Gita 18.04 Just as indulgence can be indiscriminate, so can renunciation

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
In this section Krishna is responding to Arjuna’s question asked in the first verse about the difference between tyaga and sanyas and Krishna answers by stating that actually tyaga can be seen in three modes first prior to that he has said that some people say that all work is contaminated so one should give up all work others say is purifying and that’s why it should not be given up so while addressing these two questions Krishna responds while addressing after mentioning these two points of view Krishna responds by stating that he will give the authority to understand nishchaya means certain or definitely there is a definitiveness to the answer the word definite means certain, definitiveness means authoritativeness that it is the answer which enables one to move towards holistic understanding by which we can actually practice the process of wholesome spirituality where we include the body and mind in the pursuit of the soul in the bible it is famously said that what profit is a man if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his eternal soul bhakti tells us that we don’t necessarily have to reject the world for gaining God, of course if the world comes in competition with the soul’s pursuit of self-realization and God-realization then naturally the soul needs to choose God not the world but the process of bhakti is so inclusive that even the world can be used in his service and the attitude towards the world and the way in which we approach the world varies from people to people so the idea is that people can be in different modes goodness, passion and ignorance and their modes can influence everything that they do including not only the way they try to enjoy the world but also the way they try to renounce the world normally we think as especially if you are on the spiritual path we tend to think that indiscriminate worldly enjoyment is a sign of lack of spirituality the sign that a person is caught in materialism yes that is true but then so is indiscriminate renunciation discernment or discrimination if we avoid the negative connotation of that word which comes because of it being associated with say racial discrimination or caste discrimination or gender discrimination but the word discrimination also has a positive sense in which it simply means a capacity to differentiate between the healthy and the unhealthy between the positive and the negative between that which uplifts and that which degrades so a good thing can if taken indiscriminately become bad and a bad thing if taken with discrimination can have a good effect just like sometimes some food items are very healthy say milk is considered very healthy but if somebody eats it too much that can also cause stomach upset, that can also cause various health issues even medicines if they are taken excessively the same medicine is meant to have a curative effect can have some other kind of effect also so put another way if we see that the medicines or if we see that germs of a disease are bad but when we when those germs are included in a regulated dose and given as a vaccine then they help us heal they help us develop the immunity by which we can protect ourselves from the disease so they don’t exactly help us heal but the same germs which normally would cause disease can if taken with discrimination promote health so the discrimination or discernment is what is required in interacting with this world and that is a characteristic of functional intelligence which emerges from the mode of goodness through the mode of goodness emerges knowledge and knowledge enables us to function coherently, constructively, determinately to the extent we keep ourselves in knowledge to the extent we move forward to the extent we choose not to use that knowledge to the extent we act according to our ignorant impulses which drag us down so just as there can be impulsive indulgence there can be also impulsive abstinence just as there can be impulsive enjoyment there can be impulsive renunciation and although certain actions we may say can be associated with certain modes renunciation we may say is a characteristic of those who are spiritually evolved but what defines spiritual evolution is not the external renunciation but the internal conception and if that conception is emerging from the mode of ignorance then even if the external action of renunciation comes up that renunciation will not be spiritually elevating it will only be materially incriminating so that is going to be the final thing that Krishna is going to speak in this chapter as he builds his arguments or his argument not arguments in the sense of there is no counter argument by Arjuna but he builds his case towards a conclusive and emphatic finale so he states here that O Krishna O Arjuna understand that renunciation can be in the three modes and therefore observe and understand which mode is acting when and act accordingly so Krishna is saying I am going to tell you the authority to do speculation about what is the nature of whether what is to be renounced what is not to be renounced and he says that I will be using the framework of the three modes to explain this so Krishna bases his explanation of the various kinds of renunciation on an analytical framework emerging of the comprise of three modes so in the next verses he will talk about renunciation in the modes of ignorance passion and goodness sometimes Krishna uses the sequence of first telling starting from goodness and then moving towards ignorance and sometimes he starts with ignorance and then comes towards goodness because here the flow of thought is such that he needs to bring the conclusion towards goodness and his subsequent verses will be recommending and elaborating on the mode of goodness thus first he speaks of renunciation in the mode of ignorance which will be mentioned in the next verse thank you