THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 11
VERSE NUMBER 44
TEXT IN TRANSLITERATION:
tasmaat pranamya pranidhaaya kaayam
prasaadaye tvaam aham eesam eeddyam
pite ‘va putrasya sakhe ‘va sakhyuh
priyah priyaayaa ‘rhasi deva soddhum
SANSKRIT WORDS AND PHRASES AND THEIR MEANING IN ENGLISH:
tasmaat = therefore: prannamya = saluting: prannidhaaya = having bent: kaayam = body: prasaadaye = crave forgiveness: tvaam = thee: aham = I: eesam = the Lord: eeddyam = adorable: pitaa = father: iva = like: putrasya = of the son: sakhaa = friend: iva = like: sakhyuh = of the friend: preeyah = beloved: priyaayaah = to the beloved: arhasi = (thou) shouldst: deva = O God: soddhum = bear.
TEXT IN ENGLISH:
Therefore, bowing down, prostrating my body, I implore You, adorable Lord to forgive me. Bear with me, O Lord, as a father with a son, as a friend with a friend, as a lover with his beloved.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
When the glory of the Lord is realized man cannot help adoring Him. That adoration spontaneously expresses itself as bowing down and prostrating. The vast difference in power and wealth among the worldly people creates a gulf between man and man. But the greatness of God is no hindrance to the insignificant man gaining free access to Him. Arjuna feels instinctively the filial love of the son for the father. But there is a certain amount of reverent aloofness of the son from the father. That handicap is removed by raising the relationship to that between two intimate friends moving on terms of equality. This love is further made charming and sweet by converting it into the dotage of the lovers upon each other. None is dearer to man than God.
SRIMAT SWAMI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
When a man develops ecstatic love, he feels God as his own. It is like the Gopis(the shepherd girls) of Brindavan identifying themselves with Sri Krishna. They always claimed Him as Gopinatha (as the Lord of the shepherd girls) and not as Jagannatha (the Lord of the world).
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
The Supreme is not to be regarded as a transcendent mystery but also to us, as close as a father is to the son, as a friend to the friend or as a lover to the beloved. These human relations find in God their fullest realization and later Vaishnava literature utilizes these ideas more fully.
God as Father is a familiar conception to the Hindu. Rig Veda says: “Be of easy approach to us, even as a father to his son. Do thou, O Self-effulgent Lord, abide with us and bring blessings to us.” Again, Yajur Veda says: “O Lord, thou art our father; do thou instruct us like a father.” The Old Testament uses the image of the father. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” The idea of God as a father becomes the central conception in the teaching of Jesus.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI SIVANANDA:
O Lord, take me to Thy bosom as a mother does her child. Forgive me for all that I have hitherto spoken or done. Forgive my faults. Please overlook my past mistakes. I have done this through ignorance. Now I have come to Thee in submission. I beg Your pardon now.
Comments by the blogger:
Children are adorable because they are completely innocent. God is adorable because He loves us notwithstanding our mistakes; because we take the world for real and not as illusory and become victims to the Lord’s Maya or Illusion.
Only Karma Yogis and Bhakti Yogis (Yogis of the right action and devotion) know how to spend the 24 Maya-filled hours a day without incurring fresh karmic effect that results in our coming to this world’s plane repeatedly. The trick is to spend many many hours of each day in offering worship to the Lord and adoring Him. But we, taking this transitory life on the earth for real, spend as many hours as possible every day in amassing wealth which positively makes us helpless slaves to the illusions of the world. We have already seen the Story of Narada Maya and how the great Sage and devotee of Lord Krishna in His Narayana Form goes to the river with a pitcher for fetching water at the Lord’s bidding, and on seeing a beautiful woman there how the Sage Narada falls in love with her and begins to live with her: as the story goes, the woman gives birth to eight children and one day they all are swept away and killed by the surging tide of the river. The great Sage Narada sits on the bank of the river and cries piteously. The Sage is delivered and freed from the illusion only when the Lord Himself comes to the spot and put a question to the bewildered saint Narada as to what Narada was doing; that He had sent him only to fetch a pail of water in the river! The world is purposely filled with Maya or illusion. We easily fall a prey to the pulls and attractions of the Illusion. Those practising the Yoga of Devotion, on the contrary, spend as many hours as possible in simply adoring the Lord. And those practising Karma Yoga or the Yoga of Action continually indulge in endless activities but without expecting any reward for them.
