Gita 08.19 – Recognizing our lack of control over the destructible material imples us to direct our consciousness to the eternal spiritual
Bhagavad Gita 8.19 bhutagramah saivayam bhutva bhutva praliyate ratriyagame avasah partha prabhavatyah ragame here Krishna is giving the summary of what he has told in the previous two verses with a conclusion bhutagramah saivayam bhutagramah means the cumulative of all of material existence saivayam certainly all this bhutva bhutva praliyate bhutva bhutva it is manifested again it is destroyed again the word bhutva bhutva conveys the its alliterative word bhutva bhutva bhutva means to come into being nayam bhutva bhavita vanabhuyah ajo nityasyasatoyam puranon hanyate hanyamane sharire so in 2.20 Krishna talks about the atma as nayam bhutva it does not come into being so here the world comes into being bhutva bhutva praliyate so this temporariness of the world is an important reality that needs to be considered for redirecting or for getting the intellectual impetus to redirect our consciousness towards the eternal towards Krishna and his abode when we are staying in a house if we have a rented house we know that we will have to leave that house whenever the owner wants even if there is a contract the contract is not going to be permanent and so whenever a family has a rented house one of their main goals is to get a permanent house similarly when we understand this world is temporary the intelligent person starts looking where is the eternal abode bhutva bhutva praliyate again and again it will be created and it will be destroyed bhutagramaha so by using the word gramaha which means the sum total the accumulated accumulated aggregate of material existence Krishna stresses here that nothing is going to last forever everything is going to be destroyed again and again and one more word he uses next rathriyagame avashyaha partha avashyaha helplessly so we sometimes recognize our helplessness against the power of material nature for example when there are storms when there are tornadoes or hurricanes or cyclones or tsunamis even with our huge technological power human power has been enhanced substantially now through technological power but even with this enhanced technological power still what all we can do is limited we can predict when the disasters are coming and we can withdraw people and that is indeed our responsibility to do but beyond that we are avashyaha so the bhagavatam gives another example of avashyaha to talk about how we are moved by time just like the wind moves the clouds and the clouds seem large, visible, tangible whereas wind doesn't seem to be very tangible it's practically invisible it's tangible in the sense that we can feel the wind on our body when it starts blowing but usually unless it's a storm it's not immediately tangible it's subtler but it's stronger so just as the subtler but stronger wind moves the much bigger clouds or at least bigger in terms of how they are visible to us similarly all living beings are moved helplessly by the force of time towards destruction towards death and we can't do anything to stop it we cannot stop or even slow the push of time with every passing moment we are being pushed inexorably closer and closer to destruction what is destruction? avashyaha krishna has used this word avashyaha, similar word nahi kashchid kshanapi jatati sthitya karma karyate ya avashyaha karma sarva prakriti jaya bunai in third chapter when he talks about how inactivity alone doesn't lead to perfection then he talks about how inactivity is actually not possible also for us because he says that sarva prakriti jaya bunai by the modes born of material nature we are forced to act we cannot be inactive nahi kashchid kshanapi jatati sthitya karma karyate akarma karyate without doing any activity we cannot be situated for kshanapi for even a moment karyate ya avashyaha karma avashyaha we are helplessly forced to do action of course you may say I can physically sit and be inactive sometimes people take mauna vrata but even when even when our tongue is on a mauna vrata it's almost impossible to make our mind go on a mauna vrata our mind is actually wandering rapidly passing comments oh this is like this that is like that and we are in that sense doing something in fact the mind is doing not just something but a lot of things all the time even when we are sleeping the mind is dreaming sometimes we remember dreams sometimes we don't but the mind makes us do a lot of things even at that time going further we can consider how the mind also how in this verse it is said that it is not just we we may think that and it is true that as compared to the vastness of material existence we are such tiny living beings even the earth itself is so huge as compared to what we are and and the earth is just one small part of the universe and the universe is just one among countless millions of universes and all of them are under the control of material nature all of them are helpless to resist this cyclicity of time wherein wherein everything is pushed towards destruction and nothing can be done to avoid that destruction so to the extent we understand this avasya so if the word avasya is used vasya means to be under the control avasya krishna used the word vasya earlier krishna said the word control your senses but here the word vasya means control avasya means with no control we just can't do anything about the forceful movement of material things towards their inevitable destruction and recognizing this doesn't mean that we are helpless it simply means that we need to shift our focus to that which is in our control trying to make the perishable eternal trying to make the temporary permanent is an impossible task and when we recognize how everything is inescapably temporary then we can get the intellectual impetus to shift our consciousness towards that which is eternal and we use whatever capacity we have, whatever initiative we have, whatever resourcefulness we have to create for ourselves a shelter in the spiritual realm instead of mainly trying to create a shelter in the destructible material realm we feel inspired to take to create a shelter for ourselves in the spiritual realm and that spiritual realm which beckons us with the opportunity for eternal shelter will be talked about by Krishna in the next three verses 8.20 to 22 which we will discuss in our future talks Thank you.