Jīvacide, Zombies and Jīvanmuktas:
the Meaning of Life in The Bhagavad GītāA. L. Herman
[Editor
’s Note:] Professor A. L. Herman is teaching in the Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, WI. He was the translator of The Bhagavad-Gītª : A Translation and Critical Commentry (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publishers, 1973.In discussing the meaning of life in the
Bhagavad Gītª two obvious questions arise: First, What is the meaning of "the meaning of life"? and second, How does that meaning apply to the Bhagavad Gītª ? In Part I of this brief paper I will attempt to answer the first question by focusing on one of the common meanings of that phrase; in Part II, I will apply that very common meaning to the Bhagavad Gītª ; and in the third and final part, I will point to a puzzle, the paradox of the jīvanmukta, that would seem to follow from the discussion in the first two parts of this appear. My own feeling is that the concept of “the meaning of life” is a Western invention.[1]I. One Meaning of "the Meaning of Life"
Aristotle on Purpose and the Meaning of Life
In his Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle asked the question, What is the best and most worthwhile life that a human being can live?[2] The question was important to Aristotle for it defined within a system already devoted to seeking the purposes of things, the very purpose of human life, itself. This connection between meaningfulness and purposefulness, between essential nature and tells or "goal," offers a clue, I believe, to answering the question about the meaning of "the meaning of life."
The meaning of anything, in Aristotelian terms, lies in the purpose or end served or sought by the thing under investigation. Thus the meaning of existence for inorganic and manufactured things lies in the purposes they serve, the ends for which they were made, e.g., a hammer’s meaning in this sense is to pound, a light bulb’s meaning is to illuminate, and so on. The meaning of existence for organic things also lies in their goals and purposes. For plants, animals and man the ends sought are fixed in their very nature. The pursuit and securing of such natural ends as nutrition, reproduction and pleasure, whether done unconsciously or consciously, leads to well-being, eudaimonia. For Aristotle, to speak of the happy carrot, the happy cat or the happy human is more than a mere metaphor; it is to talk about the meaning of life for plants, animals and man.
For Aristotle, man alone consciously seeks happiness. In the free and intelligent pursuit of well-being through the exercise of reason, that one unique, natural ability that man has that plants and animals do not have, lies the best and most worthwhile life for man. Consequently, the meaning of life for human beings, according to Aristotle, comes through a goal-directed activity guided by reason: Well-being lies in well-doing:
If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us.
That best thing, of course, is reason which is, for Aristotle, the divine or spiritual part of man’s nature.
If reason is divine, then in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with [ordinary] human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to life in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything....
The consequence is that the best life a man can life will be the life of reason:
And what we said before will apply now; that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason, more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest [i.e., the best and most worthwhile].[3]
If the meaning of life is in fact tied somehow to ends or goals and to the intelligent pursuit and satisfaction of those ends or goals, it would seem to follow that a life without purpose would be a life without meaning. Let’s look very briefly at a view that explores the meaninglessness of life when all purpose has evaporated.
Albert Camus on Suicide and the Meaninglessness of Life
In an essay on absurdity and suicide written in 1940 the French writer Albert Camus raises what he considers "the fundamental question of philosophy." It is really Aristotle’s original question regarding the best and most worthwhile life stated now in the more urgent language of the 20th century: Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards.
[4]Galilean physics and Kantian metaphysics must both wait upon an answer to the first question of philosophy since, in a sense, their value as well as their meaning, are both hostage to this first question, Why shouldn’t I commit suicide? If life is worth living then suicide is excluded; similarly, if suicide is contemplated then it is entirely possible that life is not worth living presumably, i.e., Aristotle’s question about the best and most worthwhile life is an absurd question. Camus puts the matter extremely well:
In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it.
That is to say, the goals and purposes of life do not exist or they fail to vivify:
An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art.... The worm is in the man’s heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.
