W. Douglas P. Hill Quotes

Thus spoke Arjuna on the field of battle, and sat down upon the chariot seat, dropping his arrows and his bow, his soul o'erwhelmed with grief.

If Dhṛtarāṣṭra's men, with weapons in their hands, should slay me in the fight, unresisting and unarmed, that were happier for me!

Guarded by Bhīṣma, this our force is all too weak; and all too strong that force of theirs, by Bhīma guarded.

On the Field of Right, the Kuru-Field, assembled, eager to fight, what did my warriors and the warriors of Pāṇḍu, O Saṁjaya?

If the aim of life is to escape from life, the watchword of life must be Control. For if the wandering senses are allowed to dwell unchecked on objects of sense, attachment to those objects will arise and cause continual rebirth. The evil must be checked at its source; mind and sense must be restrained. Control, or balance of character, is called Yoga.

Just as the distinction between good and evil is valid only on the empiric plane, so on that plane alone man's will is free to choose, man is responsible for sin. In actual fact, where man is God and personal being a delusion the question of real freedom and responsibility cannot arise. It is this double view of truth —the higher and the lower—that explains the apparent weakness of Hindu doctrine in general (with its incurable inclination to pantheism), and the much-blamed 'inconsistency' of the Gītā, on the subject of freewill.

On the empiric plane the Gītā teaches theism; it is not, then, surprising to find—still on the empiric plane—an emphasis on ethics absent from the earlier Upaniṣads. Krishna is never weary of telling Arjuna to be virtuous; his own sympathies are decidedly on the side of righteousness; it is to reestablish right when wrong prevails that he takes birth as man.

The author of the Gītā is interested in man and his destiny; for man is the centre of creation. Brahman, it is true, dwells equally in every living creature; but to man is given a gift denied even to the Lords of Heaven—man alone in all creation's scale can win release.

The universe is a puppet-show; Brahman is sole producer, Brahman is scenery and players, Brahman is sole spectator. The universe is Brahman, sportively self-deluded, taking delight in itself. The means of production is the power of delusion, or māyā; scenery and puppets are Brahman, self-stamped with 'name and form', its 'lower nature'—prakṛiti; as spectator it is puruṣa, retaining its proper nature.

God descends with a purpose. From the earliest times sacrifice (yajña) had been accounted the most important work, and in the Gītā so imperative a work is sacrifice considered that we are told that 'ever on sacrifice firm-founded is Brahman all pervading'.

Kṛiṣṇa says (vii. 19) that the man of knowledge affirms that Vāsudeva is All. This is the central doctrine of the Bhagavadgītā. Kṛiṣṇa Vāsudeva is one with Brahman, the ultimate unity that lies behind this manifold universe, the changeless truth behind impermanent appearance.

There seems to be a general consensus of opinion among modern scholars that the Bhagavadgītā, as it now appears in the Epic, is not an original poem composed by a single hand, but an ancient work, rewritten and enlarged. But all are not agreed as to the history of the poem's composition.

The Bhagavadgītā presents the doctrine that Kṛiṣṇa Vāsudeva, who helped the Pāṇḍava princes at the battle of Kurukṣetra as Arjuna's charioteer, was Supreme God, a descent of the Absolute into the world of men. Kṛiṣṇa is called Bhagavat, and the poem is a product of the Bhāgavata or Vāsudeva sect, which at the time of its composition was beginning to identify Kṛiṣṇa with Viṣṇu.