Srimad Bhagavad - Gita

======================================================================= ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01/02/2020. (Spoken on May 1, 1983) Post-4. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. We are all very well aware that sanity of the mind, inward peace and composure of the psyche are of greater consequence in our life than merely the well-being of the physical body. But there is something very crucial, namely, the capacity of our understanding itself, and this is a point which is easily missed by us. Our longings, our likes and dislikes, and all the projects in which we engage ourselves, our very outlook of life, is nothing but a kind of interpretation of our own understanding. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Thus...

======================================================================= ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 31/01/2020. The Twelfth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. (Spoken on June 26, 1983) POST-7. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. #Tell this to the mind every day. Go on harping this tune again and again : ##“You are going to commune yourself with that in which you will find the whole world concentrated. The whole world is concentrated there.” ###When you go on telling this again and again, you are doing abhyasa. This is practice. Do this every day, and think nothing else. ####This is called ananya chintana, brahma abhyasa. Practise the presence of God in a manner convenient to you according to your own predilection and in accordance with the choice you have made of your notion of God the Almighty. ...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 30/01/2020. Post -7. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The next morning Sri Krishna took leave of Vidura, and on the way he saw rishis, saints and sages standing on the roadside. He was surprised that they were all standing there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sri Krishna got down from the chariot, prostrated himself before them, and inquired, “Why are you great masters standing here?” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “We heard that you are going to give a discourse on dharma in the assembly of the Kurus, and we want t...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 29/01/2020. Chapter 3: The Aranya Parvam of the Mahabharatam-2. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. In our transitional period of aspiration, which originally was a single beaten track of movement towards only God in the early age, we think, #“Neither I want this, nor that. It is only the Father in heaven that I am after. Spiritual salvation is the goal of my soul, and I have no other aspiration.” But with a little more growth into the final maturity of the adolescent and the earlier ages of being an adult in spiritual life, doubts arise in the mind. They are all accepted, logically feasible, valid doubts; and these doubts generally, most often, do not leave a person till the end of life. ---...

======================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28/01/2020. Discourse 3: Severing the Root of this Tree of Life - 2. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #The aim is the fulfilment of the system of practice, but it is preceded by the important conditioning factor of the ideological structure in one’s own consciousness. The ultimate realisation of the aim is the concretisation of the theoretical foundation already laid in one’s consciousness. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Some centuries back there was a great German thinker called Hegel. He had a system which is hard to understand for lay persons, according to which he developed a thought from the bares...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Monday, January  27,  2020. Srimad  Bhagavad-Gita : Chapter-14. ( GUNA-TRAYA-VIBHAGA-YOGAM ) Slokam-8. #Very important slokam- Here Lord  explains  Tamo-gunam. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Slokam #"Tamastvajnanajam   viddhi  mohanam   sarvadehinam, pramadalasyanidrabhiah  tannibadhnati   bharata." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- bharata  =  hey, Arjuna! tamah  tu  =  the  tamo-gunam; ajnanajam  =  takes  birth  from  ignorance  ( product  of  ignoran...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25/01/2020. Chapter-1: This Drama of Life-3. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. The Bhagavadgita is the great gospel which Bhagavan Sri Krishna spoke. Historically speaking, many many years ago, under a special context of the Mahabharata, the great epic which, as you perhaps already know, is an epic of life as a whole. The question which this great text tries to solve and answer is the question of life of man. Your life in this world is a great question mark before you. What are you? Who are you? What is it that is expected of you and what is it that you expect from this world? These are questions before us and we may not be able to answer these questions off-hand. Where are we seated now?...

======================================================================= ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 24/01/2020. Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation -8. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. While, when a particular mood preponderates in us, we may be stirred into an aspiration for God, as we conceive God, and feel or imagine that we are fed up with this world, it may subside because this is likely to be a tentative mood which is occasioned by a particular circumstance that may not continue for all times. And when the wheel moves, when the spokes find themselves in another position, our understanding, our feelings, or attitudes change simultaneously, and we see different things altogether before us. We do not like a thing always, nor dislike a thing at all times. As years pass, our ideas ...

======================================================================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23/01/2020. Chapter 1: Introduction to the Bhagavadgita - 10. Post -10. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. But modern findings, as you are all perhaps aware, have shown a vital relationship between even space and time and your own selves, so that you are sitting in this hall at your desk, not unconnected with the walls around you, not unconnected with the sun that is shining in the sky, not unconnected even with the distant stars or what you may call the white hole or the black hole. With that you are connected even just now.  Though modern science is not regarded as a spiritual science, it tells you, very strangely, that every cell in your brain is connected to every atom ...

======================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22/01/2020. 2. The First Chapter – Vishadha Yogam, the Yoga of the Dejection of the Spirit-3. Post-3. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. When the spiritual seeker passes some years in self-abnegation, a determined spirit arises : “I have risen above all the desires of the world. I have had enough of all things. I am now here to fight the battle of life, to transcend the world, to face it, to overcome it, and then to go beyond it.” The Pandavas facing the Kauravas is like a spiritual seeker facing the whole world. The objective sentiments are represented by the Kauravas, and the subjective sentiments are represented by the Pandavas. It is difficult for the subject to face the object entirel...

