The Bhagavadgita 1

THE BHAGAVADGITA Book: Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Summary: 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 and happiness ultimately depend. The Bhagavad-Gita is a valuable aid for the understanding 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 the Gita by pondering over the Sanskrit original. Those who do not know Sanskrit will get a fairly correct idea of the spirit of the poem from the beautiful English rendering by Sir Edwin Arnold. It is so full of ease and grace and has a flavour of its own which makes it acceptable to all but those who are scrupulous about scholarly 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 sets forth in precise and penetrating words the essential principles of a spiritual religion which are not contingent on ill-founded facts, unscientific dogmas or arbitrary 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 which insists on a world wider and deeper than wars and revolutions can touch. It is a powerful shaping factor in the renewal of spiritual life and has secured an assured place among the world’s greatest scriptures. The Gita is called an Upanishad, since it derives its main inspiration from that remarkable group of scriptures, the Upanishads. Though the Gita gives us a vision 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 past generations and embedded in the language it employs. It crystallizes and concentrates the thoughts and feelings which were developing among the thinking people of its time. Chapter 2: Date and Text Its date may be assigned to the fifth century BC, though the text may have received many alterations in subsequent times. The eighteen chapters of the Gita form 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 Hindu religion possessing equal authority with the Upanishads and the ‘Brahma Sutra’ and 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 three authorities and so wrote commentaries on them expounding how the texts teach their special points of view. The Upanishads contain many different suggestions about the nature of the Absolute and Its relation to the world. The Brahma Sutra is so terse and obscure that it has been used to yield a variety of interpretations. The Gita gives a more consistent view and the task of the commentators, who wish to interpret the texts to 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 the mind, when wisdom is attained action falls away. The aim of Gita, according to Shankara, is the complete suppression of the world of becoming in which all action occurs, though his own life is an illustration of activity carried on, after the attainment of wisdom. Shankara’s views were developed by Anandagiri (13th Century), Shridhara (AD 1400) and Madhusudana (Sixteenth Century). The Maratha saints Tukarama and Jnanaeshwar are great devotees though they accept Shankara in metaphysics. Ramanuja (Eleventh Century AD), in his commentary refutes the doctrine of the unreality of the world and the path of renunciation of action. Brahman the highest reality, is Spirit, but not without attributes. He has self-consciousness with knowledge of Himself and a conscious will to create the world and bestow salvation on His creatures. The world is no deception or illusion but is genuine and real. The world is not only the body of God but His remainder.

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Ramanuja develops in his commentary on Gita a type of personal mysticism. In the secret places of the human soul, God dwells but He is unrecognized by it so long as the soul does not acquire the redeeming knowledge. Ramanuja admits that the paths of knowledge, devotion and action are all mentioned in the Gita, but he holds that its main emphasis is on devotion. Madhava (1199-1276 AD) wrote two works on the Bhagavad-Gita, called the ‘Gita-Bhashya’ and ‘Gita-Tatparya’. He attempts to derive from the Gita tenets of dualistic (‘dvaita’) philosophy. He interprets the passage ‘that art thou’ as meaning that we must give up the distinction between mine and thine, and hold that everything is subject to the control of God. Madhava contends that devotion is the method emphasized in the Gita. Vallabha (AD 1476) develops what is called ‘Shuddhadvaita’ or pure nondualism. The ego (‘jiva’) when pure and unblended by illusions and the Supreme Brahman are one. Souls are particles of God like sparks of fire and they cannot acquire the knowledge necessary for release except by the grace of the Supreme. Devotion to God is the most important means of obtaining release. Bhakti is truth associated with love. The Hindu tradition believes that the different views are complimentary. The Bhagavat says that the sages have described in various ways the essential truth. In a popular verse, Hanuman says:

“From the view-point of the body, I am Thy servant; from the view-point of the ego, I am a portion of Thee; from the view-point of the self, I am Thyself.” God is experienced as Thou or I according to the plane in which consciousness centers. Chapter 4: Ultimate Reality The Upanishads affirm the reality of a Supreme Brahman, one without a second, without attributes, who is identical with the deepest self of man. The Upanishads support Divine activity and participation in nature and give us a God who exceeds the mere infinite and the mere finite. The theistic emphasis becomes prominent in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad.

