lost to itself. When a person acts such that he

completely obscures his potential, forgetting who he is, we call this act of

violence self-destruction. Thus from the vantage point of God's play, the

extent to which one is not involved in transcending God's secondary potency

one renders the entire human drama an act of self-destruction.

 

This is not to say that nonviolence within the human drama is worse than

overt violence. The Gita considers nonviolence a godly quality,(13) one that

should develop in a person who is cultivating spiritual life. Arjuna,

however, is a ksatriya, a warrior. In the socio-religious scheme of the

Gita, qualified violence has a place in the political arena. It is

considered religious for a warrior to fight for a religious cause. But the

Gita, while arising out of this socio-religious framework, is ultimately not

about a socio-religious orientation to life. From the purely spiritual

vantage point of the Gita's conclusion, even religious life aimed at

material remuneration in this life and heavenly attainment in the next is a

form of exploitation and violence to the soul.

 

The vast majority of people do not read the Gita for directions on

socio-religious life, but rather for inspiration in spiritual life. In the

Bhagavad-gita, such socio-religious life is only mentioned in passing, with

at best a view to emphasize the fact that spiritual life has at its

foundation dutiful, responsible living. In the entire Bhagavad-gita, there

are only eight out of seven hundred verses in which Krsna directly

encourages Arjuna to fight because it is the religious duty of a warrior to

do so.(14) These verses appear only because Arjuna argued that it would be

irreligious to fight the war, and even in replying to Arjuna's mistaken

notion, Krsna concludes this section of verses with an advocacy of yoga.(15)

When understood in context, any other verses in the Gita that appear to

advocate the righteousness of a religious type of war are clearly addressing

a particular stage of yogic spiritual pursuit that Krsna wants Arjuna to

engage in.(16)

 

Socio-religious life involves coloring the human drama with a Godly brush,

whereas spiritual life involves transcending the human drama altogether and

entering God's play. Modern readers of the ever-contemporary Bhagavad-gita

want to learn about the spirituality of yoga, and they find that the battle

of life is won when the material ego is slain. It may be a warrior's duty to

fight for a righteous cause, but all such causes pale in consideration of

the plight of the soul itself. From chapter 1 through chapter 18, it is this

plight that the Bhagavad-gita is concerned with, that and the soul's highest

prospect.

 

Indeed, although Krsna appears at a glance to seek Arjuna's allegiance on

religious terms, in his concluding remarks he tells him to completely

abandon religious concerns(17) and stand firm on the stage of God's play,

poised to enter this drama of devotion. Self-surrender in devotion and,

more, self-forgetfulness in love constitute the stage on which the drama of

God's play is performed, a drama and dharma that leaves no room for

exploitation or violence--not even its religious expressions.

 

After 18 chapters of discussion, Arjuna finally understands what Krsna's

sermon is about. Thus Arjuna surrenders to Krsna's will after understanding

the reality of his soul as a mere witness to the human drama and of its

highest prospect in God's play. He fights without attachment, surrendered,

out of love for God in a plane where action is inaction in that it is not

karmically binding, where apparent violence is nonviolence.

 

Fully developed in yoga, having slain his material ego and thus free from

the web of karmic law, and now under the influence of Krsna's primary

potency, Arjuna fights the battle of Kuruksetra. As we learn in the

beginning of the Gita, the battlefield of Kuruksetra is dharmaksetra.(18) It

is a righteous place made sacred by nothing less than Krsna's meeting

Goddess Radha here fifty years earlier. It was here, deep within the play of

God, that Krsna admitted that he was conquered by Radha's love.(19) Here

Krsna becomes the chariot driver of Arjuna.(20) Within the play of God and

devotee at sacred Kuruksetra, where the devotee becomes the deity of God,

what appears to be violence is nonviolence.

 

What is true nonviolence? When a person understands himself to be only a

witness to the human drama, he ceases to act in relation to it and is thus

not bound by karmic implications. Furthermore, his enlightened, detached

action has a liberating effect on others. Removed from the drama itself, and

ceasing to generate a role in it for himself, having extinguished material

desire, the soul is at last peaceful and truly nonviolent. He has taken

himself out of the hectic life-threatening virtual karmic reality and

attained lasting peace. No time, it would seem, for war. Yet it is war, the

Battle of Kuruksetra, that in spite of Arjuna's yogic evolution and

understanding Krsna asks him to fight in. What kind of war is this then? It

is not a war of ordinary religious dharma, although all that is religious is

included within its scope. It is a war of prema-dharma, the dharma of love

that constitutes the play of God.

