I am exploring and reading a book. It is about a holy conversation that was held on the battlefield of what we in Kentucky call, a feud, such as that famous one held in the post-Civil War hills of Eastern Kentucky/West Vrginia.
The book is that of Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Steven Mitchell (New York: Three Rivers Press, c 2000).
The book, often called just Gita, is part of the foundational poetic epic of India and it was a favorite of Emerson and Thoreau. Gandhi called it his mother.
I happen to be getting into the Gita, coincidentally, in the auspicious month of August. On August 6, 1945, the United States of America initiated an atomic bomb attack on the city of Hirhoshima, Japan. August 6 is also the day that the Christian ligurgical calendar reserved for the Transfiguration of Jesus . On August 9, 1945, the United States attacked--atomically again --another city of Japan, one called, Nagasaki.
Robert Openheimer, a U.S. scientist witnessing the first atomic explosion on July 16, 1945, quoted the book the Gita.
Mitchell writes in his introduction:
The climax of the Gita is its eleventh chapter, in which Krishna appears to Arjuna in his supremem form. It is a terrifying theophany, a glimpse into a level of reality that is more tha the ordinary mind can bear. Arjuna sees
the whole universe enforded, with its countless billions of life-forms, gathered together in the body of the God of gods.
Krishna dazzles his sight blazing in
the measureless, massive sun-flame splendor of his radiant form.
This is a vision of pure energy, which does not discriminate between good and evil, creation and destruction. No wondered it entered modern history through the story of Robert Oppenheimer's response to the first atomic explosion at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. What other image form literature could have been so uncanny right for that occasion?
If a thousand suns were to rise and stand in the noon sky blazing, such brilliance would be like the fierce brilliance of that mighty Self.
As the bomb exploded, Oppenheimer thought of another, later verse:
I am death shatterer of worlds annihilating all things.
Chapter twelve in the Gita, the chapter following the sight of radiant Krishna, contains these words:
He who has let go of hatred, who treats all beings with kindness and compassion ...
The same to both friend and foe ...
that man is the one I love best.
According to the Gospel stories. aftter Jesus was transfigured, he descended the mountain and began a journey of holy conversation to Jerusalem where he was crucified.
Before Jesus was arrested, he told his disciples, as the apostle Paul later told the Christian community of Rome:
Love one other.
On August 23, my husband and I celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary.
May Peace Prevail On Earth!
I Declare World Peace.
May you do so also.
_______
For more about the Gita, see Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation.
Thank you. I will keep that in mind.
ReplyDeleteI came across this one in a bookstore. Stephen Mitchell also has a beautiful edition of the Tao Te Ching that I have read.