The three
significant verses such as-
स्तितप्रज्न्य | मामुपेत्य तु क्उन्तेय पुनर्जन्म न विद्यते। तस्माद् योगिर्भव अर्जुन |
sum up
the theme of ‘gitopadesha’- Bhagavan Shree Krishna’s teachings.
If a gitopasaka realizes these three
principles he/she will live happily, joyfully, and is finally redeemed from the
cycle of births and deaths. Upasaka who abide by the Lord’s teachings shall
have to constantly think of the Bhagavan, chant His name along with his/her
breathing. This will enable him/her to get out of this earth (mrutyu loka) where old age, sickness,
misery, and death are certain. The reason for taking recourse to Gitopasana is
due to the clamour of the soul. The embodied jivattman, rather, the embedded soul, lies in the mire of
the elemental body depending on the food, acquiring its gunas and suffers. As
soon as it realizes its state of earthly, mundane, tamasic existence it
clamours for redemption, liberation, once and for all, never to return! Hence,
we shall try to understand these concepts, first. Once we are clear about the
teachings of Bhagavan we can aim at attaining to Self through Gitopasana. It is
a very arduous
task and not easy for all. It is also not expected that everybody below the age
of sixty to take up seriously the rigorous Gitopasana! The living beings on
this earth have desire to enjoy the sensuous life and strive to get maximum
happiness from the insatiable wants and running after transient material
objects only to be disappointed at the end!. It is only at this state of
frustration that the jiva looks for redemption and the Gita comes as a suitable
guide to redeem such souls, but not otherwise. Before going into the background
of the study of the Bhagavad-Gita, let’s ponder over the statements of the Lord,
“Bhagavan uvacha”, and try to
understand the lay-out plan and the plot of the Gita presented to us. Also, it
is important to know about the point of reference to time and place of the
rendering of the gitopadesha here. At
the outset, we are of the opinion that the ‘gitopadesha’ is the Atmopanishad, brahma vidya, Adhyatma yogopanishad revealed by Bhagavan
Shree Krishna. These same words are stated at the end of each chapter of the
Gita. “Upanishad means the teachers revealing the ‘secrets’ only to the
earnest, devoted, and qualified disciples seated close to them. The Rk Veda has
ample references to this. And, the beauty is that the Rk Veda is apourusheya, neither spoken by
any human being nor, written in scripts by anybody! As a part of the epic
Mahabharata, Bhishma parva, it is shown as if Bhagavan Shree Krishna Dvaipayana
Vyasa deva dictating to Ganapati. It is indeed a monologue, svagata. Symbolically, Ganapati taking
dictation and Vedavyasa seen dictating the secret doctrines is paradoxical
since it is explicitly stated that vedavyasa, arjuna, or ganapati (Atharva) are
all one and the same! Ganapati is the first manifest form of brahma in His own
image, the first-born of Brahma as atharva. It is, indeed, an idea(-tion),
imagination), resolve or sankalpa to manifest as the universe in diverse
forms of Brahma, paramatma Narayana as Vasudeva, Sankarshana, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha
as manu and manu-manu, and finally, manava (the human being) It is an evolution
of annam, prana, manas, buddhi, jnyana and finally bliss (ananda). These are
explicit statements in the Gita. These are expressed as the cloud of stellar
gaseous matter, galaxies, stars, planets, and satellites, and finally emerging
in varied forms of living beings on earth!
There
is not much difference between what the ancient Rishis visualized and the
modern scientists seen and understood through their electronic telescopes and
other gadgets as used in CERN Experiment. The ancient Rishis as ‘drushtara’ visualized in transcendental
meditative state what the modern scientists saw in photographs received from the
powerful electronic telescopes, these days!
मुनिर्विवक्शुर् भगवद्-गुणानम् सखापि ते भरत महक्र्ष्णह्। यस्मिन् न्र्णम् ग्राम्यसु खनुवदिर्मतिर्ग्रुहितनु हरेः कथयम्॥
After all, the
mantra / shloka eulogizing supreme Lord Narayana adore the sublime
transcendental nature of Him as bhagavan SrI Krishna again and again in the Gita;
enough of it has been said in great detail. At the same time, any adoration of
the Lord with total devotion is enough to reach Him, since it has a benefic effect
of cleansing all the blemishes of the embodied soul- full of greed, desire and
fear!
