Reconciling War and Wisdom: Exploring Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita

In this episode, Kamala Rose and Nischala Joy Devi dive into the profound dilemmas faced by Arjuna at the start of Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita. Together, they explore how the ancient text’s teachings on knowledge, action, and devotion remain deeply relevant to our modern lives. Through personal stories, historical parallels, and spiritual insights, the hosts examine how we can reconcile the wisdom of philosophy with the realities of conflict—both on the battlefield and in everyday life.

Key topics covered:

• Arjuna’s crisis: The struggle between knowledge (Jnana Yoga) and action (Karma Yoga)
• The importance of devotion (Bhakti) and compassion in spiritual practice
• The concept of the higher good (Shreya) versus personal gratification (Preya)
• Parallels between ancient battles and modern-day moral dilemmas
• The impact of war on women and the role of rebuilding after conflict
• Trusting teachers and the process of spiritual growth
• Reflections on historical wars and their influence on spiritual movements
• The enduring relevance of the Gita’s teachings in contemporary society

Join us as we unpack the timeless wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and consider what it means to serve a higher good in today’s world.

Transcript

0:43

Namaste. Thank you for joining us today for a woman's Gita Podcast. I'm Kamala rose and I'm nishilla Joy Devi today, we're picking up our discussion at the beginning of chapter three, karma yoga, and we're going to start on these first two shlokas today. If you believe that knowledge is superior to action, Arjuna asks, then why do you engage me in this dreadful act of battle? I think many of us who read the Bhagavad Gita come up to this question over and over and over again, how is it that we can be reading this refined knowledge of yoga, this, this game changing philosophy, and at the same time be dealing with this horrendous War so nishthala Davie and I are going to dive into verse chapter three. Verse one, I know she has a lot to say about it too. The thing that makes me curious is here we are already in chapter three. Chapter Two, as we know, was a big chapter, and Arjuna still has doubts. He still is questioning what's going on, even with all this wonderful explanation and wisdom that Sri Krishna has given him, he still, he still doesn't understand and how difficult it is to practice these things that he's asking them for. So when he says, If you believe that knowledge is superior to action, why do you engage me in this dreadful act of battle? I think probably many of us are feeling that, how is this in relationship to that peaceful quietness that we think of when we practice yoga, or our goal is to go to yoga. The other thing that that struck me very strong is he's mentioning two he's mentioning the wisdom, or what we call Jnana yoga and the action or Karma Yoga. And in my life, I know that there has to be more than two, and I think we've talked about this before, but it probably is okay to mention it again, that without the devotional aspect, without the love, without the recognizing that the compassion to someone who may be in need, that the Karma Yoga, to me, is not as effective. It just doesn't have the power of of if you really cared, if you really your heart was involved in it. And I always go back to the one of the scenes that I've seen in a movie of Mother Teresa and scraping this man who was stuck to the road because of his body's excreting certain blood and mucus, and you can use your imagination for the rest. And she doesn't just take him to a place where he can be helped. She literally takes him in her arms and holds him. And he dies within the next couple of minutes, and someone said to her, why? Why did you even bother? You knew he was going to be dead very soon, and she said, at least for those last few moments of his life, you know that someone cared. And to me, that has to be added to it, and this is where we get back to the head, heart and hand, all of it. What a beautiful combination we've been given in the yoga sutras. They call it Kriya Yoga, the union of the three yogas that make us so strong and so powerful. So to me, what about the bhakti? That's what I would say. What about the bhakti? And then the other part of me says, Well, maybe he was afraid to open his heart, because if you open your heart and you see that you're doing harm to others, it hurts even more. So this first sloka really stirred me and got me stuck in one place, in a way, because I felt this very, very strong need for devotion, for honoring the person. For, you know, it goes back also to the native. People of our lands, when they talk about even killing an animal, they pray for the animal's soul first. So that's what I would add. If I was rewriting this, I would definitely put the bhakti in here, and you really bring our focus to the state of mind of Arjuna, where this question is coming from, and I, I think, coming from the highly philosophical chapter two, which is a sort of a layout, a roadmap of the Bhagavad gitas philosophy and discourse on reality, right? So we we sort of end in a theoretical, intellectual sort of place. What we cover in chapter two. So I think that's really important to