Reading The Gita Book 2

TITLE: Reading the Gita Book 2 CHANNEL: Wes Cecil DATE: 2026-05-08 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Thanks to our Patreon members for helping to make this episode possible and we’re now available on all the major podcasting platforms. You can find more information at the links below. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to part two of reading the Bhagavad Gita. So, in part one, Arjuna and Krishna ride forth in their great chariot to survey the field of battle and Arjuna, seeing his brothers and family and friends and relatives on both sides who are lined up against each other. This is a family civil war. He says to Krishna, who’s an avatar of Vishnu, “I do not want to fight. I do not want to kill my family members. I don’t want to see my family members being killed. And even though the kingdom has wrongly been taken from my brothers and myself and even though we have all justice and rightness on our side, I just don’t want to do this. What possible reward is worth it for me? Is it Is it having an empire worth killing my family and seeing them die? Is wealth having worth killing my family and seeing them die? No. No, I would rather be humiliated in front of everyone. I’d rather be killed here on the field of battle without offering any resistance than I would to to witness and participate in this slaughter.” And what a great Again, what a great question, right? So, now the response from Krishna is on on several layers and so we’ll see this. And so, the first response that he gives from Krishna and this is uh chapter two, uh section 11. Krishna says, “Thy tears [clears throat] are for those beyond tears and are thy words words of wisdom. The wise grieve not for those who live and they grieve not for those who die for life and death shall pass away. Because we all have been for all time, I and thou and those kings of men and we all shall be for all time, we all forever and ever. As the spirit of our mortal body wanders on in childhood and youth and old age, the spirit wanders on to a new body. Of this the sage has no doubt. From the world of the senses, Arjuna, comes heat and comes cold and pleasure and pain. They come and they go. They are transient. Arise above them, strong soul. The man whom these cannot move, whose soul is one beyond pleasure and pain, is worthy of a life in eternity. The unreal never is, the real never is not. The truth is, indeed, has been seen by those who can see the true. So, right there, you have several a well, one major linked one, and this is the notion of the transmigration of the souls. And and you can’t kill a soul, Arjuna. Don’t you think you’re going to do something that you can’t actually do? You can You can slay the mortal body, but the mortal body does not matter. What matters is the soul, and you can neither create nor uncreate a soul. Souls are eternal. And souls are reincarnated. They They They’re constantly reinhabiting. And so, this is Well, again, this is one of the central arguments for understanding the Hindu outlook and for the outlook that is presented here. And specifically, as mentioned, in Buddhism, the notion is at some point, you can rise out of the cycle of rebirth. You can escape this process, and you kind of I mean, depending on the flavor of Buddhism you’re talking about, so, you know, highly variable, but generally, there’s this idea that you can sort of transcend your mortal existence and blend back into the universal totality, ending the cycle of birth and rebirth, and ending the transmigration of the soul, because your soul becomes one uh functionally with the whole universe. And so, it is not an infinite process. So, not only is this an argument, uh it’s specifically an argument that begins to chip away at some of the key ideas that um Buddhism was presenting.

