by Stephen Cope
At the end of the Gita, Arjuna declares:
Krishna, my delusion is destroyed,
and by your grace I have regained memory
I have regained memory. I know who I am. By the end of the story, Arjuna will have been restored to the direct, immediate knowledge of who he is. Then his choices about action will be utterly clear. You will know how to act when you know who you are.
3
About halfway through his dialogue with Krishna, Arjuna begins to get it. And as his eyes open, he sees that Krishna, his friend and charioteer, is not just an ordinary guy. He is much more than a charioteer. To his astonishment, Arjuna begins to see that all along he has been in the presence of a Divine Being. Egad! Krishna is God!!
Upon recognition of Krishna’s True Nature, Arjuna has a wonderful and very human moment. He is embarrassed. He says to Krishna: “Sometimes, because we were friends, I rashly said, ‘Oh, Krishna!’ or, ‘Say, friend!’—casual, careless remarks. Whatever I may have said lightly, whether we were playing or resting, alone or in company, sitting together or eating, if it was disrespectful, forgive me for it, O Krishna. I did not know the greatness of your nature, unchanging and imperishable.”
This moment endears us to our warrior friend. Arjuna says, in effect, “Gosh, God, I have not been paying you the proper respect.” Krishna will later explain to Arjuna that they have been friends through countless lives—that they have known and loved each other through the rise and fall of many forms. Arjuna has forgotten the details, of course, but he realizes that it is indeed so. Step by step, Krishna has led Arjuna to understand his life—has led him to understand who he is, who he has been, and what his pilgrimage across the ages has been like.
Arjuna is now on fire with his love for Krishna. Out of his enthusiasm, he makes a somewhat premature request. He says, “I want to know you even more.” He begs to see Krishna’s divine form. “Just as you have described your infinite glory, O Lord, now I long to see it. I want to see you as the supreme ruler of creation. O Lord, master of yoga, if you think me strong enough to behold it, show me your immortal Self.”
Of course, Arjuna really doesn’t know what he’s asking for. But Krishna wants to grant his wish. He wants to give him full knowledge of his Divine Self. But because he knows that Arjuna does not really yet have the capacity to perceive his illumined form, Krishna gives Arjuna “spiritual vision” to perceive what has previously been outside Arjuna’s limited perceptual range.
What emerges now is one of the great theophanies in all spiritual writing. The narrator, Sanjaya, recounts what Arjuna sees. It is one of the most masterful descriptions of the indescribable in all of world literature. (Robert Oppenheimer famously quoted it in 1945, when he was reaching for words to describe the first controlled explosion of the atomic bomb over the desert in New Mexico.)
Krishna’s divine form, says Sanjaya, “appeared with an infinite number of faces, ornamented by heavenly jewels, displaying unending miracles and the countless weapons of his power. Clothed in celestial garments and covered with garlands, sweet-smelling with heavenly fragrances, he showed himself as the infinite Lord, the source of all wonders, whose face is everywhere.”
Sanjaya continues: “If a thousand suns were to rise in the heavens at the same time, the blaze of their light would resemble the splendor of that supreme spirit. There within the body of the God of gods, Arjuna saw all the manifold forms of the universe united as one. Filled with amazement, his hair standing on end in ecstasy, he bowed before the Lord with joined palms …”
What is the lesson here for Arjuna? Arjuna—now with “spiritual vision”—perceives the whole world, the entire cosmos, within the Divine form of Krishna. Krishna had already taught Arjuna that awakened ones see the Self in themselves and in all creatures. Now this teaching had become very concrete indeed.
4
Enough! Cries an overwhelmed Arjuna. He soon tells Krishna to take away the vision. The blinding light is too much for his senses to bear. He feels his mortal form being ripped apart by its intensity. Indeed, his consciousness has been ripped apart. As we shall see, the vision will change Arjuna. He has received the great teaching: The whole world is within each one of us.
