Commentary on the Bhagavadgita : 43 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, July 03, 2022. 19:30.AM

Discourse 46: The Seventeenth Chapter Begins – The Threefold Character of Faith : 3.

POST-43.

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A rajasic diet is irritating, biting, burning, and very harsh in its action on the system. It causes a burning sensation at the time of eating it, and it affects the stomach, and it may even create a stomach ulcer. These diets are very much desired by people who are rajasic in their nature. But tamasic people want another kind of food. They do not want freshly cooked food; they only want yesterday's food. 

“You have brought food that was cooked today. No, I can't take it. I want food that was cooked yesterday.” 

They would rather have leftovers from yesterday than freshly cooked food. 

Yātayāmaṁ (17.10) refers not to food cooked yesterday but to food that has been cooked some three or four hours earlier. 

That also is considered as a tamasic diet. Gatarasaṁ is food whose taste has gone because it has been kept too long. Pūti is food that is not pleasant to the taste and is almost stinking. Paryuṣitaṁ is food which was cooked yesterday. Ucchiṣṭam is the leftovers from somebody's meal. That should not be eaten. Amedhyaṁ is very impure food, kept in a dirty place, cooked by a dirty man in a dirty manner, with an impure mind, with emotions of unhappiness, tension, anger, and dislike. Food cooked by such persons should not be eaten. 

This is tamasic food.

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Now the Lord goes into details of sattvic sacrifices, rajasic sacrifices, tamasic sacrifices, and the threefold classification of every blessed item in this world.

Faith is of the nature of the quality that is predominant in a person—namely, sattva, rajas and tamas. While going to greater detail on this subject, various other things were mentioned about the three kinds of food, the three kinds of tapas, the three kinds of worship, etc.

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Aphalāṅkṣibhir yajño vidhidṛṣṭo ya ijyate, yaṣṭavyameveti manaḥ samādhāya sa sāttvikaḥ (17.11): 

That sacrifice can be called sattvic sacrifice which is performed by those who expect no particular fruit to follow from that performance. They do this sacrifice according to rules laid down in the Vedas and the Brahmana scriptures, and perform these sacrifices merely because it is obligatory on their part to do these sacrifices. 

These obligatory sacrifices have been described in the Fourth Chapter—daivam evāpare yajñaṁ yoginaḥ paryupāsate (4.25), etc., which we have already studied. 

Because it is obligatory, it must be done. It is a duty to do this kind of sacrifice.

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There are varieties of sacrifice. We may bring back to our memory the details given in the Fourth Chapter. In this chapter, and also in the following chapter, a brief statement is made as to what actually is obligatory sacrifice. Obligatory sacrifice is mentioned as threefold: yajna, dana and tapas.

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“It has to be done, and therefore, I shall do it.” Mostly, we do sacrifice because we are forced to do it due to certain circumstantial pressure. Voluntary sacrifice is what is intended here; we do not do it reluctantly or avoid it if we can.

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The sacrifices mentioned here are external as well as internal. External sacrifices are those which are enjoined upon a good householder, which he continues to perform right from the time of his marriage until his death. He maintains three fires, called dakshinagni, ahavaniya and garhapatya. Garhapatya, dakshinagni, ahavaniya are the three forms of holy fire which are lit at the time of marriage, and they are always kept burning. It is with that fire that the person's cremation is supposed to be performed because the belief, as ordained in the scriptures, is that fire will take him up to the higher realms. So we have to do it.

To be continued .....

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