Gita 10.04 – Krishna offers the good beyond the bad and the good

Bhagavad Gita 10.4 Krishna speaks buddhir jnanam sammoham so actually this 4th and 5th verses are together and these are a list of qualities which Krishna says come from him so in the next verse he will say all these different natures all those qualities which signify different dispositions they all, their variety come from me so here he gives a list and that we will focus on the list and we will talk about their origination from Krishna more in the next verse 10.5, let's focus on 10.4 here Krishna speaks here that that knowledge, buddhi is actually intelligence, jnana is knowledge asammoham is freedom from illusion Kshama satyam dhamah kshamaha when there is kshama is actually forgiveness kshama there are two different words, kshama and kshama so while hearing we might mishear the two words but if we read them, they are rendered quite differently kshama and kshama kshama is peacefulness or mind control which comes at the last part of this work kshama is forgiveness kshama svatam, kshama svatam in many prayers a lot seekers seek forgiveness from the lord by saying kshama svatam, please forgive me please forgive me oh lord kshama satyam dhamah kshamaha it is said over here that forgiveness truthfulness then dhamah kshamaha sense control and mind control this combination of dhamah and kshama will come also in the 18th chapter when Krishna talks about the qualities of the brahmanas in 18.42 so here he is saying that these qualities and then he goes into after describing seven qualities that are overall positive then Krishna describes three sets of contrasts sukham dukkham bhavo bhavo bhayam cha bhayam eva cha sukha dukha is happiness distress which is a duality which comes frequently in scripture in bhagavad gita itself it has come many times then the next duality is bhavo abhavo it is bhava is birth abhavo is death so bhayam cha bhayam is fear and there is fearlessness so now we may say that all good comes from Krishna the first qualities are fairly easy enough to understand but what about second part when Krishna is saying that even the negative seems to be coming from Krishna distress is also coming from him death is also coming from him fear is also coming from him what does it mean exactly actually we have to understand that these are these are to be understood in terms of their purpose that for example if there were no pain in this world at all pain serves as a necessary protector in this world if we put our hand in fire and we did not feel any burning sensation then we would just be destroyed our hand would be burnt to ashes and we would not notice till it is too late some people who have some kind of diseases by which they don't sense pain so they may fall they may be sitting on a bed and they may fall down and bang their head but they will not cry because they don't feel any pain at all so such people there are specific diseases which desensitize people to pain and then such children because they are not because the desensitization to pain makes them no longer cautious and they are not being cautious means that they suffer and they don't realize that they are suffering and thus they sentence themselves to misery and eventually to mortality, usually they die prematurely often because of avoidable causes because because they don't take the necessary precautions so bhaya or dukkha is not necessarily bad and further if you think in terms of death now certainly death may seem to be like evil and unmitigated evil to many people but if you recognize the point that we are meant for immortal existence and in this world there is old age, there is sickness you know for people who are old at that time life itself can be quite mortifying and miserable and at such a time if we have to move onwards towards Krishna, we cannot move onwards towards him unless we recognize the mortality of mortal existence and say if people are old at that time they are suffering so much that sometimes they may themselves say it's better that I die now how long can I suffer? Of course if people think that there is nothing beyond life then they may somehow want to desperately hold on to life at all costs, that's different but in general if you focus on the sincerity of pure devotion and we want to become more and more devoted and the world is acting as a distractor then the negativities of this world can act as distraction counters so Krishna rather than seeing God as only the God of good we see God as the God of everything, good and bad and the bad points us ultimately towards the good that is beyond good and bad just as there are waves in an ocean, sometimes the waves toss a person up and sometimes the waves toss a person down deep into the water, but if those waves are taking the person towards the coast then that is ultimately for good because there that person will be free from both the dualities so if we think of God as the source of only the materially good then we will not be able to figure out why materially bad things are happening in our life and we may lose our faith in God or we may lose faith in God's omnipotence or God's omnibenevolence, whatever but if we understand that God is the deliverer of spiritual good the good that is beyond the good and bad of this world then no matter what happens in this world at this level still we will be able to move onwards towards him and ultimately attain him by his mercy so God is transcendental to the good and bad of this world and in the absolute sense everything comes from him and in the first part where he says he is describing the seven qualities which are actually auspicious for us to be swept towards the coastline of immortality buddhir jnanam sammoham that when we have knowledge and when we have intelligence, Krishna will talk about both knowledge and intelligence in the 18th chapter, 18.20-22 he talks about knowledge and 18.30-32 he talks about buddhi and so knowledge is more in terms of perception being able to see rightly and action and jnana sorry buddhi is more in terms of action being able to act rightly so both of these the capacity to see rightly and the capacity to act rightly these ultimately are essential for us to act right to live rightly in the world so Krishna is the source of both of them and he is the source of asammoham he frees us from whatever illusions doggers in material existence and he takes us beyond the illusions of material existence to the state of beyond illusion in his abode and even before we attain his abode in the absorption and devotion to him we stay free from illusion shamah satyam dhamah shamaham so he is a source of auspicious qualities such as forgiveness truthfulness, sense control, mind control all of which enable us to attain him and attain the good that is beyond the good and bad of this world Thank you.