Dictionary-Explanations-The Srimad Vers-& Bhagavad Gita-Ch 3
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Dictionary of Religion
Dictionary and Explanations of The Srimad Bhagavad Gita
Page I
Dictionary of Religion
Dictionary and Explanations of The Srimad Bhagavad Gita
Page I
The Bhagavad Gita is part of The Mahabharata
This major epic originally in Sanskrit is of ancient India.
The other of its kind is known as the Ramayana. The Mahabharata is a narration about the Kurukshetra War.
Due to the size and nature of many areas available within, for study purposes, a link is provided below.
EXTERNAL LINKS - MAHABHARATA
Srimad- Bhagavad Gita
Third Chapter
The Way of Action
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Alternate Translation:
BHAGAVADGÎTÂ.CHAPTER III
KÂSHINÂTH TRIMBAK TELANG, M. A.
glbresearch.proboards.com/post/6491/thread
Arjuna A hero and one of primary characters of The Bhagavad Gita. He is known as the third of the Pandavas. These are the sons and princes of Pandu. When Lord Krisha teaches Arjuna is the one who is the Receiver of his Divine Word. It his conversation with Lord Krishna, which brings this Gita to life, both in philosophy and in learning of the Divine Ways of Lord Krisha. Arjuna, as a warrior is also a primary character, within the entire Mahabarata epic, and was one of the finest archers. It is He who facilitated the defeat of the Kauravas in the Kurukshetra War. Within The Mahabharata he receives many names, some of which you will note as you read the Srimad Bhagavad Gita.
Arjuna - one of taintless fame and glow like silver
Phalguna - one born on the star of Phalguna
Jishnu - conqueror of enemies
Kiriti - one who wears the celestial diadem, Kiriti, presented by Indra
Swetavahana - one with white horses mounted to his chariot
Bibhatsu - one who always fights wars in a fair manner
Vijaya - victorious warrior
Parth or Partha - son of Pritha or Kunti. Incidentally his father is the Lord of Heavens, Indra.
Savyasachi - skillful in using both arms, ambidextrous
Dhananjaya - one who conquers bows (dhanu) referring to his skills as an archer
Gudakesa - One who has conquered sleep (gudaka "sleep")
Kapi Dhwaj - Having flag of Kapi (Monkey) in his chariot (Arjuna's flag displayed an image of Hanuman from a previous encounter)
Parantap - one who concentrates the most, destroyer of enemies from his concentration
NAMES and CONCEPTS OF THE SRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA - CHAPTER 3
ATMAN: Read more: glbresearch.proboards.com/thread/2501/hinduism-atman-eternal-self#ixzz2aiYKztqD
Karma: glbresearch.proboards.com/board/183/karma-samsara
Dharma glbresearch.proboards.com/thread/2520/dharma
O descendant of Bharata:
O Bull of the Bharata race,
Bharata meaning 'The Cherished' is a legendary emperor of India.
Bharata -(Bharata, means "The Cherished"). Bharata was a legendary emperor of India, and is referred to in Hindu and Jain theology. He was son of King Dushyanta of Hastinapura and Queen ?akuntal? and thus a descendant of the Lunar Dynasty of the Kshatriya Varna. Bharata had conquered all of Greater India, uniting it into a single political entity which was named after him as "Bharatavarta".
According to ancient Indian epic legend of the Mahabharata as well as the numerous puranas and diverse Indian history, Bharat Empire included the whole territory of the Indian subcontinent, including parts of present day Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, North-west Tibet, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Deva (in Devanagari script) is the Sanskrit word for deity,
Guna means 'string' or 'a single thread or strand of a cord or twine'. In more abstract uses, it may mean 'a subdivision, species, kind, quality', or an operational principle or tendency.
In Samkhya philosophy, there are three major gunas that serve as the fundamental operating principles or 'tendencies' of prak?ti (universal nature) which are called: sattva gu?a, rajas guna, and tamas guna. The three primary gunas are generally accepted to be associated with creation (sattva), preservation (rajas), and destruction (tamas) (see also Aum and Trimurti).The entire creation and its process of evolution is carried out by these three major gunas.
Janardana is another name of Vishnu or God
Keshava is a name of Vishnu from within Hindu tradition.
