The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 13.2. Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, August 18, 2021. 8:29. PM.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
CHAPTER-13. The Supremely Friendly Power - 2.
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)
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Sri Matsya Narayana Temple is uniquely located near the ocean and offers comfort and peace in Uthandi, Chennai. Chinmaya Tarangini was inaugurated by Pujya Guruji Swami Tejomayananda on 24th May, 2015 during the Birth Centenary year of Swami Chinmayananda.

8.17.2021

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There is a supremely friendly power operating in this universe. We are not likely to be aware of this fact always. We have a natural feeling, mostly, that we are totally friendless in this world. When there is trouble, we shall not receive help from anybody. We shall be left to our fate when things come to a head. We may have tentative assistances, and a type of help we may expect from human society. We do have friends in this world, but they are conditionally arranged friends. Unconditional assistance we cannot expect.

There are occasions in life when we seem to be drowning in grief, as if death has gripped our throat and nobody will look at us except the jaws of death. At that time, we do not seem to have any kind of real relations with things. Our natural feeling is, many a time, submerged in the veneer of an outer pleasantness of human relationship. This pleasantness is an outer coating; inwardly there is the bitter pill of the medicine of the hard facts of life, which are not always available on the surface of apparent human relationships.

One need not despair. The one who gives this message, the Bhagavadgita, is a representative of the true friendship in this cosmos. Sri Krishna is considered as the permanent friend of Arjuna. Nara and Narayana are said to be inseparable brothers, inseparable friends, inseparable in every way, with Narayana representing God, Sri Krishna representing the very same thing, and Arjuna, or Nara, representing man – yourself, myself and everybody. There is an inseparable friendship that is at the base of our relationship with a secret power in this world, which is a totally outside matter for our day-to-day practical existence.

This very image of Nara-Narayana or Krishna-Arjuna as friends is given to us in another form in a passage of the Veda, and also in a passage which is repeated in the Mundaka Upanishad, that there are two birds perching on the branch of a tree. One bird is very busy with the delicious fruits of the tree, and the other bird is minding not as to what is there at all, not eating, not concerning itself with anything. The unfortunate part of it is that this busy bird eating the sweet plums is not even aware that the other bird is there nearby.

The involvement of the human mind, the engagement in human passions, desires and prejudices in the atmosphere of the world, is so intense that it cannot even be conscious for a moment that there is some super-earthly, super-physical, super-material, super-individual power masquerading in this very world unseen, unrecognised, and yet being aware of all things and ready to be of succour even to the littlest of creations. 

The idea behind the image of the friendship of Krishna and Arjuna perpetually obtaining, of Nara-Narayana or the two birds mentioned, is that we are not so very friendless as we may imagine in the desperate delusions of our minds, in the sorrows in which we are usually sunk. We do not find ourselves in that awakened atmosphere of it being possible for us to be conscious of there being such a thing. 

Like an owl which cannot visualise the light of the sun even if it is blazing at midday, the sunk mind of the bound individual cannot recognise, cannot cognise, cannot be aware even of that which is just by its side. But that is there as your friend.

To be continued ....

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