The remaining part of the chapter II Bhagavadgita
If Arjuna cannot make up his mind on the issues of life and death he
had better play his role as ordained by his class. This Ramchandra
did. Ramchandra was the king of Ayodhya. His wife was stolen by a
demon called Ravana. Ravana kept her in prison until Ramchandra
rescued her. Now that she is the queen of Ayodhya, the people of
Ayodhya question her chastity since she lived in the custody of the
demon for a long time. Ramchandra knew well that she was a pure. But
since Ramchandra was born and brought up as a warrior and king, he
chose to please the people and gave up his wife. In the world of the
Ramayana, that dwells on the Rama story, the king was he who would
rule at the pleasure of the subjects.
If we look upon life as a short interregnum between the two unknowns,
birth and death, we are apt to assert that existence is before
essence. Hence there cannot be principles or rules before we are born
into this world. So we cannot refer to any fixed principles when we
are faced with the problem of choice. All moral principles rest upon
the individual’s choice; there is no objective ground of morality.
Thus, Arjuna can act either way; he can join the war; he can also
retire from war. Ramchandra could act the role of a devoted husband
instead of playing the role of a devoted king. No one could blame
Arjuna or Rama for that. But in this hour of indecision one had better
take into account one’s station and duties. If someone is a director
or a chief minister of a state his first duty is to the people. But
think of a populous state, rich in jute and tea and considerably
prosperous in industry with a chief minister who deems his duties to
his wife and kinsmen more important than his duties to the people. He
lives like a sheikh; in order that his wife and odalisques go on
pilgrimage, the daily commuters of the local train are forced to get
down to make room for the travel, accompanied by his wife, son-in-law,
grand-children and their friends and relatives. Each break-fast for
him alone costs five thousand dollars. And every penny of the chief
minister and his party’s expenditure is borne by the exchequer of the
state. Quite naturally, the industries are closed down. People become
restless. They are often tortured for that by the party cadres devoted
to the chief minister. Even women and children are not spared; often
they are burnt to death. Like the dead bodies rotting in the jails,
the economy of the state is also rotting. Thus we have forged here a
vision of a dystopia where the ruler serves his own family instead of
serving his people. The vision is so ugly that we shudder to re-enact
it in real life. Thus though there are no criteria governing the
choice between devotion to the family and devotion to the state, a
chief minister should act according to his station and duties as
determined by the society. Every one of us, has a particular kind of
education, bringing-up and a profession or occupation; one should act
accordingly. The warrior must not renounce the world. The god-man
must not be on the look out for a clout in the corridors of politics.
The rich man over head and ears in business activities need not think
of becoming a monk. Let every man stand firm wherever he stands in
whichever rank and fight accordingly in the battle of life. Arjuna
earlier observed that a global war would destroy the time-honoured
caste-system based on station and duties. Krishna in retort points out
that if people do not act in consonance with their station and duties,
the same disorder will follow. Push any system – a digestive system, a
computer system, an urban traffic system, or a social system too far,
it violates its traditional rules and acts bizarrely. If that happens
to the society of the Mahabharata Krishna does not mind. Because
change is the category of life in the phenomenal world so Krishna asks
Arjuna to obey the duties of a warrior at the battle-field. One who
belongs to the warrior class has no greater duty than that. The trade
union must play the role of a friend of the workers. The chamber of
commerce must see to the profit of the capitalists. When one tries to
work in behalf of another, forgetting one’s own role, the companies
run on loss and the factories are closed down. This is what ails an
underdeveloped country like India where the labour leaders are but the
boot-lickers of the owners of the factory and where the cntrepreneurs
protest that they are the foremost among the socialists. Hence once
Arjuna knows what he is ordained to do by his station in the society,
he need not vacillate any more. The warrior class has no other task
greater than that of fighting. Merry are the warriors for whom such a
war arrives of its own accord as an open gate to heaven. This does not
mean that Krishna beats war drums. He does not preach war for its own
sake. Otherwise he would have himself joined in the war. But when war
is a must, a warrior by birth education and profession should rejoice
in it. If Arjuna refuses to fight this righteous war, he will
transgress his station and duties and lose his honour; he will commit
sin thereby. Nay, people will shower upon him undying infamy. For
those who enjoy popular esteem, ill-fame is worse than death. The
great warriors who have golden opinion about him, will now despise
him. They will say that he has retired from war. The enemies will
speak unseemly words variously exaggerating his worthlessness. Krishna
is right. Public memory is short. They will forget in no time what
great feats Arjuna achieved earlier. They will not understand why
Arjuna does not want to participate in the war. There is nothing more
deplorable. Thus Krishna refers to honour as a social value. In the
face of all these Arjuna should be up and go forth to war.