“He, who is one and without any colour (visible form), by the manifold wielding of His power, ordains many colours (forms) with a concealed purpose and into

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whom, in the beginning and the end, the universe dissolves, He is the God. May He 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 who know 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 within His own being. He is the light within us ‘hridyantar-jyoti’. He is the Supreme whose shadow is life and death. Impersonality and personality are not arbitrary constructions or fictions of the mind. They are two ways of looking at the Eternal. The Supreme in its absolute self-existence is Brahman, the Absolute and as Lord and Creator containing and controlling all, is Ishvara, the God. The Bhagavat makes out that ‘the one Reality which is of the nature of undivided consciousness is called, Brahman, the Supreme Self, or God’ [ShrimadBhagavat 1.2.11]:

The emphasis of Gita is on the Supreme as the personal God who creates the perceptible world by His nature (‘prakriti’). He resides in the heart of every being. He is the enjoyer and the Lord of all sacrifices. He steers our hearts 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 who supports this cosmic manifestation in space and time. He is the Universal Spirit, ‘Paramatman’, who ensouls our cosmic forms and movements. He is the ‘Parameshvara’ who presides over the individual souls and movements of nature 4

and controls the cosmic beginning. He is also the ‘Purushottama’, the Supreme Person, whose dual nature is manifested in the evolution of the cosmos. He fills our 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 behind the manifest universe, the changeless truth behind all appearances, transcendent over all and immanent in all. He is the manifested Lord, making it easy for mortals to know, for those who seek the Imperishable Brahman reach Him no doubt but after great toil. He is called ‘Paramatman’ which implies transcendence; he is ‘jiva-bhuta’, the essential life of all. In the Upanishads we are informed that the fully awakened soul, which apprehends the true relation to the Absolute, sees that it is essentially one with the 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 spiritual seekers. He is not a hero, who once trod the earth and has now left it, having spoken to his favorite friend and disciple, but is everywhere and in every one of us, as ready to speak to us now as He ever was to anyone else. He is not a bygone personality but the indwelling spirit, an object of our spiritual consciousness. When any finite individual develops spiritual qualities and shows large insight and clarity, he sits in judgment on the world and starts a spiritual and social upheaval and we say God is born for the protection of the good, the destruction of the evil and establishment of the kingdom of righteousness. The ‘Avatar’ is the demonstration of man’s spiritual resources and latent divinity. It is not so much the 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 the world, does not take away from or add to the integrity of the Divine. Creation and incarnation 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 and the dignity of man has more wonderfully renewed it. Whenever by the abuse of 5

freedom unrighteousness increases and the world gets stuck in a rut, He creates Himself to lift the world from out of its rut and set it on new tracks. Out of His love He is born again and again to renew the work of creation on a higher plane. Krishna’s ‘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 thickest darkness, the Dweller in every heart revealed Himself in the divine Devaki for the Lord is the self hidden in the hearts of all beings.”

When all seems lost, light from heaven breaks, enriching our human life more than words can tell. A sudden flash, an inward illumination we have and life is seen fresh and new. Every individual is a pupil, an aspirant for perfection, a seeker of God and if he 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-being which is responsible for the imperfections is a necessary element in the world, for it 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 not recognize Me who an above them and imperishable.” [Shrimad-Bhagavad-Gita 7.13] Through the force of ‘Maya’ we have a bewildering partial consciousness which loses sight of the reality and lives in the world of phenomena, God’s real being is veiled by the play of ‘prakriti’ and its modes. The world is said to be deceptive because God hides Himself behind this creation. [To be continued] Summary: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi

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