Some people perpetrate terrorism in the name of religion. Being angry with others about past wrongs – factual, exaggerated or imagined – they misappropriate religion as an instrument of their rage. Cherrypicking quotes from religious texts, they rationalize and exacerbate their anger against everyone, even innocents, till it becomes a cold calculating brutality dead to any ethical or even human twinges of conscience.

Such reprehensible terrorism must be condemned and countered. Simultaneously, we need to counter the atheistic propaganda that lumps all religion together, blaming it as the cause of terrorism. Some atheists even allege that the Bhagavad-gita’s battlefield context implies its consent of such violence.

They couldn’t be further from the truth. The Gita (16.21) categorically declares that anger is one of the three drives that comprise the gates to hell. And the next verse (16.22) states that such self-destructive drives must be transcended by those who wish to achieve the supreme destination. To help us achieve that destination, Krishna descends and establishes dharma (04.08). By practicing dharma, we become purified of material consciousness and attain his abode, the supreme destination (04.10).

The Gita’s essential message is that we cultivate higher consciousness, free from degrading drives such as anger. Even when the Gita addresses its contextual issue of fighting, it (03.30) asks Arjuna to first cultivate spiritual consciousness, going beyond materialistic drives such as selfish desire, ego and lethargy.

True religion requires that we regulate our anger, not aggravate it. Ideologies that aggravate anger are not religion, but are its antithesis. Proponents of such pseudo-religious ideologies go far away from the spiritual consciousness that is the purpose of religion. Their rationalization won’t save them from the karmic consequences of their depravity.

Real religion inspires people to rise beyond destructive drives such as anger. Thus, it serves as an instrument of peace, internal and external.

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