THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 4, JNANA KARMA SANYASA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF RENUNCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE OR THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE, VERSE NUMBER 36

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 4

JNANA KARMA SANYASA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF RENUNCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE OR THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE:

VERSE NUMBER 36

Text in Transliteration:

api ced asi paapebhyah paapakrrttamah

sarvam jnaana plavenai ‘va vrjinam samtarishyasi

Text in English:

Even if you be the most sinful of all sinners, yet shall you cross over all sin by the raft of knowledge.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

Sin and virtue are the obverse and reverse of the same fact which is karma. According to the use made of it, the same karma presents itself as sin or virtue. The ignorant do karma so as to get entangled in it as sin. The enlightened do the same karma to reap merit and also to be emancipated from it. Knowledge therefore is the only means to absolve all sin. As the unfordable river is crossed over by a raft, the meshes of karma are got over by knowledge.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

You can cross the ocean of sin with the boat of the knowledge of the self. (Cf. IX. 30)

Comments by the blogger:

I am 57. When I was a callow youth I read a novella story by an English author of mysteries. The name of the author slips my memory. But it doesn’t matter. He had written that story, an eminently readable one, out of the Buddhist philosophy and belief in rebirths. The protagonist of the novella is a criminal gang leader, who, inter alia, is a seller of narcotic drugs to young students. The police have a hard time in catching up with the protagonist who uses a high speed motor bike and often changes his location. It is a gripping story. In his criminal sojourn the protagonist comes into contact with a Buddha Pitchu or ascetic. He teaches the protagonist the fundamentals of the Buddhist faith which includes Man’s reincarnations many hundred times before he himself is turned into a Buddah or an emancipated soul. In the meanwhile the police are on the hot pursuit of the criminal gang leader, the protagonist’s trail. At last the gang leader makes all the arrangement for his gang to be carried on till he comes back to them in the next incarnation and in the climax, even as the much harassed police officer is in hot pursuit, the gang leader drives his motor bike straight against the trunk of a huge tree. There is a witness who saw the whole scene. He swears that he could never forget the smile on the gang leader’s face just before the dash!

A good mystery novella indeed! But even then I was not convinced. I thought why should he, the gang leader, take a rebirth at the place and town he was living before his suicide! Now I can tell that there is not even a guarantee that he would come back as a human being! What if he came back as a beast for many a birth! And all the scenario might have changed. Because it would be several hundred years, if we can tell, before he obtains a human birth! Even then there is no guarantee that he would be born in the city where he had been running the gang. All his mates and the members of the gang and the indefatigable police officer who had been very diligent in pursuing his case might have been dead and gone for centuries!              

The same way, can that fellow who pierced Nirbhaya’s stomach with a sharp instrument (a minor at the time who has since been released) practice yoga and obtain knowledge of the Self as mentioned in verses 25 to 30? Yes he can, should be the answer. But it would be one in a million chance for him to become a yogi! For his former imponderable crime and his act of having derived carnal benefit would continue to gall him and chase him through out this birth. And if he comes back here as a beast, it would be a just desert!

But theoretically is there a possibility for him to turn in to a yogi. Yes, certainly! The theoretical possibility is always there howsoever the odds might be heavy.

Such is the power of knowledge of the self! It can incinerate all sins and all the effect, good and bad, of the practitioner’s karma!