When Arjuna wept saying that he did not want to kill his kinsmen in
the war he took it for granted that no one could beat him. But Krishna
points out that no one knows the outcome of a war. For there are
stalwarts like Bhisma in the enemy camp. If one is victorious in the
war, one will rule the earth; that is the popular belief. If one is
killed, one is promised heaven. Such notions as heaven and hell, of
course, belong to popular belief and Arjuna used them in his
arguments. For last few minutes, Krishna was arguing from worldly
considerations. So honour was his theme but he can set the goal of
action from higher knowledge. He asks Arjuna to go to the war heedless
of victory and defeat, pleasure and pain. Then no sin will touch him.
Krishna has already observed how pleasure and pain are immaterial. So
are victory and defeat. However great a victory might be, its effects
are not permanent. The boast of heraldry and the pomp of power and all
that wealth and glory can give await alike the inevitable hour with
the scythe and the spade. And they say, foxes hold their court where
Ravana – the great conqueror of mythology gloried and drank deep.
Therefore no material end in view need not move us to act. Once we try
to win a war, what we want is to possess our enemy. Pleasure is the
aftermath of possession. That way we are imprisoned by our own
desires. But when we look at the skies, or look upon the waves, do we
ever seek to roll them like a mat to carry it home in our armpits?
Similarly, could we not go to war, just as one visits the seas or sees
the Himalayas? Could every one of us look upon life, as we look upon
the landscape from a railway carriage, without any attachment to them?
Once we do this, we can look upon life as it is, in a light unborrowed
from the eye. The world of matter is subject to decay and death. We
are attached to it through desire. And once we get rid of the
attachment to the world of matter, we are beyond time and beyond
space. Hence, one must not go to the war with any attachment. One
joins the wars because war comes on his way. Once we do not have any
desire, come what may and we could meet its exigencies without any
anxiety. But is it possible to have no desire at all? Such a man acts
in an emotional vacuum. The death of a mother, the wishes of a girl
friend, the chance killing of an unknown person, such incidents would
have evoked a whole range of varied emotions that reveal a man in all
his humanity. But when a man is neither sad nor jubilant over such
actions he just is. Call him sad of life? Of course, he does not
understand such comments on our part. He is a hollow man. Or else,
think of a man who responds thoughtlessly to the invitation of the
world to act. He will be a mere animals, slave to his own senses. But
Krishna does not ask Arjuna to go to the war as a robot. In the epic
battle of the Ramayana, Kumbhakarna the demon goes to the war as a
robot. As a consequence he devours up the demons of his own side also
in a fit.
Krishna says that so long he has been telling of the higher truths of
the self. Now he will tell him how to attain that higher self through
the faculty of intellect. Contrary to popular belief one need not
renounce the world or join a monastery to achieve one’s higher self.
One has to act wherever life intends one to act. It is the battle-
field for Arjuna. Action or inaction as such are not important. The
problem is how should one act? Man is surely an animal on a plane. But
on a higher plane he is a mind that hopes and despairs, rejoices and
laments. On a still higher plane he is an intellect with which he sees
into the hopes and fears of the worldly life. Still he must not escape
the world woven with the two threads of weal and woe. He must act
there only and play his part well. This is possible only through great
exertion on the part of intellect. If with the intellect one can rise
above emotions and feel himself an alien in the world, it is a great
achievement. But still greater heights have to be scaled. Just as one
visits a bereaved family and weeps with them if the occasion demands,
although it is no personal loss to one, so should one sympathise with
the hopes and fears of the world, however much childish they might be.
Just as one walks on all four and becomes a horse to humour one’s
child so need we join in the fray of the worldly life and take sides
if necessary. Thus though one is indifferent to happiness and joy, one
must play the part as it is the custom during a festival or a funeral.