remember that in this narrative, in this text, we are still standing on a battlefield, and our character, who's meant to represent all of us is, you know, is super confused now, like, here I am melting on the floor because I am afraid to, you know, kill these worthy people. I think I might break the world if I do it. Right? That's what Arjuna saying. I have a con. My Dharma says that I'm should never do what I'm being asked to do. Right my my family dharma. But then, you know, then there's this personal Dharma that I feel right. I want to uphold the good. I want to make sure good people are in charge of this kingdom, but I cannot reconcile it with killing my grandfather, who is to be revered, right? So we're back to this very subjective world of Arjuna having a, you know, complete crisis of identity, everyone who all the people that he's been up until now in his life as a mighty warrior just melted away. Right he is. He's in a different place right now, and he's asking a very real question that, look, Krishna, all this theoretical knowledge that you just gave me about the self, about how action works, about meditation, right? The importance of seeing things with objectivity. What does this have to do with this war? What about this situation? Why are you, if all of this is true and the Self exists in all people in the same way, why are you engaging me to act in this battle? Right, in this very visceral experience where blood will be shed and, you know, very strongly, decisive action will be taken. Right? Arjun is saying, if you want me to go for this goal of the self, this refined, you know, very quiet, subtle part of my being. Then let's talk about going to the monastery. Exactly, yeah, let's get the hell out of here and go and walk this other path that leads to that goal. So you know that that real world conflict, and I think the need for heart in understanding the the way each of us comes to this conflict on our own right, it might not be, I think it would be rare for the listeners here to have had this crisis of conscience happen on a on a battlefield, right, right, especially this kind of a battlefield in real life, although it very well could have happened, right? Some of our listeners could have been soldiers and been in this situation, right? But for many of us, these, this sort of doubting of our reality, feeling in conflict with our roles. And identities versus our philosophies. The kind of thing that makes you say Enough of this philosophy. Just tell me what's the right thing to do when those moments come to us, especially as women, they they were going to look a little bit different. You know, it might come at that 4am feeding, or that one last diaper, or that student in class who didn't want to go home, right? We come into conflict with our values, our ethics and our philosophies in different ways at different times in our lives. So I think recognizing the core of this first shloka as just a very real question that we've all asked in different ways in our own languages is a good way to start. And then we see also in three. Too, with these contradictory words, you were confusing me. I think that's that's that to me, that right there is humility, that he's only saying that he's confusing him. I think he's doing more than confusing him, but he's trying to be respectful and and have a little bit of control of his emotions at this more moment. Tell me what is the one thing I need to do to reach the highest goal. He's still asking for this. Okay, I understand all this, but let's get to this, this higher goal. And, you know, I can't even imagine, although, I think even though none of us, many of us, have not been in a realistic war situation, we've certainly been on battlefields. I know, having worked in medicine, I was in the battlefield almost every day, there's always something happening that you have to be alert to and you have to be able to act immediately without really thinking. That's where the training comes in the military or medicine or whatever we're doing and but you know, if you go back and you really look at the wisdom that comes out of some of these battles and some of these wars that we've been in, I have to go back to the Revolutionary War, which in the United States, which was a very, very difficult war, war in a lot of ways, Because the troops were not able to have a lot of the equipment and the clothing to protect them that they would have needed. It was sort of a put together at the last minute kind of war that, okay, let's, let's get into this. But the one thing that that, that they did there that really stayed with me, and here again, I see feel it on the battlefield here, there was a saying that came and said, don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. And ever since I heard this as a child, I've been cogitating and thinking about this. What? Why would they say something like that? What? What could that possibly mean? And I realized that it brings the whole idea of war back to a level of humanity that you're actually seeing who you're fighting. And I think what happened here with Arjuna, that's exactly what happened. If he had just gone out and started shooting arrows in any way or at people, he may not have had the emotional impact that he had when he looked not just at the whites of their eyes, but if who they are, this