The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 7.1. Swami Krishnananda.

Leena Sunil Kumar
🙌🙌
Chinmaya Mission  :

Several spiritual activities were conducted in Bangalore recently. On 5th February 2023, Sadhana Day was celebrated with 250 study group members discussing Bhagavad Geeta Chapter – 9 in the presence of Pujya Swami Brahmananda. The discussion focused on Jiva, Jagat, and Ishwara, and Pujya Swamiji emphasized the need to quieten the mind and focus on the changeless substratum. He urged attendees to analyze their dream state to understand how the world is projected.

Pujya Swami Gahanananda conducted a Geeta Jnana Yajna on Bhagavad Geeta Chapter 17 from 6th Feb to 12th Feb in Chinmaya Mission, Malleswaram. The Yajna discussed the importance of leading a life with control, balanced intellect, and a calm mind, and the three types of faith, food, and sacrifice based on the three inherent Gunas. The program was well attended.

Mahashivaratri was celebrated in Sripaadakshetra, J P Nagar on 18th February, 2023 with Mahanyaasa Poorvaka Ekadasha Rudrabhisheka and devotional offerings throughout the day. Celebrations began on 12th Feb with daily rice archana and devotional offerings.

Bhagavad Geeta Competitions were held in Kengeri, Bengaluru from Dec 2022 to Feb 2023 with participation from 22 schools and 2300 children. Balavihar and Study Group sevaks organized the event, with 204 winners in the final round.

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Tuesday, March 14,  2023. 08:00.

Chapter 7: The Nature of Right Understanding - 1.

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Chapter 7: The Nature of Right Understanding

We have covered practically the whole ground behind the meaning and the context of the First Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. We had to take so much time in covering the field of this one chapter, as it lays the foundation for all further thought and understanding which will follow through the coming chapters. We had occasion to observe that the background of the First Chapter is not simple and not so very introductory as it is generally made to appear. Rather, it has a value in preparing the ground for the edifice of the teaching.

I am sure you will be able to recollect the various stages of thought through which we had to pass in understanding the profound significance of ‘The Yoga of the Dejection of the Spirit', which is the title of the First Chapter. The dejection, or the mood of melancholy in which the representative man, Arjuna, found himself, has been described as a spiritual condition. That is why even the so-called dejection is regarded as a part of Yoga. It is not a morbid condition of negativity or an earth-bound attitude, but a necessary condition of positivity in its most initial stage, the task which a spiritual seeker has to take upon himself when he girds up his loins to encounter the universal Reality.

The darkness which one faces at the outset is the cumulative effect of the tremendous inward preparation which has already been made through the earlier stages of self-investigation, study and reception of knowledge from various avenues in the world. But an explanation has to be offered as to why this dejection arises at all, which comes in the form of an answer given by Krishna in a few verses at the commencement of the Second Chapter. The point made out is that the understanding is not clear enough. The knowledge, which is designated as the samkhya, is lacking. There is a turbidity of the intellect and a misdirection of the ratiocinating faculty, which situation supervenes on account of the reason of the human being itself getting contaminated by the prejudices of the psyche, from which it arises, as it were, like a tendril from a seed. Who can gainsay that our rationality or logic is, to a large extent, conditioned by the structure of our personality, which is located in a phenomenal context of the universe, and everything that devolves out of this phenomenality?

The term samkhya that is used in the Second Chapter is the knowledge which is supposed to be in consonance with the nature of Reality, and that which is dissonant with its nature is the opposite of it, the absence of knowledge, or samkhya. What this knowledge is will be told to us in the Third Chapter—what it is to be endowed with samkhya, or correct understanding, alongside of which we will also know what is meant by wrong understanding. The immediate reaction of Krishna, the Teacher, to the predicament of the psyche of Arjuna is metaphysical, and it takes into consideration certain aspects in the course of the argument. The sudden answer which comes as an immediate reaction to the various arguments posed by Arjuna is that the soul of the individual is essentially immortal. 

The fear of death and destruction and catastrophe which harassed the mind of this human representative in Arjuna—all these problems are out of point on account of the essence of being, or the basic fundamentality of the individual, being indestructible. There is no such thing as destruction, ultimately, of anything that exists. There cannot also be a destruction of that which does not exist. This is simple logic which is the encounter that comes forth as a flash of light from Krishna upon the mind of Arjuna. The fear of destruction was one of the points raised by Arjuna as a counterblast against the injunction that engagement in war is necessary. This argument of Arjuna received a reply in a short passage which makes out that destruction of reality is not possible. That which is, always is; and that which is not, cannot be under any circumstance.

Now, when it is said that something is destroyed, one does not properly understand what one is speaking. There is only a change of form; the name-form-complex undergoes a transformation in the process of evolution in the universe. But even in this transformation, a total destruction of any element does not take place. There is a decomposition of the parts and a rearrangement of the parts in a particular manner under a given condition. And when one lacks the knowledge of this peculiar process through which everything passes, one regards it as a destructive process, or death. Hence, the fact being that the essence of everything is immortal—we call this essence of things the soul of things—there is no need for entertaining the fear of such a thing as death. If death that seems to be imminent or impending is the retarding factor in one's engaging oneself in any action, this fear has to be shed immediately because there is no death of the essence of the personality of the individual. 

But if it is the fear of the destruction of the form or the name-form-complex, it is inevitable, and no one can escape this possibility, because the finite can never rest in itself forever. Death becomes necessary because evolution is a necessity. And death is nothing but a name we give to the process of the passing of a thing from one state into another state, into another thing, as we usually call it. So, there is no fear of the death of the essence of the individual, and there is no escaping the chance of undergoing the transformation of the name-form-complex, which is called the death of personality. Hence, either way, there is no cause for grief. 

What is inevitable has to be accepted, and to weep over the inevitable is absolutely without any significance and is to no advantage whatsoever. You cannot avert the possibility of this transformation which everything has to undergo as long as it is located as a finite entity in the realm of space-time-cause relationship. But if it is the soul that you are speaking of, it cannot be destroyed. This is a metaphysical point, a highly philosophical issue, which is the answer which Krishna gives to Arjuna's query. But this is not the only answer.

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To be continued

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