Gita 07.29 – Detect misery to correct it
Thank you Bhagavad Gita 7.29 This is the second last verse of the seventh chapter Krishna is speaking and he says here jara marana mokshaya that mokshaya doting liberation from what? jara marana from old age and from death mokshaya mamashritya they take shelter of yathanti ye they endeavor so desiring liberation from old age and death they want to take shelter of me and renounce te brahma tadvidu krishnam te brahma tadvidu krishnam they know brahma adhyatma karma chakhinam and they know adhyatma karma so Krishna has dropped two terms over here brahma and adhyatma along with karma also although karma has been used frequently many times but this context seems unfamiliar and this will lead to Arjuna's questions in the next chapter so here Krishna is speaking and he is stating that earlier he talked about four categories of people who come to surrender to him in 7.16 he stated that there are four kinds of people who surrender to him they are distressed inquisitive seekers of wealth and the knowledgeable so here Krishna talks about some other people who approach him and these can be put in another four categories or they can be considered a fifth category these people have knowledge they have knowledge of the miseries of material existence Krishna will talk later in the 13th chapter when he gives the characteristics of knowledge from 13.8 to 12 at that time he will say that to be able to systematically see that both old age disease and death are miseries this characterizes those who are in knowledge and the capacity to see thus enables them to go beyond misery by first of all recognizing misery just as a disease needs to be first diagnosed before it can be treated and quite often if the disease is not diagnosed in time best is if it is diagnosed early then it has not yet become malevolent and it can be countered and cured also especially we know about cancer if the cancer is detected at an advanced stage then it becomes very difficult to cure the cancer but if it is detected at an early enough stage then treatment is much easier relatively speaking and cure is far more probable so just as often cancers are subtle and they are basically normal cells that are growing disproportionately and what might just appear as a small small knot somewhere in the body that grows into tumor and then it's found out that the tumor is cancerous so early detection is the key like that we are all suffering in the miseries of material existence and there are phases in our life when we may be relatively speaking in a comfortable position and when we are thus situated comfortably the normal human tendency is to assume that this comfortable situation will go on constantly and based on that assumption that things will go on comfortably we fail to recognize that we are moving on the path to disaster just like someone is riding fast on a road that actually ends in a fall from a cliff the road, there is no road actually it just goes straight to a cliff and then falls off the cliff so if person is going fast and is gaining further momentum and more and more momentum then the earlier that person recognizes the dangerous situation then that person can correct and can apply a brake and stop oneself similarly while living in material existence we are all moving towards old age, disease and death and as we move thus towards old age, disease and death the momentum, the tempo that we acquire is actually the tempo of our own attachments our worldly desires and this tempo prevents us from slowing down the more we indulge, the more our attachments become stronger and the more feverishly we pursue bodily gratification and with the bodily gratification that we pursue we are tying ourselves more and more to the body, it is as if we are tying ourselves to a road to a vehicle that is going to fall off a cliff the earlier we can recognize the way we will stop tying ourselves thus and thus we will be able to come out of it we will be able to come out of the vehicle before it falls off similarly when you understand that old age, disease and death are inevitable and they are imminent inevitable means they cannot be stopped and imminent means they are soon going to come, so when we recognize this then some some people may say oh these are just they are going to happen to everyone why bother about them at all but the problem is that the assumption that they are going to happen to everyone implies that there is nothing that anyone can do about them but if you understand our spiritual identity if you understand that we are souls who can raise ourselves above the bodily consciousness to spiritual consciousness and by raising ourselves thus we can go beyond the bodily conception of life and thus although the body will be destroyed if we are not attached to the body then we will not suffer the miseries that the body undergoes death and destruction are events that happen to the body but for us as souls that destruction will primarily be a transition from this body to another body and for that death to seem not as a destruction but a transition we need to have the higher wisdom and we need to have our consciousness invested in some higher reality so the wise people understand that God Krishna is the highest spiritual reality and if we can invest our consciousness in him then we will be able to go beyond the miseries of material existence that we will actually attain liberation from old age and death sometimes when a set is given at that time just even if one or two or three members of that set are mentioned the fourth is implicit so so for example in the start of the brahma samhita it is janma is mentioned the other things are understood that creation maintenance destruction so we just saw if your sushti is maintained sthiti and pralaya are included so like that here jara and marada are mentioned and janma and vyadi are included so those who understand that material miseries are eminent inevitable they seriously strive to devote themselves to Krishna and thereby raise their consciousness above the material level and they come to know they understand spiritual reality and they spiritualize their activity thank you.