The Bhagavadgita in a Nutshell: 2. Swami Krishnananda

=================================================================================

Sunday 24, November 2024, 06:45.
Article
Scriptures
The Bhagavadgita in a Nutshell: 2.
Swami Krishnananda.
(Spoken on November 3rd, 1973.)

==================================================================================

“If understanding is superior, well, I will understand and keep quiet. Why do you want me to work? And if work is all that is essential, why comes understanding?” This quandary, this doubt which was in the mind of Arjuna, is in the mind of every one of us. This is the great war between knowledge and action, jnana and karma, as it is usually put. Everywhere this war goes on, and even now it is not ending. Some say jnana is supreme, some say karma is supreme, some say knowledge is needed for moksha, others say work is also necessary, and some say neither of them is sufficient and both have to be combined. There are so many confusions.

The answer Bhagavan Sri Krishna gives to this question of Arjuna is an answer to all of mankind – to me, to you, to everyone, at all times, for all purposes, under every circumstance. What is our duty? How are we to look upon creation and God in their relation to our individual existence and performance?

The answer of Bhagavan Sri Krishna to this question is that motive behind the action is very important. It is the motive determines the worth, value and consequence of an action. The intention behind a deed is very important, and the deed itself is not all. But that is not the whole truth about the matter. We cannot simply have an intention and be rid of all activity. The difficulty with us is that inaction is impossible for the embodied being. Our body, our personality, our individuality is made up of a network of impulsions to action. That is why some philosophers in the West say that the whole world is a process of becoming, while they call God as 'being'. We call God the Supreme Being. We do not call Him the Supreme Becoming. But the world is the opposite of it because it is a process of becoming. 

Our body, our personality, whatever we are as individuals, is a part of the cosmic process of prakriti: 

guna guṇeṣu vartanta iti matva na sajjate (BG 3.28). 

We do not get attached to anything in this world if we understand one simple truth of the structure of this world of which we are a part. When we know the world, we know ourselves also because we are only a thread in the fabric of the structure of the world. So if we understand the world, we will understand ourselves and our relation to it automatically. This understanding is implied in this half sentence, half slogam, 

guṇa guṇeṣu vartanta iti matva na sajjate.

While our duties in this world are intimately connected with the nature of our own individuality, we have also to remember that we are inwardly and outwardly connected with the world of process. The word 'process' is a Western term, but in India, in our Sanskritic terminology it is called the work of the gunas of prakriti – sattva, rajas, tamas. The whole world is a permutation and combination of the three gunas of prakriti of which the world is constituted, and these three work incessantly. The processes of creation, preservation and destruction of the world go on continuously. It is not that Brahma created the world once upon a time and now he is keeping quiet, and now only Vishnu is working and sustaining it, and Rudra will come afterwards to destroy it. These three processes of creation, preservation and destruction are eternal processes. Every minute there is creation, every minute there is sustenance, every minute there is destruction. The whole world is in a restless movement towards Self-recognition, towards God realisation, and we are caught up in this process of the world. 

So, from this point of view of the restlessness of the cosmos taken in its totality, we are also restless because we are part of the world. This is why Bhagavan Sri Krishna says, “Arjuna, you cannot keep quiet. The whole world cannot keep quiet. The whole universe is active, and you are a part of the world which is so active. How can you keep quiet?”

*****

Continued

=============================================================================================