The meaningfulness of life lies in the having of goals and purposes that make life worth living and that render suicide nugatory. In the same sense, the meaning of life must lie in those goals or purposes. From which it follows, if Aristotle was right, that the meaning of life for human beings (and for religions and philosophies) must lie in the goals that they pursue. From which it might also follow, if Camus was right, that the breakdown of meaning for human beings might also occur when life is too much for them, when understanding fails, when goals evaporate: Suicide, in one of its many forms is the result of the discovery that life is not work living, i.e., that life has no purpose or goals.
II. The Meaning of Life in the Bhagavad G
ītā: Arjuna as a SuicideThe first chapter of the
Bhagavad Gītª finds its human hero, Prince Arjuna, surveying a battlefield where a horrendous and bloody civil war is about to begin. With him as his charioteer is the divine hero of the Bhagavad Gītª , Lord Krsna., Arjuna looks over at the enemy army that he will shortly be trying to slaughter and recognizes within it his friends and relatives, men that will soon be trying to slaughter him. As a warrior, Arjuna is bound by his duty to participate in the slaughter. His dilemma is that the family that he is bound by duty to protect is now the same family that he is bound by duty to destroy. Full of anguish at what he sees, Arjuna cries out in despair that if he fights, the entire family on both sides is doomed:When these ancient family customs are abolished then all men are doomed to live in hell. Thus we have been taught.
Ah, see what a great sin we are about to commit, to kill our brothers in order to greedily enjoy the kingship.
Far better it would be for me if, unarmed and unresisting, Dhrtarastra’s sons, with their weapons in their hands, should slay me in the battle.
The first chapter of the Gītª concludes with this line:
Having said this, Arjuna, in the midst of the battle, sat down on the floor of his chariot, casting aside his bow and arrows, his heart overcome with grief.[6]
Arjuna, the Ksatriyan warrior, has just committed suicide.
[7]Krsna as Goal-tender
Krsna’s task, of course, is now to bring Arjuna back to life. Krsna is the Savior and he saves men from Hell and suicide by doing the one thing most needful: He reminds men and women of the meaning of life, of those goals and purposes that make life meaningful, and which, if pursued, lead to the best and most worthwhile life. Krsna knows not only what is best for Arjuna, but he also knows, in the context of the Gītā, what is the best life for all men and women. In preaching this universal message Krsna not only states the meaning of life to Arjuna but he states the meaning of life for Hinduism, as well. That meaning lies in the goals set and described in the Bhagavad Gītª .
The goals of the Gītª as described by krsna are very varied, hence the meaning of life espoused by the Gītª is also going to be very varied. The overcoming of duhkha by the three principal yogas of the Gītª , viz., jñª na, karma and bhakti, in order to reach the three distant next-life goals of the Gītª , viz., a better rebirth, or heaven or moksa, constitutes an all-too-familiar story of Gītª darśª na. But none of these is what ultimately seems to move Arjuna. Those distant next-life goals were known by him before and they have already failed to remove "the worm in the heart" and ‘stop the flight from light." What does move Arjuna, and what captures his interest, finally, is found in the questions that he asks about the immediate this-life goals. In what follows I’d like to talk about those immediate goals and purposes that give immediate meaning to life.
The Three Best and Most Worthwhile Lives
In addition to the three big goals of life that have already been mentioned there is another set of goals often neglected by scholars of the Gītª . The big goals of samsª ra, svarga, and moksa have an ambiguity and murkiness about them that makes their analysis exciting and rewarding. But another set of three little goals can offer just as fascinating an excursion into the meaning of life in the Gītª as the big three. I would suggest that it is Arjuna’s fascination with, and curiosity about, these little three that give immediate meaning to his life. The belief in their practical attainability in this life together with a practicable technique for their attainment, saves him from the "flight from light."
