What is Stephen Harper Reading?

Dedication:

To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
This book of Hindu Wisdom,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel

Letter:

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON  K1A 0A2

Dear Mr. Harper,

With this fifth book, I am taking you in a direction you might find surprising: Hindu scripture. There is much Hindu scripture about, into the thousands of pages. You might have heard of the Vedas, especially the Rigveda, or of the Upanishads, or of the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, among many others. In their lengthy and varied entirety, they are the sum total of the thinking about life of an ancient and still thriving civilization, that which started in the Indus valley, the place that today we call India. It’s all quite dizzying. If you feel that you know nothing, that you are paralyzed with fear and ignorance, don’t worry: we all feel that way. I’m sure even devote Hindus feel that way at times.

That feeling of fear and ignorance is in fact a good starting place, because it’s exactly how Arjuna feels at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita, the book you now have in your hands. The Gita is one short part of the Mahabharata, a much longer text, and it is the best known of Hindu scriptures, certainly the most widely read, and because of that arguably the most important. What Arjuna needs, what I need, what you need, what we all need, is a lesson in dharma, in proper conduct. And that is the lesson that Arjuna receives from Krishna, who is Arjuna’s charioteer and friend but who also happens to be the Lord Supreme God of All Things.

Arjuna is on the eve of a great battle. He has asked Krishna to drive their chariot between the two facing armies and he surveys the assembled mass of soldiers. He sees that he has friends and enemies on both sides and he knows that many will die. That is when he loses heart.

Arjuna’s battle may have its origins in a real, historical event, but in the Bhagavad Gita we are to read it as a metaphor. The true battle here is the battle of life and each one of us is an Arjuna facing his or her life, with all its daunting challenges.

I suggest you read neither the introduction by the scholar nor that by the translator, though Juan Mascaró’s translation is excellent; that’s why I chose it for you. It’s clear and poetic, uncluttered by jargon or pedantry. Read it aloud and you will feel the cosmic wind blowing through the words. But the introductions, leave aside, I suggest, because it is the same thing with Hinduism as with every religion: there are matters of history and there are matters of faith. The Jesus of history is one thing, the Jesus of faith another. Search too far into the Jesus of history and you will lose yourself in anthropology and miss the point. The Gita of faith—much like the Jesus of faith—will have its greatest influence on you if you take it entirely on its own terms, making your own way through its grand injunctions and baffling mysteries. The Gita is a dialogue between one man and God, and the best reading of it, at least initially, is as a dialogue between one reader and the text. After that first encounter, if you want, scholars can be of help.

There may be ideas here that will irk you. By Western standards, there is a streak of fatalism running through Hinduism that will bother some. We live in a highly individualistic culture and we make much of the exertions of our egos. Perhaps if we took to heart one of the fundamental lessons of the Gita—to take action with detachment—we might exert ourselves in a calmer way and see that the ego, in the scheme of things, really is a puny, transitory thing.

Read the Bhagavad Gita in a moment of stillness and with an open heart, and it will change you. It is a majestic text, elevated and elevating. Like Arjuna, you will emerge from this dialogue with Krishna wiser and more serene, ready for action but filled with inner peace and loving-kindness.

Om shanti (peace be with you), as they say in India.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

encl: one inscribed paperback book

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