The Bhagavadgita – A Synthesis of Thought and Action-6 : Swami Krishnananda

05/05/2019
(Spoken on Gita Jayanti in 1973)
A Synthesis of Thought and Action-6.

The rightness or the wrongness of an action does not depend upon the pleasure or the pain of the individual concerned in the action; this is the first warning given to us in the Bhagavadgita. We are likely to think that what brings us satisfaction is right and what brings us sorrow or grief, unhappiness, is wrong. This is an unfortunate, hedonistic approach which cannot be ultimately justifiable from the scientific point of view. A scientific principle does not care for our pleasure or pain. When we talk of a scientific principle, we speak of a truth that holds good for every person under all circumstances, irrespective of the emotional condition of the individuals concerned. So our joy or sorrow, personally and individually speaking, cannot become the standard of reference for the rectitude or otherwise of an action.

Arjuna thought that it was a horror before him in the form of a war presented before his terrified eyes. He was not happy. “Krishna, I am very sorry. I think what I am going to do is wrong.” He thought that the action upon which he was about to embark was going to be wrong, inasmuch as it shook his emotions and tore his personality. He was intensely grief-stricken. So you intend to judge actions from the point of view of your personal happiness – if you are happy, it is all right; otherwise, it is not all right. This is not the correct approach, says the Bhagavadgita.

Now, again we go back to the Upanishads. Why should the rectitude or the otherwise of an action not depend upon the pleasure of the individual or the otherwise? The Upanishads give an answer to it. The nature of existence itself is contrary to holding such an opinion. The structure of all phenomena is of such a character that it will not permit us to hold such an individualistic opinion in respect of any action whatsoever. The universe does not belong to you or to me particularly. It does not belong to anyone.

As such, we can say that nothing in this world belongs to us because everything belongs to the universe. It is a part of the world. And as the world is the basic repository of even our own personal existence – we belong to the world rather than the world belongs to us – nothing can belong to us. If nothing can really belong to us in the proper judgment of values, on an impartial judgment of things, how can anything give us pleasure or pain?

The pleasure or the pain that we seem to be receiving from the context of particular objects or groups of objects outside – this pain or pleasure which is a reaction to the stimulus from objects outside – arises on account of our possessiveness or the establishment of a specific relationship in respect of the objects of the world, which is unjustifiable, scientifically speaking. We are not permitted to establish particular relationships with anything in the world, as nature is a wholly unselfish entity bearing no positive or negative attitude towards any content thereof.

To be continued