Sri Krishna as Revealed in All Levels of Reality: 3. Swami Krishnananda.

Chinmaya Mission:

 

We have made laziness so much a part of our lives, that just lolling in bed aimlessly, seems a bodily requirement.

When your mind says, “just five minutes more,” that is the time to kick off the sheet and leave the bed.

#comfortzones #getoutofyourcomfortzone #getoutofyourownway #selfdiscipline #getupearly 

[brahma muhurt, brahmamuhurta, comfort zone, laziness, lazy, chinmaya mission, swami Chinmayananda] 

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Sunday 14, June 2026, 20:15.
Article
Scriptures
Sri Krishna as Revealed in All Levels of Reality: 3.
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on May 1, 1983)

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Duty is a most eluding term which occurs again and again in the Bhagavadgita. The true nature of the duty that is expected of us is something which we cannot easily know inasmuch as we cannot easily know our own selves as we are and, therefore, at the same time, we cannot also know what our total involvement is in the setup of the world outside. What we call duty, which the Bhagavadgita teaching seems to be expecting of every individual, is the obligation of the individual to the environment of the cosmos, and this obligation cannot be understood in its true essentiality unless the relationship between the individual and the cosmos is also known. Ethics, morality, and the proper behaviour expected of us may be said to be a natural corollary or outcome that follows from the centrality of Reality, whose characteristic is to be known first and foremost.

So if life is an adventure in the direction of achieving success and life need not and should not mean a headlong movement towards defeat and folly, if life is a progressive movement towards greater and greater enduring success, and if success according to this verse of the Bhagavadgita is certain where Krishna and Arjuna are together, we must know what is expected from us in the context of the position in which we are placed in this world.

Often interpreters of the Bhagavadgita tell us that Krishna represents the cosmic reality, and Arjuna represents the individual. God and man, grace and effort, knowledge and action, the eternal and the temporal, the Absolute and the relative are supposed to be represented by these terms Krishna and Arjuna, so every blessed thing is included in the meaning and the significance of these interesting names Krishna and Arjuna. The eternal and the temporal have to shake hands with each other. Knowledge and action have to go together. The internal and the external have to be in alignment. The individual and the universal have to be in tune. All this having being said, it has to be added that this attunement or coming together or blend or harmony should be in every level, in every stage through the process of the ascent of the individual to the universal, the particular to the Absolute.

So life becomes yoga in a very important sense. Yoga, at least from the point of view of this sort of understanding of what the Bhagavadgita means, is not outside the practice of yoga. Yoga is not a function that we perform among the many activities of our day-to-day existence; it is that alchemic touch that we give to any kind of performance and the very structure of our existence. It is the touch that we give, the transforming touch of perfection, the touch of the philosopher's stone, as it were, that converts iron into gold, by which existence and activity do not remain as two different pictures presented before us. God and world are not on the right side and the left side, as it were; and as Sri Krishna and Arjuna represent God and the world, God and man, the universal and the particular, these have to be in one chariot in the field of the Mahabharata which, as we have been told several times, is this life itself.

This chariot in which Krishna and Arjuna are seated is the location of our existence. Wherever you are located, that is your chariot, and if you can place yourself in the position of an Arjuna, you have to find your own Krishna in that particular locality in which you are stationed, and your station has its duties. Whatever be the station in which you are located, that particular station calls forth a particular corresponding type of duty on your part. So first of all find out where you are positioned in this universe – what your location is. That is your chariot, and there you as an Arjuna have to find a corresponding Krishna. The corresponding Krishna is nothing but the universal element present in that particular context of your location as an individual in that station mentioned.

Where are you located? You are located in many positions at the same time, though only one or two come to the surface of your understanding and the vision of your mind. A politically involved busy individual may think he is located in the political world, and he has no time to think anything else. He has no family, he has no obligations of any kind, and nothing to think except the fact that he is a spark of the political conflagration. Similarly, you know how a wealthy man or aristocrat positions himself in the world. He has his own idea of his world, and he is located in a particular level.

As I mentioned already, we are in the physical level, we are in a psychic level, we are in a rational level, and we are in that level where we are ultimately inseparable from the total atmosphere of the universe. So where are we located, and what is our chariot? Our chariot is all these environments in which we are involved. It is not for nothing that we are told again and again that the Bhagavadgita is a gospel for all life. It is not only for the caveman, the recluse, the solitary yogin – nothing of the kind, because it is a teaching, an instruction, which has direct concern with a solution of a conflict which one encounters in the position in which one is placed in the locality of one's existence, where a harmony has to be established. Harmony is the coming together of Krishna and Arjuna. Finding your Krishna is the harmony of your life, and if you cannot find him, you are loathly placed. You shall be crying forlorn in the battlefield, and you shall have no succour.

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