Bhagawad Gita Ch2. Verses: 33-39 [Swamy Chinmayananda]

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[Commentary by Swamy Chinmayananda]

 

IT IS INDEED A FACT THAT IT IS YOUR DUTY, AND NOW IN CASE YOU

RENOUNCE IT AND RUN AWAY FROM THE BATTLE-FIELD, THEN:

 

atha chettvamimaM dharmya.n sa.ngraama.n na karishhyasi .

tataH svadharma.n kiirti.n cha hitvaa paapamavaapsyasi .. 2\.33..

 

33. But, if you will not fight this righteous war, then, having

abandoned your own duty and fame, you shall incur sin.

 

In case you refuse to engage yourself in this glorious war, then not

only will you be renouncing your own "personal call-of-character"

(Swadharma) and honour, in not having fulfilled your noble duty, but

also incur positive sin. Not to face this army of un-Aryan

forces is as much sinful as to murder and kill those who deserve not

such a treatment.

 

Dharma, we have already explained, is the 'law of being.' Every

living creature has taken up its form and has come into the world of

objects for one great purpose, which is to gain an

exhaustion of its existing mental impressions. The bundle of vasanas

with which an individual has arrived into a particular incarnation is

called his, "personal call-of-character" (Swadharma). When classified

thus, Arjuna falls under the group of the 'kingly' (Kshatriya),

who are characterised by adventurous heroism and an insatiable thirst

or honour and fame. Not to make use of the evolutionary chances

provided by life is to reject and refuse the chances provided for a

vasana CATHARSIS. By not exhausting the old vasanas, one will be

living under a high vasana-pressure when the existing tendencies are

crowded out by the influx of new tendencies. Not fighting the war,

Arjuna may run away from the field, but he will certainly

come to regret his lost chances, since his mind is so composed that

he can find complete relief and solace only by living the intensely

dangerous life of the battle-field. A boy with tendencies

for art cannot be successfully trained to become a businessman, or an

economist, since these are contrary to his nature. If an over-anxious

parent, in the name of love, projects upon a

growing child, his own intentions and plans, we invariably find that

the young boy will have a crushed personality.

Examples of this type are seen everywhere in the world, especially so

in the spiritual field. There

are many seekers with over-enthusiasm for spiritual development, who,

at the mere appearance of a misery, or at the threat of a sorrow,

decide to run away into the jungles 'seeking God,' and

they, invariably, end in a life-long tragic disaster. They have in

them sensuous vasanas which can be satisfied only in the embrace of a

family under the roof of their own tenement, but

rejecting them all, they reach the Himalayan caves and then, all the

day through, they can neither meditate upon the Lord, nor find a

field for sensuous enjoyment. Naturally, they

entertain more and more agitations in their minds, otherwise called

sin (papa). Sin in Hinduism is "a mistake of the mind in which it

acts contrary to its essential nature as the

Self." Any act of sensuousness which the mind pants for in the world-

of-objects, hoping to get thereby a joy and satisfaction, creates

necessarily within itself more and more agitations and this

type of a mistake of the mind is called a sin.

 

CONTINUING, NOT ONLY WILL YOU HAVE GIVEN UP YOUR DUTY AND FAME

BUT ALSO:

 

 

akiirti.n chaapi bhuutaani kathayishhyanti te.avyayaam.h .

saMbhaavitasya chaakiirtirmaraNaadatirichyate .. 2\.34..

 

34. People too, will recount your everlasting dishonour; and to one

who has been honoured, dishonour is more than death.

 

To a famous hero, dishonour is worse than death. This is another

argument that Krishna brings forth, to persuade his friend to give up

his hesitation in fighting the great war. The general import

is that, if Arjuna were to abandon the fight, he could do so only

because of his cowardice, since, the cause of the war is righteous.

Certainly, there is an under-current of sympathy in Krishna's

words: he realises that, however great a hero Arjuna might be, even

he could be weakened by wrong emotionalism.

 

MOREOVER:

 

bhayaadraNaaduparataM ma.nsyante tvaaM mahaarathaaH .

yeshhaa.n cha tvaM bahumato bhuutvaa yaasyasi laaghavam.h .. 2\.35..

 

 

35. The great battalion commanders will think that you have withdrawn

from the battle through fear; and you will be looked down upon by

them who had thought much of you and your heroism in the past.

Continuing the common-man's-point-of-view arguments, Krishna says

here that not only will the world blame him and history recount his

infamy, but immediately also, the great warriors and

battalion commanders (Maharathas) in the enemy lines will start

ridiculing him. They will laugh and say that the great archer Arjuna

ran away from the battle-front because of sheer cowardice.

They will interpret his conscientious objections against the

fratricidal war as an act of cowardice of a hero during a weak moment

in his life. No soldier can stand such a dishonour, especially

when it comes from one's own equals among enemy lines.

