Eastern Thought from a Western Perspective

Are you an American? Are you totally bored of the ever-present Christian thought in the States? Had it up to here with the stagnant conventions of our stuffy and restrictive moral codes?

I’m Dr. Tito Wilson, and once upon a time, I was just like you. Then I discovered the Bhagavad Gita.

When I was a young man in 1990’s America, Christian dogmatism was inescapable. Much like today, the womenfolk were prudish and subservient, and alcohol was verboten in all but the law. Abnegation was the norm — everywhere a fun cool vice could be had, my stodgy fellow citizens could be seen turning up their nose in that classic Puritanical manner.

I longed for a new vision. I longed for a world wherein man would not run from strange and mysterious pleasures, but embrace them as the gifts of a holy pantheon of many-armed deities. Little did I know that I would find such a world nestled within the pages of the most sacred Sanskrit text in the Hindu faith.

Now, those already familiar with this profound text may find my analysis of it a bit, shall we say, controversial. But in the true spirit of eastern mysticism, I encourage you to be passive and slow to anger — for the answers to all of your questions may lie in what I have to say next.

Chapter 1

The scene is set on the eve of battle, as two Indian armies amass to head off in a clash for the ages. They all start blowing on conch shells in excitement, as is their way. One guy, Arjun, expresses doubt in the justness and glory of warfare, making some dumb point about how it makes women irreligious and loose as though that were a bad thing. I am of the personal opinion that he’s just an untermensch who never gets laid.

Chapter 2

Here’s when it starts picking up. Arjun calls on Krishna, expecting the god to validate his weakness masquerading as virtue.

Krishna, in what can only be described as a totally baller move, castigates Arjun for his intent to desert, and begins to tell him the way to achieve perfect peace. Most telling in this passage is a statement I shall remember for all of my years:

“The wise endowed with equanimity of intellect, abandon attachment to the fruits of actions, which bind one to the cycle of life and death. By working in such consciousness, they attain the state beyond all suffering.”

Read it again.

What Krishna is saying here may be hard for newcomers to grasp, so allow me to break it down. I don’t know what equanimity means, so let’s go to the next phrase — “abandon attachment to the fruits of actions.”

This is central to understanding the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna is counseling us to let go of our primitive notions of guilt and shame, and to live freely. Worry not for the abandoned progeny of your endless string of contraception-free sexual entanglements — for the physical body is transient. Fear not the scorn of the small-minded who cast aspersions on your wanton drug use. Transcend these petty limitations, and you will have broken the endless cycle of life and death. This is the path.

Chapter 3

Here, Krishna elaborates on many of the ideas touched on in the previous chapter, as Arjun proves inestimably thick and requiring of repetitive overexplanation. A few passages stand out:

Those who restrain the external organs of action, while continuing to dwell on sense objects in the mind, certainly delude themselves and are to be called hypocrites.

This one is pretty straightforward. Restrain not that external organ of getting action, for beating off to your imagination is the purest hypocrisy.

The spiritually-minded, who eat food that is first offered in sacrifice, are released from all kinds of sin. Others, who cook food for their own enjoyment, verily eat only sin.

This one is a bit trickier, but if you probe beneath the surface, you will find it relating to tantric sex and being a generous lover. Those who worry only for their own pleasure, such as my swine of an ex, are surely living in sin.

The rest of this chapter is boring and you can basically skip it.

Chapter 4

Now Krishna is teaching our dear Arjun about the concept of yog, which is a set of practices intended to bring the practitioner further along the path to enlightenment. Hifalutin concepts such as the performance of actions with emotional independence regarding their outcomes and the idea that everything is God and we are all part of one magical whole are key to this discipline. Frankly, I figured all of this out when I did shrooms in the eighth grade. Sadly for Arjun, he is an idiot and needs even the most elementary dumbass stoner ideas broken down for him in excruciating detail.

