Gita 02.21 – Integrate knowledge of the soul with the purpose of that knowledge

Bhagavad Gita 2.21 Vedāvināśinaṁ nityaṁ yena majamauveyaṁ kathaṁ sa puruṣaḥ pārtha kaṁ ghātayati hantikam Veda, Veda, one who knows.

Avināśaṁ. Avināśa, that indestructible. Nityaṁ.

One who understands, knows the soul to be indestructible. yena majamauveyaṁ That this is unborn and imperishable. kathaṁ sa puruṣaḥ pārtha How can such a person kaṁ ghātayati hantikam How can such a person kill or cause anyone to kill? So, here Krishna is also implicitly responding to Arjuna's implicit point that Krishna, you are Janardana, you are the maintainer of everyone.

So, why are you causing me to act in ways which will cause the destruction of everyone? So, Krishna is responding that how can such a person Krishna is himself in knowledge of the soul. So, how can such a person cause to kill? kaṁ ghātayati hantikam So, I will not cause to kill and you will not kill, Arjuna. Because killing itself is impossible.

Now, this raises the question Is it that life is not valued? Is life trivialized because the soul is eternal? Therefore, taking life doesn't matter? No, no, that is not the point here. The point is that the inevitability of the destruction of the body is a fact which should not be denied or concealed or wished away because of sentimentality. It is there and it needs to be acknowledged.

At the same time, it's also important that we recognize that we ultimately are spiritual beings and we are meant to lead life at the spiritual level and life at the material level is temporary. However, while we are living at the material level, there is unavoidable pain and there is avoidable pain and there is culpable pain. So, the avoidable pain is often culpable.

Culpable means for which one is responsible, criminally, karmically responsible. So, for the unavoidable pain, for example, it's just a fact of life that one is going to go old, get diseased and die and just lamenting for that is lamenting for the unavoidable. So, by lamenting for the unavoidable, we are not going to avoid the unavoidable.

Rather, by lamenting on it, we are simply increasing our mercy. What is going to happen is going to happen when it is unavoidable and by fretting over it, by whining over it, stewing over it, we only increase our mercy, misery. So, that's one aspect.

So, death is unavoidable. Don't lament for it. Now, that does not mean that we increase the pain and bring avoidable pain on anyone.

So, don't cause any harm, don't cause violence to living beings. So, the point is that although eventually this world is going to be destroyed, that does not mean that we cause violence, pain and destruction. The important point to be inferred from the inevitable destructibility of the body is that we stick to the course of dharma by which we can raise our consciousness above the body and thereby transcend the inevitable miseries of bodily existence.

Now, if someone takes the destructibility of the body as a license for destroying the body for no good reason, then that person is acting adharmically and such adharmic violent action will bring severe karma, karmic reactions and that person will have to suffer. So, the point of analyzing the inevitable destructibility of the body is to explain that we should stick to dharma because even if we think that by some adharmic means I will somehow avoid the destruction of the body, but that is not going to happen because the body is unavoidably destructible. So, Arjuna, even if you decide not to do your duty and you decide not to kill the Kauravas, but still they are going to die because the body is perishable.

But what will happen is when you fail to do your duty, you will get more karmically bound in the cycle of birth and death. So, that means there is the important thing is not violence or non-violence, the important thing is dharma. So, when the dharma, dharma is the process by which we can rise from the temporary material level, we can impel ourselves to rise from the temporary material level to the spiritual level by contemplating the temporary nature of the material level and by adopting, implementing in our life, walking in our life according to the path of dharma.

So, by this, we will rise to the spiritual level. So, the purpose of contemplating the destructibility of the body is not to gain a license for destroying the body. The purpose is to raise our consciousness above the bodily level.

And that happens by the path of dharma. And the path of dharma as a general principle involves doing good to others and not causing harm to others. As it is said earlier, as it is going to be said later, the mature spiritualist, the devotee or in 12.30 literally says, the devotee is a non-envious friend of everyone.

So, the devotee certainly doesn't want to hurt anyone unnecessarily. And what to speak of a devotee, even a person who is on the path of dharma, a devotee is on the highest rung of dharma, trying to practice the para-dharma. But even those who are on the lower level of dharma, even they are not meant to cause excessive violence.

Therefore, the important point to recognize is that one should stick to dharma. And if dharma requires violence, then one should do violence, whenever it's required, knowing that. Anyway, violence and destruction are going to happen.

By giving up dharma, I'll not be able to avoid the destruction of the body. Rather, I will entangle myself by the bad karma that I am doing in further material existence, where I'll suffer further the pangs of karmic reactions and the pangs of temporary material existence. So, therefore, the knowledge and the purpose of knowledge, both are intrinsically linked together.

If the knowledge that I am not the body, I am the soul, the body is destructible, the soul is eternal. It is diverse from its purpose. The purpose is to rise to the spiritual level of consciousness.

Then, what happens is, one can take the destructibility of the body as a license for destroying the body. But that sort of license, that sort of abuse license will entangle us in karmic reactions. And therefore, one needs to integrate the knowledge of spirit, the knowledge of the soul, with the purpose of that knowledge.

So, here, of course, for Arjuna, it's clearly a dharmic war that he is going to fight. Although he has some doubts whether the war is dharmic, Krishna will make it clear that his war is for the sake of protecting dharma and for the sake of raising people to higher consciousness. And therefore, for Arjuna, there will be no bad karma in killing.

But the extensive peace efforts that happened in the Mahabharata war, in the Mahabharata, before the Kurukshetra war, they indicated that it is not that everyone there was just using the destructibility of the body and indestructibility of the soul as a license to just jump into war. No. They tried their best to avoid war, and when nothing worked, when Duryodhana with obstinacy made war inevitable, then they embraced war as a final course of action, as a final assertive course of action.

So, for us, for here, Krishna is saying, because, actually speaking, what is happening at the individual level is unavoidable. So, the body is going to be destroyed, and we will not be able to avoid it. So, don't think of yourself that you are the cause of destruction of someone, or I am asking you to become the cause of destruction of someone.

Rather, understand that destruction is very much ingrained as a feature of material existence, and the best we can do for ourselves and for others is to lead a life of dharma by which we can raise ourselves above material existence and attain the spiritual level of reality.