Ethical Reasoning Reading Reflection Paper

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Before Ethics

Eric R. Severson

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Chapter 3: Arjuna’s Plight

Meno refused his invitation to be initiated onto a contemplative path, a decision that cost him his

life. But similar proposals have been answered differently in the history of philosophy. When Socrates

invites Meno to become “initiated in the mysteries,'' he is, perhaps unknowingly, echoing similar

invitations underway around planet earth. A century before Socrates, in what is today northeastern India,

a man named Siddhārtha Gautama, eventually called Buddha, was stirring the imagination of people

worlds apart. The wisdom of the Buddha, for thinking about what comes “before ethics,” will consume

our attention in Chapter 7. In this chapter, my focus will be on the Indian philosophical gem called the

Bhagavad Gita, a vivid and poetic song recorded by a mysterious Indian wise man known as Vyasa. The

hero of the Gita is a man named Arjuna, a powerful warrior and skillful leader. Like Meno, Arjuna is in

the midst of preparing himself for battle when he is beset by philosophical questions posed to him. Like

Meno, Arjuna is stunned by these questions, which wash over him and leave him paralyzed and

incapacitated. He says: “My being is paralyzed by faint-heartedness.”2 Yet unlike Meno, Arjuna is

transformed by this encounter, and moves willingly into the mysteries.

This chapter will tell the story of Arjuna and in the process, draw wisdom from ancient and

modern Hindu philosophy. My purpose here is not to provide any kind of exhaustive summary of this

story, nor to pose as an expert in the philosophies of ancient India. Instead, I turn to this and other global

philosophical traditions for help with universal human questions about how we might best prepare to

1 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/ancient-egypt-greek-chinese-indian-amerindian-74590051 2 Bhagavad Gita Discourse 2 number 7 [convert to translation by Goerg Feuerstein]

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think about human morality. The very fact that Western philosophy has been the standard “starting point”

for ethical dialogue is already a concern. Additionally, I am suspicious that Western ethical theory has

fallen into a series of traps, some of which Chinese, Indian, Muslim, and African (along with many

others) philosophies might help Western thinkers avoid. In fact, this chapter is merely an attempt to

provide a response to my friends and mentors who specialize in Indian philosophy, and who have insisted

that there is much to be gained for considering the manner in which Indian thinking leans into moral

questions. Much is surely to be gained in thinking about what comes before ethics across cultural,

geographical, and philosophical boundaries. Sometimes priorities may seem to converge, and at other

times the differences between these traditions will be stark. I hope it becomes obvious that there is little to

be lost by exploring how various world philosophies prepare people to think about ethics.

Here we turn to Arjuna’s plight because this story was meant, all along, to invite readers to be

stunned and then allow the impact to reshape the way they live. Though set in the context of war and the

choice to fight, run away, or do nothing, the Gita is designed to function as a guide to all decisions, as a

mode of thinking contemplatively about the small and large decisions that make up human living.3 It is

impossible to do justice to the Bhagavad Gita in this little chapter, let alone the vast philosophical

tradition behind it. Still, it would be tragic to ignore this significant global tradition as we think about how

we position ourselves before ethics. In the following chapter, I will briefly summarize some key themes in

Indian philosophy which provide a framework for understanding the story of the Gita. After describing

Arjuna’s moment of paralysis, I will explore the ethical significance of this episode. I will provide several

meditations on the importance of this text for our purposes in this volume, exploring the capacity of this

philosophical tradition to deal with complexity, ambiguity, and the important tension between ethical

choices and the resulting outcomes.

Stunned by Dharma

Before discussing the philosophical significance of this ancient text, I must first note a few

difficulties that have often prevented this text, and the Indian philosophical tradition, from being routinely

considered alongside the ethical texts of the West. These obstacles cannot be treated fully here but must

absolutely be part of any conversation that hopes to appeal to non-Western traditions for thinking about

ethical issues. A massive, ancient philosophical tradition cannot be summarized adequately in a few

pages, but a brief introduction to the Hindu concept of dharma – the idea at the heart of ethics in this

3 Galvin Flood; Charles Martin (2013). The Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation. W.W. Norton & Company. pp. xv– xvi. ISBN 978-0-393-34513-1. (provide a quotation from these pages reinforcing that point).

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tradition – provides some important context for talking about the Arjuna’s situation in the Bhagavad

Gita.4

First, this text challenges a number of the trappings of religious mythology, and even theology

itself. Krishna, the primary dispenser of wisdom in the Gita, is a deity, and Arjuna asks his ethical

questions in the only way he knows how. For Arjuna, ethical decisions are made through attending to the

dharma, a concept rooted deeply in Hindu culture and religion. These are true statements, but misleading.

People who read this text in the West often have a prior familiarity with religious writings, and these

evoke conversations between mortals and immortals, between people and deities. Readers familiar with

the Bible, the Torah, and the Qur’an have frequently encountered stories where people talk to “God” and

in these traditions, the conversations are almost always between a human being and an external “Other.”

The Prophet Mohammed, whose teachings founded Islam, encountered God as extraordinarily different

and distinct from anything he had ever known.5 Moses had to remove his shoes before walking in the

presence of God.6 Paul, first known as Saul, was struck temporarily blind by his encounter with a vision

of Jesus.7 It would be natural for readers of the Gita who have been conditioned to think in this way about

theophany (the visitations of human beings by a deity), but something starkly different is underway in the

Hindu tradition.

Truth, indeed ultimate reality itself, is not something found external to Arjuna. Krishna’s voice

and advice are part of an internal deliberation that relates to the truth of all things. Gandhi, who tends to

interpret the Gita ethically rather than spiritually, suggests that readers are to think of Krishna as

imaginary, as the voice of perfection.8 That which is true about the universe, about “God” (that word itself

may not work across the divide between Western and Eastern philosophy), is available through a deep

exploration of every person, every “self.” Though the beings of this world appear to be distinct and

independent, they share a common being, an ultimate unity. Though ancient Indian philosophy knew

nothing of the physics of the Big Bang, there are parallels between this very ancient way of thinking

about the universe and scientific discoveries. All things were once one, sharing a primordial,

undifferentiated, infinitely condensed unity. Every atom, before it was even an atom, and including time

4 Gandhi said, of the Bhagavad Gita: “If all the other scritupres were reduced to ashes, the seven hundred verses of this imperishable booklet are quite enough to tell me what Hinduism is and how one can live up to it.” Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume LI (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, YEAR), 344. 5 Husayn Haykal, Muhammad (2008). The Life of Muhammad. Selangor: Islamic Book Trust, 79–80 (FIND BOOK and make citation, quotation). 6 In Exodus 3, Moses approaches a strange bush in the wilderness that is burning but not consumed. God instructs Moses: “Do not come near. Remove your shoes from your feet because the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Cite NRSV. 7 Acts 9:8-9 Cite NRSV 8 Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume XIV, 175.

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itself, existed in that unity. All things that exist today consist of matter that was once part of the

undifferentiated singularity. This is strikingly similar to the ancient Hindu cosmology, which emphasized

the ultimate unity of all matter and meaning. This unity is sometimes called Brahman, a word that simply

cannot be translated into English without significant distortion. Brahman is all things, and God. Brahman

is the meaning, unity, and connectivity that still reverberates in all things that exist, large and small.

Above all, Brahman indicates the harmonious unity that exists beneath and beyond the chaos of

the world as we know it. For religion and philosophy in this tradition, the nature and centrality of that

“center” to the universe is the heart of thinking and living. Many Hindus wear a small, colored dot on

their forehead, called a bindi. This tiny dot represents that center, the place of unity that is the history and

destiny of all things. The smudge of paint is simultaneously indicative of the singularity of the individual

– the atman (self) – and the unity of that self with ultimate reality. The analogy to the Big Bang theory is

again helpful. There is no point in searching for the “center” of the universe, the “place” where the Big

Bang occurred; every point in the universe is the center, the site of this original unity. Place, time, and

matter all originate in that singularity; we are all the center of the universe. Likewise, the bindi is a

reminder, worn by millions of people today, that every person is Brahman. Every being is the center, the

ultimate.

