Srimad Bhagavad - Gita

======================================================================= ====================================================================== 01/01/2020. Srimad  Bhagavad-Gita : Chapter-14. ( GUNA-TRAYA-VIBHAGA-YOGAM ) Slaokam-7. ===================================================================== "Rajo  ragatmakam  viddhi  trshnasangasamudbhavam, tan  nibadhnati  kaunteya  karmasangena  dehinam." kaunteya  =  hey,  Arjuna! rajah   ragatmakam   =  rajo-gunam  ( mode of passion )   born of desire or lust; trshna  sanga  samudbhavam  =  produce hankering  and  association; viddhi  =  know  this; tat   karma  sangena  =  that  because  of  the  passion  in  Karmam( association  with  with fruitive activity); dehinam  nibadhnati  =  which...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 31/12/2019. Chapter 1: This Drama of Life ======================================================================= 1. When you come to a place like this, you have to re-orientate your minds, to a large extent, to an appreciable extent. There is a specific purpose for which you have come here to this Academy, to this Divine Life Society Ashram. To some of you, the purpose of your coming here and attending these classes may be clear; to some, it may be nebulous – not wholly perspicuous. There is something which this Academy is endeavouring to cater to the minds of people like you. This 'something' which this Ashram, this Academy, is trying to furnish you with, is perhaps what you actually need in life. You may be under the impression that there are thousands of things that you need in life. This is a thorough misconception ...

======================================================================== ======================================================================= 30/12/2019. (Spoken at a conference in Delhi on December 27, 1973.) POST-10. ======================================================================= 1. So beware of committing a mistake in your thinking about personal agency. #"God does everything. Man is only an instrument" : — #"Nimittamatram bhava savyasacin " (B.G. 11.33). You become the fountain pen, as it were, in the hands of God, Who shall write the judgment of mankind. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Srimad Bhagavad-Gita : Chapter-11. (Visvarupa-darsana-yogam) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Slokam-33. "Tasmat  tvamuttishtta  yaso  labhasva jitva  satrun ...

======================================================================= ======================================================================= 29/12/2019. (Spoken on July 15, 1979.) Last Post ====================================================================== 1. One who is not caught up in the delusion of this so-called irreconcilability of dvanvdas is one who is not stupid, and to be stupid is to believe in the ultimate irreconcilability of yourself and myself. #Can we be really friends?  ##Let us ponder over this matter a little. Can you be a real friend of mine always, till the end of life, under every circumstance, at every place, even at the point of doom? ###It is doubtful if this is a practicable proposition. We are told that a real friend is one who will follow us till the doom. But have we seen such a friend throughout history? *It is not possible because we have a personality of our own. Because I assert myself in the same way as you assert yourse...

======================================================================= ======================================================================= 28/12/2019. Chapter-2. The Sabha Parva of the Mahabharatam-6. ======================================================================= 1. Schoolboys are notorious in such behaviours even these days. Very unreasonable, rowdy behaviour, and for a little, meaningless, insignificant cause, they can kick up a huge row, and a war can take place. This happens in schools and colleges. Sometimes students even die in this scuffle, for nothing. It can be cricket or football, or even a drinking tap, a place to sit at a desk in a school, or any blessed thing. These potentialities, the manner of their expressions, are majestically described in the Adi Parva. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. But we recover ourselves. A little sense arises in us. We ge...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 27/12/2019. 2.The Search For Wholeness - 9 ======================================================================= 9.1 What is it that we are seeking in life? Salary, high status, long life, soft beds, big buildings, large areas of land—are these the things that we are asking for? No. These are definitely not the things that we are asking for. When we are presented with a bundle of currency notes we feel happy, as if we are possessing something worthwhile, but we know very well we are not going to eat these currency notes. They cannot do anything except act as a means of getting something else which is our requirement. Nobody wants currency notes or coins. We need these as instruments for procuring something else. So our desire is not for money in the form of notes and coins, but for something else which we imagine can be a...

