Shrimad Bhagavad Gita: The Divine and the Decadent the Threefold Faith (Chapter 16 and 17)

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Slippery Slopes and Stepping Stone

In the 16th chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, Sri Krsna analyses the divine and devilish qualities that exist in human beings. He continues with an analysis of the materialist culture that puts precedence of achieving and aggrandising over everything else. Steeped in ignorance, they do not realise that the Law of Karma applies to them as well. He ends by cautioning one to avoid the gateways desire, anger and greed to hell, by allowing themselves to be guided by their scriptural compass.

Faith, a Tour de Force

In the 17th chapter, Arjuna wonders whether those who set aside the ordinances of the scriptures can instead rely on faith to guide their actions. To this, the Lord replies that faith is ascertained by one's inherent nature (svabhava). This can be determined from man's physical indulgences (ahara), dedicated activities (yajna), self-denials (lapas), and charities (dana).

The Lord explains that according to the temperament of the individual, faith is of three types balanced joy (sattva), feverish activities (rajas), vegetative existence (tamas). The rest of the discourse focuses on how we can strive to achieve sattva temperament.

Every system of ethics catalogues a series of virtues and vices, and strangely enough all such systems read the same in spite of the fact that their Prophets were at different times and places. Irrespective of clime, creed, race and tongue, a good man is a good man. No doubt, there are slight differences between faith and faith, but such differences are found only in the Prophets' emphasis on the peoples' abstinence. from certain vices and cultivation of certain virtues. And their special advice and appeals to the people are obviously determined by the sort of life lived by the majority of the people in their respective eras and areas.

The very same qualities accepted as virtues some three thousand years ago, are still regarded as virtues, and even today, those who live them are considered virtuous and noble. Strangely enough, we find that human beings are the same in this uproarious present as they were in the peaceful past. In this chapter now under review, the entire mankind, of all times and of all ages, has been classified under three types - (a) the divinely good (devas) (b) the diabolically fallen (asuras) and (c) the incorrigibly indifferent (raksasas). However, the raksasika type is not taken up for discussion in the following verses, most probably because, for that type, no conscious self-development programme is ever possible unless it is broken, recast and moulded again by the relentless hand of adversity.