Texas school shooting: A Bhagavad-gita perspective – Chaitanya Charan

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So this is about, about the recent incident that happened in Texas. You are the, town, like, 19 year old boy. He just he he took a gun. He killed his grandmother, then he went to elementary school, killed the, like, 19 kids, three adults, whoever was in the class. So, I mean, Prabhu, what what are your thoughts so that I have like, I read some articles where, like, government is trying to figure out what they can do about this.

Ban gun. Do not ban guns. Or it’s it’s more of a mental health issue that is, among the, these kids. So, I mean, how we can see this and, like, how we can think about this as a as a devotee as well and as well, like, or as a normal person in both of these. What are your thoughts on this one?

Yeah. Yeah. The Texas incident where and so and one of the 19 kids were killed by a by a person who was who just went mad and had a gun with him. This is tragic, and, and the heart goes out to those who have been afflicted by it. Now one of the challenges is that we humans, when something terrible happens, we we look for a villain to blame the situation on.

So now are guns the problem? Are is mental health the problem? Life is complex. That it’s not easy to find out, to pin a complex event on a particular issue alone. Yes.

And we can say, okay. If guns were not so easily available, then this person wouldn’t have done so much. Well, yes. That is true at one level. But at the same time, could say that if somebody goes mad, you know, there are some terrorists who just took a truck, drove a truck into a crowded marketplace, and they killed people.

I mean, this is not a terrorist. This is mentally disturbed. Yes. That is true. So the point is that just blaming guns, is that the solution?

No. Is blaming mental health the solution? Well, it’s not a solution. People are mentally disturbed, and they need help. So so what has happened in today’s world is that, in general, we humans have got far more power than what we can handle safely.

Now that is almost everywhere that technology has given us access to a lot of power. It’s not just one form of technology. People nowadays would say, is to take a different example is we consider social media like Twitter. Now one person can tweet something which may be a malicious lie about somebody else, but that can destroy the other person’s reputation. And the person may defend and refute and everything, but maybe the whole the whole world may hear the lie and very few people will hear the reputation.

So so that is the predicament of the world we live in that we have got access to far more power. So we have access to a lot of outer power. And in many ways, we can say we have lost access to inner power. The power to manage our own emotions, the power to manage our own mind that we have lost substantially. So now when we say mental health problems, it could be a pathological thing where some medication is required.

But, again, mental health problems are not, simply biological problems that the medicine alone will solve the problem. Medicine may help you deal with the problem at that particular point, but there are overall sociological, spiritual issues. Ultimately, mental health comes when people have something meaningful to live for. Otherwise, there are different degrees at which mental health, problems start worsening. So there is no one quick solution for this.

In general, the Bhagavad Gita talks about, when it talks about dealing with the problems of the world, it talks about dharma at the social level, and it talks about bhakti at the individual level. Or you can say yoga which culminates in bhakti at the individual level. That definitely, dharma means the word dharma Krishna said dharma What does he mean by that? There, I come to establish dharma means I’m establishing order in the world. I have come to establish order in the world.

So the idea is that there has to be order established in the world more effectively. Now whether that establishing order means that, guns should be banned or there should be greater checks on who can acquire a gun or there should be greater security so that somebody with gun cannot come into places where they can endanger the lives of others. That is something which is context specific. You know? The they we have to carefully consider the situation and, but the principle in dharma need order law and order needs to be established more effectively.

But that is only one part of the solution. Ultimately, every human heart longs for meaning, purpose, and ultimately love. So the Gita’s 4.8 is about establishing dharma in the world. 4.91 are about establishing Prema Bhakti in the heart. So now when we said Bhakti is not just a particular, traditions way of connecting with God in a particular conception, but it is it is helping the human heart find some higher meaning, some higher fulfillment, some higher love.

So that is something which has to be done. That is not the that is not something which the government alone can do. That is the individual’s responsibility. That is society’s responsibility, and that is what, we can contribute some steps towards. Wherever we are trying to raise our consciousness, wherever we are trying to offer others resources for raising their consciousness, to that extent, that disconnection of the human heart with the divine, at least to some extent, that will decrease.

And in that way, problems like these tragedies, they can be minimized. And then David Toro said that for every one hacking at the shoot of a tree, a thousand such hackings, better than a thousand hacking at the shoot of a tree, is one hacking at the root of a tree. So the root of the tree is that to the extent the we don’t have a meaningful life, the mind will make us do more and more meaningless things. And some meaningless things will be will not be will be relatively harmless because somebody just, spends a lot of time just mindlessly surfing the net. Some people just drink and maybe drive and harm someone.

Some people actually take a gun and go out right and shoot someone. So there are degrees of, of meaningless things which can be worse and worse. But, ultimately, we need to have meaning in life. So that hacking at the so we can look at, oh, this person did something terrible and that person did something terrible, and we try to fix that. It’s important at a practical level to do that, but that’s like hacking at the shoot of the tree.

Sometimes that’s also required, circumstantially. But hacking at the root of the tree means we need to help individuals more and more individuals find meaning and purpose in their lives. And that is what the Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom can offer everyone. And when that is done and the root is root of the tree of evil is hacked, then such meaningless violence will definitely decrease.