O son of Kunti; Kunti In Hindu mythology, Kunti also called Pritha, was the biological daughter of Shurasena and a Yadava, the sister of Vasudeva,
O son of Prithâ - Prithâ: One who is the son of Pritvi the earth, that is, one who is the representative of mankind. (Prithâ: Queen Kuntî, mother of Arjuna)
Yajna: In Hinduism, yajña, also transliterated yagya or yadnya) or yagam. Tamil is a ritual of offerings accompanied by chanting of Vedic mantras (also "worship, prayer, praise, offering and oblation, sacrifice" according to Monier-Williams) derived from the practice in Vedic times. Yajna is an ancient ritual of offering and sublimating the havana sámagri (herbal preparations) in the fire. The sublime meaning of the word yajna is derived from the Sanskrit verb yaj, which has a three-fold meaning of worship of deities (devapujana), unity (saògatikaraña) and charity (dána).[1] An essential element is the ritual fire – the divine Agni – into which oblations are poured, as everything that is offered into the fire is believed to reach God. The term yajna is linguistically (but not functionally) cognate with Zoroastrian (Ahura) Yasna. Unlike Vedic Yajna, Zoroastrian Yasna has "to do with water rather than fire".(Drower, 1944:78; Boyce, 1975:147-191)
Shraddhâ
Wikipedia
O Bull of the Bharata race,
Bharata meaning 'The Cherished' is a legendary emperor of India.
Bharata -(Bharata, means "The Cherished"). Bharata was a legendary emperor of India, and is referred to in Hindu and Jain theology. He was son of King Dushyanta of Hastinapura and Queen ?akuntal? and thus a descendant of the Lunar Dynasty of the Kshatriya Varna. Bharata had conquered all of Greater India, uniting it into a single political entity which was named after him as "Bharatavarta".
According to ancient Indian epic legend of the Mahabharata as well as the numerous puranas and diverse Indian history, Bharat Empire included the whole territory of the Indian subcontinent, including parts of present day Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, North-west Tibet, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Deva (in Devanagari script) is the Sanskrit word for deity,
Guna means 'string' or 'a single thread or strand of a cord or twine'. In more abstract uses, it may mean 'a subdivision, species, kind, quality', or an operational principle or tendency.
In Samkhya philosophy, there are three major gunas that serve as the fundamental operating principles or 'tendencies' of prak?ti (universal nature) which are called: sattva gu?a, rajas guna, and tamas guna. The three primary gunas are generally accepted to be associated with creation (sattva), preservation (rajas), and destruction (tamas) (see also Aum and Trimurti).The entire creation and its process of evolution is carried out by these three major gunas.
Janardana is another name of Vishnu or God
Keshava is a name of Vishnu from within Hindu tradition.
O son of Kunti; Kunti In Hindu mythology, Kunti also called Pritha, was the biological daughter of Shurasena and a Yadava, the sister of Vasudeva,
O son of Prithâ - Prithâ: One who is the son of Pritvi the earth, that is, one who is the representative of mankind. (Prithâ: Queen Kuntî, mother of Arjuna)
Yajna: In Hinduism, yajña, also transliterated yagya or yadnya) or yagam. Tamil is a ritual of offerings accompanied by chanting of Vedic mantras (also "worship, prayer, praise, offering and oblation, sacrifice" according to Monier-Williams) derived from the practice in Vedic times. Yajna is an ancient ritual of offering and sublimating the havana sámagri (herbal preparations) in the fire. The sublime meaning of the word yajna is derived from the Sanskrit verb yaj, which has a three-fold meaning of worship of deities (devapujana), unity (saògatikaraña) and charity (dána).[1] An essential element is the ritual fire – the divine Agni – into which oblations are poured, as everything that is offered into the fire is believed to reach God. The term yajna is linguistically (but not functionally) cognate with Zoroastrian (Ahura) Yasna. Unlike Vedic Yajna, Zoroastrian Yasna has "to do with water rather than fire".(Drower, 1944:78; Boyce, 1975:147-191)
Shraddhâ
Wikipedia
The Gunas, born of Prakriti
The three Gunas and the four motivations of life, and are the intrinsic qualities of Prakriti.
Prakriti is the universal energy of primary matter or Nature.
The three Gunas are Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, and they are often associated with creation (Brahma), preservation (Vishnu), and destruction (Shiva) respectively. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva make up the Hindu Trinity or Trimurti, and with their association with the three Gunas we can see how they represent the three stages that matter, or Nature, goes through in her continuous cycle of life.
Sattva translates as essence. When someone or something is sattvic it has the qualities of purity, equilibrium, harmony, and goodness.
