Two Faces of Solidarity; Rorty and Gadamer, An Analysis: Aquil Ahmad

A Dialectical Understanding of Karmic Bondage (The Bhagavat Gita Perspective) Pramod Kumar Dash

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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.

The Bhagavat Gita begins with Visada Yoga and ends with Moksha Sanyasa Yoga. It begins with confusion, ignorance, disappointment, infatuation and delusion and ends with wisdom and liberation. From this it is evident that the Bhagavat Gita acknowledges both ignorance and wisdom, both bondage and liberation as the natural facts of life. The twist between Visada and Yoga is a dialectical twist which is not found in any literature of both west and east except the Bhagavat Gita. Both Visada and Yoga appear to be opposite pairs, but it is justified in the Bhagavat Gita that wisdom starts from a rational inquisitive mind. The doors of learning get closed by a mind of complacence. Man is a questioning being. Man is inquisitive by nature. Man is able to question the obvious and sometimes the authentic. This holy treatise believes in transformation. There is genuine transformation from the lower level of consciousness to the higher level of consciousness in every step of human existence. This transformation is possible through right knowledge or wisdom. The highest wisdom, the spiritual consciousness seems to fall under a self-delusion. This cause of delusion is conceived as the indescribable power called Maya. Maya is not perceptible except its manifestations. Maya has two distinct modes of expression, at two different layers of consciousness. Maya is the Veiling Power (Avarana Shakti) and the Projecting Power (Vikshepa Shakti). Maya conceals the reality and projects the unreal. The intellect being ignorant of its spiritual destiny struggles to fulfill itself, and then surges forward, seeking satisfaction amongst the finite sense-objects of the world. When the intellect discovers in itself a capacity to pierce through the dreary veil of ignorance, it comes to live its own Real Nature of Infinite Bliss. Each fleeting joy in the sense-world only sharpens its appetite for the Infinite Bliss. When one‘s intellect comes to a steady equipoise and is undisturbed by any of the experiences, then one is considered as having attained Yoga. There are hundreds of such empirical pairs of opposites in the Bhagavat Gita out of which we can exemplify very few like ‗Visad and Yoga‘, ‗Life and Death‘, ‗Manifest and Unmanifest‘, ‗Karma and Akarma‘, ‗Kama and Nishkama‘, ‗Karma Yoga and Karma Sanyasa‘, ‗Sadharana dharma and Svadharma‘, ‗Absolutism and Contextualism‘, ‗Determinism and Freewill‘, Jnana and Vijnana, ‗Attachment and Detachment‘, ‗Empirical vision and Transcendental vision‘, ‗Saguna bhakti and Nirguna bhakti‘, ‗Surrender and Freedom‘, etc.. In this paper we shall discuss two fundamental dialectical opposites, namely, ‗ignorance and knowledge‘ and ‗attachment and detachment‘ in order to explain the secret of karmic bondage. In common parlance, it is understood that karmic bondage is due to karma. In other words, karmic bondage is the consequence of performing karma, but in this paper, we shall discuss how karmic bondage has its origin in ignorance and attachment; and karma yoga is the consequence of our true knowledge and total devotion (Jnana and bhakti).

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Ignorance – Knowledge Interface:

Ignorance is the root cause of bondage. Hence knowledge is the root cause of liberation or freedom from bondage. We are informed by the texts that Arjuna apart from being a great warrior was also a wise person. But a question that very often arises: Why did Arjuna get himself trapped in the bondage of inactivity, indecision and ultimately find himself in the state of despair and distress? From this it is evident that even a wise person can also be trapped by bondage. Then how can we claim that ignorance is the root cause of bondage? The character of Ajuna is a symbolic example of a person who is worldly wise with all expertise and at the same time being deluded and frustrated in the real situation of life. This is what happens to a common ignorant person having no realization of the reality. The role of jnana is of paramount significance. The Indian philosophical literature underlines the fundamental distinction between empirical knowledge and non-empirical knowledge. In the Upanishads, knowledge has been classified as Para and Apara. The former refers to the knowledge of the ultimate reality and the latter refers to the body of empirical knowledge. In the Bhagavat Gita, we find a parallel distinction between Jnana and Vijnana. Here jnana refers to the conspectus of actual and possible knowledge of the phenomenal whereas vijnana is the highest knowledge. Empirical knowledge is not decried as false or misleading but is considered to be indispensible in so far as it enables one to gain the highest knowledge. The terms ‗knowledge‘ and ‗ignorance‘ are antithetical to each other but they are the two sides of the same coin in so far as the understanding of one reveals the nature of the other. If the highest knowledge is to be understood as knowledge of the Self, then it should be distinguished from the knowledge of the non-Self. Ignorance consists in mistaking not-Self to be the Self. Bondage becomes inevitable when the impermanent is mistaken as the permanent. In the Bhagavat Gita, one comes across the ontological dialectics of Purusottama and Ksetrajna, Aksara and Ksara. The term Ksetrajna is used to denote the ‗Self‘. Ksetra is referred to as the body-mind complex. It is constituted by the gunas of Prakriti, viz., Sattva, Rajas and Tamas.. It is something which is subject to birth, growth and decay. The conscious principle which makes this body-mind complex functional is the Ksetrajna or the knower of the field. Because of ignorance, one wrongly identifies the knower of the field (Ksetrajna) as the field (Ksetra) and that results in the duality of pleasure and pain. Because of ignorance, the Self imbibes the qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas and remains bound to the psycho-physical propensities, made up of the constituents of Prakrti from birth to birth. This explains the perennial bondage of the Self. Knowledge consists not only in distinguishing the self from the not-self, but also in having the vision that the Ksetrajna in different Ksetras is one and the same. This refers to the transcendent nature of the Ksetrajna and points to the qualitative monism of the Bhagavat Gita.