Chapter 5

In a rare moment of independent thought, Arjun quizzes the almighty Krishna on an apparent contradiction in his teachings.

But the masterful intellect of the divine being is always prepared for the mind tricks of mere mortals.

Those who dedicate their actions to God, abandoning all attachment, remain untouched by sin, just as a lotus leaf is untouched by water.

Again, hammering home a central thesis: scoring that strange is an act of service to the (thankfully not Christian) God, and abandoning those you sire is next to cleanliness.

The yogis, while giving up attachment, perform actions with their body, senses, mind, and intellect, only for the purpose of self-purification.

As you can see, Krishna here is starting to come to the realization of the pure emptiness of Arjun’s head, and he is almost ceasing to speak in mystical poeticisms entirely. The true yogi ignores his kids, fucks intelligently and sensually, and through the expulsion of ejaculate is purified.

Chapters 6–17

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, reading is so boring, honestly, if you don’t get the point by now there’s no saving you. I may cover these chapters in a subsequent post, but my attention span is waning rapidly, and my thoughts turn to delicious bosoms.

Chapter 18

Here we are gang — the grand finale.

The pièce de résistance.

The moment you’ve all been waiting for.

The final chapter of the Bhagavad Gita begins as most of the chapters do, with Arjun asking Krishna to again go over the exact same concepts in slightly different wording. At this point, it’s clear to the reader that the vain Arjun is desperately seeking methods to keep the attention of the gods focused solely on him, and it’s truly pathetic. That’s another great lesson of this work: when some nobody questions a wise master’s profound teachings, nothing can be gained by engaging, and you are best off swatting him like the impudent gnat he is.

Krishna sets out enumerating the five factors of action, and describes the different manifestations of these factors as determined by the actor’s state of either goodness, passion, or ignorance.

The ignorant (Arjun) are like unto the spirit as poison. They do everything wrong and are doomed to an endless cycle of karmic torment.

The “good” seem well and fine on first reading, but ultimately they seem just like those tiresome Christian moralists who are always banging on about abstain from want this and be not prideful that. Boooooring.

It is in the acts of passion, Krishna reveals, that true transcendence springs from.

That knowledge is to be considered in the mode of passion by which one sees the manifold living entities in diverse bodies as individual and unconnected.

Passionate people embrace diversity — one of my most treasured values. They recognize everyone as an individual, and as valid. Beautiful.

The performer is considered in the mode of passion when he or she craves the fruits of the work, is covetous, violent-natured, impure, and moved by joy and sorrow

When you are gracing the stage, you succeed by conveying feeling. To move others with your performance, you too must be moved by the violent tumult of joy and sorrow. That ancient secret is tapped into by few, Daniel Day-Lewis being a prominent example.

The intellect is considered in the mode of passion when it is confused between righteousness and unrighteousness, and cannot distinguish between right and wrong conduct.

Morality is subjective, y’all. All we have are shades of gray. To be confused about right and wrong shows a probing and evolving mind, one that views the human condition in all of its multitude of contradictions and complications and judges not lest ye be judged. Unlike, and I hate to sound like a broken record, those pesky Christians and their heaven and hell.

The steadfast will by which one holds to duty, pleasures, and wealth, out of attachment and desire for rewards, is determination in the mode of passion.

Attachment to and desire for reward is what B.F. Skinner termed positive reinforcement, what economists call responding to incentives, and what I call a good fucking time and a party that never ends. And so the wisdom of the past echoes throughout the ages.

And the saintly Krishna concludes with the following query:

O Arjun, have you heard me with a concentrated mind? Have your ignorance and delusion been destroyed?

To which the answer is of course no.

But thankfully his wisdom was captured by somebody with enough brain cells to rub together to actually be literate, unlike Arjun the deserter. And so the great Dr. Tito Wilson was able to recapture his words for a new audience and culture, in a way that will no doubt linger in the collective corpus of philosophical works just as the original has, for ages hence.