Bhagavad Gita

Prasthana Thraya – 3

 

One of the Dhyana slokas for Bhagavad Gita written by Madhusudhana Saraswathi praises Bhagavad Gita thus:

sarvopaniṣado gavo dogdha gopala-nandanaḥ|

partho vatsaḥ sudhirbhokta dugdhaṃ gitamṛtaṃ mahatII

All the Upaniṣhads are the cows. Krishna is the milker. Arjuna is the calf. The pure-minded are the enjoyers (of the milk).  The supreme nectar of Gita is the milk.

Bhagavad Gita which is thus praised as containing the essence of Upanishads constitutes one of the trio of Prasthana Thraya along with Upanishads and Brahma Sutras. Consisting of 700 slokas spread over 18 chapters, Gita ,as we shall refer to it hereafter, comes in Bhisma Parva of Mahabharatha and is set in the framework of a dialogue between, Arjuna, the armed warrior and disciple, and Sri Krishna, his unarmed charioteer and Guru, in the battle field of Kurukshetra.  Arjuna who arrogantly asked Sri Krishna to take the chariot to the front, turned sad and depressed seeing his Guru, elders and relatives assembled on the other side and surrendered to Sri Krishna seeking his advice and guidance on his eleventh hour dilemma “fight or pullback.”  Sri Krishna’s elaborate advice encompassing all the four yogas of Karma, Bhakthi, Raja and Jnana that dissolves Arjuna’s delusion and drives him to action is the subject matter of Gita. So Gita presents a synthesis of the four paths of Karma Yoga, Bhakthi Yoga, Raja Yoga, and Jnana yoga. 

Each chapter in Gita is titled one Yoga or the other.  Yoga means a topic and also as  that which unites the seeker with the destination. As per Swami Paramartananda the destination here is “Security, Peace and Happiness” and seekers are ourselves. We seek these outside ourselves from external objects and relations, not knowing that we ourselves are the source for our ‘Peace, Security and Happiness’; as our minds are  covered with Malam(impurities); Vikshepa(extrovertedness) and Ajjanam(ignorance).  Malam is the six fold impurities; the six fold obstacles to discover our inner joy.  And those impurities are kamaḥ, (desire), krodhaḥ, (anger); lobhaḥ (greed); mohaḥ (delusion); madaḥ (arrogance or vanity); matsaryaḥ (jealousy or competitiveness).  Vikṣēpaḥ, mental extrovertedness, is the mental restlessness and wandering. Ajjanam is ignorance of the fact that I am the one and only source for the “Happiness, Peace and Security” that I am seeking from external objects and relations. Karma Yoga rids the mind of impurities and makes it pure, giving Chitta Suddhi.  Bhakthi and Raja Yogas discipline the wandering mind making it focussed and one-pointed, giving one Chitta Ekagratha.  Jnana Yoga imparts to such a pure focussed mind the true knowledge of the Self as Brahman of total peace and happiness and security.  Swami Sivananda considers the eighteen chapters of Gita as having a progressive order, by which Krishna leads "Arjuna up the ladder of Yoga from one rung to another".  It is not only Arjuna but all of us as well through Arjuna.

Swami Vivekananda remarks “This Kurukshetra War is only an allegory. When we sum up its esoteric significance, it means the war which is constantly going on within man between the tendencies of good and evil.”  Man can overcome the tendency for evil only through the disciplines of Karma Yoga and Bhakthi/Upasana Yoga. As Gita speaks of them equally as Jnana Yoga, Swami Chinmayananda writes, “Here in the Bhagavad Gita, we find a practical handbook of instruction on how best we can re-organise our inner ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in our everyday life and draw from ourselves a larger gush of productivity to enrich the life around us, and to emblazon the subjective life within us”.  He viewed the Gita as a universal scripture to turn a person from a state of agitation and confusion to a state of complete vision, inner contentment, and dynamic action. Mahatma Gandhi also emphasises Gita being a practical guide with his own example with these words “When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavadgītā. I find a verse here and a verse there and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies – and my life has been full of external tragedies – and if they have left no visible, no indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavadgita”.  Not only Mahathma Gandhi but other leaders of freedom struggle like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Vinobha Bhave etc., have found Gita a source of inspiration in their personal and public lives. 

