Gita lite 2 – Chps 3-5

[Online course on Bhagavad-gita]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. Prabhu, the new people who are joining now are not muted. Okay.
Okay. Okay. I welcome all of you.
The second session of the Bhagavad Gita’s overview. In the first session, we discussed chapters one and two. And in that we discussed about primarily the setting of the Bhagavad Gita and how the challenge of a war is a universal challenge for everyone.
We all have to face battles. And how Arjuna was overwhelmed by the way he perceived things. And Krishna gave him spiritual knowledge of his identity and gave him various conceptions at which he could work.
So now, at the end of the third chapter, second chapter, Krishna has talked about a self-realised person to encourage Arjuna to do his duty and progress towards self-realisation. But while doing that, Krishna has said that the self-realised person is in great peace, is undisturbed by anything. So then Arjuna has a question, this person in great peace, will such a person fight the war? And that’s why the third chapter begins with two verses which are Arjuna’s question.
He says, O Krishna, that if you think war renunciation is better than work, why are you engaging me in this war? Why are you asking me to fight? Now, Krishna applies this knowledge to talk about karma yoga. Karma yoga is the karma which helps us to do yoga. Yoga means connection.
Connection with what? Connection with something bigger than ourselves. We’ll talk about yoga at different levels as we move forward. But the whole idea is that if we are self-obsessed, then the self becomes like a black hole into which we sink, into which we get supper.
We all probably know self-obsessed people. So for the self to have value, the self needs to be connected with something bigger than the self. And Krishna will talk about this connection, something bigger than the self, and working as a part of that connection.
So what that means is, for example, say we are in a country and we work for the country. We belong to the country and we work for the country. And the connection also gives us identity.
So Krishna will talk about identity at various levels. So the verses three to eight, which are the first section of the Gita, third chapter spoken by Krishna. Krishna says, Arjuna, you should work.
Why? Because if you renounce prematurely, if you renounce, others may also renounce. Others may give up their duty. And they always think that this is an easy way to evade responsibility.
They may become hypocritical. They may not have the internal renunciation, but they may act as if they’re renounced in order to gain the prestige that comes from renunciation in a spiritual society. And thus they will get degraded.
So social order is maintained when everybody works honestly, according to their level. So Krishna says that you need to maintain social order. When he says individual order means each of us has to maintain ourselves.
So Krishna says that in three, eight, that you cannot even maintain yourself. So you have to work. Now, if you consider the battlefield context, Krishna, Krishna is saying, Arjuna, you are working as a Kshatriya is what you need to do.
Otherwise, how will you maintain yourself? So this is a broader question. So at one level, we understand that, OK, I have to maintain my body and I have to play my role in society. But then Krishna takes things beyond the social level to a higher level, which is the cosmic level.
And this is one of the defining insights of humanity. What is that insight? That we can sacrifice the present to get a brighter future. That the universe seems to operate based on a transactional principle.
That we give up our present, something good in the present so that we can get something better in the future. Animals don’t have this conscious understanding. Some animals may migrate when the season becomes inclement or they may burrow so that they have something to start and it becomes cold or hot.
They can go when it becomes too cold. They have a place underwater. But that’s what they’re genetically driven to do.
But we human beings have this capacity to understand that. There’s something in the present which may give me pleasure. But if I give that up, then that can help me to create a brighter future for myself.
That our education, our employment, our relationships. If they are to be sustainable, they all have to be based on this understanding that reality is structured to be reciprocal. So he says over here, Arjuna, you work as a part of the cosmic whole to maintain the cosmic order.
And what is that cosmic order? That our existence depends on something bigger than ourselves. And when it depends on something bigger than ourselves, this is not an insight which is difficult to have. Every one of us can sense that we need air to breathe.
We don’t create that air. We need food to eat. We don’t create that food.
And even if we created the food, still we don’t ourselves know how we digest the food. The food gets digested within and then that’s how we get energy. So there is a higher order to the things outside us that enables our existence.
So what Krishna is telling Arjuna is that we can be a part of a connected whole. This understanding that sometimes we may work very hard, does my work make any difference? Even if you work with good intentions, even if you work with good competence, still you might feel this world is such a big bad place. But that’s a vision when we think of ourselves as fragmented and fleeting beings somehow existing for some time.
But Bhagavad Gita says that we are a part of a bigger whole. And every one of us, we can make a difference. So for example, now there’s a lot of environmental consciousness.
And Krishna in one sense talks about not just harmony with the environment in terms of the earth’s environment, but harmony in terms of the cosmic environment. So we do our part, we work. So Krishna is thinking, Arjuna is thinking over here, if I fight this war, what’s going to happen? He’s saying they don’t bother about the result so much.
This duty is something that you need to do as a sacrifice. So the word sacrifice in Sanskrit is called a yajna. Now both sacrifice in English also comes from the Greek or Latin root.
It means to sacralise or to make sacred. So when we sacrifice something, we are making that sacred. And yajna, the idea of sacrifice means that that which we could use for our pleasure, we give it up for some higher purpose.
Then as Krishna expands his frame of analysis. So it’s like when we are looking at a thing, sometimes a photographer can look at that thing from different angles and show different perspectives. Say if you’re going to buy a house, the house looks like this from this angle, house looks like this from this angle, house looks like this from this angle.
And then we get a better understanding of how the house is like. So similarly, Krishna is illuminating this issue of should Arjuna work or should he renounce from different perspectives. So he says from one perspective, the first two perspectives are 3 to 8 and 9 to 16.
And then he says that work to 72 and 24. He talks about house. Now, suppose Arjuna says that actually, I am so spiritually advanced that I don’t really care about the society.
That earlier Krishna had said that somebody might become hypocritical because they’re not advanced and they pretend to be advanced. But that’s not my situation. I’m already advanced.
But then he says that if you are advanced, you have a responsibility to others so that they don’t get degraded. They also advance. And everybody can advance if they do their part.
The reality is structured progressively. Just like if you consider a university. If the students were in the freshman, they see their seniors just fooling around, nobody’s studying.
And then they feel like, why should I study? But if they see seniors diligently studying, then they feel, oh, this is a serious business that we also study. And the seniors may think that, oh, I’ve already got a job. I don’t have to bother so much about studies.