Rajas translates as air or vapor. Being rajasic has the qualities of activity, movement, and passion.
Tamas translates as darkness, ignorance, and illusion. It is also a term for the obstruction of the Sun and Moon during eclipses. Tamasic qualities indicate sluggishness, inertia, and lethargy.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna explains the Gunas to Arjuna in great detail:
It is the three gunas born of prakriti – sattva, rajas, and tamas – that bind the immortal Self to the body.
Sattva – pure, luminous, and free from sorrow – binds us with attachment to happiness and wisdom. Rajas is passion, arising from selfish desire and attachment. These bind the Self with compulsive action.
Tamas, born of ignorance, deludes all creatures through heedlessness, indolence, and sleep.
Sattva binds us to happiness; rajas binds us to action. Tamas, distorting our understanding, binds us to delusion
…
Bibliography; Healer, Spiritual Counselor, and Writer, Julianne Victoria
The three Gunas and the four motivations of life, and are the intrinsic qualities of Prakriti.
Prakriti is the universal energy of primary matter or Nature.
The three Gunas are Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, and they are often associated with creation (Brahma), preservation (Vishnu), and destruction (Shiva) respectively. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva make up the Hindu Trinity or Trimurti, and with their association with the three Gunas we can see how they represent the three stages that matter, or Nature, goes through in her continuous cycle of life.
Sattva translates as essence. When someone or something is sattvic it has the qualities of purity, equilibrium, harmony, and goodness.
Rajas translates as air or vapor. Being rajasic has the qualities of activity, movement, and passion.
Tamas translates as darkness, ignorance, and illusion. It is also a term for the obstruction of the Sun and Moon during eclipses. Tamasic qualities indicate sluggishness, inertia, and lethargy.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna explains the Gunas to Arjuna in great detail:
It is the three gunas born of prakriti – sattva, rajas, and tamas – that bind the immortal Self to the body.
Sattva – pure, luminous, and free from sorrow – binds us with attachment to happiness and wisdom. Rajas is passion, arising from selfish desire and attachment. These bind the Self with compulsive action.
Tamas, born of ignorance, deludes all creatures through heedlessness, indolence, and sleep.
Sattva binds us to happiness; rajas binds us to action. Tamas, distorting our understanding, binds us to delusion
…
Bibliography; Healer, Spiritual Counselor, and Writer, Julianne Victoria
The Prajâpati: Is the 'lord of creatures', known as a group Hindu deity, in Hinduism. "lord of creatures" presiding over procreation, and protector of life.
According to later beliefs in the post-Vedic Era, the Prajapties were elected democratically. Lord Vishnu was first elected democratically/unanimously as Prajapati (in the North of Aryavrat or Bharta) by all the Rishis and subjects of that era and sat on the throne of Prajapti. Thereafter, Lord Brahama was elected as Prajapati (in the west of Aryavrat or Bharta), after which Lord Shankar (in the South of Aryavrat or Bharta) or Rudras were elected as Prajapaties. The throne of Prajpati succeeded further and there were about 26 Prjapaties, as mentioned in the Vedas.
Prajapati is a Vedic deity presiding over procreation, and the protector of life. He appears as a creator deity or supreme god vishvakarman above the other Vedic deities in RV 10 and in Brahmana literature. Vedic commentators also identify him with the creator referred to in the Nasadiya Sukta.
In later times, he is identified with Vishnu, Shiva, with the personifications of Time, Fire, the Sun, etc. He is also identified with various mythical progenitors, especially (Manu Smrti 1.34) the ten lords of created beings first created by Brahm?, the Prajapatis Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, Vasishtha, Prachetas or Daksha, Bhrigu, N?rada.
The Mahabharata mentions, in the words of celestial sage Narada, 14 Prajapatis (lit:caretakers of the Praja) Hiranyagarbha is the source of the creation of the Universe or the manifested cosmos in Indian philosophy, it finds mention in one hymn of the Rigveda (RV 10.121), known as the 'Hiranyagarbha sukta' and presents an important glimpse of the emerging monism, or even monotheism, in the later Vedic period, along with the Nasadiya sukta suggesting a single creator deity predating all other gods (verse 8: yó devé?v ádhi devá éka âs?t, Griffith: "He is the God of gods, and none beside him."), in the hymn identified as Prajapati.
