THE HOLY YOGA
CHAPTER NUMBER 07
JNANA VIJNANA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE AND REALIZATION:
VERSE NUMBER 27
Text in Transliteration:
icchaa dvesha samutthena dvandva mohena bhaarata
sarva bhootaani sammoham sarge haanti paramtapa
Text in English:
By the delusion of the pairs of opposites arising from desire and aversion, all beings, O Bharata, are subject to illusion at birth, O harasser of foes.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:
Among the pairs of opposites the foremost and the most lasting is the one pertaining to life and death. Where life is its counterpart, death, should necessarily be. The existence of the one to the exclusion of the other is impossible. From birth onwards a being proceeds towards death. The interval between the two is what is called life, which is as impermanent as bubbles on water. Death may at any moment swoop and swallow up the embodied. Of the inseparable two, life and death, the desire for the former and aversion for the latter manifest themselves from birth onwards. But both of these attitudes are born of delusion.
The pair of opposites pertaining to pleasure and pain comes next. Sense-pleasures are always crowned with pain. From birth onwards beings hug the one and shun the other. But it is an illusion to seek sense-pleasure to the exclusion of pain.
Among the pairs of opposites, the desire for the one and aversion for the other are the foes of the seekers of knowledge and devotion. These foes have to be conquered.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
Where there is pleasure there is Raga or attachment; where there is pain there is Dvesha or aversion. There is the instinct in man to preserve his body. Man wishes to attain those objects which help the preservation of the body. He wishes to get rid of those objects which give pain to the body and the mind. On account of delusion caused by the pairs of opposites, desire and aversion spring up and man cannot get the knowledge of the things as they are, even of this external universe of sense-experience; and it needs no saying in a man whose intellect is overwhelmed by desire and aversion there cannot arise the transcendental knowledge of the innermost Self.
Raga (attraction) and Dvesha (repulsion), pleasure and pain, heat and cold, happiness and misery, joy and sorrow, success and failure, censure and praise, honour and dishonour are the Dvandvas or pairs of opposites. Desire and aversion (or attraction and repulsion) induce delusion in all beings and serve as obstacles to the dawn of the knowledge of the Self.
He who is a victim of Raga-Dvesha loses the power of discrimination. He wishes that pleasant objects should disappear immediately. How could this be? Objects that are conditioned in time, space and causation will perish. That which is agreeable and pleasant now will become disagreeable and unpleasant after some time. The mind is ever fluctuating. It demands variety and gets disgusted with monotony.
Comments by the blogger:
Arjuna is called “O Bharata,” and then “O harasser of foes”
All beings, O Bharata, even a high caste beings like the people belonging to your clan, are deluded by attraction and repulsion. “O harasser of foes” the pairs of opposites are foes of humanity and you must harass them even as you are going to harass the enemies in human forms on the battlefield now.
So even people born in a good family are deluded! They are deluded at birth. You just look at a newborn baby. Once it learns to lie on its back it starts to grab at everything within reach and whatever comes to his or her hands must be immediately conveyed to the mouth to be tasted. And it learns Raga and Dvesha or attraction and repulsion quite at that stage. Sometimes it gets to grip some sharp instrument or object with a jagged edge which nicks the baby’s lips and it starts to cry. Then one should have seen one’s own child being breastfed by its mother. It is the time when it starts to sing even as it is sucking on the nipple and using its diversion, mothers usually examine the baby’s ears and other places for anything to be removed like wax. At other times the child would show its irritation. But when being breastfed and it is in a singing and dancing mood anything is possible for the mother. It is the proper time to clean the baby apart from the time of bathing.
Raga and Dvesha or attraction and repulsion are learned even while the baby is just a few months old. Then how could the grown-up children like us be not subject to the onslaught of attraction and repulsion?
We are ensnared at birth! It is a confessional statement by the Great Lord! But He is not a harasser of human beings. Once this great and mighty Universe is thought of as a beautiful thought by the Lord, and He is readily accessible even to the lowest among us, our sense of injustice vanishes and we become a willing partner in the game of life and living the Lord wants us to lead. He actually wants us to play a game and foul play just makes us to play the game once more from where the game was left off at the next birth. See, He couldn’t be more understanding than that. He wants us to have moderation in all things. He is not an arbitrary dictator. He does not say do or die. Come on ladies and gentlemen, let’s play the game for the glory of the Lord. Swami Sidbhavananda has said that self-discipline is the unit of measurement of one sect’s culture. We must be self-disciplined. God does not deny us the sattvic food and sattvic life. In the concluding chapter or discourse, the Lord enumerates what kinds and items of food are sattvic. Those food items He says which are fresh, clean and sweet are sattvic food. So in life, we must practice sattvic tendencies.
There is a misunderstanding about Gita as a text inducing renouncement of the world.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just take for example, if all people become sanyasis or ascetics, who would irrigate the field? What would happen to our life dear? It would be a mass hara-kiri or suicide! If the Lord wants us to become ascetics, then why has he given us the reproductive system? But that doesn’t mean we could lead a life of butterflies which go from flower to flower all their lives. No! Marriage is one of the finest of institutions man has devised for his outlet of animal-like feelings. Just ask those pairs of people who have latched onto each other for well over fifty years of consummately beautiful marital life as to their sex life and they would reply that after their last child, it became a thing of the past or almost. That once in a bluest moon they would have sex! There is a virtue in clinging to each other throughout life. This automatically checks the number of times a couple has sex!
Far from urging asceticism, the Text of Gita urges us to indulge in unceasing action.
When Arjuna wanted to renounce the world, the Lord tongue-lashes him and asks him whereof he got this eunuch like sentiments. He does not glorify Arjuna when he wanted and opted to eat beggar’s bread. On the contrary, he wants him to enter the field of battle which had come as an opportunity to the warrior in him.
We must glorify our Lord by ceaseless action. But we must not be hankering after money, land, women, He says. These three things have the power to make one become immoderate and insatiable and senseless. Leaving the fruit of our ceaseless action to Him, we must continue to act till the last breath.
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