THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 14
VERSE NUMBER 02
GUNATRAYA VIBHAGA YOGA OR THE YOGA
OF THE DIVISION OF THE THREE GUNAS
TEXT IN TRANSLITERATION
idam jnanam upaashritya mama
saadharrmayam aagatah
sarge ‘pi no ‘pajaayante pralaye na
vyathanti cha
SANSKRIT WORDS AND PHRASES AND
THEIR MEANING IN ENGLISH:
idam = this: jnaanam = knowledge:
upaashritya = having taken refuge in: mama = my: saadharmyam = unity: aagataah
= having attained to: sarge = at the time of creation: api = also: na = not:
upajaayante = are born: pralaye = at the time of dissolution: na = not:
upajaayante = are born: pralaye = at the time of dissolution: na = not:
vyathanti = are (they) disturbed: cha = and.
TEXT IN ENGLISH:
They who, having devoted themselves
to this knowledge, have attained to unity with Me, are neither born at the time
of creation, nor are they disturbed at the time of dissolution.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI
CHIDBHAVANANDA:
The doll of salt consigned to the
sea loses its assumed individuality and regains its natural state. Even such is
the case with the Jnaani. He gets himself identified with Brahman, who is
beyond the modifications of Prakriti. Transmigrations involving him in births
and deaths do not trouble and tarnish him.
SRIMAT SWAMI RAMAKRISHNA
PARAMAHAMSA AS QUOTED BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
Boiled paddy does not sprout when
sowed in the field. But the unboiled grain keeps on propagating. The man bathed
in the fire of Brahma jnana is no more troubled with births and deaths. But the
ignorant one cannot escape from that ordeal.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
Life eternal is not dissolution
into the indefinable Absolute but attainment of a universality and freedom of
spirit, which is lifted above the empirical movement. Its status is unaffected
by the cyclic processes of creation and dissolution, being superior to all manifestations.
The saved soul grows into the likeness of the Divine and assumes an
unchangeable being, eternally conscious of the Supreme Lord who assumes varied
cosmic forms. It is not svaroopataa or identity but only samaanadharmataa or
similarity of quality. He becomes one in nature with what he seeks, attains
saadrrsyamukti. He realizes the divine in his outer consciousness and life. Cp.
“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
Mathew v. 48. Shankara’s view is different from this. He holds that saadharmya
means identity of nature and not equality of attributes.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI
SIVANANDA:
Having resorted to this knowledge
they (the sages) are assimilated into My own nature. They have attained to My Being. They have
become identical with Me. They live in Me with no thought of “thou” or “I”.
They go beyond birth and death. There is no birth for them when creation begins
and there is no death for them at the time of dissolution. Having reached Me
they attain eternity, immortality and perfection. Having become identical with
Me through the attainment of the knowledge of the Self by practising the necessary means, they are neither born at the
time of creation nor are they disquieted at the time of dissolution. Knowledge
of the Self is eulogised by the Lord in this verse.
Comments by the blogger:
What indeed happens when a man or
woman is freed completly from the birth-death compulsion to which ordinary
mortals like us are subjected?
One viewpoint is, as
Dr.S.Radhakrishnan puts it succinctly, that the completely emancipated Souls
attain to immortal life, having become freed from the yoke of the Time—the
past, present and future—and partake of the attributes of God, the Creator of
the Cosmos. This way the emancipated Souls shed the worldliness and go up to
the loka or nether world to live a never-ending life of Pure Spirits in the
presence of God. They don’t simply merge into God. This is important and should
be noted and understood against the Philosophy of Sri Shankara who holds that
men and women in the worldly life become, after their emancipation, one with
God and merge into Him. But the other view is that the individual expressions of the Spirit who have
shed the compulsion of having to take re-births as human beings and suffer the
onslaughts of the Illusion of this world become individual beings and live in
Spirit in the presence of God forever.
Goutama, the Buddha did not have
any faith in the existence of God. He was neither a theist nor atheist; he simply refuses to talk
about God, the Creator of the Universe as we know and understand. When asked to
tell his views about God, the Buddha simply said he did not know anything about
God as we understand and that he was not
bothered about God. Though agreeing with the essence of the Vedas and the
Upanishads, the Buddha said he did not know anything about God and he did not
want to enquire about God. The Buddha agreed with the Hindu belief in
re-incarnations and the soujourns of Man, the Soul, between the earthly life
after being born and other-worldly life after death. He indeed preached that
Man is helplessly sent back to the earthly plane to work out the accumulated
Karma over the past births and thus Man has to take numberless re-births before
his complete emancipation and liberation from having to be born and come back
to the earthly plane again and again. Reincarnation is fundamental to Hinduism.
The Buddha agrees with this belief. He says that the Desire is the reason for
Man’s misery. That Desire goads Man toward unending actions and accumulate
Karma again and again on the earthly plane. The man starts his journey toward
complete emancipation only when he gives up Desire. But Man has to indulge in
constant actions on the plane of this Earth. So Man has to live his repeated
earthly life without selfish desires. Thus Gautama, the Buddha agrees with the
main and fundamental teaching of The Holy Gita! We should not forget that
Bhagavad Gita had come into being several thousand years before the birth of
the Buddha. The Buddha also preached that Man must indulge in constant and
never-ending actions on the plane of the Earth without any selfish deires in
the fruits of His actions. Thus Man must reduce, birth after birth, the bundle
of Karma and thus at some stage all His karma shall have been exhausted and Man
will become freed even like the Buddha from having to take any more birth.