The Upanishads calls it the Soul of the Universe or Brahman, and elaborates that Hiranyagarbha floated around in emptiness and the darkness of the non-existence for about a year, and then broke into two halves which formed the Swarga and the Prithvi. In classical Puranic Hinduism, Hiranyagarbha is a name of Brahma, so called because he was born from a golden egg (Manusmrti 1.9), while the Mahabharata calls it the Manifest.
Wikipedia
God's Living Bible - The Third Testament - The Rig Veda
RIGVEDA - BOOK 10 -HYMN CXXI. Ka.
1. IN the beginning rose Hiranyagarbha, born Only Lord of all created beings.
Read more: glbresearch.proboards.com/thread/3773/rigveda-book-10-hymn-cxxi#ixzz2azPuqfyr
The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita
by Swami Krishnananda
Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation
After the brief introduction to the important features which are predominant in the whole of the Gita, we have to enter into the main theme of the exposition. The setting of the occasion of the Gita, the context of the delivery of the gospel, is the human situation, which I tried to liken to the atmosphere of a battle-field, an air of war, conflict and confrontation, to be expected at every step, every moment of time, and under every circumstance.
The structure of the universe appears to be such that it faces us as a complex of various layers of conflict which we are supposed to overcome and which are known as achievements in life. A particular context or situation has an opposing or conflicting context or situation. If this opposition were not to be there staring at every given occasion in life, there would not be any impulse to action. There would be no necessity for any activity. There would be no such thing as achievement. Achievement is the result that follows the bringing about of a reconciliation or a harmony between a particular position and its opposition, usually known as the thesis counterpoised by the antithesis. The two have to be synthesised.
And the whole of the Gita is nothing but this tremendous progressive process of achieving larger and larger syntheses in our life, so that we become an embodiment of synthesis to such an extent that when it reaches its climax or logical conclusion, we achieve a comprehensiveness of being, which is inseparable from a universal synthesis of expanse. This may be regarded as equivalent to what we call God-realisation, or whatever one would like to call it. The aim of the Gita is to lead us up to this universal synthesis of the ultimate balance of things. But for this achievement towards the goal of life we have to move from stage to stage, and the admonition which the Gita gives us at different degrees of this exposition, is the yoga of the Bhagavadgita.
Many of us, perhaps all of us, might have had a glance over the various chapters of the Bhagavadgita. We are aware as to what it is about. We know how many chapters there are, and what the first chapter is telling us, and what the second chapter is about, and so on. Usually, we gloss over the first chapter. Many exponents and commentators of the Gita have opined that the first chapter is something like an introduction, and we generally pass over an introduction to the main subject of the text. But this is a mistake.
The first chapter is not an introduction in the sense of a prolegomena or a preface that an author may write to his own book. Vyasa, or Krishna, or whoever may be the author, is not giving a publisher’s note in the form of the first chapter. We would be wondering that at the end of the first chapter, it is designated as a yoga: “Arjuna-Vishada-Yoga”. It is a yoga; a wonder, indeed. It is as much a yoga as any other chapter of the Gita is. It is an inseparable vital limb of the entire body of the doctrine. It is a yoga and, therefore, it cannot be escaped or glossed over or passed on.
The context in which Arjuna, the hero of this epic, the symbol of humanity in general, finds himself is the total human situation. It is our situation, and everybody’s.
The Mahabharata is not a book giving us merely a story of some historical event that occurred in ancient times. It is an exposition of the nature of the culture of the nation — one may say, the whole of humanity. It is a teaching which is intended to show the path to humanity in its entirety, leading it up to its destination by gradual stages, and the Bhagavadgita is the kernel of this intention of the Mahabharata epic.
The purpose of the Bhagavadgita is unique, though it is clothed in an epic colour. Its outer shape is linguistic, artistic, mythological and is in the form of a narrative, but this is so because of its occurrence in the atmosphere of an epic, a heroic poem, and a tremendous heroism of a peculiar type permeates the whole of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita. It is not a cowherd’s gospel. It is not the gospel of a hermit or renunciate who abandons and cuts himself off from everything. There is a spirit in a state of ebullition, welling up into action of great consequence and moment. We will be stirred up into a tremendous urge for moving forward, as we read through the chapters of the Mahabharata.
