Commentary on the Bhagavadgita : 23 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Swami Chinmayananda

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Thursday, March 03, 2022. 20:00.

Discourse 42 :

Chapter-15 Begins: The world as an Inverted Tree.

POST-23.

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The prayer is: I aspire to attain that glorious Purusha. Let there be this prayer in our hearts every day: tameva cādyaṁ puruṣaṁ prapadye yataḥ pravṛttiḥ prasṛtā purāṇī. The prayer of the seeker is: I humbly seek to reach and attain that Purusha, from whom emanates the large tree of samsara. Go on repeating this mantra: tameva cādyaṁ puruṣaṁ prapadye yataḥ pravṛttiḥ prasṛtā purāṇī. This is actually a mantra, an inward prayer of a spiritual seeker, making out that one wants nothing but that which is above the three gunas of prakriti, which causes the tree to manifest.

SBG-ch-15. slo-5.

nirmana-moha jita-sanga-dosha

adhyatma-nitya vinivritta-kamah

dvandvair vimuktah sukha-duhkha-sanjnair

gachchhanty amudhah padam avyayam tat

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Translation :

niḥ—free from; 

māna—vanity; 

mohāḥ—delusion; 

jita—having overcome; 

saṅga—attachment; 

doṣhāḥ—evils; 

adhyātma-nityāḥ—dwelling constantly on the self and on God; 

vinivṛitta—free from; 

kāmāḥ—desire to enjoy senses; 

dvandvaiḥ—from the dualities;

vimuktāḥ—liberated; 

sukha-duḥkha—pleasure and pain; 

saṁjñaiḥ—known as; 

gachchhanti—attain; 

amūḍhāḥ—unbewildered; 

padam—abode; 

avyayam—eternal; 

tat—that.

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Slokam Translation :

Those who are free from vanity and delusion, who have overcome the evil of attachment, who dwell constantly on the self and on God, who are free from the desire to enjoy the senses, and are beyond the dualities of pleasure and pain, such liberated personalities attain My eternal Abode.

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Commentary

In this verse, Shree Krishna has explained the requisites for complete surrender to the Supreme Lord, who is at the base of this enigmatic aśhvatth tree.  The first step is to give up all pride, which is due to ignorance. The embodied souls have an illusion that they are the governors of all the material wealth that they have acquired, and continue accumulating more. Their minds are blinded by pride borne by ignorance, they think that all this is for their enjoyment, and would continue giving them happiness. A soul in such a state does not comprehend God as the owner of all. Thus, cannot surrender unto his will.

Only through proper knowledge of God can this false notion of being the enjoyer be removed. It is necessary to realize that God alone is the owner of all the material energy and it needs to be used for his service only. He is the master of the entire creation, and the souls are his eternal servants. The souls should give up the attitude of pride and develop an attitude of selfless service to the Lord. This can be achieved by understanding the true nature of the self as the eternal servant, eliminating material attachments that pull us towards the world and away from him. The Padma Purāṇ states:

dāsa bhūtamidaṁ tasya jagatsthāvara jangamam

śhrīmannārāyaṇa swāmī jagatānprabhurīśhwaraḥ

“The Supreme Lord Narayan is the controller and the Lord of the world.  All moving and non-moving beings and entities in this creation are His servants.”  Hence, as our desire to serve God increases, the illusion of being the enjoyer of prakṛiti (material world) gets gradually eliminated and the heart is cleansed.  Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj emphasizes this above everything else, as the most powerful means for purifying the heart:

sau bātana kī bāta ika, dharu muralīdhara dhyāna,

baṛhavahu sevā-vāsanā, yaha sau jñānana jñāna.

(Bhakti Śhatak, verse 74) 

“Out of a hundred advice for purification, the most important is this.  Let your mind be absorbed in the divine flute-player, Shree Krishna, and keep increasing your desire to serve Him.  This counsel is more important than a hundred such gems of knowledge.” 

But what happens once our etheric hearts are cleansed and become perfectly situated in the loving service of the Lord? In this verse, Shree Krishna says that all those perfected souls enter his spiritual realm and stay there forever. Once the state of God-realization is achieved, the material realm serves no purpose, the soul is free from the cycle of life and death. It now stays in God’s divine Abode along with other perfected, God-realized souls. The material realm is only one-fourth, while the spiritual realm is three-fourths of the entire creation. As a city prison only occupies a small part of a large city, similarly, the material realm is a very small part of God’s vast creation. The Vedas state:

pādo ’sya viśhwā bhūtāni, tripādasya amṛitam divi   (Puruṣh Sūktam Mantra 3)

“This temporary world made from the material energy is but one part of creation.  The other three parts are the eternal Abode of God that is beyond the phenomenon of life and death.”

In the next slokam, Sri Krishna explains the nature of the eternal Abode.

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There are certain conditions that we have to fulfill so that our aspiration for the attainment of this great goal may be fulfilled.

What are these qualities? 

Nirmāna: 

Not respecting oneself as an independently existing and very important individual. Recognising in oneself nothing so valuable as to distinguish oneself from other people, because self-respect has many ramifications. It leads to pride, arrogance, conflict, domination,tyranny and despotism. All kinds of things arise from the seed of self-respect. Nirmānamohā: Without this egoism called selfrespect, and without any kind of attachment, which is moha.

Jitasaṅgadoṣā: 

Free from the evil of longing for contact with things. 

Adhyātmanityā: 

Continuously resorting to the knowledge of the Atman. 

Vinivṛttakāmāḥ: 

Free from all longing for attractive things in the world, from objects of sense. Dvandvair vimuktāḥ: Free from the pairs of opposites such as raga and dvesha, like and dislike, and pleasure and pain. 

Dvandvair vimuktāḥ sukhaduḥkhasaṁjñaiḥ: Pairs of opposites known as pleasure and pain, leading to raga-dvesha, or like and dislike.

Amūḍhāḥ: Free from these pairs of opposites, great purified souls, undeluded in their nature; gacchantyamūḍhāḥ padam

avyayaṁ tat: Reach that Imperishable Abode.

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Next- CH-15. SLO-6.

To be continued ...

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