Commentary on the Bhagavadgita : 49-5.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2022. 07:00.
Discourse 49: The Eighteenth Chapter Continues – Types of Understanding, Determination and Happiness-5.

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Yayā svapnaṁ bhayaṁ śokaṁ viṣādaṁ madam eva ca, na vimuñcati durmedhā dhṛtiḥ sā pārtha tāmasī (18.35):

Tamasic determination or will is filled with sleepiness, fear, grief, despondency, pride, and a deluded state of thinking. These are qualities of a tamasic individual. Durmedhā dhṛtiḥ: A determination that is motivated by a bad or a wrong type of understanding. Mada is a kind of vanity that one feels in oneself. Vishada is despondency. Soka is grief. Bhaya is fear. Svapna is lethargic sleeping or a torpid condition of the mind, which is not inclined to any kind of activity. If this is the characteristic of a person, such a person is tamasic and is unfit for doing anything at all.

Three kinds of understanding and three kinds of decision or determination have been mentioned. Many kinds of themes constituting three categories are taken up in this fashion. As understanding is threefold and determination is threefold, happiness also is threefold. There are three kinds of happiness.

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Sukhaṁ tvidānīṁ trividhaṁ śṛṇu me bharatarṣabha, abhyāsād ramate yatra duḥkhāntaṁ ca nigacchhati (18.36):

“Now I shall tell you what is real happiness. That which leads you finally to sorrow and that which will lead you to real happiness, I shall tell you what it is.”

Yat tadagre viṣam iva:

True happiness, or real happiness, lasting happiness, genuine happiness, looks like poison in the beginning. Very painful is any kind of effort in the direction of real happiness, but in the end it is like nectar. There is a proverb that says, “You have to soil your hands in order to get sweet milk from the cow.” Anything that is intended for our final welfare looks like a bitter potion in the beginning, and we will be very unhappy even to undertake it. Whether it is yoga exercise, japa, meditation, study, sadhana or whatever it is, it will look very boring and painful, but is going to lead to final bliss. That which is really good looks undesirable and repulsive.

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Yat tadagre viṣam iva pariṇāme'mṛtopamam, tat sukhaṁ sāttvikaṁ proktam ātmabuddhiprasādajam (18.37):

That kind of happiness which will finally delight the self inside, make our understanding blossom and bring us inner peace, which ends in the nectarine experience of bliss though in the beginning it may look like a poisonous bitter stuff, should be considered as real sattvic happiness.

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Viṣayendriyasaṁyogād yat tad agre'mṛtopamam, pariṇāme viṣam iva tat sukhaṁ rājasaṁ smṛtam (18.38).

Sense indulgence appears to bring immediate pleasure, unlike sattvic happiness which looks very bitter in the beginning. Here, nectar is felt in the beginning itself. When the sense organs indulge in the objects which they long for, they seem to be drowned in nectar, so they long for the objects again and again, and one can spend one's entire life indulging in these sense objects. But in the end, terrible, painful consequences will follow. Mental grief, physical debility and rebirth will follow as a consequence of sense indulgence.

yat tad agre'mṛtopamam:

That which looks like nectar in the beginning because of the contact of the sense organs with their objects, but which will lead one to sorrow in the end, is called rajasic happiness.

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Yad agre cānubandhe ca sukhaṁ mohanam ātmanaḥ, nidrālasyapramādotthaṁ tat tāmasam udāhṛtam (18.39).

For instance, the happiness that one gets by drinking alcohol is tamasic happiness. It will completely delude our brain and put us into a state of stupor, giving us the false impression that we are in a state of joy. Intense smoking and drinking may come under this category because they appear to bring some kind of satisfaction to a person, but it is a deluded mind that thinks in this fashion. The person is happy in the beginning, in the middle and in the end—because he is drunk. In a person who is drunk, the nerves are stimulated and appear to be always in a state of happiness, but they are going to collapse completely after some time. Such happiness which is totally undesirable is tamasic happiness. Nidrālasyapramādotthaṁ tat tāmasam udāhṛtam: It will lead to sorrow and sleep. A drunken man sleeps, and when he wakes up he again drinks, and after drinking again sleeps, and after sleeping again drinks on waking up. What kind of happiness is this? This is the kind of life that some people live in the world—tamasic.

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Na tad asti pṛthivyāṁ vā divi deveṣu vā punaḥ, sattvaṁ prakṛtijair muktaṁ yad ebhiḥ syāt tribhir guṇaiḥ (18.40):

Some specific instances of the working of the three gunas—sattvic, rajasic and tamasic—have been mentioned here. There are infinite instances that can be used to illustrate this, and they are classified as being either sattvic, rajasic or tamasic. Actually, neither on earth nor in heaven is there anything which is not controlled and conditioned by the three gunas. Everything in the entire creation, in all the realms of being, is a modification of the three qualities of prakriti—sattva, rajas and tamas. Therefore, we always have to try to bring the sattvic quality to the surface of consciousness because it is perspicacious and it will give us some inkling of the higher purpose of life. The rajasic and tamasic vrittis will make us completely oblivious of the higher values of life, make us sunk in secular affairs, make us think in terms of sense objects, and cause us to take rebirth. We should develop sattvic attitudes in understanding, in determination, in will, and in happiness.

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NEXT -
Discourse 50: The Eighteenth Chapter Continues – Knowing One's Duty
To be continued ....

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