A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 27 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 06, May 2024 06:50.
Chapter 6: Sankhya – The Wisdom of Cosmic Existence - 6.
Post-27.

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The slogam of the Third Chapter says when God created this world and the individuals of various species, He ordained that there is a binding factor perpetually operating between the individuals and the cosmic process.  At the beginning of creation, Prajapati, the Creator, willed, as it were, that all created evolutes are to be bound back to the universal perspective through some bond, which is known as sacrifice. Yajna is the clue to the way in which we have to conduct ourselves in this world. Life is considered as a sacrifice. I mentioned to you briefly that sacrifice is something like charity, the giving away of one's own being in some extent. That is, you share the finitude of your personality for the welfare and survival of other such finitudes with which you are all internally connected. By this process you diminish your own finitude and, simultaneously, you produce an alternate effect of increasing the dimension of your personality. You gradually become more and more non-finite by charity.

Yajna' is a word which is well known. Yajna, sacrifice, is generally understood in the popular sense to mean some offering in a sacred fire, somebody performing a yajna somewhere. When you are told this, you understand that some sacred fire is lit and oblations are offered for the satisfaction of the gods. This is one way to understand yajna because as a sacrifice, yajna may be external or internal. It can also be universal. This threefold aspect of yajna will be dealt with when we come to the Eighteenth Chapter of the Gita.

So, externally yajna would mean offering oblations in a sacred fire. This yajna, which is offered externally by ritualistic chanting of mantras, etc., is also one kind of sacrifice. You offer something in the sacred fire for the satisfaction of a divinity as you have observed priests, pundits offering oblations. The yajamana, or the conductor of the sacrifice, is asked to repeat the word 'namama'. Indraya svaha indraya idam namama: May this be to the satisfaction of Indra, not for me. Namama: I am not doing this yajna for my satisfaction. It is for the satisfaction of the god. Who is this god? These Indras, Varunas, Angis, etc., in the Veda mantras are actually the adhidaivas. The adhyatma is the performer of the sacrifice, the adhidaiva is the deity to whom the offer is made for his satisfaction. So even in external sacrifice, yajna is very valuable, provided it is done with a pure spirit of understanding of the offering, the adhidaiva, and the adhyatma yajamana. The kunda, the actual altar, is the adhibhuta preparation. The sacred altar that is prepared for the performance of this sacrifice, ritual performance or yajna, is part of the adhibhuta-prapancha because it is made of bricks, mortar, etc. On the basis of this adhibhuta preparation of the altar, the adhyatma, which is the individual concerned, offers a symbolic gift, as it were, to that invisible, internal connecting link of divinity, the adhidaiva. So you understand to some extent the meaning of these external homas, yajnas, sacrifices, etc.

This intricate process of a yajna is not merely offering something mechanically for no purpose, but is an inwardly oriented vital action of the inward relationship between the adhyatma, the adhibuta and adhidaiva. So even in an external ritualistic homa or yajna, a universal setup is produced by the contemplation of the yajnamana, or the performer. In a passage of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the question is raised by a member of the audience in the court of Janaka who addresses Yajnavalkya: "Any offering that is made is perishable. All actions lead to results which will cease one day or the other. So all sacrifice ends in a perishable result. How would the performer of sacrifice attain immortality through sacrifice? Answer this question, Yajnavalkya."

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Continued

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