The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 5.3. Swami Krishnananda

Sunday, June 14, 2020.

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

Chapter 5: The Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata - 3

1.

What exactly is meant by the words ‘battle’ or ‘war’? 

We have our own prosaic, human, political and historical ideas about this very unpleasant event which has always been part and parcel of history and human existence. But while it is true that people engage themselves in battles and wars to solve a particular problem or a situation prevailing at a given moment of time, it is not the intention of the Bhagavadgita to say that any problem of human existence can be solved merely by reading the historical aspect of the human side of empirical existence.

2.

We never do anything unless we are sure that our doing is going to solve a particular problem or necessity in our life. If a necessity does not arise, we will not budge an inch, and we will not act. There is a need felt for action, and that need is commensurate with a difficulty behind it. 

What is meant by ‘a need’ or ‘a necessity’? 

It is an urge to set right a particular condition that is prevailing at present, implying thereby that the present condition is not a happy, perfect, expected condition. A finitude of the prevailing situation, an irregularity of it, an oddness about it, an unhappiness that is attached to it, may be considered as what we call the need of the hour.

3.

Now, our actions are actually a kind of movement on our part to solve a situation which has to be understood very carefully in its subtle, threadbare meaning. It is a state of conflict, a kind of confrontation in which we find ourselves every moment of time, practically every day, in a situation when we are face to face with some circumstance with which we cannot reconcile ourselves as it looks on its surface, or as it is capable of our understanding in our present state of intellect and mind. We have to understand here again the subtle shade of meaning behind the word ‘conflict’, which enlarges itself into the cruder meanings of what we call battle and war, etc. 

They all mean the same thing finally, though the dimension they take may vary, and their grossness or subtlety may also be different.

To be continued ...