THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER THREE, KARMA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF ACTION OR THE METHOD OF WORK, VERSE NUMBER 41

 THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER THREE

KARMA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF ACTION OR THE METHOD OF WORK:

VERSE NUMBER 41

Text in Transliteration:

tasmaat tvam indriyaany aadau niyamya bharata rshabha

paapmaanam prjahi hy enam jnaanavijnaana naasanam

Text in English:

Therefore, O eminent of the Bharatas, mastering first the senses, slay it—the sinful, the destroyer of knowledge and realization.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

When the protecting fort is taken by storm, the enemy’s position becomes vulnerable. It is easy to subdue him then. Lay hold of the senses, mind and intellect using them for divine causes and desire is thereby done away with.

A clear grasp of the teachings of the scriptures is classified here as knowledge. Intuiting the Reality is realization. Both of these become impossible to a man of worldly desires. The splendour of Atman gets smothered by desire, which is therefore condemned as sinful. The conqueror of desire is indeed a hero. Lord Siva’s burning Cupid to ashes is a mythological exposition of the conquest of desire.

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

What is maya? It is none other than the desire that obstructs the spiritual growth of the aspirant.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S. RADHAKRISHNAN:

The wisdom of the Vedaanta and the detailed knowledge of the Samk may be meant by jnaana and vijnaana. Shankarar explains jnaana as “knowledge of the self and other things acquired from the scriptures and the teachers,” and vijnaana as “the personal experience, anubhava, of the things so taught.”

For Ramanuja, jnaana relates to atmasvarupa or the nature of the self and vijnana to aatmaviveka or discriminatory knowledge of the self. In the translation here given jnaana is taken as spiritual wisdom and vijnaana as logical knowledge.

Sridhara supports both the interpretations.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

Jnana is knowledge obtained through the study of scriptures. This is indirect knowledge or Paroksha Jnana. Vijnana is direct knowledge or personal experience or Anubhava through Self-realistion or Aparoksha Jnana. Control the senses first and then kill desire.

Comments by the blogger:

We have to first master the senses before slaying them. Because, senses are sinful and destroyer of knowledge and realization. Here Arjuna is called as the one eminent of the class, Bharatas from whom India derived its name, Bharath.

The whole Universe is made of five elements, namely, water, earth, air, sky and fire. The human beings and other animals are also made of these five elements. What is there in the Universe is in us individually. Between our breasts is a heart-cave or simply cave. This cave is different from the human heart. The heart-cave contains our Atman and the whole Universe. The universal sky is not encapsulated there, but each of us is bearing the sky within our heart-cave in the same proportion as we have outside of in the universe. We individually are abundant expression of the Lord, our Maker.

Senses, human and animal, are useful in seeing and understanding the outside Universe. Without the senses we cannot live even for a minute. Eyes are important to see ourselves and other things and people. ears are important to hear and understand others’ speech and other Natural sounds. Mouth is important to eat, and without eating and drinking animal and human life is not possible. Nose is important to both smell as well as breathe. We can go without food and water for a few days. And in India thirty million people do this trick, who are so impoverished that they do not know where there next meal, if at all, will come from; but we, none of us, go without breathing even for a few minutes. The consequences will be fatal. But with the nose we smell. Without our skin we cannot touch and feel anything. Wind can be felt by our skin and heard by our ears, but cannot seen by our eyes. So without the senses nothing here can go on. Life itself is utterly impossible without the senses.

But the Lord Krishna files a white paper about the demoralizing character of the senses and asks us to first master them only to slay later!

What is the trouble, indeed?

Since man has been given a choice as to how he would conduct his life here on earth, when Man makes a pig of himself He comes down heavily on those who misuse senses. Senses are more than like electricity. Even electricity, when misused kills man. But senses’ power of annihilation is more than that of electricity; it does not kill the Atman but almost do it. Atman, in its very nature, does not suffer any action upon. But the realization of soul get for ever elongated and postponed for yugas or for ages.

God loves us so much that it almost hurts Him!

He does not want us to postpone soul-realization for ever. So he urges us to utterly kill the senses! This is like the mother threatening to “skin” the little brat who has been up to something undesirable!

This apart, a stage will come through our millennial births and deaths when we will evolve into ascetics. The Lord knows the slow progress we make, and the cumbersome process involved in the course of evolution spiritually. He wants to quicken this process. Otherwise senses are not completely to blame. We need not even slay them. We only need to use them sparingly. And we must become so very devout that our senses must be put in the service of the Lord.

For this reading the scriptures and attending the satsangs  or communal worship are primary musts. We are receptacles to hold God consciousness. Since the misuse of the senses leads to indescribably endless danger through ever increasing chain of birth and death, God speaks like the mother of the brat who threatens to “skin” him!