But then if they want to have a good culture in the university, then they should also study. So reality is, university is structured in a progressive way. So those who are at the senior level, if they study, they will graduate.
Those who are freshmen, they will go to the next level. So when reality is structured progressively similarly, Bhagavad Gita’s vision is that the universe is also like a university. And everybody at their level, if they play their part, if they do their duty, they rise and the wheels of society function smoothly.
So Krishna says, Arjuna, you have to also do your duty to set an example for others. And here Krishna gives an example of how he himself is industriously doing his duty. And then after that.
He talks about. How everybody needs to do their duty, not just to maintain their social, maintain social harmony, but also maintain their spiritual progress. 25 to 35 is a very interesting section, which I will elaborate on in the next slide.
But everybody has their nature. Everybody has their level. And everybody will grow at their pace.
It’s like a champion athlete might sprint across 100 metres within a few seconds. And a small baby might just toddle across a few, not even a few steps in that much time. But then everyone from their level, they are growing.
So Krishna tells Arjuna here, be sensitive to people’s levels and don’t push them harder than what they can take. So if Arjuna says that, oh, actually, everybody should be at the highest spiritual level, that’s not possible. And then Krishna also makes a point over here that Arjuna, you also cannot act at a level higher than what is natural for you.
So you are a Kshatriya and you cannot act like a Brahmana. Kshatriyas, basically, the essential difference between Brahmanas and Kshatriyas, many differences. But Brahmanas work on changing the inner world.
Everybody has to change the inner world. But Brahmanas focus on changing the inner world. Kshatriyas focus on changing the outer world so that it becomes conducive for changing the inner world.
That means if somebody insults a Brahmana, the Brahmana might just tolerate it. If somebody commits a crime, the Brahmana might just forgive. But a Kshatriya cannot forgive.
Kshatriya is the Justice Department. Justice Department has to give justice. So Krishna tells Arjuna, you are a Kshatriya, you cannot act like a Brahmana.
Now, then here, there’s an interesting question that Krishna, Arjuna brings up. He says, Krishna, if everybody is meant to do their duty, what is it that deviates people from their duty? What is it that makes people not play their role in the whole, in the cosmic whole? So we all have family responsibilities. Now, the family is the foundational structure, foundational unit of any society.
But say in a family, somebody gets tempted to some relationship outside and the whole family collapses. So then what has happened? Then if a family unit collapses, then nobody can actually do their duty very well. And if many, many families start collapsing, the social structure itself collapses.
So Krishna is asked by Arjuna, if everybody is meant to do their duty, what is it that drags people away from their duty? And Krishna says that is karma. Karma is lust or you could call it generally a self-destructive desire. Because lust is one force which can destroy us.
Similarly, it can be greed. Maybe in a relational sense, lust might destroy a relationship. In a professional sense, because of greed, somebody might do some malpractices, do some corruption and they might destroy the way organisation functions.
So then Krishna talks about this, the force that deviates us from duty quite graphically and analytically. And then he says that this is actually present within us. It’s significant that Krishna doesn’t say lust is present outside.
He says in 340 that Indriyan Mano Bhaktir Asyadishtanam Uchyate, that lust is present in our own senses, mind and intelligence. That means we can’t blame others if we feel lusty. The lust is not present in the person.
It is present in our own senses, our own mind, our own intelligence. And then how does one deal with lust? He talks about it that you have to use your intelligence to keep a distance from the tempting objects and then use your intelligence to rise to a higher level of reality, to rise to transcendence, to connect with the divine. And that knowledge Krishna will give in the next chapter.
Who is the divine and how do we connect with the divine? That’s the last verse. Use your buddhi to understand that you are higher than the matter. And therefore, you should seek some pleasure higher than material pleasure.
So this is the overview of the chapter and each of these chapters, because there are many themes, I cannot focus on all the themes. So I have selected one theme, which I felt is especially relevant for all of us. And in each of the chapters, I’ll take one theme more or less.
So. There’s one verse in the third chapter where Krishna says that it is better that you work according to your nature, then try to imitate someone else, because what they are doing seems better, better, seems more appealing. So this is an article from Gita Daily that sculptures can change the shape of the stone, but not their structure.
So all of us are born with a particular nature. Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaiseshudra is today often known as the caste system, but it’s not so much a caste system as a system of human types. There are some people who are naturally thoughtful, intellectual.
They live in the world of thoughts. So broadly, we could say that. The Brahmanas deal with thoughts, Kshatriyas deal with people, Vaishyas deal with, Kshatriyas deal with humans primarily or manage humans.
Brahmanas manage ideas, Vaishyas manage non-humans, that is, animals and Shudras manage things. So now there are people who are naturally attracted to certain things. So.
Given we can be if we are in a group and give people, OK, you are in a group, you can do what you like. Some people might immediately take a book and start reading. That’s what they like to do.
Some people will just look around whether everything is getting managed properly or not. And then make sure that things are managed. So we all have our nature and we all act accordingly.
So Krishna is saying this is just a simple example. But the point is that we all have our particular nature. And.
Growing spiritually doesn’t mean that we fight against our nature. It means we work with our nature by here nature. Now, it’s interesting.
What do we mean by nature? Can somebody say that it’s my nature to be angry? It’s my nature to be lusty. It’s my nature to be greedy. I can’t change that.
No. Krishna talks about our nature in two different ways. In Sanskrit, there are two distinct words.
There is vritti and there is vasana. Or we could say there is instinct and there is impulse. So instincts are like programmed intelligence.
So some people are just they have language instinct. We just come up with the right words as and when it’s required. So we just let’s programme into this without thinking.
Just brilliant at words. Some people are just brilliant at music. So when Krishna is talking about you can’t change your nature, he’s referring to this.
Basically our instincts. Now, those who are somebody might be very good at language and maybe very poor at music. If they devote themselves trying to become a musician, they will be frustrated and society will lose a good author.
So both ways there will be a loss. Now, whether somebody is an author or somebody is a singer, everybody has to deal with their own pride. If they are good at it, they can sometimes become obnoxious and they need to avoid that.
So similarly, impulses are basically the six enemies within us. Lust, anger, greed, envy, pride, illusion. Those definitely need to be restrained.
And we discussed the last section. I pointed out 336 to 43 is all about controlling. So controlling our impulses.