The exercise of intellect is no formal task. In ordinary rituals one
has perhaps to chant a hymn hundred and eight times with definite
prayer in mind. If it is done hundred times only and then if the
worshipper has to leave his prayer half way at a telephone call, his
whole project fails. This is not all. It is said that worships left in
its middle might harm him. But no such formality is necessary. We have
to attend to the telephone call; be it a call from a girl friend or
from a cop; we must not mind at it; we have t overcome our mind with
the intellect; we must do all that is in our power to act in response
to our telephone call.
Thus Krishna’s call to battle gradually takes a different turn. He
asks Arjuna to join in the battle at Kurukshetra. It asks him to fight
out his despondency. It asks him to transcend the limitation of his
vision. It asks him to fight out desire with the sharp blade of
intellect. Krishna says that even a little progress in this direction
will save us from great dangers. Horrid imaginings are more fearsome
than present fears. If we do not have any desire, why should we look
before and after? Those who mean business know what to do. Those who
toy with the idea of self-development have thousand fresh projects;
before anyone of them are tried, thousand fresh projects replace the
old ones. Precisely Krishna will not give Arjuna the leave to take
decisions only to be reversed by indecisions and revisions and so on
to rot ever in the hell of limbo. There are fools who claim that the
Vedas are the only scripture. There is a gossip that there was a
solemn gathering of vedic pundits and scholars at Benaras, a city
renowned for studies of Hindu Scripture. There it was assumed at the
outset that whatever is not there in the Vedas cannot be valid. A
young man raised his voice and asked whether such an opinion is at all
there in the Vedas or not. The meeting is dispersed. Still there are
people who advocate that the Vedas alone contain the whole truth. They
ask the people in flowery words to cherish the desire for heaven which
is in their opinion the summum bonum of man’s life. They cite the
Vedas to advocate certain rituals whereby one might attain luxury and
wealth. Lured with such words the minds of men wander aimlessly; they
cannot look inward. Krishna says that the Vedas as explained
traditionally is very much materialistic. One must be indifferent to
every kind of opposites – joy and sorrow, heaven and hell, success and
failure. One must be ever in league with one’s self. One must have no
desire to preserve the past acquirements and pine for what is not.
Even one must not perhaps act to attain one’s higher self. One must
not thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things and promises
of heaven. One must carry it freely a terrestrial head that should
look inward and outward and give meaning to the earth and humanity.
Krishna’s comments on the traditional interpretation of the Vedas is
very significant. The Vedas are the most revered scriptures in the
world of the Mahahbarata. It is said that it was Vedavyasa who had
edited the Vedas and who wrote the Mahabharata also. If we read the
Bhagavad Gita as a poem written by Vedavyasa , we must appreciate his
predicament. Marx exclaimed in modern times: Thank God! I am not a
Marxist. Similarly the poet himself shudders at the mechanical
interpretation of the golden treasury he edited. Or else, if we take
the viewpoint of Krishna, we understand that the Vedas are being used
to lesser ends in the days of the Mahabharata. Of course there is
truth in heaven: it is a world loud with cheers beyond the sphere of
sorrow. There is love without love’s sad satiety. There is joy sans
its fellow melancholy. There is activity unaccompanied by weariness.
But is that the limit of human wishes? Krishna asks Arjuna to
excelsior higher still in the expense of his inner world. He must get
rid of the opposites. Joy and sorrow, victory and defeat are but the
opposites. The notions of heaven and hell are the opposites. One
cannot remain without the other. Even “me” and “thou” are the
opposites. Arjuna must transcend these opposites. And surely he will
attain the flood of beatitude. The small pools of the Vedic scriptures
will be of little use to him then. Literature cannot be an end in
itself. It is always just a lever to lift our souls up. When one soars
to the height of beatitude, the scripture still remain dear to one
just as lovers when unite i marriage might fondly read their letters
to each other written earlier.
