THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER TWO
SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE
VERSE NUMBER 51
Text in Transliteration:
Karmajam buddhiyuktaa hi phalam tyaktvaa manishinah
janma bandha vinirmuktaah padam gacchanty anaamayam
Text in English:
The wise, imbued
with evenness of mind, renouncing the fruits of their actions, freed from the
fetters of births, verily go to the stainless state.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
The yogi views all
forms of karma alike, imbued as they are with misery in varying degrees. He converts
the misery-laden karma into the misery-freed one. It is characteristic of karma
to perpetuate the wheel of birth and death. But the yogi in his wisdom renders
it effectless in this respect. Converting evil into good is the best of all
dexterities. Lord Siva converts the world-destroying poison into the
world-saving nectar. The yogi walks the way of Siva. He handles the
bondage-producing karma in such a way that it becomes the freedom-yielding one;
yoga is the panacea of all evils in the world.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S. RADHAKRISHNAN:
Even when alive, they are released from the bond of birth
and go to the highest state of Vishnu called moksha or liberation, which is
free from all evil.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
Clinging to the
fruits of actions is the cause of rebirth. Man takes a body to enjoy them. If anyone
performs actions for the sake of God in fulfilment of His purpose without
desire for the fruits, he is released from the bonds of birth and attains to
the blissful seat or the immortal abode.
Sages who possess
evenness of mind abandon the fruits of their actions and thus escape from good
and bad births.
Buddhi referred to
in the three verses 49, 50 and 51 may be the wisdom of the sankhyas, i.e., the
knowledge of the Self or Atma-Jnana which dawns when the mind is purified by
karma yoga.
Comments by the blogger:
It is only the wise who can become indifferent to the fruits
of one’s actions. And they are wise because they are freed by the same karma
that bounds others. Thus, the wise ones, carrying out the actions here on the
earth plane without any expectation whatsoever, are freed from the fetters. What
are the fetters? The bondage of re-birth-producing fruits of one’s actions
becomes fetters indeed, because it bounds the soul to the body anew again and
again. They are fetters condemning ourselves to having to take any number of
unending re-births. But the stainless state is the freedom from re-births. Thus
the souls become one with the Lord or almost attain that state.
But the question I am preoccupied is that our youths become
coy when someone speak about our Scriptures, especially when things like the
bondage of re-births are mentioned. It is as though they have to bear this
yolk; being looked down by others as superstitious for this purpose. Hello,
there is no superstition or idle thought in the belief of re-births. Today man
has attained a state of scientific and technological stage that make the Hindus
become shy in front of their European or Western Colleagues.
Time and again let me tell our youths that it is one of the
Gifts of Hinduism to the world, like the yoga. Even like the yoga can be
practised by one and all to the same results, this belief in re-births is one
of the original gifts of our Saints and Sages. So, please, have faith in them
and in their wisdom. Already the world is ridden with too much that is not good
and Man has become a hypocrite so far One’s religion is concerned. If we and
our youths too lose faith in the timelessness of the wisdom of our meditative
Saints and Sages, it is the world which will ultimately pay the price. This pursuit
of shamelessly open materialism is not good for us or our succeeding
generations.
The Romans, despite
their superiority of thoughts, had become so vulgar that they used to have
vomiting chambers. After filling their bellies by a multi-course meal, they
would retire to this chamber and vomit what they ate so their
stomachs would become empty again for them to eat again! This kind of unbridled
materialism eventually killed a great culture.
Now the world has been turned into a vomiting chamber, so to
say. When cars were necessary it used to be a good scientific invention. Now when
five out of ten own cars with the remaining five wanting to own cars like
death, the very invention has become a vomiting chamber. We no longer travel
for necessity or knowledge, we mainly travel for pleasure these days. We no more
dress ourselves to safeguard our modesty, but to satisfy our insatiable ego and
the self-killing wants to show off. Like this we no longer do or speak anything
because it is very necessary, but just to boost our ego. And there is no end
and when we fuel our ego the needs would become endless.
With the result the world has been turned into a vomiting
chamber; one great chamber to just eat and vomit and eat and vomit; use and
throw; use, even when there is no necessity for the same. Almost seventy percent
of what the normal modern Man possesses is nothing but excess. But the scheme
of the Universe will not tolerate this. We have successfully torn up the ozone
layer. And the results intolerable hot weather and flood. The climatic change
is indeed the new invention of the Modern Man.
When our ancient Seers and Saints invented the systems of
yoga! They discovered the scheme of the universe. They discovered the
bondage-begotten nature of action. They wanted us to use our wisdom, and make
use of the yoga of wisdom to turn the bondage-begotten action into
Freedom-Giving action. They showed the way to end the number of births, and
modern man has invented how to increase the bondage of re-births by the
hundreds in just a few minutes’ living. Cine stars rule the world. Corporate barons,
the tobacco barons, the gun barons rule the world.
We should let our Saints to rule our hearts and mind. Otherwise
we would be the manufacturers of the Kalki yuga when all will come to an end.
So, let the Hindu youths become proud of their Scriptural
Revelations and beliefs such as in re-births.
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