 

God's play is not action that is born out of any necessity. It may be good

to conclude that once satisfied one has no reason to move.

Desire--need--causes one to move and generate a false identity in the human

drama. Free from the bondage of desire, why should one move? Peace holds

more for us than all the movement of the world. While the Gita reasons like

this in no uncertain terms, the Song of God offers still better reasoning as

well. Krsna tells Arjuna that if one is truly satisfied and full in oneself,

another type of movement is mandated, that of celebration in divine service.

Such is the movement within the play of God. A celebration of his fullness,

God's play overflows into human society.

 

By nature's law--the influence of God's secondary potency--all will die only

to be born again,(21) but when God's play comes within the human drama, any

death that occurs is under the jurisdiction of God's primary potency. Death

in God's play is liberating. Those under the influence of God's secondary

potency who come in contact with his play are liberated. They attain freedom

from the virtual karmic reality without having to undergo the arduous battle

of yoga.(22) They rest in the eternal peace of mukti, whereas those like

Arjuna who consciously participate in God's play attain the full fruit of

yoga in eternal celebration. What then was the bloodshed of the Battle of

Kuruksetra?

 

The contrast found in the Gita between the thought of killing millions of

people--including one's own relatives--and the pure state of consciousness

Krsna wants Arjuna to attain must be noted and underscored. This contrast is

there to teach us just how pure the devotee of Krsna is and just how high

God's play is. Throughout the Gita, Krsna teaches Arjuna what it means to be

free from false ego, unidentified with the movements of one's body,

renounced, selfless, and so on. This is no small accomplishment, and this

state of consciousness cannot be imitated. As much as Arjuna is woeful at

the prospect of war, he is awestruck by what Krsna is teaching him to be.

 

Arjuna's participation in the holy war of Kuruksetra requires his being holy

in the highest sense--free from all bias, and most of all religious bias.

The possibility of abusing this teaching of the Gita leading to

antinomianism and an unrighteous so-called religious war is checked

considerably by the standard of consciousness described at length and

mandated in the text. The person who is "not culpable even when slaying many

people" and "who does not actually slay" is "free from all egotism and pure

in intellect."(23) He has attained a God-like status and has no need to

struggle, no need to fight.

 

Careful study reveals that it is practically unimaginable that one could

attain this state, but the good news of the Gita is that it is indeed

possible to be such a person--a devotee--and that this is the perfection of

life. It involves a state of consciousness in which, for the sake of

emphasis, even violence is nonviolence. As unimaginable as this exalted

state is, so to is the Battle of Kuruksetra.

 

It is said that 640 million warriors died(24) in the 18-day battle on a

tract of land 80 miles in circumference.(25) And what were the weapons of

the war? Bows and arrows empowered by mantras that produced extremely

sophisticated nuclear-like weapons of mass destruction.(26)

 

This constitutes the largest human carnage in the history of the world, in

which eight times more people died than the number of civilians and soldiers

lost in all of the wars of the modern world combined.(27) Furthermore, the

weaponry of the war is said to have been superior to anything known to

humanity at this time, yet we have no war memorials to remind us of the

tragedy, no burial grounds, no weapons to replicate, nothing whatsoever to

remember or document the war by but the immortal Bhagavad-gita itself. Did

it really occur?

 

Yes and no. The battle is not a historical event that can be documented with

modern methodology, nor is it something that could have have taken place

within the realm of human possibility. Yet if the war is merely a myth, then

either there is no play of God within the human drama or the Bhagavad-gita

and the Battle of Kuruksetra are not part of God's play. According to the

Gita, neither of these two are an option. Thus we are left with the

conclusion that the battle did and did not occur. Its violence is

nonviolence.

 

The history of this war is the inconceivable history of the larger circle of

God's play coming with the smaller circle of the human drama. How can it be

documented? Through the practice of bhakti-yoga, the yoga of love. In the

consciousness of pure love for God, mature devotees hear Krsna's conch

heralding victory for the dharma of love as he enacts the drama of the

Bhagavad-gita and commands Arjuna to take part in the yogic battle of

Kuruksetra--an event infinitely more real to realized devotees than the

illusory, mythic drama of humanity's misidentification with matter. It opens

for them the door to a realm of possibility that cannot be found within the

confines of matter. In the homeland of the soul nothing is impossible. It is

here that Krsna's play, with all of its theological and philosophical

ramifications, is eternally performed.