Yet despite this pre-original and ongoing unity, the world is highly differentiated. We are

separated, quite distinctly, and our separation is both beautiful and challenging. The unity between me

and a rock, you and this book, is not immediately evident. Perhaps even more obvious is the separation

between enemies, between people intent on hurting one another. Just as the explosion of the Big Bang led

to differentiated atoms, molecules, and living beings, the diversification of the Hindu “One” into “Many”

is both beautiful and terrible. We can already detect what comes before ethics in such a tradition; there is

a standing duty of human beings to pursue harmony, unity, good will, and general benevolence. There is a

difference, though perhaps subtle, to think of ethical ideals as aimed at harmony, rather than perfection, as

Plato might incline us.

Ethical questions are to be asked in light of this ultimate truth about the universe. Arjuna has

found his life situated in a system that is oriented toward this harmony, and now finds himself in an

incredibly difficult position. People, after all, are often unaware of the unity that bind together all things,

and turn instead toward greed, separation, violence, and apathy. The world is chaotic, and suffering

abounds, leading people to make decisions that lead to more pain and separation. A shortsighted view of

the world makes passing problems seem massive, and in this regard Hindu life depends on a deeply

meditative approach to life. A person who lives contemplatively, meditatively, and intentionally will see

the bigger picture and make decisions that lead the world toward peace. One expression of meditative

living is yoga, a practice that is sometimes distorted beyond recognition in the Western world, in which it

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has been mostly reduced to exercise in meditation and bodily flexibility. Yoga can take many forms, but

always indicates a mode of living, moving, and being contemplative and centered. Like boats floating on

a rough sea, we appear to exist in isolation and separation from one another, and either band together for

survival or turn against one another in violence. Yoga, in this analogy, is like diving beneath the waves of

chaos that cloud our judgment, and seeing the tranquility of the ocean below, the reality that binds

together all things. Ethics in the Indian tradition therefore seeks pathways toward unity and harmony that

are not clouded by shortsighted panic over individual situations. Arjuna’s story must be understood in

light of this tension.

The true nature of every atman is found in unity, in Brahman, but the diversity of our lives as

“selves” is profound. Our bodies look different, our skills and abilities are suited for some tasks but not

others. We also find ourselves capable of doing great harm to any harmony already present in the universe

and driven to do so by the pressures and sufferings surrounding us. Each decision, from the miniscule to

the massive, either moves with the grain of the universe or against it. Every action, every word, every

invention, every breath moves either toward harmony or against it. These choices are guided by eternal

laws, called dharma, which provide the structure and basis for both the particular and universal journey

toward the unity that is the true nature of all that exists. A fundamental moral task there for confronts

every person: how do I fit into the world in which I find myself? In many cases, the laws of dharma are

fairly obvious and straightforward; people should do the work for which they are best suited. There may

be times in which we are pressed to do work for which we are not particularly well suited by the overall

needs of the world. However, when we have choices, we should lean toward that which makes us flourish

and the world around us flourish.

If sometimes we are pressed into work for which we are not well suited, we sometimes find that

we desire duties for which we are not a harmonious fit. If I had dreams of becoming a soccer goalie for

professional club, the path to that future would be ridiculously improbable. I am a small man, 5’4” if I

stand up very straight, and not particularly good at jumping, diving, or blocking fast-moving soccer balls.

I could spend every waking minute practicing, every spare dollar on trainers and coaches, and every

ounce of my energy trying to become great at something for which I am not well suited. This would be a

profound waste of energy, of course. Even if I were not well past my athletic prime, there is nothing to be

done about my height, and no amount of training can overcome athletic insufficiencies in my DNA. I’m

far better suited for other tasks in the world, such as working in narrow mineshafts. There are people who

can, with exponentially less time and energy, become adept at soccer skills. More seriously, many a

human life has been spent attempting to thrive in the wrong setting, in roles or duties for which they are

poorly suited. Dharma is sometimes hidden and only apparent after much contemplation and

experimentation. At other times, dharma is obvious.

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A 2014 children’s book by Bridget Turner, You Can Be Anything You Want to Be, seeks to help

liberate children from limitations that might keep kids from fulfilling their potential.9 The book names

important components of human life that have been used to limit the potential of children: disability,

family situations, race and ethnicity, along with environmental and religious factors. But the book also

pushes a fable: “Do you know that you can do anything you put your mind to and be anything you want

to be?”10 Such admonitions are well meaning, and often designed to liberate children from oppressive

categories. Girls have, for far too long, been steered away from advanced studies in mathematics, science

and engineering. Yet the simplistic “you can be anything you wish” message is also a dangerous one.

Turner is wrong, plainly, and her words underscore a dangerous myth. The notion of dharma resists this

notion that with enough hard work, success will always follow. Sometimes hard work leads to failure;

sometimes the hardest working goalie is still too short to reach the soccer ball. Dharma is a reminder that

in the midst of our precarious and brief lives there is something profane about wasting energy trying to

fulfill absurd dreams. This much cannot, for the devotee of this philosophical system, be doubted.11 At the

same time, the true view of the universe, and the place of any one person in its harmony, is known to no

one.12 This leads to ambiguity and paradox, at times, which are not necessarily “seen as faults to avoid

but more as mysteries to embrace and explore.”13 In the words of Swami Vivekenanda, who was

instrumental in bringing Indian philosophy to the United States: “Each one thinks his method is best.

Very good! But remember, it may be good for you.”14

There is a dharma, for instance, for every stage of life. Children should not operate heavy

machinery, adults should not spend all day on playgrounds, and the elderly should not be expected to do

heavy labor. Dharma changes, in every moment, with the changing of the weather, the aging of bodies,

the wounds and scars we gather in life, and the shifting political and familial duties. In all things, dharma

seeks harmony, and so the person who wishes to live well in this tradition must have an exceedingly

flexible approach to their duties. A good choice in one environment can be a catastrophically bad choice

when the conditions are different. Ethics, in this tradition, will not be legalistic; dharma is fluid. Yet it

might be easy to reach a misunderstanding here, which is common for Western readers of Hindu

philosophy. The idea of my dharma, of a particular “meaning of life” for me, is also a distortion of the

9 Bridget Turner, You Can Be Anything You Want to Be (Bloomington, IN: Archway Publishing, 2014). 10 Ibid, 6. 11 “[The person who is] unknowing and without faith and of doubting self will perish. For the doubting self, there is no happiness either in this world or the next.” Bhagavad Gita, Goerg Feuerstein trans., 147, Lines 4.40. [convert] 12 Rather than presuming universal knowledge, the Gita repeatedly advocated virtues such as “lack-of-pride, unpretentiousness, nonharming, patience, uprightness, reverence for the preceptor, purity, steadiness, self restraint…” Bhagavad Gita, Goerg Feuerstein trans., 255, Lines 13.7. 13 Edward Viljoen, The Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God Retold (New York: St. Martins, 2019), 76. 14 Swami Vivekanada, Collected Works, Volume 1 (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1926), 470.

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concept of duty in Indian thought. Sometimes Gandhi’s interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita has been

critiqued for leaning too heavily on the implications of this poetry on the application of these teachings

for individuals. J. T. F. Jordens claims that for Gandhi the Gita is about “self control,” which means

“interpretations of the historical, academic or theological type only skim the surface. The real task of the

interpreter becomes self-evident: it is to put the ethical code of the Gita into effect in his own life.”15 This

does not mean Gandhi is wrong; it does mean we should be careful about reading this text with merely

individual ethical formation in mind.

