The human mind tends to become attached to externals. Among materialists, this tendency makes people attached to external material things, thereby keeping them trapped in material existence.
Among religionists who by understanding scripture recognize the need to come out of material existence and start practicing a spiritual path, this tendency persists. It makes them attached to the external formulas of the path and neglect its purpose. The Bhagavad-gita warns against this tendency when it (02.46) metaphorically reminds that the knower of the purpose of scripture is its actual knower. That purpose, the Gita specifies later (15.15), is to know Krishna and love him.
This central purpose of the tradition to redirect human love towards Krishna cannot be changed. But the specific ways in which it can be fulfilled in different social contexts is changeable, indeed, needs to be changeable.
Some people mistake that faithfulness to tradition means faithfulness to a frozen set of external formulas that are unchangeable for the rest of eternity. Such a conception of tradition is based on a grievously fragmented vision of the tradition – a vision blind to a vibrant part of the tradition, its flexibility. It is this flexibility that makes the unchanging core of the tradition sensible, viable and relishable for people in different social settings, generation after generation, millennia after millennia.
Of course, an excess of flexibility endangers the tradition by changing its core. That’s why the tradition needs living seers, the contemporary knowers of its purpose. These living embodiments of Gita wisdom ensure the balance between keeping it on one hand faithful and potent, and on the other hand flexible and relevant. This balances ensures that the tradition never becomes reduced to a museum exhibit, but instead expands as a living, transforming, empowering force of individual growth and social catharsis.
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