CHAPTER NUMBER 71 OF SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNWOLEDGE

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER TWO

SAMKHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE

VERSE NUMBER 71

Text in Transliteration:

vihaaya kaamaan yah sarvaan pumaams charati nihsprrhah

nir mamo nir ahamkaarah sa saantim adhigacchati

Text in English:

That man attains Peace who loves devoid of loning , freed from all desires and without the feeling of “I” and “mine.”

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:

   As long as man is given to worldly desires he will not have peace of mind. Calmness comes to the extent craving is quelled. The feeling of “i” and “mine” leads man into bondage to karma. Agency and ownership are the modifications of mind that ensue from this feeling. Waves and billows rise up on the surface of the sea and put on appearances of separate volumes of water. It seems as if the sea is split up into many bits. But in fact it is one undivided mass of water. The ego, in this way, makes man feel he is a separate entity. And desire is the root-cause of this apparent individuality. With the cessation of desire the ego assuming “I” and “mine” disappears. What remains is the unmodified super consciousness bathed in bliss. All ethical and spiritual life is directed to the elimination of the ego.   

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUATED BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:

 When the goat is slaughtered its body shakes for a while as if imbued life. Similarly the ego of the jnani undergoes slaughter when he attains illumination. But a trace of the ego lingers just to carry on the bodily sustenance. But it has no power to bind him again to worldliness.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

Cp. The well-known saying of the Upanishad. “The human mind is of two kinds, pure and impure. That which is intent on securing its desires is impure; that which is free from attachment to desires is pure.”

Charati: He freely and readily spends himself without measure for something intuitively apprehended as great and noble.

Saantim: peace: the suppression of all the troubles of earthly existence.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDS:

That man who lives destitute of longing, abandoning all desires, without the sense of “i” and “mine”, who is satisfied with the bare necessities of life, who does not care even for those bare necessityes of life, who has no attachment even for the bare necessities of life, attain Moksha or eternal peace. (Cf. II. 55)

Comments of the blogger:

This is the mentality of a perfected yogi; first he attains peace and lives devoid of longing. This is the highest state of perfection for the man and woman here, but it does not comes very cheap. We should renounce the whole world in a way we think of and take the word for a beautiful thought in which we don’t wish or claim to have anything as our own. In this state all the “i” ness and “mine” ness fall apart. This is for the perfected sage. And this sage has come along teeming number of re-births. Except Sri Krishna like Avatars, human beings, once we reach that level from the beast, have the facility to come back here as human beings only (for which the daily devout study of the Scriptures like the Gita helps in a great way) , so that to pick up the thread from where left off at the last innings. Thus we must first ensure we live a life of moderation and honesty, with daily practice of study of the Scriptures. The perfected sages must have taken this path should be in our mind. If we, at least some of us, can become a perfect sage, it is eminently well and good. It is not an ordinary thing. But we, the ordinary people, should make a practice of the study of our scriptures and live an ideally honest life, loving our fellow beings. This is enough to fetch human birth next time, and we have a promise in the Gita itself—we will deal with it at the appropriate stage—that a man leaving off the yoga at a stage in the middle of evolution, we will come back here to pick up the thread we left off and make a restart again. So, thus, being consciously religious and honest and loving even our enemies as the points of expression of the Lord in us, we must continue to live. We should not become disheartened by the thought thinking, “How shall we ever attain that desireless state, when we are filled with desires for ourselves, our spouse, kids, parents and other relations in this life. We shall see this in detail at a later stage.

The Tamil Poetess Avvaiyar has written that it is rare to get human births and rarer still to have all our sense object and body in tact without any mistake. That has been our priority and high privilege. We should not indulge in anything that would make us like the rapists and murderers to come back here as non-human beings. Thus by gradation we can script our evolution in that kind of muni, at a particular stage, when all the “   i” ness and “mine” ness will drop off and will attains self-realisation. Earning wealth and enjoying the same is not frowned down by the Scripture Writing Sages and Saints.