Thus 24 hours a day is not a boon to us but a curse unless we are practising either the Yoga of Devotion or the Yoga of right Action.
And adoration automatically comes to the devotees and they love the Lord not for the sake of any returns but for the sake of loving.
The similes of father and son, the love between friends and lovers is evocative. All our love for this material world affects us with repeated births and deaths. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa says that all beings, both human and those belonging to the animal kingdom is striving for bliss in abundance. But they spend their lifetime repeatedly in every incarnation in focussing on the pleasures of this illusory world. But the ultimate Bliss involves the devotee and the Lord. We all bear the original bliss we were experiencing before our being sent to this world, and when we had been part and parcel of God. We were the children of Light or the Lord and after being sent to this world we forget our origin and begin to search for bliss in adulterated worldly things. But no being moves with any other motive than bliss. The Absolute Bliss waits for us when we mingle in God and become Him.
As far looking at the Great Lord as a Father or Master or Friend or lover the great 20th Century Tamil Poet Subramaniya Bharati excels all. He has written moving poetry on Lord Krishna as a friend, lover, father and even as a servant! The Lord comes to us in the form and idea as we pray Him with.
The Great Woman Devotee of Yore, namely, Aandaal, saw the Lord as her lover and refused to marry any human being! She has written evocative poetry clothing her boundless love to the Lord in Tamil and her description of her marriage with the Lord is famous for its sheerness of love and craving for the Lord’s society only as a husband!
Instead of adoring the Lord, we fall a prey to this world’s illusions and adore material things and the opposite sex. But all love of such kind ultimately is routed toward God in the course of the umpteen number of births and deaths. Step by step we become spiritual and lose interest in the worldly joys. The Great Tamil Saint, Sri Ramana Magarishi, says that when we become afflicted with a headache we try our level best and use lots of drugs because we remember the state of being when we had not a headache. Likewise, we are in continual search of small joys because we subconsciously remember our original state when we were all Children of the Light, which is the form of God.
I see the Lord Siva as my Master and myself His unflinching slave through the thick and thin of life. He has never given me any material comfort. For the last 25 years, I have been living from hand to mouth with my wife and two daughters. Lord Siva is also called in the Vedas as Rudra. And Siva is responsible for the Dissolution of the Universe, while Brahma and Vishnu take care of Creation and sustaining the beings. Rudra makes His worshippers cry and thus makes them entirely dependent on Him. Shedding tears in this world makes the way to Heaven rose-strewn. In all these twenty-five years of my married life, we have been literally existing on the bare minimum and absolutely without any saving! Rudra makes you go through fire and thus cleanse your mind which will fetch good births through the path of emancipation. But recently one miracle occurred. For quite some time I was offline and went back to my profession. Then a break from the profession occurred as my wife cut a tendon in her left hand. The surgery caused a lot of expense for me and unrelieved pain for my wife. I had to look after my wife. Thus I spent one month without going to the courts. But I never flinched by such an ordeal. My faith was put to an ultimate test. And a miracle occurred just about this time. To spend my leisure time I came back to my blogs. THE HOLY GITA blog was a great solace and spiritual experience for me. I wrote long comments for each verse this time. And all of a sudden the storm, Gaja, happened and our town went without electricity for four days consecutively. I felt miserable for I was not able to upload any post. Then on the fifth-day electricity was restored during the night time. I opened my laptop and keyed in. When I attempted to post the verses 41 and 42 I saw Google AdSense Ads! Immediately I rushed to the pooja room and thanked the Lord an umpteen number of times. Now I want to return back to blogging as a vocation and in the process earn money. I am not able to access other sites of mine except THE HOLY GITA. That’s why I have been going from pillar to post in the last couple of days. The restored electricity is only for the nights and during the daytime, we go without electricity. The system also has become very slow. We are experiencing rain every alternative day now. There is no electricity during the daytime. All these things come in the way of writing blogs in all of the sites. They say it would take one month to completely restore electricity. During this time all I could do is writing the site, THE HOLY GITA and hope for the best.
The Lord who takes away the peace of mind turns around and sweetens our life. We adore Him for the sake of itself.
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