ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the Bhagavad Gita will show us how the notions of intentionality and agency, key elements in the Western understanding of technology, can undergo a radical transformation. The drama of Arjuna, the warrior dropping his bow and arrow in battle, represents the conflicts that arise from such an understanding of technology. The assumption of an agent of action that moves itself impinges on beliefs in self-reliance, mastery, control, and ultimately political and religious freedom. The concept of action is introduced in the setting of the drama of a terrible battle in which the great warrior, Arjuna, finds that he has lost his courage to fight. Instead of challenging his reasoning in argument, Krishna, his charioteer diagnoses Arjuna's words as a symptom of cowardice. He perceives Arjuna's explanation as a rationalization of an unwillingness to fight. In response to Arjuna's confusion, Krishna distinguishes between abstention, renunciation and what had been, in Krishna's discourse on Karma Yoga, called "self-restraint".
