THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 5, SANYASA YOGA OR THE RENUNCIATION, VERSE NUMBER 21

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 5

SANYASA YOGA OR THE RENUNCIATION

VERSE NUMBER 21

Text in Transliteration:

baahyasparseshv asaktaatmaa vindaty aatmani yat sukham

sa brahmayoga yuktaatmaa sukham akshayam asnute

Text in English:

With the self detached from the external contacts he realizes the bliss in the self. Devoted as he is to the meditation of Brahman, he enjoys imperishable Bliss.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

Those pleasures are perishable which are born of contact with the objects outside. They are styled sense-pleasures. The purified mind enjoys the Bliss of Atman; and this Bliss suffers from no mutation. It is therefore held as being imperishable.

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

There are signs of the awakened ones—those that have got into Atma bodha. Those blessed ones are like the mythological Chakravaka bird which, even when parched with thirst to the point of death, does not alight on earth full of water, but seeks to slake it with the rain water only if and when available up in the sky. The God-intoxicated ones revel only in Him and in nothing else.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

He, who has freed himself from the phantoms of the senses and lives in the Eternal, enjoys the bliss divine.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

When the mind is not attached to external objects of the senses, when one is deeply engaged in the contemplation of Brahman, he finds undecaying bliss in the Self within. If you want to enjoy the imperishable happiness of the Self within, you will have to withdraw the senses from their respective objects and plunge yourself in deep meditation on the Self within. This is the gist of this verse.

Comments of the blogger:

We have seen elsewhere the quantification of the Bliss of Brahman.

To have this bliss here on earth by human beings is possible. All he has to do is to withdraw his senses from the sense objects and concentrate on Brahman.

Swami Sidbhavananda would say that every being is in search of this bliss in its own way. Every being from the little earthworm is in search of the Brahma bliss. The millennial search leads to birth as human being and then when the worm comes here as human being then there is illusion and kama and karma. When the human being was a warm he was lead by pure instincts. But when he comes and evolves as a human being, he is tossed into the Samsara Sagaram which is an ocean of worldly life. And the erstwhile worm gives as a human being himself or herself to the bliss and sorrow of the worldly life whole-heartedly. It takes hundreds of rebirths as the human being and one by one the being shed his or her likes and dislikes for the worldly objects. And at one time he or she hears about Scriptures and yoga and he performs yoga. And this is the starting point when he would have the Brahmic bliss. Little by little the human being turned yogi, through various births evolves into a perfect yogi. Then there is no allurement for his or her senses for worldly objects. The single-minded object is Brahman. When Brahman alone is the whole goal then Brahman indeed attained. Then the bliss of Brahman is attained. No more sorrow as there is no more worldly life. The individual soul enters the Brahmic Soul which is Sat-Chit-Ananda(endless and everlasting bliss). Thus the earthworm, which had its origin in the single cell animal, has attained Brahmahood!