Chapter 7 - The Creed of the Aryan Fighter

The Creed of the Aryan Fighter

We have seen that the divine Teacher has given a strongly worded rebuke to  Arjuna when he lost all his interest to fight in the war of Kurukshetra. Arjuna had exhibited following emotional outbursts :

·        His passionate self questioning

·        His shrinking from slaughter

·        His sense of sorrow and sin

·        His grieving for an empty and desolate life

·        His forecast of evil results of an evil deed

Krishna had responded to the recoil of Arjuna by explaining to him, in a mixture of persuasive and harsh language, that all this is :

·        a confusion of mind and delusion

·        a weakness of the heart

·        an unmanliness

·        a fall from the macho of the fighter and the hero

·        an unfitting quality in the son of Pritha

People look to Arjuna as a champion and chief hope of a righteous cause. In this hour of crisis and peril, he should not fall pray to the negative emotions and cast away his divine weapons and refuse to honour his God-given work.

He should not become the victim of

·        the sudden amazement of his heart and senses,

·        the clouding of his reason and

·        the downfall of his will.

This is not the way cherished and followed by the Aryan man. This mood of Arjuna had not come from heaven nor can it lead to heaven. Moreover, in this very life upon earth, this act of Arjuna amounts to forfeiting of the glory that waits upon strength and heroism and noble works. Krishna evokes Arjuna to put away from him this weak and self-indulgent pity, to rise and smash his enemies !

What is happening behind the curtain ?

We need to pause here a little and see as to really what is the advice of Krishna.

We can classify it into three categories :

·        Divine Pity

·        Heroic Struggle

·        Indian concept of god-man

We will analyse them one by one.

Divine Pity

We look upon Krishna as a divine Teacher, an Avatar, an incarnation of God.

It is normally expected from a god-man to encourage

·        gentleness and saintliness

·        self-abnegation

·        the recoil from worldly aims

·        cessation from the ways of the world.

Gita expressly says that Arjuna has thus lapsed into unheroic weakness,

“his eyes full and distressed with tears, his heart overcome by depression and discouragement’.

This state of Arjuna is caused because he is invaded by pity, krpayavistam. We may be tempted to conclude that this is a divine weakness and not a human cowardness.  The pity felt by Arjuna is a divine emotion. It should not have been discouraged by Krishna with a harsh rebuke.

Heroic Struggle

Or, in a swing of the thinking pendulum of the mind to the opposite direction, we may be tempted to support Krishna by interpreting his actions as

·        a gospel of war and heroic action

·        a Nietzschean creed of power

·        high-browed strength of Hebrew people

We may take it as an old Teutonic hardness which holds pity to be a weakness and thinks like the Norwegian hero who thanked God because He had given him a hard heart.

Indian concept of god-man

Here we have to note that the teaching of the Gita springs from an Indian creed. To the Indian mind, compassion has always figured as one of the largest elements of the divine nature. In an later chapter of the Gita, the Teacher himself has enumerated the qualities of the godlike nature in man. He had placed among these qualities the compassion to creatures, gentleness, freedom from wrath and from the desire to slay and do hurt on equal importance with the qualities of fearlessness, high spirit and energy. He has gone to the extent of terming following qualities as of Asuric (evil) nature :

·        harshness

·        hardness

·        fierceness

·        satisfaction in slaying enemies

·        amassing wealth

·        unjust enjoyments

These qualities come from the violent Titanic nature which denies the Divine in the world and the Divine in man. They worship only Desire as its deity.

The answer is : none of the above !

Let us see how.

Krishna asks Arjuna a very pointed and plain question :

“What is the origin of your dejection, stain and darkness of the soul in this hour of difficulty and peril ?”

