The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 18.1. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 05, Mar 2024 07:00.

Chapter 18: The Yoga of the Liberation of Spirit-1.

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The concluding chapter of the Bhagavadgita, which is the Eighteenth, is a sort of sequel to the whole of the message which has been delivered in the earlier sections. By way of a summing up of the teaching, the essentials are precisely stated in a classified manner. After everything has been said, it appears that point which the Gita is driving home into our minds is that we should not shirk duty. This seems to be the ringing tone of its message. And in the context of the description of the nature of duty, several other philosophical and ethical aspects also are touched upon incidentally.

The outlook of the Gita is wholly realistic. And inasmuch as the realism of life is rooted in a grand idealism of aspiration, the gospel becomes most comprehensive in its approach. When we touch one point, we begin to realise that it is connected with another, and the second one with the third, and so on, until the revelation comes that nothing can be explained unless everything is explained. Such is the organic structure of the gospel of the Bhagavadgita.

The Eighteenth Chapter starts by recounting the principle of action, Karma Yoga, which is many a time regarded as the establishment in a kind of knowledge free from action, and at other times as the performance of action free from clinging to the fruits thereof. Two significant terms are used at the very outset: sannyasa and tyaga. Though etymologically the two words mean almost one and the same thing, they are used here with a special meaning attached to each one of them. When all desireful actions are abandoned and we perform only actions free from desire, we are supposed to be in the state of sannyasa, a relinquishment of everything that is associated with personal motive or desire. But tyaga, which is also abandonment, is defined as the giving up of the desire for the fruit of the action and not the giving up of action itself. There is, thus, a difference between the giving up or relinquishment of action and the giving up of the consequence of the action. These are not easy things to understand, though it would appear that we have studied a lot on the subject throughout the course of the teaching.

It would be hard for us to make out what action is, situated as we are in a human complex working through the medium of social relationships and entertaining an outlook which is secretly motivated by some form of desire. We cannot imagine a state of affairs where we can be entirely free from all desires, whatever be the gospel, whatever be the teaching. This is a great handicap before us. And so it requires a Herculean effort on our part to rise to that level of understanding where it would be possible for us to live without motivated outlooks or desires which are directed to particular ends. It is not possible for anyone to live without doing some kind of action. This is one of the great points made out in the Bhagavadgita. It is futile on the part of anyone, whatever be his knowledge or wisdom, to imagine that he can be without any activity, because the world is nothing but action; it is a field of movement, enterprise and effort. It is Kurukshetra, an arena of activity; but it is also  Dharmakshetra, a field of action regulated by law, and not merely of some chaotic activity. Here is the problem before us: neither can we be free from action, nor can we perform action with any motive behind it. If this could enter our heads in its true significance, we would have understood the message of the Gita. As this is a difficult point to grasp, it is further explained in some detail for the purpose of the elucidation of its meaning.

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Continued

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