THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER 4
JNANA KARMA SANYASA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF RENUCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE OR THE WAY OF KNLOWLEDGE:
VERSE NUMBER 11
Text in Transliteration:
Ye yatha maam prapadyante
Taams tathai ‘va bhajaamy aham
Mama vartmaa ‘nuvartante
Manusyaag paartha sarvasah
Text in English:
In whatever way men identify with Me, in the same way do I carry out their desires, men pursue My path, O partha, in all ways.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:
Different kinds of food suit different beings. What is food to one may be poison to another. But each being receives nourishment from the food it takes. Religions are similarly divergent fo sut the varying temperaments. Worship with the aid of an image, for example, is a help to one and a hindrance to another. An act held as the adoration of the Almighty by one path, is abhorred as blasphemy by another. But the same Lord recognizes the need for all these divergent paths, understands the urge in the hearts of the various types of devotees and graciously helps them all to attain perfection. It is incumbent on the aspirant to see into this universalism of the Lord. He sees into the glory of the Lord who sees how He is shaping all beings through their various paths.
The same Reality presents Itself as Nature when contacted through the senses, mind and intellect. Therefore, the sense-bound pleasure seekers are also adoring the same Reality in accordance with their understanding and attainments. All beings are verily resting in God and enjoying Him only,while their readings and interpretations of Him vary infinitely.
Mama varimaa: My path; the way of worshipping Me.
Sarvashah: on all sides; sarvaprakaaraih, in all ways, is another rendering.
This verse brings out the wide catholicity of the Gita religion. God meets every aspirant with favour and grants to each his heart’s desire. He does not extinguish the hope of any but helps all hopes to grow according to their nature. Even those who worship the Vedic deities with sacrifices and with expectation of reward find what they seek by the grace of the Supreme. Those who are vouchsafed the vision of truth convey it through symbols to ordinary people who cannot look upon its naked intensity. Name and form are used to reach the Formless. Meditation on any favourite form may be adopted. The Hindu thinkers are conscious of the amazing variety of ways in which we may approach the Supreme, of the contingency of all forms. they know that it is impossible for any effort of lovical reason to give us a true picture of ultimate reality. From the point of view of metaphysics (Paramartha), no manifestation is to be taken as absolutely true, while from the standpoint of experience (vyavahaara), every one of them has some validity. The forms we worship are aids to help us to become conscious of our deepest selves. So long as the object of worship holds fast the attention of the soul, it enters our mind and heart and fashions them. The importance of the form is to be judged by the degree in which it expresses ultimate significance.
The Gita does not speak of this or that form of religion but speaks of the impulse which is expressed in all forms, the desire to find God and understand our relation to Him.
The same Gd is worshiped by all. The differences of conception and approach are determined by local colouring and social adaptations. All manifestations belong to the same Supreme. “Vishnu is Siva and Siva is Vishnu and whoever thinks that they are different goes to hell.” He who is known as Vishnu is verily Rudra and he who is Rudra is Brahmaa. One entitiy functions as three gods that is Rudra, Vishnu and Brahma. Udayanaachaarya writes: “Whom the Saivas worship as Siva, the Vedaantins as Brahman, the Buddhists as Buddha, the Naiyyaayikas who specialize in canons of knowledge as the chief agent, the followers of Jaina code as the ever free, the ritualists as the principle of law, may that Hari, the Lord of the three worlds, grant our prayers.” If he had been writing in this age, he would have added “whom the Chritians devoted to work as Christ and the Mohammedans as Allah. God is the rewarder of all who diligently seek Him whatever views of God they may hold. The spiritually immature are unwilling to recognize other gods than their own. Their attachment to their creed makes them blind to the larger unity of the Godhead. This is the result of egotism in the domain of religious ideas. The Gita, on the other hand, affirms that though beliefs and practices may be many and varied, spiritual realization to which these are the means is one.
A strong consciousness of one’s own possession of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but truth added to a condescending anxiety for the condition of those who are in outer darkness produces a state of mind which is not remote from that of an inquisitor.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
I reward men by bestowing on them the objects they desire in accordance with their ways and the motives with which they seek Me. If anyone worships Me with selfish motives i grant him the objects he desires. If he worships Me unselfishly for attaining knowledge of the Self, I grant him Moksha or final liberation. I am not at all partial to anyone. (Cf. VII.21 and IX. 23)
Comments of the blogger:
Arjuna is called by the Lord in this stanza as Partha. Partha means the son of Priti, Kunti. Thus Partha and Kaunteya (O, son of Kunti) are one and the same thing. The Lord addresses Arjunan in the Gita in various ways. In the stanza number 7 the Lord says, “Whenever there is decay of dharma and rise of adharma, then I embody Myself, O Bharata.” This is to convey that even as Arjunan has come as a Bharata, the highest of the clan among kshathriyas, the Lord comes into this world with highest merits. In verse number 5 the Lord says, “Many are the births taken by Me and you, O Arjuna. I know them all while you know not, O Parantapa.” Here, Parantapa means the scorcher of the foes. The Lord means, “While with my knowledge undimmed by the incidents of births continuously know all the happenings of my birth, while you don’t know. The reason is you don’t have the fire of Knowledge that can scorch the ignorance you suffer from. Even as you are a formidable archer and can scorch your enemies in war, you should develop the yogic fire of knowledge that will scorch the ignorance you suffer from!
