THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER THREE
KARMA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF ACTION OR THE METHOD OF WORK:
VERSE NUMBER 42
Text in Transliteration:
indriyaani paraany aahur indriyebhyah param manah
manasas tu paraa budhir yo buddheh paratas tu sah
Text in English:
The senses are said to be superior to the body; the mind is
superios to the senses; the intellect is superior to the mind; and what is
superior to the intellect is Atman.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:
A thing subtle is always superior to another, gross. The
senses, five in jumber excel the gross body. Mind dominates over the senses and
so it is superior to them. Intellect comes above the mind in that it decides
while the latter merely feels. Atman supplies light to the intellect itself and
therefore it is above all these instruments utilized by it.
The skin and other coverings of a fruit are of varying
grades. The interior sheaths progressively assume more and more of the
characteristics of the pulp which is the main factor in it. Similarly, in the
make up of man the subtle organs are more akin to Atman, than the gross.
Desire clings more tenaciously to the subtle than to the
gross. Attachment to the body easily gives place to the attachment to the
senses; from the senses it shifts to the mind; from the mind it rises to the
intellect. Attachment to all of these categories leads to bondage and brings
untold misery to the embodied.
COMMENTARY BY DR. S. RADHAKRISHNAN:
Katha Upanishad., III, 10; see also VI, 7. Consciousness must
be raised step by step. The higher we rise the more free we are. If we act
under the sway of the senses, we are least free. We are freer when we adopt the
dictates of manas; still more free when our manas is united with buddhi; we
attain the highest freedom when our acts are determined by buddhi suffused by
the light from beyond, the self.
This verse gives us a hierarchy of levels of consciousness.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
When compared with the physical body which is gross,
external and limited, the senses are certainly superior as they are more
subtle, internal and have a wider range of activity. The mind is superior to
the senses, as the senses cannot do anything independently without the help of
the mind. The mind can perform the functions of the five senses. The intellect
is superior to the mind because in is endowed with the faculty of
discrimination. When the mind is in a state of doubt, the intellect comes to
its rescue. The Self, the Witness, is superior even to the intellect, as the
intellect borrows its light from the Self.
Comment by the blogger:
This sloka or stanza of Bhgavat Gita starts from the phrase.
“They say that” and goes on adumbrate what has been said in the Upanishad. Sri
Krishna has extracted the nectar from the milk cow which indeed are the
Upanishads. To give credit to the saints and seers of the Upanishads by Sri
Bhagavan Himself is most beautiful.
The Upanishadic seers give fulsome credit to the Vedic
saints and say they have had the advantage of seeing the truth perched as they
were atop the spiritual shoulders of the Vedic Saints and Seers. And the beauty
is the Vedic Saints also give credit to the wisdom of their own forefathers. The
researchers have concluded that Vedic period existed some four thousand years
from now. But the assessment is not conclusive. Bala Gangadhara Tilak takes the
Vedic period further back. And he has given irrefutable and scientific facts
and data to prove his point. Swami Vivekananda says that whatever be said of
the time of the Vedic Seers, the Rig Veda was brought into the worls some nine
thousand years from now.
Such is the hoary past of the Hinduism. For thousands of
years, there have been uninterrupted and stupendous research into the state of
the created Man, the Universe and the Creator and the relationship existing
between them in this holy land.
The gross must always loose out to the subtle. The crude oil
must yield ground, in terms of usefulness and potentiality, to Kerosene oil. And
the kerosene oil must yield unhesitatingly ground to the petrol which must
yield place to the gaseous form of petrol, and this must yield ground to the
highly refined petrol used in airplane engines.
The subtler always gains ground over the gross.
The Hindu saints have found out that when we die, what
perishes is only the gross body. And the astral body with senses, mind and
intellect go up, in layers with the Atman for the core, to the nether world. There
the astral body enjoys or suffer, thus work out some karmas akin to that strata
of consciousness and then come back to this gross world, taking a new body to
further work out the remaining karma. In the course of which it acquires new
karmic effects and thus there is a chain effect. To put to an end or reduce the
number of births and deaths we are advised to not yield much ground to gross
desires which are sinful in as much as they elongate the time and increase the
number of rebirths, thus postponing our salvation or soul-realization.
No comments:
Post a Comment