Gita 17.03 – Gita’s categorization goes deeper than just believers and nonbelievers

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you Bhagavad Gita 17th chapter is called as Shraddhatraya Vibhag Yoga Shraddhatraya Vibhag Yoga the division of faith within the three modes in the western intellectual tradition there has been a constant debate between there has been an intense debate between believers and non-believers between the faithful and the faithless and in the last couple of centuries the faithless have become more and more aggressive of course at one time the faithless, the atheistic were thinking that religion is going to soon die out and everyone is going to see the light of truth and that truth according to them was of course atheism in fact when mainstream historians divide western intellectual history at the various stages one of the stages they call the stage of the age of enlightenment and their idea of enlightenment is scientific enlightenment where Europe came out of the darkness of blind belief as it is purported and as was demonstrated by Galileo and Copernicus especially Galileo’s persecution by the church so now as European colonialists expanded initially they brought various parts of the world under their political subordination so the Catholics went eastward and they brought South America especially under their subordination Portugal Spain and the Protestants so Catholics went westward and the Protestants went eastward both driven at one level by the biblical zeal to convert and at another level by the financial zeal to earn and they conquered India and other parts of the world now the initial perception of these people these colonialists was that the lands that they are conquering are very primitive these lands have uncivilized people living over there and we are supposed to bring the light of civilization to them in fact a British poet Radhiyar K. Pleven wrote a poem which talked about the white man’s burden it is the white man’s burden to civilize the uncivilized rest of the world but as some of these colonists looked more open-mindedly at the native cultures they found that many of the places had quite deep native cultures in India for example they found a whole cultural worldview that extended into posterities extended to the past for so long that it made the mind boggle as the world encountered by the western world because much of modern knowledge is coming from western sources as the world encountered as the European world Eurocentric worldview encountered other worldviews and had to grudgingly admit that it also contained deep wisdom then it was recognized that the debate about faith could not be just divided into simple categories of faithful and faithless and Europe when England was colonized in India at that time England itself was caught between was divided between two forces one was the evangelist protestants the Christian missionaries who wanted to bring the light of Christ to India and other were the rationalists who wanted to bring the light of science to India both of them together wanted to rid India of its primitive beliefs and rituals and bring India ahead to what they considered their version of light but either way before encountering India the western mind had primarily encountered at least in recent history with the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam it was only later after coming to India that we saw a very different conception of God so what was this? there were so many different Gods and was it polytheism? that’s what it seemed initially to them but then over time they recognized that it is not polytheism it is something much deeper because for example if we just focus right now on Vishnu and Krishna and Ram they are considered to be manifesting the same one God and yet they are quite different so it was monotheism but it was polymorphic monotheism polymorphic means recognizing that there is one God which can manifest in many forms so the Vedic tradition recognized that the human mind is conditioned in different ways and because of being conditioned in different ways it is not always ready to accept one straight path but when it is not ready to accept one straight path then the way ahead for it is not to condemn it to hell it is not that the Vedic tradition holds that you accept this way or you are going to go to hell forever it analyzes faith itself into three modes so not all so if we categorize the three modes of material nature if you consider the categorization done through three modes of material nature and we consider the categorization done in the rest of the intellectual tradition in terms of faithful and faithful then we will see that things are quite complicated it is not that all faithful people are equal people who believe in God even belief in God can be in goodness, passion and ignorance and similarly atheistic people can also be in goodness, passion and ignorance and this is what I want to recognize that atheism itself as a doctrine as a belief system is in ignorance but atheistic people themselves may not be in ignorance how is that possible? because the belief of a person is an important part of the person but it is still just one part the belief how much that translates into behavior and how it translates into behavior that is important for example the Bhagavatam says that the bhakti is transcendental and bhakti philosophy is centered on Krishna is also transcendental at the same time the Bhagavatam in the third canto in Kapila’s teaching in the 11th canto talks about how we are all how even bhakti can be performed in the three modes it can be in goodness, it can be in passion it can be in ignorance so similarly atheism as a doctrine is in ignorance some atheists can be living quite sadhmic lives regulated and even charitable to some extent considerate so and sometimes when we there can be such people who are atheists but who are very polite well behaved even regulated and then we hear about some