The Bhagavadgita in a Nutshell: 3. Swami Krishnananda

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Saturday 07, December 2024, 13:35.
Article
Scriptures
The Bhagavadgita in a Nutshell: 3.
Swami Krishnananda.
(Spoken on November 3rd, 1973.)

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Now, we cannot keep quiet; that is one side of the matter. But we cannot foolishly be active; that is another side of the matter. 

Mā karmaphalahetur bhur ma te sangostv akarmani (BG 2.47): 

Do not be attached to the fruits of action, and also, at the same time, do not be inactive. Sri Krishna is catching us from both sides. We cannot keep quiet, and yet we cannot do whatever we like. A disciplined form of activity, action, is our duty. This Third Chapter is wonderful. The more we think about it, the more wonderful it appears to be. Everything is done by prakriti.

Prakrtim yanti bhutani nigrahah kim karisyati (BG 3.33). 

“Ah, is it so?” Arjuna is a very shrewd man. He wants to catch Krishna at every point. “If everything is done by prakriti, whatever I do, even if I go and hit somebody's head, it is prakriti's action only. I can abuse somebody, I can do a sinful action because you say everything is done by prakriti, and who can restrain prakriti? If prakriti does everything, then even sinful actions are prakriti's only, and I may do anything. Is it so?”

“No.” Now, here is a very subtle distinction drawn by Bhagavan Sri Krishna between the causes of sin and the nature of prakriti. Prakriti does not make us commit sin. This is a very subtle point. The Bhagavadgita is very difficult to understand, and not everybody can know its implications. It is very hard, perhaps the hardest of gospels that we have in the world. 

If everything is done by prakriti – guna guseu vartante – then we have no agency in any action. 

“I have no agency even in murder,” Arjuna may say. “I can tell lies, and it is prakriti telling lies.”

No. There is a mixture of two elements in every action. That mix-up is not clear to Arjuna's mind, and it is not clear to any one of us. Therefore, we sometimes put a question: “If murder is done, prakriti or God is doing it.” There are some people who say that, but it is not so. The action of prakriti, or the action of God, as we may call it, is different in its structure and pattern and meaning from the individually driven motivated action of an individual. This is the difference between individual psychology and the cosmological significance of prakriti. Cosmology and psychology are two different subjects, and they should not be mixed up with one another. Prakriti's activities are cosmological, whereas the individual's activities are psychological.

Continued

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