Setting the tone for our year long exploration of how religious and spiritual traditions approach ethical responsibility, in this brief talk Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, Jeremy Engels, will describe the ethics of the Bhagavad Gita and then complicate that ethics by situating the Gita in the narrative arc of the epic Mahabharata, of which the Gita is a chapter. He asks, under what circumstances is it ethical to act out of duty without concern for "the fruits"--i.e., the consequences--of one's actions, as the Gita teaches.