Rethinking Krishna

The Temple of Hanuman is developing quickly, far faster than I expected. Because it is the first of what I anticipated would be three parts, and because The End of Reason is constructed similarly of three parts, I didn’t expect the Temple of Hanuman to be longer than 20,000 words. I’m already nearly halfway to that point. I’m relatively satisfied that the Temple of Hanuman is moving in the right direction thematically, though there is room for improvement over the current draft. Yet I’m becoming increasingly uneasy that the exclusive focus in the Temple of Hanuman on stories of and relating to Rama will not have the impact that I need of it. I’ve fought the urge repeatedly in the last weeks to slip in references to Krishna from the Gita Govinda and the Bhagavad Gita. Issues that Aurangzeb raises are not, in my view, adequately answered by reference only to the Ramayana (whichever version: I rely primarily on Valmiki but am finding the Kamban version a useful perspective on some of the stories and am enjoying the somewhat amateurish but occasionally inspiring televised version [in 78 parts] which relies on those and many other versions of the Ramayana.) In fact, the arguments that I’m making relying exclusively on reference to Rama could be much strengthened by adding references to the life and mission of Krishna. I could not only strengthen arguments I’m already making, but adding stories of Krishna will improve the work as narrative entertainment, and will allow me to address head on issues of caste and reincarnation, which are not a focus of the Ramayana. Introducing references to Krishna, however, would add a level of complexity to the work that may be difficult to manage. Consider that Hanuman is remembered as Rama’s servant, not Krishna's. But this complexity would add a new dimension to the work that allows me to make what I feel is the most crucial argument: to borrow from the Quran, I can argue more persuasively, “No distinction do We make between any of His messengers.”

Adding references to Krishna will eliminate the need for the second of the three planned books and will cause the Temple of Hanuman to run twice as long as the planned, but not realized, last book of Breaking the Wheel that was to include coverage of the Buddha. I suspect that my decision will be to include stories of Krishna in the Temple of Hanuman and forget the second of the three books and likewise to eliminate the third book altogether, and save stories of the Buddha either for a later work or ultimately to pull those references into the Temple of Hanuman. At the moment, however, my focus is getting stories from the Ramayana down on paper and in some kind of order to make coherent arguments about the nature of religious revelation. In short, now that I’ve made some progress, I’m feeling that my original plan for the work was probably the best plan and that the plan I developed later, breaking the books up by religious figure (book one-Rama, book two-Krishna, book three-the Buddha) was merely my attempt at that time to approach the problem of integration by avoiding it entirely. In retrospect, the plan was flawed and I’m likely to abandon it. Unless, of course, I change my mind again. In the meantime I plan to finish the work with reference only to the Ramayana and then, in the second draft stage, begin incorporating and integrating stories from the life of Krishna.