the bhagavadgita 1

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THE BHAGAVADGITA

Book: Dr. S. RadhakrishnanSummary: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi

Part 1

Preface

The concepts of right and wrong do not belong to the sphere of science; yet it is,on the study of the ideas centering round these concepts, that human action andhappiness ultimately depend. The Bhagavad-Gita is a valuable aid for theunderstanding of the supreme ends of life.

No translation of the Gita can bring out the dignity and grace of the original. Its

melody and magic of phrase are difficult to recapture in another medium.

Those who know Sanskrit can rise to a full comprehension of the meaning of theGita by pondering over the Sanskrit original. Those who do not know Sanskrit willget a fairly correct idea of the spirit of the poem from the beautiful Englishrendering by Sir Edwin Arnold. It is so full of ease and grace and has a flavour ofits own which makes it acceptable to all but those who are scrupulous aboutscholarly accuracy.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

Chapter 1: Importance of the Work

The Bhagavad-Gita is more a religious classic than a philosophical treatise.

Millions of Hindus, for centuries, have found comfort in this great book which setsforth in precise and penetrating words the essential principles of a spiritualreligion which are not contingent on ill-founded facts, unscientific dogmas orarbitrary fancies. With a long history of spiritual power, it serves even today as a

light to all who will receive illumination from the profundity of its wisdom whichinsists on a world wider and deeper than wars and revolutions can touch. It is apowerful shaping factor in the renewal of spiritual life and has secured anassured place among the worlds greatest scriptures.

The Gita is called an Upanishad, since it derives its main inspiration from thatremarkable group of scriptures, the Upanishads. Though the Gita gives us avision of the truth, impressive and profound, though it opens up new paths for the

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mind of man, it accepts assumptions which are a part of the tradition of pastgenerations and embedded in the language it employs. It crystallizes andconcentrates the thoughts and feelings which were developing among thethinking people of its time.

Chapter 2: Date and Text

Its date may be assigned to the fifth century BC, though the text may havereceived many alterations in subsequent times. The eighteen chapters of the Gitaform Chapters 23 to 40 of Bhishmaparva of the Mahabharata.

Chapter 3: Chief Commentators

The Gita has been recognized for centuries as an orthodox scripture of the Hindureligion possessing equal authority with the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutraand the three together form the triple cannon (Prasthana-traya). The teachers of

Vedanta are obliged to justify their special doctrines by an appeal to these threeauthorities and so wrote commentaries on them expounding how the texts teachtheir special points of view.

The Upanishads contain many different suggestions about the nature of theAbsolute and Its relation to the world. The Brahma Sutra is so terse and obscurethat it has been used to yield a variety of interpretations. The Gita gives a moreconsistent view and the task of the commentators, who wish to interpret the textsto their own ends, becomes more difficult.

The commentary of Shankara (AD 788-820) is the most ancient of the existing

ones. Shankara affirms that Reality or Brahman is one without a second.Shankara holds that while action is essential as a means for purification of themind, when wisdom is attained action falls away. The aim of Gita, according toShankara, is the complete suppression of the world of becoming in which allaction occurs, though his own life is an illustration of activity carried on, after theattainment of wisdom.

Shankaras views were developed by Anandagiri (13 th Century), Shridhara (AD1400) and Madhusudana (Sixteenth Century). The Maratha saints Tukarama andJnanaeshwar are great devotees though they accept Shankara in metaphysics.

Ramanuja (Eleventh Century AD), in his commentary refutes the doctrine of theunreality of the world and the path of renunciation of action. Brahman the highestreality, is Spirit, but not without attributes. He has self-consciousness withknowledge of Himself and a conscious will to create the world and bestowsalvation on His creatures. The world is no deception or illusion but is genuineand real. The world is not only the body of God but His remainder.

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whom, in the beginning and the end, the universe dissolves, He is the God. MayHe endow us with an understanding which leads to good actions.[Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.1]

Thou art the woman, thou art the man; thou art the youth, and also the maiden;thou as old man totterest with a stick, being born. Thou art facing all directions.[Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.3]

His form is not capable of being seen; with the eye no one sees Him. They whoknow Him thus with the heart, with the mind, as abiding in the heart, become

immortal. [Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.20]

He is universal God who Himself is the universe which He includes withinHis own being. He is the light within us hridyantar-jyoti. He is the Supremewhose shadow is life and death.

Impersonality and personality are not arbitrary constructions or fictions of themind. They are two ways of looking at the Eternal. The Supreme in its absoluteself-existence is Brahman, the Absolute and as Lord and Creator containing andcontrolling all, is Ishvara, the God.