So then Krishna is saying that. So what is changeable? Yes. The kind of anger, the kind of impurities we have, lust, anger, greed, envy, they are changeable and they need to be changed.
We need to purify ourselves. But the basic shape, the structure of the stone can’t be changed. That means our basic instincts, whatever we have, we will actually act accordingly.
So when Krishna is telling Arjuna you are a Kshatriya, be a Kshatriya. But don’t be a Kshatriya like Duryodhana. Duryodhana was a Kshatriya but he was greedy, he was envious, he was malicious.
Don’t be like that. So when we are fighting a battle, one of the biggest things, biggest deciders of success or failure is which battle a person decides to fight. Now our army decides to fight.
In some situations it might just not be changeable. Say if a kingdom is to be attacked from the front, from the left, from the right, their defence is impermeable. Then it’s critical that you attack from the back or whatever, that way.
So similarly if we start struggling to change our basic nature, Kshatriya tries to become a Brahmana. Or Kshatriya tries to get a lot more money, tries to become Vaishya, whatever. So that is a battle which will set us up for frustration.
And more often than not, in our spiritual life, if we are fighting this material battle which is not winnable, trying to do something that is not according to our nature, that discourages us so much that we become discouraged in our spiritual growth also. And then we start thinking our spiritual life also is not working. So it’s not that the spiritual process is not working, it is that materially we are working disharmoniously.
So there are only two verses in the Bhagavad Gita where Krishna repeats more or less the same verse. So 3.35 we repeated in 1847 later. And that is the same thing that you cannot change your basic nature.
So Krishna tells Arjuna that you are a Kshatriya and you fight. So that is a brief overview of the third chapter. As I mentioned, after every chapter, we will have a brief pause and we can have some questions.
Are there any questions right now? If anybody has, you can raise their hand and I’ll unmute that particular person. OK. Yes, you have a question.
Hare Krishna, Prabhuji. Yes, Prabhuji. So I have a question with respect to instincts, which is repeat, I believe.
So you said that we cannot change our basic nature, which is our basic instincts. So how are our instincts determined? Like, are they dependent on our previous lives? If that’s the case, we should be able to make some progress in our current life for our future lives. So if but if they are not changeable, if we if it is considered as programmed intelligence, then how how can we proceed on being better in our instincts? OK, good question.
So if our instincts are determined by our previous life, then how do we progress? Can’t we change them at all? Well, it’s not so much that we can’t change them. It’s that the effort required to change them may be far more than the effect that you might get in it. Say, for example, somebody is tone deaf.
And they try to become a professional musician. They will be miserable. They will not be able to do it.
And even if they do it, the effort will be excruciating. And because that’s not their nature, they will not get much joy. So, of course, even if he has certain instincts, we need to develop them.
That means Arjuna had some innate talent in Arjuna. But Arjuna was not just satisfied with the talent. He did not become a champion just by talent.
There is talent and then there is commitment. So talent plus commitment will eventually lead to achievement. So even if we have talents, we need to practise and develop them.
So we are on a progressive journey. And certainly the way we act in this life does change whatever we have. You could say this is like wealth.
We acquired some certain wealth in certain areas. And in certain, say, if somebody has a lot of wealth in a particular, maybe they have a lot of inherited a lot of wealth in maybe in industry. And they decide to go into agriculture.
And in that agriculture, they don’t have much wealth. And they have to shift everything from here to there. But there they already have infrastructure ready.
It’s a simple example. Maybe an oversimplified example. But the point is, we already have a head start in certain areas.
And we have to scrawl in other areas. So every area we put effort, we can improve, no doubt about it. But the point is how much effort and how much result.
And in general, to understand our nature, the best way to do it is to look at two things when you’re observing ourselves. What is it that we feel comfortable doing? And what is it that we are competent at? Competent doing. So guna, karma, and bhagavad-gita.
So guna and karma can be understood as comfort and competence. What is according to what the qualities if we have some example, then we feel comfortable doing that. And if we have the karma, that means we are competent at doing it.
So if you’re already comfortable and competent at doing something, then we do it more and we rise from competence to excellence. We rise from comfort to joy, sheer joy. That’s how we progress in this life.
Does that answer your question? Yeah, thank you, Prabhuji. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay.
So let’s move on to chapter two now. Chapter four, rather. I think here it is.
I’m starting the share screen once again. Yeah. Is the screen visible to everyone? Okay.
So now in the fourth chapter, there is an interesting diversion, which also leads to a continuation. So what happens here is that Krishna concluded the last chapter by saying that you use your knowledge and intelligence to situate yourself on the spiritual platform. And Krishna is talking using the timely to talk about the timeless.
The timely is Arjuna has to fight a war. The timeless is the overall nature of reality. And how things are to work according to that overall structure of reality.
So then here Krishna has said that everybody has to play their part. And while playing their part, there is a destructive desire that deviates them. So then there is with spiritual knowledge, if one situates oneself on the spiritual level, then they can go beyond the pull of destructive desires.
So that knowledge Krishna says is co-eternal with creation. Right from the beginning of history, Krishna says in the fourth chapter that I have given this knowledge in the past. So just as the sun gives light.
So Krishna says, I give the light of knowledge to everyone, including the celestial beings, those who are considered godly. Then when Krishna speaks this, that this is how this knowledge has been passed down in disciplic succession. Suddenly Arjuna says, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You are just about my contemporary. How could you give this knowledge at the beginning of creation? So now that’s the first time in the Bhagavad Gita that Krishna explicitly says that he is, he is God. And these are the famous verses where Krishna says that he descends to this world.
So now question might come. Does Arjuna know that Krishna is God or he doesn’t know? The point is that Arjuna is at that point bewildered and he’s asking questions from not from the point of his devotional relationship with Krishna, but from the point of view of understanding what is Dharma. So, so then Krishna talks about how he descends for the purpose of providing knowledge.
And 1 to 15 talks about what is the nature of the knowledge, that knowledge is what liberates us. That will be repeated again in the later part of the chapter also. And there are many interesting sections over here, a subsections within this 1 to 15, where Krishna says that the ultimate purpose.
So the divine descends so that humans can ascend. So humans can ascend means we can rise from material consciousness to spiritual consciousness. We can rise to a transcendence.
