THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 5, SANYASA YOGA OR THE RENUNCIATION, VERSE NUMBER 23

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 5

SANYASA YOGA OR THE RENUNCIATION:

VERSE NUMBER 23

Text in Transliteration:

saknotee ‘hai ‘va yah sodhum praak sareeravimoksanaat

kaamakrodhodbhavam vegam sa yuktah sa sukhee narah

Text in English:

He who is able to resist the impulse of desire and anger even here before he quits the body—he is a yogi, he is a happy man.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

Desire or its counterpart anger is bound to make its appearance as long as life lasts in the body. They are capable of raising their hoods even while man is at the point of death. It is in and through indulgence, indulgent observation and covetous imagination that desire thrives. Anger, its negative expression, sprouts when the sense-objects prove themselves unpleasant. Desire fostered in the mind expresses itself in the physique by directing the senses covetously on their objects; there is then a longing for them visible in the countenance. Anger has its physical expression as perspiration, throbbing of the body, quivering of the lip and reddening of the eyes. A yogi is he who has quelled the impulses of desire and anger. This done, the bliss of Self becomes tangible to him.

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

Lust and greed have immersed people in sin. If you behold women as the embodiments of the Divine Mother, you will escape from the snares of lust and its aftermath, misery.

God- vision is impossible until desire is vanquished.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

The non-attachment from which inner peace, freedom and joy arise is capable of realization even here on earth, even when we lead embodied lives. In the midst of human life, peace within can he attained.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

Yukta means ‘harmonised’ or steadfast in Yoga or self-abiding.

Desire and anger are powerful enemies of peace. It is very difficult to annihilate them. You will have to make very strong efforts to destroy these enemies.

When the word kama (desire) is used in a general sense it includes all sorts of desires. It means lust in a special sense.

While still here means ‘while yet living’. The impulse of desire is the agitation of the mind which is indicated by hairs standing on end and cheerful face. The impulse of anger is agitation of the mind which is indicated by fiery eyes, perspiration, biting of the lips and trembling of the body. In this verse you will clearly understand  that he who has controlled desire and anger is the most happy man in this word, not he who has immense wealth, a beautiful wife and beautiful children. Therefore you must try your level best to eradicate desire and anger, the dreadful enemies of eternal bliss.

Kama (desire) is longing for a pleasant and agreeable object which gives pleasure and which is seen, heard of or remembered. Anger is aversion towards an unpleasant and disagreeable object which gives pain and which is seen, heard of or remembered.

A Yogi controls the impulse born of desire and anger, destroys the currents of likes and dislikes and attains to equaniminty of the mind, bu resting in the innermost Self, and so he is very happy. (Cf. VI. 18)

Comments by the blogger:

The word Yogi means many things in the Gita. Here the person who is free of desire before shedding his body is the yogi and the happy man. The object of life is happiness. The western world is a great satiators of desires. They are adepts in finding out new ways of living it off, as they claim. Desire, when being satiated, creates new situations and circumstances which form new desires. The White Man consumes a lot by way of rich food, clothing and drinks and what not. We are small pies to him. Now even the Indians, the Middle-Class Indians, not to count the thirty crore Indians who don’t know where their next meal will come from, have begun to ape the White Man. Eating out is essentially a White Man’s culture like dating, but today the Indians ape their white brothers and sisters and have given themselves shamelessly to the consumer culture. For McDonald and other multi national companies India is a hunting ground. The White Man creates lots of holes in the ozone layers. He has been doing this for nearly two and half centuries. He consumes a lot. And Indians have started to make pigs of themselves. There is no discretion. Pizza culture will not liberate man.

While the Hinduism acknowledges reincarnations, it wants Man to have few wants. Desire when stopped by others become anger, according to Swami Sidbhavananda. All our anger have arisen out of the disallowed desires. Desire for pizza can be substituted by desire for a desire to fill the empty stomach of a couple of children. Here desire is sublimated. And anger will not arise. The object of human birth is to find salvation. And it is not possible if we do not help others. If we consider ourselves as islands there is lurking an enemy in the form of desire.

Desire is not a Saturn. Desire can be sublimated like in the case of the self-giving life of Mahatma Gandhi. He alone could tell the kind of the sense of happiness he manufactured by giving his time for others. Our object is unconditional happiness in this world itself. We can achieve this by desiring to help others and make our lives a meaningful one.