[clears throat] So, so moving on from there. So, 17, interwoven as creation, the spirit is beyond destruction. No one can bring to an end the spirit which is everlasting. For beyond time he dwells in these bodies, though these bodies have an end in their time, but he remains immeasurable, immortal. Therefore, great warrior, carry on thy fight. And any man thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the way of truth. The internal in man cannot kill, the internal in man cannot die. He is never born and he never dies. He is in eternity. He is for everyone, never born and eternal, beyond times gone or to come. He does not die when the body dies. When a When a man knows him as never born, everlasting, never changing, beyond all destruction, how can that man kill a man or cause another man to kill? As a man leaves an old garment and puts on one that is new, the spirit leaves his mortal body and wanders on to one that is new. Weapons cannot hurt the spirit and fire can never burn him. Untouched is he by drenching waters, untouched is he by parching winds. So again, this is the idea, like you cannot escape the this pattern and you can’t destroy it. So, killing your relatives, you really aren’t killing them. That that you you you’re not doing what you think you’re doing. You do not have that power. So, don’t worry about that. The The cycle of earth and life and death is never ending and certainly you cannot end it. And then we get a second argument in here, which is nested on top of the first, and this is in line uh 31. Think thou also of thy duty and do not waver. There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in righteous war. So, this is a righteous war. Arjuna is in the correct and this is the duty of a warrior. You’re a warrior, that’s a warrior cast, you’re a warrior, you’re in the right, this is your duty. There is a war that opens the doors of heaven, Arjuna. Happy is the warrior whose fate it is to fight such a war. Not only should you fight this war, you should be happy that you have been fated to have the opportunity to fight such a war. This is your big chance. Right? But to forego this fight for righteousness is to forego thy duty and honor. It is to fall into transgression. Men will tell of thy dishonor both now and in times to come. And to a man who is in honor, dishonor is more than death. The great warriors will say that thou hast run from the battle through fear. And those who thought great things of thee will speak of thee in scorn. And thine enemies will speak of thee in contemptuous words of ill will and derision, pouring scorn upon thy courage. Can there be for a warrior more than shameful fate? In death, thy glory in heaven, in victory, thy glory on earth. Arise therefore, Arjuna, with thy soul ready to fight. Prepare for war with peace in thy soul. Be in peace and pleasure and in pain, in gain and in loss, in victory or in the loss of battle. In this peace, there is no sin. This is the wisdom of Sankhya, the vision of the eternal. Hear now the wisdom of yoga, the path of the eternal and freedom from bondage. Uh, so here is the idea. You’re doing what’s right, you’re fulfilling your duty. So, this becomes a key element in the Bhagavad Gita, the idea of duty. You should do it when you understand your duty, you understand it correctly, now you should do it because doing your duty is the path of wisdom, it is the path of enlightenment, of uh of everything, it raises your soul. And you do this without reference to pleasure or pain or suffering or victory or wealth or anything else. And he says, “No step is lost on this path, and no dangers are found, and even a little progress is freedom from fear.” The follower of this path has one thought, and this is the end of his determination. But many branched and endless are the thoughts of the man who lacks determination. So, the determination here is, “I will do my duty.” And once you make that your determination, now everything goes away and vanishes, and you see the path of wisdom. There are men who have no vision, and yet they speak many words. They follow the letter of the Vedas, and they say, “There is nothing but this.” Their soul is warped with selfishness, desires, and their heaven is a desire. They have prayers for pleasure and power, the reward of which is earthly rebirth. Ha. So, this is the problem. If you follow the Vedas, and remember we’re always referencing the Vedas here, uh as I mentioned in the introduction and in the first section, to the letter, and this of course is always There’s a huge problem in in religions and philosophy in general is you have the idea of religious rules and religious ideals, but then in application it gets tricky. And it’s like, “Oh, some people follow the Vedas because they think they’re going to get all these rewards, they’re going to get all these benefits, they’re going to get all of the earthly goodness from following.” And he’s like, “No, no, no. This is not how you follow follow the Vedas. This is just selfish desire, and this is just going to lead to earthly rebirth.” Those who love pleasure and power here and following their words, they have not the determination ever to be one with the