Gita 18.57 Take shelter of the intelligence to convince yourself of the need to take Krishna’s shelter

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you here krishna is continuing his declaration of the universality of the process of bhakti and there he states that this inclusiveness or universality was indicated in previous verse also same theme is continued here chetasa sarva karmane mai sanyasya mat paraha buddhi yogam upashitya chetasa sarva karmane in all your work by your consciousness offer the work to me mai sanyasya mat paraha why should you offer the work to me because i am the supreme goal buddhi yogam upashitya in this way by taking shelter of buddhi yoga yoga of intelligence upashitya always be conscious of me let’s look at one by one the components of this verse krishna is saying that two things make me the goal of your work and make me the goal of your life offer your work to me suppose we love someone then we may do hundred other things but we are all doing it for our beloved suppose a man loves his wife then the man may go to office, work very hard but the purpose is of working all that hard is maybe to buy a new car for his wife maybe buy a new house for her so the work is not the goal the person, the pleasure of the person is the goal and all the work in that sense is done for the person who is loved the same dynamic applies for us and krishna that we work primarily to please him we work primarily to connect with him we understand that he is life’s ultimate purpose he is the all attractive supreme person to the extent we understand that to the extent we absorb ourselves in him accordingly to that extent we can grow in our life in our devotion towards him so how will this happen, how will we get this understanding by taking shelter of buddhi yoga it’s interesting before we can take shelter of krishna we have to take shelter of buddhi yoga by which we can understand that krishna is eminently worth taking shelter of with our intelligence we can feel krishna’s greatness, we can feel krishna’s sweetness and when we feel that then we can move onwards towards taking greater and greater shelter of him the essence of life is the reciprocation of love and the most lovable of all persons is krishna because he embodies in full whatever attractiveness is present in anyone so for us to be able to connect with him to be able to serve him it is vital that we strive to the best of our capacity for taking shelter of him actually sometimes the idea of renouncing may seem that it will be depriving us but it doesn’t have to deprive us if we see that if we appreciate that through the renunciation we are getting the deepest connection through the renunciation we are moving closer and closer to our all attractive lord buddhi yoga this is where the whole bhagavad gita offers us buddhi yoga the yoga by which we can connect with our all attractive lord by taking shelter of him we can always be conscious of him at one level when we are when we love someone we can be always conscious of them but another level if we understand the importance of someone then also we can be conscious of them suppose we are working in an office and we have a boss whom we admire and whom we want to please then we will be conscious of how best we can please him and in all our actions we will try to do those actions with the competence that will please the boss and that is what we all would like to strive for so similarly for each one of us it is vital that we recognize the that the glory of Krishna and the sweetness of Krishna the greatness of Krishna and the sweetness of Krishna each of these or both of these can help us deepen our devotion for Krishna help us become conscious of him so buddhi yoga upashitya with our intelligence directed in a mood of devotion we can connect with Krishna and by that connection with Krishna we can actually become sweetly and deeply absorbed in him and if we become conscious of him thus that consciousness will help us overcome all the obstacles that might come because of our conditioning and because of our conditions that is the declaration which will be made by the next verse mach chitta sarva durgaane mach prasada trishsi mach chitta sarva durgaane mach chitta sarva durgaane if you become conscious of me you will pass over all obstacles by my grace sarva durgaane every single obstacle that is there you can cross over such is the potency of becoming conscious of Krishna so here the stress is on just become conscious of Krishna no matter what happens so it’s a beautiful segue it’s a link towards the conclusion section of the Gita where the emphasis will be on undistracted undiluted devotion the focus in that section will be on how best each one of us can by our practice of bhakti become connected with Krishna become absorbed in Krishna and thus go beyond whatever illusions we may be having whatever challenges we may be facing we can go beyond all of them through the steady connection with Krishna brought about through the intelligence executed through our action and imbued by our intention ultimately which will blossom into devotion and grant us eternal ecstatic absorption thank you Bhagavad Gita