The Bhagavad Gita and Ecology: Death, Detachment, and Devotion

John Kennedy

South Asian Religions and Ecology, Spring 2017

Professors: John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker

The Bhagavad Gita, a beloved and widely influential Hindu scripture, presents a

revelatory vision that calls for a response. The vision is one of impermanence and the

inevitability of death; the ultimate ruin of all we create and strive for. The called for response is

to detach oneself from the fruits of action, and instead to focus attention on conducting oneself

with integrity and discipline. This is karma (action) yoga (discipline). The vision is also one of a

world in which all things are thoroughly and equally suffused with the presence of the divine.

The right response is to devote oneself lovingly to God, both in spiritual discipline as well as

engaged action in the world - bhakti (devotion) yoga. These two visions, and the responses they

call forth, are ultimately shown to be two sides of the same coin. They also have great potential

to ground an ecological consciousness and ethic that could be especially fruitful in our current

planetary moment.

In the opening chapters of the Bhagavad Gita we meet our protagonist Arjuna, an archer

and warrior, preparing to go into battle against an opposing army. Accompanied by the Lord

Krishna, his guide and charioteer who also happens to be God, Arjuna sinks into despair as he

recognizes the army lined up against him as his own family members and friends. Faced with

this intolerable situation he makes his dejection known to Krishna, saying it would be better to

be killed himself than to destroy his own kin at the height of their power, while their goals were

still desires. (Bhagavad Gita 2.5) Krishna offers his counsel, teaching Arjuna of the

impermanence of all phenomena and the inevitability of death: Death is certain for anyone born,
and birth is certain for the dead; since the cycle is inevitable, you have no cause to grieve! (Gita

2.27). Since all things are passing away and fleeting, Krishna exhorts Arjuna to let go of

attachment to pleasure and pain (2.14), to transcend identification with the ephemeral sorrows

and joys of life and to endure fleeting things for they come and go! (2.14).

He diagnoses Arjunas distress as arising from his attachment to sensuous

objects (2.62), in this case his cherished friends and family. Furthermore, Krishna identifies

himself as the ultimate source of destruction, declaring I am death the destroyer of

all (10.34). In this view of things, all of life come from the hand of God, even death, and so

attachment to anything in form is rendered futile and bound to end in suffering. This can seem

like a cold and unsympathetic philosophy on its face, but this is only part of the revelation; like

the Hebrew prophet Isaiah who needed a burning coal to be placed on his tongue by angels

before he could behold the vision of God (Isaiah 6:6-8), and like Christ who first had to undergo

the crucifixion before being raised to new and unending life (Luke 9:22), desolation often and

necessarily precedes consolation when it comes to things of the divine.

However, even here on the other side of hope we can find a useful critique of the

consumer culture that has fueled and continues to sustain the unfettered capitalism that has so

ravaged our planet. The dung of the devil, as Pope Francis has called it, with its endless-

growth paradigm and unquenchable fire that burns through the earths limited resources as if they

were as bottomless as human greed, is at the root of the environmental crisis. In 1973s The

Denial of Death, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker posited that human civilization is an

elaborate defense mechanism that guards against the terror of dying. This is achieved,

imperfectly but powerfully, by focusing our attention and efforts on cultivating our symbolic self,

in contrast to the finite and mortal physical self. The symbolic self can live on in legacy and
memory, and it is where, according to Becker, we place our hopes for transcending death and

achieving immortality. 1

Our consumer culture, and the advertising machine that drives it, is of course all about

the maintenance and aggrandizement of the symbolic self. Symbolic complexes, or brands, are

the psychically charged drivers of consumerism, and we tend to locate our identity within them.

It is the reason why I bought NyQuil instead of the store-brand generic that was a little less

expensive when I last had a cold. It is why everything that James Bond wears, drives, or

consumes in a movie, from watches to cars to liquor, tends to immediately sell out. Thomas

Merton, Trappist monk and pioneer of East-West religious dialogue, wrote that we would rather

buy a bad toothpaste that is well advertised than a good one that is not advertised at all. Most

Americans wouldnt be seen dead in a car their neighbors had never heard of.2 We are taught

that we can become more through the acquisition of more, and yet more never seems to be

enough; the goal post is perpetually moved forward and, for the wise, is eventually discovered to

be a desert mirage. Satisfaction and joy is not found in possessions or acquisition because as

soon as we lay claim to something we begin to lose it. Nothing lasts, everything changes, but

rather than confront this reality we are, like clockwork, ferried along to the next momentarily

distracting and fleetingly satisfying purchase by the next alluring advertisement. The Gita

confronts us with the inevitability of death that this cultural machinery systematically denies on

our behalf, taking an ax to root of the unsustainable ways of life that have given rise to the

climate crisis. The great irony is that by denying and repressing the necessary and inevitable

1 Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: The Free Press, 1973)

2 Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), 193.
suffering and death in our own lives, we create unnecessary suffering and death for others and on

a much greater scale.

