Gita 16.17 – Devotion is a matter of inner intention, not outer ostentation

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
we also get a hellish destination eventually here Krishna is speaking about those people who are show bottle religionists Prabhupada used this idiosyncratic word show bottle which comes from his experiences in pharmacy where people often would put bottles with colorful liquids inside them in the windows of the shops so as to attract customers people would think these bottles contain so many colors they must be good medicines so where people are primarily both those who are giving are concerned with show are concerned with appearances and those who are giving are also those who are receiving also they give too much credibility to appearance as compared to substance show bottle so here what is the show bottle thing ajante naam yagya iste ajante means to perform yagya but such people perform yagya how? naam yagya iste in name only dambhe naaviti purvakam so dambhe dambha means pride it actually means more than pride it actually means there can be pride also of two types where somebody has some good qualities and likes to show them off and likes to bask in the laurels that come from that so that is one level but another level is that one does not have those qualities at all but still one pretends to have those qualities and thereby one tries to gain credit so Krishna actually when talking about the characteristics of knowledge in the 13th chapter when talking about the characteristics of knowledge amanitmanam vittam so he begins by talking about a person not sitting on earth and not having dambha dambha means Prabhupada translates this as humility and pridelessness dambha is more of like a person on the show off and showing off something which does not belong to oneself like some people when they want to go to a party you know and they want to impress the people at the party or a boy wants to impress a girl and he wants to take her in a car and he gets some friend’s car and says that this is my car and then in that way he evokes the admiration of the earth so this is if one is proud of things that one is not having also qualities that one is not having things that one is not possessing that is dambha so dambhena vidhi purvakam in this particular verse chapter 16 text 17 he says that these people are characterized by dambha so dambha means that they are not interested in actually developing love for god they are not interested in pursuing the purpose of religion that is attaining love for god they are interested primarily in just pretending to be religious so that they can get some respect in a pious society for namesake they do yajna now we may say who is going to do something like that for namesake yesterday most of the society that we live in is not such a religious society and that’s why people may not want to do religious activities for the sake of religious activities for the sake of prestige but still religion does have a widespread influence and at least within the society of people who are nominally religious there can be competition for example there will be competition about how say for example when Ganesh Deities are established for the annual Ganesh Utsava then different religious groups will compete that we will have a bigger Ganesh Deity you have 7 feet, we will have 8 feet somebody will say we will have a 10 feet Deity somebody will say we have a 12 feet Deity somebody may have, we will have a 15 feet Deity and like that there will be competition now it may sometimes also be that a person has great devotion and that great devotion exposes itself through lavish offerings such as and very opulent decoration and things like that but actually just the lavishness of worship does not necessarily convey the depth of devotion if someone does lavish worship they are not concerned about chanting the holy name they are not concerned about bringing to the Lord, please engage me in your service they are concerned more about doing yajna now in the past when Krishna spoke the words of Vidya at that time yajna was not just a marker of yajna was not just Vidya’s performance for appeasing the Gods but yajna was also considered to be a sign of pedigree, of caliber of prestige and some people who was actually simply for the sake of appearance because he wanted to be famous as a person who has done so many yajna and of course he was not demoniac Krishna is talking about demoniac people but the principle is similar that although he was exterminated he did not know about the ultimate purpose of religion and that’s why eventually Naraguni came and enlightened him and that’s when he understood, oh really this is the purpose the purpose is devotion to the supreme and he has to be worshipped with yajna I never knew about this so now of course he was sincere but uninformed and so when he was informed properly he became illumined, he became enlightened but in many other situations the person is not even informed properly Naraguni is not informed properly but the person is ill-intentioned so Krishna is talking about such a person over here when he states that यजन्ते नामयं यहिस्ते the person now he is not talking about simply a innocent or ignorant person that you can understand from the whole context this is the 16th chapter, the divine and demoniac natures and the divine natures have already been talked in the first Krishna has talked them earlier also in many places the qualities of those who are godly and now in this chapter he focuses on the ungodly, the demoniac दईवा आसुर संपद विभावयो so from the 4th verse onwards it’s asuri sampadi that is being described so as that is the case there is no chance here of elevation so the context indicates that people are not doing this for the sake of spiritual elevation and preceding half of this verse also confirms that आत्मसंभावित अस्तप्थ आत्मसंभावित अस्तप्थ impudent complacent complacent refers to one who is over confident one is too sure that I know what is right and no one else knows what is right so one is too sure of one’s own possession of the truth and the सब्द means that inner cock sureness manifests as outer cockiness where a person speaks in a way that is disrespectful especially treating respectful people disrespectfully that is the characteristic of the स्दब्ध आत्मसंभावित अस्तप्थ धन्मारदंद a person is intoxicated by possessing wealth and being honored whoever becomes successful in whichever social circle that person starts thinking oneself to be very great so in some circles say a person’s अस्तप्थ now in that circle that person will behave very respected of course that respect is more because of fear of reprisal rather than appreciation because of the strength of character of the person but still there is that appreciation there is that respect so now because of that आत्मान and similarly because of one’s armstrong techniques because of threatening others one may extort money and one may become powerful so आत्मसंभावित अस्तप्थ धन्मारदंद a person is intoxicated by delusion धन्मारदंद and because of such intoxication a person does not understand right from wrong a person performs rituals just for the namesake this is the profundity of the Gita that it helps us to understand to differentiate pure dharma from superficial dharma and pseudo dharma so here Krishna is talking about pseudo dharma people who are people who are not interested in religion for God’s sake but they are interested in religion for their ego’s sake they are interested in religion because they say whatever will give them respect and praise and will load their ego that they want to do so if they find themselves in a religious society where getting where putting on an appearance of being religious is going to help them in their quest for respectability and honour then they do that and if that is not going to help them then they will give it up so I and Me is what they are concerned about and God becomes a tool to I and Me and that’s why when God becomes a tool to I and Me the end result of it is that we can’t have life going on in a superficial way something has to crack that person’s facade will crack sooner or later when some challenge comes up and those same people who at one time seem very holy and religious they start exhibiting such an ugly side of them that other people who might have for them might have been temporarily taken in by their by their seeming piety the other people become shocked what happened so now if we equip ourselves with scripture and we understand that devotion is a matter of inner intention not outer ostentation then we will not be misled by people who make such ostentatious displays of course it is not that everyone who does elaborate worship of the Lord is being ostentatious we have to be careful and respectful if somebody is seriously devoted to the Lord in terms of leading a pure life and leading a life of relatively of satguna or principles and within that is also doing religious worship that sort of worship which is a part of one’s so that means if worship is just one part of one’s life and the rest of one’s life is not affected affected in the sense that it is not positively spiritually transformed by one’s worship so say suppose somebody is a gangster and that person builds a temple then ok yes that person has done something good and that’s valuable but that does not make that person a great worshipper of God that person doesn’t become a great devotee by that so this difference between inner intention and outer ostentation is in terms of the consistency of one’s actions with one’s ostentatious displays so if that ostentatious worship is just one part of one’s life and the rest of the life one is conniving, cheating abusing and is overall exhibiting rajasic and tamasic characteristics and even then we that little part of some kind of worship that person is doing especially now this verse is talking about that person doesn’t even follow scripture while doing the worship then what kind of benefit will come by that worship is really questionable still at one level we may say that it is better than atheism but at another level we have to understand that bhakti is not about outer show it is about inner change and if the person does not exhibit signs of inner change in terms of an all round outer transformation then just a occasional show of ostentatious devotion should not be seen as a sign of religious or spiritual advancement Radha Krishna says this is the way godless people try to deceive others and garner respect for themselves and this sort of deception Krishna is exposing in this verse