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

The aijswe^M^f the Teacher proceeB^ upon two different lines , first a brief reply founded upon the highesti^easi)f the general i^an culture in which Arjuna has been educated, secondly, a nothe r and larger founded i)n~-a more ijU imat e knowledge, opening'uuo j^eper truths jof our being, which is the real starting-point of the teaching of the Gita.

This first answer relies on the philosophic and moral conceptions of the Vedantic philosophy and the social idea of duty and honour which formed the ethical basis of Aryan society. Arjuna has sought to justify his refusal on ethical and rational grounds, but he has merely cloaked by words of apparent rationality the revolt of his ignorant and unchastened emotions. He has spoken of the p hysica l life and the de ath of the body as if these were the primary realities ; but they have no ^ch essential value to the sage and the thinker. The soiTow for the bodily death of his friends and kindred is a grief to which wisdom and the true knowledge of life lend no sanction. The enlightened man does not mourn either for the living or the dead, for he knows that suffering and death are merely incidents in the history of the soul. The soul, not the body, is the reality. All these kings of *15611” ’Fof’“whbse approaching death he mourns, have lived before, they will live again in the human body ; for as the saul_pa§ses physically through ^ildhood and youth and age^ so it passes on to the changing of the body. The calm and wise mind, the dhiraj the thinker who looks upon life steadily and does not allow himself to be disturbed and blinded by his sensations and emotions, is not deceived by material appearances ; he does not allow the chmour of his, blood and his nexyes and his heart tcTcloud his ju^ment or to contradict his knowledge He iooks beyond the 'apparent facts of the life of the body and senses to the real fact of

THE CREED OF THE ARYAN FIGHTER his being and rises beyond the emotional and physical desires of the ignorant nature to the true and only aim of the human existence.