Bhagwad Gita - Post 18

Dear All,

After allowing Arjuna to speak out and express his deluded state fully, the Lord takes over only after Arjuna is through with all his expressions, all his logics and is now looking for the guidance from Hrishikesa (Hrisika+Isa = Lord of senses).

Chapter 2 - Verse 11

Ashochyaan anvashochastwam

prajnaavaadaamshcha bhaashase;

Gataasoon agataasoomshcha na

anushochanti panditaah.

The Blessed Lord said:

You have grieved for those that should not be grieved for, yet you speak words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.

Sri Krishna directly takes Arjuna to the highest realm of Truth, the essence of all Upanishads by pointing out that it is unwise on the part of Arjuna to grieve for the death he foresees of the army of Kauravas, for, the wise men know that there is no death for SELF, which is the eternal identity off all of them.

Death is nothing but disintegration of the matter and that the five elements of which the body is composed, return to their source.

Swami Sivananda pens a powerful line when he writes, 

"Arjuna forgot that his relations with this world in his present life were the results of his past actions. These, when exhausted, end all the relationship and the new ones crops up when one takes another body"

His disciple Swami Chinmayananda writes,

"The ego (Avidya) rises when the Pure SELF is not recognized; this deep-seated ignorance in man not only veils his Divine Nature from himself, but also projects on the reality, a positive misconception".

"Grief and dejection are the price that delusion demands from its victim. To rediscover ourselves to be really something higher than our own ego, is to end all the sorrows that have come to us, through our false identifications.

Thus, the Eternal spirit in man, asserting its false relationships with his body, comes to feel bound by a thousand relationships with the world of things and beings."

Katha Upanishad says, 

"Just as the sun, the eye of all the world, is not defiled by the eye's outward blemishes, So the One Inmost Self of every being is not defiled by the suffering of the world".

Thus, as echoed in the above Upanishad declaration, encompassing all that exists, internal and external is the Supreme Lord / Supreme SELF. 

Whatever is present in totality is the Supreme SELF, the undecayable one, without a second and nothing else. 

Swami Sivananda writes in Moksha Gita,

(For a liberated sage who has realized that all being are the Self, there is neither delusion nor grief, as there is no second for him)

And His worthy disciple Swami Krishnananda writes the commentary on the above verse,

"To him who sees Oneness only everywhere, where is delusion and where is grief? The experience of secondlessness is achieved through a finding of one's self in each and every being including even the wicked and the ungrateful. 

Such an expansion of the Self leads to the glory of the manifestation of the real Essence of the Being of all beings, where one finds himself in truth, where the lost Self is recovered with unbounded joy. 

Grief is only the temporary psychosis of the individual which has been deprived of a desired object or which is unable to fulfil a desire. The Jivanmukta who sees the One common Being spread everywhere grieves never. Beholding Existence as undivided he walks on the earth unknown and unidentified."

The main lesson on this verse is given above in the lines marked bold. 

For one to grieve for the other, either living or dead, the one has to differentiate between himself and the other, i.e., other objects should be perceived by him.

When one has crossed that duality of subject-object and beholds the entire creation as ONE COMMON BEING, then who has to grieve for whom?

What does it mean, in the light of satsanghs held till now, the blog posts given till now on Upadesa Sairam, Tattva bodha etc?

When one realizes SELF, then He transcends his body, mind, intellect, he transcends Vasanas, he exists verily as the pure canvass, in which so many drawings may come and go, but the pure canvass has nothing to do with these drawings and it exists pure, unaffected. 

It is also like the screen in a theatre where so many pictures come and go, there is comedian, Hero, heroine coming and giving, there are emotions, there are tears, there are laughters happening when the projector is on and the movie is running. But, does the screen have anything to do with all those things?  Does the screen grieve when some character in the movie projected on it dies or laughs when a character is born in the same movie?

In order to cure the very source of Arjuna's delusion, Krishna is here teaching him the cream of knowledge, as declared in the immortal books of the Hindus, the Upanishads.

True to that traditional cultural concept of education, here, the Great Master, Krishna, starts his instructions to Arjuna with a direct discourse upon the Eternal truth. 

Love.