Gita 08.13 – Cherish remembrance of Krishna to relish the fruit of meditation

Thank you so here 8.13 in the bhagavad gita Krishna is talking about how ashtang yoga culminates in bhakti yoga in order to lead to success he is describing the process by which people or more specifically ashtang yogis meditate and attain perfection so the previous verses talked about how one should shut out all the senses and come to the stage of pratyahara, sarva-dharana, sanyamya, manodhini, rudhyaccha now in this verse it is described once one has shut out the outer senses then what is the next thing to be done? then one needs to focus on transcendence so om mitti om is an extremely powerful sound which is universally treasured as a means for elevating consciousness it is universally treasured by both personalists and impersonalists now the yogis and the impersonalists may not know about the personal absolute and the mayavadis who want to avoid the personal absolute they usually focus only on om before their chanting so here Krishna is telling that yes, chant om ma manusmaran ma manusmaran so the important thing is ma manusmaran so while chanting the om one has to also get some sort of conception one has to think of something, ok the om sound is coming in but along with that the yogis in order to be successful to attain the supreme destiny they need to be also remembering Krishna so now Krishna has told earlier in the fifth verse of this chapter that if you remember him at the time of death you will attain him so now if Krishna has already said that by remembering him we will come to him then here we wonder why does one have to go through the process of practicing brahmacharya, shutting out the senses reciting om and then remembering yes, this is the process for people who are not bhaktas and who do not have that much faith in the process of bhakti by which they think that bhakti will provide adequate preparation for remembering Krishna at the time of death but actually bhakti gives the supreme empowerment supreme blessing and one doesn't need anything more if one is practicing bhakti so therefore in fact and the important thing is that even if one is practicing something else one has to practice bhakti in order to attain success so other parts are not necessary for bhakti but bhakti is necessary for other parts and in this way it is the element of bhakti that eventually leads to success so the serious thinker thinks the intelligent thinker thinks, the intelligent seeker thinks that if at all I have to ultimately remember Krishna then why not start with that right from the beginning and then Krishna says that if somebody can do that then such a person will comparatively speaking attain me with much greater ease and that is the theme of the next verse ananya cheta sadatam yo mam smarati nityasyam visyaham sulabhaham ityuktasy yoginaham sudasyaham sulabhaham so if instead of going through the whole elaborate process of the initially washed down yoga, if from the initial stage only one starts fixing the mind on Krishna then one will attain him relatively speaking sulabhaham much more easily and we have that sulabhaham process when we are trying to chant the holy names we don't know to starve ourselves painfully we don't have to do any extremist austerities but if we just keep serving Krishna without letting temptations and tribulations distract us then we can now march towards supreme perfection and that ultimately is what is demonstrated through the life of the Pandavas the great devotees no doubt there are different versions of the Ramayana where different pastors have talked about but the essential core to me is the same within that essential core the teachings of Yudhisthira extremely valuable.