A Study of the Bhagavadgita - Chapter 6.5. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Saturday, May 29, 2021. 10:15.AM.
Chapter 6: Sankhya – The Wisdom of Cosmic Existence - 5.
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These five koshas mentioned – Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vijnanamaya, Anandamaya – this body, this social relation, this matter, this possession, this wealth, this whatever you have, they are all extraneous to your immortal essence, and therefore they are bound to leave you. Bereavement is the law of phenomenal existence. There is a verse towards the end of the Mahabharata which says that all accumulation will one day end in dispersion. 

All rising will end in fall. All accumulation will end in extinction. Life ends in death, and it is a fool who has occasions of joy and sorrow several times in a day. Sometimes you are elated, sometimes you are grief-stricken. There should be no occasion for you either to exult or to be grief-stricken, considering that these waves of joy and sorrow frequently dashing on you are caused by the process of time. Your duty is to follow dharma.

So one aspect of your personality, which is phenomenal, talks in this strain, and the other aspect tells you that you are going to achieve infinite existence. God-realisation, moksha, is your aim. This is what your spirit will tell you again and again. Your aspirations are endless. Unending is the asking of the soul. Nothing in the world can satisfy you; not all the grain, not all the gold, not all the silver, not all the domain in the world can satisfy even one person. Not even one person can be satisfied by the wealth of the whole world. Such are the desires of man, like the flaming march of a conflagration in a forest.

As there are two aspects of a human being, there are also two approaches to the problems of life. One approach is Sankhya, another is Yoga, but they are not connected by an 'and'. They are two phases, two wings of a single bird that is flying – simultaneously, indivisibly, as it were. Yoga is defined as action. 

Yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam (Gita 2.50): Expertness in action is Yoga. 

But what kind of action? What is meant by 'action'?

Here, in the beginning of the Third Chapter, a clue is given to us as to how action can bind or not bind. If the mind is not connected to the actions that you perform, you cannot call it real action. It will become like an automaton moving, a mechanical activity. If the body is moving and the mind is not thinking, it cannot be called real action. So while a person sits quiet without doing any action, we may imagine he is doing nothing; but he does something when the mind is conscious that he is not doing anything. If the mind is roaming over various questions of life or even entertaining desires as a daydream, but the sense organs are not active – neither you eat, nor you see, nor you smell, nor you talk, though you have a desire to eat and a desire to see, a desire to come in contact with people, but you are not allowing the desires to fulfil themselves by restraining the activity of the operative organs – this is real action. 

Even if you are physically doing nothing but are mentally doing something, you are an active person from the point of view of the psychology of your personality. But if your mind wants nothing, it has no desires of any kind, it contemplates not anything in this world but physically you are engaged in work, then that action cannot be called action. Mind, intention, purposiveness, causation, impulse – these are the actions. So physical activity, whatever be its nature, cannot be regarded as action of any kind if the mind is detached from it.

To be continued ....

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