Commentary on the Srimad Bhagavad Gita- Discourse 7.6. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday,March  25, 2021. 11:07. AM.
Chapter-7. The Third Chapter Concludes: The Knower of Reality.-6.
Post-17.
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The other method is, as far as possible, to try to avoid the company of people who are not in any way going to be of help to you or are going to be a disturbance to you. Atheists and materialists or opponents of any kind may not be good company for you. Be alone to yourself. Try to be alone to yourself as much as possible, and be in the midst of people only to that extent as would be necessitated by the work that you perform. You may be a teacher, you may be a factory manager, you may be a medical person, or you may be professor, etc. You may be in the midst of society only to the extent to which you have to fulfil your obligations—not more, not less. When that performance is over, you may withdraw yourself. When the class is over, you need not go on chatting with the other teachers, etc. Reduce your contact with people to the minimum by a judicious analysis of the requirements of human society. Thus, diet is one method, and social contact is another.

The third is the study of spiritual books such as the Bhagavata, the Bhagavadgita, the Upanishads, etc. This should be done every day, in the early morning, so that you start the day with the noble thoughts of Vyasa or Valmiki or Bhagavan Sri Krishna or Jesus Christ or whoever it is. The intense nobility and the profundity of these spiritual teachings which have gone into your mind due to your svadhyaya in the morning will, to some extent, restrain your behaviour throughout the day.

Lastly, there is meditation and japa. As much time as possible must be devoted to meditation and japa. The sense organs are weakened by these methods, and weak minds cannot wreak as much havoc and are not as rapacious as they are when they have strength.

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Gita-ch3, slokam-40 :

"Indriyani mano buddhir asyadhishthanam uchyate

etair vimohayatyesha jnanam avritya dehinam."

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Tatvam (Essence) :

BG 3.40: The senses, mind, and intellect are said to be breeding grounds of desire. Through them, it clouds one’s knowledge and deludes the embodied soul.

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Translation :

indriyāṇi—the senses; 

manaḥ—the mind; 

buddhiḥ—the intellect; 

asya—of this; 

adhiṣhṭhānam—dwelling place; 

uchyate—are said to be; 

etaiḥ—by these; 

vimohayati—deludes; 

eṣhaḥ—this; 

jñānam—knowledge; 

āvṛitya—clouds; 

dehinam—the embodied soul

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Commentary :

By revealing the locations where lust resides, Shree Krishna now indicates that there is a method of controlling it. The fortress of the enemy must be spotted before one can lay siege on it. In this verse, Shree Krishna states that the senses, mind, and intellect are the places from where lust exercises its dominion over the soul. Under the sway of lust, the sense objects are desired by the senses, the senses infatuate the mind, the mind misleads the intellect, and the intellect loses its discriminatory powers. When the intellect is clouded, the living being is deluded to become a slave of lust and will do anything to satiate it.

These instruments—senses, mind, and intellect—are not bad in themselves. They were given to us for the purpose of achieving God-realization, but we have permitted lust in its many forms to lay siege on them. Now, we have to use the same senses, mind, and intellect to uplift ourselves. In the following verses, Shree Krishna explains how to do that.

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The forces of kama and krodha have a location in your body. They are the sense organs, the manas and the buddhi. Your reason, your mind and your sense organs are the instruments which are harnessed by the forces of kama and krodha to achieve their purpose. So the lower category may be controlled first, and the higher category afterwards. The sense organs may be restrained first by the means that I mentioned in brief. Then you can control the mind gradually by japa sadhana. As direct meditation is very difficult, the mind can be restrained by japa sadhana, purascharana, etc. Then the buddhi is restrained by higher meditation.

To be continued ....

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