Gita 17.05 Our body is not ours to abuse by arbitrary austerity

Transcript

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thank you Bhagavad Gita 17.5 ashastra vihitam ghoram tapyante ye tapojanaha dambhankarasamyuktah kamaragbalanvitaham so ashastra vihitam ghoram without shastra actually this verse and the next verse are one unit of thought and they are describing people who don’t follow shastra and do things totally whimsical so especially we can say it refers to demoniac people who use the scriptural principles of say fasting and austerity but they use it for their demonic purposes they use it to attack and destroy others and thus they actually work to make their own life more miserable for others make their own life miserable and they make others lives miserable also so that is described over here there is no question of shastra in their following so ghoram they do terrible activities those who perform austerities like that those people dambhankarasamyuktah with arrogance and impudence infused within them kama raga balanvitah and they are empowered by their craving kama and raga by lust and attachment so when they function in this way they are actually creating a lot of trouble for themselves and there are no shortcuts so Krishna has earlier talked about yaha shastra vimutsu vijaya vartate kama karatah so here Krishna is going back to those people he is talked about in the previous verse you have to understand the context to understand where this is coming from Arjuna has asked about those who follow those who have some faith but not in shastra what is their position Krishna then talked about how faith is within the three modes and then he gave a broad understanding in the previous verse of how jante sattvika devan yaksha ksamsi rajasah pretan bhutaganams chane jante tamasah jana how those in goodness worship devtas those in passion worship the yakshas and rakshas those in ignorance worship the bhutas and pretas the ghosts and spirits now after talking about these three Krishna is now taking a step back to caution that he is not referring to these people that these are condemned people and he is not focusing on them he is focusing on others so the people he is focusing on is that those who are as Krishna said earlier so Krishna is going back over there and speaking about them just to caution that these are not who are going to be discussed about in this chapter so that he is referring to them becomes clear from the two points that comes in 17.5 A and so this is they are empowered by desire and attachment so this means its more or less same as and similar is so when Krishna is talking about these people what exactly they do those who torment their bodies so they are doing it not for any spiritual purpose but simply to make a show of what they can do with their bodies so its motivated simply by arrogance and that is unhealthy that is undesirable because we all have our own bodies which are we could say the result of our past karma and we have to deal with these bodies and we have to live with them and we cannot claim that these bodies are ours entirely in the sense that the bodies are given to us by mother nature and ultimately by Krishna so we don’t have a right to torment these bodies we can live here and we can use them if we consider the body to be like a house and the house needs to be used properly a tenant can stay in a house but the tenant can’t damage the house prosecuted will get into trouble similarly if we do whatever we feel like with the body normally we think of tormenting the body in terms of say whiplashing it, starving it or in extreme sense when people commit suicide so in this case they are damaging their bodies and normally we use the word in a conversational or conventional sense that my body but actually it’s not our body or at least it’s not only our body so if somebody destroys their body if they destroy their home they will be penalized by the law now we normally think of austerity as a good activity but what makes an activity good is not just external form of the activity but the internal intent of the activity and if our internal intent is it’s just out of our own attachment so we take the body and we decide to abuse it through austerity arbitrary austerity is austerity that is just done by one’s own mind and such austerity needs to be recognized as as unwanted, as unhealthy and Krishna will speak about it in uncompromisingly strong words by calling it demoniac, calling such people as demonic so if you look at the demonic mentality it is basically based on the rejection of scripture and that is exactly what the people are doing over here they are performing austerity but they have no respect or regard for the higher principles of life and the higher purposes of life the higher purpose of life is spiritual advancement the higher principle of life is that we are meant to live in harmony with the supreme spiritual reality Krishna when there is no understanding of either this higher principle or higher purpose then even if one does some practice which is normally done for a higher principle or higher purpose then that practice when divorced from its higher principle or higher purpose becomes lower so the materialistic people often perform immense austerities say if terrorists want to kill someone and they make an elaborate plan and sometimes to execute their plan they may stay in hiding they may even not get food for some time and sometimes they may go through immense bodily trouble but it is all for a destructive purpose just like in the past demons like Vrikasura would perform enormous austerities but it was all for destructive purposes so our body is not actually ours just like a tenant may say this is my house but then that house is not theirs for abusing their house is theirs for using properly for the right purpose so one fundamental understanding that we need when we try to make sense of the Bhagavad Gita is that the universe is not ours for the taking and not even our own body is ours for doing what we want with it everything belongs to the supreme and is meant to be used if not directly for his service then at least within a reasonable scriptural ambit of its God ordained purpose indulgence of the body for sensual pleasures can be said to be in the mode of passion and tormenting the body arbitrarily, whimsically can turn out to be in the mode of ignorance and Krishna says such behavior is demonic thank you