The Bhagavadgita is principally a spiritual message — spiritual in the true sense of the term. We have to clear our minds of the usual notions of spirituality and religion. When we take to such text-books of yoga, as the Bhagavadgita, we have, first of all, to recondition our minds and make ourselves prepared for the reception of this impersonal teaching. We are personal, and the teaching is impersonal, manifest in various stages. Ultimately, it will become totally impersonal, into which the personalities vanish altogether, as if they had never been at any time. But we are hard-boiled individuals, our personality is as realistic to us as flint, and so it would not be easy for us, who cling to the status of our individualities, to appreciate and to receive into our minds the great cosmic intention behind the teaching of the Bhagavadgita.
The teacher of the Gita knows this psychology very well. Perhaps he is one of the greatest psychologists we can ever imagine. And so he commences the teaching from the level of the ordinary human being. The feelings of man are to be taken into consideration when he is confronted or dealt with in any manner. And it is the feelings or the groups of the feelings of the individual that work themselves up into action.
When we face the world or are busy with the performance of any duty in the world, our feelings guide us along a particular direction. When we are small boys, youngsters, jubilant with youthful enthusiasm, we entertain great hopes and imagine that we have great powers. We make a program of our life. ‘Such is to be my achievement in life.’ But this enthusiasm is beclouded with a lack of understanding of the nature of the atmosphere in which one lives, to which fact one is awakened gradually as one becomes more and more mature. The boyish enthusiasm subsides slowly and the maturity of the grey hair begins to speak in a different language and tells us that the world is made of a different stuff altogether, from what we imagined earlier when we were not sufficiently educated in the art of living.
Arjuna was such a person, and he stands as a symbol for any person, anywhere, at any time, a simple person embodying in his personality the forte and foible of anyone. The strength and the weakness of man can be seen in Arjuna. Every one of us, anywhere, has a strength but also a weakness. All these points have to be taken into consideration. We should not underline unnecessarily the weaknesses of ourselves, ignoring our strengths, nor should we go to the other extreme of imagining that we are all-in-all and that we are free from every defect.
We are in a world of conflicts and forces, rajas, which pulls us outward in the direction of space, time and objects though the avenues of senses, and sattva, which keeps us intact, integrated in our own selves and in our own status. The stability of our personality is maintained by the sattva that is present in us and the distractedness of our life is caused by rajas, which also preponderates simultaneously, in some measure. And a feeling of enough with work, the getting fed-up with things, an exhaustion, a tiredness that we often feel in life is the result of tamas, the principle of inertia. All these are to be found in us at all times.
We are sattvika, rajasika and tamasika, at every time. Only, one of these properties comes to the surface, at a time, putting down the other two, or at least one goes down sometimes, and we appear to be in a particular mood of the hour. The mood can change, even our ideas can vary, our outlook can completely get transformed for reasons we cannot easily understand, due to the coming to the level of our consciousness these properties, one or the other, sattva, rajas or tamas. These properties, or qualities, which are psychological and individual, as well as physical and cosmical, work in various ways and constitute not only the body of the objects of sense including our own bodies as subjects but in a subtle form make up our psychological organ, so that, as the Gita itself would say in one place, there is nothing anywhere which is not a compound or complex of these three gunas, i.e., sattva, rajas and tamas. Neither on earth nor in heaven can we find anything, anywhere, which is not the result of a permutation or combination of the three gunas. One may be an angel in heaven, or a mortal here in this world, but all these forms are constituted of the gunas. So, the human being, in the human context, finds himself in an arena of conflicts of these forces and the battle of life, so-called, is nothing but the field of the action and reaction of these forces.
The battle of the Mahabharata or any battle whatsoever, inward or outward, is the colour and the shape that these forces put on when they commingle in the interest of cosmic evolution. They collide one with the other. There is a collision of the thesis with the antithesis for a higher purpose of the evolution of the individuality of both the thesis and the antithesis, and there is a coming together of both in a blend to form a totally new thing altogether, giving birth to a new baby, as it were, in the form of a synthesis which transcends the lower opposing categories. The context of the first chapter of the Bhagavadgita is the atmosphere of tense feelings in the field of a tremendous Armageddon, each one imagining that one would win victory over the other, each one intent upon overcoming the other, so that each one musters in all the powers of oneself available for unleashing the same in this battle that is to ensue.
The individual faces this world before it as a confrontation, a field of action and opposition. The child in its moods of unintelligent enthusiasm imagines that it can do anything with this world, possess it, enjoy it, overcome it, utilise it, harness it for its purposes. As we grow older we become aware of the fact that the world is too much for us. Its quantity frightens us, as the ocean can terrorise us when we gaze at it on the shore. We are afraid of it because of the tremendous magnitude that is in front of us. How vast is this arena of the Universe! How difficult it is to think of the powers of these five elements, the whole of nature. Not merely that; there are other things to which we are connected — our social relationships.
