My Gita

by Devdutt Pattanaik

Krishna’s discourse continuously speaks of yagna, a Vedic ritual that binds the individual to the community. He elaborates on the relationship of the individual, whom he identifies as jiva-atma, with divinity, whom he identifies as param-atma, which is etymologically related to ‘the other’ (para). The Buddha spoke of nirvana, which means oblivion of individual identity, but Krishna speaks of brahma-nirvana as an expansion of the mind (brahmana) that leads to liberation (moksha) while ironically also enabling union (yoga), indicating a shift away from monastic isolationism. That is why, in Hindu temples, God is always visualized with the Goddess as a householder, one half of a pair. The devotee looks at the deity (darshan) and the deity, with large unblinking eyes, looks back; the relationship is ‘two-way’ not ‘one-way’.