The Relevance of the Bhagavad-Gita to Humanity: (The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita): 1.4. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Monday 14, April 2025, 12:30.
The Relevance of the Bhagavad-Gita to Humanity: 
(The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavad-Gita): 1.4
1.Introduction -4.
Swami Krishnananda.

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In a case that is brought before the court, for instance, the contending parties always hold that they are right. Each party argues the righteousness of the cause or the point that they make out, and both are right. This is what they are emphasising. Each party says, “I am right.” Now, if both are right, they cannot differ; but in their conception of the rectitude of their behaviour, they do differ. So the difference has to be bridged by a cementing link, which is the judicial pronouncement. Such a situation arose in humanity when the golden age descended into the denser form of human thought, when such recognition and appreciation of one in respect of the other was not possible. It was not accepted by a certain state of mind that such a one hundred percent cooperation with another is going to be for one's welfare. “My welfare does not lie in my totally agreeing with another. It mostly depends on my sticking to my own point of view.” This is the beginning of dissension among people. If each one starts thinking like that, there is tension in human life. This can lead to more and more concrete manifestations of the tension, which we call battle and war, which leads to any kind of consequence.

Such a state is pictured before us in the Mahabharata. It is nothing but a whole epic of the battle of human existence, which necessitated the bringing into the picture of human thought the gospel of the Bhagavadgita, which tells us what we have to do under a given condition. The whole of our life is a confrontation. Today we are living in a world in which we are faced with confrontations of different types, and our duties, our performances and execution of our daily vocations have mostly taken the form of a confrontation, rather than a smooth-sailing affair. It is not a happy thing, because we have to be cautious and vigilant in our daily attitudes and performances. This is the state of affairs today, especially in humanity at this moment.

Some such thing is before the mind of the great author of the Mahabharata epic. Similar is the Ramayana. These two standard epics present before us a portrait of the human predicament, which calls for certain deep thinking on the part of everyone as to what one should do under a given condition, and the given condition is some kind of confrontation, though the nature of the confrontation may vary. It is something like saying that so many people are ill; they are sick, but it does not mean that everybody is sick in the same way. One man has one kind of illness, another has another kind of illness, a third has a third kind. They may be different types of patients from the point of view of the varying categories of illness, but the fact that they are ill is a common factor that is ruling over all of them. So everyone has one kind of problem or the other.

Now, the Bhagavadgita is supposed to be a recipe for the solution of the problems of every person. This is something unique about it. It is not intended for me or for you or for anybody; it is supposed to be a universally applicable recipe for the ills of mankind. This is a speciality about it, and that makes it very difficult to understand what its intentions are, because we have never heard that one recipe can be prescribed for every kind of difficulty. Yet, there is a norm that can be prescribed as a basic precondition for individual steps that we may have to take in detail for day-to-day engagement.

There is what is called medical science, for instance. We cannot say that there are many varieties of medical science. The basic philosophy behind the prescription of medicine is uniform. It takes into consideration the structure and the constituents of the human personality, the conditions that are necessary to cause health, and those conditions which bring about disease. There is a general philosophy of medicine, notwithstanding the fact that different medicines are prescribed for different kinds of illness. These varieties in the prescription of medicine under given conditions of illness do not mean that the basic philosophy of medical treatment is variegated.

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Continued

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