Three Jīvanmuktas
A good deal can be learned from paying attention to the questions that Arjuna asks Krsna throughout the
Gītā. At times he simply plays straightman to Krsna’s preaching, an awed Theaetetus to Krsna’s Socrates. But his questions as well as his cries of bewildered anguish give his role in the dialogue a human authenticity that saves the work from being a tedious religious tract on how to successfully pursue selfish ends. Arjuna’s anguished cries to Krsna, "Your muddle-headed words [vyñ miñ -ren’ aiva vakyena] are really confusing me!",[8] are cries shared by the reader-listener; and Arjuna’s natural curiosity about the occultist behavior of those who have attained the transcendental goals loudly touted by Krsna coincide with the curiosities and concerns of almost every one that I know who has ben caught up in the Gītª .The Karma Yoga Jīvanmukta
In Chapter II, immediately following a sermon on Karma yoga by Krsna ("Let your goal be action and never the fruits of action"), Arjuna poses a question the answer to which will ultimately save his life:
How does that man behave who has reached the goal of steady wisdom and whose mind is completely steady? How does the [karma yogi who has become a j
In a way this is a curious question. Why does Arjuna ask it? What brings him off the floor of his chariot to pose the question? What pricks his curiosity? For whom does he ask the question? For himself? For another? Is he asking, as I am assuming, When I am liberated, how will I behave? and, Is that behavior something worth striving for? Is it an ideal I really want to acquire? The fact that he gest up, begins the dialogue with Krsna, and eventually goes into battle is the best indication that we have of the importance of Krsna’s answer:
When he abandons all desires that are in the heart, and finds contentment by the self in the self alone, then he is called a man of steady wisdom.
When in sorrow his mind is not disturbed, when he is indifferent to pleas
He who has no attachments toward anything, and who, having gotten this or that good or evil, neither delights in it nor hates it, his mind is steady.
When such a man, like a tortoise drawing back his limbs on all sides, withdraws his senses from the objects of the world, then his mind is steady.
[10]The best and most worthwhile life, for Arjuna at least, lies presumably in the life of the karma yoga j
īvanmukta.While the man of undistracted mind may not be someone you’d like for a husband, roommate, or fried, he stands nonetheless as the living paradigm of ul
timate value for the Arjunas of this world. The karma yoga jīvanmukta of steady mind possesses certain anti-human, less-than-admirable qualities that would make him something other than an ideal for the ordinary person. His indifference, his passionless and unattached state of mind is nothing short of spooky. [11]The Bhakti Yoga Jīvanmukta
In Chapter XII, following a sermon by Krsna on the yoga of devotion ("Those who lay all of their actions on Me, intent on Me, worshipping and meditating on Me, as their goal, ... I am their Savior from the ocean of deathly existence."), Krsna describes the bhakti yoga j
īvan-mukta:He who bears no ill-will to any being, who is friendly and merciful, who is without selfishness and egoism, indifferent to pain and pleasure, patient;
This yogi who is always content, self-controlled, unswervable in his determination, with his mind and reason dedicated to Me, he is My bhakta, and dear to Me.
He who does not make sorrow for the world, and whom the world in turn does not make sorrowful, who is freed from the anxiety of joy, intolerance and fear, he is also dear to Me.
He who wants nothing, he who is pure, skilled in action, unconcerned and untroubled, who has renounced all undertakings, he is My bhakta, and dear to Me.
And all those who, embued with faith, take Me as their ultimate goal and follow this immortal dharma as I have taught it, they are incomparably dear to Me.
[12]The best and most worthwhile life is now found with those who please God, who are dear to Lord Krsna, through the practice of bhakti. The bhakta possesses a preponderance of the guna of tamas and with it the more humane characteristics than either the karma yogi or, as we shall see below, the jñª na yogi. The bhakta is, after all, friendly and merciful, patient, unselfish, and freed from intolerance. He is, in fact, a person one might very well enjoy having for a husband, roommate, or fried. On the other hand, his possession of the same anti-human characteristics of desirelessness and egolessness possessed by the karma yogi might give the ordinary person pause in regarding this jàvanmukta as an ideal.