Krishna says that one has the right to action; but he does not have
the right to its results. He should not however will an action. He
must at the same time desist from inaction. These sound paradoxical
indeed. Inaction, it must be remembered, is not absence of action. It
is but letting oneself go wherever the wanton wishes carry one willy-
nilly. Man in normal state is always active. If he does not do
anything physically, his mind works. The work should not be tantamount
to inaction. If he does not have any work at hand, Krishna has given a
task sufficient for a life time to achieve. That is to observe one’s
own mind from the height of intellect and see that no desire pops up
there. Desire is at the root of all action. So one must not desire
anything. One must not will any action. Will it or not, actions will
be thrust upon one and they must be faced four square. There must be
readiness at any time. The action might result in success or failure
in the worldly sense. But the doer should be indifferent to that. A
businessman may mint money. A politician may achieve power. A
scientist may discover world moving theories. An author might bring
the readers to melting mood. They will reap applause no doubt from
many corners. There will be detractors also. But one must look upon
both the upholder and the detractor with equanimity. To that end the
doer must get rid of his ego. That is the most clever way to act. This
must be accomplished through the efficiency of the intellect. Action
with a purpose is far inferior to this. One might join politics to
bring about an egalitarian society on earth. One might preach religion
to lift up the hearts of men. They also, rather, pale beside the
selfless doer. Those who work with the hope of enjoying the good
results thereof are very dull indeed. One must give up the awareness
of good and bad. Only then one learns how to be cleaver in action.
Wherefrom do such notions as good and bad spring? Surely from
delusion. In the phenomenal world, as we have already, observed good
and bad are relative. There is no ground for objective moral values.
Yes, Krishna, on a particular level of his realised self flings ethics
into the four winds. Krishna observes that once man swims across the
serbonian bog of despondency and delusion, he realises in real life,
all that have been taught and all that could be taught. The ocean of
knowledge is boundless. It is ever expanding. One cannot comprehend it
i hundred lifetimes perhaps in the face of the information boom taking
place today. Even then it should be remembered that knowledge is
becoming day by day more important as capital. Just as farmers are
only two percent of the total American population, so will be the
industrial workers reduced to a small fraction in no time. Mind
workers will multiply in the age of information revolution. They
cannot be interchangeable. Because the tool of workers will be in the
brain. These are all true. They speak of hyperbolic increase in the
volume of knowledge; but it is a pity that wisdom lingers. Just as
measuring the vital statistics of a woman will never help one to win
her heart, similarly, a survey of information can never give us
wisdom. Wisdom is attained through selfless action without and
intellectual struggle within. When the intellect attains its poise in
the face of conflicting ideas one attains bliss.
Arjuna seems to have been carried away by Krishna’s call to war
inward. The victory at Kurukshetra is ignoble in comparison to the
victory over one’s own self. When one takes up a career, one must know
about those persons who have excelled in that. Arjuna asks Krishna to
tell him about them whose intellect has attained poise. How do those
blessed ones speak? How do they live? How do they walk?
Krishna says that when a person thoroughly dismisses the cravings of
the mind and is over head and ears in conversation with his own
greater self, he has stable intellect. He is not shaken by sorrows. He
is not elated with joys. He is sans love, sans fear and sans anger. He
is attached to nothing in the world. He neither curses the evil nor
greets the good, when he encounters them. An earthquake, a loss in the
share market, a war, anything might happen to one for which he is not
responsible. Again good luck might move one from the log cabin to the
chair of the president of a country. A boot polisher might become a
Henry Ford. A labourer in a petroleum mine might become a Rockfeller.
A Corsican adventurer might become a Napolean. Let fortune smile if
she lists. One need not be beyond oneself. When does one bless or
curse? Only when one has attachment to the worldly life. This
attachment is possible through the aid of our senses. But the blessed
man withdraws them inward so that there is little contact with the
external world. He does it just as the tortoise withdraws itself
within its shell. The withdrawal of the senses inward has a plethora
of meanings. We have five senses. Mind presides over them. Mind cannot
see on its own. It is blind like the king of Dhritarastra. Just as the
blind king sees the battle of Kurukshetra through the eye of Sanjaya,
so the mind perceives the external world with the aid of the senses.
This implies mind to possess the external world with the help of all
the faculties in man. But once the mind is made to scan itself, the
senses need not bring the message from the outer world. Then the
senses are busy comprehending the inner self. The ears try to hear the
inner voice. The eyes closed try to espy the light of the inner self.