======================================================================= ======================================================================= 26/12/2019. (Spoken on Gita Jayanti in 1973) A Synthesis of Thought and Action-10. ====================================================================== It is in this basic foundation of the cosmos that we have an answer to the question of the relation between matter and spirit of the individual and the world and society. All antitheses get reconciled in the Vision Supreme. The Bhagavadgita takes us through action to knowledge, though it goes from knowledge to action, thus blending knowledge and action in a beautiful synthesis so that knowledge and action cease to be two different approaches. We have not here the conflict between knowledge and action, as both mean one and the same thing. When action understands itself, it is called knowledge; when knowledge starts moving, it is called action. They are one and the same. Such is th...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 25/12/2019. Chapter-2. Sankhya Yogam Summary : ======================================================================== Sanjaya explains the condition of Arjuna, who was agitated due to attachment and fear. Lord Krishna rebukes him for his dejection, which was due to Moha or attachment, and exhorts him to fight. After failing to convince Sri Krishna through his seemingly wise thoughts, Arjuna realises his helplessness and surrenders himself completely to the Lord, seeking His guidance to get over the conflict of his mind. The Lord takes pity on him and proceeds to enlighten him by various means. He explains to Arjuna the imperishable nature of the Atman, for which there is no past, present and future. The Atman never dies, therefore Arjuna should not grieve. As It transcends the five elements, namely, earth, water, fire, air and...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 24/12/2019. Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation -6. ======================================================================== 6.1 Arjuna was such an individual. He had likes and dislikes. The whole story of the Mahabharata is a description of the conflict among the varieties of likes and dislikes. The spiritual seeker is taught, through the epic atmosphere of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita, the lessons of life and the morals that follow from these lessons. When our reasoning capacity is turbid, our knowledge is inadequate, and our adjustments with the world outside, including human society, are not strong enough. They collapse at the least touch of confronting situations, because human relationships are only an outer form of an internal propulsion of these three forces—sattva, rajas and tamas—which are cosmically pre...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 23/12/2019. Chapter 1: Introduction to the Bhagavadgita - 8. ======================================================================== As I mentioned, the conflict which is the battlefield, under which circumstance the Bhagavadgita was thought to be properly delivered, is connected with your very soul itself. It is an adhyatma-vidya; it is a spiritual teaching. It is not a war gospel, it is not a military science, it is not a science of sociology, it is not human psychology, it is not even cosmology – though all of this the Bhagavadgita is, because of its integrated nature. ##As a parent speaks to a child from every aspect of the well-being of the child, God speaks to man from the point of view of the welfare and well-being of creation as a whole. It is a message to me, to you, to all those that were, all those that are, and all t...

======================================================================== ======================================================================= 22/12/2019. 2. The First Chapter – Vishadha Yogam, the Yoga of the Dejection of the Spirit ======================================================================= 2.1 The Bhagavadgita is a system of meditation. It is not a story that is being told to us of what might have happened centuries back. It is a concentrated spiritual guide which takes us from the very level in which we find ourselves at any given moment of time, and enables us to rise from that level to the next higher level, from the next higher level to a further higher level, and so on, in a graduated manner. There is no double promotion or sudden jumps in the teachings of the Bhagavadgita. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2.2 #In a way, we may say that the Bhagavadgita ...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 21/12/2019 2.THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 3. GOD, THE ALMIGHTY -1. ======================================================================== 2.THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL : Krishna commences his teaching with a declaration of the indestructibility of the Soul and the futility of grief over the death of what cannot die. The birth and death of the Soul are like the changing of one's clothes while the person in essence undergoes no change in the process. All experience of change like pleasure and pain is the consequence of the contact of the elements with the essential consciousness projected through the mind and the senses. The contact, naturally, is impermanent and hence its reactions are to be endured with fortitude. The unreal cannot be, and the real cannot not be. The Soul is real. The contacts are not real. No one can destro...

