Special Days Meditations (41)
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Any other questions or comments? Hare Krishna.
On the sacred occasion of Gita Jayanti, let us meditate on the profound, immense, immeasurable sacredness of this day. Krishna is the greatest well-wisher of all living beings. And it is because of that, He listens time and time again to this world to restore order.
And yet, He is not there always over here. And when the order is no longer, He establishes it, but the order is no longer maintained, then what happens? How can the living entities find their way back to Him? So, Kunti Maharani, in her prayers, after analyzing the various reasons why Krishna appears, she concludes, from 32 to 35, she analyzes, she says in the conclusion that, You come here to stimulate the process of hearing and remembering. So, you perform pastimes and you give your message.
And by that, So, the living entity is suffering because of ignorance, because of which they are engaging in sensual activities and making the consequences. So, for countering that, you come. And Krishna, He comes at one particular time in history, He performs His pastimes for about 125 years and then He departs.
But, His message remains forever. And it is on this day, in Jyotisar, the tree is, according to the tradition, considered to still be there in Kurukshetra, where in between the two battle armies, on the battlefield, Krishna spoke the message of the Gita. So, the Gita’s speciality is that it is eminently a call for action, but it is a call for action based on not just wide strident emotion, but on profound intellection.
That means, intellection is serious contemplation, thoughtfulness. So, generally people become enthusiastic to act and they are fired up with emotions. But often when they are fired up with emotions, those emotions dominate them so much that they often are not able to think clearly.
But, if one is able to think clearly, systematically and then act seriously, that is the best. So, that is what actually the Bhagavad Gita enables us to do. It is based on profound intellection, deep contemplation that we are not the body, we are the soul, we are ultimately parts of God and this profound philosophical understanding becomes clear but along with that, the Bhagavad Gita also fills us with vibrant emotion.
What is that vibrant emotion? That is the emotion of devotion because we understand we have an eternal life of love with Krishna and Krishna is our greatest well-wisher and by loving and serving him, even in this world through performing Bhakti Yoga, we can get glimpses of the supreme happiness here also. So, there are many books which may be inspiring, calling up come on, do this, do that, do that. There may be politicians who give very powerful speeches and people get galvanized into action, ready to fight, become martials, ready to lay down their life for the country and that kind of speaking is considered to be very glorious in the sense that it invokes people but that is primarily based on triggering people’s emotions and often politicians may use it for western interest, they may use it to spark communal riots or things like that but and there are sometimes some people give very deep profound talks and they go just deep into the aspects of wisdom and they are very wonderful but then they don’t have much call for action that’s the history of western philosophy that in the west there were many philosophers especially in the medieval and the modern times pre-modern times wherein some of their insights were brilliant but they had no sadhana, no practical call of action by which no practical methodology for inner transformation by which people could benefit from those talks that inspiration, that contemplation so in one sense we could say they were brahminical but they did not have any practical kshatriya aspect to it and there are politicians who are primarily kshatriya but they don’t have a brahminical aspect to it now Krishna is complex as he is always because he is God, so he is simple for the simple and complex for the complex he is at one level he is manifesting as a kshatriya in the world he is born in the Yadu dynasty which is the dynasty of kshatriyas but then he lives in Vrindavan which is a abode of Vaishyas now he is drawing the chariot of Arjuna and drawing those chariots are considered to be sutras usually, sutras are sutras although they can fight also sometimes but here Krishna is actually acting as a brahmana by giving spiritual wisdom so Krishna transcends all the varanas although he can act within any of the varanas wherever he wants so he is giving a very practical call for action but based on profound intellection and Bhagavad Gita spoken in the most dramatic of settings no other scripture in the world has so dramatic a setting right in the middle of a battlefield some people may say how is it possible that people will stop fighting a war just so that two people can talk but that was the principle nature of the kshatriyas at that time they actually often when they fought they definitely wanted to win but they wanted to win by proving the superiority of their military skills over the opposite party, not just that they wanted to win by hook or crook and that was the mood initially although as the battle intensified the Kauravas started that immorality and then the Pandavas also did certain things which were required at that time but at this particular time at the start of the battle both the armies respected the fact that Krishna and Arjuna were having a discussion and this illustrates that we no matter how urgent the situation may be we need to have adequate contemplation and appropriate emotion so that adequate contemplation reminds us who we are and what we are meant to do and the appropriate emotion means that we are able to have the right consciousness where we know whatever I am doing this is an opportunity to serve Krishna and then when we act with adequate contemplation and appropriate emotion then the way we act will bring us abundant satisfaction as Sanjaya says at the end of the book I am jubilant and Arjuna also demonstrates he has given up the bow at the end of the first chapter in 1.46 when he says his mind is filled with and he has put aside his bow but at the end of the Bhagavad Gita he has become confident and he has lifted up the bow and there there is going to be victory so in that way we can also learn by absorbing ourselves in the wisdom of the Gita our actions will be having the adequate contemplation the appropriate emotion and then they will result in abundant satisfaction that is the glory of the Gita and on this sacred day we can meditate on this special glory of the Gita and pray to Krishna to bless us so that we can internalize, assimilate realize, relish and live its wisdom and we can thank Srila Prabhupada who has given us the lesson of the Gita in a very accessible way through Bhagavad Gita as it is