Dharma is certainly about what choices an individual person makes in the world, but it would be

a mistake to think of it individualistically. It would be a waste of my energy to train for a career as a

soccer goalie, but the real problem lies in the world I would abandon in order to pursue that foolish goal.

The likelihood that somebody pays me to block soccer balls is astronomically low and there are a number

of people who depend upon me to provide food and shelter. Then, there is the time I would spend doing

things that help nobody and energy spent developing skills that are not helpful to my family, to my

friends, to my colleagues. Dharma is not principally about each person finding their own destiny or

individual fulfillment in the universe. Dharma is about the big picture. Some portions of the big picture

are specific to each person, but other pieces are available for all to see. One of those, for Arjuna and for

traditional interpretations of dharma, is family.

The Bhagavad Gita is the most famous excerpt from the massive Hindu epic The Mahabharata.

Hinduism may very well be the most diverse of the world’s religious traditions and Indian philosophy is

one expression of that diversity. There are, for instance, many thousands of holy writings in Hinduism;

various Hindu groups gravitate toward different texts, different deities, and diverse practices. In the midst

of this multiplicity, the Bhagavad Gita may very well stand alone as the most universally celebrated.

Gerald James Larson, a scholar of Hindu philosophy, claims: “if there is any one text that comes near to

embodying the totality of what it is to be a Hindu, it would be the Bhagavad Gita."16 The popularity of

this text, though, has often led readers to overlook an important decision made by Arjuna before the

verses of the Gita begin.

The story begins with a great deal of action already underway, as is often the case with good

stories. Two armies are assembled, one significantly larger and better armed. The smaller army is led by

Arjuna, a great archer and the prince of his people, known as the Pandavas. The field of battle is empty,

15 J. T. F. Jordens, “Gandhi and the Bhagavadgita,” Modern Indian Interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita, Robert Minor, ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986), 104. 16 Gerald James Larson, “The ‘Tradition Text’ in Indian Philosophy for Doing History of Philosophy in India,” in R. T. Ames, ed., The Aesthetic Turn: Reading Eliot Deutsch on Comparative Philosophy (Peru, IL: Carus Publishing), 132.

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waiting for a great war to begin. This war that is about to begin was not inevitable; Arjuna had already

done a great deal to avoid it. Opposite his army, the Kauravas are assembled, led by his cousins. The

Pandavas had been methodically squeezed out of their territory. The powerful Kauravas had declined

Arjuna’s request that his people be allowed a small village in which to dwell. In an act of genocidal greed,

the leader of the Kauravas, a man named Duryodhana, had denied the Pandavas even a piece of land the

size of needlepoint: “I will not surrender to the Pandavas even that much of land which may be covered

by the sharp point of a needle.”17 And so the cornered Pandavas, facing genocide, had turned to Arjuna to

prevent their annihilation.

This is what makes the Bhagavad Gita brilliant; it positions Arjuna between family members,

with genocide in the air, and places a bow in his hand. Family members die no matter what he does. There

is no simple, clear duty that would guide him forward at this point. Dharma pulls him in opposing

directions. The Gita is therefore a text built to help people grapple with conflicts with the systems of

dharma. In fact, this text was composed in an era of great unrest within Hinduism, as certain

manifestations of Hindu dharma were being called into question by new generations. Particularly, the

laws of dharma had been used, from time immemorial, to establish and support a caste (varna) system for

social organization. In this type of caste system, which is illegal in India today but continues to exert

significant influence on social and political relations, the channels for dharma are largely determined by

one’s birth. This means that the principle duties that one performs in the world are largely determined by

gender, ethnicity, social, and economic situation of ones parents. One can see some functional importance

to this practice, especially in its earliest history. Fathers who were fishermen trained their children to fish,

and their whole family diet and schedule would revolve around the practices that led to effective fishing.

If a child in a fisher-family decided she would prefer to train to be a shoemaker rather than deal with fish,

this choice would push against the grain of the family dynamic. Shoemaking requires different tools;

cobbler’s instruments are unlikely to coincide with tools designed for fishing. Cobblers have particular

skills and tricks and abilities, and these would not be readily available to the daughter of a fisherman. The

caste system came to structure which families, groups, and ethnicities could provide religious and

political leadership. It determined which persons should take military leadership, which persons should

carry away trash, who should deal with sewage, and who should live in luxury. We should not be

surprised that scholars and leaders have soundly rejected this system as a distortion of the concept of

dharma, and an abuse of the concept of varna in the Gita.18 People familiar with the legacy of racism and

17 Mahabharata, Book 5, Section LVIII [find best translation] 18 For instance, Vijay Kumar Saxena argues that: “Arjuna is extremely concerned about the varna-admixture (pollution of varna). It is necessary to understand why Arjuna is giving so much emphasis on ‘varna-pollution.’ Varna these days is usually translated as caste but the existing caste system, based on heritage and not attributes of

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classism around the world should also be unsurprised that the legacy of the caste system continues to

haunt societies around the world influenced by these practices.

From Paralysis to Action

Arjuna, knowing that he needs help, goes to see the wise and powerful deity Krishna, who

simultaneously gives audience to Arjuna’s enemy, Duryodhana.19 Krishna is not a king, but does have a

powerful army supporting him. He chooses neutrality in the battle but offers two gifts for their use in the

war to come: his armies and his counsel. The armies and weapons at his disposal are vast so when Arjuna

values Krishna’s wisdom over his power, Duryodhana is surprised and pleased. Thinking Arjuna to be the

fool, he gladly takes the army of 10,000 soldiers over the mere advice of Krishna. Duryodhana longs for

victory in war and seeks the advantages that lead to such an outcome. Arjuna, he thinks, has chosen

foolishly by thinking that words of advice from Krishna might have as much value as legions of well-

armed troops. The contrast with Meno is palpable; Meno left Athens with troops, but no wisdom. Both

Duryodhana and Meno paid dearly for choosing power over wisdom and contemplative action.

When the day arrives and the battle lines are formed, Arjuna rides with his charioteer, who is

Krishna in disguise, for a moment of reflection before the war begins. Like Meno, who before a great

battle stopped for a conversation with Socrates about what it means to be virtuous, Arjuna paused. As he

looks across the battlefield, he sees the faces of his uncles, his cousins, his teachers, his friends. This is

not a battle between a distant invader but a war between relatives and friends. The people who will lie

dead on the field afterward are people he loves. “Arjuna said: My dear Krishna, seeing my friends and

relatives present before me in such a fighting spirit, I feel the limbs of my body quivering and my mouth

drying up.”20 Behind him and before him, Arjuna sees faces of those he loves. There are no right answers

here; all choices lead to death. It is at this very moment in this epic story that it becomes glaringly clear:

this is a story about ethics. After all, ethical reasoning is not an adventure in thinking about morality when

there is no skin in the game. Arjuna must decide. And his decision will lead to suffering. Indecision will

also lead to suffering. There is no road before him that neatly moves through the minefield of suffering

nature, is very different from the ancient social classification…” Saxena, Feel the Bhagavad Gita: A New Interpretation (Bloomington, IN: Archway Publishing, 2016), 89. However, Saxena advocates against both the modern and the ancient version of varna as the basis for social organization. Sri Aurobindo writes: “[The Gita] lays very little stress on the external rule and very great stress on the internal law which the Varna system attempted to put into regulated outward practice. And it is on the individual and spiritual value of this law and not on its communal and economic or other social and cultural importance that the eye of the thought is fixed in this passage.” Sri Aurobindo, The Bhagavad Gita With Text, Translation: Commentary in the Words of Sri Aurobindo, Third Edition (Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 2006), 568. 19 Mahabharata Book 5, Section 7 20 Bhagavad Gita, Goerg Feuerstein trans., 1.28. [add page number and convert]

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unscathed. To proceed is to hurt somebody, and Arjuna has to make the painful decision in this moment

about which persons he will harm.