The attempt here is to find out the real nature of Arjuna’s deviation from his heroic qualities. Divine compassion is all right. Accepted that it is a good quality in man. But there are certain conditions to be fulfilled. The divine compassion has to descend to us from higher levels. The misplaced and out-of-tune compassion is a folly and dis-respectful. This happens when the man who shows the compassion is of following type :

·        His intrinsic nature does not possess it. He is only outwardly showing it at that particular instant

·        His personality is not cast in its mould

·        He is only pretending to be a superior man, the master-man or the superman

To become a Superman, the person must manifest nothing short of the highest nature of the Godhead in humanity. This compassion observes with an eye of love and wisdom and calm strength :

·        the battle and the struggle

·        the strength and weakness of man

·        his virtues and sins

·        his joy and suffering

·        his knowledge and his ignorance

·        his wisdom and his folly

·        his aspiration and his failure

And most important of all, this compassion is used to help and to heal. and  not to shrink from one’s duty. It will manifest differently in different types of people.

·        In the saint and philanthropist, it may cast itself into the mould of a plentitude of love or charity

whereas

In the thinker and hero it assumes the largeness and the force of a helpful wisdom and strength.

The true Aryan fighter manifests this compassion. It is the soul of his chivalry. It will not break the bruised reed, but helps and protects the weak and the oppressed and the wounded and the fallen. Most significantly, it is also the divine compassion that smashes down the strong tyrant and the confident oppressor. But this is NOT done in wrath and with hatred, the qualities of the lower human nature. Here we have to take a particular note of a spiritual truth – The wrath of God against the sinner, God’s hatred of the wicked and eternal torture of the wicked are the fables of half-enlightened creeds. The old Indian spirituality clearly saw that God is having as much love and compassion for the strong Titan erring by his strength and slain for his sins as for the sufferer and the oppressed who have to be saved from his violence and injustice. The act of slaying the oppressing Titan and as well as showing compassion to him are NOT contradictory actions but well go together for the divine man, the superman, the Aryan fighter and the God. It is very essential that we fully understand the true meaning of compassion before we can attempt to grasp the teaching of the Gita.

The motive force which actuate Arjuna in the rejection of his work and mission is not true compassion as explained above. That is not compassion but an impotence full of weak self-pity, a recoil from the mental suffering which his act must give rise to on himself.

This is clearly reflected in the statement of Arjuna :

“I see not what shall thrust from me the sorrow that dries up the senses”

Of all things, self-pity is among the most ignoble and un-Aryan of moods. Even the expression of pity for others is also a form of self-indulgence.

·        It is the physical shrinking of the nerves from the act of slaughter.

·        It is the egoistic emotional shrinking of the heart from the destruction of the Dhritarashtrians because they are “one’s own people” and without them life will be empty.

This pity is a weakness of the mind and senses. It is a weakness which may well be beneficial to men of a lower grade of development. These people have to be weak because otherwise they will be hard and cruel. They have to cure the harsher by the gentler forms of sensational egoism. They have to call in Tamas, the weak principle, to help Sattwa, the principle of light. This is required in order to quell the strength and excess of their rajasic passions. But surely this is not the way for the Aryan man who is having a higher level of all round development. He has to grow not from weakness, but by an ascension from strength to strength. Arjuna’s is a special case.

·        He is the divine man, the master-man in the making

and as such

·        He has been chosen by the gods.

·        He has a mission to accomplish.

·        He has God beside him in his chariot.

·        He has the heavenly bow Gandiva in his hand,

·        He has the champions of unrighteousness, the opponents of the divine leading of the world in his front as his enemies

He does not possess a right to determine

·        what he shall do or not do according to his emotions and his passions, or

·        to shrink from a necessary destruction by the claim of his egoistic heart and reason or

·        to decline his work because it will bring sorrow and emptiness to his life or

·        to lose interest because its earthly result has no value to him in the absence of the thousands who must perish.

All that is a weak falling from his higher nature.

·        He has to see only the work that must be done, kartavyam karma.

·        He has to hear only the divine command breathed through his warrior nature,

·        He has to feel only for the world and the destiny of mankind calling to him as its God-sent man to assist its march and clear its path of the dark armies that beset it.

