Action and Suffering, Knowing and Not Knowing in Murder in the Cathedral and the Bhagavad-Gita

Abstract

Before we bring a moral verdict on Thomas Becket’s progress as an evolved character, it will help to see the rationale of non-attachment in the light of verses from the Bhagavad-Gita. The passages on knowing-not, knowing, and action/suffering are re-examined here. All by himself, Thomas knows little. What he would know differently, both of/ for himself and others, requires that he seek his dharma by discovering how false or illusory his knowledge has been, and why. This essay tries to capture the pedagogic logic of learning what we know and what we do not. Learning by reciprocal exchange becomes a model for those who are averse to arguing from results. Intertexts like W. B. Yeats’s “Vacillation” and E. M. Forster’s “Hymn Before Action” help them read the Archbishop’s Christmas sermon all afresh. This essay concludes by arguing how Eliot himself found dramatic poetry an ideal vehicle for presenting action precisely the way the Gita exhorts us.