The concept is shraddha, and its nearest English equivalent is faith. I have translated it as such, but shraddha means much more. It is literally “that which is placed in the heart”, all the beliefs we hold so deeply that we never think to question them. It is the set of values, axioms, prejudices, and prepossessions that colors our perceptions, governs our thinking, dictates our responses, and shapes our lives, generally without our even being aware of its presence and power.
This may sound philosophical, but shraddha is not an intellectual abstraction. It is our very substance. The Gita says, “A person is what his shraddha is” (17:3). The Bible uses almost the same words: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Shraddha reflects everything that we have made ourselves and points to what we have become. But there is nothing passive about shraddha. It is full of potency, for it prompts action, conditions behavior, and determines how we see and therefore respond to the world around us.
When Norman Cousins talks about a “belief system” analogous to the body’s organ systems, that is one aspect of shraddha; he is referring to the power to heal or harm that is inherent in our ideas of ourselves. One person with a serious illness believes he has a contribution to make to the world and so he recovers; another believes his life is worthless and he dies: that is the power of shraddha. Similarly, self-image is part of shraddha. One person believes she will succeed in life and overcomes great obstacles; another, who believes she can do nothing, may be more gifted and face fewer difficulties but accomplish very little.
Yet shraddha is not brute determination or wishful thinking. When St. John of the Cross says “We live in what we love,” he is explaining shraddha. This is our world. Our lives are an eloquent expression of our belief: what we deem worth having, doing, attaining, being. What we strive for shows what we value; we back our shraddha with our time, our energy, our very lives.
Thus shraddha determines destiny. As the Buddha puts it, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. We are made of our thoughts; we are molded by our thoughts.” As we think, so we become. This is true not only of individuals but of societies, institutions, and civilizations, according to the dominant ideas that shape their actions. Faith in technology, for example, is part of the shraddha of modern civilization.
“Right shraddha” according to the Gita, is faith in spiritual laws: in the unity of life, the presence of divinity in every person, the essentially spiritual nature of the human being. Wrong shraddha” is not necessarily morally wrong, merely ignorant. It means believing that there is no more to life than physical existence, that the human being is only a biochemical entity, that happiness can be got by pursuing private interests and ignoring the rest of life. Such beliefs are misplaced: We have attached our shraddha to beliefs that life cannot bear out. Sooner or later they must prove false, and then our shraddha changes. Like our thinking, therefore – like we ourselves – shraddha evolves. The purpose of karma is to teach the consequences of shraddha, so that by trial and error, life after life, the individual soul acquires the kind of faith that leads to fulfillment of life’s supreme goal. Krishna explains the dynamics:
When a person is devoted to something with complete faith, I unify his faith in that. Then, when faith is completely unified, one gains the object of devotion. In this way, every desire is fulfilled by me. (7:21-22)
This is perhaps the most compassionate insight into human evolution ever expressed. The Gita is steeped in it, but it is not exclusive to the Gita or to Hinduism. “Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not,” says Meister Eckhart, “secretly Nature seeks and hunts and tries to ferret out the track in which God may be found” The whole purpose of every experience, every activity, every faculty, is to turn the human being inward and lead each of us back to our divine source. Thus every person seeking satisfaction in the world outside – pleasure, power, profit, prestige – is really looking for God: ‘As they approach me, so I receive them. All paths, Arjuna, lead to me” (4:11).
Two forces pervade human life, the Gita says: the upward thrust of evolution and the downward pull of our evolutionary past. Ultimately, then, the Gita is not a book of commandments but a book of choices. It does mention sin, but mostly it talks about ignorance and its consequences. Krishna tells Arjuna about the Self, the forces of the mind, the relationship between thought and action, the law of karma, and then concludes, “Now, Arjuna, reflect on these words and then do as you choose” (18:63). The struggle is between two halves of human nature, and choices are posed every moment. Everyone who has accepted this challenge, I think, will testify that life offers no fiercer battle than this war within. We have no choice about the fighting; it is built into human nature. But we do have the choice of which side to fight on:
Remembering me, you shall overcome all difficulties through my grace. But if you will not heed me in your self- will, nothing will avail you. If you egotistically say, “I will not fight this battle,” your resolve will be useless; your own nature will drive you into it. (18:58-59)
Therefore, remember me at all times and fight on. With your heart and mind intent on me, you will surely come to me. (8:7)
Thus the Gita places human destiny entirely in human hands. Its world is not deterministic, but neither is it an expression of blind chance: we shape ourselves and our world by what we believe and think and act on, whether for good or for ill. In this sense the Gita opens not on Kurukshetra but on dharmakshetra, the field of dharma, where Arjuna and Krishna are standing for us all.
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The following is an excerpt written by Eknath Easwaran, from the introduction to his translation of the Bhagavad Gita (on Amazon).