one. So, there it is, to fuse with the big and the eternal. The three gunas of nature are the world of the Vedas. Arise beyond the three gunas, Arjuna. Be in truth eternal, beyond earthly opposite, beyond gains and possessions. Possess thine own soul. And so, we should pause here for a moment and go, “Okay, what are the three gunas?” And I’m probably pronouncing them wrong again. I apologize. This goes to an old Vedic tradition sort of elaborated in many ways. And there’s so many expressions of this, but but but roughly speaking, it’s the notion that you’re you’re motivated by seeking enlightenment, attachment to knowledge, seeking satisfaction or power, seeking survival, which is sort of security, rest, also related to power. And the Vedic argument, if you will, I don’t know if you can call it an argument, but the the the structure of the Vedas suggests rather strongly that we always have these these are present in everybody all the time. And what we’re struggling with is to balance them. And that the path to enlightenment, the path of wisdom, the the path of yoga, this is the one that balances these forces. If you can bring them into perfect balance and harmony, then you can rise above them. And this is just exactly what Krishna is saying here. Overcome all this. Don’t worry about the outcome. Worry about the duty. If you if you focus on your duty with determination, everything else will become clear. This will fall away. You can become the master of your soul. And this is how one brings oneself into harmony with the universe and in fact transcends functionally mortal existence. This is the big goal here that is being articulated by Vishnu Allah by Krishna. And so he continues here, “Set thy heart.” This is 47. “Set thy heart upon thy work, but never [clears throat] on its reward. Work not for reward, but never cease to do thy work. Do thy work in the peace of yoga and free from selfish desires. Be not moved in success or in failure. Yoga is evenness of mind, a peace that is ever the same. For work work done for a reward is much lower than work done in the yoga of wisdom. Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason. How poor those who work for reward. In this wisdom man goes beyond what is well done and what is not well done. Go thou therefore to wisdom. Yoga is wisdom in work. And Arjuna hears this and he says, well, how is the man of tranquil How is the man of tranquil wisdom? Who abides in divine contemplation? What are his words? What is his silence? What is his work? So basically, who is this man? How does this work? You know, I want to be this man. This sounds good to me. But how does How does this work for me? When a man surrenders This is Krishna again, 55 now. When a man surrenders all desire that come to the heart and by the grace of God finds the joy of God, then his soul has indeed found peace. He whose mind is untroubled by sorrows and for pleasure he has no longing beyond passion and fear and anger he is the sage of the unwavering mind. Whoever is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or ill, his is a serene wisdom. When in recollection he withdraws all his senses from the attraction of pleasures of sense even as a tortoise withdraws all its limbs, then his is a serene wisdom. Pleasure of sense but not desires disappear from the austere soul. Even desires disappear when the soul has seen the supreme. The restless violence of the senses tempestuously carries away the mind of even a wise man striving towards perfection. So even like all of these desires will go away. Notice this does sound a lot like Buddhism. This is a synthetic work, right? You you you can see the resonances and you could probably thinking to yourself as you read these passages, wow, this sounds a lot like Buddhism. Indeed it does. Uh and it’s important to recall here or to mention here that there is a practice in Hinduism which still goes on today by the way, which is to embrace suffering through overcoming it. And here even that you’re It’s like you’re you’re not supposed to be attached to suffering or to not suffering. Right? You’re not supposed to be attached to either of them. And he says this is going on in 61. Bringing them all into the harmony of recollection, let him sit in devotion and union, his soul finding rest in me. For when the senses are in harmony, then he his is a serene wisdom. When man dwells on the pleasure of sense, attraction for them arises him. From attraction arises desire. From the lust of possession, this leads to passion and to anger. From passion comes from confusion of the mind, then loss of remembrance, the forgetting of duty. So, there it is, right? So, there’s this hierarchy, right? Where you just go through. So, when you start getting pleasures, you get attractions. When you get attractions, then that arises lust. And then this leads to your passions for lust in this case um in the Sanskrit. I’m trying to think of the actual word in the Sanskrit. I don’t have a dual text here. Uh should come back to me. Anyway, the lust It’s using the word lust in translation, but what it really means is just general aroused emotion. So, what you know, lust is not incorrect, but we usually use lust