Arjuna in his reply to Krishna admits the rebuke. However, he still strives against and refuses the command to fight. He is aware of his weakness and yet accepts his subjection to it. The poverty of spirit has destroyed his heroic nature. His whole consciousness is confused in its view of right and wrong. He also accepts the divine Friend as his teacher. At the same time, the emotional and intellectual structure which has served as solid base for his sense of righteousness has been entirely cast down. Now he is not in a position to accept a command which seems to appeal only to his old standpoint and gives him no new basis of action. Still he attempts to justify his refusal of the work by putting forward in its support the following :

·        The claim of his nervous and sensational being which shrinks from the slaughter with the sequel of blood-stained enjoyments

·        The claim of his heart which recoils from the sorrow and emptiness of life that will follow his act

·        The claim of his customary moral notions which are appalled by the necessity of slaying his Gurus, Bhishma and Drona

·        The claims of his reason which sees no good but only evil results of the terrible and violent work assigned to him

He is resolved that on the old basis of thought  and motive he will not fight. He now awaits in silence the answer to objections that seem to him without any solution. Krishna’s first task is to destroy these claims of Arjuna’s. This is necessary to make a room in Arjuna’s mind before he proceeds to reveal to him the higher law. This higher law will transcend all egoistic motives of actions. Had Krishna tried to explain to Arjuna these higher laws without first clearing the clutter in Arjuna’s mind, it would have failed to make any impact. We should note here that Krishna is going in a very systematic, step by step and planned way in bringing around Arjuna to the core of his teaching as we shall see further.

The answer of the Teacher proceeds upon two different lines.

·        First, a brief reply founded upon the highest ideas of the general Aryan culture in which Arjuna has been educated.

·        Secondly, another and larger explanation which is founded on a more intimate knowledge. This opens into deeper truths of our being. This is the real starting point of the teaching of the Gita.

Explanation of the first answer

The first answer relies on the philosophic and moral conceptions of the Vedantic philosophy. It rests on the social idea of duty and honour which formed the ethical basis of Aryan society. This is because Arjuna has sought to justify his refusal on ethical and rational grounds. But he has failed in it very miserably. He has merely tried to hide the revolt of his ignorant and unchastened emotions behind a façade of apparent rationality. He has spoken of the physical life and the death of the body as if these were the primary realities.

Explanation of the second answer

These things have no essential value to the sage and the thinker. The wisdom and the true knowledge of life do not approve of the grief arising out of the bodily death of his friends and kindred. The enlightened man does not mourn either for the living or the dead. He knows that suffering and death are merely incidents in the history of the soul. The soul and not the body is the reality. All these kings of men in the shadow of death for whom he mourns have lived before the current life and they will live again in the human body after getting killed in the war. The soul passes physically through childhood and youth and age. In a similar fashion, it passes on to the changing of the body.

Qualities of wise man

The person matured with wisdom do not allow the clamour of his blood and his nerves and his heart to cloud his judgment or to contradict his knowledge.

·        He is calm and of wise mind,

·        He is dhira, the thinker who looks upon life steadily and does not allow himself to be disturbed and blinded by his sensations and emotions

·        He is not deceived by material appearances.

·        He looks beyond the apparent facts of the life of the body and senses to the real fact of his being

·        He rises beyond the emotional and physical desires of the ignorant nature to the true and only aim of the human existence.

The real fact and the highest aim is this :

The human life and death is repeated through the aeons in the great cycles of the world. They are only a long progress by which the human being prepares and makes himself fit for immortality.

The method of preparation and the characteristics of the man who is fit are :

·        The man who rises above the conception of himself as a life and a body.

·        The man who does not accept the material and sensational touches of the world at their own value or at the value which the physical man attaches to them.

·        The man who knows himself and all as souls

·        The man who learns himself to live in his soul and not in his body

·        The man who deals with other too as souls and not as mere physical beings.

Immortality

Here, we should note that immortality does not mean the survival of death. Death is inevitable to every creature born with a mind. Immortality means the transcendence of life and death. It means that ascension by which man ceases to live as a mind-informed body and lives at last as a spirit and in the Spirit.