In that moment, seeing the faces he cares about on both sides of a field of battle, Arjuna is frozen.

He is stunned and paralyzed. He drops his bow on the ground, and his quiver of arrows beside it. How can

he fire arrows into the bodies of the people he loves? Beside him, Krishna begins an extended

conversation that will consume much of the rest of the Bhagavad Gita. What should he do in the face of

conflicting responsibilities? Arjuna faces the question of absurdity, perhaps of nihilism, in this moment.

Since everyone dies in the end, what’s the point in fighting? Why should he fire arrows into the bodies of

people who have cared for him throughout his life? Mohini Mohun Chatterji, who helped introduce the

Gita to Europe and the Western world in the late nineteenth century, wrote: “Whenever a man loses faith,

these three evils, grief, fears, and weakness, attack him, and he begins to delude himself into the belief

that it is fruitless to persevere on the upward path.”21 Perhaps Arjuna should flee his duty and

responsibility to lead his people, or simply refuse to fight and allow himself to be slaughtered alongside

them? Arjuna is no coward but he does not wish to move into battle unless his actions are truly virtuous,

justified, and warranted. He is frozen, paralyzed, stuck by the absence of any clear answer about how he

should proceed.

This is the signature moment for this text which has captured the hearts and imaginations of

billions of human beings. How are we to proceed in ethical dilemmas for which we have neither clear nor

easy answers? The conversation that follows between Arjuna and his charioteer investigates the

complexity of deciding how to proceed when the moral high road is obscured or inaccessible. In the

process, the Gita provides a guidebook to decision-making and a source for all attempts to think about

ethics hereafter. Yet in most college ethics courses in Europe and North America, let alone boardrooms or

political committees, the Bhagavad Gita goes unmentioned. To the chagrin of Western thinkers, the Gita

opens up the question of ambiguous ethical situations without providing any obvious formula for

resolving them.

Section Heading

The Bhagavad Gita is written during the time period in which a variety of assumptions about

dharma are being called into question, including the importance of the caste system. Even in his most

despondent state, Arjuna does not question the value and importance of dharma, of living toward a future

harmony. His problem is that he is being called to act against the historic “family laws” and “eternal caste

laws.” Arjuna names some of the family members lined up against him for battle: “Teachers, fathers,

21 Mohini Mohun Chatterji, The Bhagavad Gita or the Lord’s Lay (New York: Julian Press, 1960), 26.

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sons, yes, even grandfathers, uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, and other kinsmen –

these I don’t want to kill, even if they kill us.”22 The people across from him are his teachers, the people

to whom the eternal laws of dharma require him to be reverent and respectful. By positioning Arjuna in a

conflict between two regimes of “duty,” the Gita sets up a challenge for traditional Hindu practice and

belief. The Gita seems to articulate some of the anxiety that comes with a sort of great awakening in

Indian philosophy, a stirring that also gave rise to Buddhism. Traditional dharma demands reverence to

family, obedience to leaders, adherence to an ancient assurance that virtue will be handed down through

patriarchal lineage. Arjuna remains committed to dharma, but he comes to question his perception of his

own dharma, as a warrior-caste prince with incredible skills as a bowman. Is it really consistent with the

universal laws of dharma to kill the very people dharma has taught him to respect and protect?

This is a strikingly similar question to the one asked by Socrates, who questioned the Athenian

practice of revering families with power and wealth. The Buddha, like Arjuna, was born into the

Kshatriya caste, the people charged with being warrior-leaders. Like Arjuna, he was guided (also by his

charioteer) into deep questioning about the mode in which he was expected to perform dharma in the

world. There are stark differences, of course, in each of these philosophical and religious traditions. Still,

the problem is too consistent to be denied: people everywhere struggle with the momentum of both

privilege and poverty. Racism, sexism, and classism are insidious forces that find ever-new ways to be

perpetuated down the winding roads of history. Given the obvious distortion of the concept of dharma in

the caste system, it is worth exploring how a more faithful application of that philosophical concept might

critique and correct this practice.23

As Krishna points out to Arjuna, greed and desire are corrupting forces. The structures of dharma

that might guide people to the faithful pursuit of ultimate harmony might also be eroded and undermined.

In the larger Mahabarata we learn that several of the warriors that stand opposed to Arjuna in this war

were loyal, earnest, and virtuous warriors, just like Arjuna. Their main fault was applying their loyalty to

the leadership of Duryodhana. Corruption is contagious, and good people get caught up in corrupting

systems. The caste system may have, at some point in distant history, helped facilitate the movement

toward a harmonious society. In the world today it leads to chaos, violence, oppression and corruption.

Modern scholars like Sardar Panikkar point to this resource, at the very heart of Indian philosophy, for the

rejection of racism, sexism and classism. Panikkar notes that a line referring to caste in the Gita “is the

22 Bhagavad Gita, Goerg Feuerstein trans., 1.?? [find quote, reword to this translation] 23 Lines from the Gita have been utilized not just by politicians but also by scholars to justify the ongoing implementation of caste discrimination in societies influenced by Hindu thought. Bhagavad Gita scholar Ronald Neufeldt lists Rajendra Lal Mukerji, who went by the pseudonym “The Dreamer” among those who used the Gita to warn against attempts to abolish the caste system. Ronald Neufeldt, “A Lesson in Allegory,” Modern Indian Interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita,19-21.

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most unequivocal repudiation of divine origin of caste based on birth, the most categorical denial

of…inherent superiority.”24 Yet, it takes very little for dharma to be corrupted into adharma

(unrighteousness); the references to the caste system in the Gita leave the door open for an insidious and

ongoing distortion. The Gita leaves readers with a distinctive appreciation for the way the practice of

mindfulness contributes to a moral vision for the delicate way that every human being moves into ethical

questions. To allow dharma to become hardened, instead of pliable and ever changing, is to render it

vulnerable to the abuses that are emblemized in the historical – and in many ways ongoing – segregation

of societies influenced by the Bhagavad Gita.

Ethics in a Complex World

The Bhagavad Gita makes it clear: Not even the wisest person can know precisely the right duty

in all situations and circumstances. There are, in a world with billions of people and many more billions

of other organisms and objects, simply too many factors for any person to consider. Indian philosophy

begins at this point, in the acknowledgment of the fact that the world is too vast and complex to ever be

fully understood. In the modern period of Western philosophy, when people like Thomas Hobbes, John

Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau attempted to help Europeans rethink ethical ideas, it was very popular

to imagine starting over with a blank slate.25 This mode of thinking about ethics assumes a utopia in

which decisions are clear, and then seeks an approach to ethics that would work in increasingly complex

situations. There is surely merit to this approach, but we find a very different approach to ethical

reasoning in the Bhagavad Gita. Here, the very condition for ethical questions is the never-ending

undecidability of ethical decisions. There is a degree of uncertainty about moral decision-making, and

Arjuna must learn never to expect otherwise.

Though it was written long before the famous nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arjuna’s

complaints as he converses with Krishna have a distinctly nihilistic tone. This ultimate undecidability,

after all, potentially unsettles the entire infrastructure to the moral universe. What if there is no point to

any of this? Arjuna wonders if it might be better to just abandon his post or allow himself to be killed.

Nothing could be worse, he thinks, than slaying the whole scaffolding of his extended family. There is no

24 Sandar K. M. Panikar, 1960, 40-41. 25 Steven Pinker connects three related themes, the “doctrines of the Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine,” which are logically distinct but “in practice they are found together.” According to Pinker, they commonly hold that human beings are either neutral or better off until some learning or socialization takes place. He quotes Rousseau: “There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered” (from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On Philosophy, Morality and Religion (Lebanon, NH: Dartmouth University Press, 2007), 170). Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 10-11.

