Gita 18.61 – Krishna doesn’t cause our worldly wandering – he frees us from the cause of that wandering

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors. thank you arjuna that the lord or the controller of all living beings is situated in the heart of all living beings brahman brahman is to wander brahman is to cause to wander yantra rudhani that as if situated on a machine made of matter sometimes this verse is thought of as conveying the idea that god is the absolute controller and everything that happens in our life and everything that we do that is also controlled and determined by god brahman rudhani so brahman refers to the cause to wander now what does it mean is it that the lord is causing us to wander in material existence or is it that we want to wander it is our desire that is causing us to wander so certainly if you look at the whole philosophy of the bhagavad gita in the full context our desire does have a significant role to play in fact just two verses after this this is 18.61 and 18.63 similarly krishna will say that that deliberate and then and as you desire so you can act this raises the question that this raises the obvious point that krishna is acknowledging that we have the power to desire and we have the power to act according to our desire and he far from taking away that power is simply urging us to act properly to act thoughtfully to deliberate on what he has said and based on that deliberation to make a sound decision then if we have the power to desire and decide then what does brahmayan mean how does the lord cause us to wander now if you look at the full context what comes before this and what comes after this the point is not that the lord is controlling everything in our lives including our own choices but that we are bound to act according to our nature and the lord is the controller of that nature also so if you look at the previous two verses 59 and 50 krishna says nibaddha svena karmana kartum necchasi anmohat so he says by our own nature nibaddha svena karmana we are all bound svena karmana now it’s interesting svabhava and svakarma krishna is talking about two things in the same ova we have our own nature and we have our actions corresponding to nature and krishna says our svabhava binds us to our svakarma nibaddha svena karmana and then he stresses that same point further when he says kartum necchasi anmohat kartum necchasi even if one desires not to act anmohat now the attempt to not act according to one’s svabhava, that is a moham karshisya vishopitat even then you will be forced to act avasha, you will be helpless so svabhavavad essentially means that we have a certain psychophysical nature and we will all be constrained to act according to that nature this broadly correlates with the concept of varna and how a brahmana will act brahmanically a kshatriya will act like a kshatriya and in the case of arjuna he may think that peace is better than war but he will not be able to sustain his determination to act peacefully because his nature is that of a kshatriya a kshatriya when dishonored will be driven to challenge and counter that dishonor so if arjuna decides to act like a mendicant as a brahmana and depends on charity and then someone refuses to give him charity and neglects or scorns him as is sometimes the fate of beggars then arjuna will not be able to tolerate it and he will go for his sword and he will act like a kshatriya and even if he doesn’t desire to act he will act that way so the point of this verse is to underscore that we ourselves are not free although we may fancy ourselves as free we are not and now krishna is not saying i am the controller here he is saying our swabhava is the controller and if you look at the overall philosophy of the gita we understand that our swabhava is formed by our own actions from our past so that means ultimately it is we who are responsible so if somebody has a kshatriya nature that means that person has lived and thought like a kshatriya in the past, chosen kshatriya modes of action and reflection and that’s how has developed kshatriya disposition now so at even broader level we can say that we humans cannot fly in the air like birds nor can we run like cheetahs now through extraordinary practice some people may be able to learn very fast and through a lot of technological exertion we may be able to fly in airplanes that is different that we human beings are intelligent by which we can acquire certain capacities but those are not innate to us and we may fly in the sky but then if the fuel gets over no it’s not we who are flying but the plane which is taking us so often we use I’ll be flying to America tomorrow no we use it as if we will be developing wings and we ourselves will be flying that actually we will simply be sitting the way we sit at home or an office or a comfortable chair and the plane will be moving so we cannot entirely go beyond our body’s limitations and they will snap back at us just like a rubber band can be pulled a little bit but afterwards it snaps back to its right side similarly our bodily limitations will come back to haunt us so Krishna is saying that how can one go beyond the body body’s drive we cannot but even a brahmana a person with a brahmanical intelligence can use that intelligence either for godly purposes or ungodly purposes and now we all have a lower side that impels us to use whatever nature we have for ungodly purposes that needs to be curbed and to do that we need to recognize someone who is higher than what we are we need to recognize someone who is our lord and master and the lord and master of material nature also Krishna has said he is the master of material nature and this is 9.10 and that applied also to the fact that he is the master of our body our body and the body’s nature also so this verse when it says it simply means that if you look at the full context of the verse that maya has produced this machine and we are on that machine and that machine has its own script has its own programming by which it acts and we can’t control that programming or rather we can’t completely alter or reject that programming that is there but although we don’t have the control but there is someone who is with us who has that control so in that sense our body mind set up is ultimately arranged by Krishna it is not that Krishna wanted us to have a particular kind of body and mind but that we have got it by our past karma but it is under Krishna’s control so in that sense Krishna has the capacity to ensure that our body mind body mind set up doesn’t spin out of control so now if we see brahmayan Krishna is causing to wander this we see in the context of the next verse surrender unto him surrender unto him wholeheartedly by his mercy attain supreme peace and you will attain the ultimate destination so essentially what Krishna is saying here is that the body mind set up that can drive you down but if you surrender to the one who is the controller of the body mind set up then you can get an auspicious destination so we have a lower side and we have a higher side and this lower and higher refers to the desires by which we will act so as a Kshatriya a Kshatriya can be protective or Kshatriya can be exploitative but Kshatriya has strength and has the Ishwarabhava the natural disposition to control which is not bad not necessarily bad if it is used in the service of the supreme controller so Krishna is saying that when we surrender to the super soul in the heart then the super soul he by our connection with him by our surrender to him by receiving his mercy so the connection between him and us is two fold our surrender and his mercy by that our lower side will get curved and our higher side will be nourished and thus we will be able to overcome the problems that we develop in material existence and we will not be dragged down by our body mind set up but rather we will be able to use our psychophysical nature to elevate ourselves and to attain Krishna