is my grandsire, this is my uncle, this is my cousin, and you it's very difficult to shut that off. And I think we talked about this before in medicine, we're taught never to treat our family because there's too much attachment to it. There's too much feelings, whether good feelings or not good feelings. And I think this is what Arjun is coming up against, again, uh, he's he's looking, he's seeing. This is not, these are not the enemy as depicted. This is the enemy that's also my kith and kin. This is also part of me. So what do I do? And that's why he says it in such frustration, tell me what the one thing I need to do to reach the highest goal is this? It that I have to kill my my family. So I think this is something that's perpetuated too. I know in Christianity and Catholicism, especially, a lot of the saints that were picked did some awful things. You know, King wenceslaw, for instance, he killed his whole family to get in his position, and he was sainted because he brought more people into the fold. So I think there's this nothing is purely good or purely bad in this kind of situation. And I think this is what Arjun is going for, at least, this is what I'm going through. I read it, so I'm assuming that he went through a similar kind of thing. And I want to get to that idea of the kind of awakening that comes out of war times in just a moment. Because, you know, we're looking at some specific idea. As in the Sanskrit verses here, which are fascinating, Krishna is referring to this idea of intelligence and knowledge by using the word buddhi, right? You may be familiar with this as the intelligence, the wisdom faculty, the buddhi that we utilize in meditation, right? So in chapter two, Krishna spoke very specifically about the use of the buddhi directing that in a way that one would be able to see a higher good, right? This is kind of the internal work of karma yoga that was outlined in chapter two. So when Arjuna says that is that knowledge, is this knowledge through the buddhi better than karma, right acting in the world this way, he uses the epithet for for Krishna, that is janar Dana, which says, I am. It calls him the agitator of men. You the agitator of men? Tell me which one is better, or karma, right? Then he goes on to say, the why this terrible action? Do you urge? Oh, handsome haired one Keshava, one of my favorite epithets of Krishna, the one with the beautiful hair, then picking up in in verse two, he says, Your speech sounds equivocal, right? You these words are contradictory. You're confusing me. What are you confusing? You're confusing my buddhi I cannot make heads or tails of what you're talking about. It's giving Moha confusion, right? We know this idea of Moha confusion as being a pretty core obstacle on the path of yoga, right? When the mind is cloudy, I can't I can't sort it out too much information. I'm overwhelmed, right? We might call this an overwhelm. Surely tell me what is the the highest good. And he uses the word here, Shreya Shreyas is a higher good, a supreme good as which is a, I think, a foreign idea to Westerners, that there's some sort of higher standard that that our society is measured against. Yeah, right. I think, I think, you know, Westerners, we come from a place where we're, you know, we're certainly guided by some sense of a manifest destiny, like you said in the, you know, looking at American history, which is so interesting and so recent and so well recorded, to kind of give us a sense of ideas in motion, in a spiritual sense, but this idea of a higher good, a place where all people are cared for, I think we have to ask a couple questions. What does Arjuna mean by the Shreyas that he's speaking about, show me what is the higher good, right? Because he's framing this in his own terms, as a Kshatriya warrior in terms of the Vedic Varna system, right? That's where his questions coming from and where his conflict is coming from. Right? As modern readers, we're not really measuring against a standard of society laid out by the Vedas. We're coming from a different place when we look at the idea of a higher good, what does what would that mean? Right? We, you know, we think about ideas of universal freedom, equality for all people right, our civil rights movements, our women's rights movements are built on the idea of striving for a higher good. But I think it's a good time to acknowledge that the culture of the Gita and the culture of us today, there is a disparity. So another place where our we could experience Moha in the buddhi in reading these verses. But I think it's, I think, as you said, Nishtha, this core idea that out of the confusion, out of everything being tossed up in the air, in a sense of reconsideration, wars and cultural shifts that lead to wars can often bring this about on a personal level for individuals and beget larger movements like wars. There's like religious revivals, right, that lead to people questioning their sense of values and belonging in a in a more spiritual sense, it's it's following the Vietnam War that we have the growth of yoga in the West, kind of explosion where yoga Swamis and teachers and vocabulary and ideas and postures, and, you know, it was, you know, following the Vietnam War. So wars and cultural shifts is another dimension. I think that's very interesting to explore here. You