Thor’s Day, February 14: Bhagavad-Gita

EQ: How does Bhagavad-Gita

teach dharma karma?

  • WE GO TO 2ND LUNCH!
  • Welcome! Gather paper, pen/pencil, wits!
  • Bhagavad-Gita
  • Students read and answer questions aboutBhagavad-Gita
  • Reading Journal: Unit 2
  • Studentsbegin Reading Journal with quotations from Ramayana, Bhagavad-Gita
  • ELACC12RL-RI1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis
  • ELACC12RL-RI2: Analyze two or more themes or central ideas of text
  • ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop
  • ELACC12RL6: Distinguish what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant
  • ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal International texts
  • ELACC12RL-RI9: Analyze for theme, purpose rhetoric, and how texts treat similar themes or topics
  • ELACC12RL10: Read and comprehend complex literature independently and proficiently.
  • ELACC12W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis
  • ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames
  • ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions
  • ELACC12L2: Use standard English capitalization, punctuation, spelling in writing.
  • ELACC12L3: Demonstrate understanding of how language functions in different contexts
  • ELACC12L4: Determine/clarify meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases
  • ELACC12L5: Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, nuances
  • ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases

World Literature and Composition: Bhagavad-Gita

Excerpts adapted from a translation by Barbara Stoler Miller

Bhagavad-Gita (“Song of the Fortunate One”) is about 2000 years old, slightly younger than Ramayana, and like it one of the most sacred Hindu texts. It features a dialogue between Arjuna, a mighty warrior and general, and Krishna, his charioteer – who happens also to be an avatar of Vishnu. As the poem begins, Arjuna is afraid to go to war against his cousins:

I see omens of chaos,

Krishna; I see no good

in killing my kinsmen

in battle….

They are teachers, fathers, sons,

and grandfathers, uncles, grandsons,

fathers and brothers of wives,

and other men of our family….

What joy is there for us, Krishna,

In killing my cousin’s sons?

Evil will haunt us if we kill them,

Though their bows are drawn to kill us.

The sins of men who violate

the family create disorder in society;

This undermines the constant laws

of caste and family duty.

Krishna, I have heard

that a place in hell

is reserved for men

who undermine family duties.

In short, Arjuna fears that by killing many family members and other good men, he will violate the dharma and create bad karma. But as avatar of Vishnu, Krishna has insight into dharma. He says that Arjuna is wise to consider these things, but that the dharma requires its followers to know what is necessary to fulfill the dharma, and to do it even if it causes pain. The dharma has put Arjuna in this position, so now he must:

Look to your own duty;

do not tremble before it;

nothing is better for a warrior

than a battle of sacred duty….

If you fail to wage this war

of sacred dharma,

you will abandon your own duty

only to gain evil….

Be intent on action,

not on the fruits of action;

avoid attraction to the fruits

and attachment to inaction!....

Krishna continues to counsel Arjuna:

A man cannot escape the results

of action by abstaining from actions;

he does not achieve success

just by renunciation.

No one exists for even an instant

without performing action;

however unwilling, every being is forced

to act by the qualities of nature.

When one’s senses are controlled

but one keeps recalling

sense objects to the mind,

one is a deluded hypocrite.

When one controls the senses

with the mind, and engages in the discipline

of action with his faculties of action,

detachment sets him apart.

Perform necessary action;

it is more powerful than inaction;

without action you even fail

to sustain your own body.

Action imprisons the world

unless it is done as sacrifice;

freed from attachment, Arjuna,

perform action as sacrifice!....

Action comes from the spirit of prayer,

whose source is OM, sound of the imperishable;

so the pervading infinite spirit

is ever present in rites of sacrifice.

He who fails to keep turning

the wheel here set in motion

wastes his life in sin,

addicted to his senses, Arjuna.

But when a man finds delight

within himself and feels inner joy

and pure contentment in himself,

there is nothing more to be done….

Always perform with detachment

any action you must do;

by performing action with detachment,

one achieves supreme good.

Reading Guide: Bhagavad-Gita

  1. What is the Bhagavad-Gita, and how old is it?
  1. Who is Arjuna?
  1. Who is Krishna?
  1. Whom is Arjuna about to fight?
  1. Arjuna says he sees “______of ______” if he kills his kinsmen.
  1. “______will haunt us if we kill them,” says Arjuna, even “though their ______be ______.”
  1. According to Arjuna, “the sins of men who violate the family create” what?
  1. According to Arjuna, what is “reserved” for men who “undermine family duties”?
  1. Summarize Arjuna’s worry in terms of karma and dharma:
  1. Krishna is just a chariot driver, so why does Arjuna ask his advice about karma and dharma?
  1. Krishna tells Arjuna that dharmarequires that its followers know and do what?
  1. Krishna tells Arjuna, “If you fail to wage this war … you will abandon your own ______.”
  1. “Be intent on ______, not on ______,” says Krishna.

Freewrite 20 words: Explain the difference between these two things.

  1. Krishna sayswe “cannot escape the ______of action by ______from action.”
  2. According to Krishna, one is a “deluded hypocrite” if one “controls the ______but … keeps recalling ______to the ______.”
  3. Krishna says that “necessary ______… is more powerful than ______.”
  4. Krishna says that “______imprisons the world / Unless it is done as ______.”
  5. According to Krishna, what must action come from?
  6. “Always perform with ______any ______you must do,” says Krishna.

Freewrite 20 words: What does this mean?

TURN IN TODAY:

  • Reading Guide: Bhagavad-Gita
  • At least ONE Reading Journal Entry
  • Quotation from B-G
  • 100 words’ commentary

Studentsbegin Reading Journal with quotations from RamayanaReading Journals

You will be reading much this term, both inside and outside of class, even when you don’t realize it. Keeping a record of words and thoughts is something writers and scholars have done forever; it helps to grab information and ideas as they pass through your ears and eyes, and to file them into your mind. Your journal will take the form of a double-entry journal:

  • On the left side, quote from works we read and works you read on your own. Quote word-for-word; cite according to MLA Rules. Number each entry. Unit Journal needs at least 20 quoted passages – at least 10 from class reading.
  • On the right side, write a reflection, at least 100 words, on that quoted passage. Explain what the passage is “about,” and why that passage matters, and apply it outside the work. This is graded for thinking, not grammar; don’t just fill up 100 words’ worth of space.

# / Examples: Quotation/Citation / Examples: 100 word reflection
1 / She should have died hereafter;
There would have been time for such a word Tomorrow ….
–William Shakespeare,
Macbeth V v 20-23 / Here Macbeth has just found out that his wife is dead, and he doesn’t seem to care. Basically he is saying that she was going to die anyway, so why should he care? And it also says she should have died later because he doesn’t have time to deal with it right now. This is especially sad since the couple started out so happy, sharing everything, and now Macbeth has no feeling at all. It reminds me of one time when my little brother wanted to play and I was too busy and told him to go away and he asked me why I didn’t love him anymore.. That was a sad day.
2 / Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From The
Underground. New York: Dover
Thrift Editions, 1992, p. 8. / Like Dostoyevsky’s narrator I have a hard time accepting limits. This guy is in prison and will not accept the reasons for it. In the same way I have a hard time accepting the reasons for anything that stands between me and what I wish were true, even when I realize that the wishes are impossible. When I was a teenager I could dunk a volleyball, but I was never quite able to dunk a basketball. I know now that that is unlikely, but I haven’t given up, though realism says I should do so and find a more attainable goal.

Unit Reading Journals are due on Test Days.