Disqualification of person for immortality

A person

·        who is subject to grief and sorrow

·        who is a slave to the sensations and emotions

·        who is occupied by the touches of things transient

can not become fit for immortality.

Limit of forbearance

These things must be borne

·        until they are conquered

·        till they can give no pain to the liberated man

·        till he is able to receive all the material happenings of the world whether joyful or sorrowful with a wise and calm equality.

This is like the tranquil eternal Spirit secret within us receives these things.

An-Aryan ignorance is :

·        to be disturbed by sorrow and horror as Arjuna has been disturbed

·        to be deflected by them from the path that has to be traveled

·        to be overcome by self-pity and intolerance of sorrow and recoil from the unavoidable and trivial circumstance of the death of the body.

It is not the way of the Aryan climbing in calm strength towards the immortal life.

Death

There is no such thing as death. It is the body that dies and the body is not the man. That which really is, can not go out of existence, though it may change the forms through which it appears.

Existence

Similarly, that which is non-existent can not come into being. The soul is and can not cease to be. This opposition of ‘is’ and ‘is not’, this balance of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ is the mind’s view of the existence. It eventually finds its end in the realisation of the soul as the one imperishable self by whom all this universe has been extended.

Fact of Life

Finite bodies have an end. However, that which possesses and uses the body is infinite, illimitable, eternal and indestructible. It casts away old and takes up new bodies as a man changes worn-out raiment for new. There is nothing there in this to grieve at and recoil and shrink.

Soul

This is not born, nor does it die. Nor is it a thing that comes into being once and passing away will never come into being again. It is unborn, ancient, sempiternal. It is not slain with the slaying of the body. Nobody can slay the immortal spirit. Weapons can not cleave it, nor the fire burn, nor do the waters drench it, nor the wind dry. Eternally stable, immobile, all-pervading, it is for ever and for ever.

Reality

It is

·        not manifested like the body, but greater than all manifestation

·        not to be analysed by the thought, but greater than all mind

·        not capable of change and modification like the life and its organ and their objects, but beyond the changes of mind and life and body.

It is yet the Reality which all these strive to figure.

Even if we assume for a moment that

·        the truth of our being is less

                   exalted,

                   vast,

                   intangible

                             by death and life,

·        if the self were constantly subject to birth and death,

even then the death of beings ought not to be a cause of sorrow. Death is an inevitable circumstance of the soul’s self-manifestation.

The process of birth is the appearing out of some state in which it is unmanifest to our mortal senses. We can not call this state before birth as non-existent. It is existent but not manifested. Death is a return to that unmanifest world or condition. Out of this unmanifest state the soul will again appear in this material world through the process of birth, thus repeating the cycle of birth and death. The scenario painted by the physical mind and senses about death and the horror of death whether on the sick-bed or on the battlefield  is the most ignorant of nervous clamours. Our sorrow for the death of men is an ignorant grieving for those for whom there is no cause to grieve. After death, these men have not vanished from the existence. They have also not suffered any painful or terrible change of condition. Instead, beyond the point of death, these men are equally in existence and equally happy or sad in their mental state before death. In reality, the higher truth is the real truth. We in our own self are all that Self, that One, that Divine. To him we look on and speak and hear of as some other being outside of us. We consider him as the wonderful entity beyond our comprehension, though in reality we ourselves are that. It is interesting to note that no human mind has ever fully and completely known this Absolute with the help of our seeking and declaring of knowledge and learning from those who have knowledge. It is this Absolute which is here veiled by the world, the master of the body. All life is only its shadow. The coming of the soul into physical manifestation and our passing out of it by death is only one of its minor movements. When we have known ourselves as this, then to speak of ourselves as slayer or slain is an absurdity. We have to live only in only one thing which is the ultimate Truth. The Eternal manifests itself as the soul of man in the great cycle of its pilgrimage. Birth and death are its milestones on a very long road. Worlds beyond this material world are its resting places. All the happy as well as sad circumstances of life, battle and victory are the means of our progress. Immortality is the home to which the soul travels.