So for doing that, how exactly will that happen? We have to acquire knowledge. So Krishna comes to give that knowledge and he says many in the past have acquired this knowledge and they have become elevated and liberated. So you also Arjuna, learn this knowledge and live accordingly.
So what is this knowledge? This knowledge is the knowledge of essentially how to act without getting entangled, how to act so that one can get liberated. So that is the section from 16 to 24. What happens is that the Bhagavad Gita’s flow is involving many concepts, which were understood and known to Arjuna.
And they are not known to us because we live in a different cultural context. So that’s why if you just read the Bhagavad Gita in an unguided way, that means ourselves read it. Sometimes we just get overwhelmed by the many concepts over there and the basic flow of thought might be lost.
So here I’m trying to focus on the core flow of thought. Our core flow of thought is that we all have to act in the world. So what is the way to act? What is the best way to act? How can we act in a way that brings maximum fulfilment to us? And also brings maximum contribution, maximum achievement to the outer world.
So that is the question. So I’m focussing on that in the way I’m analysing the flow of the Gita also, focussing on that central flow. So now Krishna says that actually karma is very difficult to understand.
Now when we do a particular action, we often think that this action, action A leads to the result B. Say for example, I eat my food and then I get energy. But there are so many factors in between which also need to work. So A, if my digestion is not working, then I may eat the food but I may get no energy.
I may eat the food but A, if somehow that food has been subjected to, there’s food poisoning over there, then I might fall sick. So the point is that actually each one of us needs to move forward in our life in a way that can be progressive from where we are. And for that, you need to recognise that it’s not our action alone that leads to the result.
So sometimes we might just yell at someone and that person just silently tolerates it. And sometimes we might yell at someone and that person just makes it such a big issue that our life becomes like hell because of that. They take such offence out of it.
So which action will trigger what reaction? It is very consequential for us. And we go through life with a certain set of expectations that if I do A, B will happen. But it’s not always like that.
Life can at any moment change from order to chaos. Order means that our action produces the expected result. Chaos means that when we do a particular action and what reaction, what result comes out of it, we don’t know.
So Krishna says you have to act here. How do we act in a way that won’t increase our trouble? So that is the knowledge which he says he will give. Again, that knowledge essentially is about working with detachment.
When work doesn’t work, detachment works. That means that when we do something and the result doesn’t work, then we have to look at a bigger picture. And see that in the bigger picture, something is happening.
That although there’s no result for this immediately, but every action that I do, it contributes. A simple example. So Krishna’s repeated theme over here is work with detachment.
So I’ll give you an example. I hinted at this example in the previous class, a student works to get marks. That’s one level of result.
I study and I get the marks. But the student might also study so that I can learn the subject. Say somebody is a medical doctor and they just study to get marks and they don’t really have knowledge of the subject.
You wouldn’t want them to be treating this. So somebody can work to get the knowledge. Sometimes both of these can work together.
We work and we get the marks and we also get the master of the subject. But sometimes you may not get the marks, but still if you’re studying diligently, you will get master of the subject. Now you’re going to expand to a bigger picture also and say that if somebody studies diligently, then even if they don’t get master of the subject, they get something more than that.
They get a trained disciplined mind that can master any subject. And that is a far greater gain. So if we expand our perspective, then every action can be seen as productive within a particular context.
Sometimes we say we talk about some spiritual subject to someone, but they are not the least interested. And you feel, oh, this is just a waste. I wasted my time.
But in a bigger perspective, if you are thoughtful, we learn. This kind of, if I talk in this way, people are not convinced. So maybe I need to approach the subject from this angle.
I can approach from this angle. So if we are focussing on this simple result that this person should agree with what I’m saying, then it was a failure. But if I’m detached enough to see beyond the immediate result of a bigger picture, then I can learn something that, oh, this is not the way I should work.
This is not the way I should speak. So Krishna says that acquire that knowledge means to frame things in the bigger picture and to have some detachment from the short term from the immediate picture. When you work, you work in that way, this person will become liberated.
So he says, that if you work with detachment, then you will grow in such a way that your work will become transcendental and such working with detachment. Krishna equates with the talking of yoga. What is it earlier? That is sacrifice.
So sacrifice needs to be willing to give up our immediate interests. So that some bigger interests are resolved. So this is 16 to 24 and then 25 to 33.
Krishna talks about how does one expand one’s perspective? How does one learn to see the bigger picture? So for that, he says that there are various ways. And when we give charity, charity is one way to just give charity. So we don’t think about ourselves and our gratification and our family, but we think about people who do not have people who are less, less than us.
So, or we do austerity. Then when we do austerity fast, then what happens? Again, we develop a certain amount of perspective. Actually, I just function taking my body for granted, but the body has so many drives.
I need to learn to discipline myself from those drives. Then beyond that. So he talks about austerity.
He talks about charity. He talks about doing religious rituals. He talks about how the path of yoga, pranayama, which will be labelled further in the sixth chapter.
But overall, Krishna says that all these things you might do, they are meant to give us knowledge. And what is the knowledge? Learn to see things in a bigger perspective, or are they not just in a bigger perspective? Learn to see them in the most constructive perspective for your context. So then we don’t get overwhelmed by things.
So what does it mean to see things in the most constructive context? Say, right now, we are having this class. And suddenly you stop hearing. Then you might wonder, oh, have you accidentally muted? So then that suddenly unexpected thing that you’re not able to hear, you’re putting it in one causal box.
Okay, did I mute myself? And if you accidentally muted yourself, so you can’t hear the sound. Of course, not mute. You just turn down the sound.
So you couldn’t hear it. But then if you find that you’re not muted yourself, then you might say that, okay, is everyone else present? Is the internet there? Is the internet gone down? That’s another context. You say, is your internet there? Okay, you can see other people.
Then is the speaker’s internet there? So you could escalate this, or you could maybe say that maybe there has been an attack by some terrorists in America and the whole internet of America has crashed. And that’s why the class war cut. And that’s also possible.
But if somebody escalates it to that level, they will unnecessarily panic. That’s not that impossible. It may not be probable.
So basically we all do this that we place things in the right context. Say, if our computer is not working and you say, this computer is lousy. That’s the best expression we can come up with because we just don’t know much about the computer.
But a computer specialist comes and says, oh, actually, maybe at that time you did like this because of it. The hard drive has got damaged. Or the motherboard has got damaged.
