Verse 63
Krodhaad bhavati sammohah
Sammohaat smriti vibhramah;
Smritibhramshaad buddhinaasho
Buddhinaashaat pranashyati.
From anger comes delusion;
from delusion the loss of memory;
from loss of memory the destruction of discrimination;
from the destruction of discrimination, he perishes.
Swami Chinmayananda has described this verse
beautifully. No other commentary can match his style of
explaining, when it comes to this verse.
He writes,
“Like a tree emerges from a seed, the source
of all evil starts from our own wrong thinking, or false imaginations.
….When we constantly think upon a sense-object,
the CONSISTENCY OF THOUGHT creates in us
an ATTACHMENT for the object of our
thought; and, when more and more thoughts flow towards an object of attachment,
they crystallize to form a BURNING DESIRE for the
possession and enjoyment of the object-of-attachment.
The same force of the motion, when directed
towards obstacles that threaten the non-fulfillment of our desires, is
called ANGER (Krodha). An intellect fumed
with anger (Krodha) comes to experience DELUSION and,
the deluded intellect has no power of discrimination, because it loses
all MEMORIES OF THE PAST.
Any one filled with anger is capable of doing
acts totally forgetting himself and his relationship with all others. Sri
Sankaracharya says in this connection that a deluded fool, in this mental
condition, might even fight with his own teachers or parents, forgetting his
indebtedness to these revered persons.
Thus, when an individual, through wrong
channels of thinking, becomes ATTACHED to an object, the attachment
matures into a burning DESIRE to own that object.
Then, when an obstruction to possess that
object of desire shoots him up into a fit of ANGER, the
mental disturbance caused by the emotion DELUDES the
intellect and makes the individual FORGET his sense of proportion and
his sense of relationship with things and beings around him.
When thus, a deluded intellect forgets its
dignity of culture, it loses its discriminative capacity, which is called, in
common parlance, as 'conscience' (Buddhi).
Conscience is that knowledge enjoyed for
differentiating the good from the evil, which often forms a standard in
ourselves, and, whenever it can, warns the mind against its lustful
sensuousness and animalism."
Let’s take an example to get more clearer on
what this verse says and how the Acharya has explained the same.
A person has thoughts about sale of a most
advanced laptop, and he gets attached to that laptop sale deal. He develops the
desire to buy that laptop by all means.
Now, at this point, he has purchased the
laptop and is extremely attached to it.
His equanimity has already been disturbed. He
is dragged back into the material world and has taken one step backwards from
moksha or freedom.
So, attachment (for that laptop) has given
birth to desire to own it and his equanimity is disturbed.
Let’s move forward in the sequence:
The laptop either gets conked off or it is
lost. What happens then??
He is angry that it has broken down, he
completely loses his equanimity, takes anger out on his wife and family
environment is agitated.
Here, not only has he completely lost his
equanimity, but has also caused pain to other members of his family. So, the
message here is that constant pondering and thinking about objects eventually
leads to moving away from equanimity, hence it is to be avoided, or at least
minimized to the extent possible.
An interesting point seen here is around
anger. Per the shlokas, anger is caused when one’s desire gets obstructed.
Also, attachment to a concept causes continual waves of thought, anger and
delusion, in other words, stress. Therefore, these shlokas provide an ancient
but relevant analysis of anger and stress.
So, attachment - desire - indulgence in para
dharma - anger on losing the object desired, all these have been observed so
far in the above example.
From krodha arises bewilderment and delusion
which is the mental condition where one is no longer cognizant of what action
should be performed and what action should not be performed. One will foolishly
do anything in this condition.
Thereafter comes dementia causing loss in
memory of the process one began in order to constrain the senses and control
the mind. From dementia comes loss of will power, one no longer has the drive
and incentive to cultivate themselves towards obtaining spiritual realization
of the eternal soul.
Memory loss mentioned in this verse is not
physical loss of memory, but it denotes loss of wisdom learnt and practiced all
these years, which is lost due to delusion of mind caused due to anger.
When this happens then one perishes, with his spiritual opportunity being drowned
again and again in samsara the endless cycle of birth and death in the material
existence.
So, here perishing is not to be taken in literal sense that one dies, but the
perishing is the losing of one's opportunity to go beyond the cycle of
birth/death, i.e. Samsara!!!
How then a Stitaprajna exists, in contrast to
the existence of a normal jiva explained in this verse?
Let us see in the next verse...
Love.
