Srimad Bhagavad - Gita

====================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 29/02/2020. Srimad  Bhagavad-Gita : Chapter-14. ( GUNA-TRAYA-VIBHAGA-YOGAM ) Slokam-10. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Rajastamascabhibhuya  sattvam  bhavati bharata, rajah  sattvam  tamascaiva  tamah  sattvam  rajastatha." bharata  =  hey  Arjuna! rajah  tamah  ca  abhibhuya  =  ( sometimes ),  overcoming  rajas  and  tamas  ( over-rule); sattvam  bhavati  =  ( person )  gains  satvic  gunam; sattvam  =  ( some  other  times ),  sattvam  and; tamah  ca  ( abhibhuya )  =  tamas,  by  defea...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 28/02/2020. Chapter 4: The Struggle for the Infinite - 1. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #Though the Bhagavadgita is regarded as a well-known textbook, it is really not intended for the ordinary man. ##Its teachings, its ethical principles, its ultimate aims, are all of such a nature that it is difficult to accommodate them into the normal thinking of the human being living in a world of desires, ambitions, prejudices and traditional routines of various types, all which are cut at the very root by the altogether different outlook of life which the Bhagavadgita presents. ###The more we begin to ponder over its message, the more would we find it difficult to make it a guideline for our day-t...

======================================================================= -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27/02/2020. Chapter 1: Introduction to the Bhagavadgita - 12. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #The restlessness that you feel in this world and the unhappiness that characterises your daily life will tell you that life in this world as a human being is not complete.  ##If human life is complete, you would be happy always and no problem would be facing you. There would be no anxiety of any kind if human life is the last point, the terminus. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. #The Upanishads say there are realms of being that transcend human life, and modern evolutionary doctrine says t...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26/02/2020. 2. The First Chapter – Vishadha Yogam, the Yoga of the Dejection of the Spirit-6. Post-6. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #Arjuna should be well prepared for all the psychological eventualities that he may have to face, rather than merely being prepared for the physical eventualities. To fight with the mind is more difficult than to fight with people, as it is the mind that sees values in things and considers people as friends or enemies, etc. Who tells us that so-and-so is a friend or an enemy? ##It is the mind. Hence, there is a particular psychological reaction from ourselves that is the determining factor in defining our envisagement of values. Otherwise, we cannot know who is a frien...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 25/02/2020. (Spoken on September 18th, 1974.) Post-6. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. #The Bhagavadgita wants you to also be integrated in your relationship with the public, not merely in your relationship with the parts of your own personality.  ##And what is this public?  ###‘Public’, according to the Bhagavadgita, does not mean merely the human beings outside.  ####The world is larger than a set of human beings.  #"Mankind is not merely the content of the world; there are many more things than mankind in this world."  ##"The forces that control the destiny of the world are not mankind’s forces."  ###"They are natural forces." ...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24/02/2020. Chapter-6 : The Bhagavadgita Continued on Yogam : ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #As the flame of a lamp in a windless place flickers not, so steady is the mind of the Yogi practising meditation.  ##Where the mind, completely restrained through the practice of meditation, attains quietude, and where seeing the Atman by the Atman, one is satisfied in the Atman; where one feels that infinite bliss, which is super-sensuous and is capable of being comprehended only by the higher understanding; established wherein one does not move even a bit; having obtained which one considers no other gain as superior to that; and wherein established one is not shaken even by heavy s...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23/02/2020. Spoken on May 1, 1983) Post-6. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #So life becomes yoga in a very important sense. Yoga, at least from the point of view of this sort of understanding of what the Bhagavadgita means, is not outside the practice of yoga. Yoga is not a function that we perform among the many activities of our day-to-day existence; it is that alchemic touch that we give to any kind of performance and the very structure of our existence.  ##It is the touch that we give, the transforming touch of perfection, the touch of the philosopher’s stone, as it were, that converts iron into gold, by which existence and activity do not remain as two different pictures ...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22/02/2020. The Twelfth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. (Spoken on June 26, 1983) Post-9. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Also, we have what are called attitudes of devotion, bhavas. There is the attitude of a father. Mostly religions consider God as a Father in heaven, as a Parent Supreme. Sometimes in India we have the concept of considering God as Mother. Or, as I mentioned, there are other ways such as sakhya and other things, which are not usually practised these days. The predominant concept is the concept of a parent – God, the Supreme Father – though other ways are also there.  However, all these are mentioned in connection with the understanding of this third way,...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 21/02/2020. Post-9. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. War took place. Without going into detail of the further events, we can sum up by saying that Sri Krishna was even ready to break his promise of not taking up weapons in the war when he found that Arjuna had a subtle inner respect for Bhishma as his grandfather and would not actually face him with the strength that he could have exercised at that moment. Arjuna was going a little slow, as if he was not eager to fight, and Bhishma was destroying everybody. Bhishma was raging like fire, and thousands and thousands of Pandava forces were dying. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

