Gita 18.48 See beyond the unpalatable to the essential to pursue the transcendental

Transcript

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is vital for realizing our spiritual commonality. Thank you. 18.48, Bhagavad Gita.
Krishna is encouraging Arjuna here to persevere in his duty as a warrior, and in that connection he gives a reasoning over here. He says, sahajam karma kaunteya, sahajam, with birth, sahajam karma, Arjuna kaunteya, sadosham api na tyajet sadosham, there is fault. The fault just can’t be avoided.
It is intrinsically there. sarvarambha idoshena, all endeavours, sarvarambha toshena, by faults, dhumen agnir ivavrtaha, just as fire is covered by smoke. So, here Krishna makes a very important point that we need to develop the capacity to look beyond faults to essence.
If we keep looking at faults, we won’t go very far in our life, because every situation will have some faults. Now, this world itself is a faulty or broken place. In many ways, we just cannot avoid certain negativities that come because of the compromised nature of the world.
So, all that we can do is keep moving onwards towards Krishna, towards making our contribution in the mode of service to Krishna in whatever faulty situation we encounter in life. So, encounter is something which every one of us has to do. When we face life, we have to face it with determination, with resolution.
So, if we look at faults and say, I’ll not do this, I’ll not do that, there’ll be nothing that we’ll be able to do. So, sarvarambhahi doshena, every single endeavour arambhadoshena, by fault, dhumen agnir ivavrtaha, just as fire is covered by smoke. That’s a very significant example.
Now, fire, we don’t want it to be covered by smoke. We would prefer the fire, because that is what is constructively useful for us. At the same time, we can’t do away without the fire, without the smoke.
We can’t do away with the smoke. And smoke is not just here, there, it is uivavrtaha, avrtaha means covered over. Sometimes there’ll be a lot of smoke.
So, we don’t want to increase the smoke obviously, and we have to manage the smoke so that we can go beyond the smoke and stoke the fire, increase the fire. So, similarly, in any endeavour that we do, we don’t want to increase the faults in them. Faults are there, because in every work that we do, we will have to deal with something unpalatable.
And by dealing with the unpalatable, we have to persevere in by focusing on the essential. Fire is not only pure, it is essential for our living being. In the Vedic context, it was essential for doing fire sacrifices.
But even beyond fire sacrifices, it is simply something that we absolutely need if we want to live constructively, if we want to move forwards in our life, and we cannot sustain most of our activities without fire, whether it is for cooking or for heating or for smelting or for a variety of other purposes, apart from even sacred, religious or spiritual. For secular purposes, we need fire. So, there is smoke which is unavoidable and we minimize the smoke.
Sometimes if we make things a mess, if somebody is lighting a fire, they don’t know how to do things, the smoke might become inordinately too much. Now, smoke is not desirable and we don’t want to increase the smoke per se. But when the smoke is there already, then there is no need to deny, there is certainly no need to increase it.
So, for Arjuna as a warrior, as a martial guard in the society, he has the power to do a lot of good. When people are in distress, he can help free them from distress. He can, as a member of royalty, direct state measures, direct means oversee or supervise or arrange, direct state measures for the good of people.
He can help in various ways in getting Arjuna to move forwards in doing good to society. But sometimes, the same power by which he can bring a smile on the faces of crying or sad people, that same power, that same position will bring with it the responsibility by which he may have to punish people. He may have to fight against wrongdoers, against non-anti-social elements and penalize them, sometimes even prosecute and execute them.
And sometimes, some wrongdoers, maybe people who are otherwise dear to him, they are wrongdoers, then he cannot become sentimental. He has to recognize that they are wrongdoers and he has to do what is required for dealing with them. So, this understanding that Arjuna has to have is vital, that this world will never give us any unadulterated good.
All bad, all good will come with something bad and we will just have to live with the bad and focus on the good. So, not only is the king’s duty essential and someone has to take it up even if it has some unpalatable elements and it is essential not just for the citizens because they need to have a responsible king, but people who are of the martial royal nature, that is the only way they will get purified. The nature of the mind is that it can always look at faults and stay dissatisfied.
But this dissatisfaction does not help us to get to anything constructive in life. If we want to move towards something constructive, then the onus is on us, the responsibility is ours to move forwards in our particular life and attain Krishna. So, if a Kshatriya of a martial nature tries to become like a pacific nature of a Brahmana, may feel that it is good but he will not be able to sustain it for long and when he can’t sustain it for long, there will be frustration because of that.
So, rather than trying to do something artificial and get frustrated, it is much better that one recognize the finiteness of one situation, the finiteness of our options and choose the best bargain, choose the best among whatever limited options that we have. Thus, Krishna is encouraging Arjuna to stick to his duty no matter what happens. Hare Krishna.