Here's Prince Arjuna on bended knee before his part-time charioteer and full-time god Krishna begging out of his job as a warrior just as the battle is about to start. This story is told in the Bhagavad-Gita, which has become a central episode in the epic Hindu scripture of the Mahabharata.Their discussion yields a mythos and logos for moving in and through the world in peace--the paradox being that throughout the work Krishna tells Arjuna to fight because he was born a warrior.
Now the Bhagavad-Gita is very subtle, wonderful and strange but it just struck me this morning how at odds it is with our modern American view: work should be something that, at least potentially, we enjoy, that might help us achieve self actualization. Here, however, Arjuna hates his job but must do it or the community will collapse. Now, as a near pacifist, the choice of the allegory makes me uncomfortable but the concept, I think, is right.
But to the writers of the Bhagavad-Gita this zeitgeist is an anathema--the individual is here to participate in a community where everyone has a role to play. When such roles are taken on--and the grasping ego left behind--the individual is freed to become part of something greater than himself: a community.
I agree with Sartre that, at least at times, 'Hell is other people.' But, from what I can see, the only way this life makes sense for the individual is by doing his work for, and in community with others. As such, there is a paradox: Sartre was right but, it is also right to say that heaven is other people as well.
