When I was 18 or 19 years old I read the Bhagavad Gita. It’s an ancient Indian spiritual story that is a
conversation between Arjuna, a prince, and Krishna, a god, about whether Arjuna
should participate in a great battle. Arjuna doesn’t want to do it. He says he
would rather die. Krishna tells him he must fight. I didn’t understand why Krishna said this. I
was against war. I saw it as stupid, horrible and wasteful. I read it again when I was in my mid-thirties
and still didn’t get it. I still thought that war shouldn’t be, that fighting
was wrong, that participating in battles was not spiritual.
In my late fifties I moved from the city out into the wild.
My wife and I live at a remote biological field station in the central Arizona
highlands. Our neighbors are thousands
of species of plants and animals. It is very beautiful. At first glance it
looks so peaceful - everything living together in harmony. When you look closer
it becomes obvious that it’s a battle at every level. Everything in nature is fighting for its
existence as a species. The field of grass gently waving in the breeze in front
of our house consists of a dozen or more different species fighting each other
for limited water, sun and nutrients. The rabbit that just ran across our meadow
evolved to more efficiently evade coyotes and mountain lions and the lions have
evolved to more efficiently catch and eat rabbits.
In our guts, communities of microbes are at war with each
other. Some help us digest our food and others keep them in check so they don’t
take over. White blood cells course through our veins looking for intruding
bacteria and viruses. Invading microbes are constantly adapting to better enter
and live our bodies. The ability to respond to a million different threats
resides in our genes.
We just had a scientist out here that specializes in
studying adaptive mechanisms in a species of wild tobacco. In the leaves are
structures called phytochromes that detect a certain frequency of light that
means that it is in the shadow of a taller plant. This detection triggers the
plant to grow taller so it can out-compete the other plant for light. Another
mechanism in the roots somehow knows when another plant is too close to it.
This triggers faster root growth to compete with its neighbor. There are
hundreds of mechanisms like this in every living thing. I think I am finally beginning to understand
what the Gita was talking about. The battle described in the book is a metaphor
for life.
Not only is life a battle, it’s not fair at all. Individual
animals and plants vary in their ability to survive and adapt. We humans are
the same. We each are born with unfair advantages and disadvantages and events
and random circumstances during our lives can kill us, weaken us or even make
us stronger and more able to survive. We are genetically designed to try to
compensate for disadvantages, threats, etc. by strengthening defenses and
offenses and/or by enhancing undamaged systems to compensate for the damaged
ones. These are the strategies and tactics of war.
By now you might be pretty unhappy with what I have been
saying. It really sounds pretty terrible. Peace is impossible. Life is not
fair. The best we can hope for is to fight battle after battle until we
inevitably lose and die.
The survival of individuals has never been the goal of life.
It’s always been about survival of the species. The Gita poses all this in
spiritual terms but you don’t need to believe in any god, reincarnation, or an
afterlife to change your perspective. To participate in the conflict, not for our individual selves, but for each other is probably the only
way to achieve a modicum of personal peace and equilibrium.
I believe it was Joseph Campbell who said, “When
we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we
undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.” This is not just some
spiritual mumbo jumbo. There is a biological imperative behind it. It turns out that the battle can be glorious and fulfilling when done for a good cause. Being involved in something larger than oneself can be awesome, even if it doesn't even work out. I guess we are just wired that way.
