A Dialectical Understanding of Karmic Bondage (The Bhagavat Gita Perspective) Pramod Kumar Dash
I Introduction: Dialectical understanding is different from the understanding through factual description and mere logical analysis. It is also different from speculative assertions and linguistic analysis. Prof. A. K. Mohanty writes: Dialectical operation involves the total personality of man and arises out of the cognitive necessity to arrive at truth absolute, the conative necessity to find the ultimate good and the affective need to meet the most beauteous or sublime. In the progressive march of the dialectic of dialectical movement, the lower is transcended by overcoming the oppositions among warring cognitive perceptions, conative dispositions and affective predilectitions of human personality. Complete absence of dialectical stance might make one’s thesis degenerate into dogma.1 Dialectical understanding is the highly evolved consciousness that begins with logical analysis but ends with its application in the empirical life situations of an individual. It is not restricted to the understanding of the logical pairs of opposites such as ‗A and not-A‘ and ‗A or not- A‘ which lead to the logical consequences of contradiction and tautology respectively. On the other hand, dialectical understanding leads to the ethical paradigm of Self-transformation by the realization of the pairs of opposites which are experienced empirically in life. The Bhagavat Gita is a treatise of dialectical understanding of the ethical paradigm of Self-transformation. The cognitive, conative and affective aspects of human personality are to be transformed for attaining the ultimate goal of life (Purusartha), i.e., moksha (liberation). But liberation is not an abstraction from the practical life. The state of freedom is attainable only through the dialectical understanding of the pairs of opposites which are construed as true wisdom. Lack of dialectical understanding is bondage because man becomes misguided and deluded by the different one-sided perspectives. Bondage originates from ignorance and gets infected by its manifestation through action and emotion. Liberation is freedom from ignorance which is removed and transformed to perfection through dialectical understanding of the apparent opposites.
4