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road that leads away from death, no harmonious choice that avoids pain, and no surefire formula for

decision-making that avoids the chaos of life. Arjuna says that he is despondent:

O my Lord! When I see all these, my own people, thirsting for battle, My limbs fail me and my throat is parched, my body trembles and my hair stands on end. The bow Gandeeva slips from my hand, and my skin burns. I cannot keep quiet, for my mind is in tumult.26 What is the point in living when even in the unlikely event of victory; his joys will be stained

with blood? He cries out in despair: “To slay these masters who are my benefactors would be to stain the

sweetness of life’s pleasures with their blood.”27 There is no blank slate and Arjuna knows it; all decisions

carry with them the weight of an impossibly complex and painful past and a truly unpredictable future.

At first harshly, but then gently, Krishna begins to turn Arjuna back from his place of

despondency and toward action (karma yoga),28 though he proposes a surprising way to think about

action in light of Arjuna’s difficulty. Before discussing Arjuna’s decision to fight, it is important to note

the value of the Gita for thinking about moral problems in a complex world. Kant dreams of a world in

which every single decision of ethical importance might be made with utter certainty, putting metaphysics

on “the sure path of science.”29 Arjuna abandons any such hope, and considers the possibility that no

decision can be made in the world with utmost certainty. He seeks a clear path, and complains when the

advice he receives does not offer simple resolution to his ethical dilemma: “My intellect is bewildered by

your ambiguous advice. Please tell me decisively the one path by which I may attain the highest good.”30

This may appear to some western thinkers to be a weakness of the Gita; there is no reliable ethical rule to

be followed, no pathway to discover a set of universally justified actions. But Arjuna is positioned

between a rock and hard place for the sake of demonstrating the flexibility of dharma, and the importance

of doing something about injustice even when none of the options before us are optimal. The reason

Krishna cannot give Arjuna a template for moral duty is precisely because Arjuna’s duty is unique to his

position in history, his station in society, and his unique mind. Krishna tells Arjuna, in response to his

complaint about ethical ambiguity: “It is far better to perform one’s natural prescribed duty, though tinged

26 Bhagavad Gita, Goerg Feuerstein trans., 1.?? [find quote, reword to this translation] 27 Bhagavad Gita, Goerg Feuerstein trans., 2.?? [find quote, reword to this translation] 28 “There are a variety of different types of yoga. The Bhagavad Gita outlines three main types: the yoga of knowledge (jñāna), the yoga of works (karma) and the yoga of devotion (bhakti). THe Gita integrates all three into a single theoretical framework, marginally favouring the yoga of devotion, but seeing all three in terms of the cultivation of an attitude of selfless action, that is, the performance of actions without personal attachment to its consequences.” Richard King, Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 67. 29 Immanuel Kant, Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics: With Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, Gary Hatfield, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), page? 30 Bhagavad Gita, Goerg Feuerstein trans., 3.?? [find quote, reword to this translation] (what other word for ambiguity?)

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with faults, than to perform another’s prescribed duty, though perfectly. In fact, it is preferable to die in

the discharge of one’s duty, than to follow the path of another, which is fraught with danger.”31 A

universal guide will not determine the path of Arjuna; he will have to perform a duty that is in some ways

unique to him.

Putting this in terms familiar to the Western ethical tradition, Krishna points Arjuna to both the

universal and the particular, and warns him against contemplation in one arena to the neglect of the other.

The meaning of dharma, in fact, contains both of these connotations. Philosopher Bina Gupta points out:

Dharma is divided into the virtues and the duties of the members of each class, and also to those virtues and duties that are obligatory for every human being. Thus, it is the duty of a warrior to fight for a noble cause as against the forces of evil. The context of Bhagavad Gītā precisely is constituted by the relationship between the two parts of the world of dharma: viz., the dharma belonging to the specific classes and the dharma that is common to all humans. The teachings are, on the face of it, intended to resolve a perceived contradiction between the two.32

To borrow a phrase from feminist philosophy, Arjuna’s way forward involves “staying with the trouble”

that lies before him.33 Arjuna proceeds to fight, but he does so with ongoing somberness over the fact that

no pathway existed that could have bypassed the bloodshed. To grieve pathways not taken, even as one

chooses and moves forward, requires tremendous balance and character. Later in the Mahabharata we

find Arjuna standing victorious, over and over again, against long odds. But Arjuna dances on no graves,

experiencing his victories with equanimity and the somber awareness that he too will someday fall.34

The Bhagavad Gita is therefore about the choice to act rather than be paralyzed by the problems

with every possible action. This text is based on the universal ideal of dharma, but since dharma is

constantly evolving to suit the current state of affairs, the Gita is far from idealistic. In contrast, Kant

seeks to establish ethical theory moving from ideals that are independent of “the existence of things.”35

31 Bhagavad Gita, Goerg Feuerstein trans., 3.?? [find quote, reword to this translation] 32 Bina Gupta, An Introduction to Indian Philosophy: Perspectives on Reality, Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 2012), 315. 33 This phrase from the title of: Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017). 34 Arjuna laments the victory of his army over his own teacher, Drona: “Yet unrighteous that we are, and stained with a levity of behavior, we scrupled not to injure him. Alas, exceedingly cruel and very heinous has been the sin that we have committed, for, moved by the desire of enjoying the pleasures of sovereignty, we have slain that Drona. My preceptor had all along been under the impression that in consequence of my love for him, I could, (for his sake) abandon all,--sire, brother, children, wife and life itself. And yet moved by the desire of sovereignty, I interfered not when he was about to be slain. For this fault, O king, I have, O lord, already sunk into hell, overcome with shame. Having, for the sake of kingdom, caused the slaughter of one who was a Brahmana, who was venerable in years, who was my preceptor, who had laid aside his weapons, and who was then devoted, like a great ascetic, to Yoga, death has become preferable to me to life!” Veda Vyasa, Mahabharata, Complete Volumes 1-18, Kindle Edition, Kisari Mohan Ganguli, trans. (Seattle: Amazon.com Services LLC, 20019), Kindle Location 53973, Chapter CXCVII. 35 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Section VI. Transcendental Idealism as the Key to the Solution of Pure Cosmological Dialectic, p.? need best translation

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He calls his approach “transcendental idealism,” for it seeks ideas not found above space and time, in the

human mind. This makes the “ideals” stable, metaphysical pillars through which the phenomenal world

can be better understood.36 For Kant, this way forward establishes the groundwork for thinking about

ethics, for it rests morality on stable ideals that are a priori – established by “pure reason” rather than

empirical observations. The concept of dharma can be spoken of abstractly, as the idea of harmony and

tranquility, but such an approach distorts the very meaning of dharma, which is always particularized to a

particular person, people or moment in history. Daniel Ingalls, a specialist in this era of Hindu

philosophy, argues that in the Sanskrit epics (particularly the Ramayana and the Mahabharata) the

concept of dharma consistently expresses a concern for “practical morality.”37 Ingalls believes this is a

pervasive aspect of dharma. When the concept of dharma is abstracted from the practical concern of the

actual universe, it ceases to be dharma. In the introduction to his translation of the Apastamba

Dharmasutra, one of the earliest writings about dharma, Patrick Olivelle writes: “Dharma and Adharma

do not go around saying, ‘This is us.’ Neither do gods, nor gandharvas, nor ancestors declare what is

dharma and what is adharma.”38 Dharma, along with its opposite, are pinned irrevocably to the world in

which they are applied.

I offer this contrast between Kant and the Gita not to elevate one approach above the other. In

fact, thinking with Kant about the foundations for ethics is a task for another chapter. For now, it is

important to underscore the fundamental connection between dharma and the complexities of the world,

as it exists in the present. Dharma shapes and is shaped by the world that it guides.