The setup of Nature is a different thing, a consideration of which will come later on in the course of our study of the Gita. But we have immediate problems which are related to our human relationships, more imminent and demanding greater attention from us than the powers of Nature. We may be feeling heat and cold, we may be under the pull of the gravitational power, the five elements may be there before us — earth, water, fire, air, ether, as terrible forces, no doubt, but they are not our immediate consideration. When we get up in the morning we are not usually thinking of the five elements, though it is true they are there as powerful oppositions before us. We are rather thinking of immediate human relationships and other things connected with our personality, emotionally related, and the concern of today, for instance. There are loves and hatreds in relation to our connections with humanity in the immediate vicinity of our existence.
When we are in the midst of people to whom we are accustomed we are not in a position properly to go deeper into the secrets of these relationships. We are living in a social atmosphere, we are living in a town, we are living in a monastery, in an ashrama, in a house, in a family.
When we are living in an atmosphere of this kind, which is human and social, we cannot know our mind wholly, because the fish is in water, and it thinks that everything is fine. We must bring the fish out of water and then see the fate of it. We wrench ourselves from social relations for some time, be not in the midst of people, do not go to the shop for purchase, do not live in the town, do not have anything to do even with family relations, do not speak to anyone, do not look at anybody’s face for some months. We will know ourselves better then, than when in society. We will be a little bit restless in the beginning stages. We will be unhappy for reasons we cannot easily know. We will like to get up and run away into the thick of human relations once again, because man is a social animal basically. And to ignore this aspect of the human individual would be not to properly comprehend the psychology of the human being. The attractions and repulsion’s, the likes and dislikes in relation to personalities, are inborn in us. We are born into this circumstance.
We have something to say about the people around us, for or against, we have some opinion about people, we always pass a judgement on things in our own selves. A judgement in the form of a logical conclusion that we draw in connection with our understanding in relation to humanity around us becomes the propelling force for our conduct and behaviour in relation to people. Our attitude towards people is the result of our understanding of people. We have an opinion in such-and-such a manner and therefore we have to deal with this situation in such and-such a manner. This so-called dealing in respect of people outside is our conduct which we express in behaviour outwardly, an expression of our internal attitude or feeling psychologically. Mostly, we are tied up by ropes of likes and dislikes which pull us in two different directions and we rarely bestow thought on the interesting feature behind our likes and dislikes, namely, that a like implies a dislike, and a dislike implies a like. They are not actually two different activities of the mind. It is one outlook, one attitude which puts on the colour or feature of a double attitude. The like which the mind entertains in respect of a particular thing or a group of things implies the exclusion of factors which do not contribute to the make-up of that atmosphere in which this thing or this group of things exists. The inclusiveness in respect of a particular situation implies exclusiveness in respect of other situations. So, as the obverse and reverse of a coin, like and dislike go together, one signifying the other, one being impossible without the other. This is, again, an internal warfare that is taking place in us, a perpetual conflict between the circumstances within us pulling us in the direction of likes and dislikes.
Alternate title: yajña
yajna, ( Sanskrit: “sacrifice”) also spelled yajña, in Hinduism, offerings to the gods based on rites prescribed in the earliest scriptures of ancient India, the Vedas, in contrast to puja, a later practice that may include image worship and other devotional practices.A yajna is always purposeful, even though the aim may be as general as sustaining the natural order of the universe. Correct performance of the ritual and recitation of the necessary mantras, or sacred formulas, is considered essential, and the performer and the objects employed must all be in a high state of purity. The arbiters of such ritual requirements are the professional class of priests, the Brahmans, who are still required to officiate at all important public yajnas. Many Hindu householders continue to perform the mahayajnas, the five daily domestic offerings.
Encyclopedia Britannica
yajna, ( Sanskrit: “sacrifice”) also spelled yajña, in Hinduism, offerings to the gods based on rites prescribed in the earliest scriptures of ancient India, the Vedas, in contrast to puja, a later practice that may include image worship and other devotional practices.A yajna is always purposeful, even though the aim may be as general as sustaining the natural order of the universe. Correct performance of the ritual and recitation of the necessary mantras, or sacred formulas, is considered essential, and the performer and the objects employed must all be in a high state of purity. The arbiters of such ritual requirements are the professional class of priests, the Brahmans, who are still required to officiate at all important public yajnas. Many Hindu householders continue to perform the mahayajnas, the five daily domestic offerings.