Let us see one instance of the all-embracing practical approach i.e. in the case of obtaining Mukthi, given to us all through Arjuna.  In ch. 7 Sri Krishna classifies bhakthas in four groups Artha, Artharthi, Jijnasu and Jnani through verse 16, and we will be mostly falling in one or the other of the first three groups:

chaturvidha bhajante maṃ janaḥ sukṛtinorjuna

artho jijnasurartharthi jnani ca bharatarṣabha

Four kinds of virtuous men worship Me, O Arjuna! They are the Artha (distressed), Artharthi (the seeker of security and pleasure), Jijnasu ( the seeker of knowledge of Me), and the Jnani (one who knows Me) 

Artha bhaktha thinks of the Lord only periodically; as and when he is faced with a crisis or a problem and then he prays to Him with all fervour but slowly forgets Him after the crisis fades or blows over under the pretext he does not want to disturb Him.  He is a sakama bhaktha as his sporadic devotion is for selfish needs and desires.  For such a sakama bhaktha also Sri Krishna offers a way for Mukthi in the closing verses of the last chapter ie. Ch 18 in verse no. 56:

Sarvakarmaanyapi sadaa kurvaano madvyapaashrayah;

Matprasaadaadavaapnoti shaashwatam padamavyayam.

Doing all actions, always taking refuge in Me, by My Grace he obtains the eternal, indestructible state or abode.

The prescription is to do all nitya, naimithika karmas as well along with other laukika karmas but without forgetting the Lord all the time and also His words that fruits of all actions, good, bad or mixed, come through His Grace only. In short perform all your actions, material and spiritual, karma yoga way completely surrendering to Lord and He will guide you to Mukthi

Artharthi bhaktha remembers Him always no doubt but he has also one material demand or other always. He is also a sakama bhaktha but unlike Artha bhaktha he regularly thinks of the Lord. To him Sri Krishna offers a way for Mukthi in verse no. 65 of ch.18:

Manmanaa bhava madbhakto madyaajee maam namaskuru;

Maamevaishyasi satyam te pratijaane priyo’si me.

Fix your mind on Me, be devoted to Me, sacrifice to Me, bow down to Me. You will come to Me; truly do I promise unto you, (for) you are dear to Me.

The prescription here is to surrender to one’s Ishta Devata, Bhakthi Yoga way totally, converting his sakama bhakthi into nishkama bhakthi. ‘Me’ stands for Ishta Devatha only and not for Vasudeva putra.Krishna.  

A Jijnasu bhaktha is a nishkama bhaktha. His devotion is not out of material desires or wants but out of deep thirst for knowing Him. So his devotion to Lord is for Lord’s sake. Only he also has not got the Jnanam and  to Him Sri Krishna’s advice is contained in sloka 66. This is also called Charama sloka as this is the last sloka of Upadesa.

Sarvadharmaan parityajya maamekam sharanam vraja;

Aham twaa sarvapaapebhyo mokshayishyaami maa shuchah.

Giving up all dharmas (dharmas and adharmas ie. all actions), take refuge in Me alone; I will liberate you from all sins; grieve not.

Giving up actions implies not giving up actions as such but giving up the Kartrutva buddhi ie, doership and also Bhokthrutva buddhi ie. enjoyership. With Karthruthva bukthi and Bhokthrutva buddhi goes Ahamkaram, Mamakaram i,e. ‘me, my’ thought and with that Dehabhimana also. So shedding ego and Dehabhimana, surrender to the Ishta Devata meditating on It and being always aware of It as the One without a second is the prescription.  ‘Mamekam’ stands for looking upon Ishta Devata as the one Saguna Brahman whose manifestations only are all other Devatas.  As there is no sense of doership, no fruits of action will attach to him. Though he may not be equipped with Nirguna Brahma Jnanam he surrenders the Jnana Yoga way to his Ishta Devata for Mukthi.

For the Jnani Bhaktha Sri Krishna does not offer any advice as with attainment of Jnanam, he has already attained Jivanmukthi and for all purposes he is one with Him though he may continue in the body to exhaust Prarabhdha karma.  This Sri Krishna  has hinted earlier in ch, 7 sloka 18:

Udaaraah sarva evaite jnani twaatmaiva me matam;

Aasthitah sa hi yuktaatmaa maamevaanuttamaam gatim.

Noble indeed are all these (all the bhakthas); but I consider Jnani bhaktha as My very Self; for, steadfast in mind, he is established in Me alone as the supreme goal.

It is no wonder that with its practical approach, Gita has been highly praised not only by eminent Indians like Mahathma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, Abdul Kalam, etc. but also by eminent foreigners like Aldous Huxley, Henry David Thoreau, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, and Herman Hesse.

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Ananya Bhakthi – a brief analysis.

Bhakthi comes from the root Bhaj , which means to serve with attachment, here the attachment is to God.  Those who follow the path of bhakthi are called bhakthas. These bhakthas can be broadly divided into two groups, Sakama bhakthas and Nishkama bhakthas.  Sakama bhakthas are those whose devotion to God and worship of God is motivated by material wants and desires.  So here God is not the end goal of the bhaktha.  God is only an intermediate means through whose help he wants to attain the fulfillment of his material wants. This is usually the early stages of bhakthi in which we most are. In this early stage God is worshipped in many forms, depending upon bhaktha’s moods and needs.  In this early stage there is also much importance to rituals, and worship is offered equally out of fear as of love.

