THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 5, SANYASA YOGA OR THE RENUNCIATION,VERSE NUMBER 16

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 5

SANYASA YOGA OR THE RENUNCIATION:

VERSE NUMBER 16

Text in Transliteration:

Jnaanena tu tad ajnanam yesaam naasitam aatmanah

Teshaam aadityavaj jnaanam prakaasayati tat param

Text in English:

Shining like the sun, knowledge reveals the supreme in them, in whom ignorance is destroyed by self-knowledge.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

Darkness vanishes when the sun rises; ignorance ceases to be with the dawn of knowledge. As the sunlight reveals things in their true perspective, Self-knowledge or Brahma-jnanam posits the Reality of Brahman and the evanescence of Prakriti. The knower of Brahman knows he is Brahman and none else.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

tatparam; paramaartha tatvam; ultimate reality. Shankara

The Self above the ego is not touched by sin or merit, by joy or sorrow. It is the witness of all.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

When ignorance, the root-cause of human sufferings, is annihilated by the knowledge of the Self, this knowledge illuminates the Supreme Brahman or that highest immortal Being, just as the sun illumines all the objects of this gross, physical universe.

Comments of the blogger:

The Supreme is in them, that is, beings. Tatvamasi or Thou art that, when it is realised the Self-Knowledge shines like the sun. For that ignorance shading Knowledge has to be got over by annihilation thereof. The reason for the Lord’s love for the sinners and others, for the way He clubs them both together in the stanza last, is ignorance. This ignorance is not the making of Man to start with. Man is tossed into the samsara sagaram or the ocean of worldly life, and this presupposes illusion that gives rise to desire and desire ends up in actions non-stop. So, at least, to start with Man or individual soul is not responsible for the ignorance. It is rather instilled by the Greater Self or the Omnipotent to conduct its sport divine on the individual souls. That is why we should not take anything in the worldly life including a death in the family so very seriously. We are not responsible for the initial ignorance. One Self gets crystallized into a teaming number of individual souls. The only difference between the two is while the individual souls must play the swadharmic karma or self-ordained duty in a way that would shrink and reduce the number of births, the Omnipotent remains supremely free of any action. Once the self-ordained duty is being continually carried out by the individual souls, then devotion comes in and we must pray to our Lord Master for deliverance along with a list of worldly things. The objective should be to reduce the number of rebirths. When we exert ourselves in this way, Nature will help us by withdrawing her pull on us and we would become that much more relevant in shedding ignorance and head toward the attainment of self-knowledge. Nature is a benign Mother. She never pulls back her punch for those who are after the worldly lures. Such people can’t even have time for a decent ten minutes’ prayer to the Lord. But if we persevere, Nature starts to tilt in our way and puts accidental and coincidental things in our way that all help in shedding the ignorance. 

Even a continuous chanting of the Lord’s name will deliver us!