religionists some religious terrorists say those are people who are out to kill others and they feel not the slightest compunction about blowing up a building and killing thousands of people in fact they feel great celebration in doing such a thing then we may wonder hmm are such believers are such religious believers really better than the non-believers so this is a valid question and we need to recognize that the Bhagavatam talks about ten factors that shape the influence that influence the modes or rather that shape which mode we are in and that Agama, the books that we read Dhyana, the kind of meditation that we do they are just two of the elements and the food that we eat the association that we keep, like that multiple factors are mentioned the point here is that our faith will reflect who we are while also determining who we become that means that for a religious terrorist the person has to some extent a violent disposition and when that person meets with gets a worldview that rationalizes violence not just rationalizes but glamorizes violence then such a person becomes a unfeeling machine machine of death who goes about killing anyone and everyone without any compunction so the point is that you may see terrorism which is characterized by brutal violent that is clearly Tamasic and just because the just because the terrorists claim to be devoted to God claim to be motivated by religion we shouldn’t forget we shouldn’t let our understanding of situations be determined by non-scriptural categories alone so the non-scriptural category is of religious people and non-religious people and within that category religious people are seen as troublemakers as terrorists but the Bhagavad Gita offers us a different classification and with this classification we can see it classifies not only people in terms of their culture or food but also in terms of their religion so certain modes of religious expression are clearly Tamasic and so sometimes some people may lump everyone in a category together and say everyone here is like this so for example there was recently this movie PK which which tried to counter the stereotype that all Pakistanis are terrorists yes the point is that branding putting one label on a whole group of people especially large group of people is simplistic and often misleading now that applies in general to the category of religious and non-religious also so when some people say that religious people are terrorists they don’t understand that there is religion in three modes and the Bhagavad Gita disapproves religion in the lower mode that’s why its concluding call is so dramatic which religious text of the world tells its followers to give up religion all religious texts tell to take up religion and the Bhagavad Gita is a religious text at least it was thought in the mainstream world as a religious text although more accurately it is a text that transcends the religious boundaries that define the world today but still the point is that it asks us to go beyond religious formulas and rituals and embrace the principle of love love for the supreme and love for all living beings in relationship with the supreme by embracing this kind of inclusive world view wherein at one level being philosophical is about being categorical categorical sometimes is said to mean being clear categorical no that means a clear no but categorical also means dividing into categories so when the Bhagavad Gita is philosophy has philosophy its categorization is very fine very refined and it reveals the inadequacy of of the simplistic categorization of religious people as say violence mongering even in the secular world even in the mainstream media the thoughtful people recognize that say the Amish Christians the Amish is a community which practices non-violence and simplicity and lives without any technology in some parts of America, Pennsylvania and they speak the Pennsylvania Dutch language so now these people they in and of themselves don’t believe in violence even when they are subjected to violence how can they be lumped in the same category as as say a Jihadi who celebrates joy celebrates with joy on killing a thousand people so the point is that by recognizing this category of Sattvic, Rajasic, Tamasic and recognizing that this category underlies and applies to the worldly religion of religious and non-religious we can we can we can learn to not get false impressions or be put off when we see religious people behaving violently or abhorrently we recognize that it is not religion that is to be blamed it is Tamoguna at play and such people because of their religion they are now adopting the name of their religion too because that religion is available and that religion was propagated to them so they have adopted the name of that religion for becoming violent but it is quite likely that if that religion had not been there those people would have taken up violence in the name of something else now of course whether those people would have become violent to the same extent or less extent or more extent that will vary depending on time, place, circumstance human behavior is determined by various factors but the important principle that we need to recognize is that what the Bhagavad Gita teaches is first that we come we cultivate and then by living in Tamoguna we practice the process that will take us towards transcendence and this kind of religious practice is very sublime it has a very positive contribution to make to the world it is not a it is not a religion that causes violence it is not a religion that even encourages it is a world view it offers a world view in Tamoguna one recognizes that one of the characteristics of Tamoguna is to see the truth, to have knowledge so one recognizes that there are people with different mindsets and thereby one learns to live with tolerance while of course pursuing transcendence oneself and also inspiring others who are interested to take a similar pursuit of transcendence