The skin tries to touch the image of the inner self to believe it and
to remain ever in touch with it as if in a blessed swoon. No, this is
not narcissism. This is not mere infatuation with one’s own visage. It
is an adventure and a seeking.
The readers are already on the path of adventure. Kurukshetra is
nothing other than the human body itself. Blind Dhritarastra is the
mind that cannot see on its own and that lords over the body. His
hundred children are but the symbol of the hydraheaded desire. They
have usurped the body. Each sense is like Janus liking inward and
outward. The five Brothers are but the inward looking aspects of the
five senses. They now want to wrest the body from the many desires.
The personality of the reader is under-going convulsions. Arjuna is
also the ego. We generally identify the hero of the story with our
ego. At the hour of the battle royal between the inward looking senses
and the numerous desires, the ego all on a sudden seems to give up the
war. The ego feels that being true to the kindred points of heaven and
home would be better. The ego wants to have the cake of
selfrealization and yet wants to eat or pertake of the pleasure of the
external world. But wisdom springs from the unconscious mind in
Krishna. The ego tries to prevail upon the unconscious mind. But the
unconscious mind protests and says its says . thus the body is a big
wisdom, a plurality consisting of body, senses, mind, ego etc, with
one inner voice, a war and a peace, flock and a shepherd.
True that even when the senses are withdrawn from without, they still
continue to be enamoured of the pleasures of the external world
through the reminiscing of the mind. The mind feeds upon the pleasures
of the past. But such actions vanish with the glimpse of the higher
self in the mind itself. But this is not that easy. The senses with
the inclination for the outward are as powerful as the demons. They
overwhelm the god or the inward looking senses and takes the control
of the three worlds of the conscious the subconscious and the
unconscious of a being. They forcibly carry away the mind that could
give whatever one wishes. But once the mind is taken prisoner by the
demons, it loses its genial current and can give only what it receives
from outward perception through the senses.
Krishna says that the only help that could one expect at this hour is
possible when one pines for Krishna at the bottom of one’s heart.
There is a story that during the hour of creation, the whole
existence disappeared in the water of the cosmic mind. On that
boundless deep rested the primordial atom Narayana, a manifestation of
the god head plunged in deep sleep on the cushion of the spread
thousand hoods of the primordial snake symbolic of the id or the
desires of the unconscious on which the creation is held. The creation
is as such the playground of the thousand desires leaping forth from
the hell of the unconscious. From the navel of Narayana, who is both
father and mother, Brahma – the creator of the universe is born. If
the eros or the creative spirit is born, thanatos or the killer’s
instinct is also born. They are the demons Madhu and Kaitava. They at
once find the child Brahma and rush to kill him. Helpless the creative
spirit prays to the energy that has lulled Narayana – primordial
matter to sleep. Matter and energy are at bottom of the same. Now-a-
days it is called matterergy by science. But for functional need we
need both the concepts. Energy appears in the form of a woman from the
body of the matter Narayana. At once Narayana is awake. He fights the
demons who are his own children and kills them. Narayana thus paves
the way to creation by removing the hurdles of unimaginative minds in
the demons. Arjuna, in course of his conversation again and again
refers Krishna as Madhusudana or one who kills the demon of
unimaginativeness. Despite that he tried to prevail upon Krishna. That
is why Krishna never refers to his own divinity. But now he has to
refer to himself as divinity impelled by the exigencies of truth.
No one can fight the demons of the desire on one’s own. One can only
conquer them if one is devoted to the Lord. The love for Krishna has
to be inculcated. One must cling to Krishna like a lover craving for
his mistress. In a patriarchal society males enjoy more freedom than
woman. Hence the paradigm of the lover could be better understood if
we take a woman for a lover. In an Indian joint family, a house-wife
is tied hand and feet by her duties to her husband, to her mother-in-
law, to her sister-in-law, to her neighbours. She cleans the house,
cooks the food, attends the ailing, looks after the family poultry and
dairy, washes the linen and the utensils and so on. She has hardly
time to breath. Habit is internalised and she mentally becomes docile
to the system. If such a woman falls i love with a bohemian youngster
for his ethereal notes on the flute, one can imagine what hardship and
hindrance she has to face. But nothing can stop her. She incloses the
young man and seats him on the lotus of her bosom. She washes his feet
with the precious drops of love that wells forth the lake of her
heart. She fans with the very breath, she inhales and exhales.
