Early this summer, I attended the funeral of a colleague’s son, a colleague who has also been my faculty mentor. In form, it was closer to what is called a celebration of life, a gentler and more dignified manner of bidding farewell to the departed. In the span of my own limited years, encounters with the finality of life have been few. The only funeral I had witnessed in person took place eighteen years ago, upon my grandmother’s passing. Since settling in the United States in 2016, several members of my extended family have passed away, yet physical distance deprived me of the chance to stand among the mourners. As I think of them, each departing in turn, my feelings always remain tangled and resistant to naming. Blood binds us, yet I am conscious that such partings belong, inexorably, to the order of nature.
Among the books that shaped my understanding of life, none has exerted a deeper influence than “Bhagavad Gita “. I first encountered it in my freshman year at university, not long after my grandmother’s passing. To this day, I can still recall the moment when Krishna, the Celestial Charioteer, spoke to the troubled warrior Arjuna, urging him not to be distressed by the outward appearance of fate, and reminding him that even in death the soul can attain Brahman, the supreme reality — a liberation akin to Nirvana. “Bhagavad Gita” is an ancient Indian epic composed more than two millennia ago; its themes are intricate, yet at its heart lies the pursuit of self-knowledge, the mastery of desire, and the attainment of lucid detachment. This quest, of discerning the self, tempering the ego, and rising to a state of clear consciousness, has long captivated me. Even in those early days, I sensed the confines of the human condition and understood that one must learn, with reason, to accept oneself as but a small thread in the cosmic tapestry. In retrospect, I suspect that my reading of the “Gita” then had less to do with mourning my grandmother and more with a deeper intellectual yearning.
The “Bhagavad Gita” tells such a story. In an ancient Indian kingdom, two royal brothers came to war over the succession to the throne. The protagonist, Arjuna, was a prince of one side. At the outset of the tale, both armies had drawn up their formations and the battle was about to begin, when Arjuna suddenly felt a deep uncertainty. He asked Krishna to halt the chariot, and told him that those standing before him as enemies were his fathers, grandfathers, teachers, brothers, and other kin. What possible good could come from slaughtering one’s own family? Even if victory brought him the crown, it would still be a sin. With this realization, Arjuna wished to abandon the fight. Yet Krishna, who was in truth a lord, told him that to renounce one’s duty at the very moment it should be fulfilled was an even greater wrongdoing, for a man’s obligation is to carry out his appointed role. To Krishna, the tragedy Arjuna saw was of another order: one must act without clinging to the results of action, for only then can the mind rise above the illusions of the senses. In his teaching, such action is an offering, and only those who understand offering will act as necessary without being ensnared by gain or loss. The conduct of the clearest and most discerning mind is to give itself wholly to the law of nature, becoming part of it; to act for no gain and to refrain for no fear, seeking nothing, doing only what must be done. Such a person alone will attain the ultimate bliss. After his counsel, Krishna revealed his divine form, the god of destruction with countless hands, bellies, eyes, and mouths, boundless and all-pervading, saying —
Time I am, the full-grown world-destroying Time,
— Bhagavad Gītā, Chapter 11, Verses 32–33 (translated by Swami Sivananda)
now engaged in destroying the worlds.
Even without thee, none of the warriors
arrayed in the hostile ranks shall survive.
Therefore, stand up and obtain fame.
Conquer the enemies and enjoy the unrivalled kingdom.
Verily, by Me have they been slain already;
be thou an instrument, O Arjuna!
Here, the deep wisdom Krishna reveals is one that human beings, by their own capacities, can scarcely grasp. At that moment, he told Arjuna that his enemies have been slain already—an assertion intelligible only from a vantage beyond the limits of ordinary perception. If one were to think of time as a dimension of the world, then from the perspective of a higher order of being, the present, the past, and the future coexist. This does not mean they are immutable, but rather that what we habitually call “before” and “after” can, on another plane, be apprehended all at once. Through such a world view, we may come to see that the vast world is neither within our control nor even fully within our comprehension. What we must do is not to fret over outcomes, but to free our actions from the designs of personal gain and attune them to the order of the world. Only in this renunciation of attachment (in Sanskrit, Bhakti, meaning selfless devotion and surrender) can one act and yet endure in a world steeped in suffering, without being consumed by suffering itself. Such, in essence, were the meagre notes I scribbled to myself when I first read the “Bhagavad Gita”.
In truth, I cannot recall having any particularly strong emotional reaction to the passing of my grandmother or other relatives. Perhaps it was because I was too young to know what kind of response was expected; what I do remember is a sense of blankness at the funeral. My detachment in such moments drew more than one rebuke from my elders, who found it extremely discourteous. This memory often brings to mind Meursault in “The Stranger “—the man who remained impassive at his mother’s funeral. As the years have passed, I have come to realize that examining one’s own emotions is not a simple task. From one perspective, I consider myself calm: I have always thought of death as a return to nature, the body as no more than a temporary dwelling, and dying as merely continuing to exist in another, unconscious form. Yet from another perspective, I cannot help but feel some unease. Perhaps this so-called “composure” is itself suspect; it may not be the fruit of enlightenment, but rather the shelter of avoidance. Thus, on the one hand, I understand this as the “detachment” spoken in the spirit of “Bhagavad Gita”; on the other, I must admit to retaining a certain reserve toward it—a hesitation not easily concealed, or rather, a distance that has never quite closed.
At the close of the memorial for my mentor’s son, his two sisters presented a short film distilling the arc of his life. In the span of barely ten minutes, all manner of emotions interwove, and I found it difficult to compose myself. In part, as a father, I knew all too well what stirred within me; yet also, that single word kept returning to my mind—”detachment”. When the memorial ended, I really wanted to tell him that we are all children of nature, and that those who have left us have merely returned to it. Yet in that moment, no Krishna-like answer came to my lips. I only lowered my head, embraced him, and offered a white flower, emblem of peace. That night after all had quieted, I lay awake, my thoughts unceasing. I suddenly understood that no matter how many books one has read or how clearly one sees, knowledge does not guarantee a better life, not even in the spiritual. Even if I know that the truth of the world is but emptiness, the heart will always have its own reasons beyond the grasp of the intellect. This moment further brought Freud to my mind: he wrote that life is suffused with suffering, and that human beings have only three ways to meet it—through substitute satisfactions, diversion of energy, or numbing of the self. What strikes me as curious is that even when I hold a “correct” or even “perfect” answer, I may still choose those worldly options that seem “foolish”, simply because they work. Perhaps, such choices are not foolish at all, but part of what it means to be human.
In the past, I had always believed that, in the face of life’s many misfortunes, one could ultimately find a perfect answer in which to settle oneself. This summer taught me otherwise: I am not entitled to such certainty. However elegant and complete that answer may appear, it has never truly stood where life itself takes place. This celebration was, in truth, the story of Dr. Yang being defeated by Fan—the self shaped by books giving way to the other self shaped by life. Even so, I mean not to imply that the “Gita” is ambiguous or unsound; on the contrary, I still regard it as among the wisest books I have ever read. In its pages, Krishna tells Arjuna:
He who is everywhere without attachment,
— Bhagavad Gītā, Chapter 2, Verse 57 (translated by Swami Sivananda)
on meeting with anything good or bad,
who neither rejoices nor hates,
his wisdom is fixed.
I still believe this to be a wisdom of the highest order. Yet life lies neither in feeling wisdom, nor in renouncing folly, still less in achieving flawlessness. Life, at last, is simply life. After all, all theory is grey, while life breathes in verdure.
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
— J. W. von Goethe, “Faust” (The First Part of the Tragedy)
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.