A Study of the Bhagavadgita :14.2. - Swami Krishnananda.
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Greetings to all from Chinmaya Vibhooti for Ganesh Chaturthi!
Shri Pranav Ganesh Bhagwan ki Jai!
Shri Sadhgurunath Maharaj ki Jai!
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Tuesday, September 06, 2022. 07:45.
Chapter 14: Our Involvement in the Whole Creation -2.
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The Smritis, such as the Manusmriti, are very specific in this instruction that we should not live in this world for the sake of enjoyment of objects of the senses. The universe, the field of activity in this world, is also a field of education. When you go to a school or college, you go there for a certain discipline for improvement of personality, and not for eating or enjoyment. Education is not an enjoyment; it is a discipline. Discipline looks like something totally different from enjoyment. You go home after school or college and then entertain yourselves with any kind of delicacy which you cannot get in the educational institution. But you know very well how important education is. Discipline is also a kind of necessity, and necessity cannot be other than what is a joy for you in the long run.
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So nobody can escape from the duty of performing tapas or austerity. Every person, especially a spiritual seeker – or anyone, for the matter of that – who wants anything in this world, spiritual or otherwise, should be an austere person. Indulgence is contrary to the welfare of beings – not only your personal being, but also the being of other people around you. You harm yourself by being indulgent and, in a way, you harm other people also by your indulgence in the sense that you deprive other people of their requirements. So there is a double error involved in sense indulgence – harm to one's own self and harm to society outside. Exploitation of people and ruin of one's own personality are involved in every kind of sense enjoyment. Therefore, you have to give the body, the mind, the feelings and emotions only as much as it is necessary for survival.
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Now, what kind of survival?
It is not somehow or other getting on, just keeping the prana alive. You must be robust in health, very vigorous in your personality, healthy and capable of utilising this body and mind for the purpose for which it has been given to you, which is advancement in the pursuit of the Universal Spirit. So you have to be very cautious in the performance of austerities, tapas. Do not go to extremes. Over-indulgence is as bad as over-austere torture of either the feelings or the body. Neither should you torture the mind and the body, nor should you indulge them.
Madhyama marga is the middle path, the path of harmony, samatvam.
Samatvaṁ yoga ucyate (Gita 2.48).
Yoga is the harmony of attitude in all respects, including your attitude towards the body, mind and spirit. Neither give it too much, nor starve it. This is the austerity that is involved. You have a duty towards it. Every day you have to be engaged in this austerity because every day you have to be with yourself. Tapas is defined in this manner.
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Dana is charitable nature, which is your goodwill towards others.
Now, "Love thy neighbour as thyself" is an old saying, and it may be regarded as the highest dictum that is available to us for living a good life – the idea behind it being that you have to consider other people as important as you yourself are.
We are mostly selfish people; almost everybody has some element of selfishness which somehow or other appears and works out a means of establishing its superiority over others. Logically you don't argue like this – you never say you are superior to other people – but basically there is a survival instinct in every person at the cost of anybody else. While you have to survive, it is good that others should also survive.
In what way are you more important than others?
All living beings are limbs of the same cosmic personality; therefore, a consideration that you bestow for the welfare of others is supposed to be equivalent to the consideration that you bestow on your own self. Charity is this much: a well-being that you extend to other living beings who are as good and as aspiring, as meaningful, as your own self.
This is called charity, dana. Every day this has to be performed. Your goodwill for people is not only for today; it is for all time and every day, as long as you are alive in this world.
So, you should adopt austerity for your own benefit so that you may not be overindulgent or over-starving, and also good will, a charitable nature, and a loveable attitude towards society; this is dana.
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You have a duty, therefore, to yourself and to society; but there is another duty which you may miss in your overenthusiasm in regard to people outside and your own self – namely, divinities that are superintending over you, the invisible gods, adhidaivas.
They control even your breathing process. The very vitals of your personality are operating on account of the working of these divinities. Suryanarayana is the Sun god about whom we complain so much, and whom we do not consider as anything at all in our daily life: "Sunrise and sunset – let him do his work; in what way are we concerned with it? He is drudging through the skies."
But we cannot exist for three days if solar energy does not sustain and energies us.
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To be continued ....
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