A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 3-8: Swami Krishnananda.

- January 17, 2024

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Thursday, 18 Jan 2024 06:25.

Chapter 3: The Transmigration of the Soul:7.

Post-8.

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“So Arjuna,” says Bhagavan Sri Krishna, “the Atman, the consciousness, does not die. Basically, you have passed through many births, as have I. The only difference is that I know the entire series of incarnations through which I have passed, whereas you are not aware of it.” The intensity of attachment of consciousness to the particular body of an individual prevents it from knowing that it has taken previous births. The attachment of your consciousness to this particular body is so vehement that it is severed automatically from any connection or memory of the previous life, so that you cannot know what you were in the previous birth, nor can you know what you will be in the next birth. You know this birth because of terrible attachment to only this body. You do not have attachment to anything else. Sri Krishna says, “I am not so attached. I stand as a transcendent incarnating principle” – a subject which will come in the Fourth Chapter – “and, therefore, when I pass from one incarnation to another, I move, as it were, from one room to another room of a house; and nobody forgets the room from which one has exited and entered. But you are not like that. I know everything, but you know nothing. Now, knowing this, be free from the dread of dying, and also have no love for life.”

The Manu Smriti says you should neither love life nor hate life because both are wrong issues, for the reason already mentioned. “How wonderful, how beautiful is this world, how happy is life!” – do not say that. “How idiotic, how wretched is this world, how bad is life!” – do not say that, either. Neither is this world beautiful and nice, nor is it idiotic and stupid. It has no such characteristics. To put it psychologically, you are foisting, projecting your own psychological circumstance on persons and things outside, and seeing things which are not there.

So Sri Krishna comes to the point that, placed in this situation, what is your duty? “Having told you that the consciousness, which is the Atman, is deathless, universal in its nature, and also having told you what birth and death are, now I am placing before you a little principle of what you are to do.” The Bhagavadgita is an answer to the question of what human duty is. Given a particular certain circumstance and being placed in a condition, what is it that you are supposed to do? The answer does not fully come in the Second Chapter; it will come much later on.

Anyway, Sri Krishna rebuts the arguments of Arjuna by saying, “Your understanding is turbid. There is no prajna in you, really speaking. You lack buddhi-yoga, discriminative understanding.” 'Sankhya' is the word used. You lack sankhya-buddhi. Sankhya-buddhi is discriminative knowledge, and the application of it in practical life is called Yoga. Sankhya is the wisdom of life; Yoga is the application of this wisdom in your daily life. Inasmuch as you lack this discriminative faculty and are blabbering something according to your own whim and fancy, you cannot adjust your life harmoniously in this world. You are a disjointed personality.