The Bhagavad Gita

By Cali Cao

The Bhagavad Gita, if I’m not wrong, is based on Hinduism and it took place in ancient India. That is where Buddhism also started from too. I think I somewhat understand this story because some of its principles are similar to Buddhism. In Buddhism we believe in Dharma, karma, and yoga too, except in Buddhism these concepts—well, mostly the last one—has a different name: Zen—I think that is what it’s called. It’s a state where one sits and mediates and thinks of everything but that everything is nothing once peace is achieved. (Don’t quote me on this, I only visit temples on New Year for good luck.) Karma is just another word for “what goes around comes back around” by Justin Timberlake, isn’t it so? As for Dharma, I guess I can say that it’s very similar to hand reading and Tarrot cards. My mom told me that your destiny is in your palms, so let the wise monk read them and tell you what God/the above have got in store for you because every line on every palm is a different destiny. I don’t remember which palm of yours is your destiny and which palm of yours is your future spouse’s destiny. As for Tarrot cards, it’s the card you choose that tells where you’re going—like fortune reading we can find in the streets of New Orleans within the French Quarter area. Also, Buddhism believes in reincarnation too, except if you kill another human you will be reborn as animal or pay off your crime in one of the 18 levels of hell before you can return to becoming a human again to continue until you’ve finally achieved the absolute status of purity that will allow you to be with the beings above, so I fully understand the reincarnation ordeal.

When I saw some of the pictures of Krishna/Vishnu in class, I thought I saw Buddha because Buddha has many forms and some of his forms have many arms too. And the yellow—and light colors—totally gave me a sense of familiarity.

What surprised me was when I read the introduction to the story and it said that Arjuna shared his wife with his siblings. Although I did come across a story where 2 brothers in India shared one wife because they didn’t want their ancestor’s land to be divided, I—having been told by my Jesus loving Grandma that Eve came from Adam and so one female is assigned to one male–still find such a story odd. I guess it is because my family is from the east side of Asia where in ancient time only high status men can have multiple wives (but not anymore—it’s illegal now) instead of the west side of Asia where it’s the opposite thing (and apparently it’s still going on now).

The whole conflict happened because of greed. I understand that, but what baffles me is that if the leader of the Kauravas is granted a holy vision of see the battle, why didn’t any one above grant the old guy the divine vision to see his wrong doing? Arjuna can pause a fight because of the guilt in his heart, then why didn’t the Kauravas stop too because of guilt? I heard that no one is all evil or all bad, but why did the Kauravas seem to have no empathy towards their own relatives? Is this what have to happen in teaching stories to make everyone learn something?

What I like about this story is that it isn’t quite that hard to understand—and the part where Krisna taught Arjuna yoga. What I didn’t like is that Arjuna can’t accept Krisna’s true form. To me it seems that Arjuna is shallow, only cares about the prettiness that he can see. I mean Krisna is still holy no matter what he looks like, so why be “scared” of what is true? He should have felt honored (and stared at it some more) to have seen that form of Krisna because not even the other holy beings get to see it.