 

MOREOVER:

 

avaachyavaadaa.nshcha bahuunvadishhyanti tavaahitaaH .

nindantastava saamarthyaM tato duHkhatara.n nu kim.h .. 2\.36..

 

36. And many unspeakable words will your enemies speak cavilling

about your powers. What can be more painful than this?

 

Finding that Arjuna is conspicuously reacting well to these

arguments, Krishna drives home to him the folly of running away from

the battle-front. It will be intolerable when his enemies

scandalize his glorious name and his chivalry in foul language, too

indecent even for words. Not only will history record for all times

his cowardly retreat but even while he lives, he will be

pointed out and laughed at as a 'hero' who ran away from the battle-

field.

 

hato vaa praapsyasi svarga.n jitvaa vaa bhokshyase mahiim.h .

tasmaaduttishhTha kaunteya yuddhaaya kR^itanishchayaH .. 2\.37..

 

37. Slain, you will obtain heaven; victorious you will enjoy the

earth; therefore, stand up, O son of Kunti, determined to fight.

 

 

In case he has to give up his life on the war-front, fighting for

such a noble cause, he shall, certainly, enter the 'Heaven of the

Heroes' (Veera-swarga) to stay and to enjoy there for

aeons. In case he wins, he shall certainly come to rule over the

kingdom and enjoy in the world, and thereafter also he shall go to

Heaven to enjoy there the status of a mighty hero who fought

championing the cause of Dharma. Either way he will gain because he

was on the side of the good --- the war aims of the Pandavas being

stoutly righteous.

 

Therefore --- meaning, for all the reasons so far enumerated, "Arise,

resolved to fight." Earlier, Arjuna, after expressing his feelings of

grief and despair had sat inert and motionless throwing

down his weapons. Krishna asks his friend to come out of this

moodiness and dejection, "determined to fight" the noble war.

The call to war is justified because of the particular situation in

the Mahabharata where the Geeta was given out. Generalising the call

of Krishna, we may say that it is a divine call to Man

to discard his melancholy dejections in the face of life's challenges

and to come forward to play as best as he can "the game of life" with

a firm determination to strive and to win. In this line, we

have the universality of the Geeta explicitly brought out for those

who understand it and find its vast application to the community of

man.

 

NOW LISTEN TO THE ADVICE I OFFER YOU ON YOUR INNER ATTITUDE WHILE

YOU FIGHT THE BATTLE:

 

sukhaduHkhe same kR^itvaa laabhaalaabhau jayaajayau .

tato yuddhaaya yujyasva naivaM paapamavaapsyasi .. 2\.38..

 

 

38. Having made --- pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and

defeat --- the same, engage in battle for the sake of battle; thus

you shall not incur sin.

>From this stanza onwards we have a slight hint about the technique of

Karma Yoga as explained in the Geeta. In the introduction we have

stated that the second chapter is almost a summary of the whole

Geeta; later on, we shall see how the Path of Devotion also

is, in brief, indicated in this very chapter.

 

In this stanza we have Krishna's first direct statement on the

technique of Self-Perfection and, as such, a very careful study of it

will be extremely fruitful to all students of the Geeta.

The three pairs of opposites mentioned here are distinct experiences

at the three levels of our mortal existence. PAIN AND PLEASURE are

the "intellectual" awareness of experiences

unfavourable and favourable; GAIN AND LOSS conceptions indicate the

"mental" zone where we feel the joys of meeting and the sorrows of

parting; and CONQUEST AND DEFEAT indicate the "physical" fields

wherein at the level of the body, we ourselves win or let others win.

The advice that Krishna gives is that one must learn to keep oneself

in equilibrium in all these different vicissitudes at the respective

levels of existence.

 

If one were to enter the sea for a bath, one must know the art of

sea-bathing or else the incessant waves will play rough on the

person, and may even sweep him off his feet and drag

him to a watery grave. But he who knows the art of saving himself ---

by ducking beneath the mighty waves, or by riding over the lesser

ones --- he alone can enjoy a sea-bath. To hope all

the waves to end, or to expect the waves not to trouble one while one

is in the sea is to order the sea to be something other than itself

for one's convenience! This is exactly what a foolish

man does in life. He expects life to be without waves --- but life is

ever full of waves. Pain and pleasure, gain and loss, conquest and

defeat must arise in the waters of life or else it is complete

stagnation --- it is almost death.

 

If life be thus a tossing stormy sea at all times, and it should be

so, then we, who have entered life, must know the art of living it,

unaffected either by the rising crests, or by the sinking hollows

in it. To identify ourselves with any of them is to be tossed about

on the surface, and not to stand astride like a light-house, which

has its foundations built on the bed-rock of the very sea.