Cooking, cleaning, washing, brooming she always worships her lover. So
the outer world peopled with her demanding husband and in-laws become
as unsubstantial to her, as a dream, though they veritably exist.
Krishna is surely physically present before Arjuna as his charioteer.
Man cannot explore himself wholly without some external aid. There
must be god himself as the aid. But god must communicate with man as
man. He must don man’s attire. And he must come not as a master but as
a slave. Physical presence of god does not convince one. He must be
internalised and solicited. This internalisation is possible because
human body is the temple of god. God is our higher self. Hence though
Krishna is out there physically, his words were heeded not. Krishna
advises to solicit for help from the Krishna within. The true
preceptor is not there without; it is there within the seeker himself,
he only fingers at the real teacher within the self. The self must
guide the self.
Let us enthrone the higher self Krishna in our heart. We have to
meditate upon him walking, sleeping, eating, shitting, pissing,
fucking, flirting in the work-a-day world. One need not abandon even
an iota of his activities or possessions in the worldly life. Let the
executive be more busy than ever with the company meetings. Let the
college teacher take French leave from the college to make more money
through private tuitions (Because that is the way of the world in
India). But constant meditation upon Krishna will change the world for
him. The more the image of Krishna will be pronounced at heart, the
more the world will be as unreal as a nightmare.
If the meditation is otherwise, the shape of things become different.
If one meditates on riches, or power or erudition, one naturally wants
it close to one’s heart. One visits the rival man’s house. One visits
share-markets or race-course where getting and spending is the rule.
Now he wants to possess them. But material wealth is always scarce in
comparison to our ever increasing want. Hence the economic rat race.
Two persons cannot possess the same car. Hence the seeker finds that
his coveted object is in other hands. He is angry. From anger, one
becomes more determined than ever to attain one’s heart’s desire. One
forgets everything else. One forgets his wife and children and
friends. One becomes a tyrant eating into his own heart pent up in a
castle removed from the fellowmen called love and sympathy and
kindness. They are ruthlessly killed like the million youths
protesting love at Tian-an-men square in China. From forgetfulness
appears the syndrome of loss of wit. The demon of worldly life thus
wrests one from the hand of God and yells out “I have won!”
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. One who is always vigilant
in mind and shoots at sight any emotion like love or hatred, just as
Indian B.S.F. jawans shoot instantly at the sight of any Pakistani
hanadar sneak in Indian territory, is not deprived of worldly
pleasures as such. If a woman comes to one, let one enjoy her. Or if
it is a woman. If a man comes to her, she might enjoy him. That way no
Mahabharata or no Bible is polluted. There is no sacrilege. If money
or fame comes to him, of course, he enjoys them. But he is ever in
control of himself. A hitch-hiker gets a car-lift and becomes a guest
of the multi-millionaire non-resident Indian, Swaraj Paul for time; he
enjoys his hour. But as soon as Time the bell-man asks him to get out
from the guest house, he is just as happy as ever. This is how one
attains placidity of mind.
Once the mind attains placidity it is all quite with the battle-
field. The demons of materialistic distraction are destroyed once for
all. The ego rid of its narcissism is shorn of its face that casts a
longing lingering look towards the worldly-life. Its only face left
now is engrossed with the sublime feet of the highest beatitude. All
this happens due to the ceaseless efforts on the part of the intellect
to control the mind. Now that the control is complete the intellect
can wholly engage itself in the pursuit of the higher self.
One who cannot control one’s senses, has no intelligence at all. Even
animal have control over their senses. Take any domestic animals whom
we can observe closely. Cats are no doubt fond of milk and fish. The
main entree of the Bengali people generally consists of rice and fish.
Once we become a little careless at diner the cat furtively comes and
picks up the fish from the bowl and vanishes through the window. But
take the case of dogs. If a dog is a representative animal, then
animals have control over their senses, but think of a mild and humble
college teacher. Every day on his way to college in the local train he
is left to himself. In a brown study he imagines himself at the summit
of material success in his career as a teacher. At once he remembers
his enemies. He becomes a famous author in his imagination. Some four
bright and intellectual ladies are enamoured of him. He enjoys them. A
few years later he begets the Magsaysay aware for his writings. Now he
comes by eight fresh beautiful girls who admire him. He enjoys them.
