THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER TWO
SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNWOLEDGE
VERSE NUMBER 62
Text in Transliteration:
dhyaayato vishayaan pumsah sangas tesoo ‘pajaayate
sangaat samjaayate kaamah kaamaat krodho ‘bhijaayate
Text in English:
Brooding on the objects of senses, man develops attachment
to them; from attachment comes desire; from desire anger sprouts forth.
VERSE NUMBER 63
Text in Transliteration:
Krodhaad bhavati sammohah sammohaat smritivibhramah
Smriti bhramsaad buddhinaaso buddhinaasaat pranasyati
Text in English:
From anger proceeds delusion; from delusion, confused
memory; from confused memory the ruin of reason: due to the ruin of reason he
perishes.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
What is enunciated
here may be explained through a concrete example as follows:-
A man goes to his
office every day seeing on the road many people, but not taking note of them. Like
mere phantoms they appear and disappear. An attractive figure one day left a
faint impression in his mind. On the following day the same figure drew a
little more of his attention. Subsequent sights of that lovely figure made him
cogitate; it was a pretty young woman that took possession of his mind. He developed
attachment to, and picked up acquaintance with her, which steadily grew into friendship.
Then came in him the desire to make the charming woman his own. Rivalry now
ensued between him and another young man courting her. Competition between the
two changed into bitter anger.
What else is anger if it is not an obstructed desire? From the
sort of anger provoked in one, the nature of desire lurking in one can easily
be detected. Anger is temporary insanity. When the mind is occasionally upset
it is anger, when permanently, it is lunacy. In effect both are the same;
delusion ensues in either case.
In the woodlands the trees, creepers and plants are all
easily discernible. But when there is a dust laden tempest the trees are tossed
so much that one cannot be distinguished from another. It is a mass of
confusion. Akin to this is the state of mind given to anger. It gets deluded
first; next comes the loss of memory of things good and bad. A violence is
resorted to indiscriminately, paving the way for self-destruction.
The prolonged bitter anger in the two wooers of the woman
burst one day into a rage. A scuffle ensued in which one tried to do away with
the other. They forgot in the excitement about the severe punishment that the
law of the land metes out for attempted murder. Both were jailed and the woman
had her own lover to marry. Loss of discrimination paves the way for
self-destruction.
A minute peepal seed gets into a crack in a wall, sprouts, grows
and rents the wall asunder. Similarly an evil thought germinates in the mind,
develops in its own way and wrecks the man ultimately. Thought can make or mar
man. Good thought mends and makes man while evil one ends him.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUATED BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
A holy man was living in a temple. Nearby was the house of a
harlot. Noticing how the profligate ones were frequenting her house he once
called the woman and warned her against her evil ways. She lamented over her
lot and prayed to the Lord for forgiveness although she could not put an end to
her base profession. The annoyed anchorite now started recording her lapses by
piling a pebble every time a libertine visited her. When the heap of pebbles
grew large, the holy man summoned the prostitute to his presence and censured
her severely pointing out to her pyramid-like enormity of her sins. The heart-broken
whore died that very night appealing to the Almighty for deliverance from the
debauched body. Strangely enough, that very night the holy man also departed. The
defiled remains of the former was cast away as food to vultures and jackals;
but that of the latter was interred with due honours. Lo, the development of
this scene was quite different in Yama-loka. The soul of the prostitute was
escorted to Vaikuntha while that of the anchorite was consigned to hell. The excited
holy man demanded an explanation for this injustice. The reply came that
inviolable justice alone prevailed in the creation of the Lord. Although living
in a polluted body, the prostitute’s mind was ever fixed on the Divine, whereas
the mind of the man in the holy body was always wandering on unholy concerns. While
the earthly remains of both were fittingly disposed, their souls as well were
assigned their fitting regions. Beware of your thoughts and everything will be
all right with you.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
To the Verse Number 62
Cp. Kalidasa: “They whose minds are not disturbed when the
sources of disturbance are present, are the truly brave.”
kaama: desire. Desires may prove to be as resistless as the
most powerful external forces. They may lift us into glory or hurl us into
disgrace.
To the Verse Number 63
Buddhinaasa: destruction of intelligence. It is failure to
discriminate between right and wrong.
When the soul is overcome by passion, its memory is lost,
its intelligence is obscured and the man is ruined. What is called for is not a
forced isolation from the world or destruction of sense life but an inward
withdrawal. To hate the senses is as wrong as to love them. The horses of
senses are not to be unyoked from the chariot but controlled by the reins of
the mind.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
To Verse Number 62
When a man thinks of the beauty and the pleasant and
alluring features of the sense-objects he becomes attached to them. He then
regards them as something worthy of acquisition and possession and hankers
after them. He develops a strong desire to possess them. Then he endeavours his
level best to obtain them. When his desire is frustrated by some cause or
other, anger arises in his mind. If anybody puts any obstruction in his way of
obtaining the objects he hates him, fights with him and develops hostility towards
him.(Cf.II.64)
To Verse Number 63
From anger arises delusion. When a man becomes angry he
loses his power of discrimination between right and wrong. He will speak and do
anything he likes. He will be swept away by the impulse of passion and emotion
and will act irrationally
Comments by the blogger:
If a man does not think of an object, the worldly life will
cease so far as he is concerned. If all men and women and children of the world
do not think of any object, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, commendable or
degrading, the purpose of creation will come to an end!
There is a story about this. Lord Siva, in the beginning,
created the SHABTA RISHIS and asked them to make a world of humanity. But,
since they came directly from the Lord of Senses, nothing happened here. The Rishis
spent all their time in uninterrupted meditation! After some time when the Lord
came to see the sprouting of the world, there was no world whatsoever; only the
Rishis. It was then he created alluring women and the story goes on like this.
So without desires this world will come to an end. If we all
should be shorn of all desires, the world will cease to exist, so far as the
homo sapience are concerned, within a hundred years! There would be no human
being, the highly evolved of all the species.
Man should think of the objects, attachment for them should
arise; from attachment desire must be born. Otherwise the world would cease to
exist or become devoid of the homo sapience. Moreover the very samsaara is
constituted of illusion or forgetfulness of our former original godly state and
taking this transitory world for the real one, kama or desire and action or
karma. For our action God needs illusion or maya and desire or kama! Without illusion and
desire, no action is possible in this world. Without expectation none will act.
There is no reward for action means there will be nil- action! And without
action the purpose of the Lord so far as Creation is concerned will be set at
nought!
And, please understand, the Purpose of the Bhagavat Gita is
not to turn all into saints and seers and sages. In actual fact the Lord
Himself urges on Arjuna to take up the sword and give equal battle to the enemies
arrayed opposite him! We should never mistake Gita teaches the
otherworldliness. On the contrary, we are advised not to remain without action.
But there should be moderation in everything.
Moreover Gita will be of use to a sanyasi as well as
samsaari or the householders. We are at the varying point of inward development.
So we must use Gita to do our self-ordained duty to the best of our ability,
but always leaving the fruits to the Lord, if we want to reduce the number of
re-births. If we love the Lord so much, the allurements of the world will be
minimal. Even for the worldly people Gita is of immense use as the very knowing
of a different type of conscious levels and a proper study of the Gita daily
will certainly bring in us a sense of balance. When we have attained that sense
of balance, we have started at the rocket speed toward the Lord!
No comments:
Post a Comment