The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 9-6: Swami Krishnananda.

-
========================================================================================

Thursday 21, November 2024, 06:10.
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity:9-6.
Chapter 9: The Classification of Society-6.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita: 
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti

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

What is meant by this bewareness? It shows that inasmuch as your conduct is decided and determined by your nature, and you cannot act contrary to it – you can act only in accordance with it, not more, not less – your contribution to the solidarity of society will be to the extent of the permission granted by your nature at that given moment in that state of your evolution. It is not a license to act in a libidinous or a selfish way, but it is a concession given to you to do only that much as you can under the conditions in which you are placed because of the preponderance of the gunas. Nobody will ask you to lift an elephant's weight. You have not got that strength. Only the elephant can lift a larger weight, but you can also lift some weight. That will depend upon what you are.

It has already been noticed that human society is an interrelated, interconnected, interdependent organism. It is one person, as it were, and humanity, therefore, may be considered as one thought in a general sense. It is not one thought in a detailed or particular sense, just as the legs are not the head, the nose is not the eyes, yet they all constitute one body, and we can consider them as one organism. I am not you; you are not another. Everyone is different from everybody else. Yet, in spite of this difference in detail, we are the human species. As humans we are categorised under a particular class of thinking. We think as human beings. We do not think like trees and hills and reptiles, and so on. Therefore, the human way of thinking is considered here as the standpoint of the observation of duty and the performance thereof.

The duty you are expected to perform is whatever you are capable of contributing to the welfare of the whole. Here again, a little analogy of the human body will be good. You do not expect the leg to think as the brain thinks. You do not expect the head to walk. You do not expect the nose to see, or the ear to smell. It is expected of each organ to perform a particular function. Now, the difference in the performance of these functions does not imply any kind of ethical or moral superiority, or even a social difference. Which part of your body is inferior, and which part is superior? Even a little hair of mine is dear to me. How can I say it is not dear? Even a nail is me. It is not merely mine, it is me – so dear, so loving, so beautiful, so necessary, because it is myself.

We are now considering your performance in the context of your whole relation in the fabric of human society, and we will consider the larger society of the universe afterwards. For the time being, let us confine ourselves to human society only. In the beginning of the Second Chapter of the Gita, the emphasis is on the social side first. The other sides come later on, gradually, stage by stage, when we go deeper and deeper. So your position in society, as conditioned and dictated by the preponderance of the gunas, will decide what your contribution should be.

You may ask, “Why should I contribute anything? Why should I not be inactive? I will not do anything. It is better to keep quiet.” Now, this is not possible. 

Na hi kascit kshanam api jatu tishthaty akarmakrt (BG 3.5): 

No one sits for a moment without doing something. 

It is not possible to be inactive, because you are per force goaded to act in a particular way by the very fact of your relation to this larger organisation called society. It is goaded to perform that function, merely because of the fact of its being a part of that mechanism. It is integrally related to it. When the train moves, every part of the train also moves. There is no need to tell each part to start moving. It goes because it is connected.

******

Continued

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gita : Ch-3. Slo-43.

-
Image
Srimad Bhagavad-Gita : Chapter-3. ( Karma-yogam ) Slokam-43. ( Thus, knowing the atma to be superior to intelligence, O brave and strong Arjuna, steady the mind by self-realisation and conquer this insatiable enemy, in the form of lust. ) evam  buddheh  param  buddhva  samstabhyatmanamatmana, jahi  satrum  mahabaho  kamarupam  durasadam. mahabaho  =  O,  strong  brave   Arjuna; evam  buddheh  param   =   thus  superior  of  intelligence; atmanam  buddhva  =  knowing  the  atma,  by  atma,  the   intelligence (the  vivekam/discrimination  and  vicharam/ realisation ); atmanam  samstbhya  =  keep  the  atma  steady  without  oscillations;  (controlling  the  mind   from,  vishayas)     kamarupam  du...
Read more

A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 33 - Swami Krishnananda.

-
Image
================================================================================= Saturday 01, June 2024 06:40. Chapter 7: The Entry of the Absolute into the Relative -3. Post-33. ================================================================================= There are endless connections of this type. The relationship of adhyatma and adhibhuta is involved in an infinite variety of degrees of ascent and descent. This imperative of the presence of a consciousness between adhyatma and adhibhuta in various degrees is the reason why you sometimes feel there are many gods. Sometimes the question arises: Are there many gods, or only one God? There is only one God, the Absolute, but inasmuch as it manifests itself as an interconnecting link between subject and object through millions of degrees of ascent and descent, it looks as there are millions of gods. It is as if there are millions of governments merely because there are millions of officials in a centrality of administration. There is...
Read more

The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita - 8.1. Swami Krishnananda.

-
Image
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, March 21, 2021. 07:57. AM. Chapter 8: Creation and Life After Death -1. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bhagavadgita is a moksha-shastra, a scripture on the science of the liberation of the spirit. Thus it follows the course of the return process along the same lines as the evolutionary process of the descent of the soul from the Supreme Being. The first six chapters may be said to be engaged in an exposition of self-discipline from the individual point of view, the integration of the human personality and the preparation of the whole man for the greater task which is yet to come – namely, the at-one-ment of the individual with the set-up of the universe. Some of the interpreters and commentators on the Bhagavadgita hold that the first six chapters have a relevance to the significance of the term 'twam' in the famous Upanishadic p...
Read more