Commentary on the Bhagavadgita : 46-5 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, July 14, 2022. 07:30.

Discourse 46: The Seventeenth Chapter Begins – The Threefold Character of Faith : 5.

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Vidhihīnam asṛṣṭānnaṁ mantrahīnam adakṣiṇam, śraddhāvirahitaṁ yajñaṁ tāmasaṁ paricakṣate (17.13): 

Tamasic sacrifice, tamasic worship, tamasic yajna is that which is done contrary to prescribed rules and is totally oblivious to the regulations laid down in the Vedas, the Brahmanas and the Smritis, or even by tradition, and is bereft of charity. No offering is made to the deity, and no proper mantra is chanted, and no fee is given to the performer of the sacrifice. It is an unthinkably defective way of approaching things. The desired result will not follow. An example is a person who employs a pandit—a yajamana who engages a saint or a purohita for the performance of a worship—and does not properly respect him, does not give him his due, and he concentrates only on what he will get out of it, and not on the pleasure of the gods or the satisfaction of the deity whom he is invoking through the sacrifice. And he is faithless; inwardly, he has no faith in the very performance itself. “If something comes, well and good; and if nothing comes, that is also all right. I will pray to God, if God is there. If He doesn't exist, that's not a loss to me. O God, if there is a God, come and help me.” O God, if there is a God. If God is not there, we do not lose anything by the utterance of a few words.

Faithless performance is tamasic performance. When our heart is not in a thing, we are also not in that thing. Where our heart is, there we are; and if we ourselves are not there, what is the good of doing anything? We have to be present in the deed that we perform, we have to ‘be' in the worship that we offer, and we have to ‘be' in the meditation that we undertake every day. Whatever is manifesting itself from us is ensouled by us. That is, if we stand outside the performance, the performance becomes a corpse, a skeleton. It is without life because we have stood outside it. But if we have entered into it, the action itself is enlivened by our soul. We are entirely in it; then it is that the action becomes a real sacrifice. Where we are not in the work, it ceases to be a sacrifice. To the extent we are involved in the work, to that extent it is a sacrifice. If we are wholly involved in it, and we are not separable from the work that we are doing—we ourselves are the work, as it were—then it is the highest sacrifice, and it will bring us the best of benefits. Else, it is tamasic.

Devadvija guru prājña pūjanaṁ śaucamārjavam, brahma- caryam ahiṁsā ca śārīraṁ tapa ucyate (17.14). 

Yajna is of three kinds, which have been mentioned. Now we are being told that tapas is also of three kinds. Physical tapas, verbal tapas, and mental tapas are distinguished here by their own peculiar qualities. Worship of gods, worship of learned Brahmins, worship of the Guru, worship of wise persons, knowers of Brahman, purity inside and outside, straightforwardness of behaviour, self-restraint, ahimsa or non-injury to living beings—these are austerities of the body. We physically prostrate ourselves before the divinity whom we are adoring every day in worship, we prostrate ourselves before great men, divine people, preceptors, together with an internal self-restraint that we exercise on our own self, maintaining a purity of conduct and motive inwardly and outwardly—if this could be done, the body is performing a tapas. Physical discipline is described here as adoration of divinities, adoration of gods, adoration of learned, wise, spiritual preceptors, self-restraint, control of the ten sense organs, purity, and straightforwardness. If this can be maintained, we are physically restraining ourselves entirely.

Our speech also has to be restrained. In the same way as there is a restraint of the body by discipline of this kind, there has to be a discipline of the speech.

 Anudvegakaraṁ vākyaṁ satyaṁ priyahitaṁ ca yat, svādhyāyābhyasanaṁ caiva vāṅmayaṁ tapa ucyate (17.15): 

The discipline of the speech is considered to be that which is pleasing, which does not agitate the mind of the person who hears it, which is very beneficial, kind and sweet, and is also truthful and not camouflaged with any kind of untruth—purely factual, verbal expression, which is very dear and happy to hear, and good for the people who hear it. There is also daily study of the holy scriptures, svādhyāya.

As we have discipline of the body, there is discipline of speech. What are these? They are sweet speech—not speaking like a thorn pricking people—truthful speech, kind speech, beneficial speech, and daily study of holy scriptures for our own inner illumination. The svādhyāya of the Veda Samhitas, patha of Ramayana, Bhagavata, Bhagavadgita, etc., all come under svādhyāya yajña, by which we purify and discipline our speech.

To be continued ......

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