 

The play of Krsna is as human as it is divine. In the drama of Krsna's play,

many things occur under the influence of his magical primary potency that do

not quite fit into material calculation. Just as in drama things happen that

do not happen in the "real world," things happen in Krsna's play that do not

tally with our sense of possibilities. The play of Krsna is carefree, which

at the same time is wonderfully filled with knowledge, lessons by which

humanity can realize its own potential for love.

 

Krsna plays, and through this play he teaches and attracts us. Arjuna is

encouraged by the most loving God to be instrumental in the killing of 640

million people, and if that is not bad enough, some of them were his own

relatives. Why didn't Krsna stop the war and convert Duryodhana by other

means? Certainly he had the power to do so. The reason is that this was his

play, his personal drama in which no one is really killed, and through it he

teaches everything we need to know to be absolutely nonviolent.

 

 

 

 

Footnotes:

 

(1) See Bg. 4.18 for a verse that speaks directly about action in inaction

and inaction in action. Also see Bg. 5.7. Otherwise, this is a recurring

theme throughout the Gita. Arjuna's reluctance to act is a form of passive

aggression that is karmically implicating. Krsna's idea of fighting does not

implicate one in karmic bondage. It is ultimately about being in the world

but not of it, as is Krsna's position.

 

(2) Bg. 4.4

 

(3) Bg. 4.5-6

 

(4) Here I am explaining the Gita though the lens of Gaudiya Vedanta. Jiva

Goswami calls it acintya bhedabheda tattva. God is possessed of

inconceivable potency, or sakti, that is simultaneously one with and

different from him. His inconceivable (acintya) sakti, by which he does the

impossible, is referred to in Bg. 9.5 (yogam aisvaryam). God's primary

potency is referred to as his svarupa sakti or antaranga sakti

(internal/primary/spiritual potency).

 

(5) This potency is referred to as God's maya sakti or bahir-anga sakti

(external/secondary/material).

 

(6) Bg. 4.6 speaks of God's primary potency governing his personal

activities. See Bg. 9.13 (daivim prakrtim) for an example of this potency

governing the activities of God's devotees.

 

(7) Bg. 2.70-71

 

(8) Kama, or desire, is called very injurious/sinful (maha papma) in Bg.

3.37.

 

(9) Bg. 3.27

 

(10) Bg. 1.24-25

 

(11) Bg. 1.27-44

 

(12) Bg. 1.45

 

(13) Bg. 16.2

 

(14) Bg. 2.31-38

 

(15) Bg. 2.38 concludes this section and in it Krsna uses the words same

krtva (equanimity in action) that define the yogic state. Indeed, the same

word (samah) is used in Bg. 2.48 to define yoga, and this verse is in fact

an explanation of Bg. 2.38 and the entire section of verses under

discussion.

 

(16) We find such verses in chapter 3, which is about karma yoga. Those

verses found in chapter 18 (18.46-48) are part of an overall summary of the

entire text that takes us from dutiful socio-religious life to

self-forgetfulness in love of God.

 

(17) Bg. 18.66

 

(18) Bg. 1.1

 

(19) See Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.82.44.

 

(20) The essence of the Gita is found in the idea that at the zenith of

spiritual attainment the devotee conquers God through love, and thus love

itself is supreme. This is evidenced in the Gita by the fact that the

supreme Godhead Krsna becomes the chariot driver of his devotee Arjuna. In

the Srimad-Bhagavatam he is defeated by Radha's love.

 

(21) Bg. 2.27

 

(22) According to Jiva Goswami's Krsna-sandarbha, this is relative only to

Krsna's play and not to that of any of his avataras.

 

(23) Bg. 18.17

 

(24) See Sanga, Kuruksetra War: 'myth, history or lila'

 

(25) Kuruksetra of today, with all of its important holy places relevant to

the battle, is considered to be an area 80 miles in circumference, although

the Satapatha Brahmana 11.5.1.4 seems to indicate that it may have been

larger in ancient times.

 

(26) Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada identifies the brahmastra as a nuclear

weapon in his Srimad-Bhagavatam translation and commentary on 1.7.19.

 

(27) This calculation includes the Civil War, Boer War, Mozambiquean War,

Russian Revolution, Korean War, Vietnam War, World War I, and World War II.

See Hutchinson Encyclopedia (1996) and Macmillan Encyclopedia (1981).

 

 

 

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