Alan Watts on the Bhagavad Gita

Margaret Thatcher remarked that Europe was the product of history. European nations were shaped by centuries of wars, dynasties, traditions, and cultural evolution, their identity deeply rooted in historical continuity.

By contrast, the United States was consciously built on philosophy: Enlightenment ideals of liberty and individual rights. Its founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—embody abstract principles rather than inherited traditions.

Europe grew organically from its past, while the United States was deliberately constructed around ideas, making it a nation defined more by philosophy than by historical legacy. An analogous story can be told about the religions and the dharmas. The dharmas are a product of philosophy, not history.

Judaism gave birth to Christianity, and Islam was a reconstituted amalgam of the two. The religions rely on history. They claim that the world was only around six thousand years old and was created by God (a divine being) whose human creations were commanded by him (he was of course male) to revere and worship him if (according to Christianity and Islam) were to avoid being tormented for eternity in hell (a lake of fire) by him.

“I created you because I want you to worship me or else I will burn you for eternity.”

Lovely guy, that Yahweh, don’t you think?

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The dharmas have no such conception of a creator god. In the dharmas, there is the ultimate reality and that’s all there is. That ultimate reality is given a name — Brahman. The rest, including you and I and everything that exists. is just a part of the ultimate reality of Brahman.

There is no particular time that Brahman did this or that. Brahman is timeless and eternal.

In contrast to that, the god of the religions created the world about six thousand years ago, and then over the following years, intervened to erase the mistakes that he made by commanding the killing of this or that tribe and frequently wiping the entire slate clean by wholesale genocide. It’s hard to conceive of a more laughably childish notion than that.

The dharmas are based on philosophy. That is why the dharmas are so much harder to understand, and also why the dharmas will persist long after the religions are dead and gone.

The religions are a product of history. They rely on a historical tale. That there were people such as Abraham, David, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed — who were born at some specific time (mostly in the last couple of thousand years) and revealed all sorts of incredible ideas.

The dharmas, in sharp contradistinction, are not revealed and are ahistorical. The characters are not located in some historical times. The figures matter not because of their antiquity but because of the ideas attributed to them.

Therefore a dharmic person like me is by definition an atheist — a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or gods, as defined by the religions. The question of the existence of an entity called god is an ontological matter. Does a god as defined by the religions exist? No, there is no such entity. It is logically inconsistent and therefore false.

The dominant religions of the world today are Christianity and Islam. Christianity is slowly and steadily declining. I conjecture that Islam will be dead in about ten or fifteen years. Christianity will take another few decades or so. I further conjecture that only the dharmas will endure. Why? Because the dharmas are based on philosophy.

The Sanatana dharma (commonly known as Hindu dharma) is the mother of the other two — Buddhism and Jainism. Its foundations are the Vedas (four of them) and the Upanishads. The two great epics of the Hindu dharma are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

The Mahabharata is huge — the longest epic poem in the world, over 200,000 shlokas (verses.) It is roughly 10 times the combined length of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Within the Mahabharata is the story of an internecine war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. One of the five Pandava brothers is Arjuna, a mighty warrior. As it happens, for the war Arjuna has as his charioteer Krishna.

Now Krishna is no ordinary being. He’s an incarnation of Vishnu. Vishnu, as it happens, is the ultimate reality, the Brahman. How Krishna ends up as Arjuna’s charioteer is a fascinating tale that I will go into later. For now, let’s get on with the story.

So then, the two armies of the Pandavas and the Kauravas were facing each other on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. It was a bright sunny day, I suppose. Arjuna, the great Pandav warrior, was resplendent in his chariot with Krishna his charioteer.

Then, just when the battle was about to begin, Arjuna has a crisis. What is this all about, he wonders. Why the heck am I doing this, he asks Krishna.

That’s how the Bhagavad Gita begins. Arjuna’s doubt. Fortunately there’s Krishna, the supreme being. The Gita is that conversation between Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Krishna teaches Arjuna yoga.

Let me have Alan Watts tell you about that. Listen.

That’s it for now.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.