Content Warning: Discussion of classism and xenophobia. Brief discussion of death, racism, colonization, misogyny, and mental health.
In this episode, I continue telling the Bhagavad Gita with the third chapter: "Karma Yoga". The text was written in post-Vedic India, responding to the rising popularity of Buddhism via the Vedic scholarship of the Upanishads. This chapter focuses on the particular process of attaining Krishna consciousness and is considered the true beginning of Bhagavad Gita for the devotee. The Gita was first published in The Mahabharata. The dialogue comes from the end of this long work and has often been republished with purports. I will be telling the version with purports, so as to ascertain cultural attitudes in two different eras of Indian history: during the production of the Upanishads and the 1900s CE. These distinct periods of time represent the original myth and its dialogues respectively.
I also tell the history of Vedic India at the beginning of the episode, demonstrating a number of ways in which colonization and nomadism shaped Indian history. We'll discuss how the Bhagavad Gita supports metaphorical readings of Holy Texts, how my personal spiritual beliefs conflict and align with the Bhagavad Gita, and how caste systems are implemented via religious conditioning. We'll once again explore the metaphor of Sri Krishna, and thus the god concept. We'll be stripping these confusing spiritual ideas into their human elements, illuminating the ways in which organized religious dogmas reinforce certain human traits and seek to disincentivize others.
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