Encyclopedia Britannica
The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita
by Swami Krishnananda
Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation (Continued)
Arjuna was such an individual. He had likes and dislikes. The whole story of the Mahabharata is a description of the conflict among the varieties of likes and dislikes. The spiritual seeker is taught, through the epic atmosphere of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita, the lessons of life and the morals that follow from these lessons. When our reasoning capacity is turbid, knowledge is inadequate, our adjustments with the world outside, including human society, are not strong enough. They collapse at the least touch of confronting situations, because human relationships are only an outer form of an internal propulsion of these three forces — sattva, rajas and tamas — which are cosmically present everywhere. There is a cosmic purpose behind even our individual likes and dislikes. And our entanglement in like and dislikes is the result of our not understanding our wider involvement in a cosmical meaning that is at the base of all human situations.
We always feel, ‘I have a like’ and ‘I have a dislike,’ but we do not know why we have that like, why we have that dislike. Why is it that we should like this and dislike something else? We cannot give a satisfactory answer except that which is purely sentimental and emotional. But the world does not live on sentiments and emotions. It is a perfectly logical system, and all the parts of the mechanism of the universe are scientifically arranged, and our behaviour outside as well as our thoughts and sentiments inside, our relationships of any kind, are conditioned by this final structure of things in general, of which we are integral parts, and the mistake of the human being in Arjuna was the incapacity to go deep into this involvement of the human individual in the larger set-up of things.
It is difficult for us to imagine that we are related in a more significant manner with things than what appears on the surface. A son is related to the father, a father is related to the son, there is a relation between friends, etc. This is only the outer form of some of the relationships that appear to us before our eyes. But these relationships are metaphysically conditioned, cosmically organised by an impersonal government which has no friends or foes, and which does not bestow favours on anyone. It is like a large computer system which has no friend and which has no enemy. It depends upon how we manipulate the mechanism, how we feed this system, how we approach it and how we conduct ourselves in relation to it. If our conduct is in any way disharmonious with the requirement of the set-up of the mechanism, we will find that an undesirable result follows, something we did not expect. And the reason behind this unexpected occurrence cannot be attributed to any kind of error in the set-up of things, in the mechanism we call the computer, but in the mistake we have committed, in the error that is involved in our relationship, in our not understanding properly how it works. Arjuna, and anyone, could not and cannot easily understand or grasp this circumstance. So, we have hundreds of occasions everyday to be jubilant in joy and hundreds of occasions to be sunk in sorrow.
The Mahabharata concludes with these words: “Fools find themselves in umpteen situations everyday when they can be happy, or when they can be unhappy, also.” It is the stupid man, not the wise one, who sees occasions for joy, or sees occasions for grief in the world. The world is not intended to bring us joy, nor is its intention to pour on us sorrow. A vast computer has no intention to give us satisfaction, nor is it intended to be there to bring us sorrow. It is impersonal and it has no such emotional meanings behind it. But human beings are emotionally composed. They are not bathed in the light of wisdom at all times. We have secret directions from impulses which sometimes appear to be irrational because they cannot be explained in a scientific manner, though ultimately there is an explanation for everything in this world.
The seeker on the spiritual path is described in the first chapter of the Bhagavadgita,
Arjuna being made the spokesman of this occasion. The field of battle is the field of life. The things that we want to do in this world are the confrontations before us and our wisdom will be judged by the manner in which we deal with these situations. A situation means anything and everything with which we are connected, anything that we are supposed to do in the world. And in this duty that we are called upon to perform, there is no such thing as a superior or inferior duty. There is no superior thing or inferior thing in this world, just as in a huge machine we cannot say that some part is superior, something is inferior. Everything has its role to play. Any kind of comparison or contrast would be odious in such a set-up which has no human significance but is cosmically oriented. The spiritual seeker, the sadhaka, has a spiritually-oriented enthusiasm in the beginning. Every one of us has a love for spiritual life. And the moment the idea of spiritual life arises in the mind, we find ourselves in an unspeakable situation of clinging something and abandoning something else. This is the obvious feature in religion and in the popular spirituality of mankind which goes by the name of asceticism, renunciation, etc. The idea of spirituality is generally inseparable from the idea of renunciation, the giving up of something for the sake of clinging to some thing else which we imagine at that moment as our ideal. We bifurcate one thing from the other. But the Bhagavadgita is not a gospel of renunciation of this type. No doubt, it is fired up, right from the beginning to the end, with a surge of renunciation which will burn and burnish us into the gold of the higher personality ideal. If at all there is any scripture which emphasises whole-heartedly the spirit of renunciation, it is the Bhagavadgita.