Arjuna is an archer, a bowman of unparalleled skill and accuracy. His moment of existential

paralysis is based on the near certainty that he will release arrows that directly lead to the deaths of people

he loves and admires, people that dharma has guided him to respect and revere. This conflict is visceral,

Arjuna does not know in which direction his duty lies. This is the core tension in the Gita. This story has

been arranged not to guide readers toward war, nor violence, though that is indeed the direction in which

Krishna guides Arjuna. The text is an occasion for reflection before action; the Bhagavad Gita is

precisely meant to be a text read “before ethics.” Among the conditions for making decisions in ethical

36 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ibid.: “I have myself given this my theory the name of transcendental idealism, but that cannot authorize any one to confound it either with the empirical idealism of Descartes, (indeed, his was only an insoluble problem, owing to which he thought every one at liberty to deny the existence of the corporeal world, because it could never be proved satisfactorily), or with the mystical and visionary idealism of Berkeley, against which and other similar phantasms our Critique contains the proper antidote. My idealism concerns not the existence of things (the doubting of which, however, constitutes idealism in the ordinary sense), since it never came into my head to doubt it, but it concerns the sensuous representation of things, to which space and time especially belong.” [find best translation] 37 Daniel H. H. Ingalls, "Dharma and Moksa", Philosophy East and West, Vol. 7, No. 1/2 (Apr. – Jul., 1957), 43 [get article and confirm the wording or choose another quote] 38 Olivelle, Patrick. Dharmasūtras: The Law Codes of Ancient India. Oxford World Classics, 1999, p?

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reasoning, around the world, is the importance of outcomes. How important are the fruits of a given

ethical action? This question divides two of the principle moral orientations in ethics: deontological and

consequential. Deontological ethical systems focus on duties and behaviors that should be performed

regardless of outcomes, and consequentialist systems place higher value on the actual results of those

actions. Kantianism is a classic example of deontology in Western ethics, and utilitarianism a standard

example of consequentialism. The Gita does not neatly conform to either of these categories but may

provide a helpful way of rethinking them.39

Action and Inaction

A cursory read of the Gita might leave readers with the impression that it favors violence and

war. After all, the book begins with Arjuna paralyzed by the prospect of doing harm, and he is slowly

convinced by Krisha to fight. However, as the Gita progresses it becomes clear that the dilemma Arjuna

faces is about the dueling virtues of action and inaction. For this reason, Mohandas Gandhi, among the

most famous advocates of non-violence in world history, called the Bhagavad Gita his most treasured

guidebook to the active – not passive – resistance of violence in the world.40 He suggested that this book

points not toward the “necessity or inevitability of war” but instead to “demonstrate the futility of war and

violence.”41 Gandhi points to later sections of the Mahabarata, after Arjuna has secured his unlikely

victory. Despite his great achievement, Gandhi writes: “at the end, the victor is shown lamenting,

repenting, not only the outcome, but the very idea of causing so much pain, such gigantic devastation and

violence.”42 Fighting may have been the best expression of Arjuna’s duty, but we should hesitate to draw

conclusions from the fact that “action” in this case involved violence, or any particular motion at all.

What was once duty, dharma, may never be the right choice again. This is a philosophy designed to thrive

in ambiguity, and to teach adherents to thrive and find peace in the midst of impossibly complex ethical

situations.

There are times when decisions are easy, when thinking hard about some ethical question leads to

clear and unambiguous choices. Should I participate in the recreational clubbing of baby seals? This is a

39 For an interesting summary of the arguments about reading the Bhagavad Gita as either deontology or consequentialism, see Sandeep Sreekumar’s article: Sandeep Sreekumar, “An Analysis of Consequentialism and Deontology in the Normative Ethics of the Bhagavadgītā,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 40 (2012), 277–315. Sreekuman believes that reading the Gita as a consequentialism unlocks aspects of its meaning that evade a deontological reading. These categories, though, seem to force this text into boxes for which it is not suited. 40 “The Gita, however, will serve as a safe guide to anyone who read it with Truth and nonviolence as his guiding principles.” Mahatma Gandhi, The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi, North Atlantic Books, p. 164. 41 please update Gandhi material 42 same here.

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choice, of sorts, and one that nearly every ethical theory can agree upon.43 The fact that these decisions

are straightforward and lead to agreement is obviously beneficial. The world would be a better place,

surely, if we could arrive at more ethical agreement. However, the pursuit of ethical certainty can feed a

dangerous fantasy. If Arjuna’s story is set in a morally complicated world, our modern situations are all

the more convoluted. The Gita reminds us that definitive choices are wonderful, but we should not expect

such situations to often arise. It is okay to be torn, uncomfortably placed between competing “good”

choices. We should learn to mourn that which we did not, or could not, choose. I can walk away with

confidence from my decision not to club baby seals, or poison the city’s water supply, or any number of

other obvious decisions. Arjuna is paralyzed because he faces the kind of ambiguity that inhabits most

contemporary ethical debate.

Consider the ethical challenges presented by the cluster of policies known as Affirmative Action.

The inheritance of racism and sexism has left us with a world in which tremendous inequalities are

readily apparent and statistically striking. In the United States, in 2017, women made 82 cents to every

dollar earned by men.44 The statistics of wage disparity are striking:

When the gender earnings ratio is measured using White men’s earnings as the comparison, it shows marked disadvantage for Hispanic and Black women. Hispanic women earned just 53.0 percent (compared with 54.4 in 2016) and Black women earned just 60.8 percent (down from 62.5 percent in 2016) of White men’s median annual earnings in 2017 (Table 1). Median earnings for a year of full-time work for Hispanic women are below the qualifying income threshold for eligibility for food stamps for a family of four; in 2017 this was $32,315 per year…45

None of these numerical disparities are an argument unto themselves; yet each of these statistics

represents an obvious instance of striking inequality. This problem is not a new one and has been evident

to Americans for decades. Sometime oppression is supported by laws and policies that can be adjusted.

There have been some successful attempts to ameliorate these discrepancies, and some catastrophic

attempts. Should children be bussed out of their neighborhoods and into other schools in order to reverse

educational inequality and racial disparity? During the late 20th century, communities around the United

States experimented with this practice, a tangible effort to reverse some of the most entrenched ethical

43 There are exceptions, such as the ethical theory known as “egoism,” which proposes that all actions performed in the interest of the self are morally acceptable. Egoism argues: “[T]he highest good for each person is his or her own happiness. From this principle it follows that right action consists in looking out for and furthering one’s happiness, wrong action consists in neglecting it. The theory, in other words, answers all questions about what a person ought to do by prescribing the action by which [she/he/they] can best promote [her/his/their] own happiness.” John Deigh, An Introduction to Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 25-26. 44 Kayla R. Fontenot, Jessica L. Semega, and Melissa A. Kollar. 2018. “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2017.” Current Population Reports P60-263; Table A-4. U.S. Census Bureau [fix citation] https://iwpr.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/09/C473.pdf 45 ibid. (page 2 of fact sheet)

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problem facing America.46 Eventually, court-ordered busing began and with it, considerable turmoil.

Parents agonized over the fate of their children, as busses carried them away to schools outside their

communities. Lawsuits proliferated. Private schools found themselves inundated with students whose

families could afford to avoid public schools. Historians are in disagreement about the impact of busing,

and opinions about the practice have changed over time. Jennifer Woodward argues that busing, for all of

its efforts to create equality in education, the slow pace of the roll out of busing provided privileged white

families ample opportunities to explore alternative options for their children. Children delivered by bus

from predominantly Black neighborhoods carried the burden of the disruption their presence created at

their new schools.47 Very few people loved busing, in theory or in practice, but if it indeed led to a more

integrated society with less disparity, the end seemed to justify the uncomfortable means. By the turn of

the century, all court orders mandating busing had been overturned, and even cities like Seattle – which

participated in the program voluntarily – had abandoned the practice.48

Affirmative Action is not one policy, but a collection of efforts to do something about problems

that are not easily addressed. The choice to bus children seems to have been a failure, though opinions

about the practice are shifting over time. We can say, if nothing else, that the effort represents an attempt

to seek justice even when all potential solutions are complex and messy. Affirmative Action policies have

increased opportunity and diversity in colleges, businesses, and government.49 These policies have also

created tensions, reinforced discrimination and resulted in bitterness and division. Arjuna looks in all

directions and sees problems with every solution to his quandary. This is why his deliberations in the face

of a paralyzing conundrum have been so inspirational to readers down through the ages. The Bhagavad

Gita thinks morality without stepping away from the fray; Krishna coaches Arjuna to stick with the

trouble.

