HOLY YOGA
CHAPTER TWO
SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE
VERSE NUMBER 15:
Text in Transliteration:
yam hi na vyathyanty ete purusham purusharshabha
sama duhkha sudham dheeram so ‘mrta tvaaya kalpate
Text in English:
That man, o the
best of men, is fitted for immortality, whom these do not torment, who is
balanced in pain and pleasure and steadfast.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMY CHIDBHVANANDA:
The indweller in
the Puri—in the body looked upon as a city—is called Purusha. Pleasure and pain
occur inevitably in the body because of the contact of the senses with their
objects. He who identifies himself with the body is bound to be grieved. But
his mind does not waver who gets fixed in the Self, he is all calmness.
Remaining unruffled by the evanescent events, reveals the clarity of his
understanding. He therefore becomes the man of steady wisdom. He is thus fit
for immortality. We have come into this
world to avail ourselves of all the happenings here and thereby discipline
ourselfves for enlightenment. Cessation of misery corresponds to the removal of
ignorance.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
External life is
different from survival of death which is given to embodied being. It is the
transcendence of life and death. To be subject to grief and sorrow, to be
disturbed by the material happenings, to be deflected by them from the path of
duty that has to be traversed, “niyatam karma, shows that we are still victims
of avidyaa or ignorance.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMY SIVANANDA:
Dehadhyasa or identification of the Self with the body is
the cause of pleasure and pain. The more you are able to identify yourself with
the immortal, all-pervading Self, the less will you be affected by the pairs of
opposites (Dvandvas, pleasur and pain, etc.)
Titiksha or the power of endurance develops the will power.
Calm endurance in pleasure and pain, and heat and cold is one of the qualifications
of an aspirant on the path of Jnana Yoga. It is one of the Shatsampat or sixfol
virtues. It is a condition of right knowledge. Titiksha by itself cannot give
you Moksha or liberation, but still, when coupled with discrimination and
dispassion, it becomes a means to the attainment of immortality or knowledge of
the Self. (Cf. XVIII. 53)
Comments by the blogger:
In the verse number 14, the Lord declared that the contacts
of the senses with their objects create feelings of heat and cold, of pain and
pleasure. They come and go and are impermanent. One should bear them patiently.
In this verse, that man is fitted with immortality whom these donot torment,
who is balanced in pain and pleasure and steadfast.
So what is the problem? Whether which ever way we choose we
are susceptible to get pain and pleasure, heat and cold. This is the basis and
one of the conditions of human life. We cannot choose otherwise. When the saint
Ramakrishna got a cancerous growth on his hand, he said the suffering disciples
that there were two being inside this body. One is permanent, and that is the
mother Kaleeshwari, and the other was his body, and the suffering is only to
the body and not to the mother inside him! Whether we like it or not, what ever
card we choose to play, we get pain and pleasure. Sometimes without our being
agent to it! How? The ISI man kills the victim in coldest of blood, and we get
to see it on the TV, the whole day we suffer intensely! Even weeks later,
whenever we think or speak of it, we get pain in unvarying intensity. But,
apart from watching the damned scene that was brought into our drawing room, in
which way were we party or privy to it? But we suffer as though we were
directly involved in it. A photograph of a small boy washed ashore the
Mediterranean sea changed the course of the European World history and till
then the countries like Britton, France and Germany who were unwilling to allow
the surge of the Syrian refugees and refugees from other suffering countries readily
allowed the Muslim refugee influx. One photograph did the trick. What was the
reason? The collective soul of the humanity suffered at the way the small
angelic boy was lying on the fringe of the sea shore face down in that blood
curdling manner! We all felt the pain. As though we had produced, or privy to,
the refugee crisis! The world leaders had to respond to that one photograph in
a manner that was exemplary. Woven into it was another source of pain that,
under the garb of fleeing refugees, hundreds of ISI recruits and trained
soldiers had entered the European countries. And the beasts were boasting about
the same. Daily the opening of the newspaper and watching a news bulletin gives
us pain and pleasure. The impoverished auto driver who took time to find out
the address of one of his passengers that day who had left his fat wallet or a
gold ornament gives us intense pleasure, as though it was not the auto driver,
it was we who did the act. But, a group raping being repeatedly beamed in news
bulletins, and the story of a mother killing her own daughter who “misbehaved”
and wanted to marry her own brother born of her mother’s another husband, gives
us for a month, day after day, such intense pain. We get to lose hope in the
redeeming feature and scheme of the universe. The Nirbhaya case reportage raped
each and every one of us personally. The five , three, even two-years-old child is raped and
killed!
But apart from this, the least promotion gives us such
intense pleasure that is almost unbearable. I love him/her so much that it
hurts is our own fashion of acquiescing to the pulls and pressures of the maya
or illusion! Whether we want it or not, the world and our lives in this world
is filled with shine and rain, shadow and light, pain and pleasure. This world
is nothing but that, it would seem. There is a method in this madness. There is
a method in this mad mad world! I thought, so I am. How do we take a thing,
even a death in the family is in our own hands! We could elect to wallow in
self pity like the valiant Arjuna and howl for years together inside of our
private self. Or we can come to be reconciled with God’s plan and the
concerned, deceased individual’s own working out of karmic effects and find
piece in an essentially a rather unbearably personal sorrow! It is all in the
hands of ours. Titiksha is forbearance. The Lord expects us not to just give us
in to sorrow or give us up to a happy incident. There should be moderation in
everything. Forbearance is declared as yoga in another verse by the Lord.
Since we cannot change the world and the essential scheme of
things behind it, we have to develop forbearance. It will give us great
spiritual or inward power which could be channelized in other ways to obtain
salvation. When India was getting its independence at midnight, it ‘s author,
Mahatma Gandhiji was in elsewhere to stop the sheerness of the fratricide by
the sheerness of his emasculated physical presence. Because he had developed
that kind of inner power like a saint and with frail and failing limbs the old
man could stop the fratricide in Nowhalli. But he was not at the place where he
should by right be. He had declared it would be more time till India would
really become independent. Till a beautiful wench decked in gold ornaments
should be allowed to go to her house from work in the dead of the night. Till then
Ramrajya shall not have come. That india should get economic freedom. There was
so much suffering around. While the few have more, more wither without even the
basic necessity. The people needed to be educated. Till then we cannot consider
ourselves as belonging to an independent nation, he had declared. And Pandid
Nehruji’s own Priyadharshini saw to it it would take a millennial years for
India to get that kind of freedom. Now, even a nose picking by the Prime
Minister in his private chamber becomes editorial material for the “valiant”
media barons, who had had their tails safely tucked between their buttocks and crawled
when they had been asked by Srimati Indira Gandhi just to bend!
National freedom depends much upon the personal freedom of
the subjects. Hinduism does not preach to a nation or a group or to the whole
world; it preaches to the individual man on the street. It says have titiksha
or forbearance, for part of the scheme of this material world is full of pains
and pleasures, and giving up oneself to any does cause the rise of samskaaram
which binds us individually. And we will have to come back again to enjoy the
fruits. Those who deride Hinduism look pathetic now. While the Mohammedanism is
looked upon with fear by others, even the catholics in the Vatican churches are
not ready to observe the sabbatical day in the true spirit. Mohammedanism has
created a fear psychosis. Except in India, the Christians and Muslim in other
countires cannot be readily said to be truly following their individual
Scriptures en mass.
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