II: 31

[Krishna Jaya]

Chapter 2, Verse 31

 

“Know what your duty is

And perform it without hesitation.

For a warrior, there is nothing better

Than a battle that duty enjoins.”

 

Ram Dass:

 

“Krishna shifts gears here.  His call, ‘do your duty’ speaks very forcefully to Arjuna, because it comes from a level that Arjuna is especially tuned to hear.  In the Hindu tradition, the castes were divisions in society based on birth and role.  Your caste defined your life through one set of coordinates.  Then there were the Ashramas, or stages of life, of which there are four.  There is the period from birth to twenty, when you’re a student.  Then there’s the time from twenty to forty, when you’re a householder.  You make the money that supports the whole system.  Next there’s the stage from forty to sixty, when you do your religious study.  And then from sixty on, you become a renunciate, a Sannyasin.  You let go of everything worldly, and turn your attention completely towards God.

 

Between caste on the one hand and Ashrama on the other, your life was laid out pretty clearly, like a plot on a grid.  If you were a Kshatriya of a certain age, for example, there would be a well-defined prescription for just what you ought to be doing, your Swadharma.  It was an absolutely clear-cut structure, and it defined appropriate action. Krishna is standing squarely within that system when he says to Arjuna, Do your duty.  Do what is appropriate.

 

‘Duty’ is one of the highest obligations for a Kshatriya.  It goes very deep.  So when Krishna frames Dharma in those terms and exhorts Arjuna to do his duty, it’s a powerful argument from Arjuna’s Kshatriya perspective.  But although that’s the power of the argument for Arjuna, it’s not really where Krishna is coming from.  He’s not calling on Arjuna to do his duty out of a set of social demands, but out of his responsibility to a higher law.”

 

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:

 

“The event of war is a natural phenomenon.  It is a process of restoring the balance between the negative and positive forces of nature.  To rise to the call of a war to establish righteousness is to respond to the cosmic purpose, the will of God.  To live and die to maintain law and order in society, thereby remaining a faithful instrument in the hands of God, is the privilege of a man born into a Kshatriya family. 

 

Krishna’s purpose is to convince Arjuna that, from the point of view of his duty, the only worth while course is to shake off his reluctance to fight and face up to the action for which he has been born.  He seeks to bring home to Arjuna, that to him, born a Kshatriya, fighting is natural.  ‘For a warrior, there is nothing better than a battle that duty enjoins’ because establishing righteousness for the good of the world is the most glorious and justifiable way of fulfilling the life of a Kshatriya, who is born to protect Dharma at whatever the cost.  Dharma maintains the stream of evolution in life.  The Kshatriya who does not accept a just fight is not aligned with this natural stream of evolution.”

 

[Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower, features a mythical Kshatriya named Roland, a gunslinger… “He never felt so fine as he did at this moment of beginning (of battle); never felt so completely and truly himself.  Here were the tag ends of glory’s old cloud.  It didn’t matter that they (his enemies) were robots.  What mattered was that they had been preying on the helpless for generations, and this time they had been caught utterly and completely by surprise.”]

 

Sri Aurobindo:

 

“How does Self-knowledge justify the action demanded of Arjuna and the slaughter of Kurukshetra?

 

The answer is that this is the action required of Arjuna in the path he has to travel.  This world, this manifestation of the Self in the material universe is not only a cycle of inner development, but a field in which the external circumstances of life have to be accepted as an environment and occasion for that development.  It is a world of mutual help and struggle; not a serence and peaceful gliding through easy joys is the progress it allows us, but every step has to be gained by heroic effort and through a clash of opposing forces.”

[Krishna Jaya]

Daniel Clark (a friend):

“Krishna, the original worshipable, advented himself within a certain culture. He was not subject to the laws and customs of that culture. But he often chose to go along with the local mores when it suited his purposes. For instance, he encouraged Arjuna to kill - with the argument that Arjuna was a Kshatriya and that's a Kshatriya's duty. We live in a different culture. This particular persuasion of Krishna's does not apply to us. At least it does not apply to those of us who are
striving for self-realization. For such people, the way to God is the way of peace. As The Course in Miracles says, ‘Let peace of mind be your only goal.’ Still, it might be that for Arjuna, doing his duty as a Kshatriya gave him peace of mind. Certainly when he was in doubt about his duty he was extremely agitated. So what is true in one age may not be true in another, and religion must change to suit the times.”

[A guy's been riding shotgun on a Brinks truck for twenty-five years. It's all he knows how to do. He's gotten steady raises, pension benefits, etc. and is successfully supporting his wife and four children. His best friend took him to the Darshan of a Hindu saint a few years ago and now our Brinks man is studying the Bhagavad Gita daily, practicing Yoga, meditation and the allied disciplines and, in a nutshell, striving towards Self-realization. Can he not learn, in his absorption of Krishna's teaching in the Gita, how to square his spiritual quest with his life in the world? Or must he quit his job and figure something else out?]

Daniel Clark:

“His newfound peace of mind will be noticed by his coworkers. It may be that they will ask him about it. Or not. He now sees everything as part of God. In his mind he's offering all his actions to God. My guru [Srila Prabhupada] said, ‘You don't have to change anything. Simply add Krishna.’ His pension benefits will be augmented by other benefits. No quitting necessary!”