The Nishkama bhakthas are those bhakthas for whom God is the end as well as means. They do not have a material goal either for themselves or in respect of others to whom they are attached, except for the welfare of all of humanity as a class.  For them bhavana, the mental attitude, in bhakthi  is more important  than any physical  ritual.  Under Nishkama bhakthas come Jijnasu bhakthas and Jnani bhakthas.  The Jijnasu bhakthas  have as their goal Jnanam, knowledge of God and to this end pray for anthakaranasuddhi, the purity of mind and thoughts, necessary for acquiring Jnanam overcoming raga and dwesha.  Their goal is spiritual goal which is related to God, who can be called as Iswara as well.  Those Nishkama  bhakthas, who after attaining  Jnanam, revel in that Jnanam with bhakthi  are the Jnani bhakthas.  The Jijnasu’s path to Jnanam is through ananya bhakthi.  

Lord Krishna gives the formula for ananya bhakthi that is the hallmark of Bhakthiyoga in a few places in Gita. We shall see two of them starting with the advice to Arjuna in 9-27.

यत्करोषि यदश्नासि यज्जुहोषि ददासि यत्। ( Yad karoshi Yad asnasi yad juhoshi dadhasi yad )

यत्तपस्यसि कौन्तेय तत्कुरुष्व मदर्पणम्॥ (Yad tapasysi kaunteya tad kurushva madharpanam )

Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever ritual you perform, whatever you give, whatever religious discipline you follow, Arjuna, please do it as an offering to me.

After revealing his Viswarupa, Sri Krishna again spells out the recipe for ananya bhakthi to Arjuna in 11-55.

मत्कर्मकृन्मत्परमो मदभक्तः सङ्गवर्जितः। matkarmakrit matparamo madbhakthaha sangavarjithaha।

निर्वैरः सर्वभूतेषु यः स मामेति पाण्डव॥ nirvairah sarvabhutheshu yah sa mamethi Pandava॥

He who does actions for Me, who looks upon Me as the Supreme goal, who is devoted to Me, who is free from attachment and who bears no enmity towards any being, he attains Me.

In this sloka Lord Krishna has laid down four criterions for ananya bhakthi with a rider that such an ananya bhaktha will attain Him.  As Lord Krishna is speaking these words not as the son of Devaki and Vasudeva but as the incarnation of Cosmic Supreme, attaining Him is Mukthi or liberation from the cycle of birth and death and so we can take these as criterions for a bhaktha to reach his spiritual goal of liberation. They are:

 1)   Whose work is all for Iswara  

2)  For whom Iswara is the Supreme goal

3)  Who is free from all worldly associations

4)  Who has no sense of enmity towards any living being. 

Criterion 1 was explained in the sloka we saw earlier i.e. sloka 9-27.  For a Nishkama bhaktha seeking liberation, Iswara is the Supreme goal.  His attachment is only to Iswara and to Satsangh and so he is free from all other worldly associations and material attachments.  Criterion 4 which results from the Universal vision, that Lord Krishna speaks of in Gita 10-8, is very important as it lifts bhakthi to its higher form, Parabhakthi.  For what constitutes lower form of bhakthi, let me quote from Swami Vivekananda’s work on Bhathiyoga

Swamiji  writes “ The one great advantage of Bhakti  is that it is the easiest, and the most natural way to reach the great divine end in view; its great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it oftentimes degenerates into hideous fanaticism……... That singleness of attachment (Nishthâ) to a loved object, without which no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e. by hating every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal. This kind of love is somewhat like the canine instinct of guarding the master’s property from intrusion; only, the instinct of the dog is better than the reason of man, for the dog never mistakes its master for an enemy in whatever dress he may come before it. Again, the fanatic loses all power of judgement.”

He further states later “It has always to be understood that the personal God worshipped by bhaktha is not separate or different from the Brahman.  All is Brahman, the one without a second; only the Brahman, as unity or absolute, is too much of an abstraction to be loved and worshipped; so the bhaktha chooses the relative aspect of Brahman, that is Ishwara, the Supreme Ruler”.  So all personal Gods are to be understood as different manifestations of Brahman.  With name and form, they are different, but without name and form, as Absolute Truth, there is no difference.  Swamiji uses a simile to drive home this point. 

In Swamiji’s words “Brahman is as the clay or substance out of which an infinite variety of articles are fashioned. As clay, they are all one; but form or manifestation differentiates them. ….. the clay-mouse can never become a clay -elephant, because, as manifestations, form alone makes them what they are, though as unformed clay they are all one. Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind”.  From this understanding comes the Universal vision an essential constituent of ananya bhakthi that can lead to Mukthi.

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