A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 29 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 14, May 2024 06:57.
Chapter 6: Sankhya – The Wisdom of Cosmic Existence - 8.
Post-29.

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This is a little commentary on the principle of action in this world. Act you must; work is your duty. It is so because of the fact you are involved phenomenally in this body, in space, time and causation. You cannot wrench yourself from the relativity in which you are involved just because of the fact that Universality is your existence.

So the Bhagavadgita brings about a beautiful blend between the relative and the Absolute. It does not go to the extreme of emphasising only the earthly existence of political and social relations, nor does it sever the relationship of your relative existence with the cosmic existence. God and man walk together in the principle of the Bhagavadgita. They shake hands, as it were, as friends. Krishna and Arjuna are considered as eternal comrades. The God of the universe and the relativity of the individual are not to be segregated. Nara and Narayana are the symbols divinely portrayed of man and God. The relationship between man and God, the world and the cosmic, the relative and the Absolute, is the relationship between Arjuna and Krishna. Two birds perched on the same tree, living together, one eating not the fruit of the tree and the other engaged in the enjoyment of the fruit, is another analogy that we have in the Rigveda mantra and also in the Upanishads, the two birds being God and man.

This body, this world, this creation, is itself the tree on which two birds are perching. One bird is God; the other bird is myself, yourself. You are engaged in eating the fruit in this world, which is so delicious, and are not even conscious of the other bird sitting near you, unconcerned and merely gazing. Where is the freedom? This is perhaps the fruit which you should not eat. What you require is the vision of that which is sitting quietly inside you, the unconcerned spectator of the universe. This spectator of the universe is God, Ishvara, who is your friend, Narayana. He sits quiet in the chariot of Arjuna, doing nothing. Arjuna is very busy every moment. The intense activity of Arjuna and the so-called calm, quiet seatedness of Krishna are great contradictions indeed. The Bhagavadgita wants to bring a blend between these. "Act! Do not be a coward. Rush forward!" says the one who does nothing Himself. And the last verse of the Bhagavadgita will also be a further exposition of the necessity of the blend of Krishna and Arjuna, Narayana and Nara, God and man, the Absolute and the relative.

Sankhya and Yoga therefore, while they appear to be two ways of approach to things, are two ways of a single approach only, in the end. The singleness of this approach arises from the fact that we are simultaneously phenomenal and noumenal. We are not today phenomenal and tomorrow noumenal. We are in God and in this world – you may say, in heaven and in hell – at the same time. So it is necessary for us to be cautious in the sense that we are able to be an expert manager of our own person in this world of an apparent division or a contradiction between the universal and the particular. Expertness in this performance is necessary, cosmically as well as individually; else, there will be a rift in our personality. We will be a psychological derelict. There will be non-alignment of our inner psyche.

There is a gradational necessity to integrate the personality from the lowest of our levels to the highest. Physically also we must be integrated; otherwise, we will be sick bodies. The maintenance of the body in its anabolic and catabolic processes should be a blend of action taking place every day. Neither not eating nor eating too much; neither sleeping too much nor not sleeping at all, etc., will be told to you later on. So is the case with your senses. Neither indulge them nor starve them. So is the case with the mind. It has two desires – to ask for the endlessness of things and to satisfy its own craving through the desire.

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Continued

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