Bhagavad Gita: The Paradox of Dharma and its Ontology

Abstract

In the history of Indian philosophy, dharma has been re-evaluated and challenged multiple times by various schools of thought: is it is an injunction from above or one codified in scriptures? What happens when a scripture is authorless and what is then the validity of dharma? Can one follow dharma if it brings unfavorable results? It is in this context that Bhagvad Gita attempts to deal with dharma in a fictional context of a battle and in doing so raises more complex questions - it addresses the very paradox laying at the heart of dharma in a paradoxical manner. This paper looks at dharma in an ontological sense: the living dharma of Gita is a significant intervention, since Gita attempts to explain and thus justify the paradox of one’s being by proposing life of living dharma (not living a life of dharma).