know, I think if we didn't have the emotional attachment and looked at war from a distance and a maybe that's why they're not including the bhakti in here, I don't know, but we could see really what you're saying, and just moving that even further in, it becomes almost a purge. And from an emotional and a humanitarian point of view, what I'm saying is not so, but if you look at it from a different level, and like a little bit like a moderate and not, not a devastating, but a moderate forest fire, it's the same kind of thing. It happens by itself. It gets all the underbrush burned away so the trees can then grow better and sustain and for a society, it takes a long time to overcome and to come back from a situation like that, especially since historically, this is the time when the men were wiped out of societies. They were not left. It was only women, and we see this in the end of the Gita too, that it's the women that are left, the women and children to rebuild and to make a country that's hopefully better than the one that they had before. Now sometimes that doesn't happen. Sometimes it's rebuilt in the way of the the conquerors. And it's not a pleasant experience, but it's always a big change, like you're talking about, sometimes a cultural shift that comes in, a physical shift that comes in, something happens, and even to the land itself. You have to understand that by putting these land mines in, by bombing we're destroying Earth itself in this so it's a very destructive force from the nature of the earth all the way to nature of us and as a human race. Yet it seems to have come from millenniums and millennials and millenniums before this, 1000s and 1000s of years it's been going on. So there must be some purpose to it in the evolutionary process, as we become more and I would like to air quote this, if I may, civilized, because that's always a question in my mind. Are we becoming more civilized? But some of us are moving away from this idea that we can actually benefit by harming someone else, and once we get the concept that all we're harming is ourselves, you know, I was thinking the other day. I was I was looking at a group of people that monetarily, have very little. And they were all sitting together, and they were telling stories and joking and patting each other on the back and doing all kinds of things. And then I looked over to group people that were very affluent, and they were very still and serious, and I thought, what happens to us, all the the praying and the hoping that we get monetary stability, and then we get unhappy. We're not happy with it. So it's the same thing like this with this war. How much can we get? How much can we take? Let me put it that way, and still feel fulfilled, because taking is not what makes us fulfilled, it's giving. So we're in a big dungeon here, and this is, I think, an important question to ask in our relationship with karma, is giving and. And taking one, one of the ways Mr. Ramaswamy explained karma that sticks with me forever is, you know, our relationship with nature Prakriti is, you know, explored in depth in all yoga philosophies. But he sort of summarized that there's a point where you're taking more than your share. You're taking too much from nature, right? We all this is a core idea in the Gita. We're entitled to our work and to our labors and to this. And I think what you're saying reflected in the people who don't have so much, there's an understanding that I'm not going to get anything out of this. But look at this western culture that, you know, many people are coming to this idea for the first time when they're introduced to yoga philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. And, you know, Eastern thought that there is some place of taking too much, of taking beyond your share. It goes completely against everything that the American Dream is built on, and the sort of Western ideal this, you know, underlying myth of perpetual growth that we've been fed by our our cultural paradigm, right? We we can understand intellectually that it's not sustainable. You can't just keep growing and, you know, bubbling and leaps and bounds, like what we see in our global business world. We see companies that you never heard of, and all of a sudden it's a gazillion dollar business. Yeah, right. I just saw that the documentary on Twitter. So interesting, right out of an idea spawns a giant cultural change, and, you know, the the money, right? But at the same time, you know what, what's where? Where's the balance in any of this like this is what we're accustomed to seeing, ginormous explosions of growth and wealth, and often lose sight of the quality of life that is really what we're looking for, you know, to be happy and healthy and feel safe and loved, feel a sense of respect and that our contributions are valuable, right Not to make a million dollars or to become famous, like so many children are growing up today, with the goal of becoming famous on social media, which is, again, it's about a million miles away From this battlefield in antiquity. But the same ideas of learning to balance one's self in the world one's contribution with the reciprocation with what we're receiving back. I also wanted to pick up that idea that you know, often out of these war times like you, like you mentioned at the end