A Study of the Bhagavadgita :14.3. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Chinmaya Mission :

After more than 2 years the Chinmaya Vrindavan team was excited to host Pujya Swami Swaroopananda for a 5 day talk series on Managing difficult situations based on Sankat Mochan Hanuman Stotram during the Ganesh Utsav season. 

The daily talks were preceded by chanting by the Bala Vihar children and cultural events. The ashram premises was brimming with excitement to bask in Pujya Swamiji’s presence and the Bala Vihar children also had a chance to fly kites with Pujya Swamiji.

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Saturday, September 10, 2022. 09:45. 
Chapter 14: Our Involvement in the Whole Creation -3.

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The rise of the Sun in the east is actually the propulsion for activity of the prana. The Upanishad says, look at the rising Sun as the prana of your own being. Throughout the diurnal sojourn of this great master of light and energy in the skies, whom you consider as a distant orb, you are involved vitally. The eyes operate due to the Sun. The ears operate due to the Dig-Devatas; the nose operates due to the Ashwini Kumaras; the skin operates due to the wind or the air principle, and the taste buds operate on account of Varuna-Devata. The mind operates because of the Moon, the intellect because of Brahma, the ego principle is in Rudra, the chitta or the memory is in Vishnu, the hands due to Indra, and the legs due to Vishnu, again. Like that, every part of your body is operated by some divinity, though you are under the wrong notion that you are seeing, you are hearing, you are touching, you are tasting, you are swallowing, and you are grasping. Nothing of the kind! All the ten senses – five senses of knowledge, five organs of action – mind, intellect, ego and the subconscious memory, all these are external manifestations of an internal activity invisibly taking place on account of the working of the divinities above.

Every day you have to offer prayers. There are some who do sandhyavandana, the worship of the gods who are manifest in the forms of this nature. Early morn is a divinity, the rise of the Sun is a divinity, space, time, cause, and all the things that you see, even plants and trees are manifestations of these divinities. The whole world is filled with life; there is nothing called dead matter anywhere, and life emanates from the Universal Prana, Sutra-Atma or Hiranyagarbha, to which you have to offer your prayers. Every early morning when you get up from bed, your prayers should be to these sustaining divinities. From all ten directions they pour grace upon you.

Yajna is sacrifice to the gods. This sacrifice can be performed as an external act of offering into the sacred fire. As symbolic of your feeling you chant some mantras, prayers, etc. But prayer need not be in the form of material offering. Prayer is a surrender of the spirit to the Universal Spirit, to the God of creation, to the spirit manifested as humanity, to nature as a whole. Nothing equals prayer. 

The greatest sadhana is prayer. While prayer can manifest itself as actual worship in temples or altars in your house or in the form the holy fire of yagna, homa, etc., sacrifice can be in the form of the chanting of the Divine Name – nama japa. Yaj–ānāṁ japayaj–osmi (Gita 10.25), says the Lord: 

Of all sacrifices, recitation of the Divine Name, called japa, is to be considered as the best of sacrifices because it does not involve harm to any creature, or any expenditure on your side; it is just a mental act, an act of feeling. So while it is not essential and is mostly not necessary to go on performing yajna in the form of material offerings like ghee, charu, etc., it is permitted in the case where you feel it is an essential. Your heart is what is needed.

When you wake up in the morning, sit for a few minutes at least and be conscious of the great divinities that are inundating you, pouring themselves upon you like the sunlight pours on everything without expecting any recompense. Great God is kind enough to give us free sunlight, free air to breathe, free water to drink, and we have to be grateful. Namaste Vayo and all the shanti mantras are procedures adopted for carrying on this prayerful attitude in our daily life. Pray to every god. What is this 'every god'? 

This is the Universal Spirit operating through every little manifestation, even through a leaf in the tree. You cannot keep your foot on the ground unless you beg pardon from Mother Earth that you are treading upon her. Vishnu patnim namastubhyam, padasparsa ksamasva me. You should chant this prayer. "O Goddess of Divinity, please pardon my keeping my foot on you." The Earth is full of life; it is divinity itself, and you cannot touch anything without actually touching God in some manifestation, in some manner.

Yaj–adānatapaḥkarma na tyājyam iti cāpare: 

Sacrifice in the form of obligation to the divinities, charitable feeling towards people in society, and austerity on your behalf – these are incumbent on your part. Nobody can be free from this kind of work.

There are verses in the Eighteenth Chapter which go into great details of the distinction made among sattvic feeling, rajasic feeling and tamasic feeling. When you perform yajna, offer your prayers, or do charity or austerity, you may be sattvic, rajastic or tamasic, as the case may be. You can do a good thing in a bad way, in a grudging, reluctant manner, with no mind associated with it. You may do your prayer by chanting like a machine while your feelings are somewhere else, such as in your problems or practical family life. That is rajasic. Or you may be slothful or sleepy and go on imagining that you are doing some prayer. That is tamasic prayer. And you may ruin your personality by not understanding the minimum of the proportions with which you have to do your tapas, etc. We need not go into all these details just now. I am just mentioning even these good things of yajna, dana, tapas are of three categories – sattvic, rajasic and tamasic.

All actions, whatever they be, should not be regarded as performed by you independently. That you are not the sole agent of any action is another thing that is emphasised in some other verse of the Eighteenth Chapter. 

Adhiṣṭhānaṁ tathā kartā karaṇaṁ ca pṛthagvidham, vividhāś ca pṛthakceṣṭā daivaṁ caivātra pa–camam (Gita 18.14). 

Five ingredients are involved in the execution of any deed. When you walk, when you eat, when you go to the marketplace, you do not think that five things are involved. You are only the person concerned. "I am going to the marketplace to purchase some vegetables." This is what you feel and say. But that is not true. You cannot take one step in any direction unless five cooperative factors function at the same time. The physical body should be fit, first of all, for the requisite action. If you are a soldier, a clerk, an officer, a labourer, whatever you are may depend much upon the condition of your physical body. So one factor that conditions the nature of your action is the circumstances of the physical body. How is the body? Is it fit for some particular type of work, and not others? Everybody cannot be everything. So one factor that limits the operation of your action is the condition of your body, or the adhiṣṭhāna

The second factor is karta, or the consciousness of the extent of agency involved in action – to what extent you feel that you are actually doing this work of your own accord, and not under pressure from somebody. You may be driven to do some deed due to circumstances. Then in that case, you are not the sole agent of an action, though you are doing it independently. If you are carrying bricks or stones on your head, or digging, you may be thinking you are doing it independently, but there is a compulsion from social conditions and other factors which makes you undertake that kind of work. So the extent of agency in the performance of a particular action is also to be considered in relation to its involvement, etc. Hence, the body is one thing, and the nature of the feeling of agency is another thing, which is called karta.

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To be continued .....

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