Gita 15.03 Detachment cuts not the world but our own attachment to the world

Transcript

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thank you bhagavad gita 15.3 krishna is talking here about the principle of this material existence of how we are bound in the material existence by comparing it with a tree upside down banyan tree and he is saying here that actually the form of this tree is extremely difficult to perceive na roopam asyeha tathopalabhyate upalabhyate na roopam asyeha in this world it is very difficult to perceive the nature of this tree naantho na chadhir na chasam pratishtha where is the end where is the middle where is the beginning it is very difficult to perceive asvatthamenam suvirudhamoolam that that asvattha has very deep roots suvirudhamoolam asangashastrenadrudhenachitva you should break it with the weapon of detachment so here Krishna is stressing that everyone of us has to make choices in our life and that if we wish to overcome the illusions that bind us we will have to ourselves make the choice of placing ourselves in the influences that will engender detachment and not the influences that engender attachment asangashastrenadrudhenachitva with determination we will be able to overcome if we have asanga if we can use shastra or weapon of detachment so earlier it has been stated that we are bound that we are bound by our own karma now this verse says that how do we get detached how do we get disentangled by asanga now in the previous in the first verse it has said that this tree is imperishable so if the tree is imperishable then how can it be destroyed asangashastrenadrudhenachitva cut it with the weapon of detachment so actually what we cut is not the tree itself we cut our own attachment to the tree what we overcome is the forces by which we become entangled in this tree what we overcome is our own attachments basically many times in scripture it is said that when we practice bhakti then the knot of karma that binds us to this world lot of attachments produced by our karma that is cut off here Krishna is focusing primarily on asanga his vision is not, his description in this chapter has not gone to the positive reality of the higher spiritual world so he has not yet talked about attachment to higher reality the most effective way to become detached is to become attached to something higher when we become attached to Krishna when we become absorbed in Krishna then we move forward towards attaining him because we realize that we fill our consciousness with him so in the Srimad Bhagavatam a similar metaphor of a weapon for cutting off entanglement is used but that weapon for cutting off entanglement is compared with the remembrance of the Lord yad anudhyasena yukta karma granthi nibandhanam yad anudhyasena remembrance of the Lord is the weapon by which we can cut off the weapon of attachment karma granthi nibandhanam the entangling knots of karma can be cut off so what we need to do is move towards purifying ourselves move towards focusing on the supreme but here because Krishna has not described the positive reality till now so he is focusing on detachment how to bring about detachment he will tell later when he says that the person in knowledge is one who is absorbed in him in the 19th chapter of this verse 15.19 he will say one who understands that asamudho that actually one who is free from illusion one who worships me with all whole heart sarva bhavena bharta so that will be talked about later but here the point which I am making is that if you consider the Bhagavatam it also uses the weapon of metaphor and there it says what is the result if one uses equips oneself with the remembrance of Krishna and keeps fighting then what happens by that weapon of remembrance he says that vidyate hrdaya granthis kshiyante sarva samshayah kshiyante chasya karmani dhrishtevat manishvare vidyate hrdaya granthis that the knot of attachment binds us that will be cut off will become free from all illusion kshiyante chasya karmani kshiyante karma will stop the karmic entanglement will stop dhrishtevat manishvare we will see the self and the master so here Krishna is similarly telling over here that by the weapon of detachment when we cut ourselves off from this tree of material existence then we will be able to attain higher reality another point over here is narupam asetha thopalabhiti that we can’t understand the material world that means that don’t try to figure it out get out this world is extremely complicated as we are studying science for example at one level we are understanding more and more about the nature but then we are also understanding how little we understand in the past Dalton thought that atom is an irreducible fundamental particle now the atom itself is a universe with so many subatomic fundamental particles within it that we don’t even understand the atom very well we understand very little about it the more we realize how little we know and the more we realize how much more there is to know so this is of course not a recipe for ignorance for accepting or perpetuating ignorance but simply that we need to direct our knowledge effectively we need to learn that unless we focus our knowledge on that which is most important we can get endlessly enamored by and entangled in pursuing knowledge that is not all that important whatever knowledge we need to live in the material world, function in the material world to satisfy our curiosity so that we can elevate our curiosity towards the supreme object of curiosity that is the Lord who will be described later but the exact nature of the world where it comes from how exactly we come here how the material world expands all that analysis it is endless so rather than getting caught in that endless analysis we need to direct our consciousness in detachment towards the reality beyond this world and that is the way to detachment and thereby to disentanglement Thank you