Eknath Easwaran on Bhagavad Gita

In a heroic age, on the vast plains of North India, a timeless spiritual classic
was born -- the message of Sri Krishna to Prince Arjuna, on the brink of a war he
doesn't want to fight.

- Beginning of the write-up on the blurb of Eknath Easwaran’s commentary of Gita

Bhagvad Gita is the bible of Hinduism, and very unjustly so. There is a most fantastic book in Hindu spiritual literature called Ashtavakra Gita which far surpasses Bhagvad Gita, and yet Bhagvad Gita gets all the limelight, and Ashtavakra Gita exists in relative obscurity. Ashtavakra is a very straightforward book, just the essence of vedantic truth and nothing else. Just like Bhagavad Gita, it is also an impromptu exposition delivered by an enlightened master, in response to a situation and the questions of a seeker-king. However, while the context of 'A. Gita' is simple and understandable, the context of 'B.Gita' is nothing less than grotesquely preposterous. And what infinitely compounds that weirdness is that no one ever down the centuries raised the slightest point indicating it, on the other hand everyone invariably would go ga-ga over the superb brilliance of the setting of Gita. Let’s examine this setting, following the line quoted above.

“In a heroic age” – there was nothing heroic about that age, or if we have to go by that definition our age can become heroic too if all the prime ministers’ and presidents’ posts were filled with military generals and commanders! In fact the situation then was even worse.

Arjuna, easily the central protagonist of Mahabharatha, seems to know absolutely nothing, no art, no knowledge, no skill except archery. (Although in one chapter he becomes a dance teacher in disguise, and he supposedly learnt it in heaven.) I have no clue exactly what qualification he had to become the king of India of that epoch, or of some central state thereof. In the recent Beijing Olympics, one Indian fetched a gold medal in the shooting competition, and was overnight shot to celebrity fame in the country. Now imagine how weird the situation would be if people all over the place started clamoring that he should become the next prime minister of this country! And yet, everyone adores Arjuna in India, he remains the archetypal princely figure of the ages! It must also be noted that in those days, they had arrows that would go like guided missiles of today, turning and twisting on their path if need be and relentlessly chasing their target; now since all the power was in the arrows gifted by gods, where even this only talent of Arjuna comes into play is not very clear. Anyone can press a button in a missile silo, or launch an arrow which can find its own way!

However, things are even worse than that, much worse, because Arjuna is part of the five Pandava brother team, and Arjuna being the king actually means the eldest of the five brothers – Dharma Raja – being in charge, since Arjuna invariably defers to the wishes of his elder brother. This Dharma Raja character doesn’t even know how to wield any weapon, all he seems to be interested in is a form of very primitive and utterly childish dice-based gambling game like snakes and ladders, and this kind of gambling is purely based on luck, so no skill whatsoever is required to play it. Further, as is demonstrated in the most central turning point of the whole Mahabharatha, the Dice-Game episode, Dharma Raja has a tendency not to only to be utterly childish, but also psychotically retarded. He goes on losing game after game to his opponent, but he seems to have utterly no capacity to control himself from discontinuing. He keeps losing not only all his kingdom and wealth, but he even wagers people, his own brothers, and his wife, as if they were his personal property and loses them all, which is just unimaginable height of criminal absurdity. I am not quite sure by what justification he claims his right to the throne again. Such persons would be put in high-security mental asylum in our days, but in those days and down through the ages Dharma Raja was regarded the ‘King of Righteousness’ – his very name means that through some coincidence (actually since he was granted to his mother through the grace of none other than the Lord of Death, Yama Dharma Raja).

So this whole righteous war thing, the archetypal battle of good against evil, is fought over the cause of making an utterly inane, inept and retarded, disgustingly mediocre person as the ruler of Hastinapura, as Delhi was called at that time. This is what the bunkum about ‘the heroic age’ is about, though we have not been able to explore the real depth of it. And practically all Krishna does in Bhagavad Gita is to convince a suddenly and inexplicably reluctant Arjuna to fight the battle so that this bunch of morons can become the ruling clique of the state, in a country where every one else is dead after fighting this bloody all-out war. And this is supposed to be the greatest spiritual classic of all times! Bhagavad Gita, along with the epic book of which it is a part, Mahabharatha, should be featured in the Guiness Book of World Records as being the world’s stupidest story ever, not world’s greatest spiritual classic!