The same anti-human even-minded indifference that characterizes the bhakta is also found in the last of the ideal lives that Krsna describes for Arjuna. Here again the meaning of life lies in the pursuit of the ideal of the j
īvanmukta.The Jñª
na Yoga JīvanmuktaIn Chapter XIV, Arjuna reiterates the question first posed in Chapter II when he asked about the behavioral characteristics of the karma yoga jīvanmukta. Chapter XIV opens with Krsna promising a sermon about the highest knowledge the knowing of which leads to supreme perfection ("I shall declare the goal of highest jñª na"). Following this presentation Arjuna asks about the nature of the person who has transcended the three binding gunas and become supremely perfected through jiāna:
By what sign (linga), Oh Lord, is he characterized who has become perfect. What is his way of life?....
And Krsna answers:
He who does not hate illumination, activity and delusion when they arise, nor crave them when they are absent;
He who is seated as one unconcerned, unshaken by the gunas, who stands aside, without wavering knowing that it is only the gunas that do everything;
He who sees pleasure and pain as the same, who abides in the tman, who values a lump of earth, a stone and a piece of gold equally, who is the same to the loved and the unloved, who is steadfast, and to whom both blame and praise of himself are equal;
He who is the same in honor and dishonor, and the same to fried and enemy, and who has abandoned the starting of all actions, such a one is said to have passed beyond the gunas.[13]
Conclusion
The Bhagavad Gītª ends as Lord Krsna says to Arjuna, "Abandon all your duties, come to me alone for refuge for I will give you moksa from all sins." [14] And Arjuna responds, "I shall act according to your word."[15] Krsna has reminded Arjuna, in the words of Aristotle, that he must "strain every never to live in accordance with the best thing in us" and by so doing "we can make ourselves immortal.” By pursuing the goals of the jīvanmukta Arjuna will have found and removed, in Camus’ words, "the work in the heart" and halted "the flight from light." What has turned Arjuna around is not merely the promise of the big goals of a better life in the next life, of heaven in the next life, or of liberation from a next life, but a series of extraordinary descriptions of what life can be like here and now for liberated man. It is, I have suggested, the immediacy of those three lives of the jīvanmuktas that brings Arjuna off the floor of his chariot and onto the battlefield. Where the ordinary person might be repelled by the anti-human qualities of the jīvanmukta, Arjuna appears fascinated and energized by them as he repeatedly asks Krsna about the in-life, little goals of these alive-while-liberated yogis.
But despite the feeling of repulsion of the ordinary person, the jīvanmukta ideal saves the Arjunas of the world from suicide by giving them extraordinary and challenging goals and purposes
for which to strive. And that ideal constitutes one of the many meanings of life in the Bhagavad Gītª .[16]As if to confirm our initial feeling that the phrase "the meaning of life" is a Western invention and untranslatable if not meaningless within the Indian con
text, consider what happens when the attempt at translation is carried out: The paradox of the jīvanmukta.Recall that one of the goals, if not the only goal, in the
Bhagavad Gītª that gave meaning to life was to have no goals at all. Recall that the one common feature running through the three descriptions of the jīvanmukta was that he retained no purposes or desires; both had been eliminated: From the Western, Aristotelian, point of view the life of the jīvanmukta is totally without meaning. Recall further that from Albert Camus’ Western point of view the jīvanmukta would be already dead: The jīvanmukta is a suicide.Arjuna began his life in the
Gītª as a suicide; if he were to successfully follow Krsna’s advice, he would end his life as a suicide, as well.A more careful explication of the paradox of the jīvanmukta can be re
ndered in the following fashion where a paradox is taken as "a statement seemingly contradictory or absurd yet in fact true":1. If life exhibits goal-directed activity guided by reason then life has meaning.
