VERSE 5 OF CHAPTER 2 OF SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE

HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 2, SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE

VERSE NUMBER 5:

Text in Transliteration:

guroon ahartvaa hi mahaanubhaavaan

   sreyo bhoktum bhaikshyam apee ‘ha loke

hatvaa ‘rthakaamaams tu guroon ihai ‘va

   bhunjeeya bhogaan rudhirapradigdhaan

Text in English:

To eat the beggar’s bread even is far better in this world than to slay these great-souled masters. But if I kill them, my enjoyment of wealth and desires in this world itself will be stained with blood.

Comments:    

According to Swamy Chidbhavananda, mahaanubhavans like Bhishma, Drona and Kripa are held by Arjuna in high veneration. To treat them all on a sudden is well nigh impossible for him. Instead, he is prepared to renounce the world and live by eating beggar’s bread even. He further says that Bhishma is an embodiment of continence. Chastity itself gets defined in this exemplary person. Self-denial is his life-long austerity. And the Preceptor Drona is a person of right conduct and a versatile genius. So to treat them as enemies is impossible for Arjuna.

Sri Krishna does not ask Arjuna to kill them when they are asleep in their bed-chamber. They have come to give battle to him. Arjuna is a chatriya, whose duty is to slay the aggressor or get slain by him. Here the three great souls are arraigned against the righteous Pandavas. But Arjuna becomes remiss in his duty as a chatriya. In the war Bhishma could kill Arjuna, the same is the case with Drona and Kripa: that being the case, Arjuna is speaking his inability to put behind everything and take up his arms and fight the aggressors.

Moreover, the dharma of a person who has renounced this world is not an easy one. It is no fixed deposite to fall back upon at a critical juncture. To renounce the world is not a matter of joke nor a choice even. You renounce the world because there is nothing that you expect from the world. But Arjuna has had every thing in the world through his life as a chatriya, and now he wants to change it in favour of renouncement. Renouncement is not a matter of choice. It is an inward culture, and men are born that way. Nowadays we see modern Jet-set Swamys. Not all of them have renounced the world. There is much fakery and putting on airs involved in this at the present age; a man becomes a swamy simply by donning the ochre. One need not clad in the ochre to become a hermit. It is an inward culture in which there is no room for hesitation and despondency with which Arjuna is stained with. It is a stain for a person who has renounced the world. He must take the world as it is and try to do his might to the humanity without any expectation. And not all of them are indulged in human service after their attainment of renouncement. Many of them simply live ike a beggar or in solitary caves in the high hills without coming down and mixing with common folks. So the calling of renouncement is not for Arnjuna. He is a killer of the vile and who has challenged him. He can never become a hermit. It is not an ordianary thing to become a renouncer in favour of seeking God alone. Arjuna has had wives, children and wealth in life. To renounce them all in the jiffy is not for him, it is just an escapist’s attitude

“rudhiraprdigdhaan” means smeared with blood. Here the import is that the Pandavas do not want to enjoy the fruits of the war smeared with the blood of his own achariyas and kinsmen. Here the war is to establish dharma or righteousness and destruction of the evil persons. The war is not waged for the country and Pandava’s kingdome back alone. It is to safeguard the subjects from the tyranny of a heartless man. Arjuna has forgotten all these things in a sentimental  hurry!