THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER THREE
KARMA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF ACTION
VERSE NUMBER 3
Text in Transliteration:
sri bhagavaan uvacha
loke ‘smin dvividhaa nisthaa puraa ;roktaa mayaa ‘nagha
jnaanayoena saamkhyaanaam karmyogena yoginaam
Text in English:
The Blessed Lord Said:
The twofold path was given by Me, O sinless one, to the
world in the beginning—the path of knowledge to the discerning and the path of
work to the active.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
Cognizing the self
through the process of discrimination and detachment from the non-self is known
as the path of knowledge. Clarity of understanding comes as one continues to
discharge one’s duty with dispassion. Intellect clarified thus gets to know the
self clearly. The path of knowledge and the path of action are both thus
conducive to the cognition of the self. They are both verily great paths. Aspirants
inclined to discrimination and those to duty are found in the world at all
times. These paths therefore eternally exist along with man’s aspiration for
self-perfection.
COMMENTARY BY DR. S. RADHAKRISHNAN:
The teacher distinguishes,
as modern psychologists do, two main types of seekers, introverts whose natural
tendency is to explore the inner life of spirit and extroverts whose natural
bias is towards work in the outer world. Answering to these, we have the yoga
of knowledge, for those whose inner being is bent towards flights of deep
spiritual contemplation, and the yoga of action for energetic personalities
with love of action. But this distinction is not ultimate, for all men are in different
degree both introverts and extroverts.
For the Gita, the
path of works is a means of liberation quite as efficient as that of knowledge,
and these are intended for two classes of people. They are not exclusive but
complementary. The path is one whole including different phases. Cp. “Such are
the two modes of life, both of which are supported by the Vedas—the one is the
activistic path; the other that of renunciation.”(Mahabharata Epic, shantiparva,
240, 6) The two modes of life are of equal value. The teacher points out that
jnaana or wisdom is not incompatible with karma or action. Shankara admits that
work is compatible with enlightenment. Work is adopted not as a means to the
gaining of wisdom but as an example to the ordinary people. In the world of the
enlightened as in that of the teacher of the Gita, the sense and expectation of
reward are absent.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
The path of knowledge of the sankhyas (jnana yoga) was described
by Lord Krishna in chapter II, verses 11 to 38 , the path of action (karma
yoga) from 40 to 53.
Pura Pokta may also mean “in the beginning of the creation
two fold path was given by Me to this world.”
Those who are endowed with the four means and who have
sharp, subtle intellect and bold understanding are fit for Jana Yoga. Those who
have a tendency or inclination for work are fit for karma yoga. ( The four
means are discrimination, dispassion, sixfold virtues and longing for
liberation. The sixfold virtues are: control of the mind, control of the
senses, fortitude (endurance), turning away from the objects of the world,
faith and tranquillity.)
It is not possible for a man to practise the two yogas
simultaneously. Karma yoga is a means to and end. It purifies the heart and
prepares the aspirant for the reception of knowledge. The karma yogi should
take up jnana yoga as soon as his heart is purified. Jnana yoga takes the
aspirant directly to the goal without any extraneous help (Cf.V.5)
Comments by the blogger:
This is pure psychology. In the very beginning persons with
introversion and extroversion in different degree were in existence. Even today,
it is the case. It took modern psychology several thousand years after the
Vedic sages and saints discovered the two pattern in human beings. But no one
is completely introvert or completely extrovert. That also speaks of the
greatness and variety of the Creator. Always He has gone for infinite variety
in His creation. Though people could be broadly divided in to two groups, there
can be no exclusivity. In each person both the tendencies are present. And, the
fact whether a man or a woman is an introvert of extrovert depends upon the
preponderating quality. If a tendency to become inward looking is greater than
that of the desire to act in the external world and manufacture gain and pain,
profit and loss, he is an introvert. And if a person is preponderatingly given
to acting in the external world, since even he has some degree to get to be
looking inward at assorted times or at personally understandable moments of
truth, then that man must be viewd as an extrovert.
When the Lord says that in the beginning he gave the
two-fold path of knowledge to the discerning and the path of work to the
active, the Lord means His Prakrity or Nature.
Nature has everything we need. We need only to ask. She will
give. We have already seen that the matter of evolution itself was a simple
matter of asking and seeking. Seek , and you will get. The Nature or Prakrity
is in the Lord and the Lord is not confined to the Nature alone. Nature schools
us. Whether we know or not, consciously or unconsciously we seek from Nature
all we want. And what we pray to God for also supplied by the mother nature.
The two paths were also came with the pracrity or Nature. So
it was there before Man. Otherwise there could not have been any seeking and
getting and surviving, and in the process, evolvling for the animals. Long before
Man came, or the Home Sapience appeared, there were two-fold paths provided by
God through His Nature.
God created the endless Nature and gave unto her everything
her children would require. And then, God became just a witness through the
universe soul, of whose dot is expressed individually in us, and then withdrew
from the universe. That Ultimate State of the Supreme is called by the
Vedhopanishadic saints as “TURIYA” OR “TURIYAM”. That “God in His Turiya state”
has got nothing to the world. This world scintillates with the superconscious
knowledge of God.
This was why the ancient Indians, the Vedic sages, the
Egyptians and the Greek worshipped nature and they sang hymns in glorification
of the various natural forces. Most of these Nature worshipping cults were destroyed
and the followers were put to violent death mercilessly by the Christians in
the beginning of the Christendom. But the Hinduism absorbed such cults and thus
even now, among the Hindus the nature worship lingers. For example the neem
tree, pepul tree and vilva tree are worshiped by the Hindus of all cults.
The Rigvedic sages fully understood the composite of the
universe and how it revolves within them and without them!
So God, through Nature, created the two-fold paths in the beginning
itself to take care of both natures of beings!
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