Gita 01.37 – Greed gives us a tunnel vision of reality

Thank you so here Arjuna is continuing his reasoning about why we should not fight the war so previously he has said that what will we gain if we lose all our relatives and to the obvious question that if you don't fight you will lose your very life so he has said that actually even if they kill me still it is better that I don't kill them that now I should not kill them that's what he was going to say but then the question will come that they will kill me so he is saying yes they may act according to that layer because they are blinded by greed but I am not we should not be blinded that is the point which he is making in Bhagavad Gita 1.37 and Bhagavad Gita 1.38 these people are not able to see because of greed their consciousness has been taken away abducted so the destruction of the dynasty the fault the grievous wrong in destroying the dynasty they are not able to see and is extreme sinful activity which will bring severe reactions Mitra Drohe Droha actually means rebellion or betrayal so conflict among friends which involves betrayal of friends which involves fighting amongst friends so this is a great fault this is Dosham so but unfortunately this fault of so there is fighting between relatives who is going to destroy the dynasty and there is fighting among friends also so virtuous person a dharmic person is meant to stand by the side of relatives and stand by the side of friends but here because there is because there is the abduction of the consciousness by greed what is happening is that one is losing out that one is not able to see what is right and what is wrong and they are ready to fight and kill so Arjuna will say in the next verse they may be blinded but we don't have to be blinded like this so the point is greed normally is the word greed may be considered to be negative but the current culture is such that the the word greed may not be glamorized but the idea of greed is quite positively depicted and glamorized where consumerism involves possessing more and more and enjoying more and more, controlling more and more now whenever attention goes to one thing attention goes away from another thing so so greed causes our attention to focus on the things about which we are greedy about the objects of our greed and that causes us to become blind to other things just as to take a very unfortunate distasteful distressing example when a man when a person becomes very lusty and wants to physically violate a woman so at that time the attention goes only to the treating the person treating the woman as a object for gratification of one's lust and then one doesn't even think that the woman is a per..leave alone thinking that it's a sinful activity it's a grievously sinful activity far from that one doesn't even think that the other person the woman is a person and has her own free will, has her own desires and one cannot one cannot exploit a person like it's an insentient object but because lust has reduced one's consciousness so that one sees only the bodily form that will offer gratification so when attention goes to that thing then attention goes away from other things other things are the sinfulness activity, the culpability of the activity and the violation of the freedom of the other person and the fact that the other person is a person with it's not just an object, it's a person with free will and with personality all that is lost similarly so Duryodhana was so greedy, his attention was focused only on his his perverse ambition of getting the kingdom and in the pursuit of that ambition nothing else mattered to him so that he could get his own brothers, actually they were his cousins but they were like brothers in one sense that he could dispossess them make them penniless and send them to the forest to live like beggars that he could dare to dishonor their wife and try to strip her in public, something which is not done even to even to women of the night they are also meant to be paid for their services and they are also to be offered some basic human respect the kind of treatment that was attempted to be meted to Draupadi was something which in respectable courts would not be done even to prostitutes so why did he do all this? because his vision was so captured by greed that he had become blinded to everything else and now also Arjuna is saying that that the Kauravas are not seeing that oh we will be killing our relatives, we will be killing our friends and so they are blinded and they are not able to see and that is why they are doing such a grievous thing but his point is we are not blinded and we should not be doing such things that he will talk about in the next verse and he will continue his discussion in a series of subsequent verses but we can consider and contemplate gravely the the grievous blinding of consciousness that happens because of the anarthas that the anarthas give us a dangerously narrow tunnel vision of reality so tunnel vision means that one can see only that which is seen in the direction of the tunnel and everything else is dark just like when a person is in a tunnel then the tunnel makes everything else dark and only the pathway along pathway of the tunnel is seen similarly the anarthas so to have a tunnel vision of things means to see only one way to see only one thing and to see nothing else so the anarthas shrink our consciousness and give us a tunnel vision of reality so those who are greedy like the Kauravas were they can't think about their spiritual well being they can't think about spiritual liberation or spiritual elevation or spiritual happiness they can't even think of ethical moral considerations although they may offer some good service to them by giving some charity or doing some rituals and they do that especially because that will make them more powerful and will make their schemes for greed, schemes of pantry to greed more successful so the if within the tunnel vision of greed religion comes in as a section of religion a segment of the religious circle comes in within the tunnel vision of greed then even that segment of religion will be accepted but everything else will be rejected so if doing some religious ritual could boost the prestige and power of Duryodhana, Duryodhana would do that but if religion required him to surrender to the supreme lord Vishnu who had manifested as Krishna during his times then he Duryodhana had no patience, no time for such a religion so this tunnel vision which the Anartha subject us to becomes the cause of the soul's destruction the soul gets so terribly covered that it may take many lifetimes before the soul again sees the light of the human form and hopes to, can hope to find a way out of the tunnel vision and although that prospect is sobering what is enlivening is the reality that the tunnel vision cannot be imposed on us if we don't want it the scriptures offer us a holistic vision, not a tunnel vision and the more we study scripture, the more we associate with those who are learned in scripture, those who are living according to scripture, then we break free from the tunnel vision there is no or but there is there is actually we could say at the highest level that we see everything in connection with Krishna and because Krishna is actually connected with everything everything is his energy, that perception of the connection of everything with Krishna brings us the supreme satisfaction and takes us out of illusion towards the ultimate reality life eternal with Krishna thank you.