Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 23-4. Swami Krishnananda.

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You change! The world will change. - Swami Chinmayananda

Keeping this vision in mind, a massive initiative was held by Swami Turiyananda of Chinmaya Mission Kadapa. A special outreach programme was held to orient over 10K youngsters studying in Kadapa colleges about Chinmaya Yuva Kendra.

To commemorate Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, over 800 youngsters are expected to participate in Utthishta Bharata, a 3 day youth camp at Sri Lalitha Panchayatan Temple premises between 13-15 Aug 2022.

CM Kadapa team invites  youth from Andhra and Telangana region to celebrate the 75 glorious years of India's Independence and become a part of this grand celebration!

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Sunday, July 31, 2022. 18:45.

Chapter 23: Introduction to the Sixth Chapter - 4.

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There is an intelligent life operating, a supreme will that is deciding, and a comforting satisfaction and joy at the heart of all things. Machines have no joy. Though there is a beautiful collaboration between the parts of the machine – very friendly is the relation between the parts of the machine and its entire makeup – yet, there is no soul. We cannot say that the machine is enjoying its work. It does not know what it is doing. But the world is not working in that way, like a huge machine set up for no purpose. It is not a lifeless, automatic action that is taking place. It will look as if this great action of prakriti in its operation of the three gunas, which are is constituents, works like a huge mechanical setup. Though it is precise and very perfect and exact in its action like a machine, of course, yet there is no use being merely mathematical and exact without a soul inside.

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There is a supreme soul operating in this cosmos. We are not living merely like a nut and bolt of a huge machine of prakriti's mechanisations. God is operating everywhere and at all times, controlling even the littlest movements in creation. This was given us as a message in the beginning of the Fourth Chapter. In the Fourth Chapter we learned how we can satisfactorily, soulfully, not soullessly, participate with great joy and fulfilment of purpose in this wondrous creativity of the cosmos, which is not merely an exact machine of prakriti's three gunas but a supreme soul blissfully redounding upon itself, playing with itself, as it were, the great joy of God thinking Himself in these vast creative forces. In this vast creative blissful process of God's creation, your participation is a yajna, a sacrifice, a duty, and to live is to work, and to work is to worship, and to worship is to be in tune with God. 

All this was mentioned to us in the Fourth Chapter.

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You automatically get detached from all objective attachments, likes and dislikes, when this knowledge dawns in you. Vairagya in the true sense of the term becomes your possession, your enlightenment, your education and your virtue. This enlightened person in this educational career described, placed in this context of a governance of a supremely benignant God, wants nothing in this world because that person is no more a person. That person is an imperson. A participant in a living universality is no more an isolated nobody. There is, therefore, no desire for anything. There is no desire for anything because everything is mine; everything is everybody's. The whole abundance of God's creation is at our disposal; therefore, why should we ask for anything? This is the tone of the Fifth Chapter, karma sannyasa. There is sannyasa in karma. A detachment, a renunciation, an abnegation of all external contacts otherwise effected through the senses is considered as totally unnecessary. We do not require this operation of sense contact at all in order that we may be joyous. Our joys are not necessarily the outcome of sense contact.

It was mentioned precisely in a verse in the Fifth Chapter: 

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(BG 5.22).

"Ye hi sansparsha-ja bhoga duhkha-yonaya eva te
adyantavantah kaunteya na teshu ramate budhah."

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ye—which; 
hi—verily; 
sansparśha-jāḥ—born of contact with the sense objects; 
bhogāḥ—pleasures; 
duḥkha—misery; 
yonayaḥ—source of; 
eva—verily; 
te—they are; 
ādya-antavantaḥ—having beginning and end; 
kaunteya—Arjun, the son of Kunti; 
na—never; 
teṣhu—in those; 
ramate—takes delight; 
budhaḥ—the wise

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Translation:

BG 5.22: The pleasures that arise from contact with the sense objects, though appearing as enjoyable to worldly-minded people, are verily a source of misery. O son of Kunti, such pleasures have a beginning and an end, so the wise do not delight in them.

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Commentary :

The senses create sensations of pleasure in contact with the sense objects.  The mind, which is like the sixth sense, derives pleasure from honor, praise, circumstances, success, etc.  All these pleasures of body and mind are known as bhog (material enjoyment).  Such worldly pleasures cannot satisfy the soul for the following reasons:

Worldly pleasures are finite, and hence the feeling of deficiency remains inherent in them.  One may feel happiness on becoming a millionaire, but the same millionaire becomes discontented on seeing a billionaire, and thinks, “If only I also had one billion, then I too would be happy.”  In contrast, the bliss of God is infinite, and so it gives complete satisfaction.

Worldly pleasures are temporary.  Once they finish, they again leave one with the feeling of misery.  For example, an alcoholic enjoys the pleasure of drinking alcohol at night, but the next morning, the hangover gives him a splitting headache.  However, the bliss of God is eternal, and once attained, it remains forever.

Worldly pleasures are insentient, and hence they continuously decrease.  When people see a new Academy Award prize-winning movie, they are overjoyed, but if they have to see the movie a second time to give company to a friend, their joy dries up.  And if a second friend insists that they see it a third time, they say, “Give me any punishment, but don’t ask me to see that movie again.”  The pleasure from material objects keeps decreasing as we enjoy it.  In Economics, this is defined as the Law of Diminishing Returns.  But the bliss of God is sentient; it is sat-chit-ānand (eternal ever-fresh divine bliss).  Hence, one can go on chanting the same divine Name of God all day long, and relish ever-new devotional satisfaction in it.

No sane person enjoying a delicious dessert would be willing to give it up and eat mud instead.  Similarly, when one begins to enjoy divine bliss, the mind loses all taste for material pleasures.  Those endowed with the faculty of discrimination understand the above three drawbacks of material pleasures, and restrain their senses from them.   Shree Krishna emphasizes this in the next verse.

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To be continued .....

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