of this war, it whose left is women and children and men you know, to rebuild a society. And I think if we look at religious or spiritual thought in terms of its relationship to wars, we can build a kind of interesting story that new ideas spreading among women post war, taking lots of many seeds sprouting over time, right? Becoming more institutionalized, more conservative, growing into greater patriarchal structures, right? But just look at you brought up the Revolutionary War. I mean, before that, the United States was largely made of Calvinists, very conservative religious sects. And after the Revolutionary War, a whole new diversity starts to grow. And then after the subsequent wars in the Civil War, in particular, a huge explosion in Quakers the Theosophists, started making their way to the West Coast. I don't know if you've ever heard of a wonderful woman named Catherine Tingley. I've always been a huge fan. She writes very much from the heart. Heart, and she had her spiritual awakening on the battlefield in the Civil War as a nurse, caring for caring for all of the wounded. And she was a daughter of a wealthy family, and out of her experience on the battlefield, she made her way west to California. She followed that American sense of hopefulness and utopianism to the West Coast, and became a very integral part of the founding of the Point Loma branch of the Theosophical Society, and she's sometimes credited as bringing the avocado to California. Oh, interesting, interesting. Yes, where did she bring it from Mexico? Oh, okay, okay, that's, that's great. That's a great story. Yeah, you know, I think that sometimes we confuse. And if we look at you, mentioned two different, very different wars, mentioned a revolutionary in the civil and I think that the reasons for each were very different, why they were fought, and because of the morality issue and the humanity issue of the Civil War, that, to me, is why all these others grew up, the Philosophical Society, et cetera, whereas the Revolutionary War was A very different war. It was breaking off from England and for our independence. So the flavor of the war lasts till afterwards, so that so when we start to reconstruct after something has been destroyed, hopefully, the reason that that was fought is part of the reconstruction. So this was because everybody should be seen as a human. No human should be seen as partial as it was during the Civil War. And so to me, it would be very logical for these very humanistic, spiritual paths and groups to come forward like what went on during the Civil War, the the underground railroads and the All the getting slaves out, etc, etc. It almost forced people into a morality that they in everyday life they may not have appreciated, but because it was such a catastrophic experience, fought in on the land where people actually lived. I think there was a big change in it from that. And so I have to I those are the ones I'm familiar with. And you talk about heroes like the Crimean War, my hero was Florence Nightingale, being a medical person that, and through that, the what she saw was brought nightmares, but in it, she had the ability, and I think this is what we're getting at here in the Gita. I'm hoping that's what we're getting at through this awfulness of men screaming in pain, rotting in their own beds, etc. She just took the simplest things and she said, How can I make them a little more comfortable? How can I make this a little more human? Maybe by putting a bell beside their bed so they don't have to scream out. They can ring it if they need us, washing them just the simplest thing she thought of that changed everything still today. This is what used, not the little bell anymore. They have much sophisticated bells to ring, but this was her way of making this war, this horrendous experience, human. And I think that's what the spirituality is, to find some kind of humanness and spirituality in even the worst, strong, strong image and strong reality of the gitas teachings. Because really, in each chapter, we are brought back to the battlefield and have to confront the you know, the setting of the story. As we encounter ever increasingly refined spiritual philosophy that's also contained right next to a very violent situation. So I think the time to reframe the situation and consider what does that mean to you today? What does that mean to us today, to serve a higher good? The idea of Shreya, right? We're talking about a way that a serving serving a higher good, something that's beyond a personal need. It's to help keep society healthy. And you know, I It's one of the things I really love about reading the especially the the ancient Sanskrit prayers on peace. And I see this addressing of the higher good all the time. And that idea that May all beings be well, may loka samasta, sukino bhavantu, May everyone everywhere be happy and free. I mean, what a beautiful statement of the higher good, right? It's it goes the Upanishads speak of this, the kata Upanishad beautifully speaks of Shreya, the higher good, in terms of a contrast, what is good and what is prayer, what is gratifying to the individual? Right? Yama, the god of death, asks the student to contemplate knowing the difference between Shreya, the highest good, and prayer, the personal want, right, right? Something that's