Bhagavad Gita

674 Words2 Pages

In the following Hindu reading, the Bhagavad Gita is a sacred spiritual text that has uttermost meaning in the religion of Hinduism. Krishna’s teachings in the Gita helps resolve tensions between dharma, which is moral obligation, and moksha, which represents “release”, spiritual freedom from life with the association of bhakti, which represents devotion. In the Bhagavad Gita, the concepts of dharma and moksha are unclear until encountered with each other.
Accordingly, in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna must avenge Dhritarashtra’s because he is passing the kingdom to his own son instead of Arjuna’s brother Yudhishthira who is the rightful king. While god Krishna drives Arjuna into the battle and as he prepares to fight, he recognizes his family within …show more content…

The experiential dimension relates to devotion, liberation and inner peace. This explains how Arjuna needed to have an ongoing faithful relationship with Krishna in order to perform his duties without having remorse. As presented, Arjuna is faced with choosing between dharma and moksha. He feels that he must follow his dharma and by doing so he must fight in the battle against his family. Alongside, Krishna tells Arjuna that his dharma in life is to be a warrior and rightfully fight for the kingdom and restore the right balance of karma in his life. However, Arjuna states, “I see no good in killing my people in battle.” He feels like he is violating his dharma because he will be killing his own family members. Also, this affects Arjuna’s ability to have devotion, liberation, and inner peace because he does not feel right about the duties he needs to fulfill. Therefore, this demonstrates the experiential dimension of religion because he is afraid about the effects of his actions. However, Arjuna must fulfill his duties in order to restore the right balance of karma in his life. Thus, while Arjuna is facing a dilemma between choosing to kill and not to kill, Krishna offers him a third alternative, which is Bhakti, meaning devotion. “Krishna is a god with qualities, whom Arjuna can love and through whom he can achieve union with the god without qualities (nir-guna), the world-soul (brahman),

Open Document