Gita 18.53 Determined disconnection from the material paves the way to the spiritual

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Gita 18.53 Krishna is now concluding his description of how to progress spiritually within the renounced order after renunciation and now he talks about various attitudes that need to be announced renunciation requires not just giving up possessions but also requires giving up the possessive mentality or the mentality of being an enjoyer of this world ahankar is ego bala is strength darpa is show off ahankar is ego where one wants a lot of prestige in 16.3 Krishna has talked about this so here damba means when one has no qualities one pretends to have qualities and wants prestige thereof ahankar is generally one thinks a lot about one says ahankaram balam darpam one likes to show off strength the physical strength the political strength economic strength one likes to boss over others darpa so one likes to preen as they say delight in getting pleasure one is that one dominates others and gets fear in seeing them cower when some people get pleasure in seeing fear for them in otherwise and some people delight in getting others to admire them in awe of course it may be in envy also but one wants to impress others and that becomes a driving force of interaction sometimes there is some people their conversation is simply a competition and mutual humiliation that means each person is trying to speak in a way that puts down the other person the other person is trying to speak in a way that puts down the first person so conversation is not meant to be a competition and mutual humiliation at all but unfortunately some people treat it like that these are all qualities which keep our consciousness caught in matter and material things and we need to break free from them ahankaram balam darpam kamam krodham jasamshita kamam krodham parigraham kamam krodham jasamshita comes in the 16th chapter when Krishna is talking about demoniac quality and how those demoniac qualities cause people to go to a demonic destination so here he says kamam krodham lust anger and possessiveness vimuchya nirmama shanto vimuchya when one gives all these things lust is the desire to get worldly objects especially sensual objects sexual objects krodha is what results from frustrated desire kam can generically refer to the desire to possess any material object for one’s own enjoyment correspondingly krodha refers to the frustration and the fury that comes when one doesn’t when one’s desire is not fulfilled parigraha parigraha is possessiveness nowadays people suffer from an addiction called shopaholism just like there is alcoholism or workaholism where people are mad to drink or to work similarly there is shopaholism where people shop, shop, shop more and more and more and in that way this gets completely consumed oh this sale there, this offer there some people buy things afterwards they won’t provide, they buy it they buy it and put it in their some storage room and then hardly ever take it out also so vimuchya when we can give all these things up nirmaham shanta when we just give up that mentality this is mine, this is mine, this is mine shanta, then we can get peace and not just ordinary peace we can just go to a scenic natural place and feel peaceful we can just shut off the if we have noise cancelling earphones even if we are in noisy place we can still feel peaceful over there but we need to go beyond them that is not just noise cancelling earphones can protect us from the outer noise but there is no noise cancelling device for the inner noise the inner noise is a disruptive thing that our mind keeps saying, this person did like this why did this happen, come on you should watch that, go there so when these kind of desires keep coming they distract us and they degrade us they distract us because we can’t do something constructive and often they degrade us because we end up doing immoral, ignoble things just in the hope of getting some pleasure or in the hope of avoiding some trouble we shirk from responsibilities this is the inner noise when it passes, how does it go away and the cravings we purify ourselves of them, to the extent we purify ourselves of these cravings of cravings to that extent we move forwards and thus we move steadily towards Krishna by the determined detachment from this world, of course at this stage Bhagavad Gita is not talking about Krishna Krishna will come in the next verse here Krishna talks about attaining the Brahman platform vimucca nirmama shanto brahma bhuyaya kalpate so brahma bhuyaya kalpate means one who comes to the spiritual level Krishna has talked about another way to come to the spiritual level is by practicing avyabhicari bhakti in 14.26 he said avyabhicari bhakti yogena sevate sagunan samatit yaitan brahma bhuyaya kalpate so even by practicing unflinching bhakti one can come to the Brahman platform and by practicing unflinching renunciation also you can come to the Brahman platform so how we get there will vary from person to person but the important thing is that we need to move on steadily till we attain the spiritual path of course the path of bhakti is easier because we have the principle of grace helping us divine grace can help us move towards Krishna that’s what we seek in our spiritual life especially on the path of bhakti path of bhakti will come later but if you see the series of verses started with the point of attaining Brahman it was bahut para siddhim prapto yatha brahma tathāpnoti nibodhame samāsenaiva kaunteya nishthā jñānasya para so Krishna has said in the previous verse I will tell in the summary how you can attain the Brahman and that Krishna tells in summary in these three verses so the summary refers literally to a summary a short description of what is to be done so we can attain the spiritual by negation and rejection of the material negation by disconnection from the material rigid determined disconnection from the material and we can also attain the spiritual by committed connection with the spiritual with the supreme spiritual reality so that is the path of bhakti which we will talk about in the future verses we will discuss them in our future class thank you