The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita : 1.2 - Swami Krishnananda.
Chinmaya Mission :
CORD - Chinmaya Organisation for Rural Development :
Empowering minds and shaping the future has been the motto of CORD, a leading non-profit organization working towards rural development in India. Their collaboration with Teach For India (TFI) has proven to be successful, benefiting over 500 people.
CORD organized a retreat for the members, where they were trained on various aspects of CORD's rural development model and had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Kshama Metre, the National Director of CORD. The immersive experience allowed participants to share their insights and experiences with the community members, leading to positive transformation in their daily lives. CORD's collaborations with organizations, corporates, and academics aim to bring about positive change in rural India.
Friday, February 10, 2023. 07:00.
Chapter 1 : This Drama of Life - 2.
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The Bhagavadgita is the great gospel which Bhagavan Sri Krishna spoke. Historically speaking, many many years ago, under a special context of the Mahabharata, the great epic which, as you perhaps already know, is an epic of life as a whole. The question which this great text tries to solve and answer is the question of life of man. Your life in this world is a great question mark before you. What are you? Who are you? What is it that is expected of you and what is it that you expect from this world? These are questions before us and we may not be able to answer these questions off-hand. Where are we seated now? We have a simple glib answer which may not be the correct answer. I will tell you how even very small things may not be the things we actually bring into action in our life – like the location of yours, here, at this present moment, to give you only one simple, concrete, gross example. Where are you sitting now, at this present moment? You can have many answers to this question. You are sitting in the hall of a library of the Sivananda Ashram, in the campus of The Divine Life Society. This is a very correct answer, and nobody can say that you are wrong in saying that just now, "I am seated in the hall of the library of this Ashram." But you can also say, "I am living in the state of Uttar Pradesh. I come from Madras, Maharashtra, Punjab or the United States, etc. I am now in India."
This is also a correct answer – you are now sitting in India, and not merely in this little hall. Though it may be true that you are in a hall, it is not untrue that you are in India. Perhaps you are likely to be more free and liberated in your psychological operations when you feel that you are in India, rather than feel that you are in a little hall. You yourself will know the difference between these two ways of thinking – "I am in India, not in a little hall." You may also say that, "I am on the surface of the earth"; this is also true. You are sitting on the earth, on the surface. You are not sitting in a hall, which is only a concept in your mind. You are on a spaceship. Do you know what a spaceship is? You know very well what it is; and the earth is a spaceship. To move in space and rattle through space, you need not go to the moon or some other planet – you are just in that condition even now. This is a little planet, the earth, on which you are seated, and it is moving with such rapidity in space that to be in the moon or the earth – it makes no difference to you. When you go to the moon you will find yourself in the same condition as you are now finding yourself when seated on the earth. Just as you do not know that the earth is moving now, you will not know that the moon is moving if you are sitting there. So goes the way in which the mind thinks.
You are also in a solar system, a large electromagnetic field which runs vitally from one planet to the centre of the sun. You are not in a library hall, sitting here. You are in a terribly powerful magnetic field operating between the sun and this earth. There is no empty space between the sun and this earth; it is electricity operating, and we are terribly influenced by every planet, every thing that is between us and every other planet. The sun and the whole solar system is conditioned by another system called the 'Nebular Organisation', the Milky Way, etc. which contains thousands and thousands of solar systems like us. We are now in the Milky Way, a part of it. We will not be able to think with our minds the way in which we are accustomed to, if the mind is to be lifted like this – higher and higher into wider regions of location. We are not sitting in a little hall, we are not even on the earth. We are in a vast spatial and temporal expanse which is influencing us from moment to moment, so that we may say that we are living in this vast universe, not in a library hall. And each one of you will be able to appreciate the difference that it will make to you if you are able to think that you are living in a vast expanse of this astronomical universe than this little thinking that you are in a small room in the academy campus. You are right in thinking that you are in the academy campus in a small room, but you can also be right in a more intensive manner if you know that you are in a larger dimension of the whole set-up of this terrible creation before you, and you are in that.
The Bhagavadgita, thus, does not take any one standpoint in answering questions of life. It takes every standpoint. Otherwise, the study of human life – or any life for the matter of that – may not be complete. A very expert physician takes into consideration every aspect of the possibility of illness of a person, and doesn't treat only one aspect. Otherwise, there will be reaction from that aspect which is ignored or neglected in observation. A total answer is given to a total question in the Bhagavadgita. There is only a single question before us, and a single answer will come from every corner of the world. The question is single because we are involved in a single, uniform manner with the large environment in which we are living, and the answer also has to be a complete answer. As is this human organism a complete system of operation, so is our relationship to the whole environment of ours – a complete involvement. All of our involvements are complete and total to the core. Hence, any educational endeavour has to be a thoroughgoing and incisive, in-depth inquiry into the structure of all things.
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To be continued
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