As alluded to earlier, Krishna calls Arjuna to respond to this reality of ultimate defeat

in the form of death by cultivating an attitude of detachment from ones karmic actions. This

detachment is not, however, a retreat from action and engagement in the world. Instead,

detachment from ones karmic actions means detachment from the fruit of ones karmic actions

(karma phala), not withdrawal from action itself. Conversely, disciplined action (karma yoga) is

a central feature of the teachings in the Bhagavad Gita. Be intent on action, not on the fruits of

action; avoid attraction to the fruits and attachment to inaction! (2.47) Since all is

impermanent, since nothing can ultimately be laid claim upon as the lasting fruits of ones action,

and yet since action in this world is entirely inescapable, as even inaction and retreat create their

own karmic effects, Krishna calls for a higher form of detachment. In this disciplined action, one

is fully engaged in performing their dharma, the sacred duty called for by ones geographical,

temporal, and social situation, and yet does so without any regard for the outcome, or the fruit of

their actions. Relinquishing the fruit of action, the disciplined man attains perfect peace; the

undisciplined man is in bondage, attached to the fruit of his desire. (5.11) To do the task at hand

skillfully, simply, and attentively, without anxiety from being tied up in the outcome, is to find

peace and serenity for one is free of the unnecessary burden of trying to know and determine

what is out of their control.

This has the potential to be of great practical value to those engaged in the struggle

against a different kind of enemy than Arjuna was faced with. That enemy is, of course, climate

change and those in high places who actively deny and exacerbate it while systematically

working to undermine efforts for a sustainable and flourishing future. Like Arjuna, contemporary
warriors for peace and ecology are faced with what can often appear to be an intolerable

situation. Climate scientists, activists, politicians, and religious leaders have been sounding the

bells of alarm for decades. Even oil companies like ExxonMobil have been aware of the effects

of greenhouse gas emissions since the 1970s3 and have elevated ocean drilling rigs in

anticipation of rising sea levels4. The writing has been on the wall for some time, and yet the

response has been far from adequate. We have heard the call to repent many times but it has not

been heeded. The damage done by climate change is already immense and some of it

irreversible, leading climate activist Bill McKibben to go so far as to propose a new name for our

planet in his book Eaarth, claiming that the Earth has been fundamentally altered by human

activity.5

In what is just one example of the challenges facing us, we are now seeing the beginnings

of permafrost thaw. Permafrost occupies about 24% of the landmass of the Northern

Hemisphere, and it is beginning to melt. Permafrost is composed of frozen water, microbes, and

other organic material, and it contains vast amounts of methane and carbon, two greenhouse

gases.6 As the permafrost melts, these gases are released into the air, further accelerating the rate

of global temperature increase and creating a feedback loop which will cause the permafrost to

thaw at at increasingly higher rates. Unless permafrost thaw is contained, we may be faced with a

3Shannon Hall, Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago, Scientific American, October 26, 2015, https://
www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

4 Amy Lieberman and Susanne Rust, Big Oil braced for global warming while it fought regulations, LA Times, December 31,
2015, http://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/

5 Bill McKibben, Eaarth (New York: Times Books, 2010)

6Hillary Beaumont, Permafrost collapse, Vice News, March 3, 2017 https://news.vice.com/story/canadas-permafrost-is-

collapsing-thanks-to-climate-change
worldwide tropical climate which would be catastrophic for biodiversity and life on earth as we

know it.7

This state of affairs can, and does, lead to despair. Some feel its too late. Its natural to be

overwhelmed and immobilized by feelings of futility in the face of realities such as these. Like

Krishna to Arjuna, the Gita speaks to us in precisely this state of despair induced paralysis,

counseling us to take courage and perform our dharma, our sacred duty, even in the most

repugnant of situations, surrendering the outcome to God. Dharma comes from the Sanskrit root

dir, meaning to sustain. According to Sanskrit scholar Barbara Stoler Miller, its basic

meaning is that which sustains, i.e., the moral order that sustains the individual, the society and

the cosmos, and if each unit or group in the manifold and complex universe performs its own

function correctly, the whole will be harmonious and ordered.8 Dharma, then, has powerful

resonances with our present predicament. To do our part in sustaining the balance and harmony

of our individual, societal, and global life is to challenge decidedly adharmic actors and

enterprises. Even if we are not assured a favorable outcome on the global scale, we can take

heart in the Gitas teaching that if we do our part in working for a harmonious and flourishing

present and future, we are fulfilling a sacred duty.

Duty, of course, can have limits as a motivator, especially when that duty is to God,

whom many in our time and place have ceased believing in, and with whom many more have

very limited conscious experiential contact with; functional atheism in our day and age is surely

more prevalent than professed atheism. Furthermore, Krishna and the theology of the Gita

cannot seamlessly be mapped onto God as understood and worshipped in Christianity, the

7Zo Schlanger, Melting Permafrost Is Turbocharging Climate Change, Newsweek, June 2, 2016, http://www.newsweek.com/
2016/06/10/permafrost-greenhouse-gases-global-warming-465585.html

8 Barbara Stoler Miller, translator, The Bhagavad Gita: Krishnas Counsel in Time of War (New York: Bantam Dell, 1986), 158.
religion closest to the heart of American history and identity, accounting for around 75% of the

religious affiliation of contemporary Americans. 9 However, the monotheism and devotion to the

incarnate Lord Krishna that is expressed in the Bhagavad Gita strongly echoes the theological

and spiritual core of Christianity, in which believers lovingly adore and worship the incarnation

of God in Jesus, and thus can serve as inspiration to socially and spiritually engaged Christians.