Here Krishna advises Arjuna, while inviting him to fight, that he

should enter the contest and keep himself unaffected by the usual

dissipasting mental tendencies that come to everyone, while

in activity. This equanimity of the mind alone can bring out the beam

of inspiration, and give to one's achievements the glow of a real

success.

 

It is very well-known that in all activities, inspired work gathers

to itself a texture of divine perfection which cannot be imitated or

oft-repeated. Be he a poet, or an artist, a doctor or a

speaker, irrespective of his profession, whenever an individual is at

his best, his master-piece is always accepted by all as a 'work of

inspiration.' When we thus work with the thrilled ecstasy of

an unknown mood called 'inspiration,' the ideas, thoughts and

activity that come out of us have a ringing beauty of their own,

which cannot be otherwise mechanically repeated by us. Thus, Da

Vinci could not repeat for a second time and copy on another piece of

canvas the enigmatic smile of his Mona Lisa; Keats' pen could no more

re-capture for a second time the song of the Nightingale in its

flight; Beethoven could never again beat out of his faithful

piano a second Moonlight Sonata; Lord Krishna himself, after the war,

when requested by Arjuna to repeat the Geeta, admitted his inability

to do so!!

 

To the Western mind and understanding, 'inspiration' is an accidental

and mysterious happening over which the mortal has no control at all,

while to the eastern Rishis, inspired living is the real godly

destiny of man, when he lives in perfect unison with the Self within

him.

 

A balanced life, wherein we live as unaffected witnesses of even our

own mind and intellect, is the realm of self-forgetfulness, where,

instead of becoming inefficient, our profession gathers the

scintillating glow of a new dawn. This extra aura in any achievement

is that which raises an ordinary success to an

'inspired achievement. The Yogis of ancient Hindu-lore discovered a

technique, whereby the mind and intellect could be consciously

brought to a steadiness and poise, and this technique is called

Yoga. The Hindus of the Vedic period knew it, practiced it, lived it;

and with their incomparable achievements, they provided, for their

country, the golden era of the Hindus. The philosophy of a country

like India, in the Vedic period, must necessarily be Theistic, but it

has its applications in all walks of life. If it fails in its all-

round application, it cannot be a philosophy. A theory of life which

has no universal application, can at best, be appreciated as

the noble opinion of an individual, which may have its own limited

application, but it can never be accepted as a philosophy.

In the entire scheme of Bhagawan's arguments so far, he has provided

Arjuna with all the necessary reasons, which a healthy intellect

should discover for itself, before it comes to a

reliable and dependable judgment upon the outer happenings. A mere

spiritual consideration should not be the last word in the evaluation

of all material situations. Every challenge should be

estimated from the spiritual stand-point, as well as from the

intellectual stand-point of reason, from the emotional level of

ethics and morality, and from the physical level of tradition and

custom. If all these considerations, without any contradiction,

indicate a solitary truth, then that is surely the Divine Path that

one should, at all costs, pursue. Arjuna came to the delusory mis-

calculation of the situation because he evaluated the war only

from the level of his sentiments. The opposing forces were teeming

with his own relations and to kill and exterminate them was indeed

against the ethical point-of-view. But, this emotionalism

overpowered him, and at this moment of his total inward chaos, he

completely lost sight of the other considerations that would have

helped him to regain his balance. He surrendered, as a

mind should, to Krishna, the inner discriminative capacity.

Therefore, the Lord, having undertaken to guide Arjuna, provides him

with all the available data gathered from different

points of view. Throughout the Geeta, Krishna plays the part of the

"discriminative intellect" in an individual, a true charioteer in the

Upanishad-sense of the term. After thus placing all the possible

points of view upon the problem --- the spiritual, the

intellectual, the ethical and the traditional for Arjuna's

consideration --- Krishna concludes in the earlier stanza that Arjuna

must fight. In this stanza Krishna tries to explain how he should

conduct himself in this undertaking. It has been said that he should

fight the war with perfect detachment from all anxieties which

generally come to an individual, when he identifies himself

with the non-Self (Anatma) --- at the level of his intellect with the

concept of pain and pleasure, at the level of his mind with the fears

of gain and loss and at his body-level with the restlessness

of conquest and defeat. Equanimity in all such mental challenges is a

factor that ensures true success in life. We have

explained earlier how the human mind is to be kept open, while

working in its given field of life, so that, while living in the

midst of life's battle, it can exhaust the vasanas that are already

in it. This purgation --- catharsis of the Soul --- is the compelling

purpose for which every living creature has arrived on the platform

of manifested life. Viewed thus, each individual living

creature --- plant, animal or man --- is but a bundle of vasanas.

The equanimity in the face of all situations, advised here, is the

secret method of keeping the mind ever open for its outflow. When it

gets clouded by the ego-sense and the egoistic desires,

then the out-flow is choked, and new tendencies start flooding in.

