Gita 17.02 See not just people’s ideological faith – see also their functional faith

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you Krishna is speaking here and he is answering Arjuna’s question about the situation of people who have faith but not in scripture which is asked in the previous verse so here replies Shraddha faith is of three types of the living beings the embodied beings it is born of their material nature so it is of the nature that they have acquired from that Krishna mentions the three modes in this verse and in ignorance so there are these three kinds of faith and Krishna says that hear about it I will explain these three kinds of faith to you now so it is interesting that Krishna is speaking here about faith and herein he strives to speak about Krishna is talking here about faith within the three modes of material nature earlier in 12.2 Krishna has talked about so those who have created transcendental faith Krishna says they are most intimately united with me they fix their mind on my personal form that is transcendental faith which is faith in the all attractiveness of Krishna now here Krishna is talking about those who are not following scripture but who are having some kind of faith and their faith can be classified into these three categories so it is born from one’s we will focus on that theme our faith is the outgrowth of who we are if somebody is a Kshatriya then they have great faith in managing and martial weapons they have to fight they have faith that if they train themselves in archery in sword fighting then they will be able to effectively deal with situations if they aren’t able to then that’s also fine not being able to resolve a conflict by fighting not being able to win a war that might not seem a big deal to a Brahmana Brahmana’s faith is in knowledge in reasoning in trying to resolve conflicts to discussion so violent confrontation for a solution may seem attractive to a Kshatriya that’s what they have faith in Kshatriyas are trained not to pursue violence indiscriminately and they have to be careful that the violence they use is dharmic for the right purpose and only then they can move forward that which is our own disposition our own emotion our own nature now we cannot wish it away and it is not that resolving all conflicts can be resolved simply through discussion or all conflicts have to be resolved through confrontation in terms of war no we need different horses for different courses as the saying goes so similarly different approaches may be required in different situations the Pandavas tried the Brahmanical approach of peaceful discussion and that is also actually Kshatriya approach Kshatriyas are also trained to resolve things peacefully as much as possible but when that didn’t work they did have to take repose to confrontation so essentially we all have to understand what our nature is and we will accordingly have faith Vaishya will have a lot of faith in the power of money and money is also important weapons are also important, knowledge is also important skills of artisan which is what a Shudra will have faith in that is also important so the question is not one of that which is more or less important but what is what works best for whom so sometimes in today’s world there is a conflict between the faithful and the faithless so the theistic and the atheistic the believers and the non-believers however this is an artificial dichotomy because it’s not that anybody can ever be faithless the faithless have faith in in their faithlessness, in the non-existence of God so faithless also have faith but their faith is of a different kind from what the word faith is normally used faith is normally used to refer to faith in God but they have some other kind of faith they have faith in the non-existence of God because they can’t prove the non-existence ultimately so now that is one broad category faithful and faithless and sometimes normally the faithful may demonize the faithless by saying that atheistic people are demoniac they are this, they are that and sometimes the faithless the atheistic may point to the bad character of the religious people and they say this is what religious people are what is the use of having faith in God if one behaves like this however we have to understand these categories of faithful and faithless in terms of having faith in God they are they are one kind of categorization but a more important categorization is in goodness, passion and ignorance so even religious people can be in these three modes sometimes religious people in the mode of ignorance will tend to be more violent religious people in the mode of those in the mode of ignorance will tend to be fanatical those in the mode of goodness, the religious people will be more moderate so if somebody is in the mode of goodness and that person is a non-believer and that person makes as a reference point religious people who are in the mode of ignorance they will naturally feel that these religious people are so bad and if religious people, the believers, the faithful who are in the mode of goodness look at non-believers who are in the mode of ignorance they will say non-believers are so bad so whatever ideological faith we have whether it is being God or anything else beyond that we have what we could call as functional faith so we could say that there is an ultimate faith and there is an operational faith so the ultimate faith the faith in God as the ultimate reality that is good, that is auspicious but one’s functional faith will determine or operational faith will determine largely how one functions so Krishna is talking here in terms of this operational faith that we have to look at people in terms of their operational faith those who are in the mode of goodness if they are believers they will operate in a tolerant, broad-minded, moderate way and those who are in the mode of ignorance will operate in a different way so rather than looking at simply ideological categories we can also look at functional categories of faith and that functional categorization is what is stressed in this verse of the Bhagavad Gita and that will be elaborated on this chapter Thank you