Here in verse 11 Arjuna is addressed as Partha which is equal to Kaunteya, the son of Kunti. Whenever the Lord uses either of these epithets, Partha or Kaunteya what He really means is that even ordinary man born of the womb of a woman can do or understand what He says in the verse.
In verse 11 the Lord means any average ordinary man and woman can have access to Him and pray to Him in whatever manner and using whatever name to address Him.
That apart, as Dr. S. Radhakrishnan exhaustively deals with, the religion of Gita shows an approach which can only be described as Catholicity of religion.
There is an ample scope for human beings to approach God. The beauty is one can get from Nature what he can get from God! Can you follow me!
The real religion of the Vedic Sages and Saints related to worshipping the Five Elements. Nature is made of five elements, which are Fire or Agni, Water, Wind, Earth and Sky. They invoked these elemental gods in their sacrifices and got whatever they wanted. They found out the properties of Fire or Agni and through Agni they gave oblations to other gods and the deceased forefathers for the appeasement of their soul. Thus they had understood the Universal and the Individual soul and they were satisfied with their gods plus Rudra or Siva and Vishnu. These two Gods came to have predominance in the later age. But for the Vedic Saints Rudra and Vishnu were among the gods they invoked in their hymns and prayed, and propitiated in their sacrifices.
What is important is that the same benefits one seeks from Lord Siva or Vishnu can be obtained from the elemental gods even now. In the villages, one can see commonly in tanks that after one finishes bathing, people standing waist deep in water and look up at the sun and pray to the sun god. This is a common sight in villages even now.
Prahalad is a great devotee and his father, Hiranyasippu, a king claiming to be God and greater than the Lord Vishnu, would make his subjects to worship him as God. But his own son, Prahalad being a great devotee of the Lord Vishnu would stoutly deny to worship his father and always speak and sing about the greatness and glory of the Lord, Vishnu. For this Prahalad would be victimized by his own father. No punishment he handed over to his son could cure his devotion to the Lord Vishnu. At one stage Prahalad’s father would challenge his son to show him Prahalad’s God. Prahalad would answer, “He is everywhere”. At this,the father would be enraged and show a pillar and ask, “Is your God in this pillar?” The son would answer, “My God is in the pillar as well as a speck of dust.” At this,his father would once again, “Is your God in this pillar?” When his son says, “Yes!” Hiranyakasipu, the father would give the pillar a kick with his leg. At the Lord Vishnu emerges out of the pillar and kills the father who claimed Godhood.
For the limited purpose of ours it is interesting to know that God is claimed by Prahalad, the staunch devotee to be everywhere.
Nature is scintillating with the Cosmic Intelligence. Whichever god or God we pray to if the prayer is soulful and full of shradha or belief, then even the selfish prayer is granted within the boundaries of the Prarabta karma of the individual.
In the early times of the Christian religion they butchered all who worshiped gods other than Jesus Christ. Likewise the Mohammadanism claims Allah the Great to be the only God and makes it one of the bounden duty of the average Muslims to go for jihad or wage a war against faithless persons who are idol worshipers. Jesus Christ told His disciples to propagate His message at the risk of being butchered by the infidels. This is the problem with these two religions. Everywhere we see the Christian faithful folks entering unbidden the Hidu houses with leaflets about the Messaiah. Bible culture is just 2000 years old. And less than that is that of is the age of the Mohmmadan culture. But Rig-Vedic period is fixed at a period even by the foreign scholars, the White Men, BC2000, which means 4000 years from today. The Egypt, Greek and Roman cultures, which can be said flourishing at the time of the Upanishadic Period have all fallen to pieces without a trace. But the Hindu culture is the one that continues even now without any break whatsoever notwithstanding many an invasion and resultant bids to propagate their religious culture.
Today’s world needs Hinduism more than ever. Only the Hindu dharma can save the world. you may go to the church or mosque everyday. There need not be any problem. But don’t try to slurp up with money power in the case of Christians and plan to butcher Hindus with the help of Pakishtan which is an Army with a State, the Hinduism and Hindu way of life. No Hindu would try to propagate his religion, for one is born a Hindu not converted a Hindu. The 150 million Muslims and Christians can convert voluntarily, which is logical, to Hinduism, as their religiou roots are staunchly embedded in Hinduism. But it should be an act voluntary. No Muslim or Bible reader should be forced to return to their mother religion.
The third world war is said to be likely on the question of potable water. Now is the time for the Hindu way of life. Men and women should use the Nature’s resources with abundant caution like a sparrow. No one with money power has the authority to use resources more than he or she could chew.
God is watching through Nature and Nature is our school. Not only we must graduate but the generations to come must have enough Natural resources. For this Hindu way of life is an ideal way. Worshipping Alla, the Great, or Jesus Christ, one should follow the Hindu way of life.
And as for the intrinsic meaning of this verse (11) I request the readers to give several readings to the commentary given by Dr.S. Radhakrishnan.
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