But what will happen to the
completly emancipated Soul? Here The Buddha denies the existence of God or just
does not worry about God, and says when a man becomes a free soul and attains
to immortality, he goes to the world of
immortal souls and live there forever.
Thus Gautama, the Buddha is neither
theist nor atheist, but an Agnoist. He says he knew nothing about God’s
existence and he did not lose anything because of his ignorance. It should be
remembered that the Buddha’s reaction came in the background of sheer
materialism practised by the Priestly
community among the Brahmins or Arians. The teachings of The Bhagavad Gita and
the other Upanishads were forgotten in favour of the relentless pursuit of
shameless materialism by the priests who conducted various Sacrifices
recommended in the Vedas. And these elaborate Sacrifices cost the moon. The populace of that times found it life-threatening
to not pay heed to the avaricious priests’ words who recommended various
Sacrifices which posed an unbearable monetary problem. Even the Rajas of those
times found it a Herculian task to successfully conduct a Sacrifice. Huge
quantities of gold coins and hundreds of cows had to be given to Brahmins as
gifts prior to the conduct of Sacrifices. Thus the only community that thrived
in those days belonged to Brahmin community or Arians. For every act of daily
and day-to-day activities, various Sacrifices were prescribed. If you wanted
rain you had to conduct a sacrifice. If you wanted to avoid a deluge you had to
conduct various sacrifices. If a householder wanted a son to carry on his
lineage, he had to conduct Sacrifices which would almost cost all the savings
of the poor man. Even great merchants and rich men found it hard to go on
conducting Sacrifices. As an offshoot of this culture of Sacrifices paralysing
superstitions were spread by the Priests. It was a perfect time for the birth
of a fearless reformer. And Lord Buddha footed the bill. He neither accepted
the existence of God nor denied the same. Instead, he said that he did not want
to search for God. And this did not posit any loss or harm to him. He just
wanted his followers to be ridden of selfish desires of all kind and do their
allotted karma. This would purify the practitioners’ mind and after death, he
would come back to this earthly plane
with the enabling karma that would goad him strait away toward the prescribed
pursuit of doing his swadharmic (self-ordained) duty in life without having a
stake in the result.
Here in this verse Sri Bhagavan
says that whoever got the knowledge he is going to elaborate will attain unity
with Him!
Well, Sri Shankarar’s
interpretation of this verse is that, after earning the emancipation through
real Knowledge about Him and His Cosmic Form, such great souls would literally
enter into Ishwar and become one with Him.
I have one problem with this
interpretation. If what Sri Shankarar utters is true, then we will have no
existence in bliss outside of God, for we will have attained oneness with Him.
Then what is the meaning of our striving against His Maya or Illusion birth
after birth, death after death? For countless reincarnations is spent in our
slow progress of liberation from the pulls and pressure of this Illusory world.
We strive like anything. We shed tears. God’s illusion trips us up birth after
birth and we have had to stand up and walk again on the path of righteousness.
How much we have had to struggle! Right from the beginning, according to Sri
Bhagavan’s words in Gita, we were pure spirits only and not human bodies with
which His illusory power makes us identify with. That is the first thing or
false step we take the moment we are born. Then we cultivate relentless desire
to enjoy this world. And these desire-born activities bind us to this worldly
life for still more re-births. What a waste of time and struggle! We were
Spirits only before we were sent down to this world. Once sent down to this
material world, we become desirous of getting the whole world under our
say-so. We are made to forget our godly status prior to our first birth. We,
birth after birth and death after death, strive and dig and dig like an
Australian miner. All our energies of mind and body are focussed to activities
on this earth, quite forgetting our elevated status. We commit horrendous
commissions and omissions in the wake of our relentless pursuit after bliss. We
even commit murder and all other types of sins and thus enchain ourselves to life on this earthly plane. It is very difficult for us to become tired of
this world and start to strive for spiritual excellence. But that is only the
beginning. Once we turn our attention to the spiritual side, this world
redoubles its power and efforts to get us demoralized and it is an effort at
every puny step we take toward the spiritual side. Even great Saints mourn
about their inability to fight a manly war against the redoubled pulls of this
material life and the constant vigil they have to have against the attractions
of this worldly life in order to be able to stay in the spiritual path. if that
be the case with great saints like Manikkavasakar, could one ably and fully
describe puny little selves like us and the thankless war we have to wage
against the thraldom of the materialistic world?
And what for all these painful
struggles spread over numberless re-births? If we are only going to enter into Ishwar
and become part and parcel of Him with no independent existence, what about all
the struggles and miseries we encounter for teeming number of times birth after
birth? How many tragedies we court in our pursuit of the material world? Could
all these struggles through teeming number of re-births be put aside without
any accounting?
All our struggles and tragedies and
miseries we court in our pursuit of materialistic life could be explained only if we could have an
independent existence in the holy presence of God.
In the second chapter of Bhagavad
Git, the Lord tells Arjuna, “There was no time when you and I and these Rajas
were not in existence and there shall be no time we will cease to exist.” We
should never forget the import of this world. Every man and woman, after all
the struggles in this material world, at the end of the Spiritual day, will
become pinpoints of eternal life in pure Spirit, of course, in the presence of
the Lord our God.
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