There are many reasons to study the Gita in our old age – just ask Gandhi. Verse 36 of Chapter 4 of the Bhagavad Gita encourages us: “Even though thou be the most sinful of sinners, thou shalt cross the ocean of misery by the boat of knowledge.” In Gandhi’s commentary (recommended), the Mahatma addresses this passage from the standpoint of old age:
For me, the Gita is the ship, not because it is a learned work but because I have liked it, it has appealed to me in my old age, and verses in it have been a great support to me.
I agree with Gandhi on this, but with caveats. The Gita is a tricky document. It would seem to be the story of a strange blue God (Krishna) exhorting a young warrior (Arjuna) to get out on the battlefield and kill people, and yet Gandhi found his doctrine of non-violence in it. It is a war story that describes the war within us.
Again, the Gita is a little slippery, and many people have gotten it wrong. There was a popular book a few years back that assumed that the Gita was telling us to follow our bliss. That might be good advice, but it is not what the Gita is saying. The Gita’s message is more complex; it is more nuanced; it is more like life. I hope I can convey some of the complexity and the relevance of the Gita to aging – but, of course, you must read it for yourself.
I recently watched a golf movie that was based on the message of the Gita called The Legend of Bagger Vance. Good movie (directed by Robert Redford), but it didn’t quite hit the mark. However, the movie was close enough to get me to read the novel that it was based on, and that was indeed fortuitous. The novel, by Steven Pressfield, is somewhat drenched in the intricacies of golf. (I admit to skipping the long paragraphs in the sand traps.) I noted, when I have written about the Gita before, that Krishna values devotion of any kind – perhaps even devotion to the game of golf? The author has Bagger (the Krishna figure) tell us that “all sport is holy, for it embodies the objectified search for the subjective experience of yoga, meaning the union, union with the divine.” But golf is even better because:
In other sports the opponent is regarded as the enemy. We seek by our actions to disable him…This is not the way to salvation, or more accurately, it is at one remove. The golfer on the other hand is never directly affected by his opponent’s actions. He comes to realize that the game is not against the foe, but against himself. His little self… (121)
Read The Legend of Bagger Vance, but please read the Gita first.
The Gita pops up in unexpected places. Thoreau took Emerson’s copy with him to Walden. Emerson’s poem “Brahma” is all but lifted from the Gita. Whitman scribbled in his copy. Philip Glass wrote an opera using only the words of the Gita. Such references abound – there is even a Gita for the CEO. And I recently found another interesting citation.
It is my daily practice to read the lectionary of the Episcopal Church, wherein are noted feast days for people of note. Being curious, I often look up the souls honored there and thus came across the rather incredible Vida Dutton Scudder, whose feast day is on October 10. An American scholar, philanthropist, sometime pacifist, and activist, she also wrote a book about old age called The Privilege of Age, which I have been unable to find. I did, however, find her autobiography, On Journey, which was written in her seventies. In it, Scudder chronicles how, born in India as a child of Christian missionaries, she returned to England as a toddler when her father died in a swimming accident. He left her his books, among which was an early translation of the Gita. In Scudder’s long memoir, we get much about her participation in the Christian church, her development of settlement houses and retreat centers and the teaching of the principles of social work – her exemplary life goes on for hundreds of pages. But she reserves the precious last few paragraphs for the Gita. Specifically, she talks about how the Gita has prepared her for old age (Scudder lived into her nineties), and how the Gita’s admonition to care about the work, but not the results of the work. has taught her to let go of what went before. It also taught her courage:
…I turned to the Gita in the Great War, to dispel hesitant scruples. Then it taught me fearlessness, and gave me courage to accept the moral risks in action. Now the days of action are passed, does the somnolence of age creep over me?… The Gita shall say the last word; it is a word of comfort, it is still better, a word of hope:
“Following the Rule, cleansed of spirit, victorious over himself…his self becomes the Self of all born beings…. Putting away utterly all loves born of purpose, little by little, he shall win stillness [quoted from Gita 6].
The second chapter of the Gita famously tells us that “Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits.” In old age, it is often hard not to live in mourning for the fruits of our actions – individually or collectively. If we do so, we are not meeting the challenge of the moment, not facing the work that is before us of aging and death. And we must use what energies we have left to do the work that is left to us, while not relinquishing the stillness and peace that is our right.
If you have never read the Gita, please read it. Read it for the first time without many annotations. If you want to go further, there are some wonderful commentaries out there, including those by Gandhi (based on his talks) and Eknath Easwaran. Easwaran has a one volume translation with an excellent introduction, as well as a separate three-volume commentary. And if anyone has a copy of Scudder’s Privilege of Age, please let me know! She published an essay of that title in the Atlantic in 1933 which I have, but the full book was published in 1939.
When I Come To Be Old 