The Bhagavat makes out that the one Reality which is of the nature of undividedconsciousness is called, Brahman, the Supreme Self, or God [Shrimad-Bhagavat 1.2.11]:

The emphasis of Gita is on the Supreme as the personal God who createsthe perceptible world by His nature (prakriti). He resides in the heart ofevery being. He is the enjoyer and the Lord of all sacrifices. He steers ourhearts to devotion and grants our prayers.

The Divine pattern and the potential matter, both these are derived from God,who is the beginning, the middle, and the end, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

The Real is the supra-cosmic, eternal, space-less, timeless Brahman whosupports this cosmic manifestation in space and time. He is the Universal Spirit,Paramatman, who ensouls our cosmic forms and movements. He is theParameshvara who presides over the individual souls and movements of nature

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and controls the cosmic beginning. He is also the Purushottama, the SupremePerson, whose dual nature is manifested in the evolution of the cosmos. He fillsour being, illumines our understanding and sets in motion its hidden springs.

Chapter 5: Krishna, the Teacher

In the Gita, Krishna is identified with the Supreme Lord, the unity that lies behindthe manifest universe, the changeless truth behind all appearances,transcendent over all and immanent in all. He is the manifested Lord, making iteasy for mortals to know, for those who seek the Imperishable Brahman reachHim no doubt but after great toil. He is called Paramatman which impliestranscendence; he is jiva-bhuta, the essential life of all.

In the Upanishads we are informed that the fully awakened soul, whichapprehends the true relation to the Absolute, sees that it is essentially one withthe latter and declares itself to be so.

In the Gita [4.10], the author says:

Delivered from passion, fear and anger, absorbed in Me, taking refuge in Me,many purified by the austerity of wisdom have attained to My state of being.

A liberated soul uses his body as a vehicle for the manifestation of the Eternal.The divinity claimed by Krishna is the common reward of all earnest spiritualseekers. He is not a hero, who once trod the earth and has now left it, havingspoken to his favorite friend and disciple, but is everywhere and in every one ofus, as ready to speak to us now as He ever was to anyone else. He is not abygone personality but the indwelling spirit, an object of our spiritualconsciousness.

When any finite individual develops spiritual qualities and shows large insight andclarity, he sits in judgment on the world and starts a spiritual and social upheavaland we say God is born for the protection of the good, the destruction of the eviland establishment of the kingdom of righteousness. The Avatar is thedemonstration of mans spiritual resources and latent divinity. It is not so muchthe contraction of Divine majesty into the limits of the human frame as the

exaltation of human nature to the level of Godhead by its union with the Divine.

The assumption of human nature by the Divine Reality, like the creation of theworld, does not take away from or add to the integrity of the Divine. Creation andincarnation both belong to the world of manifestation and not the Absolute Spirit.

In the great souls we call incarnations, God who is responsible for the being andthe dignity of man has more wonderfully renewed it. Whenever by the abuse of

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freedom unrighteousness increases and the world gets stuck in a rut, He createsHimself to lift the world from out of its rut and set it on new tracks. Out of His loveHe is born again and again to renew the work of creation on a higher plane.

Krishnas Avatar is an illustration of the revelation of the spirit in us, the Divine

hidden in gloom. According to the Bhagavat, at midnight, in the thickestdarkness, the Dweller in every heart revealed Himself in the divine Devaki for theLord is the self hidden in the hearts of all beings .

When all seems lost, light from heaven breaks, enriching our human life morethan words can tell. A sudden flash, an inward illumination we have and life isseen fresh and new.

Every individual is a pupil, an aspirant for perfection, a seeker of God and ifhe seeks earnestly with faith, God the goal becomes God the guide.

Chapter 6: The Status of the World and the Concept of Maya

The world of time and change is ever striving to reach perfection. Non-beingwhich is responsible for the imperfections is a necessary element in the world, forit is the material in which the ideas of God are actualized.

Maya is sometimes said to be the source of delusion (moha).

Deluded by these three-fold modes of nature (guna), this whole world does notrecognize Me who an above them and imperishable. [Shrimad-Bhagavad-Gita7.13]

Through the force of Maya we have a bewildering partial consciousness whichloses sight of the reality and lives in the world of phenomena, Gods real being isveiled by the play of prakriti and its modes. The world is said to be deceptivebecause God hides Himself behind this creation.

[To be continued]

Summary: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi

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