Comment by caddybox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by caddybox | Hacker News Reader

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The Bhagavid Gita attempts to define a person's response to a life event by decomposing it into "dharma" and "karma". Dharma is external and is specified by a person's birth, caste, etc. (essentially societal factors) whereas Karma is more personal and rises out of actions from a man's conscious volition. It attempts to propose the right action by checking what is good dharma and good karma but as I've read in a beautiful introduction to the Mahabharata translation by John D. Smith, Dharma and Karma can often point in opposite directions.

I thoroughly agree that the central idea of the Bhagavad Gita is to do your job without unnecessary worry or anxiety about the outcome. I've seen similar ideas in Epictetus's Enchiridion (put yourself to things in your control and forget about things beyond your power) and more recently in the notion of "separation of tasks" central to Alfred Adler's works. Irrespective of the source, the idea of focussing on my job without worrying about the outcome has been immensely helpful to me in moments of great anxiety and uncertainty.

Dharma: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma_Initiative

One the lessons I personally took from it is following your path even though other paths may seem more attractive. Follow your calling essentially.

I think that’s really really wrong interpretation of it. It tells you your karma (actions) should always be dictated by your dharma (the right thing to do, nothing to do with caste btw, not sure how that got into the translation if it did).

Krishna tells Arjun (the warrior being mentioned here) that it doesn’t matter that it’s your kinsmen including some which are the salt of the earth on the other side. You fight them because they are standing for adharma (injustice) and you should always stand for dharma (justice) no matter the personal cost.

> your dharma (the right thing to do, nothing to do with caste btw, not sure how that got into the translation if it did).

The right thing to do is not universal. Dharma doesn't place the same responsibilities on a king and a peasant. Your dharma is dependent on your role in the larger order and thus on your caste. The Mahabharata itself has more than a hundred references to Kshatriya dharma which is unsurprising given its martial context.

It also seems a little cynical in places about how that specific conception of “Kshatriya dharma” plays out. Most of the central conflicts of the tale revolve around people being trapped by certain obligations stemming from hardline adherence to certain Kshatriya codes of honor. Towards the end there is a whole soliloquy where someone widowed by the war is heaping the blame for the carnage of Krishna and everyone involved in upholding what she believes to be insane adherence to codes of loyalty and never backing down on a promise once given.

Krishna kind of receives it with a shrug, and eventually his own clan is annihilated by infighting and all the principal heroes of the tale save Yudistra perish with only the briefest and half-hearted eulogy that elucidates their main tragic flaw, like Arjuna’s vanity. In fact, Krishna’s whole purpose for incarnating is said to be a mission to “unburden the Earth” of these Kshatriyas and the ceaseless conflicts they brought to the world.

So in a way the story is as much about the importance of Dharma as it is about the passing (and possible follies) of that rigid conception of Dharma from the world. The end of the conflict ushers in the Kali Yuga, an aeon of strife in which it is stated explicitly that what is and is not dharmic conduct becomes difficult to parse.

> Krishna’s whole purpose for incarnating is said to be a mission to “unburden the Earth” of these Kshatriyas and the ceaseless conflicts they brought to the world.

Facinating. I've never heard of this interpretation before. Do you have any sources that discuss this? A quick Google search didn't show anything.

Fascinating and... wrong. Krishna strongly portrays himself as the creator and preserver of the Varnashrama Dharma in the Bhagavad Gita.

It's in a variety of commentaries on the Puranas. This from the Srimad Bagavatam is just an example: https://vedabase.io/en/library/tqk/17/

The reasons why the Earth was "burdened" is up for interpretation. The commentary I linked comes from a pretty hardline "Krishnaist" point of view which is a bit on the messianic and manichean side. But wiping out all the "fallen" kshatriyas is one of the traditionally understood purposes for the Krishna incarnation.

It's hard to deny that at the end of the Mahabharata literally all the Kshatriyas are dead, including Krishna's own clan who wipe themselves out as a result of having some sort of senseless frenzy come over them. The only one who survives the age is one of Arjuna's grandsons, from whom all subsequent Kshatriya lineages are said to derive. (Although most modern ones are actually various sequences of steppe invaders who got integrated into Hindu society).

>The reasons why the Earth was "burdened" is up for interpretation.

So, the source does not support your claim in any way, by your own admission?

The source is pretty much just reiterating the Gita's line: Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion – at that time I descend Myself.

>But wiping out all the "fallen" kshatriyas is one of the traditionally understood purposes for the Krishna incarnation.

Traditionally according to who? I have not heard this interpretation even once, and you have failed to procure a source.

> So, the source does not support your claim in any way, by your own admission?

You could just read it yourself and see that it does say he was there to wipe out the Kshatriyas. What's up for interpretation is what "burdened" means. You will find most religious texts leave many things like this up for interpretation because they're the outputs of evolving, oral traditions and not fixed technical manuals.

> I have not heard this interpretation even once

Then I have serious doubts as to how knowledgable you are on the subject. This is given as the central reason for the events of the Mausala Parva and why the hunter who ends up killing Krishna is held blameless for simply executing the last step in Krishna fulfilling his Dharma. The whole of the Mahabharata is about the concept of yagna/sacrifice, the eradication of the old to make way for the next Yuga.

> You could just read it yourself and see that it does say he was there to wipe out the Kshatriyas.

I have skimmed through the article several times and I could not find anything suggesting that. Can you please quote the relevant sentence/paragraph from the article?

It's not an 'article' it's a transcription of a book. There are multiple pages. https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/11/1/

>It's not an 'article' it's a transcription of a book. There are multiple pages.

Forget linking to the right chapter of the book, you had not even linked to the right book. How did you expect anyone to verify your claim!?

> Then I have serious doubts as to how knowledgable you are on the subject

Let me remove all your doubts and assure you that I have absolute no knowledge of the subject whatsoever, apart from what comes from being born in a not-particularly-religious Hindu family. I never claimed any special knowledge nor do I need any to be able to verify your claim.

You are making a straightforward, factual claim that it is the accepted view that the whole purpose of Krishna was to wipe out the Kshatriyas. I am not even asking you to establish that this is the accepted view, which is your full claim. I am just asking for one source that reiterates the same view.

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