In fact, bhakti charged with jnyan is the
ultimate panacea for all ills of human life.
Thus, it is neither to ignore Him, nor to glorify Him- who needs no
praise from mortals, that the Gita is adored here. It is only to experience the
divinity inherent within us that we take to Gita upasana. We may try to make
others also get a glimpse of it, but that may not be necessary! The real
purpose of the gitopasana is to wean ourselves away from excessive indulgences
in sensuous life in this mundane world and, in course of time, we may attain
spiritual development and divine revelations.
त्रेतो-युगदौ च ततो विवस्वन् मनवे ददौ मनुस्च लोकभ्र्त्यर्थम् सुतयेक्श्वाकवे ददौ इक्श्वाकुन च कथितो व्यप्य लोकमवस्थितह्॥ (महाभारत, शांति पर्व ३४८)
व्ष्ग्णी नाम् वासुद्व्स्मि पांडवानाम् धनंजयः।
मुनीनामप्यहम् व्यासः कवीनां उषना कविः॥( १०. ३७)
Sage
Vedavyasa, Shri Krishna dvaipayana, is an incarnate Vishnu The Blessed Lord has made it explicitly clear
that He only is the author of this gItopadesha and He is dhanurdhari Arjuna as well.
Cause
of karma is desire. ‘Desire’ leads to
resolve (sankalpa) and, in turn. it leads to action. Thus, desire becomes the
seed of karma.
The
person seated in the chariot is the embodied soul Arjuna and the Charioteer Is sat-chit-ananda,
shuddha prajnya, Consciousness. He (‘It’ / ‘That’) is, Purnaprajnya, Shree
Krishna ‘The Supreme Soul’. The horses tied to the chariot are the Senses. The
strings of desire, attachment, hope and fear tie the horses to the chariot. The
elements of Karma and destiny are the unseen reins.
The Bhagavad-Gita is all about Bhagavan
Shree Krishna’s talks (uvacha)
to Arjuna. In fact, the Gita starts with King Dhrutarashtra in conversation
with his Minister Sanjaya. Dhrutarashtra wants to know from Sanjaya the
happenings at the Battlefield of Kurukshetra. Then, starts the narration thus, dharmakshetre kurukshetre . . .||
Where are these dharma kshetra and Kurus
kshetra?
The
definition of kshetra is given
in Chapter XIII- kshetra-kshetrajnya yoga. Bhagavan
Shree Krishna says He only is the field of knowledge (devata), the knower (Rishi)
and the means of knowledge (Chhandas).
The jnyata, jnyeaya and jnyan are one! The one ‘who wants to
know’ gets to know through some medium like the seeker becomes a drushtara-
Rishi, a ‘veda vidu’.
Ultimately
Jnyan’ (Knowledge) only remains! In fact, we are all
recognized as a faculty member- a doctor, scientist, engineer, advocate, etc..Even
that disappears in old age! When a person relinquishes his purvashrama (family tradition) and enters sanyas he is known by some ananda
ji, and nothing more!
‘Dharma’
is ‘righteousness’- the land of ‘dharma’
is dharma kshetra’. Anybody swerving from this path of righteousness in this
land of dharma is a ‘kuru’; it is a blemish, a stain attached to
the pure soul of the jiva and has to be cleansed.
Kurukshetra is the ‘Battlefield’ where the
blemishes of the afflicted soul is cleansed. Maha Bharat is the land of dharma. This is
the land of great saints and sages who attained to ‘Ritam sat’ ‘truth’, brahmn.
Emperor Bharat ruled this elite’s land. It is also the Land of R. Ganga (pure consciousness) derived from the
Heavens by the penance of Emperor Sagara. Bhishma, called Gangeya, is the symbolic representation of muladhara prajnya (basal plexus of
consciousness) since he is the seventh son of Ganga (as per the epic). He is an
elemental body, the embodied soul that forgot its true nature of
sat-chit-ananda! Bhishma became the root cause of total devastation at the end
of the war. He took a vow to protect the children of the Blind King
Dhrutarashtra who went against dharma. The war ended with total destruction. It
is alleged that the Kourava Cousins
cheated the Pandavas in the game of
dice and usurped their Kingdom, and even planned to kill them. When they
refused to part with even five villages, let alone the Kingdom possessed by cheating,
it was decided to fight out in a battle. Thus, the two armies assemble in the
Battlefield of Kurukshetra near Delhi, formerly known as Hastinapura. It is all confusing for an ordinary person to think of
a war where Bhagavan or God Himself is taking part and, the two armies are not
even the human beings! This aspect of the Mahabharata War has to be clarified
first. Even after 5000 years people are questioning whether there was any war
as such!
