Life Lessons

((A Page of my senior yearbook with quotes beneath the pictures))

Last Thursday I went back to my high school to pick up my senior yearbook and attend the traditional reunion and “Yearbook Signing Party.” Although no actual signing took place, my friends and I poured over the quotes printed beneath each of the senior pictures. I noticed that most of the 208 girls in my class chose sayings about life and about how to live life. Then a couple days later, when I returned to UT and began reading the Bhagavad Gita, I encountered quote after quote of life lessons that would be perfect for a yearbook. Nearly every passage of the Bhagavad Gita offers morsels of advice.

((Chained to a culture of monotony by David Boyle, this image suggests the heavy weight that inaction can make one bear))

I especially liked the heavy focus on action. I agree, for example, with the law of action in that “he who can see inaction in action, and action in inaction is the wisest among men” (35, line 18). So many people live their daily lives in continuous negative habits that can lead to unhappiness or more serious consequences like drug addiction. In a sense when someone keeps up those negative habits, the actions are actually inactions in working toward a better life. Conversely, I know we have all seen action in inaction through our lives as high school and middle school students. For me, peer pressure comes to mind. Peer pressure and bullying people often leads people to do embarrassing and dangerous acts, and not having the courage to stop such things or perhaps stick up for a friend is actually an action since we make a choice to remain inactive. A more current example of action in inaction could be letting a friend drive back from a party drunk. The inaction is actually an action since it involves a choice to act one way. And in all these cases the action or inaction seem just as morally important and I admire how concisely the Bhagavad Gita sums this up. The whole idea of action, of course, is an extremely complicated idea and “what should be done and what not” (43) often becomes foggy. Further, this idea of action and taking the initiative clearly links to traits of our role models and leaders.

Much of this World Lit class has also focused on our past and history through these role model projects, road maps, and exploration of childhood wonder. I found the lessons in the Gita, however, refreshing and quite different from this focus on our origins as Lord Shri Krishna states “for even the children of sinful parents, and those miscalled the weaker sex, and merchants, and laborers, if only they will make Me their refuge, they shall attain the Highest” (77). This life lesson that we can make anything of ourselves, despite our past mistakes and origins, is inspiring and brings to mind popular American rags to riches tales. I do believe that our past undeniably shapes the future, but I must remember that history is not what defines a person. More important is character, personality, and current choices.

((A drawing of the massive stone lid to the sarcophagus of Pakal))

Later in the Gita Lord Shri Krishna goes on to summarize his worldly existence through the Tree of Life or the “ashvattha.” He states that the “phenomenal creation, which is both ephemeral and eternal, is like a tree, but having its seeds above in the Highest, and its ramifications on this earth below” (119). Although I do not immediately find a life lesson in this description of an inverted tree, the imagery reminds me of ancient Mayan beliefs from over 1000 years ago. The sarcophagus lid of the idolized ruler named Pakal, shown above, places Pakal at the center of the universe—emerging from the mouth of an alligator and rising to the tree of life. The rectangular patterns on the side borders are symbols of the sun and moon which further develop Pakal’s centrality to the universe. Divine symbols and images of ancestors line the top and bottom which links the idea of the Tree of Life to the past. This stone carving of an extremely symbolic rebirth and centrality to the universe teach me about Krishna’s idea of the Tree in relation to mankind. The Tree of Life, to me, connects all the emphasis of action and inaction and the idea of history and identity in the Bhagavad Gita.