THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 4, JNANA KARMA SANYASA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF RENUNCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE OR THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE, VERSE NUMBER 07

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 4

JNANA KARMA SANYASA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF RENUNCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE OR THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE:

VERSE NUMBER 07

Text in Transliteration:   

yadaa-yadaa hi dharmasya glaanir bhavati bhaarata

abyudhaanam adharmasya tadaa ‘tmaanam srrjaami aham

Text in English

Whenever there is decay of dharma and rise of adharma, then I embody Myself, O Bharara.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

Dharma is verily the karma that is conducive to man’s growth and progress; what impedes them is adharma. At every time adharma prevails and prevents man’s evolution, the Cosmic Intelligence embodies itself, as a matter of course.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

“whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases the Almighty Lord, Jari, creates himself.” Wherever there is a serious tension in life, when a sort of all-pervasive materialism invades the hearts of human souls, to preserve the equilibrium, an answering manifestation of wisdom and righteousness is essential. The Supreme, though unborn and undying, becomes manifest in human embodiment to overthrow the forces of ignorance and selfishness.

Avataara means descent, one who has descended. The Divine comes down to the earthly plane to raise it to a higher status. God descends when the man rises. The purpose of the avatar is to inaugurate a new world, a new dharma. By his teaching and example, he shows how a human being can raise himself to a higher grade of life. The issue between right and wrong is a decisive one. God works on the side of the right. Love and mercy are ultimately more powerful than hatred and cruelty. Dharma will conquer adharma the truth will conquer falsehood; the power behind death, disease and sin will be overthrown by the reality which is Being, intelligence and Bliss.

Dharma literally means a mode of being. It is the essential nature of a being that determines his mode of behaviour. So long as our conduct is in conformity with our essential nature, we are acting in the right way. Adharma is nonconformity to our nature. If the harmony of the world is derived from the conformity of all beings to their respective natures, the disharmony of the world is due to their nonconformity. God does not stand aside when we abuse our freedom and cause disequilibrium. He does not simply wind up wind up the world, set it on the right track and then not simply wind up the world, set it on the right track and then let it jog along by itself. His loving hand is steering it all the time.

The conception of dharma is a development of the idea of rta which connotes cosmic a well moral order in the Rig Veda. The rta which gives logical significance and ethical elevation to the world is under the protection of Varuna. The god of the Gita is the upholder of righteousness saavtadharmagoptaa (IX,18), not a God beyond good and evil , remote and unconcerned with man’s struggle with unrighteousness.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

Dharma is that which sustains and holds together. There is no proper equivalent for this term in the English language. That which helps a man to attain to Moksha or salvation is Dharma. That which makes a man irreligious or unrighteous is Adharma. That which elevates a man and helps him reach the goal of life and attain knowledge Dharma; that which drags him and hurls him down in the abyss of worldliness and ignorance is Atharma.

Comments by the blogger;

Whenever there is a decay of dharma and rise of adharma, then i embody Myself, O Bharata.

There a promise as different from the Second Coming of Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus does not set up any time limit when he will come again, for obvious reasons. He must be realized by every Christian and all the Bible readers. That is the second coming for that individual who has attained salvation. Note the sentence that the Christ will be in agony till the last man enters the Heaven. So the second coming must be understood allegorically as many observations in the Holy Bible, especially in the old Testament.

But the Lord of Gita gives the Hindus and the world that He will embody Himself whenever there is the decay of dharma and rise of adharma. Here there is no particular reference to any individual’s decay in his dharma. Otherwise,what was God doing when Nirbhaya was being raped by that bunch of bruits? No, here the connotation is clearly to the whole society and the world.

Dr. S.Radhakrishnan says the dharma is derived from the Rig-Vedic Sages’ discovery of rta. What is rta? rta is orderliness in the Universe. The Rig-Vedic Sages found out the orderliness in the midst of pell-mell in the whole Universe. Just imagine what would happen if the earth or other planets revolving round the sun reduce or increase their velocity by just a fraction of a second! That fraction of the second would be like the time of Kalki avatar happens! The whole world as we know thoroughly—our knowledge about the other milky ways and containing trillions of stars bigger by millions of times than our own mighty sun is not complete—would come to an end as there will be an automatic change in the all planets velocity and within a second everything would be tossed around in the Universe as we know well and all the planets would be reduced to the smithereens!

It is to the credit of the Rig-Vedic Saints who found order in the whole Universe. The day following the night and the night following the day is ample evidence that our own planet has rounded the sun while revolving itself on its focal point! The unvaryingly changing seasons also is ample proof that everything is fine with the mother earth. The El Nino and our acts of tearing into the Ozone layer in the industrial matter of two hundred years have brought some fluctuations only bespeak of our meddling with this order. The consequences we saw in the Chennai deluge recently was only a tip of the iceberg! The world over, the earth is heating up and the Pols are denuded of their icy clothe and with the result the sea level is rising. And our leaders are speaking and indulging in nit-picking as they put forth valiant and shameless points about the carbon footprint and carbon responsibility among the various countries!

Whenever dharma or righteousness is wronged wholesale God embodies Himself. There is no other chance. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan speaks of the misuse by man of the freedom given to him. That is the freedom to choose or freedom of choice. God has given us individually this freedom. He has also given us discrimination to find out our svadharma or self-ordained duty. If all of us individually adhere to our own self-ordained duty, there would be no need for the Lord to embody Himself.