The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita : 4.4. & 5.1 - Swami Krishnananda

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Wednesday, April 19, 2023. 06:30.

Chapter 4: Duty – An Empirical Manifestation of True Being -4.

Chapter 5: Life as a Yajna or Sacrifice-1.

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Now, the duty that you are expected to perform in the world is not something imposed upon you by a government, or a social mandate from outside. It is the law of your own nature expecting you to do what is necessary, under the very structure of your own individuality, or jivatva – your personality. I go back to the analogy of the limbs of the body. You cannot even exist unless there is cooperation among the limbs of the body; there will be dismembering of your body, there will be a complete dislocation of the limbs, and there will be total destruction and an end of your existence itself. Na hi kaścit kṣaṇam api jātu tiṣṭhaty akarmakṛt, kāryate hy avaśaḥ karma sarvaḥ prakṛtijair guṇaiḥ (Gita 3.5): No one exists without doing something. The world is active, perpetually – every atom is active. You will not see anything static in the world – not one cell of the body, not one electron – everything is vibrating terribly. Why should they move in this manner? The evolution of the universe is the answer. The world is active without remission of effort, for the achievement of a goal which is self-realisation of the cosmos. It is the universe attempting to be aware of its own majestic existence. What you call 'evolution' is only the process of the ascent, of the lower degrees of reality in the direction of the higher degrees. Unless the 'Absolute Reality' is contacted and made one's own, evolution cannot cease.

The activities, the duties so-called, fulfil themselves in the realisation of the Absolute – God-realisation. Then there is no expectation on your part, and nobody expects you to do anything; the universe frees you from its clutches, and no law operates there because your being and the law become one. The will of the cosmos and the will of the individual get united, and actually, what you call 'democracy' is nothing but the union of the individual will with the national will. If there is no such unity, there is no democracy. Likewise, when the Universal Will and the individual will seem to be working in harmony, karma yoga is being performed by you – every action becomes yoga, because it is a perpetual union of your being with the Being of the Universe. Karma yoga is action transmuted into the yoga of meditation. A meditation is the precedent of every right action. Ideas precede activities – thought comes first, action afterwards. Yoga is the union that is anterior to the action that follows from this union. You meditate first, think first, place yourself in an orderly position in respect of the universe, and then act, and then it becomes Yoga. So karma yoga is action which is yoga, and yoga is action – action is Yoga – they mean the same thing. All life becomes yoga. Even your breathing becomes yoga, provided you can connect this activity of your existence and your performance with the purpose of the cosmos, with the intention of God. This union of your will with the Cosmic Will is a yajna that you are performing – a sacrifice, a glorious performance which is also yoga. Yoga is sacrifice, sacrifice is yoga – yajna is yoga. This is the theme of some of the portions of the fourth chapter.

Chapter 5: Life as a Yajna or Sacrifice-1.

In the middle of the fourth chapter of the Gita, certain instructions are given on the performance of different kinds of sacrifice, known as yajnas. The word 'yajna' is a very significant one throughout the Bhagavadgita, perhaps through most of the scriptures in India, indicating that the principle of life consists in sacrifice of some sort or the other. The philosophy of India may, in a way, be summed up by the word 'yajna' – sacrifice. Every moment of our life is a sacrifice that we perform in the direction of a higher fulfillment, and a sacrifice is therefore a gain and not a loss. In ordinary language we praise a person who has performed a sacrifice, thinking that sacrifice involves a sharing of one's joy with others, in a sense a sort of loss which one has voluntarily incurred for the welfare of other people. "Oh, what a sacrifice he has done," thus we ejaculate. This is our point of view – whenever we give something, we feel we lose something. Sacrifice, no doubt, means giving something, but it does not mean losing something. In giving, we do not lose. Give and it shall be given back hundredfold. It is difficult to understand the meaning of sacrifice, and a knowledge of it is absolutely necessary to understand the teachings of the Bhagavadgita. The whole of karma yoga, or any yoga for the matter of that, is centred round this principle governing all life and existence – the principle of yajna, sacrifice.

In the fourth chapter, indications are given of the possibility of performing different kinds of sacrifice. A purely philosophical and spiritual touch is given to this description of the different forms of sacrifice here, because the Bhagavadgita is pre-eminently a spiritual gospel, a gospel of all life, and thus very comprehensive in its treatment of the basic values of life. Dravyayajna, yogoyajna, tapoyajna, jnanayajna are some of the terms used in this connection. Without going into the verbal or linguistic meaning of these terms, and without confusing you too much with the academic interpretations of these enunciations of the forms of sacrifice, I can clinch the whole matter by bringing you back to the process of cosmology, evolution – a thing we can never afford to forget throughout our studies because the story of creation or the procession of the cosmological event also suggests acutely the position we occupy in this world, our status in this universe, without which we can do nothing correctly, nor can we know anything properly. Yajna – sacrifice – whatever be the form it may take, is a summoning of the higher power into one's own self, and a consequent surrender of the lower self for the higher dimension of one's own being, known as the superior Self.

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Next
Chapter 5: Life as a Yajna or Sacrifice-2.
To be continued

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