Okay. So the more knowledge we have, the more perspectives we can have towards a situation, the more context in which we can place the situation. So Krishna essentially is expanding the perspective of Arjuna so that he sees the war, not just as he’s fighting against his cousins, his relatives for gaining a theorem.
Actually, you are working to grow in spiritual knowledge. So work with detachment. The 34 to 42, Krishna says that, okay, there are various ways to knowledge.
Which way does one follow? He says that for that, you need a personal spiritual guide, not just one guide, but many guides. And that’s where he talks about the concept of Guru. That we need to learn.
We need to have wise teachers who can guide us. And from them, we gain knowledge. When we learn from them, they teach us how to place things in the right perspective, how to place things in a way that enhances our growth.
It enhances our understanding. And Krishna says that if you learn from the right teacher, then never again, will you fall in illusion the way you have currently fallen illusion. There’ll be no more confusion.
And there’s a lot of glorification of that knowledge, which we can learn from the spiritual master. And here in 439 and 40, Krishna talks about the role of faith. He says faith is the precondition for knowledge.
In today’s world, often there is some people envision a conflict between science and religion. And this is science is based on facts. Religion is based on faith.
That’s not true because science also requires faith. When Newton saw the fruit falling, the apple falling, and then he asked what made this fruit fall. Now he had the faith.
The fruit zone was fall by chance. There is a causal mechanism. There’s a causal order to nature.
And he tried to understand the causal order. So even when we seek understanding, we have the faith that there is something worth understanding out there. So that itself requires faith.
So no knowledge can be acquired without faith. Even if we search on Google for something, we have faith that Google will give the most relevant searches. Even if some searches are not so relevant, we have faith that we will be able to find the right searches.
So faith is essential for any kind of knowledge. And similarly, Krishna says, when you are learning from a spiritual guide, at that time also faith is required. But this faith is not blind because you see whether your guides are themselves living by that knowledge.
Are they also moulding their lives spiritually? If we want to become spiritual, then we have to see whether our teachers, those who are supposed to teach spirituality, are they themselves living spiritually? If they are, then they can elevate us. And then Krishna, after glorifying all this knowledge, concludes this chapter by saying, Oh Arjuna, therefore you fight with the weapon of knowledge. This is a very significant verse.
This is 442. Krishna is saying that, Arjuna, more important than fighting the outer war is fighting the inner war. You have enemies out there and for them, you have your bow to Gandiva.
But you have enemies in here. Broadly speaking, inside us, there can be two kinds of enemies. There can be desires and there can be doubts.
Basically, inside us, we have the mind and the intelligence. I talk about this more in the 7th chapter. But the mind generally comes up with many desires.
And many of those are like destructive desires we discussed earlier. So the obstacle in the inner world that comes from the mind is desire. And we also have intelligence.
The obstacle that comes in our inner world from our intelligence is doubt. So Krishna in the previous chapter talks about how Arjuna, you need to combat self-destructive desire. And in this chapter he says you need to combat doubts also.
So how do you combat doubts? By acquiring knowledge. By using the weapon of knowledge and having faith enough to at least explore whether the knowledge makes sense. Doubt is not a bad thing.
If we are, I’ll conclude this with this example and then we move on to the next slide. That if we are driving a car, we have a brake and we have accelerator. We have a gas pedal.
So now, if we are driving in the search for knowledge, doubt is like the brake whereas that faith is the accelerator. If something doesn’t make sense, then we say, we’re going off track. Let’s break it.
Hey, wait, wait. What does this mean? So I have a doubt. Please explain.
So doubt is also important so that things make sense for us. But we also need faith. Okay, this makes sense.
I want to know what is more over there. If we don’t move the car forward, if we don’t press the accelerator, we can’t move forward. So yeah, you taught me, you told me that makes sense.
What more do you have to tell me? When I ask what more you have to tell me, I’m having faith that you have something worthwhile to tell me. So those who have only doubts, they are sceptics or even they are cynics. And those who constantly keep doubting, they are like people who use the brakes to drive their car.
Just keep pressing the brake, the car will not go anywhere. It’s similar in 440. Krishna says that those who are constantly doubting, they will get happiness neither in this world nor the next world.
This was the broad theme of knowledge and doubts. Now, faith and doubt in the pursuit of knowledge. I’ll take one theme from the section based on 411 in the Bhagavad Gita.
411 Krishna says Everyone is on my path. There are some, so this is an extraordinarily inclusive statement which Krishna is giving over here. There are some religious traditions which say that our way is the only way.
And if you’re not following our way, you’re going to go to hell. And there are extremists in such traditions who say you’re not only going to go to hell, we will help you get there faster. And that leads to fanaticism.
And it’s sectarianism and fanaticism which alienates people like nothing else in today’s world. So, Krishna in his Bhagavad Gita says that actually everybody is on the path to me. So if we consider the truth, like if we envision a roundtable conference where people are discussing the truth, then no one owns the truth table except God.
That means no tradition, no path has a monopoly on God. Actually, God makes himself accessible to different people through different traditions at different times. Again, this is a big subject, but broadly there are three terms you could have.
Exclusivism is the idea that my way is the only way. Exclusives, like somebody claims that we have exclusive rights to God. Then if you have a pendulum, exclusion is one extreme of the pendulum.
Pluralism is the other extreme. Where pluralism holds that actually everyone, so my way is the only way. That’s one thing.
The other extreme is every way is whatever way, whatever you follow, that is your way. Now, this might seem broad-minded, but certainly we want to be broad, we want to be open-minded, but we don’t want to be so open-minded that our brains fall out. If somebody is saying that my way is to kill and murder and abuse and violate and torture, can you say that that is their way? No.
So we could say here that to understand, to reconcile these two is that there is the bottom of the mountain and the top of the mountain. The bottom of the mountain is worldly or material consciousness. The top of the mountain is spiritual consciousness.
And exclusivism means that there is only one path up to the top of the mountain. Pluralism means every path will take you to the top of the mountain. But no, some paths may take you away from the mountain.
Some paths may take you deep into the valley, far, far, far away from the mountain. So, inclusivism says that there is one purpose and there can be many paths that are included in the pursuit of that purpose. So, one purpose is that we want to get to the top of the mountain.
