Gita 09.21 – Blindness to mortality, even if it be in heaven, is still blindness
Thank you.
Krishna continues to analyze here the nature of material happiness. He is not talking about sinful sense gratification. He is talking about pious sense gratification of the kind that is available in the heavenly planets and says that life is there, enjoyable, he had mentioned in the previous verse.
But then it comes with a time limit and that time limit limits everything. Even if it is divideva bhogana, even if it is a huge amount of happiness, still it is all ultimately limited by the expiry date that it comes with. Krishna says, te tam bhuktvā svarga-lokam viśālaṁ viśālaṁ, it is huge happiness, they enjoy it, but after that, kṣīṇe puñye mārtya-lokam viśanti kṣīṇe puñye when the puñya, the pious credits that they have got, they get exhausted, mārtya-lokam viśanti, they come back to earth, mārtya-loka, the earthly planetary system is characterized by death.
It is, whereas in the heavens, because the lifespan is so long, so the occurrence of death is not so frequent and awareness of death is not so prominent in the consciousness of the residents of heaven. Unless, of course, they are spiritually awakened and spiritually aware. But in the case of earthly residents, the occurrence of death is so frequent and pervasive.
Of course, everybody has to die, and in that sense, the death rate is 100%. But when we talk about the frequency of the occurrence of death, that means that actually we can, just by living in this world, encounter death coming upon different people at different times and in the news, among our relatives, in our social circle, because life is so temporary, so short-lived, death is so pervasive and even prominent, therefore, this world is called mārtya-loka. kṣīṇe puṇye mārtya-lokam viśanti, they come back to mārtya-loka, he says over here, evam trai-dharma-manoprapanna, thus one who follows the trai-dharma, dharma-arthakāma, trai-dharma-manoprapanna, what does that person get? gata-gataṁ kāma-kāma-labhante, gata-āgata, that person simply goes back in the cycle of birth and death.
kāma-kāma-labhante, so Krishna has described here one cycle of elevation from earth to heaven by piety and degradation from heaven to earth by the exhaustion of that piety. And through this, Krishna points to several such occurrences, in fact, repeated occurrences which underscore that even the atonement of heaven is temporary and thus the people who achieve that are not doing anything tangible in the ultimate sense for solving the problems of their life. Prabhupāda would give the example of goats standing in line while they are about to be slaughtered soon.
As long as they are given sense of gratification, a nice food to munch on, the goats don't care about what happens to them in future. Such obliviousness to the future is suicidal. But unfortunately, that's what happens to goats and to goat-like humans, and even to goat-like humans who rise to the level of heavenly residence.
Now, evam trai-dharma-manu-prapanna, in this way, those who follow trai-dharma, they gata-āgataṁ kāma-kāma-labhante, they go and come and they do not get anything lasting. The Bhagavad Gita is spoken at a time when the kṣatriyas had a very prominent ethos of laying down their life in a heroic battle and ascending to heavens. Within the mainstream kṣatriya community, the ascent to heaven was considered the greatest achievement of life.
Indeed, Arjuna also pointed to that when the first argument that he gave, or rather Krishna pointed to that, when he said that, asvargyam akirtikaram arjuna kutas tvā kashmala-vidhaṁ viṣame samapasthitam anārya-juṣṭam asvargyam akirtikaram arjuna So, where does this weakness come from? viṣame samapasthitam, at this time of danger anārya-juṣṭam asvargyam, it does not behave in ārya, behoo in ārya, and it is asvargyam, akirtikaram, so fame and heaven, these were considered to be the crown jewels in the celebrated career chart for kṣatriyas. So Krishna is telling Arjuna here that career chart, the success in it is actually not success. It is another kind of failure.
To use the temporary to attain the eternal is real success. To use the temporary to attain another better temporary is not really success. It is actually underutilization, which causes the loss of a precious opportunity.
So in this verse Krishna stresses that the attainment of heavens offers only a temporary result and therefore a wise person should not try to do the karma kāṇḍa by which to attain heavens. What should such a person do? That will be told in the next verse where Krishna states that his devotees attain an eternal destination. The essential theme of these two verses on karma kāṇḍa 9.28.21 is that by doing punya in terms of Vedic rituals, one can go to heavens and enjoy men's pleasures, but even those pleasures are temporary and one will have to return back to the earth.
Therefore, this is not a worthy aspiration for a wise person.