======================================================================== ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20/02/2020. Chapter 3: The Aranya Parvam of the Mahabharatam-4. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #My dear spiritual seeker, we find ourselves in a wilderness after some time. We hop from place to place in search of different kinds of spiritual security and atmosphere. It is a kind of psychic wilderness where we do not know how to properly place ourselves.  ##It is an exile from our original aspiration and the satisfaction and security, the balance of approach and positivity that we seemed to have in our minds in the early days.  ###The Kauravas drove the Pandavas out into the forest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19/02/2020. Discourse 3: Severing the Root of this Tree of Life - 4. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #In certain scriptures we are told that knowledge of this tree is the knowledge of the Absolute, so that it is identified with some aspect of Ultimate Reality itself.  #But the Bhagavadgita wants us to cut at the root of this tree with the axe of non-attachment.  ##The Gita is oftentimes known as Anasakti yoga, the yoga of detachment or non-attachment, and the whole of yoga is only this much, at least from one point of view.  #It is an art of detachment. But it is not merely a negative process of withdrawal of something from something else. That is why we have b...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18/02/2020. Chapter-1: This Drama of Life-5. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #Arjuna, the representative of man, who thought as any one of us thinks, found himself in a difficulty when he had to confront life's problems. The word 'confrontation' is very unpalatable. It implies a kind of opposition you are trying to face – which war is, battle is, and perhaps any encounter or enterprise is. Any enterprise in life is an opposition you are facing.  ##Any activity of any kind is the effort on your part, to solve a question arisen on account of an opposition that is in front of you; if there is no opposition of any kind, no activity would be essential in life. You n...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17/02/2020. Srimad  Bhagavad-Gita : Chapter-14. ( GUNA-TRAYA-VIBHAGA-YOGAM ) Slokam-9. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Sattvam  sukhe  sanjayati  rajah  karmani  bharata, jnanamavrtya  tu  tamah   pramade  sanjayatyuta." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- bharata  =  hey  Arjuna! sattvam  sukhe sanjayati   =  satvam  develops  happiness; rajah  karmani  =  rajas  in  actions  of  fruits; tamah tu  =   but  tamas; jnanam  avrtya  =  conce...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16/02/2020. 2. The First Chapter – Vishadha Yogam, the Yoga of the Dejection of the Spirit-5. Post-5. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #This is not the problem of a beginner in spirituality. It is the problem of an advanced person in spirituality. The world is not afraid of a beginner; it knows that he is a fly, so it does not care. An elephant does not care about a fly sitting on it, but if a lion comes in front of it, it will be conscious of the lion.  ##Similarly, the world will not care to recognise even ten or fifteen years of japa, meditation, etc., because these japas are not going to touch even the skin or the fringe of the reality of life. But if we are determined, the...

======================================================================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15/02/2020. (Spoken on September 18th, 1974.) Post-5. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #Therefore, we are not supposed to bring about the assemblage of mechanical parts in the discipline of our personality, because that would be an artificial life.  ##We are supposed to conduct ourselves in such a way that our life is an art, a beauty, an attraction, so that our face beams with a joy that draws people towards us as if we are a magnet.  ###Beauty is a source of attraction, and we become a source of beauty on account of the discipline spiritually conducted according to this novel doctrine of the Bhagavadgita. -----------------------------------------------------...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14/02/2020. Chapter 4: The Bhagavadgita-6. 6. UNIVERSAL RELIGION-. 7. Yogam. Chapter-6 : The Bhagavadgita -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. #The religion of the Gita is not a sectarian doctrine relegated to a section of humanity but a call of the One God to all humanity.  ##While there are those who worship Him in erroneous ways by limiting symbols, they too shall reach Him, if their devotion to the ideals they have set up is exclusive in the sense that it can accommodate or harbour no other thought.  ###Fanaticism in religion arises when there is devotion to one's ideal with hatred for the ideals of others. But this, according to the Gita, is not the way to Go...

======================================================================== #Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda had a wonderful ability to take everyone under his wings, from the child to the youth to the householder. Here is a letter he writes on the significance of a happy home : ##"A home is not merely a roof over us - it must be a harbour from all mental worries - a #divine sanctuary - a haven of Peace - an arbour of love and affection – a garden where your #children can grow in beauty and strength." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13/02/2020. (Spoken on May 1, 1983) Post-5. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. #Duty is a most eluding term which occurs again and again in the Bhagavadgita.  ##The true nature of the duty that is expected of us is something which we cannot easil...

======================================================================== ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12/02/2020. The Twelfth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. (Spoken on June 26, 1983) Post-8. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Archanam : is daily worship as you do in the temples : With shodasa upachara, the sixteen methods of ritualistic performance, you adore God Almighty as present here in His archa avataram, in His images, in His murtis, in His idols, as we have in the temples or places of holy worship. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. Vandanam : is offering prayer: “O Lord of mercy and love…” as you pray. You may pray, “Father, Thou art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name,” and so on,...