Once again, the thing that surprised me most about last night’s class was the different perspectives brought forward about the texts.
Surinder mentioned the difference between western linear thinking and an Eastern way of circling the truth, shedding a small bit of light with every revolution. She also questioned why we were treating the text as an anthropological document, as opposed to scripture dictated by God. It was an honest question, and one that gave everyone pause for a second. It’s easy to treat a text as historically significant as the Bible as a secular text to puzzle over in fact it is only natural to analyze the text and look for any rational clues to explain the millenniums of passion that it inspired.
I read the Bhagavad Gita as a foil for Genesis, but I think the focus for many others was (not surprisingly) the Bhagavad Gita. Kirsten presented spoke at length about the historical background of the text, and posed some challenging questions about whether modern people would be able to relinquish worldly goods and free will to bow to Krishna's spiritual requirements. We spoke about the tension between fate and free will, or, in more specifically, the tension between free will and dharma. We spoke of the necessity of a warrior to obey his or her leader's commands without question, Finally, and most importantly perhaps, we spoke of the differences and similarities between mental illness, battle-fury, and being struck by the holy spirit or possessed by a demon or a god. Perhaps these labels may describe the same symptoms, but in different eras?
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