And somebody can get up from this side, somebody can go from that side, somebody from that side, somebody from that side. So, we have to see essentially two things. If somebody is following a spiritual path, then what is the result of following a spiritual path? That they become more spiritually attached and they become less materially attached.
So, bhakti-pareeshanubhaviraktiranyatra. The Bhagavatam says that the process of spirituality such as bhakti, devotion is, it is meant to give us experience of higher reality. And that experience of higher reality is so fulfilling that we become attached to it and then we don’t become, we don’t stay so dependent on other things.
So, what is the context of this for our discussion? In this chapter, when Krishna says that I descend to give you knowledge. So, Krishna says that actually I descend in various ways. I, the process of gaining knowledge is not one, reduced, restricted to one tradition.
Prabhupada in this context would say that when people would ask him about Jesus, he would say that Jesus is son of God. And he would say Jesus is our Guru because somebody can give up, somebody can give up their life for the sake of God and they have enormous love of God and somebody has that much love of God, then they are our teacher. So, this is the mood of inclusions of the Bhagavad Gita.
The Bhagavad Gita gives us a overall map of the spiritual territory and then within that we can place various paths and pursue the path, pursue a path that works best for us accordingly. So, this is an overview of the fourth chapter. Any questions about this till now? Okay, Rajneesh.
Okay, was this an earlier comment? Rajneesh, do you have a question earlier? I saw you, I didn’t notice it. Yes, please. Yeah, Hare Krishna Prabhu.
Thank you. In this fourth chapter, you talk about knowledge. So, knowledge is like, like, we need to understand, like, self-realisation, that whatever we do, like, first we know, like, who we are and by, you know, performing the Bhakti Yoga, our ultimate goal is to achieve Krishna frame.
So, this is the knowledge you are talking about, like how we can keep Krishna in centre and how we can enhance in our devotional path. Okay. So, what is the knowledge that we are talking about here? The Bhagavad Gita has its own flow going on.
So, right now, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna has not talked till now about Bhakti directly. Primarily, he’s talking about Karma Yoga and he’s talking about here about the knowledge that will enable us to do Karma Yoga. So, there is Gyan Yoga is also another path, the path of knowledge.
But we shouldn’t confuse Gyan with Gyan Yoga. Gyan is required for any path of Yoga. Gyan is generally knowledge.
Similarly, somebody is doing Ashtanga Yoga, which is basically yoga meditations, pranayama, postures, that also requires knowledge. If somebody is going to practise Bhakti Yoga, that also requires knowledge. So, Krishna is here talking basically about the knowledge by which one can expand one’s perspective of reality.
So, one can understand that actually, so Arjuna is thinking, if I fight this war, whether I win or I lose, it’s a bad situation. So, Krishna is telling Arjuna, this war is not just about his immediate result. There’s a bigger perspective.
You are a soul and they are also souls and all of you are on a journey of spiritual evolution and you have to act in a way that furthers your spiritual evolution. Now, while furthering your spiritual evolution, sometimes material things will also work to your satisfaction. That’s what the full effect does.
But sometimes they may not work to your satisfaction. When they don’t work to your satisfaction, don’t become disheartened by that. Continue your work.
So, yes, this knowledge will culminate in devotion to Krishna. But that doesn’t mean that that is all the Bhagavad Gita is talking about. The Bhagavad Gita is gradually expanding the perspective.
So, you could say, Arjuna’s focus is on the body and the material reality. From there, Krishna first brings his focus to the soul and spiritual reality, to the spiritual soul’s journey. Then from that, Krishna will bring this focus from soul to the Supreme Soul, to God, Krishna.
And then, how one can progress toward Krishna. That progression will happen here. Krishna is talking primarily about knowledge, which will help one to work with detachment.
Yeah, I got it. Thanks. Thanks, Praveen.
Any other questions? Okay. So, we’ll move on to the third chapter now. Sorry, the third chapter of today’s class, that is the fifth chapter.
This is chapter 5. Chapter 5 has 29 verses. And in this, it’s interesting that there are some chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, which are very similar or parallel to each other. Chapter 3 and 5 are like that.
Chapter 7 and 9 are also like that. So, chapter 5 also begins with Arjuna asking a similar question as chapter 3. Krishna, do you want me to fight or do you not want me to fight? Because why in the fourth chapter ended Krishna telling Arjuna, use the weapon of knowledge to fight the doubts within you. So now that seems to be like a very much of inner work.
But then do I, if I’m fighting this inner war, do I also have to fight the outer war or no? That’s the question which he has. So then Krishna says that actually renouncing and working both are good. Now here, Krishna is focussing on the point that even if you are, even if you are renounced enough to follow the path of renunciation, which has going out to jungle and everything.
He says renunciation in action is better than renunciation of action. Renunciation in action means we act with the mood of renunciation. And that is better.
Why is that better? Because the body and mind are by nature active and it is much easier to go along with the body and mind and act rather than to silence them completely. And then Krishna says, then after talking about this, that it’s better to work with the mood of renunciation and rather than to renounce work. Then he goes deeper.
7 to 16 is a very interesting concept. He says what entangles is not our action but our conception. With what conception are we acting? That is what will determine whether whether somebody is going to be bound or somebody not going to be bound.
Sorry about that. Okay. So what is the conception that binds? What is the conception that liberates? Krishna says that when we act, there are various factors involved in that action.
Say if a person commits a crime, then the person commits the crime, then the police arrest that person and then the judge sentences that person and the person goes to the jail. So now in this case, you could say, why did the person go to the jail? You could say it was because the judge sentenced the person. You could say it was because the police arrested the person.
You could say it is because the person committed a crime. Now, which of these is true? Actually, it is all three are true. Suppose the person commits a crime, but the police don’t arrest.
Then the person will not go to jail. Somehow, that person has got very good law attorneys and then the judge doesn’t convict that person. Again, that person won’t go to jail.
So when a particular result comes, there are multiple factors involved which lead to the result coming about. Now, this is of course a negative example. But the point is, we might say that if you do wrong, if somebody commits a crime, they should go to jail.
But just the crime alone doesn’t lead to the jail. The crime sets off the chain of events that will lead to the person going into the jail. And sometimes the set of events may not happen immediately.
