Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 20-4. Swami Krishnananda.
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Monday, May 02, 2022. 19: 00
Chapter 20: The Arising of the Concept of Unity-4.
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In the Mahabharata there is a story. Vidura gives this story to the weeping Dhritarashtra and Gandhari who beat their breasts, hit their heads on the floor, and sobbed bitterly at the death of all their children after the war.
“What is this life? Misery and misery and misery,” says Vidura.
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However, it occurs in the Mahabharata in the context of Vidura's teaching at the close of the war.
He says,
“Our fate, our life, our condition is really pitiable, like the man who fell into a well in the wilderness. In darkness a man fell into a well in a thick jungle, and perchance he caught a hold of a root of a tree on the precipice, hung on it, and did not fall into the water. When he looked down, what did he see there? He saw a crocodile with open mouth. Oh God, my dear God! It was a crocodile gazing at him. He looked up. He saw a tiger with an open mouth. It was looking at him from the top. He cannot go up because the tiger is there, and he cannot go down because the alligator, the crocodile, is there. In this condition he is hanging. But the worst thing is to be told now. A rat was munching at the root which he was hanging on to, eating it little by little. After some time, what will happen? He will be down on that alligator itself. Into its mouth he will go. But in this condition of terrific precariousness – the tiger above, the crocodile below, the rat eating the root on which he was hanging – he found some drops of honey falling from the bent branch of a tree on which there was a beehive. From the beehive overhead, drops of honey were falling. He put his tongue out to catch the drops of honey because it was so sweet.”
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Which idiotic person will try to drink honey at that time? But was sweet. Death is at the elbow; it does not matter, because honey is sweet. This is what man thinks. And this is not an instruction of Vidura to Dhritarashtra and Gandhari. It is a scientific fact of nature. Death embodied is this phenomenal world. At any moment, anything goes. Anything can be crushed down by the relentless law of the world which has no pity, we may say. Though, of course, we cannot attribute ethical sense to the impersonality of nature, from our own point of view it may look that cruel is the hand of nature. Such is this world. And in this condition we try to eat the delicious fruit of this dangerous product of the forbidden tree of life.
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Covet not anything in this world with the senses. They are sorrow breeding.
“They have a beginning and an end. Therefore, no wise man will go near them,”
says Bhagavan Sri Krishna in this famous verse occurring in this chapter. We have to control our impulses even before we die. It is worth doing this.
We should not wait for the moment of death for wisdom to dawn in us:
BG
Chapter-5.
Slokam -23:
"Shaknotihaiva yah sodhum prak sharira-vimokshanat
kama-krodhodbhavam vegam sa yuktah sa sukhi narah."
Translation : Those persons are yogis, who before giving up the body are able to check the forces of desire and anger; and they alone are happy.
The shedding of this body, we should go with a satisfaction that we have achieved something worth the while for which we have come to this world. The impulse of kama and krodha should be restrained. He who is endowed with the strength to restrain, to withhold, the impetuosity of the forces of kama and krodha, desire and anger, is always liberated. Such a person is always in a state of yoga.
Such a person is happy: sa yuktah sa sukhi narah.
This has to be effected gradually, day by day, by various methods which have been told us in different contexts.
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The impetuosity of the sense organs is understandable. They are like that because they have a cosmic backing. The little wave in the ocean has the support of the whole ocean. The entire body of the ocean is pushing it, and therefore the wave is up like a little hill on the surface of the water. Similarly, a little sensory desire has a cosmic push at the back. The whole sea is at its back, and therefore it becomes impossible to restrain the sense organs. We are nobodies, actually. We have no strength to control the senses.
It is said in the Bhagavadgita that prakriti will have its say.
BG Chapter-3
Slokam-33.
"Sadrisham cheshtate svasyah prakriter jnanavan api
prakritim yanti bhutani nigrahah kim karishyati."
Translation :
Even wise people act according to their natures, for all living beings are propelled by their natural tendencies. What will one gain by repression?
prakritim yanti bhutani nigrahah kim karishyati.
(Second line of BG 3.33) :
Natural forces will act naturally. No individual action is here indicated. When it is said that the impulses of desire and anger have to be subdued, it is not meant that you and I can work it independently. Individual effort is not sufficient.
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