The ego is born when an individual starts getting upset at all these

pairs-of-opposites (Dwandwas) such as joy and sorrow, etc. The

attempt to keep equanimous is successful, only if action is

detached from the ego. Thus, mental purification --- vasana-catharsis

--- is the benign result of real living and right

action: and this is Yoga. This is explained, in the next chapter of

the Geeta, in all detail as Karma Yoga.

 

The philosophical theory of truth was described in the very opening

of the Lord's message, and, in order to drive home those conclusions

into the practical-mind of a man-of-action, Arjuna,

Lord Krishna gave arguments from the stand-point of the common man.

Ultimately, he concluded that Arjuna must fight and explained in what

attitude he should fight. Practical religion consists in living the

philosophy one has understood.

 

HEREAFTER, THE SCHEME OF THE GEETA IN THE CHAPTER IS TO EXPLAIN THE

TECHNIQUES OF LIVING THE VEDANTIC PHILOSOPHY, IN AND THROUGH

KARMA YOGA. HENCE SAYS THE LORD:

 

eshhaa te.abhihitaa saaN^khye buddhiryoge tvimaa.n shR^iNu .

bud.hdhyaa yuk{}to yayaa paartha karmabandhaM prahaasyasi .. 2\.39..

 

39. This, which has been taught to thee, is wisdom concerning

SANKHYA. Now listen to the wisdom concerning YOGA, having known

which, O Partha, you shall cast off the bonds-of-action.

 

What is so far taught consists of the "Sankhya," meaning, "the logic

of reasoning by which the true nature of the Absolute Reality is

comprehended," which can end for you all sorrows arising from grief,

attachment and the like. Krishna promises that hereafter he will try

to explain the technique of attaining the wisdom (Buddhi), which is

otherwise called Buddhi yoga --- "devotion through work."

FRUITS OF ACTION (Karma-phala) --- The Law-of-Karma, which is often

misunderstood as the Law-of-Destiny, forms a cardinal creed of the

Hindus and a right understanding of it is absolutely essential to all

students of the Hindu Way-of-Life. If I am, now, justly punished, in

Delhi, for a crime committed last year by Sri Ramana Rao in Madras

then, certainly there must be something common between the criminal

Ramana Rao THEN in Madras and the saintly Chinmaya NOW in Delhi! The

long arm of the law of the country discovering the identity of

Ramana Rao in Chinmaya must have slowly crept from Madras to Delhi

and ultimately booked the "Swami" for the crime of Rao, that he was!!

Similarly, nature's justice is always perfect and, therefore, if the

Hindu philosophers accept that each of us individually suffers

because of our crimes committed in another form, and in a

different locality, at a different period of time in the past,

certainly, there must be some identity between the SINNER IN THE PAST

and the SUFFERER IN THE PRESENT. This identity, the Shastra says, is

the mind-and-intellect-equipment in each one of us.

 

Each act, willfully performed, leaves an impression upon the mind of

the actor according to the texture of the motive entertained. In

order to work out and remove these impressions --- vasanas-catharsis

--- each individual arrives at his specific field of activity

in life. Sin-impressions in the mind can be wiped away only with the

waters of tears, acting upon the mind, in an atmosphere of sobs and

sighs. Thus, every one gets his quota of chances to weep, which,

in many cases, comes to be discovered, later on, as not so sorrowful,

after all.

 

A mind which has thus been completely purified, fails to see a

situation really worth weeping for. Weeping, in fact, is not ordered

by the circumstances, but by the "papa-tendencies" in the mind of the

miserable.

 

Merely because there is a record in my gramophone box, I will have no

music. Even when it is placed on its disc and revolved at the

required speed, it will not and cannot sing. Music can

come out of it only when the needle is in contact with it. The

unmanifest music in the disc can be brought to expression only

through the sound-box. Similarly, here, the mental impressions

cannot in themselves bring either disaster or reward unless they are

connected with the external world through the needle-point of our

ego-centric self-assertion. One who lives, as we found in the earlier

verse, in perfect equanimity in all conditions, must

necessarily come to live in a realm of his own, away from the

pleasure and pain of the INTELLECT, the sobs of success and failure

of the MIND, and the fears of loss and gain in the FLESH. To the

degree an individual detaches himself from his own body, mind and

intellect, to that degree his ego is dead, and, therefore, since the

"sufferer" is no longer available, there cannot be any more "fruits-

of-action" for him to suffer. Rightly understood, we shall realise,

during our discussions on this chapter, how this Theory of

Krishna has not the novelty of an original idea. The more intimately

we understand it, the more we shall realise that Krishna has but

given a new vesture to an ancient idea. But due to this re-

statement in the Geeta, of a cardinal truth of ancient Hinduism, a

religion that was dying revived itself. And from the days of its

origin, five thousand years before Christ was born, it is

beckoning us today, even two thousand years after the Nazarene's

death.

 

[To be continued...]