Once Arjuna has regained his equilibrium, Krishna drives home the point: “Arjuna,” he says (and I paraphrase), “the explosion of energy and consciousness you have just beheld is also within you. Coiled and ready. Thou Art That. If only you would connect with it. You saw all beings in me. All beings are also in you.”
Krishna continues, and says, in effect: “Now seeing the whole picture, you have the information you need in order to make your decisions about how to act in this world. You now know, incontrovertibly, that the whole world is in every being. You have now seen that you are One with it all. You have seen that the whole world is one family. There is no true separation between beings. This is the Truth.”
Arjuna is stunned. Humbled. And more than a little freaked out. He wants to hold on to the Truth. But he also wants to turn away from it. “When I’m in the presence of this Truth” he says, haltingly, “I know my real nature; and I act accordingly. My actions in such a case are effortlessly noble. But I forget. I forget who I am. Krishna, help! How do I maintain the fragile connection with this Truth?”
Now Krishna gives him the keystone: “Arjuna, that is why I have given you your dharma,” he says (and here and in the following paragraphs, I paraphrase Krishna). “Your dharma is your way of staying connected with your True Nature. It is the particular way in which you can devote your life to the welfare of all beings. Your dharma is your very own way of expressing the Truth. Your dharma is the one place where you can penetrate the fleeting world of form. Where you can live as I live, fully connected with the whole world of mind and matter. Where you can live in the sure knowledge that you are not the Doer, but only a vehicle of the great Doer.”
Krishna reiterates his earlier teaching: Know your dharma. Do it with all your passion. Let go of the fruits. And now he adds a fourth and final teaching: And turn it over to me. Surrender the whole process to me. Surrender your life’s work to God—to the divine within you, and to the divine within all beings. In this way your forgetfulness and delusion will slowly disappear. When you are immersed in your dharma, the wave becomes the sea again. Don’t you see? Dharma is your path home.
“Now do you see?” says Krishna. “In this mortal life you must walk by faith. You must walk by faith, not by the sight of your limited human vision. In order to walk by faith, you must gradually learn to trust me and my guidance. You must gradually learn to surrender your will. You cannot steer your dharma with the vehicle of self-will—the will of the small “s” self. Self-will will always steer you toward delusion, toward forgetfulness, toward separation. This self-will—driven by the grasping of small “s” self—is the greatest enemy of freedom and Oneness.”
Krishna’s teaching at this point in the dialogue becomes bold and challenging: “Keep all your senses tuned to the ineffable at all times. Listen for and follow my guidance every step of the way. Let go of doubt. And finally, see Me in every human being. See the Divine within yourself. Within everyone. And act accordingly. Your actions will be effortlessly noble—and will create happiness for you and for the whole world.”
Arjuna now understands that the real task he must master in this lifetime is learning to walk by faith. And he realizes that enacting his dharma is, in itself, the greatest act of faith.
In this final section of the book, then, we will explore two of the central themes in Krishna’s powerful final lessons to Arjuna:
1. Walk by faith.
2. Take yourself to zero.
We will examine the lives of two great examplars of these principles—beginning with an investigation of the astonishing life of Harriet Tubman, a nineteenth-century American slave who surrendered her life into the hands of God, and who discovered, as Tho
reau did, that one person’s freedom could burst the fetters off a million slaves. And finally, we’ll look at the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi, perhaps history’s most brilliant student and exemplar of the Bhagavad Gita. In the process, we will also revisit the stories of our old friends Brian (the priest) and Katherine (the dean) as they continue to come to grips with the perils and promise of their own individual dharmas.
ELEVEN
Harriet Tubman: Walk by Faith
Most families have dharma teaching-stories. Of course we don’t call them that. But think for a moment of your own family’s dharma stories. These are usually tales of the courage and character of some colorful forebear, who against big odds thrived in her authentic calling. When these tales are told over and over again they develop a flavor of myth. The young people at the grown-ups’ table on Thanksgiving roll their eyes when they hear them for the twentieth time. Still, these stories creep into our psyches, and help to form our sense of what might be possible for us.
