THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 5, SANYASA YOGA OR THE RENUNCIATION, VERSE NUMBER 20

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER 5

SANYASA YOGA OR THE RENUNCIATION

VERSE NUMBER 20

Text in Transliteration:

na prahrsyet priyam praapya

   no ‘dvijet praapya chaa ‘priyam

sthirabuddhir asammoodho

   brahmavid brahmani sthitah

Text in English:

Established in Brahman, with firm understanding and with no delusion, the knower of Brahman rejoices not, getting what is pleasant and grieves not, getting what is unpleasant.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

Likes and dislikes, happiness and misery—feelings of this kind are all associated with one’s entanglement in the body. He who thinks of himself as the body gets deluded. But he who is established in Brahman is completely free from mentation.

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:

What remains in the man from whose mind lust and greed are entirely eliminated? The Bliss of Brahman beams in him.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

brahmani sthitah; established in God. He gets at It, reaches It and enters into It and is fairly established in It.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

This is the state of a Jivanmukta or a liberated sage or a Brahmana who identifies himself with the Self or Atma. He always has a balanced mind, who identifies himself with the body and mind feels pleasure and pain, exhilaration of spirits when he gets a pleasant object and grief when he obtains an unpleasant object.  (Cf. VI.21, 27, 28; XIII. 12; XIV.20)

Comments by the blogger:

Having given out the promise that one can attain salvation here in his earthly sojourn in the previous verse, Sri Krishna now gives the merits of such a person who is firmly established in Brahman. When a person is firmly established in Brahman, his understanding is firm and he suffers from no delusion. What is pleasant for the worldly man is not so for him. So he does not rejoice at it. He does not grieve when he gets something unpleasant. During the time when India was under the foreign yoke for well over 400 years there were many yogis who could have overthrown the foreigners by their sheer yogic power and prowess. But they did not interfere in what was being played out. Today we are talking about India becoming a super power in 2020 and even if it fructifies the true yogis firmly established in Brahman will not rejoice.

Of course there are some exceptions like Swami Vivekananda who took pride in his Indianess. And his own guru and master lived through the White Man’s reign without talking anything about it. Swami Vivekananda had a vision and mission and he restored the pride of India and spoke about the sages of the Vedas and Upanishads throughout his life.