======================================================================= ====================================================================== 20/12/2019. (Spoken on May 1, 1983) POST-1. ===================================================================== Often teachers as well as students of the Bhagavadgita consider the last verse of this gospel as representing in a way the quintessential import of the whole teaching. Yatra yogesvarah krishno yatra partho dhanurdharah, tatra srir vijayo bhutir dhruva nitir matir mama (Gita - Ch-18.Slokam-78). Thus concludes the Bhagavadgita. “Where there is Krishna the Lord of yoga and where there is Arjuna the wielder of the bow, there is prosperity, victory, happiness and firm quality. This is my conviction,” said Sanjay. This statement would mean that a kind perfection in life can be expected where this blend between Krishna and Arjuna is made practicable. We know very well that Krishna and Arjuna, two geniuses in their ow...

======================================================================= ======================================================================= 19/12/2019. (Spoken on June 26, 1983) Post-4. ======================================================================== #Srimad Bhagavad Gita : Chpter-12. Slokam-s 8 to 11. ======================================================================= Mayya eva mana adhatsva mayi buddhim nivesaya, nivasshiayasi mayy eva ata urdhvahm na samsayah. - Slo-8. Aatha cittam samadhatum na saknoshi mayi sthiram, abhyasayogena tato mam ichaptum dhananjaya. - Slo-9. Abhyasepy asamarthosi matkarmaparamo bhava, madartham api karmani kurvan siddhim avapsyasi.-Slo-10. Athaitad apy asaktosi kartum madyogam asritah sarvakarmaphalatyagam tatah kuru yatatmavan. - Slo-11. ======================================================================= The first slokam, therefore, pitching itself on the ultimate nature of God, which is supreme abso...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 18/12/2019. (Spoken on Gita Jayanti in 1974) POST-10. ======================================================================= So the gospel of the Bhagavadgita clinches the matter by telling us in its clear-cut language that ignorance of the law is no excuse. “Oh, I did not know it. I am sorry.” We should not say that. If we are sorry, well, we have to bear the fruit of it. We touch the live wire and say, “I am sorry; I didn’t know it is a live wire.” Well, all right, if we didn’t know it is a live wire, now we know it. To reiterate the gospel of the Bhagavadgita, knowledge, sankhya, should precede yoga, action. The reaction of good and bad does not impinge upon the individual when there is rootedness of the individual in buddhi marga, the yoga of understanding. But we do not want to understand because an understanding in th...

======================================================================= ======================================================================== 17/12/2019. Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation -5. ======================================================================== We will be a little bit restless in the beginning stages. We will be unhappy for reasons we cannot easily know. We will like to get up and run away into the thick of human relations once again, because man is a social animal basically. And to ignore this aspect of the human individual would be not to properly comprehend the psychology of the human being. The attractions and repulsions, the likes and dislikes in relation to personalities, are inborn in us. We are born into this circumstance. We have something to say about the people around us. For or against, we have some opinion about people, and we always pass a judgement on things in our own selves. A judgement in the form of a logical conclusio...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 16/12/2019. Post-4. ============================================================= When Duryodhana left the place, Sri Krishna accosted Arjuna and said, “What a foolish person you are! Why did you not ask for the army? What good is it if I sit idle without doing anything for you? Why have you made this wrong choice? The other man took the good forces, and you are asking for me, who is as good as nothing.” Arjuna replied, “Thou art all for me, great Master. I know you very well. Don’t try to deceive me by this query as to why I have chosen you.” “Oh! You want to vie with me. Okay, all right. Do that,” said Krishna. Then they both left. After that, Sri Krishna’s role in the Mahabharata was only when it became necessary as a policy of political science to plead for peace with the Kurus. The policy of Sri Krishna is called simha...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 15/12/2019. (Spoken at a conference in Delhi on December 27, 1973.) Post - 9. ======================================================================== But God does not immediately come for help, as it were. He follows the system of politics called sama, dana, bheda, danda. Sri Krishna did not take up arms against Duryodhana immediately. That could have been done, but he did not do so. He first tried the method of conciliation. He made a calm and polite and very humble request, “My dear friend, why don’t you give the Pandavas’ their share honourably? This is not dharma, this is not duty.” It did not succeed. He tried other methods. “You take half, you give half. Or you take the major portion and give the minor portion.” That also did not work. Then he said, “I will create dissension among you”—bheda, it is called—by telling Karna w...