Non Violence
The main message of Gita is renunciation. One should renounce
everything and take refuge with the Lord, that’s the underlying message. This
can be done in various ways for people of various temperaments. Some may follow
the path of acquiring supreme knowledge by denying anything material and in the
external world, a practice commonly called “Neti”, “Neti” or “Not This, Not This”. Some may
follow the path of devotion and total surrender. Some may follow the path of
detached work, by surrendering the fruits of action to divine will. Still some
others may follow the path of Yoga or contemplation, control of mind, and
ascetic practices. The ultimate goal is self surrender for the realization of
the Supreme Bliss.
In several places Gita
advocates non violence as one of the highest means of achieving the Supreme
Truth and it also a characteristics of one who has realized the Supreme. It is a
divine quality. It is the characteristics trait of the Brahmins, the highest class. It is the
characteristics of the highest class of devotee and it should be based not on
any morality or ethics, but on seeing the Self or Atman in every body,
by seeing everybody in the Atman. When one has achieved the wisdom, one
knows that the world is God, everybody is God and God is in everybody. Or in
other words everything is the Supreme Bliss – the Brahman, or in other sense, everything
is Atman, the Supreme Self. Under
such a circumstance if one is injuring another, he is injuring oneself. A
devotee cannot think of injuring the God whom he sees in every living being,
that’s why he is non violent. A person of divine trait is non violent because it
is his nature not to harm anything or anybody, irrespective of whether he sees
God in every being or not. A Yogi is non violent as he sees the Self or Atman everywhere. A true non violent
person will not be afraid of vicious animals, nor would anybody be afraid of
him. They will only find love and compassion with him. He will be able to
conquer everybody with love and compassion. Unless one reaches that state it is
dangerous to advocate non violence for everybody under every circumstance, esp.
to a Kshatriya like Arjuna who is duty bound to protect
others and to uphold virtue.
In another sense the battlefield may also be an allegory. Sri Krishna is our Guru or the supreme guide, the chariot
is the body, Arjuna is the
intelligence and the enemies are the lust, greed, ego, pride, anger, delusion
etc. Only by the grace of the God or the guru are these enemies conquered.
Otherwise the intelligence, being deluded is too afraid to fight for the sake of
attainment of the Supreme Truth.
So violence is not the message, nor is non violence. Gita teaches one to reject both and go
beyond light and darkness – Nistraigunya
bhava Arjuna. By transcending the three gunas one is able to gain the Supreme
Knowledge and Bliss. Violence, non violence, good, evil, light, darkness are all
qualities – pairs of opposites. One cannot exist without the other as darkness
is merely absence of light, non violence is absence of violence. So unless one
can think of light one cannot think of darkness. Similarly unless there is
violence the concept of non violence becomes meaningless. Much evil is there in
the world so that one can understand and appreciate the goodness, kindness. The
Supreme Being sans any attribute or quality is beyond all pairs of opposites and
to get to that state one has to reach that state by going beyond the pairs of
opposites. This is only possible by completely renouncing ego (“I”, “Mine”) and
desire.
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