The Essence of the Gospel of the Bhagavadgita - 3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 20, May 2024 07:20.

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Scriptures

The Essence of the Gospel of the Bhagavadgita -3.

Swami Krishnananda

(Spoken at a conference in Delhi on December 27, 1973.)

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This is one of the forms of conflict which we have to face in our life. We have the call of duty on one side, and the call of affection from the other side. Many a time we are unable to think through the terms of duty before us. We try to interpret every situation in terms of our personal relationships. Influence counts these days. This is a slogan which everyone is familiar with. Efficiency and the sense of duty do not seem to pay us as much as influence, personal contact and relationship. This is a fall in the sense of values. The personal relationship of Arjuna with the constituents of the army before him gained an upper hand, and the purpose for which he was there was forgotten. This happens to us, to every person. Arjuna is only a symbol of humanity, a representation of you and me and every person in the world. He spoke what each one of us speaks in our daily life. “Oh, what a pity!” cried out Arjuna, and we also say, “Oh, what a pity! I have my wife and children, I have my husband, I have my relatives, I have a large family to feed.”

'I', 'me', and such appellations as these which refer to your bodily existence begin to interpret every situation, and we begin to judge whether anything in the world has any connection with us or not. “What have I to do with it, what will it pay me, and what will it bring to me?” is the question. So you come first always, and everything else comes afterwards. “The world is there for my sake. What does the world mean to me?” is your question. Your family has a meaning to you but somebody else's family does not mean anything to you, and therefore you are not concerned with it. Millions of people may starve and die, but you have no concern for them because they are not your relations. But if one child of yours suffers, you cannot sleep for days because it is your child. You are not concerned with situations or circumstances as such; you are concerned only with what it means to you and how it is connected with you. This is the emotional interpretation of life and the world.

This was Arjuna's condition. His personality was torn to shreds by the psychological conflict that arose within himself. He did not know whether it was proper to be or not to be, as Shakespeare puts it in his Hamlet. You do not know whether it is proper to be or not to be. You do not know what to do and what not to do. 

(BG 2.7) was the query of Arjuna to Bhagavan Sri Krishna: “Lord, I do not know. I am confused. What is proper for me in this condition? Please tell me. Am I to engage in this bloody deed called war and kill all my kith and kin in order to reign over this bloody kingdom? Or is it proper for me to retire and live a life of isolation, even of a mendicant? What is my duty at this moment, in this context?” was the question—and it is your question, it is my question, and it is everybody's question.

What is your duty at a given moment of time? Though 'duty' is a general term applicable to every obligation that you owe to the world outside, it changes its colours and contours at different times and under given conditions, like a medicine that is administered to a patient. Though it is true that every disease requires a medicine, different diseases require different types of medicine. In a similar manner, though duty is an obligation on everyone's part, you owe a duty of different types. It is difficult for you to judge what peculiar shade of difference influences that particular kind of duty that you are called upon to do at any given moment of time. This requires knowledge. This knowledge which is the background of the sense of duty at any given moment of time is called sankhya in the terminology of the Bhagavadgita. 

Sri Krishna rebutted the arguments of Arjuna, dismissed all his cogent sayings with one sentence: “You speak words of wisdom, but you do not possess wisdom (BG 2.11): You are weeping for that for which you should not grieve, and yet you speak of knowledge.

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Continued

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