The Gita prepares its readers to face moral questions like sexism, racism, and economic

inequality by embracing the ongoing ambiguity of difficult decisions. Krishna tells Arjuna: “Look upon

pleasure and pain, victory and defeat, with an equal eye.”50 The key to virtuous living is found in

adherence to duty in the midst of this complexity, and despite the ultimate evasiveness of ethical

certainty. Krishna’s point is that we can’t do nothing. He tells Arjuna: “do not be attached to inaction.” In

the face of racism and sexism, doing nothing is the only non-option, the only excluded course of action.

46 Find notes from books about bussing, etc. 47 Jennifer R. Woodward, "How Busing Burdened Blacks: Critical Race Theory and Busing for Desegregation in Nashville-Davidson County, "The Journal of Negro Education Vol. 80, No. 1 (Winter 2011), pp. 22-32 48 citation needed on Seattle’s history of affirmative action. 49 cite some examples of successful policies. 50 Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, [convert to translation by Goerg Feuerstein]

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In summarizing the confounding difficulty of applying affirmative action policies in the United States,

journalist Louis Menand summarized the movement to action, despite any clear or certain road forward

as: “Don’t just stand there. Do something.”51 This claim does not constitute an endorsement of any

particular action, but instead refuses to let the paralysis produced by ambiguity to produce an indefinite

deferral of action.

In his 2020 book The Affirmative Action Puzzle, Melvin Urofsky outlines the complexity of

attempts at “affirmative action” reaching back to the Reconstruction era following the American Civil

War.52 He starts this history with a bill vetoed by President Andrew Johnson, who held the office after the

assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and until 1969, when he failed to even win nomination for

reelection. It fell to Johnson to continue the efforts of reconstruction, a role that historians mostly agree

bungled catastrophically. Impeached by the House of Representatives, and narrowly avoiding conviction

by the United States Senate, Johnson pushed hard in opposition to granting citizenship to former slaves.53

The 1866 Civil Rights Act, vetoed by Johnson, suggested that “all persons within the jurisdiction of the

United States shall have the same rights in every State and Territory, to make and enforce contracts, to

sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of

persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.”54 Urofsky points out that Johnson rejected the bill,

which provided provisions to aid to Black citizens, because it utilized a “distinction of race” and might

“operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.”55 More than 150 years after these words by

one of the most maligned leaders of the United States, the same logic continues to stymie debates about

the “puzzle” of affirmative action policies. The problem involves racial distinction, and action to remedy

injustice seems to affirm racial division and the differing treatment of human beings according to race,

gender, disability, and other categories. A common response is to do nothing, and hope things get better,

because no affirmative action policy can be established that rests on universal laws about the treatment of

human beings. The Gita teaches resistance to the temptation of inaction.

This is not to argue that any particular policy should be followed, or even that a particular action

be taken. There is even the possibility of a strategic inaction, a choice not to act that is itself an action.

Arjuna must be ethically nimble: the same choice may be proper expression of dharma in one situation,

and entirely improver in another. Gandhi demonstrates how strategic inaction can be utilized this strategy

51 Louis Menand, "The Changing Meaning of Affirmative Action: The past and the future of a long-embattled policy." The New Yorker, January 2020. [page/fix citation] 52 Melvin Urofsky, The Affirmative Action Puzzle: A Living History from Reconstruction to Today (New York: Pantheon, 2020). 53 Citation/elaboration from a book on Johnson’s presidency needed. 54 Urofsky, 3. Change quote to original legislation, but credit Urofsky p3. 55 Urofsky, 4.

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in a series of world changing non-violent protests against British imperialism.56 Krishna teaches Arjuna

that there is no such thing as inaction; everyone is always making a choice: “Those who see action in

inaction and inaction in action are truly wise amongst humans. Although performing all kinds of actions,

they are yogis and masters of all their actions.”57 Ignoring a problem is a choosing, a choice in favor of

the perpetuation of oppression. The Gita teaches us to expect that our choices will rarely feel certain, but

that the absence of certainty is not an argument for inaction. Perhaps here we can find modes of thinking

appropriate for struggling against injustices that exceed the bounds of a single lifetime, and for continuing

to struggle in pursuit of harmony in the midst of perplexing and complex problems. To act in the midst of

uncertainty, and be pulled in multiple directions, is to be torn. This ancient text embraces the importance

of being, and remaining, torn.

Beware the Fruit

The Bhagavad Gita wrestles directly with a question that confounds ethicists the world over: to

what degree should outcomes matter when determining ethical actions? Deontological ethical theories

tend to emphasize the performance of a duty with less regard for consequences, and consequentialist

theories focus directly on the outcomes. These are crucial categories for understanding ethics in Western

philosophy. The Gita is not easily reduced to these approaches and may be distorted by the effort to read

it as supporting either. Arjuna is positioned between duties, just as he is placed before uncertain

outcomes. He is confused about his duty, particularly when it appears to point to devastating outcomes.

The conversation between Arjuna and Krishna returns repeatedly to the question of the fruit of the action.

Arjuna must choose whether to fight, flee, or lie down and die. How should he relate to the outcomes of

his decision?

To explore this question, we have to at least briefly contemplate the importance of desire in the

Gita and in Indian philosophy. Dharma is concerned with the big picture, with the overall place that each

action takes in the general movement of the universe toward its true reality as one. In that regard, at least,

the Gita aims all actions toward an outcome, toward a consequence. In all things, the duty of a human

being is to move toward that harmony and embrace actions large and small that move the world in the

direction of moksha (literally “freedom,” this word indicates freedom from the ongoing cycle of

suffering). Dharma, as we have seen, follows channels and patterns. Dharma is manifested in the respect

for elders, in meeting social obligations, in embracing duties appropriate for one’s station in life and

society. These are channels of duty and some of them are so deeply entrenched that a person can follow

56 Academic quote summarizing nonviolent resistance to British rule in India. 57 Bhagavad Gita, 4.18 [convert to translation by Goerg Feuerstein]

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them deontologically, without having to pause and consider the ends to which they point. The relationship

of a choice to its outcomes, in this tradition, is complex. The Gita, in particular, embraces the complexity

of this ethical tension between duties and outcomes.

Since Arjuna was an archer, the metaphor of archery is appropriate here. As a bowman, Arjuna is

utterly concerned with the outcome of his shot. He aims at a target and like modern archers, is attuned to

his breathing, to the breeze, to the humidity, to the capacity and fatigue of his muscles, to lessons learned

from countless arrows gone before it, and innumerable other factors. Shooting arrows is an exercise in

yoga for Arjuna, who learns to have awareness of all these factors without cognitively processing each

one. Indeed, experts in all sports will speak of a “zone” in which the human mind and body perform

incredible feats without seeming to think about the process at all. The harder one tries to shoot the perfect

arrow, or basketball, the more difficult and frustrating the process becomes. Arjuna cares about the

outcome of his shot, but he does so loosely. He knows the duty of shooting, the patterns and practices that

lead to good bowmanship, and he follows them without pausing to question them. The performance of

ethical duty is best done just as seamlessly. Should we pause to consider the morality of helping a person

who falls crossing a busy street? Should we hesitate to stand between a toddler and a cliff? These are

duties that virtuous people fill instinctively, pre-reflectively, and in the fluidity that combines doing with

being. These movements are not the product of arguments or reflections, but instinctual expressions of

virtue, or dharma. We will find strikingly similar practices at the root of Aristotle’s philosophy of virtue.

