Gita essays 36
After a brief
reference to Karma-yoga with emphasis on swadharma and swabhava,
Lord Krishna made a short reference to Jnana yoga highlighting the role
of nitidyasanam. When one gets established in Athma Jnanam, one
remembers his identity with Brahman spontaneously which Lord described
as entering Brahman. Then Lord takes up a brief revision of Bhakthi yoga with emphasis on surrender for receiving Lord’s Grace. For not all are comfortable in pursuing Jnana
yoga with its disciplines of mananam and nitidyasanam, even though
they may start enthusiastically with sravanam. Surrender to Lord is not out of fear or
weakness but out of love for the Lord, the highest form of selfless pure love
which Lord reciprocates as His Grace to His devotees. Surrender is not a passive act
of physical prostration but a constant continuous remembrance of God in all contacts and transactions to the
accompaniment of mental renunciation of ‘I’ness and ‘My’ness in all activities.
Lord prescribes different modes of saranagathi for different types of
devotees of which first one is propounded in verse 56 as:
Doing all actions ever taking refuge in Me, one obtains the eternal,
indestructible state or abode by My Grace(18-56).
The above
prescription of surrender is made keeping in view aartha bhakthas and artharthi
bhakthas. They are not interested in
Jnanam but have devotion to God and are also devoted to their material pursuits
which take priority over devotion to God.
Lord does not want them to change their physical ways, only he wants the
change in their mind setup. They should accord devotion to God priority always substituting
‘I’ consciousness with God consciousness at all times. Giving up their ahamkara and selfish
motives, they must work selflessly seeking His Grace. In short, what they do, they should do as a
service to God and what they get they should accept as the blessing of God.
He then assures Arjuna that one can overcome all
obstacles and achieve peace and success while doing his swadharma
without ego and without sense of doership, surrendering himself to Lord. But at the same time He also strikes a note of
warning that if because of ego one abandons the path shown by the Lord, and
strikes a different path driven by his egocentric desires then he will perish without achieving anything worthwhile. He applies this to Arjuna’s life itself and
warns him that if out of ahamkara, he decides not to fight and leave the
battlefield to take up a life of renunciation, this may not be possible. It will turn out to be a temporary mental
aberration only as his Kshatriya swabhava will not let him stay
away from the battlefield deserting his fighting brothers and may force him to
join the battle rather helplessly, when it may be too late either for his or
their good.
After cautioning Arjuna, Lord reminds him of Iswara tatvam. Iswara as the Supreme power lives in everyone’s
heart and guides everyone’s development.
The relations of one’s inborn nature and fateful compulsion are in His
hands. As puppets are moved by a
string-puller seated behind the scene, so also the created beings move and act
on the stage of the world under the control of the Lord seated in the hearts of
all. So we must be conscious of the
Divine on all the planes of our existence. Arjuna is called upon to understand the will
of God and do his duty. He must surrender unto Him and put himself totally at
the service of the Lord without any reservations. Then by His grace Arjuna’s
delusion will be dispelled and he will attain inner harmony and peace.
With these words Lord
wants to end His advice to Arjuna and give him a free rein to decide on the
best course of action in the light of this advice and act freely as per his
decision. But then His love for Arjuna
is so strong that he feels like adding a few more touches before calling it a
day. And He again emphasises saranagathi
in two more verses before proceeding to sum up the benefits that these words of
advice can confer on one and all. The first of the two verses runs as:
Fix your mind on Me, be devoted to Me, offer worship to
Me, bow down to Me. you shall come to Me alone; I truly promise to you (for)
you are dear to Me.(18-65)
This can be seen as an
advice of surrender to Jijnasu bhakthas for whom God is a priority
goal. They do not have the Ikya Jnanam but are committed to acquire Iswara
Jnanam. Lord advises them to make Him as the only goal, surrender to Him
their ego and body consciousness and act without the sense of doership in all
their activities. This can also be seen as a final summary of Karma/Bhakthi
yoga.
The second of these
verses is the final advice coming from Lord.
This can also be seen both as a prescription to surrender for Jnani
bhakthas and also as the gist of Jnana yoga. The verse runs as:
Renouncing all actions, take refuge in Me, the non-dual;
I will liberate you from all sins; Do not grieve.(18-66)
This is the final teaching verse of Gita as the
later verses are only winding up verses; and therefore Sri Ramanujacharya calls
this the ‘Charama-Sloka’ meaning the final verse. The teaching that started from the verse 11
of the 2nd chapter concludes with this verse and this verse is considered to be
a very important one and also a confusing one as this is open to several different
interpretations. All actions relate to body-mind complex and so renouncing all
actions is possible only when one gives up mentally one’s identification with
the body-mind complex. One non-dual Lord is the Advaitic Nirguna Brahman
and surrendering to Him is through Athma Jnanam realizing one’s oneness
with the Nirguna Brahman as Athma. This in turn leads to the realization that as Athma one stands liberated always, as Athma is ever untouched by Punyam
as well as Papam and it is only through adhyasa mistakenly
saddled with Punyam, Papam and bondage.
So Lord’s advice can be interpreted as “ Realize through Jnanam your
true identity as Athma, that is the non-dual Nirguna Brahman and shed your
false identification with the body-mind complex; thereby freeing yourself
mentally from all the notions of punyam-papam and Dharmam-Adharmam, be a
liberated Self here and now.”
After concluding the
advice Lord makes a few general remarks concerning the study and teaching of
Gita and also the phalam. He first
advises that one who has no faith,
discipline, devotion and desire to know should not be given this knowledge.
Then He declares that one who imparts and the one who receives this wisdom will
attain the Lord Himself And even the
one who merely hears this with faith will also attain higher worlds. Then Lord
Krishna asks
Arjuna whether his delusion is gone to which Arjuna replies positively with
grateful acknowledgement and promises to abide by the Lord’s teaching.
Sanjaya who had been so far broadcasting the happenings
in the battlefield to Dhridharashtra now tells the
blind king how fortunate he was to hear this advice direct from the Lord and
how thrilled he feels to have had Cosmic vision of the Lord, Viswarupa
darsan. Sanjaya concludes his remarks with the
declaration:
Where there is Krishna,
the Lord of Yoga, and where there is Arjuna, the wielder of the bow, there will
be permanent wealth, victory, prosperity and justice. (18-78).
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