In my own family, my grandmother, Armeda Van Demark Crothers, was the teller of these tales. She told them at Sunday dinner, or seated in a wicker rocking chair on the front porch of the family summer cottage. One of her favorites was the story of my great-great-great grandfather, Dr. Elias Willard Frisbie. Dr. Frisbie lived from 1799 until 1860 in the little town of Phelps, New York—the upstate village where I spent happy weeks and months as a kid, and where my grandmother lived out her entire life.
Elias Frisbie was an ardent abolitionist, and his house was a hub on the so-called “Underground Railroad” during the decade leading up to the Civil War. The Underground Railroad—as every tenth-grader in Phelps knows—provided a network of invisible support to fugitive slaves from the Deep South all the way to Canada. My grandmother told stories of Dr. Frisbie’s risky commitment to this invisible road to freedom, and of his involvement with fugitive slave Harriet Tubman, whose own home was in the nearby village of Auburn, New York. Grandma emphasized: By helping runaway slaves, Dr. Frisbie put himself in serious danger. His actions were in direct violation of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
Grandma knew great dharma material when she heard it. She told tales of the midnight movement of fugitive black faces through the woods around Phelps; of near encounters with police; of the dreaded slave catchers who occasionally haunted the little village and surreptitiously surveilled suspect homes. Her tale usually ended with the story of a triumphant parade in Phelps—a parade of slaves and their white supporters—that went right up the center of town. Dr. Frisbie was at its head. And the moral of the story? Do what you know is right even if you have to take risks. The fine Dr. Frisbie was hewing to his high ideals.
Grandma’s story worked its intended magic. Dr. Frisbie—and Harriet Tubman and her network of freedom fighters—captured my imagination. And the lesson I took from the story could have come from Krishna himself: A guy has got to do what a guy has got to do.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve become intrigued with Elias Frisbie’s interactions with the near-mythic figure of Harriet Tubman. Grandma didn’t know enough about Frisbie’s relationship with Tubman to include the details in her official story, but I’ve learned as much as I can about them, and I now weave these nuggets into the original story when I tell it to my nieces and nephews. This, I suppose, is how a family’s dharma story evolves.
2
Harriet Tubman—a diminutive, unprepossessing, and mammothly determined fugitive slave—was the most famous rescuer of slaves in the American South in the decade between 1850 and 1860. She carried out a string of at least nineteen daring raids into slaveholding territories—leading her enslaved family and friends (and practically anyone who dared to come) out of bondage in the South and all the way to freedom in Canada. Her hair-raising journeys became the stuff of legend—and were made more notorious by the fact that Tubman was herself a fugitive slave and subject at any time to recapture and the horror of reenslavement. (Actually, Tubman would most likely not have been reenslaved had she been caught. She would have just been hung. By the time the Civil War erupted there was a price of $40,000 on her head—and she was hated and feared by Southern slave owners.)
Stories of Tubman’s raids into the South are toe curling. By all accounts, she had an uncanny ability to evade danger. She could evaporate into thin air with a whole troop of fugitives (and she sometimes led as many as ten or twelve out at a time). She had a second sense about when to move and when to stay under cover—hunches that often defied common sense. She had an unerring sense of which riverbank to follow, which house might be safe, which house might harbor danger. There are edge-of-your-seat accounts of her accidentally coming face-to-face with former masters during her forays south—once on the very plantation from which she had herself escaped. These stories always end with her avoiding recognition through some clever spur-of-the moment disguise: pulling a bonnet down over her face, or putting her nose in a newspaper (though she could not read a word).
When one drills down into these tales, one finds that they flesh out in vivid fashion one critical component of dharma: the issue of “guidance.” Harriet was widely believed to have been guided directly by God—called by him, and guided by him every step of the way. Within months of her near-miraculous escape from a plantation in Maryland, she had the distinct sense of a call, a voice inside that said, “Harriet Tubman, I want you to help free others.” Tubman answered back to God, “Find somebody else. Can’t do it. You kidding?”
