Arjuna’s despair about killing friends and family raises questions about duty in extraordinary circumstances. A conversation with Krishna frames duty as something to perform without being driven by expected results. The speaker encounters the Bhagavad Gita during a college Hinduism class after skipping classes and struggling academically. A patient professor explains the idea of doing duty regardless of outcome, leaving a lasting influence despite mediocre grades. The speaker reflects on whether a child should attend college, questioning a costly credential system while valuing formative experiences like being guided to read and understand challenging material. The value of such guidance is difficult to measure, even if it seems banal or vain.
"In my writing, and in my idle thoughts, I often return to Arjuna's lament upon surveying the battlefield of Kurukshetra and finding that he must kill his friends and family. What is his duty in that extraordinary moment? What is my duty, then, in far more ordinary and less harrowing circumstances?"
"This question, which unfolds throughout a conversation with Krishna, appears in the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, a book I somehow did not know existed until I took a Hinduism class in college. I was not a good student, routinely skipping class, but, worried that there would be a price to pay for my truancy and bad grades, I tried, sometimes. A few books got read, including the Gita, which I didn't really understand until my professor-the sort of charming, gray-haired stoic found in religion departments of liberal-arts colleges across New England-explained, in a capacious and friendly way, that one should do their duty without considering the outcome."
"When I think about whether my nine-year-old will need to go to college, I mostly hope she won't, because I don't think this country should rely so heavily on a credentialling system that's far too expensive, inaccessible, and time-consuming to be worth it. But I do worry that she will miss out on experiences like mine, when a nineteen-year-old was forced to read something he wouldn't have otherwise and was guided toward a revelation, however banal or vain, by a patient professor. How do you place a value on something like that?"
"There will always be idealistic, ink-stained people who want to devote their lives to scholarly pursuits-their role to inspire young people to love ideas as they do. But this transfer, more than anything else in the academy,"
#duty-and-ethics #bhagavad-gita #education-and-mentorship #college-and-credentials #moral-responsibility
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