The Gita

For a while now my mind has been quiet, devoid of any thoughts. This is partly responsible for my inactivity here. The other reason for the inactivity is the powerful messages I am reading leave no room for anything else. I've been indulging in the Bhagavad Gita or the Song of the Lord.

The Gita is a masterpiece and the one thing I truly love about it is the relevancy of its message. Although narrated by Krishna to the warrior prince Arjuna, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, some 5000 years ago it can be applied to daily life even in this era. Despite being a spiritual text it is oddly human and advocates the message of doing your duty without any attachment to the outcome. Our duty lies in working towards the ultimate consciousness and in that name whatever we do -- Arjuna had to kill his cousins, uncles and teachers -- is a duty to the Lord. By this I do not mean that the Gita advocates meaningless killing, quite the contrary, but it says if all doors to justice are closed and war is the only way then so be it. BUT we must ensure that every other way has been investigated and sought out.

The 700 verses are quite overwhelming but can also provide purpose to one's everyday living. A few points, that stuck out so far, are summarized here.

• The soul is immortal - it does not take birth nor does it die. As we throw out old garments and get new ones, the soul casts off old bodies and regenerates in new ones. In short, no one can kill you. You are immortal.
• Whatever occurred in the past was for good, whatever happens in the future will be for your good too. Do not regret over the past or worry about the future. The only thing we can control is the present. Work on it.
• We arrived in this world empty-handed and will return back to the Source empty-handed. Nothing is ours; this illusion of belonging is the cause of our suffering.
• Change is the quintessential law of the Universe. Nothing in the Universe is static and we are all subject to this law.
• We are the soul and not the body. By falsely identifying with the body we cause suffering. The body dies and disintegrates into the 5 elements with which it was formed. The soul is eternal and unchanging.
• Surrender yourself to the will of God, receiving both success and failure with equanimity.
• Work in the service of the Lord, never stop working but dedicate every act -- the work you perform, the food you eat, even your suffering -- to the Lord. This will release you from karma's bondage and result of actions both good and bad.

The Song of Creation

This morning, walking to work, I had a strong desire to listen to one of my favorite hymns from the Rigveda – the Nasadiya Sukta. The Rigveda is a vast reservoir of treasures where one hymn triumphs the other in terms of poetic magnificence, its message and holding you in its grasp while everything else moves on, but the Nasadiya Sukta is special. Most hymns are for earth, wind, fire, various Gods but the Nasadiya Sukta is about cosmology and creation.  

It’s a simple chant that shows how the early man expressed his doubts of the age-long question haunting mankind – where did we come from? Who is the creator of this universe? The questions might seem simple – generations of humans since have asked them to no avail – but it’s the author’s poetic brilliance that stands apart and threatens to completely overwhelm you.

We have all wondered what came first – the hen or the egg but to write it in a way that titillates your senses and make your hair stand on your skin, defying the laws of gravity, is indeed a feat. Not only does the author convince you the questions in the hymn are central to our existence but also puts into perspective how minute and irrelevant everything else is.

Like all Vedas and other religious texts written at the time, no one knows who wrote this hymn. With the emphasis placed on the art form no one, including the author, gave significance to the idea of fame and glory. Thousands of pieces of classic literature is rampant, even today, with no one sure of their author or its origin.

My first thought on hearing the Nasadiya Sukta was the Big Bang – the primordial way in which scientists believe our universe started. There is a lot of debate about this; the central question being how could something have come out of nothing? Quite appropriately the hymn starts with “Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where?”

It questions many things, many aspects of traditional beliefs – it tells you how there was something despite nothing but also questions how it came about. It renders the Gods helpless by simply stating they came after creation so they ought not to know anything; but also promulgates the belief of a grand master, a designer who brought about the world as we know it. Despite such ideas, it stands unconvinced, the author unable to conclude how and where things came from. The grand master may be the designer; maybe he knows how it all started but perhaps he doesn’t know either.

For me, the hymn is a paradox – it shows how even at that time there was struggle with the idea of creation. Its central message being people of that era believed there was something that created us but still couldn’t come around to accept it. For centuries since we are still struggling to understand where and how creation took place; if we are alone in the universe, if there is only one universe or a multitude of verses all with their own laws and perhaps their own unique set of creations. The language of the questions may have become complex as we learn more and more about the universe we inhabit but the basic message is identical – we may accept the idea of a grand designer or we may defy it. Either way, we are ignorant about how we came into existence.   No matter how advanced our technology is, the answer to this basic question continues to elude us.

Nasadiya Sukta - 129th hymn of the 10th Mandala of the Rigveda

Translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith

Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminate chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.

Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart’s thought discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.

Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.

Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes into creation? The Gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?

He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

End of days?

Last night, The Universe on History International kicked off a new season with an interesting episode -- Sun's evil twin, Nemesis. There is a school of thought that proposes a star called Nemesis is orbiting our Sun and every 26 million years comes close to it which causes worldwide destruction and annihilation of species. Geologists have looked at all mass extinctions caused up to today and surprisingly realized they occur exactly every 26 million years. So far this has happened about 5 maybe 6 times, the last one wiping out the gigantic dinosaurs.

The program then went on to suggest how these extinctions were a boon to mankind since they destroyed the dominant species of the time and paved the way for mammals to evolve, ultimately resulting in the human species taking over Earth. I was, however, more interested in learning about the extinctions so I went hunting.

About 73,000 years ago we had a close call with an extinction, although it didn't wipe out everyone. A massive volcano erupted on the island of Sumatra, blocking the sun's rays and reducing the Earth's temperature by 9 degrees F. Humans were reduced to only a few pockets and only about 10,000 of us survived this major catastrophe.

The event before that occurred 65 million years ago and wiped out almost everyone, along with the dinosaurs, when a giant rock was hurled from space. Now that got me thinking -- if these geeks are proposing an extinction event every 26 million years then how did we get so lucky and are still surviving? Nemesis has got to orbit close to 3 times more now but it didn't cause any events. Is the star losing its power or is some one else watching to make sure we cause our own extinction without any outside help?

I didn't finish the program; maybe they had some answers for this conflict but it definitely highlighted how fragile life is in this vastness of ever expanding and fastly accelerating universe. There is so much out there we don't know and don't understand; our solar system is but the size of a pin head in our own galaxy and perhaps doesn't even count in the unimaginable depth of space. To deny the possibility of life elsewhere is stupid but to dicount how valuable and precious life is, despite the universe's size, is naive. 10,000 to 7 billion; we've come a long way but we are never far from a lurking asteroid or comet threatening to destroy every single evidence of us ever have existed. It is not a question of if but of when. We are waiting, solemnly, for everything to be destroyed and for the cycle of life to renew. It would just be a whole lot nicer if we waited without causing so much destruction of our own.