Having explained this real truth behind the apparent truth of our existence, the Teacher appeals to Arjuna, ‘O son of Bharata’ to put away this vain sorrow and shrinking and fight. But Arjuna is still not convinced. Accepted that what Krishna says is the real truth. But where does it leads to ?

Arjuna accepts that

·        this high and great knowledge,

·        this strenuous self-discipline of the mind and soul

will enable us to rise beyond the clamour of the emotions and the cheat of the senses to true self-knowledge.

·        It may well cure us of the fear of death and the sorrow for the dead

·        It may well show us that those whom we speak of as dead are not dead at all

·        It may convince us that those who are dead are not to be sorrowed for, since they have only gone beyond

·        It may well teach us to look undisturbed upon the most terrible assaults of life

·        It may persuade us to look upon the death of the body as a trifle

·        It may exalt us to the conception of all life’s circumstances as a manifestation of the One and as a means for our souls to raise themselves as the immortal Spirit.

Arjuna is ready to accept all these arguments of Krishna. He says that the explanations given by Krishna, though they may contain the Truth, do not answer a very specific question from Arjuna.

‘How to justify the action demanded of Arjuna and the slaughter of Kurukshetra ?  ‘

Krishna patiently answers that this is the action required of Arjuna in the path he has to travel. It has come inevitably in the performance of the function demanded of him by

·        his svadharma,

·        his social duty,

·        the law of his life and

·        the law of his being.

This world, this manifestation of the Self in the material universe is not just a cycle of inner development. It is also a field in which the external circumstances of life have to be accepted as an environment and an occasion for that development.

It is a world of mutual help and struggle. Our progress is not through a serene and peaceful gliding with easy joys and comforts. Here every step has to be gained by heroic effort and through a clash of opposing forces. This struggle is taken to the most physical level in the act of war and the people who do this are Kshatriyas, the mighty men. Their nature is composed of war, force, nobility and courage. Their virtue and their duty is in protection of the right and an unflinching acceptance of the battle as a fact of life.

There is a continuous struggle between

·        right and wrong

·        justice and injustice

·        the force that protects and the force that violates and oppresses.

When this struggle comes to a flash-point on the physical level, the work gets violent and terrible. At this time the champion and torch bearer of the Right must not shake and tremble. He must not abandon his followers or fellow-fighters. He should not betray his cause and leave the standard of Right and Justice to trail in the dust. He should not allow it to be trampled into mire by the blood-stained feet of the oppressor. He should not allow this to happen because of a weak pity for the violent and cruel and a physical horror of the vastness of the destruction decreed. His virtue and his duty lie in battle and not in abstention from battle. It is not slaughter, but non-slaying is a sin in this situation.

At this point, the Teacher adopts a different strategy. He turns aside for a moment and gives another answer to the cry of Arjuna over the sorrow of the death of relatives. The sorrow which will empty his life of the causes and objects of living. Krishna now takes up the question as to what is the true object of the Kshatriya’s life and his true happiness. It is certainly not the self-pleasing and domestic happiness. It is not a life of comfort and peaceful joy with friends and relatives. His true object of life is to battle for the right. His greatest happiness lies in the quest to find a cause for which he can lay down his life or by victory win the crown and glory of the hero’s existence.

“There is no greater good for the Kshatriya than righteous battle. When such a battle comes to them of itself like the open gate of heaven, happy are the Kshatriyas then. If thou dost not this battle for the right, then hast thou abandoned thy duty and virtue and thy glory, and sin shall be thy portion”.

Such a refusal will

·        incur disgrace and

·        the blame of fear and weakness and

·        the loss of his honour.

Loss of honour, his fame, his noble station among the mighty men, the men of courage and power is a worst grief for a Kshatriya. Such a life for him is worse than death.

