Commentary on the Srimad Bhagavad Gita- Discourse- 8- Post-2. - Swami Krishnananda
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Tuesday, April 27, 2021. 06:23. PM.
Chapter-8.The Fourth Chapter Begins: The Avataras of God
Post-2.
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Slokam-7 :
"yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata
abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham." (BG- CH-4.SLO-7)
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Translation by words :
yadā yadā—whenever;
hi—certainly;
dharmasya—of righteousness;
glāniḥ—decline;
bhavati—is;
bhārata—Arjun,
descendant of Bharat;
abhyutthānam—increase;
adharmasya—of unrighteousness;
tadā—at that time;
ātmānam—self;
sṛijāmi—manifest;
aham—I
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Translation of the Slokam :
BG 4.7: Whenever there is a decline in righteousness and an increase in unrighteousness, O Arjun, at that time I manifest myself on earth.
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Commentary :
Dharma is verily the prescribed actions that are conducive to our spiritual growth and progress; the reverse of this is adharma (unrighteousness). When unrighteousness prevails, the creator and administrator of the world intervenes by descending and reestablishing dharma. Such a descension of God is called an Avatār. The word “Avatar” has been adopted from Sanskrit into English and is commonly used for people’s images on the media screen. In this text, we will be using it in its original Sanskrit connotation, to refer to the divine descension of God. Twenty four such descensions have been listed in the Śhrīmad Bhāgavatam. However, the Vedic scriptures state that there are innumerable descensions of God:
janma-karmābhidhānāni santi me ’ṅga sahasraśhaḥ
na śhakyante ’nusankhyātum anantatvān mayāpi hi (Bhāgavatam 10.51.36)[v5]
“Nobody can count the infinite Avatars of God since the beginning of eternity.” These Avatars are classified in four categories, as stated below:
1. Āveśhāvatār—when God manifests his special powers in an individual soul and acts through him. The sage Narad is an example of Āveśhāvatār. The Buddha is also an example of Āveśhāvatār.
2. Prābhavāvatār—these are the descensions of God in the personal form, where he displays some of his divine powers. Prābhavāvatārs are also of two kinds:
a) Where God reveals himself only for a few moments, completes his work, and then departs. Hansavatar is an example of this, where God manifested before the Kumaras, answered their question, and left.
b) Where the Avatar remains on the earth for many years. Ved Vyas, who wrote the eighteen Puranas and the Mahabharat, and divided the Vedas into four parts, is an example of such an Avatar.
3. Vaibhavatār—when God descends in his divine form, and manifests more of his divine powers. Matsyavatar, Kurmavatar, Varahavatar are all examples of Vaibhavatārs.
4. Parāvasthāvatār—when God manifests all his divine powers in his personal divine form. Shree Krishna, Shree Ram, and Nrisinghavatar are all Parāvasthāvatār.
This classification does not imply that any one Avatār is bigger than the other. Ved Vyas, who is himself an Avatār, clearly states this: sarve pūrṇāḥ śhāśhvatāśhcha dehāstasya paramātmanaḥ (Padma Purāṇ)[v6] “All the descensions of God are replete with all divine powers; they are all perfect and complete.” Hence, we should not differentiate one Avatar as bigger and another as smaller. However, in each descension, God manifests his powers based on the objectives he wishes to accomplish during that particular descension. The remaining powers reside latently within the Avatar. Hence, the above classifications were created.
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Slokam-8 :
"paritranaya sadhunam vinashaya cha dushkritam
dharma-sansthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge." (BG- CH-4.SLO-8)
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Translation by words :
paritrāṇāya—to protect;
sādhūnām—the righteous;
vināśhāya—to annihilate;
cha—and;
duṣhkṛitām—the wicked;
dharma—the eternal religion;
sansthāpana-arthāya—to reestablish;
sambhavāmi—I appear;
yuge yuge—age after age.
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Translation of the slokam :
BG 4.8 : "To protect the righteous, to annihilate the wicked, and to reestablish the principles of dharma I appear on this earth, age after age."
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Commentary :
Having stated in the last verse that God descends in the world, he now states the three reasons for doing so: 1) To annihilate the wicked. 2) To protect the pious. 3) To establish dharma. However, if we closely study these three points, none of the three reasons seem very convincing:
To protect the righteous. God is seated in the hearts of his devotees, and always protects them from within. There is no need to take an Avatar for this purpose.
To annihilate the wicked. God is all-powerful, and can kill the wicked merely by wishing it. Why should he have to take an Avatar to accomplish this?
To establish dharma. Dharma is eternally described in the Vedas. God can reestablish it through a Saint; he does not need to descend himself, in his personal form, to accomplish this.
How then do we make sense of the reasons that have been stated in this verse? Let’s delve a little deeper to grasp the import of what Shree Krishna is stating.