But if there is anything which tells us that spiritual life does not mean the cutting of oneself from what is real but constitutes a harmonisation of oneself with the atmosphere in which one lives, there cannot be a greater and more significant teaching than the Bhagavadgita in this respect. While, when a particular mood preponderates in us, we may be stirred into an aspiration for God, as we conceive god, and feel, or imagine, that we are fed up with this world, it may subside, because this is likely to be a tentative mood which is occasioned by a particular circumstance that may not continue for all times. And when the wheel moves, when the spokes find themselves in another position, our understanding, our feelings, or attitudes change simultaneously; and we see different things altogether before us. We do not like a thing always, nor dislike a thing at all times. As years pass, our ideas of things change. And what we loved one day may not be the thing that we love today. So is the case with the things that we disliked one day or disregarded at some moment of time. These moods of ours are relative to the conditions through which our psyche passes in what we may call the process of evolution. They are relative and not absolute situations. We cannot have an absolute love for any thing, or an absolute dislike for anything. They are like the stages of the healing of a disease or a wound, the recovery of health by degrees, when we begin to feel different things on different days.
This is what happened to the great Arjuna, and to every one of us it does happen, also. The sentiments in us are strong enough to counterblast our rationalities and our arguments though they may be philosophical or supposedly spiritual. Whatever be the philosophical profundity of our arguments, we should not imagine that our sentiments and feelings are weaker. They take up the case and argue in a manner which is deserving of equal attention, as the argument of the opposite party. And the arguments of Arjuna in the first chapter were the repudiation of all the feelings that he had entertained earlier, just the opposite of what he said a few days before. Merely because of the nature of the confrontation before us, we may be repelled after a time even by the goal of spirituality, the very ideal which attracted us earlier, because our comprehension of the nature of this ideal was not comprehensive enough.
One cannot keep up the sobriety of spirit throughout one’s life, because of the power of rajas and tamas within, whose nature one does not properly understand. The things from which we withdraw ourselves in a spirit of renunciation may demand recognition some time later, at some moment, on some occasion when they find that the circumstances are suitable for their having a say, because, usually, the religious renunciation is a misguided attitude in most cases of even so-called genuine aspirations, all because we work upon the reports given to us by the sense organs, and to a large extent our idea of God, the idea of spirituality, the notion of renunciation, are all conditioned by what the senses tell us. What gives us pain and sorrow and that which appears to be not in consonance with our idea at any particular moment of time of what we call the spiritual ideal may be regarded as worth renouncing. Persons and things are abandoned and the world is regarded as the field of bondage. We dub it as a factory in which Satan works, from which we have to extricate ourselves at the earliest moment. Our idea of God is sensory. If we would deeply consider this theme, are may realise that we are unable to dissociate the God-ideal from sense-perception, boiled down to its essentiality. We may not conceive the God-ideal or the spiritual ideal in a physical or material form, but the sensory atmosphere does not necessarily mean a material atmosphere. It is a peculiar organisation of consciousness that we call the field of sense-activity. When I speak of the sense-world I do not mean the physical world necessarily or the material objects with which the senses come in contact. It is rather an arrangement of consciousness by which it bifurcates subjectivity from objectivity, cuts the object of perception from the subject that perceives or cognises, and refuses to see any kind of vital relationship between itself and its object.
The field of sense activity is such that the object of sense perception does not appear to have of any kind of organic connection or real meaning in respect of the subject, so that we can wholeheartedly love something and wholeheartedly hate something, also, without any impact of it upon our own selves. This is how the senses work. But every love and hatred has some kind of impact upon the subject, because it is not true that the world is made up of isolated subjects and objects, finally. So, the war of the Mahabharata, in which Arjuna was engaged, was not a war against some people, merely. He was engaged in a vast atmosphere from which he could not extricate himself psychologically, a point which was driven into his mind by Sri Krishna, as explained in the second and third chapters.
Read All Chapters from The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita by Swami Krishnananda
www.sankaracharya.org/library/gita-phiilosophy.pdf
Continued below with specific References to Chapter 3 - The Yoga of Action
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