On a still higher plane of success he is courted by sixteen more
women. He enjoys them. All on a sudden his brown study shatters with a
jerk of the train. And he finds that his lust is more than that of
Harun-Al- Rashid of the Arabian Nights who killed a woman every night
after sleeping with her. The passenger sitting next to the professor
thinks that his neighbour is an ideal man. But what is his real self?
Is he not less than a dog? He has been imagining of the objects of the
world. He has nothing else to think over. If one gives free rein to
senses, eating, sleeping, womanising, bullying. He has no one aim. His
thoughts now drawn to this object and now to that object have no one
purpose. Engrossed with senses and the objects of senses he cannot
think. Those who cannot think are doomed to be in the hell of eternal
unrest. What is the worldly life like? The people like our professor
fight among themselves overtly and correctly to possess more and more
comforts in the forest of life like the normads who roam ahunting and
who fight among themselves. When sense gratification is the point, no
one woman can satisfy a man. There are limitations on all sides. If
desire burns with greater heat and energy, the flesh is weak. That
brings sadness with it. Furthermore, no possession is forever.
Thousand flowers bloom in the morning to shed their petals on the
ground with the sunset. If the mind follows the inclination of the
senses the state of a person is like that of a raft tossed by the
wanton winds. The world of senses jerks it on all sides. Therefore, as
Krishna observes one who restrains the senses from their objects of
love have their intellect stable. In other words, Arjuna’s dilemma has
resulted from his want of control over the senses. His mind has been a
slave to his senses of loss of his possessions. He should get rid of
it.
Arjuna must not imitate what other men do. When all the world is
plunged into sleep, the man who rules himself, keeps awake. Unless one
burns one’s midnight candle one does not learn. When everybody rushes
after the pleasures of life like mad, the seeker quietly contemplates
on the way of the world. That which is daytime for the world is the
night for the seer. Civilized western countries fell upon Africa with
the wake of the twentieth century like a pack of curs and quarrelled
among themselves over the booty. That bore fruit in the two great
wars. If in retrospection, anyone thinks that it was the awakening of
the west, the nations who were too shy to take part in the gold rush
should congratulate themselves for remaining asleep at that time.
Whether one wants it or not, one cannot keep oneself away from the
pleasures of the world. For the breeze blows when it lists. The birds
sing. The flowers bloom. The sky holds its canopy over the happenings
in the world. The list has no end. In human life, friends will flock.
Love will come uncalled for. One need not turn out one’s guests, just
as the sea does not refuge the rivers that pour their waters into it.
The sea is full and still it does not refuge the gifts. Similarly the
men whose intellect is lodged in the contemplation of the self to
gladly receive whatever the worldly life has to give him; nothing
disturbs his peace. This is not all. Once a man attains peace he is
inpossession of all the wealth of both the worlds physical and
spiritual. A man named Nanda left the world for the life of a
mendicant at the feet of Lord Buddha. But the pleasures of worldly
life still haunted him. He went t his master and told that he would go
back to his wife. Buddha asked him to stay with him a while. He took
Nanda to heaven where he met five hundred fairies. Buddha assured
Nanda that he would give all those five hundred fairies to Nanda, once
Nanda succeeded in meditation. Nanda agreed to Buddha’s proposal. Once
Nanda attained peace through meditation, he no longer needed those
dames. Because nothing in the two worlds was then beyond his powers.
A man who has no pride, no attachment, no desire, freely moves about
in the world in peace. He forsakes every object of desire.
Thus a man stations himself in the cosmic self. Once there, he has no
fear of being displaced. He lives all along in his state. When he
dies, he sojourns to a world where no desire burns.
Such is the glory of a conqueror, who scatters and slays the
misbelieving black horde of fears and sorrows that infest the soul.
Once Arjuna becomes like that, need he desist from war? Once Arjuna
strives to be like that, should he step back from war? War after all
is the point where the opposites meet
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