Warrior’s ideal is :

·        Battle

·        Courage

·        Power

·        Rule

·        The honour of the brave

·        The heaven of those who fall nobly

A Kshatriya becomes false to himself and to the demand of the world on its leaders and kings when :

·        the Warrior’s ideal is thus lowered

·        that honour is tarnished

·        he is classified amongst false heroes who are called cowards and weak because of their unheroic actions

24^th Nov 05

Krishna says :

If you get killed in the battle, you attain heaven. If you win the battle, you shall enjoy the earth. Either way, you win. Therefore, O son of Kunti, arise and fight. Do not run away from the battle field.

This is heroic appeal of Krishna. It is on a lower level than the advice of stoical spirituality given earlier. Having appealed to Arjuna’s warrior spirit, Krishna now proceeds to touch the deeper level of spirituality. Next, he bids Arjuna to make grief and happiness, loss and gain, victory and defeat equal to his soul and then turn to the battle. This is the real teaching of the Gita. Here we should note the unique approach of Indian ethics. It very well recognises the practical necessity of graded ideals for the developing moral and spiritual life of man. There is no uniform standard to all the men irrespective of their level of moral and spiritual development. At this stage, Gita takes the Kshatriya and the four orders (Chatur Warnas) ideal in its social aspect and not in the spiritual meaning. This is done later. At this stage, Krishna tells Arjuna that if the motive of his action is based on the concept of joy and sorrow and the final outcome of the action (fruits of work), then this is his answer to him. That is the advice given above : Head (become martyr in battle) you win (attain heaven after death), tail (victory in battle) you win ( enjoyment of this life) – either way, it is a win-win situation for you. Running away from battle is like giving up the game of life without even making an attempt to play it. This is a sad thing particularly because you are then losing a wonderful opportunity of ‘win-win’ situation. Krishna tells Arjuna that he has earlier explained to him in what direction the higher knowledge of self and the world takes you to. Now I have shown to you as to what direction your social duty and the ethical standard of your order (i.e. ideals of Kshatriya) will lead you to. (swadharmam api caveksya)  From whatever angle (higher spiritual standpoint or lower practical standpoint) you consider this situation, it leads towards the same conclusion. You must fight. In event Arjuna is not satisfied with his social duty and the virtue of his order (Kshatriya), if he thinks that it leads him to sorrow and sin, then Krishna offers him another direction. He bids him to rise to a higher level and not sink to a lower level. Put away all egoism from you, disregard joy and sorrow, disregard gain and loss and all worldly results. Focus you attention on the cause which you must serve and the work you must achieve by divine command. ‘so thou shalt not incur sin’.

We have seen here that Krishna has given answers to Arjuna according to the highest knowledge and ethical ideals to which his race and age had attained at that particular time.

He has answered to Arjuna’s

·        plea of sorrow

·        plea of the recoil from slaughter

·        plea of the sense of sin

·        plea of the unhappy results of his action.

And this is the creed of the Aryan fighter. In summary, it says to Arjuna, the Warrior of Truth :

‘Know God. Know thyself. Help man. Protect the Right. Act without fear or weakness or faltering in thy work of battle in the world. Man is the eternal and imperishable Spirit. Thy soul is here on its upward path to immortality. Life and death have no permanent value. Sorrow and wounds and suffering are nothing. These things have to be conquered and overcome. Do not have a narrow outlook at your own pleasure and gain and profit. But fix you sight on the above and around. Above to the shining summits to which you have to climb.  Around at this world of battle and trial in which good and evil, progress and retrogression are locked in stern conflict. Other people have high trust on you, they bank on you. You are their strong man, their hero. Help them. Fight. You must destroy when your destruction is a necessary thing for the progress of the world. However, while you destroy, you should not hate that which you destroy. Neither should you grieve for all those who perish in the war. Know everywhere the ONE SELF.. Know all to be immortal souls and the body to be but dust. Do thy work with a calm, strong and equal spirit. You should fight or fall nobly. You should conquer mightily. This is the REAL work that God and your intrinsic nature have given to you to accomplish.’  

............ based on Chapter 7, Essays on the Gita by Sri Aurobindo