just for um sexual attraction. But this means lust for like lust for gold or lust for power or lust for fame, any of that. This is all the same emotion, not just sexual desire. And then this when that gets frustrated, this leads to anger. So, you can’t do that. And the anger confuses your mind. And when your mind is confused after all those steps of going wrong, you forget your duty. You forget what you’re supposed to be doing. And so, the way to remember your duty, it’s sort of Epicurean in a way, is if you just get rid of all these other distractions, you get rid of all these disturbances, what will be left and what you can fix your mind in is what you’re supposed to be doing. It may Your duty is always there. And it’s the noise of the world that causes you to be confused about it. When you quiet your mind and quiet the the the the distractions, the desires, the pleasures, the the gunas of the Vedic tradition, then what becomes clear is your duty. And that’s where you’re different from Buddhism because in Buddhism you’re clearing your mind entirely. This is well again, I say that it’s a versions of Buddhism. Let’s just say the major schools of Buddhism. What you would What you do is when you clear your mind, it just totally clears. But here when you clear your mind, what you’re left with is your duty. And this is This is again a a key distinction that’s being both argued here and and promoted. This is This is what the Again, the function of the Bhagavad Gita is uh in this section. So this is the idea from passions come confusion of the mind, section 63, then loss of remembrance, the forgetting of duty. From this loss comes the ruin of reason. The ruin of reason leads man into destruction. But the soul that moves in the world of the senses and yet keeps the senses in harmony, free from attraction and aversion, finds rest and quietness. In this quietness falls down the burdens of all her sorrows for when the heart has found quietness, wisdom has also found peace. There’s no wisdom for a man without harmony and without harmony there’s no contemplation. Without contemplation there cannot be peace and without peace there cannot Can there be joy? So notice joy is also woven in here. For when the mind becomes bound to passion of the wandering senses, the passions carry away the man’s wisdom even as the wind drives a vessel on the waves. So this is just a working backwards of what they’ve just worked through the hierarchy hierarchy. The man who therefore in recollection withdraws his senses from pleasure of sense, he is a serene wisdom. In the dark of night, all beings awake to the light that of the tranquil man. But what is day to the other beings is night for the sage who sees. Even as all the water flows in the ocean, but the ocean never overflows, even so the sage feels desire, but he is everyone in his infinite peace. For the man who forsakes all desires and abandons all pride of possession and of all self reaches the goal of peace supreme. This is the eternal in man, oh Arjuna. Reaching him all delusion is gone. Even in the last hour of his life upon earth, man can reach nirvana of Brahman. Man can find peace and in the peace of his God. There it is. You can’t do you transcend this. So again, notice this is very Buddhistic. I mean Buddha is the Buddhism is grew out of Hinduism, so this isn’t a surprise, but the emphasis in Buddhism has become so different as I mentioned that it’s a threat. And so here it is the ideal. Let go, surrender, but surrender to duty. And that message is so notice it’s just it’s a very clear message here. One, we have the transmigration of the soul, the eternal presence of the soul, and then the need to recognize this truth through abandoning the passions, the excess desires that cloud our wisdom, cloud our reason, and don’t allow us to see the truth of that. And that when we bring that into harmony, we’ll see our duty. And when we see our duty, we can follow that with determination. This is what yoga does. It is a to Yoga is about helping us focus our mind so we can be clear about our duties, and then we know what to do, and then we don’t have these problems. So, Arjuna, do not be confused. Do not feel this weak, and do not let your passions and sorrows distract you from what you’re supposed to be doing. Reflect on your eternal soul. Reflect on the eternal soul of those about you, and you will be at peace. You will be at one with the universe, and you won’t have to worry about this problem of whether or not you should roll out here and kill your family. In fact, you should be pleased for the opportunity because you’re a warrior and this righteous duty is before you, which is all you can really hope for in your wisdom. Now, one of the great I say aspects of the of the Bhagavad Gita which we encounter now is that Arjuna is not a fool. He’s interested, he’s open. He wants to learn. Like if you read the Socratic dialogues, often you you’re like No, why why would anybody go along with Socrates? I mean I get he’s trying to make a point and all this and sometimes they’re great, but often I’m just like No, I wouldn’t ever accept that argument from Socrates, right? Like come on now. This is Arjuna. Arjuna