The biggest dharma that the soul can engage in is devotion to God. That is what God strengthens by taking an Avatār. When God descends in the world, he reveals his divine forms, names, virtues, pastimes, abodes, and associates. This provides the souls with an easy basis for devotion. Since the mind needs a form to focus upon and to connect with, the formless aspect of God is very difficult to worship. On the other hand, devotion to the personal form of God is easy for people to comprehend, simple to perform, and sweet to engage in.
Thus, since the descension of Lord Krishna 5,000 years ago, billions of souls have made his divine leelas (pastimes) as the basis of their devotion, and purified their minds with ease and joy. Similarly, the Ramayan has provided the souls with a popular basis for devotion for innumerable centuries. When the TV show, Ramayan, first began airing on Indian national television on Sunday mornings, all the streets of India would become empty. The pastimes of Lord Ram held such fascination for the people that they would be glued to their television sets to see the leelas on the screen. This reveals how Lord Ram’s descension provided the basis for devotion to billions of souls in history. The Ramayan says:
“In his descension period, Lord Ram helped only one Ahalya (Sage Gautam’s wife, whom Lord Ram released from the body of stone). However, since then, by chanting the divine name “Ram,” billions of fallen souls have elevated themselves.” So a deeper understanding of this verse is:
To establish dharma: God descends to establish the dharma of devotion by providing souls with his names, forms, pastimes, virtues, abodes, and associates, with the help of which they may engage in bhakti and purify their minds.
To kill the wicked: Along with God, to help facilitate his divine pastimes, some liberated Saints descend and pretend to be miscreants. For example, Ravan and Kumbhakarna were Jaya and Vijaya who descended from the divine abode of God. They pretended to be demons and opposed and fought with Ram. They could not have been killed by anyone else, since they were divine personalities. So, God slayed such demons as a part of his leelas. And having killed them, he sent them to his divine abode, since that was where they came from in the first place.
To protect the righteous: Many souls had become sufficiently elevated in their sādhanā (spiritual practice) to qualify to meet God face-to-face. When Shree Krishna descended in the world, these eligible souls got their first opportunity to participate in God’s divine pastimes. For example, some gopīs (cowherd women of Vrindavan, where Shree Krishna manifested his pastimes) were liberated souls who had descended from the divine abode to assist in Shree Krishna’s leelas. Other gopīs were materially bound souls who got their first chance to meet and serve God, and participate in his leelas. So when Shree Krishna descended in the world, such qualified souls got the opportunity to perfect their devotion by directly participating in the pastimes of God.
This is the deeper meaning of the verse. However, it is not wrong if someone wishes to cognize the verse more literally or metaphorically.
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Discourse :
At every juncture of experience, whether created knowingly or unknowingly, God manifests Himself, just as healing forces in the body work perpetually when there is disease in the system. If there is some illness in the body, the protective forces immediately gird up their loins and powers called anabolic forces stand against the catabolic forces which are intent on destroying the body. As gods and demons fight in heaven, the constructive healing forces fight, as it were, against disease-forming toxins—just as whenever there is even a little pain in the foot due to a thorn that has gone into it, the entire body descends as an incarnation of power to set right that element that has entered as something totally alien to the bodily requirement.
When does God incarnate? Is it sometimes, occasionally, always, or only in some ages? The word ‘yuga’ is used in this verse: yuge yuge. Yuga also means the fourfold cycle of time known as Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Kali Yuga. These four ages of the time process are called yugas in Sanskrit. “In every yuga I manifest myself” is one meaning. We will find in the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana or the Vishnu Purana or other Puranas that the incarnation of God in some form—Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, and so on—took place in every yuga. But yuga also means a junction, a crisis, a situation where there is a conflict of forces, outwardly as well as inwardly. There is a necessity for the descent of redemptive forces, in the same way as the constructive redeeming forces of the body do not act only sometimes. They do not even sleep. The anabolic forces, or constructive forces to which I made reference, are perpetually working in the body to see that health is maintained and the body does not deteriorate.
Just as the intelligence maintaining the human body works continuously, without winking and without sleeping, in order to maintain this psychophysical organism, in the same way, God acts in this world through manifestations which are myriad in number. Santi sahasra?a?—thousands and thousands are the ways in which God can reveal Himself for the purpose of bringing about a rapprochement of conditions, a harmony among conflicts arising in any way whatsoever. God can reveal Himself positively in the form of an amelioration of all the conditions causing pain to people, or negatively by the amputation of a limb of a body if that becomes unavoidable, which God does only under extreme cases in the form of battle, war, epidemics, cyclones, earthquakes, floods and tornadoes. All these come as incarnations of God. He may come as the beautiful butter-stealing child Krishna—so tender, so attractive, so beautiful and so adorable—or He may also come as the terrific tooth-and-claw Narasimha. Hence, we should not expect Him to manifest Himself only in the manner we like.
To be continued ...
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