If Aristotle is right then life is meaningful when that life is involved in the rational striving after goals. Without both goals (purposes) and striving (desire) there can be no meaning to life. From which it logically follows:
2. If life has no meaning then life exhibits no goal-directed activity guided by reason.
If Camus is right then life is without meaning for the person who has no goals. Such a person who has recognized the meaninglessness of life, who rec
ognizes the emptiness of both goals and desires, is already a suicide. The jīvanmukta, as the Gītª has described him, is a kind of zombie, i.e., "a corpse reactivated by sorcery but still dead.” At the very least the jīvanmukta having become unattached to both goals and desires has become emptied of the self or jīva: The jīvanmukta has become a jīvacide. As a jīvacide he is dead to family, to society and to the world; he is dead to the life of the mind, to reason and to the intellect; he is dead to compassion, to love and to that kind of concern that makes the moral life the center of being human; and he is dead to art, to music, to literature and to all of those aesthetic and civilizing pursuits that tend to make us bearable to one another.The paradox of the j
īvanmukta from the Western point of view can now be finally seen as a double-edged paradox: First, it points to the obvious logical contradiction that the goal of life described in the Gītª can never be a goal at all for the goalless, desireless jīvacide; and second, it points to the obvious practical absurdity that such a goal is ultimately nothing more nor less than the unpalatable, tasteless, zombie-like state of the jīvacide.Thus the paradox of the jīvanmukta and the untoward implications that o
ccur when one attempts to translate or transport into the Indian context a Western phrase that clearly does not belong there.
Notes
[1] Not only is "the meaning of life" a Western invention but, I suspect that the phrase is essentially untranslatable into the Indian context. Just as there are no English synonyms for guru, dharma, rta, karma, bhakti, jñª na, yajña and moksa so also there are no Indian synonyms for a host of English concepts, such as sacrifice, myth, religion, god, individual, faith and belief. Cp. "The question, ‘Do you believe in Vishnu?’ makes no sense in the Indian context: it cannot be put." Indian Religion, Edited by Richard Burghart and Audrey Cantle (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), p. viii. But whether meaningless, untranslatable, or not, the investigation into the possible application of the phrase to the Indian context may still be worth the effort.
[2] See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethnics, 1095a-1098a, 1177b-1178a.
[3] Nichomachean Ethics 1177b-1178a; Richard McKeon (ed.), The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 1105.
[4] Albert Camus, "An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide," The Myth of Sisyphus, Translated by Justin O’Brien (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955), p. 11.
[4] Ibid., p. 12.
[5] Ibid., p. 11.
[6] Ibid., p. 12.
[7] Bhagavad G§t~ , É. 44-47.
[8] "An escapist suicide (one of four possible types) is one of flight or escape from a situation sensed by the subject to be intolerable. This can be because of a combination of felt emotions (e.g., shame, guilt, fear, worthlessness) or attendant to the loss of a central element of the individual’s personality or way of life. There are two subtypes: flight and grief. The key word is "intolerable." To my mind, all suicides are of this type." Edwin Shneidman, Definition of Suicide (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1985), p. 27.
[9] Bhagavad G§ tª , II. 55-58.
[10] I use "anti-human" in the same sense that Mircea Eliade uses it to describe the practice of yoga in general: "It represents a living fossil, a modality of archaic spirituality that has survived nowhere else"; "...its immediate purpose is to abolish the human condition"; and, finally, "The method [that produces j§ vanmuktas] comprises a number of different techniques (physiological, mental, mystical) but they all have one characteristic in common--they are antisocial, or indeed, antihuman." Mircea Eliade, Yoga (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 361, 67, 95. The aim of yoga is to abolish the human condition, a goal more closely in line with the G§ tª ’s description of the j§ vanmukta than the later orthodox explanation of the goal. Karl H. Potter states that later explanation as follows:
...prª rabdhakarman [karmic residues that determine the birth, length of life, and experiences of this very lifetime] has to work itself out -- it cannot be destroyed by Self-knowledge... it cannot be "burned" for it has already begun to bear fruit. Thus the liberated person normally continues in bodily existence, working out his prª rabdhakarman, and this state is known as