Shankara & Tilak 2

We all wish to combine Shankara’s supra activism and Tilak’s activism approach on Gita and Karma. And we do hope to complete Krishna’s vision that way. But it will not be a complete picture that way. The basic reason is that we cannot make something whole by putting together its parts. It is like we breakup a person’s body into pieces and then put the parts together to make a whole person again. It is simply impossible. Parts put together cannot make a whole; it is a different thing; however, a whole consists of many parts. Our vision of Krishna takes both Shankara and Tilak, but just mixture of their view points will not make a complete philosophy of Krishna. There are thousands of views about Krishna; Shankara and Tilak present only two views. Even a combination of thousand views cannot make a complete Krishna. 

For example, if we make a list of ingredients that make up a human body- like iron, copper, sodium, aluminium, phosphorous etc., they will be worth four to five hundred rupees, not more, nine tenths of human body is water, which does not cost anything much at the moment. And the rest of these things are available in the market. If however we put them all together in the right proportions they cannot create a live human body. A live body is much more than the sum total of its parts, although it cannot be without these parts. An organic unity exists in Krishna’s philosophy of life, although it has a thousand different parts. And every part has been interpreted differently by various people. Ramanuja, Shankara, Nimbark, Tilak, Aravind, Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave all have their own different voices. And if we collect all these views on Krishna, they cannot recreate the organic unity that Krishna is. We will not find Krishna in this amalgamation. And it is also true that in Krishna all these are present and many things more also are present. The amalgam will be a mechanical dead unity. It will be nothing more than an arithmetical addition. 

What we have been seeing is not commentary on Krishna; we are not interpreting him. We have very little to do with these commentaries. We are unveiling Krishna before us. We are not trying to impose ourselves on Krishna, we are unravelling him exactly as he is; right and wrong, moral and immoral, rational, irrational, and even trans-rational. As Krishna himself is choiceless, neither do we pick and choose anything from his life. For thousands of years people have been struggling to interpret Krishna and what Krishna said in Gita. This is unveiling Krishna in his entirety without caring for inconsistencies and contradictions inherent in his life and teachings. I want to see Krishna as whole and in one piece. I also believe that it is the only way to understand Gita better.

Let us understand Krishna, more, to understand Gita well! 

Wishing you good health and happiness,

Dr. Dwarakanath, Director, Mitran foundation- the stress management people