The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 7.5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, March 30,  2023. 08:00.

Chapter 7: The Nature of Right Understanding - 5.

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We have also noted that rights follow duties automatically. To ask for rights would be redundant in the context of things, because the privileges of the individual are necessary results that follow from the correct performance of duties, and we are anxious about our rights on account of the incorrectness of the performance of duty—a selfishness that creeps into its so-called performance, wherein placed the individual ceases to be performing duty really. The value of the performance in the form of duty lies in the extent of the unselfishness that is behind it, the impersonality of the ground on which it is rooted. The larger the self that performs the action, the greater is the unselfishness behind the action. What we call the selfishness of an individual is the attitude of the limitation of the self involved in the visualisation of things. There are grades of selfishness and grades of unselfishness, too. In comparison with the higher stage, the lower one may appear as selfish.

Hence, in the advance of consciousness through the process of its evolution we will find that there is an ascending degree of the concept of unselfishness. And the particular degree of unselfishness which determines an action will also determine the nature of the result that follows from that action, so that when an utter unselfishness or a total abolition of personality is behind the performance of an action, that action is no action at all. There we see inaction in action, when the action is motivated by an annihilation of the consciousness of individuality. That is called Cosmic Action, if at all we can call it an action. Thus, action and being commingle at a particular stage, so that existence itself becomes action. But this is a very remote possibility, the final end of things, the absoluteness which the self reaches when it is supposed to have attained liberation, by which we mean the freedom of consciousness from finitude of every kind, in which condition placed, the self of an individual becomes the Self of all beings. “Yena sarvam idam tatam”: that Self of ours pervades the selves of all beings. And, therefore, the performer of action, if it is to be regarded as the self, should be considered as the Self of all beings, so that everyone is doing that action, and not ‘you' or ‘I' as apparently privileged individuals, encased in a body-mind-complex.

This is the sum and substance of the Samkhya and the Yoga expounded in the Second Chapter of the Gita, amounting to a precise answer to the complicated question which Arjuna raised in the First Chapter. And, inasmuch as the questions of Arjuna arose from the various levels of his personality, the answer also has to be equally relevant to those levels from where the questions arise. That is the reason why the Bhagavadgita is not exhausted merely by the Second Chapter, though, for all practical purposes, it appears as if we have given a suitable and complete answer. We have laid the foundation for a correct and full answer but the details shall follow in the chapters to come.

Our problems do not arise merely from one level of our being, as homeopaths tell us that the disease is not merely in the physical body. It is a total organic condition, and unless the root of it is dug out, the disease is not cured. The whole of the Bhagavadgita is the panacea, the remedy, the medicine that is prescribed as an antidote to the diseased questions which arose from the disintegrated personality of humanity in general, represented in the individuality of Arjuna.

Chinmaya International Foundation (CIF) :

Happy Ram Navami. Greetings on the auspicious Ramanavami day!

May Lord Shri Ramchandra bestow His grace and blessings on all of us.

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We are also told, towards the end of the Second Chapter, how such a poised person conducts himself in this world, into which details we need not enter here, because they are obvious from what we have studied up to this time. Every one of us would be able to understand how such a perfect person would conduct himself in the world. There is no necessity to offer a commentary thereon. Everything would be welcome, everything would be all right. All shall be for the best for that person who has ceased to be a person any more. That person has become an ‘imperson' and, therefore, everything is welcome and everything gets absorbed into the impersonality of the person, the genius of an individual. Just as every river is welcome to the ocean and it absorbs all the waters into its bosom, such is the comprehensiveness and the charitableness of the impersonal person, the Sthitaprajna, the perfected individual of the Second Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. One with established understanding, whose consciousness does not flicker or waver when the winds of the world blow over it, such a person is a spiritual stalwart, known sometimes as the Jivanmukta in the language of the Vedanta philosophy.

Chinmaya Mission :

On the spiritual path there may be ups and downs but NEVER a fall. The spiritual journey has its ups and downs but never a complete failure or collapse. Keep going despite the challenges.

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What a wondrous message we have in a single chapter! And what a wondrous problem we picked up in the First Chapter! Duty is the name of this wisdom-charged admonition of the great Master of the Bhagavadgita, Bhagavan Sri Krishna.

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Next
Chapter 8: The Yoga of Action
To be continued

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