The Bhagavadgita – A Synthesis of Thought and Action-5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday 25, Aug 2024, 06:50.
Article
Scriptures
The Bhagavadgita – A Synthesis of Thought and Action-5. 
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on Gita Jayanti in 1973)

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Now, again we go back to the Upanishads. Why should the rectitude or the otherwise of an action not depend upon the pleasure of the individual or the otherwise? The Upanishads give an answer to it. The nature of existence itself is contrary to holding such an opinion. The structure of all phenomena is of such a character that it will not permit us to hold such an individualistic opinion in respect of any action whatsoever. The universe does not belong to you or to me particularly. It does not belong to anyone. As such, we can say that nothing in this world belongs to us because everything belongs to the universe. It is a part of the world. And as the world is the basic repository of even our own personal existence – we belong to the world rather than the world belongs to us – nothing can belong to us. If nothing can really belong to us in the proper judgment of values, on an impartial judgment of things, how can anything give us pleasure or pain? The pleasure or the pain that we seem to be receiving from the context of particular objects or groups of objects outside – this pain or pleasure which is a reaction to the stimulus from objects outside – arises on account of our possessiveness or the establishment of a specific relationship in respect of the objects of the world, which is unjustifiable, scientifically speaking. We are not permitted to establish particular relationships with anything in the world, as nature is a wholly unselfish entity bearing no positive or negative attitude towards any content thereof.

If the world is a single unity, of which we are also an integral part, accepted, no object or person in the world relates to us in any personalistic fashion and, therefore, no one in the world can bring us happiness or sorrow. Our individualised happiness or grief is an immediate outcome of our so-called relationship with certain persons and things in the world which ultimately does not exist, and cannot be justified.

The Upanishads speak of the ultimate truth of things. Yo vai bhuma tat sukham: The Plenum is felicity. And what is the Plenum? What is this Bhuma which is the source of real bliss? 

The Chhandogya Upanishad tells us: yo vai bhuma tat sukham, nalpe sukham asti (Chhandogya Upanishad VII.23.1); yatra nanyat pasyati nanyac chrnoti nanyad vijanati sa bhuma (VII.24.1). 

Where you are not permitted to look on any object as an external something, that is the Supreme Plenum. But where you are drawn down to the level of an individualistic perception of such and such a thing being personally related to you, that is finitude of consciousness. It is not the true nature of things. 

Satyam eva jayate nanrtam, satyena pantha vitato deva-yanah, yenakramanty rsayo hy apta-kama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam (Mundaka Upanisahd 3.1.6), says the Upanishad. 

Truth succeeds; untruth will never succeed. And what is the truth? The Plenum is the truth. And what is the Plenum? Wherein you are not to look upon anything as an isolated something or a disjointed object separated from your own existence, that is the Plenum.

If this is the truth, all your pleasures and pains should be untruth. Therefore, Arjuna, pleasure and pain cannot become the standard of judging the rectitude or otherwise of an action. That would be to base the action on a false foundation. You have to base your action on the concept of duty rather than on the concept of pleasure.

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Continued

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