Spiritual engagement is crucial here, as the Gita has limited applicability to a purely

secular worldview or ethic; the whole philosophical system of snkhya which it is founded upon

is unintelligible without the divine or transcendent. The vision of the Gita is neither biocentric

nor anthropocentric, but rather theocentric. In this, it stands as a challenge to the secular

materialism prevalent among progressives, who are among the most sensitive and responsive to

the realties of climate change. Thomas Merton wrote that the Gita brings to the West a salutary

reminder that our highly activistic and one-sided culture is faced with a crisis that may end in

self-destruction because it lacks the inner depth of an authentic metaphysical consciousness.10

In the Hindu philosophy of snkhya, the cosmos is constituted of both immortal, transcendent,

unmanifest spirit (purusa) and the manifestation of this divine reality in space, time, and form

(prakrti). The Gita puts it this way: My nature has eight aspects: earth, water, fire, wind, space,

mind, understanding, and individuality. [prakrti] This is my lower nature; know my higher nature

too, the life-force that sustains this universe [purusa]. To live in balance, to live in peace, one

must be rooted in purusa even as they lead engaged lives in the world of prakrti.

This God-consciousness is cultivated, and the heavy burden of materialism lifted, through

loving devotion to Krishna, or bhakti yoga. Krishna, the supreme Lord, loves all that he has

9Frank Newport, Percentage of Christians in U.S. Drifting Down, but Still High, Gallup, December 24, 2015, http://
www.gallup.com/poll/187955/percentage-christians-drifting-down-high.aspx

10 Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions Books, 1973), 349.
made, dwelling compassionately deep in the self, (10.11) and calls Arjuna to respond to him

with that same divine love. This is the way of liberation from the vicissitudes of life that the Gita

teaches, and it forms the basis for the ethic of detachment from the fruits of ones actions. The

Gita also teaches that Krishna, as the source and life of all that exists, is present in all creation, in

all life, in all form: He who sees me everywhere and sees everything in me will not be lost to

me, and I will not be lost to him. I exist in all creatures, so the disciplined man devoted to me

grasps the oneness of life; wherever he is, he is in me. (6.29-31) The entire world, then, is a

vehicle for loving devotion and worship of Krishna for the natural world is interpreted as the

manifestation of Gods body. 11 This surely can engender an ecological consciousness and ethic,

for if every leaf that turns, every squirrel that scurries, every hawk that flies overhead, and every

deer that returns your gaze is the incarnate Lord to whom you are devoted looking back at you,

then the natural response is to fall in love with the world. We can see something like this in the

spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi. This equanimous and spacious, free of attachment and

anxiety even when faced with the death and dissolution of the forms we have come to know and

love, for the beloved on whom all is woven like a web of pearls on a thread (7.7) is eternal and

does not perish when all creatures perish. (8.20)

Bhakti also proves to be an ecologically valuable spiritual path for another similar but

distinct reason. Union or atonement with the divine, or the ultimate, is at the heart of most paths

of liberation across religious traditions. These ways of salvation have sometimes been in tension

with, or disconnected from, concern for the natural world because God, or the ultimate, is usually

believed to be beyond the natural world. However, in the Gita Krishna teaches Arjuna that by

devotion (bhakti) alone can I, as I really am, be known and seen and entered into and that

11 John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker, Ecology and Religion (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2014), 149.
acting only for me, intent on me, free from attachment, hostile to no creature, Arjuna, a man of

devotion comes to me (11.54-55). Here we have love for the natural world and a path of

spiritual enlightenment inextricably linked, a life-and-world-fructifying and sustaining balance.

Like Arjuna on the battlefield, many men and women of good will today may find

themselves occasionally slumped in their chariot (or chair), laying down their bow and arrows,

(1.47) feeling dejected, filled with pity, sad eyes blurred by tears. (2.1) Efforts to reverse

climate change can seem increasingly unsure and there is danger of widespread moral malaise in

the face of a repugnant US president and his administrations policies. The courage and faith

needed to rise to the fight (2.3) can be difficult to come by. The Bhagavad Gita, a masterwork

of religious literature that has inspired and shaped spirituality and activism since its composition

over two thousand years ago, can speak to us today precisely in this hour of great distress. The

verses of the Gita counsel us to be open to the sacred and the divine as we care for the natural

world, and to ground our caring in that openness. It calls upon us to take courage, release

attachment to the fruit of our action, and to find nourishment, motivation, and guidance in the

performance of our sacred work for a sustainable and flourishing planetary future in spiritual

devotion and divine love.