The Pandavas stand here for the divine
souls, the ‘brain-child’ or manifest forms of different deities, such as,
Yama (Yudhishtira), Vayu (Bhim), Indra (Arjun), and the celestial twins Ashvins
(Nakul and Sahadev); these are the mantrasya
putrah, born of the power of
the mantra! Kunti married to King Pandu had the gift of five mantras for her
devoted service to great sages. Karna was the first born from the Surya-
mantra when she was a girl of eight years. In fact, we are all children
of the Sun only! Even the Mother Earth and all other planets are the daughter of the Sun! Aditya is the purusha. Our biological mother and her mother are all born of earth, soil or food in the strict sense of the term. In this sense, we are all Ganapati only, made of clay!
The Kurus are depicted as blemished
characters here! Further, there are no such human beings who wage a war sometime during
the recent past, say 3500 years B.C. The Ancient History of India dates back to
at least 10 000 years and the puranas are dated back to a million years, when
the Mt. Himalayas were just rising above the sea level from the Sea of Tethyas,
the remnant of which is the Mediterranean Sea. This is recorded history of
fossil studies available from the geological history of India. We have got a
Map of Asia showing the Kingdoms ruled by Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma, Narasimha deva
dated back to 500 000 years (see Appendix).It is stated that Hiranyakashipu was
ruling the land adjacent to the present Caspian Sea (sea of caspsus) where the
Sage Kashyap had his ashram. These details give us some idea how the Sage
Vedavyasa, if there was one like that!) ever wrote an epic Mahabharata?
However, these things do not preclude us from knowing what Lord Shree Krishna
speaks about the secrets of creation, sustenance, dissolution in the Gita..
The Bhagavad-Gita
has come to us, as well as, to the entire world as a gift of Shree
Shankaracharya who found this along with another beautiful verse eulogizing
Vishnu in a thousand names (sahasra nama),something
like an interlude, a sort of unconnected text, in the Bhishma parva of the epic Mahabharata. The epic is credited to a
pen name Veda Vyasa, and the author
is anonymous! Some say, it is Shree Krishna Dvaipayana, and some say it is
Badarayana! Anyway, people think this astounding personality, a non-existent
one, at that, classified a bulky Vedic Text into four divisions and wrote all
the eighteen epics! This work of classifying the Veda gave him the name Vedavyasa. But it is not his original
name.
. However, the epic Mahabharata in which the
Bhagavad-Gita is located is by itself a fiction, a drama, a mythology. All the
characters mentioned in it are fictitious. There is no such thing as
Kurukshetra war and all the characters are not the humans like us. Recently, a
Television survey team went to Kurukshetra and found not a single trace of war.
What all they found was just five stone pillars attributed to the Pandava’s
temple and the rest all thorny bush and wild open space! Thus, it is open to
our intellectual capacity to think and come out with a plausible explanation.
Let us take the Gita, verse by verse, and arrive at our own conclusion.
The Invocation is of utmost
importance since it gives us a clear idea as to the preamble of the Gita. It starts
thus,
ॐ ब्रह्मदेवनां प्रथमः संभभूव विश्वस्यकर्त भुवनस्यगोप्ता स ब्रह्मविद्याम्।
सर्वविद्या प्रतिष्टं अथर्वाय ज्येष्टपुत्राय प्राह || [अथर्ववेद गोपथ ब्राह्मण मुंडक उपनिषत् १.१]
Thus, it is neither to glorify the Lord who needs no praise from
mortals, nor to describe the epic War that the gItopadesha is presented
here. It is to experience the divinity inherent in us and make others also get
a glimpse of it/Him within their own inner Self. The real purpose of the Gita
is to draw the attention of the worldly people who are foolishly engaged in an
endless search for profit and pleasure, and wean them away from their excessive
indulgences in sensuous life in this mundane world and direct them towards
spiritual development and divine revelations. (Shanti parva, 348).
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