Gita 17.07 Food sacrifice charity and austerity represent broad patterns of the soul’s interaction with its encasing circles

Transcript

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Bhagavad Gita 17.7 Krishna is continuing now to answer Arjuna’s question about the nature of the faith of those who do not follow Shastra but still have some faith at some level so this is a continuation from text 4 where you could say 5 and 6 is a digression for emphasis of the difference so 4th talked about how broadly speaking the objects of worship vary depending on the modes there the description was how depending on how one believes depending on the mode of goodness if in goodness one should worship the devatas in passion one worships the yakshas and rakshas and in ignorance praitas and bhutas so now apart from this if you want to know what is the nature of the faith of person there are different pointers faith is internal to a person and we do not have the power to look into the heart of a person to know what their faith is but whatever our faith is that is expressed through our actions so by looking at the actions of people we can know what kind of consciousness they have or what kind of faith they have so one action that we can look at is whom do they worship what kind of beings do they worship and now we can look at what are the other categories of their actions so here 4 more important actions are talked about in fact most of the remaining chapter will be an elaboration of these 4 items so the aahara that people take can be in goodness or passion or ignorance and similarly their so the bheda, the division into the 3 categories of yajna, dana and tapa and now you hear it so the point here is that yajna, dana, tapa and the anna aahara can be seen of people and thereby we can understand which mode they are situated in if you look at the modes, what are they the modes can be understood at different levels but from a functional perspective we can say that they are subtle forces that shape the interaction between matter and consciousness so subtle forces that shape the interaction between matter and consciousness so how is consciousness interacting with matter that can be seen these ways one of the basic functions that we human beings have to do for survival is eating and so one mode of interaction between matter and consciousness is through the consumption of food by the conscious living being so now which kind of food that living being will consume that is a matter of personal choice and the modes shape our choices so by looking at what kind of food someone is eating you can get a fair understanding of what kind of consciousness they are living in and how the modes are influencing them and also what their faith is when we eat we want enjoyment and we want nourishment those are the two primary motives while we eat what kind of food will give us enjoyment that will be varying from person to person what kind of food may give us nourishment there is also some variety of opinion about that but not so much that is broadly understood to be standard but we have faith that this kind of food I will enjoy so that indicates by looking at the food that people eat we can get some understanding of what their faith is so eating food is one primary interaction which the soul has with the body now yajna, dana, tapa these can be seen as specific religious activities and they can also be seen as representatives of generic patterns of interaction of the soul with the universe so yajna it refers to fire sacrifices but if we consider these three activities they are representing the soul’s interaction with the three coverings that it is placed in we have the bodily covering then we have the social covering which refers to the society the social circle in which we are and we are in the cosmic covering where in the Vedic understanding there are higher beings who arrange for the provision of our needs the third chapter Krishna has said that is actually 3.9 onwards Krishna has used that in a section where he talks about this interaction between the human beings and the devatas so yajna refers to the mode in which we interact with the universe so do we see the universe as yajna, fire sacrifices are not just certain quixotic rituals of bygone culture they are not that at all in fact there is a subtle and profound spiritual understanding of the nature of the cosmos underlying it and basically refers to the mode in which we interact with the universe do we interact for the sake of pleasure thinking that the universe is ours for dominating and the yajna that we may do in that case we just burn and destroy things which we feel are coming in the way of our enjoyment so we may destroy forests thinking that this forest is what I want this forest is simply taking up the land which I want for my industrialization or whatever and I take it away so that is we could say very destructive exploitative mentality which is coming from the mode of passion and ignorance so specifics we will deal later about the yajna, fire sacrifice one may just burn the forest or blow up the forest or whatever the destruction is so the yajna, the interaction of the universe is in a very destructive mode dana refers to an interaction with other living beings we live in a social circle and in that social circle we take and we give so what we take and what we give is dependent on hundreds of factors in which social situation we are in but whatever be our situation we are expected to contribute something and dana is our contribution to our social circle some people simply take and don’t give at all some people give but very resentfully that different kinds of dana will be talked about later in the 7th chapter but this basically refers to how do we interact with other people, what is our understanding, what is our conception, our consciousness when we interact with others do we think of them as simply agents in our enjoyment do we think of them as factors that we use for our exploitation, do we think of them as objects of service do we think of them as partners we can have different conceptions and based on that we will interact with them in different ways so of course yajna, dana, tapa are all three we could say broadly not just modes of interaction but modes of contribution that we live in these three circles and take from them is understood we live in the universe and we take oxygen we need light, we need water we live in a social circle, there are so many ways in which we depend on others for getting our things done so therefore the important thing to recognize is that the way in which we think we need to contribute that kind of contribution will lead to our satisfaction that is what we need to do that reflects our consciousness, our modes and our faith and the same applies with respect to the body what kind of tapa do we do we could say with respect to these three things there are some people who do none of these there are many people nowadays who don’t do any yajna who don’t give any dana and who don’t do any tapa so if you look at these as simply cultural forms then they may seem to be just almost irrelevant to today’s context but if you see them as representations of the modes of interaction of the embodied living being with its various encasements, then we can see them as broad principles which are universal so for example tapa people may not be doing austerity for religious purposes if they do not believe in God but many people believe that they should look beautiful and for that they may fast so without the remembrance of the Lord then may this cheta phalani abhga hanaanichagacchanam so Kulashekhar Maharaj says that the performance of fasting if it is done without the remembrance of Krishna it is simply an exercise in weight reduction so in trying to cut the fat so there also we see people doing some kind of austerity so we take from the body whatever we have our desires to fulfill, we use the body as a tool so if we are using a car to drive so what do we give to the car in return do we give adequate fuel do we service it properly, do we keep it clean so similarly if we consider the body to be a vehicle the soul is situated on this machine made of material nature then what do we do how do we interact so the yajna, dana, tapa and aahara are reflective of the faith of the embodied living being because these four activities represent the ways in which the soul interacts with its environment and it is that interaction which is shaped by the modes so how the modes are influencing a person can be understood by looking at these modes of interaction and these are four elements so Krishna will be using 12 verses to describe these and along with that there are some verses for summarization or further elaboration and then in the last part of this chapter Krishna will talk about the principle of Om Tat Sat we will discuss this in new course in our future talks thank you