gratifying to the ego. These are important. This is where the discernment lies. This is where we are able to tell whether you're taking more than your share, whether you're taking too much from property. And the scales become unbalanced. And I asked myself this question all the time, is this good, or is it gratifying? Is it Shreya, or is it Praya? And so the tradition asks us this and gives us these examples, these beautiful prayers, and you know, to think of something like the Mangala mantra that speaks of, you know, a time far before our current history, where the this very honest wish for the welfare of all says, may our leaders not be corrupt. May they please follow the path that's best for all of the people, right? We get this idea that the struggles that we are struggling with today are the same struggles that our spiritual ancestors east and west have struggled with, right? The all of the people on the precipice of war, whether that's the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, the Crimean War, or this battle of kruschettra in ancient history. Throughout history, these wars, seemingly were fought because of maintaining the higher good, right? That's been a rationalization for war, exactly, yeah, and at the same time the rationalization for the rebuilding afterward. So I think this just really invites us to to think about these ideas, not as like just one single answer or one single way of understanding the concept of Shreya, or that word, we can't I think that's what I love so much about Sanskrit, is you can't put it in a tiny box and say that you just understand it. It requires going over it and taking it up in your mind and thinking about the way you think about it. And how do you picture that higher good? Nishthala, how do you serve that higher good? I do my best, you know? I try to take a step back when something happens. I think I was talking to someone yesterday, the other day, and this is don't just do something. Stand there. Observe First, take a moment to look at the whole situation and even the teacher I know, having been under the tutelage of a yoga master for so long. Most, I have to say, most of what I felt, how he taught was irrational at times, and did I always do it? No, because sometimes my mind didn't agree with it, and and then sometimes I did, because I could go, I stopped enough like just what you're saying, Kamala, I stopped enough to to look at it and say, My I feel like he has the greater good in his consciousness. And I'm going to go with it, even if I don't understand it. But I think we have to be very careful, because we have to purify ourselves enough to know if this is something that's going to elevate us and it is for the greater good or not, and until that purification happens. Sometimes we have to trust a teacher that they know. So we have to be very careful how we choose a teacher. And when you were talking about these ancient prayers and slokas, one of my favorite that that I've done every morning for no matter how many years ends in MA, VID, Visha, vahaee. And this is translated in a very few different ways, but one of the ways it was translated is you're talking to the teacher. This is, this is a dialog between you and your teacher, it can be an external teacher. It can be an internal teacher. But what you're saying is, may we harbor no ill feelings toward each other. And I could never figure out why this would be there. But when I read the Gita, it makes sense the teacher is pushing you to do something that you can't see the bigger picture of, and you may start to resent it. I know people do, and they get angry then at the teacher who's trying to move us forward. So this chant is saying to us, this sloka is saying to us, don't cherish any ill feelings toward each other. There's a high like you're talking about. There's a higher purpose for all of this. Have trust, a matter of fact, and then it could also mean your fellow UPA gurus, your little gurus that are all around you. Actually, when we did this, we chanted that last line three times for emphasis, to make sure that we knew what it was about and to develop more of this trust that they are taking us in the direction, and it could be our own heart that's taking us in the direction that we don't even follow. It's a way to trust and what a what a great thought to end on. Sahana vavatu, sahanau, bhunaku, sahavir, yankar, may we cherish no ill feelings toward anyone I'll just, I just want to say before I turn on my computer every morning, I chant this, right? I I have a I see my computer screen and the zoom as a way of being together with other people, and, you know, really connecting through through through the internet, with people I've never met before. And to me, that's, that's where I've got that togetherness, that it's very, it's a very hopeful thing. And I, you know, I've, I've prayed this prayer for so many years also, and taken so much meaning, and I feel like you know it at this stage in my life, and it's you know, it has a special meaning that I meet people like you and like our listeners by coming together here in podcast land. So thanks for joining us today, everybody. That was a nice way for me to wrap it up. And we thank you all so much for making time to listen to our dialogs. We'll look forward to seeing you next time. Namaste. Namaste. You.