See, sometimes some person commits a crime and then they get away with it. And then they commit a bigger crime and they commit a bigger crime. And they keep committing crimes for so long that eventually their crime list becomes like a like a big file and sometimes covers cupboards in the police department or wherever.
And then if they are caught, they will be severely punished. Sometimes, in that sense, the worst thing that can happen for a person who does something wrong is to not get the consequences of their wrong action. Because that may encourage them to keep doing more and more wrong things.
But the point is, because the action alone doesn’t produce the result, there is the action and there is the police who are arrested and then there is the judgement sentences. So broadly speaking, Krishna says that there are three factors, many factors, but three categories of factors we could say. You could call this in Sanskrit as three Js.
There is the Jiva, there is the Jagat and there is the Jagdish. So there is soul, there is material nature and there is God, the Supreme. So the soul is the doer of all actions.
The soul is the doer of all actions or we in the sense that right now I am speaking. So I desire to speak and in that sense, I am the doer. But suppose I get a sore throat.
I get ulcer in my mouth and that makes it so painful for me to speak that I can’t speak. Then although I am the desirer, I cannot be the doer. So leave alone the result of say if I want to speak on the Bhagavad Gita and help all of you to gain a better understanding of the Gita.
That is one result I seek by my speaking. But the first result of my speaking is that I should be able to speak in a coherent way. But if I can’t even produce a sound, then none of the subsequent results are going to come.
So in my activity of speaking right now, I am the desirer. I desire to speak and after I desire to speak, it is material nature which executes the desire just like in that example of the criminal, the wrongdoer, the soul, the police is like material nature and the supreme is the judge. Similarly, in this case, I am desiring to speak.
So I am the soul. I am the desirer and in the sense of being the desirer, I am the doer. But whether what I desire happens or not that is dependent on factors beyond me.
So if I act and then my body doesn’t cooperate, my words won’t come out also. But even if my body cooperates and I am able to speak, but within each one of our hearts, God, Krishna is present and it is ultimately He who helps us understand things if we want to understand them. So Srila Prabhupada, when he went to America, or came to America to speak on spiritual wisdom, bhakti wisdom, he prays, O Krishna, please make my words understandable to my audience.
He’s not thinking that just it’s my expertise in speaking that will make it understandable. Krishna in the hearts will make them understandable. So basically there is the higher authority of Krishna determines whether our actions lead to the desired results or not.
So in every action we could say the soul desires, the soul desires and the super soul sanctions and then material nature executes. And that’s how things happen. So now if we have a proper conception of things, that means if I understand that I am one part of a whole network through which the action produces the result, not that my action is the sole cause of the result.
And if I am acting harmoniously with the purpose of the network, that means let’s consider a student, sorry, a teacher who is a part of a university or a school and then the teacher teaches as well as they can and then they will get their salary. Now some students may be very diligent and they learn and they flourish academically and some students are very inattentive and they languish. So of course the teacher wants that all the students should do well but the teacher understands I am speaking on behalf of the school and the teacher’s remuneration doesn’t come directly from the student.
It comes from the school. So if the teacher if we understand that we are a part of a whole and we are acting on behalf of the whole then our actions, they are not selfishly motivated for our gain alone then they won’t entangle us. That’s the point of the conception Krishna says about it.
So we need a spiritual conception of life. So when we have a spiritual conception of life and a spiritual conception of happiness then that conception liberates us. Now what does spiritual conception of happiness mean? We all have our own conceptions of happiness.
Some people might think that eating my favourite dessert that’s happiness. Somebody might think that watching my favourite sports game that’s happiness. Somebody might say that hanging around with my friends that’s happiness.
So whatever it is that we think is happiness that’s okay but that happiness may not be what is going to give us lasting happiness. That may be something which gives us only temporary happiness. So Krishna says that there is outer sensory pleasure which is temporary which often leads to trouble and to the extent we seek pleasure at the material level we stay entangled because if we want material pleasure then we have to stay in material consciousness.
Our level of desires directs our consciousness. Say somebody cooking in a kitchen and the cook is attached to eating food then the cook will constantly be concerned as soon as the food is ready I want to eat it and is anybody else eating it? The cook is attached to eating food and the cook can’t cook the food basically. They cook for more than themselves they cook as a part of maybe a restaurant or some bigger event, bigger entity.
So the cook is instead thinking of the pleasure of feeding others or bringing a smile on people’s face when they get to put food to eat then the cook can cook. So based on that our consciousness stays where our conception of pleasure primarily is. Sometimes some people are talking before food but their joy is not in talking they are looking for food and they are half distracted.
So even if some very stimulating conversation is going on they are not interested or they can’t focus. So if we want to grow spiritually we need to develop a spiritual conception of happiness. If you remember what is the overall point we are discussing over here Krishna has been asked to Arjuna how should I act? So should I work or should I renounce? Krishna says work with renunciation.
Now what does work with renunciation mean? He says that working with the right conception the right conception is that be renounced from the idea that your action alone will produce the result. That your action is a part of a bigger network and just play your part in that network. But then when can we look at that bigger network when we are not too obsessed or attached to the result.
So Krishna is saying that if you want to become elevated and liberated we have to develop a spiritual conception of life and a spiritual conception of happiness. So spiritual conception of happiness means that beyond the things or the sense objects in the world that might give me pleasure there is higher pleasure available if I turn toward higher spiritual reality. And Krishna says the happiness over there will be akshayam imperishable.
Sukham akshayam ashrite in 525. Now Prabhupada gives a simple definition of materialist and spiritualist. He says that materialists are those who seek pleasure externally.
Spiritualists are those who seek pleasure internally. After talking about this Krishna says there is one outlines one path to liberation in 27-28 and that is the path of ashrama yoga sitting in yoga meditation and that will be discussed in the 6th chapter elaborately. But then after that in the 29th the concluding verse of this chapter is that it gives a liberating conception of the divine.
I earlier mentioned that Krishna first shifting Arjuna’s focus from the body to the soul and then from the soul to the whole. So now this is this last verse is where he is talking about the whole. And what does he mean when he talks about the whole? He says that that ultimate reality is benevolent that we if we want to be peacefully playing our part in the world we start losing our peace when either what we want we don’t get or what we don’t want we get.
So sometimes we get resentful. Why are things working out this way? So Krishna says if you understand the nature of reality that reality is ultimately it may not be good to us but it will be good for us. That means sometimes bad things will happen but ultimately they will be for our good.
