The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita : 2.4. - Swami Krishnananda.

Chinmaya Mission :

On March 7th, 2023, Pujya Swami Mitranandaji and members of Chinmaya Mission Sikkim met the Honorable Governor of Sikkim, Shri Laxman Prasad Acharya, to inform him that Chinmaya Mission has been chosen as the National Coordinator of G20 on the theme "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" by the Government of India. 

The organization is organizing a seminar on May 13th, 2023, in Sikkim, to discuss the philosophy of treating all human beings as members of the same family and working together for the greater good of humanity. 

The Governor accepted the invitation to inaugurate the seminar as the Chief Guest. 

The seminar aims to promote greater understanding and cooperation among different nations and cultures.

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Saturday, March 11 2023. 07:00.

Chapter 2: The Difficulties of the Spiritual Seeker - 4.

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Hence, now comes a very important conclusion. "Under these circumstances of a doubtful background of my very idea of taking to this path, I think I have to think thrice before taking a step in this direction. I shall do nothing; it is enough," said Arjuna and he threw his weapon down, giving up all effort whatsoever in the direction of doing what he was expected to do. Now the question arises: What is it that you are expected to do, which frightens you so much, as it frightened Arjuna? The battle that we speak of in the epic is only a metaphor; it is an insignia of the conditions of life as a whole. Every question is a battle; you have to face it in order to answer it. Every moment of our life there is a question before us: What am I to do, and in what manner have I to do, and for what purpose have I to do, etc.? There was a great thinker in the West who wrote a large thesis in answer to three questions: 

What can we know, what are we to do, and what can we hope for in this world? These are three questions before us, and the great thinker wrote three books in answer to these three questions. What can we know finally in this world, which also implies what we cannot know? What are we supposed to do here? What can we expect finally here in this world? These are philosophical questions – you may say spiritual questions – because what you have to do as a duty is connected with what you can know, and if your knowledge is tarnished by the error of a contamination of sense activity, to that extent your knowledge of what you have to do in this world also will be contaminated. Your idea of duty will be inadequate to the extent of your inadequacy of the understanding of life itself. So Arjuna did not know what he was supposed to do, as he had decided in a wrong manner not to do, since to do would mean a great suffering to himself as well as to others. To reach God, to enter the kingdom of heaven is a suffering to you in one way, and also is a suffering to others with whom you are related in this world; and you know very well why it is and why it should be so.

This difficulty arises on account of a lack of sufficient understanding, and understanding is called samkhya in the language of the Bhagavadgita. "Arjuna, you have no samkhya-buddhi," says Sri Krishna. "You are unable to discriminate between the real and the unreal, the true and the false, which means to say you have no right understanding, and samkhya is right understanding." The word 'samkhya' is used in the Bhagavadgita in a different sense from the way you are likely to understand it in the schools of thought. Here the samkhya word does not necessarily mean the jargon of the traditional school which goes by the name of Samkhya, propounded by a sage called Kapila, as one of the six systems of thought in India. Though it has some connection with what the Bhagavadgita is telling us, it is not identical with the meaning of the word 'samkhya' as it is used in the Bhagavadgita. In a general way we may say that samkhya means right knowledge. It is not easy to have right knowledge when we are not having sufficient information regarding things, and the information conveyed to us by the senses is not ultimately reliable. We cannot wholly rely upon what the senses are telling us. 

Therefore, the knowledge which is based on these reports of the senses may not be entirely reliable. Hence, our understanding of the world may not be regarded as adequate to the purpose. Thus it follows that we cannot know what we are supposed to do in this world. One cannot know what one's duty is because knowledge of things is based on understanding, which we lack, since we are sensorily conditioned and not so very rational, purely, as we may sometimes imagine ourselves to be. So samkhya was not there in the mind of Arjuna; right understanding was not coming forth. I am now slowly entering into the second chapter of the Bhagavadgita which is called Samkhya Yoga. The difficulty, the melancholy, the despondency, the fear which was the subject of the first chapter arises on account of a lack of samkhya. What is samkhya? What is knowledge? What is right understanding? Before I touch upon the core of the meaning of the term 'samkhya' as used in the Bhagavadgita, I would give, in a few words, the way in which the cosmological principles are described in the school going by the name of Samkhya, under the authorship of Kapila. As I mentioned, though it has no direct relevance to the Bhagavadgita, it would be profitable for you to know what it actually means, and how it differs from the samkhya of the Bhagavadgita.

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To be continued

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