The Bhagavadgita – A Synthesis of Thought and Action-1. : Swami Krishnananda

23/11/2018
(Spoken on Gita Jayanti in 1973)

A Synthesis of Thought and Action-1

The culture of mankind may be said to have reached its zenith in the thoughts of the Upanishads, wherein we have an exposition of the quintessential essence of all values that humanity has been seeking through the passage of history. In this groundwork of human culture, we have the perennial inspiration of the soul of man, the cry of the deepest in the human individual, the raptures of what may be regarded as the most valuable part of human nature. Such is the meaning hidden behind the gospel of the Upanishads, which soar into the empyrean of the superhuman and the meta-empirical, rising to levels of such ecstatic heights almost inaccessible to the faculties available to the human individual, making us giddy with the heights that they have reached. It is practically impossible for the modern man especially even to think of their significance except that they are wonderful spiritual messages given to us. While the human mind is always able to very quickly misunderstand things, it is not so easily able to understand things in their proper perspective and context. It is very easy for me to misunderstand you, but it is not so easy to understand you. This is human nature in its simple openness and placid empiricality. To commit a mistake is easier than to pursue the course of truth.

The glorious teachings of the Upanishads contain truth in their simple nakedness, unclothed with vestures of human liking or sentiment. This is precisely the reason why they could not easily become a guiding directive of the practical life of man in the workaday world.

In the Bhagavadgita we are supposed to be given a practical turn to the supreme and ideal loftiness which the spirit of the Upanishads embodies. You will remember that towards the end of each chapter of the Gita is the colophon: iti shrimadbhagavadgitasu upanishatsu. The Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita are like brothers or sisters born of the same parents – the Vedas, the Srutis and the Smritis – which contain within themselves the wisdom of man in its theoretical as well as its practical aspects.

To be continued ..