So if we are concerned only with our pleasure instead of the pleasure of the whole pleasure of the divine pleasure of God. If we think that reality should be structured for our pleasure we will be frustrated. But if we see that we are all meant to be a part of the whole and contribute to the pleasure of the whole then we will find that we can act in a way to be peaceful.
And reality the nature of reality the nature of the absolute truth will be such that we will find it is benevolent for us. So in this verse Krishna is pointing towards devotion which is what he will talk about from chapter 7 onwards. 7 to 12 is the Bhakti section of the Bhagavad Gita which will come in new course.
So basically in this chapter Krishna has given hints of what he is going to give in future. It’s like if you have a structured course going on then or if you have a TV serial going on at the end of one episode towards the end of the episode what is going to come in the next episode is told. So as to get people back for those episodes.
So Krishna is giving what is going to come in the future chapters in this last section. So I will take one concept from the 5th chapter. We will talk about how to act in the right way so that you don’t become entangled.
So Krishna says that the spiritualists have an equal vision. Nowadays is the age of egalitarianism. We are very much against discrimination, racial discrimination or gender discrimination or any kind of discrimination.
So the Bhagavad Gita takes this far beyond human beings to include all living beings. Equality should not just be expended to human beings. That is called a speciesism that our human species is somehow unique.
But no, all living beings are spiritual. Of course we human beings have a greater opportunity to pursue our spirituality because our consciousness is developed. But 518 basically is a verse which says that those who are in spiritual knowledge they see humans as well as animals like cows or dogs or animals everybody they see all of them equally.
So now many people today say that we want to be spiritual but not religious as BNR as they call it. And one reason why people are put off by religion is because religion often seems to make people very it makes them very sectarian and places them in a hierarchy. Okay, I am the I am the chosen one and all of you have to subordinate yourself to me.
So that kind of hierarchy of purity is there. I am higher, you are lower. Then sometimes people start becoming condescending towards others.
And that alienates people. those who are spiritualists now for functioning in any place, hierarchy is required. Say for example if you want to cook food and there are 5 people over there now if all of them say we have equal rights to cook that’s fine.
You can claim equal rights but if one of them knows better than everyone else how to cook then let that person lead the cooking and everybody will get food by that. So if a hierarchy is based on competence then that is good. If a hierarchy is based on exploitation then that is bad.
So hierarchies are required for functioning in the world. But a spiritual vision doesn’t make the hierarchy the dominant reality. It sees the equality essentially and accepts the hierarchy functionally.
That means the Bhagavad Gita acknowledges that every one of us is a soul and as a soul every one of us is equal. But also functionally people are of different kinds. There are people who are intellectual, there are people who are administrators there are people who are of a business orientation, there are people who are artisans and everybody needs to be functionally engaged in the same way.
If we want to discuss and if we want to understand a complex philosophical idea the opinion of a Brahmana and the opinion of a Shudra will not have the same value. Practically if we ask a person who is in a science first grade about what is your opinion of Einstein in physics you can’t say that everything is equal over there. Every person who is a first level student and a PhD scientist can’t be said to be equal.
So for functioning hierarchy is required. So the Bhagavad Gita acknowledges the need for hierarchy but stresses the equality. Some people they become ritualist and they stress the hierarchy so much that the equality is completely removed.
And that’s what has unfortunately happened with respect to India in the caste system. In the caste system the hierarchy was so much elevated that the equality was almost non-existent or in the awareness of the equal spiritual potential of everyone was lost completely and that’s how the caste system became very discriminatory. So it’s ironical that the same tradition that gave a philosophical vision of equality and universality for all living beings, not just all human beings that same tradition because of the neglect of the knowledge because of the ritualization that same tradition has also given rise to one of the most oppressive hierarchical systems and social systems in the world.
So some people they equate Indian culture and Indian religion, say Hindu religion with the caste system. But the Bhagavad Gita it is not talking at all about the discriminatory caste system that is here. The spiritual vision is that we see people equally in terms of the equal spiritual potential and then functionally we act in a way that is appropriate for them and appropriate for us.
So to stay disentangled we need to act in a way which is appropriate both from a material and a spiritual perspective. So Krishna says that if we want to act then we have to have the spiritual knowledge in our awareness. We see the material reality functionally but we see the spiritual reality also as a machine.
And that’s how the Bhagavad Gita is actually a book which is a universal book and it’s not only the wisdom universal its vision of reality is also very universal and all-encompassing. So I’ll summarise what I spoke today. I spoke on the theme of how the third, fourth and fifth chapters the third chapter is essentially about the flow should Arjuna act or not act.
Krishna like a photo being taken from different perspectives to show how fully Krishna says why you should work from different perspectives work to maintain your own individual order, your bodily health maintain social order work to maintain cosmic order by sacrificing work to set examples so that others also do their social roles work so that others grow spiritually gradually and then he also talked about if we are all meant to do our duty what pulls us away? That is self-destructive desires like lust. And then I focused on this one theme of how sculptors can change the shape of the stone not its structure. We all have to work according to our nature and I talked in the fourth chapter about how Krishna is now giving Arjuna the knowledge by which he can do work we can work with detachment.
So Krishna himself descends to give this knowledge and this is the knowledge of how to act in a way that we don’t become entangled but rise toward liberation and that is placing our actions in the right context and then we talked about the various ways of gaining knowledge and what is the result of knowledge? It liberates and therefore Arjuna should fight against the doubts within the weapon of knowledge the fifth chapter was Arjuna asking exactly should I fight or should I not fight? Krishna goes deeper and he says that renunciation in work is what is desirable and then he says what entangles is our conception so I discussed various conceptions with which I am saying a person might function and a spiritual conception of life requires a spiritual conception of happiness and in the Bhagavad Gita talks about how one way to liberation is through yoga and ultimately it is culminating in bhakti yoga and we discussed this theme of how we need to acknowledge hierarchy functionally and focus on equality essentially so is there any one question that anyone has? so we are just on time so we will finish today and if some of you have asked some of you have so if you have any questions you can please send on whatsapp also later and we will answer them so thank you very much for your participation Hare Krishna Thank you Hare Krishna Thank you Hare Krishna Hare Krishna