has very good responses. And so at the end of book two, I actually want to skip a little bit just to the opening of book three to wrap this up because it’s so wonderful in the way that he responds because I think it’s a very human response. It’s very much truer indeed than I think you get in a lot of texts, partic- philosophical or religious that you encounter other places. Um and and so I think it resonates much more powerfully. So the opening of book three is Arjuna’s just stopped fighting. He’s put down his weapons. He’s said I’d rather be humiliated on this field of battle and the response is Hey, you can neither kill nor not kill. You you The the soul is immortal. What you need to do is just clear your mind and relax and let go of all that. You don’t want to be humiliated, you don’t want to be defamed. And you just need to find your duty and then let go of all other things and this will bring you peace. Abandon your passions, so on and so forth. And Arjuna responds to this, which is a which I think is actually a great response. And he says to Krishna, uh if thy thought is that vision is greater than action, why dost thou enjoin me this terrible action of war? My mind is confu- confusion because in thy words I find con- contradictions. Tell me in truth therefore by what path may I attain the supreme. Uh so he says, “Look, you’re telling me that that what I need to do is recognize the truth, discover wisdom, apply reason, clear my mind, which is of course what we’ve just read, like abandon the passions, the hierarchies that misleads your mind, everything that we’ve just covered or the sections that we’ve just covered is basically the whole section. Um and he and Arjuna says quite specifically and very reasonably, “If thy thought is that vision is greater than action, like you keep telling me clear my mind, get my mind right, attain wisdom, attain peace, right? If if that’s what’s important, why would I do this terrible thing? Like I don’t understand. I’m confused.” He says, “My mind is in confusion because I find contradiction.” And notice if you go back through it, he’s absolutely right. You can neither kill nor not kill them. So kill them. And Arjuna is like, “Or I could not kill them.” And he says, you know, the most important thing is for the sage to clear his mind and acquire wisdom and and and see the oneness of the universe and all this. And so he’s like, “Great. So I killing these people does not help me find oneness with the universe. So why don’t I stop and focus on becoming wise? Like I want to I I want to do this. I want to become the supreme. I want to find my path so that I can uh evolve, so I can develop my wisdom and become in harmony again.” And I’m like, you know, I remember the first time I read this, I was like, yeah, that’s a really good response. That That is a great response to what we’ve just read. And I’m like, “Wow.” You know, cuz you can I mean, I find Krishna pretty convincing as we go along. And so, Arjuna is actually sometimes does a better job of being skeptical than I do when I’m reading the text. I’m like, “Okay, I see the argument that Krishna is making. I kind of embrace it. I can feel the resonance of Buddhism. I can see the elements of the old Vedic approaches and the wisdom of Hinduism in general.” And then Arjuna’s come back like, “Great. Therefore, like, I don’t want to kill my family.” So, book two of the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, very simple, very short, straightforward, but the argument here is is look, you need to just clear your mind, become wise, abandon your passions, embrace your reason, and do what you will then recognize as being right, regardless of the outcome. That’s the idea. Souls are immortal. You can either create them nor to destroy them. And as long as you’re thinking that, you’re wrong. You’re you’re not seeing the world as it truly is. So, stop, get your mind right, get your vision right, and then you will have the clarity to understand what you should do. That is the fundamental argument that you get from book two. And again, this is is is drawing from but also evolving the ideas that you encounter in the Vedas, which by this point, you know, let’s say this was composed in 200 BC. I’m just saying. So, at that point, you know, we’ve got a thousand years of Vedic development. So, the Vedic literature is ancient and has been developing for a millennia, over a millennia ago. And so, he invoking this he’s invoking a very rich and complex tradition in itself, but pretty clear in its main focus, and really I think uh very apt. It’s a very apt question that Arjuna asks, “Why should I kill my family?” An interesting answer that uh Krishna gives, um but then Arjuna’s response at the opening of book three, which is where we’ll pick up next time, I think just really provides this great tension and this great setting that challenges Krishna to say, “I’m not saying what you’ve said is wrong, I’m just saying it makes me think I should go meditate in a cave and get my mind right.” And that that’s the most important thing. And so the response to that question is where we’ll pick up next time. So reading along with the Bhagavad Gita book two,