Though Arjuna now arrives at a moment of indecision, a moment that requires ethical deliberation, he

does so as a person who has trained himself with the yoga of harmonious actions. This training is like the

preparation of a master archer, repetition that becomes embedded in the very constitution of a person.

Sometimes, however, the arrow missed the target. In fact, it always misses the perfect center of

the target, since one can always imagine any “space” divided yet again into yet smaller divisions.

Arjuna’s virtue is found not in achieving the perfect shot. If this were the case, happiness would be

forever evasive. Even when he did produce a near-perfect shot, the euphoria of such a moment would be

fleeting, his best efforts would be spoiled by a sudden breeze, a muscle twitch, slight differences in the

weights of arrows. Krishna’s says to Arjuna: “You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions'

fruits. Act for the action's sake.”58 This is the paradox of action and outcomes, plant and fruit: that we

must act in the direction of the target and simultaneously renounce the desire to hit it. It is in the desire-

less action, aimed toward the target pursued without desire, that dharma flourishes. As Gandhi wrote: “do

your work as duty par excellence, but renounce the desire for the fruit of action…this desirelessness is the

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sun around which devotion, knowledge, and the rest revolve like planets.”59 Dharma is constantly

evolving with the world, and the desire for any target attaches the archer to the goal. Victory and defeat

are not the point, even if one always aims for victory. The result reshaped dharma, agitating the universe

toward its origin and its future. The person who is poised, harmonized, and virtuous abandons the fruit,

even as she accounts for it in her ever-renewed sense of her place in the world. The secret of life is

therefore honing the art of doing without become attached to what is done.60

Arjuna eventually turns with resoluteness toward the battle, performing his duty of a warrior and

choosing the painful battle over all other options. The puzzle of the Bhagavad Gita can be processed

through modern ethical lenses, but this book is less about the particulars of this ancient battle and more

about the difficulties of living and choosing virtuously in the midst of complex situations. Reading this

text before ethics is principally about understanding a mode of being human that does not fear ambiguity,

a mentality prepared to proceed without certainty. This text, indeed the entire Indian philosophical

tradition, seeks peace and harmony even when situations seem dire. To learn from the Gita, and then do

ethics, is to move forward contemplatively, never becoming too attached to one’s own role in the story of

the universe. Like Meno, Arjuna turns toward the battle. Unlike Meno, Arjuna paused. The point is not

that Arjuna’s pause led to victory instead of defeat; indeed, if we were to draw this conclusion from the

Gita, we would miss the point. Arjuna might have been defeated, in fact, because even careful choices

often lead to failure. Instead, the point of the Gita is that by renouncing self-interest and denying the

impulse to retreat into apathetic indifference, Arjuna lives – or dies – well. He aims his life toward the

good, toward virtue, toward dharma, and in so doing embraces a mode of being that resonates with all

persons, with all creatures, will all that is.

Section Title

The key to making ethical decisions, in light of the wisdom offered in the Gita, first involves

finding one’s place in the complexity of the world. There is a tendency, the world over, to become

absorbed with proximate issues and lose sight of the larger context. This has certainly led to significant

problems with the earth’s complex environment, which suffers greatly from nearsighted decisions about

the impact of human behavior on planet Earth. For most people, a single day requires a vast array of

decisions, many of them seemingly miniscule in nature. In most cases, actions are logistically trivial in

59 Citation from Gandhi. 60 Bhagavad Gita, 5.12 [convert to translation by Goerg Feuerstein] “The united one (the well poised or the harmonized), having abandoned the fruit of action, attains to the eternal peace; the non-united only (the unsteady or the unbalanced), impelled by desire and attached to the fruit, is bound.”

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nature, and are seemingly pointless in isolation from the broader dharma of virtuous living. Why bother to

recycle a single scrap of paper? What’s the point of plucking one stray bottle out of the ocean? What

difference does it make whether food or clothing purchases are created with an effort to mitigate their

impact on the environment? To follow the Gita is to a mode of being virtuous that is not deterred by the

scope of the choice. The contemplative approach to human virtue that is advocated by the Gita resists the

tendency to dismiss choices because they are small or trivial. As Krishna admonishes Arjuna, he

repeatedly returns his perspective to the larger context in which his decision is situated. The Gita teaches

the connectivity of all things, including decisions that are microscopic.

The lumberjack cuts down a tree, itself the product of minerals slowly but steadily drawn from

the soil. The tree is chopped and shaped by tools, becoming furniture and firewood. The firewood will

soon be converted to heat, gas, and ash, some of which will be returned to the earth and perhaps gathered

into new trees. Occasionally, I cut up trees that fall near my house in the Pacific Northwest and burn them

to warm my house in the winter. The heat moves from burning logs, through the woodstove and into my

hands, warming them from the cold work of swinging an axe. The heat does feel remotely like a tree, but

it is a tree, or at least the event of a tree becoming something else. Eventually, the tree is gone, and

everything it once was has disappeared into the ground as rot, into the air as smoke, into my hands as

heat. Other trees, perhaps other pieces of this particular tree, can be turned into furniture, a picture frame,

a bookshelf, or the pages of this book. The woodcrafts may outlast the lumberjack, the shelf outlasting the

carpenter. There are wood artifacts, after all, many hundreds of thousands of years old, shaped by the

hands of the ancestors of Homo sapiens.61 But wood breaks down, eventually, following the dissolution of

all things that come together in this fragile and fluid universe. My great grandfather’s wooden yardstick

hangs in my shop; I use it occasionally, mostly for sentimental purposes, but time and usage have begun

to obscure the numbers. The object is full of life, even as its usefulness fades; it calls to mind the careful

way his wrinkled hands turned wood into toys. This inspiration, more than the tool itself, shapes the way I

shape wood with my own hands, themselves beginning to wrinkle.

Certainly, this is the way I use words, all of them yardsticks handed to me by people as gifts. The

words arranged in this book were not only given to me, mostly long before I typed them, but each phrase

of this text has been considered by a wide community of my friends, family, teachers, and trusted

advisors before they were sent to the printer. My name stands alone as the author of this book, but to be

61 Hartmut Thieme, “Lower Palaeolithic hunting spears from Germany," Nature, Vol. 385 (1997), 807–810: “They are thought to be the oldest complete hunting weapons so far discovered to have been used by humans. Found in association with stone tools and the butchered remains of more than ten horses, the spears strongly suggest that systematic hunting, involving foresight, planning and the use of appropriate technology, was part of the behavioural repertoire of pre-modern hominids.”

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an author, as a woodworker, is to find oneself nestled in a complex world in which materials and persons

and ideas are all connected. To pretend I work with these tools, wood or word, as though I invented them

is the ultimate hubris.

Even the great Arjuna failed to retain this lesson, his incredible prowess with bow and arrow

clouding his vision for the larger part that he could play in the world. Eventually, Arjuna himself died,

pierced by an arrow. His death was blamed on his pride, particularly in his success as an archer.62 This

connectivity, the relationship between Arjuna and his tools, his family, his body, the earth, is the cause of

his anxiety but also his pathway to happiness. The core lesson he must learn involves the wholehearted

dedication to doing what is good without the inevitable disappointment that comes when a perfect world

fails to emerge. Arjuna cannot succeed if his efforts will be jaded because they fail; to be happy is to learn

to revel in the doing of the good. To live in this way is not to stop caring whether an action bears fruit.

The archer always learns, always adjusts, always adapts after every effort. The key is to find happiness in

the game, in the action, in that zone of human existence where the atman gives itself, not in the manner

that this gift is received.

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