The stories of a “call” such as Harriet received are omnipresent in the spiritual and religious world: Jonah and the whale, Moses in Egypt, St. Paul on the road to Damascus. “The Call” is an archetype of the spiritual imagination. It is nothing less than the call to be absolutely yourself.
The call to Harriet was repeated over and over again—as it has to be in these stories, since the first response is always “no.” Of course, in this particular story Tubman finally said yes, but very reluctantly. Doubt and indecision are always a central aspect of “call” stories, and Arjuna is our antiheroic example. Harriet decided that if she were going to respond to this nagging call, she would have to put herself in God’s hands, because she had no idea how to pull it off by herself. “If you’ve called me to this, Lord, then you’ll damn sure have to do it, ’cause I can’t.”
Harriet followed her guidance. She prayed. She listened. And she found the guidance she received stunningly reliable. Eventually, Harriet learned to walk by faith, not by sight. And her faith was, apparently, contagious, for everyone else began to trust her as well. Fugitives whom she helped free soon enough learned: If she says go, go. If she says stay, stay.
A moment-by-moment trust in Divine guidance is central to Krishna’s teaching. He teaches: “To know when to act and when to refrain from action, what is right action and what is wrong, what brings security and what brings insecurity, what brings freedom and what brings bondage: These are the signs of a pure mind.”
To know when to act, and when not to act.
Harriet Tubman’s dharma story allows us to examine the question of guidance. How does Divine guidance actually work? Is there really such a thing? Is it from God, or is it from an ineffable Inner Self? Is it available even to us?
3
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in 1825. (Her mother had arrived on a slave ship directly from Africa, and was bought by a Maryland family named Pattison.) As a girl, Harriet learned the central facts of slavery: Your body is not your own, your life is not your own, your labor is not your own, and your family is not your own. This last fact was a source of particular suffering for young Harriet. She learned early on that your kin can be sold “downriver” at any moment, and you have absolutely no recourse. Once sold, families were rarely reunited. Tubman watched as her mother’s family—sisters and brothers—were auctioned off in front of her, while the family stood by in horror and agony.
How would one manage the violence and powerlessness of such a life? Harrie
t’s mother managed it by developing a sustaining faith in God, and she taught this faith to Harriet. The entire family was illiterate, so they never actually read the Bible, but they learned Bible stories by heart—especially the Old Testament stories of the suffering of God’s people in Egypt, and their eventual escape into the Promised Land. These stories were made vivid in Harriet’s imagination in chants sung rhythmically while at work in the fields, and in stories told at night huddled together in the slave cabin.
Harriet would need every ounce of her mother’s faith: When she was only five years old, a “Miss Susan” drove up to Pattison’s plantation and asked for a young girl to take care of a baby. Pattison sent Harriet off with “Miss Susan” that very instant—to a new and harrowing home far from her parents. This experience of sudden exile was repeated over and over again throughout Harriet’s childhood. By the time she was fifteen she had had many masters, though she eventually ended up back at Pattison’s. She said later, “I grew up like a neglected weed—ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.”
By the time she was in her teens, Tubman had become a field hand—which she vastly preferred to being a house slave. In the fields, she developed physical and mental stamina, and enjoyed the taste of the personal power this brought her. Outdoors—where she was not so directly under the shoe of the master—she began to get a taste of freedom. She wanted more.
In 1849, Harriet learned quite by accident that for the previous decade she and her family had been held illegally in slavery, for they had—unbeknownst to them—actually been freed by Master Pattison’s will at his death ten years earlier. Pattison’s heir had conveniently neglected to inform them of this. The discovery of this outrageous betrayal made Harriet blind with rage. What to do? She turned first to her faith. She decided to begin a prayer vigil for the soul of her master (Pattison’s heir), whom she now knew to be a charlatan of the worst sort. She prayed fervently that his heart would be changed.