======================================================================= ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 21/01/2020 (Spoken on September 18th, 1974.) Post-3. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Though there are millions of cells in our body, all different from one another, and though each thought of the mind may be said to be different from other thoughts, and every limb can be separated from every other limb, our consciousness does not feel this isolated location of the parts of the personality. We are a total, we are a whole, we are a completeness. This is an inviolable law of consciousness operating in every person right from childhood up to old age, even up to the event of death. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20/01/2020. Chapter 4: The Bhagavadgita-4. 4. THE INCARNATIONS OF GOD 5. THE SECRET OF RIGHT ACTION -1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. God incarnates himself in the world, whenever there is decline of righteousness and rise of unrighteousness, for the purpose of the protection of the good, the vanquishing of the wicked and establishment of justice in every age. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. #The theory of divine incarnation has been a controversial issue in the philosophy of religion and has been one of the intriguing questions in theology. It is impossible metaphysically to interpret to the mind...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19/01/2020. (Spoken on May 1, 1983) Post-3. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. A keen student of the Bhagavadgita would have observed that a single answer is not available, but a manifold answer is poured forth through the different verses of the Bhagavadgita, often making us feel that there is, as it were, a contradiction in the statements made. There is a sociological point of view sometimes visible to us at the very beginning of the Gita, a point of view of the Sankhya even in the classical sense, a point of view which is purely political, economic and personal, a point of view which may be called ethical and moral, a point of view which is cosmical, natural, universal, and a point of view w...

======================================================================= --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18/01/2020. The Twelfth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. (Spoken on June 26, 1983) POST-6. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. If you feel the necessity to think something else also at the same time, you are not fully convinced that God is the Ultimate Reality. He is one among the many other equally good realities, perhaps. The secondary importance that we may sometimes give to God in the midst of many other relative realities which also impinge on our mind or attract our attention is a failure. 2. Therefore, the teaching says: Do this practice again and again. ‘Practice’ means the habituation of the mind to a single thinking continuously for a protracted period. The definition of practice is given b...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 17/01/2020. Post-6. ======================================================================== Sanjaya said, “I am very glad, Your Highness, that you ask who Krishna is. I will tell you who he is. You cannot even see him, as you are wedded to the sense organs, and he is the master of the senses. One who is the master of the sense organs cannot be beheld by anyone who is a slave of the sense organs; and you want to see him, and you ask me why he is coming. He knows very well the injustice that you have done to the Pandavas by your love for your foolish children. Do you know why he is coming? His intention is to burn the Kurus. He will reduce you all to ashes.” Dhritarashtra was frightened, “Receive him well. Let the streets be cleaned, let there be festoons, music, a band, and dancing. Receive him gracefully. Let him not be annoyed ...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 16/01/2020. Chapter 3: The Aranya Parvam of the Mahabharatam-1. ======================================================================= 1. Great and interesting meanings have been read into the Mahabharata epic, and the more we go into its secrets and implications, the more may we be able to relate it to human life in general. #Do we not hear it said again and again that the more we study the Bhagavadgita, the deeper is the meaning that one discovers in it? #If that is the case with the Bhagavadgita, that is also the case with the Mahabharata because in a comparison, we may say, #if the Bhagavadgita is the soul, #the Mahabharata is the body. So the spirit of the Bhagavadgita is embodied in the epic of the Mahabharata. If the Bhagavadgita is a gospel for all life, the Mahabharata epic is a dramatic description of the performa...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 15/01/2020. Discourse 3: Severing the Root of this Tree of Life - 1. ======================================================================== 1. Many a seeker on the spiritual path is often unintelligently enthusiastic with a misapprehension of the nature of spiritual life and the way to the attainment of the goal. Sincere seekers often imagine that yoga is a practice, and they want nothing but practice, with an added notion that it will bring about an immediate experience of a supernormal reality. This is immature thinking, a child’s behaviour towards the realities of life. There is no such thing as a sudden jumping into the practice of yoga, yet they imagine that it is doing something immediately and that it will be followed up by a sudden outburst of supernal light. This is a thorough misunderstanding of the situation. ---...

======================================================================== ======================================================================== 14/01/2020. Chapter-1: This Drama of Life-2. ======================================================================= 1. Swami Sivananda, the founder of this institution, had a specific mission to hold aloft in life before mankind, which was not merely to teach you what anybody else has taught you, but to awaken you – not merely to sermon, or give a gospel. A sleeping man has to be woken up before anything is taught to him. There is no use of giving you a sermon when you are asleep. The first thing is to awaken you from the dream or the sleep in which you are. When you are able to see things in a better way, you may be told what is essential for you; if you are asleep there is no use of speaking to you. So the role which great men of stature, like Swami Sivananda, played in life seems to be the function of awakening man rather th...