Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

formless Peace beyond. The re^il of Arjuna is the tamasic recoil from acdon^o|lihe.JSa£^ manr'^The TeacKer^ mav confirm it in its direction, using it as a dark entry to the purity and peace of the ascetic life ; or he may purify it at once and raise it towards the rare altitudes of the sattwic tendency of renunciation. In fact, he does neither. He di^our^es the tamasic recoil and th^ tendency to renunciadon and enjoins the continuance of action and even of the same fierce and terrible action,' T>ut he poims the disciple towards another and inner renunciation which is the real issue from his crisis and the way towards the souPs superiority to the world-Nature and yet its calm and self-possessed action in the world. Not a physical asceticism, but an inner askesis is the teaching of the Gita. 8x VII THE CREED OF THE

ARYAN FIGHTER* The answer of the divine Teacher to the first flood of Arjuna’s passionate self-questioning, his shrinking from slaughter, his sense of sorrow and sin, his grieving for an empty and desolate life, his forecast of evil results of an evil deed, is a strongly-worded rebuke. All this, it is replied, is co nfusion of mind and delusion , a weakness of the heart, an n nmaniiness . a fall from the virility of the fighter and the hero. Not this was fitting in the son of Pritha, not thus should the champion and chief hope of a righteous cause abandon it in the hour of crisis and peril or suffer the sudden amazement of his heart and senses, the clouding of his reason and the downfall of his will to betray him into the casting away of his divine weapons and the refusal of his God-given work. This is not the way cherished and followed by the Aryan man ; this mood came not from heaven nor can it lead to heaven, and on earth it is the forfeiting of the glory that waits upon strength and heroism and noble works. Let him put from him this weak and self-indulgent pity , let him rise and smite his enemies ! * Gita n, 1*38. THE CRE.ED OF THE ARYAN FIGHTER

The answer of a hero to a hero, shall we say, but not that which we should expect from a divine Teacher from whom we demand rather that he shall encourage always gentleness and saintliness and self-abnegation and the recoil from worldly aims and cessation from the ways of the world ? The Gita expressly says that Arjuna has thus lapsed into unheroic weakness, *‘his eyes full and distressed with t^rs, His lieart overcome by depression and discouragement,'' because he is inva d^ by pity, Is this not then a divine weaTcness'? Is not pity^ divine emotion which should not thus be discouraged with harsh rebuke? Or are we in face of a mere gospel of war and heroic action, a Nietzschean creed of power and high-browed strength, of Hebraic or old Teutonic hardness which holds pity to be a weakness and thinks like the Norwegian hero who thanked God because He had given him a hard heart? But the teaching of the Gita springs from an Indian creed and to th e Indian mind compassion has always figured as one of the largest elements of the divine nature. The Teacher himself "enumerating in a later chapter the qualities of the godlike nature in man places among them compassion to creatures, gentleness, freedom from \^tn.¥n(I from the desire to slay anJ do hurt, no l^s than fearlessness and' high spirit and energy. Harshness and hardness and fierceness and a satisfection in slaying enemies and passing wealth and unjust enjoyments are A^ric qualities ; they come from the violent Titanic nature which denies