Bhagavd Gita Chapter 2 Verses 54 to 60 - Swami Chinmayanandaji's Commentary

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LINKING UP THIS STANZA WITH THE NEXT, SHANKARA SAYS: "ANXIOUS TO

KNOW THE CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF ONE WHOSE INTELLECT HAS

COME TO AN EQUIPOISE, HE ASKS THIS QUESTION, AS SOON AS HE GETS A

CHANCE TO INTERROGATE":

 

Arjuna uvaacha .

 

sthitapraGYasya kaa bhaashhaa samaadhisthasya keshava .

sthitadhiiH kiM prabhaashheta kimaasiita vrajeta kim.h .. 2\.54..

 

Arjuna said: 54.

What, O Keshava, is the description of him who has steady

Wisdom and who is merged in the Superconscious state? How does one of

steady Wisdom speak, how does he sit, how does he walk?

 

In the last two stanzas the discussion naturally turned towards the

Ultimate Goal which a Karma

Yogin reaches when he has, with evenness-of-mind, perfected the

"technique of work." The idea seems to be quite appealing and the

theory, indeed, logical. There is a ring of conviction in it, when

the theory comes from the mouth of Lord Krishna. Arjuna has such a

mental constitution that Karma Yoga appeals to him the most.

The grief-sticken hero of the first chapter has forgotten his

hysteria and has now come to take an active interest in the

discussion. As a practical man, he is afraid as to whether, after

gaining this great Goal of Life through Buddhi yoga, he will be able

to live so vigorously in the world outside. Looking from the Vedic

usage of the term, one is apt to misunderstand that the perfected

Yogin, who has come to rediscover the Self, lives exclusively in a

world of his own. The description of the Upanishads can give a

novitiate the notion that a Perfected Sage is ill-fitted to live in

the world. Arjuna, as a child of the age of hatred and diplomacy, was

curious to know fully the condition of the Perfected Master before he

actually accepted the theory and tried to live it.

 

His anxiety to know the entire Truth is clearly shown here in his

very questions upon such non-essentials as, 'How does he speak,' 'how

will he sit,' 'how will he walk,' etc.

 

These questions must be considered quite appropriate and dramatic,

when they come from one who had been, till then, a patient of

hysteria. Again, the first-half of the stanza demands a

description of a Man-of-Steady-Wisdom while in Samadhi, that is, with

regard to his inner life, and the second half is

asking for a description of how such a Master will act in the world

outside.

 

Arjuna is asking a forked question: (a) a description of the state of

mind in a man-of-realisation merged in Self-experience and, (b) an

explanation as to how that experience will influence his

actions in the outer world, when he emerges from that Transcendental

experience.

 

In this stanza and the following section, "Man-of-Steady-Wisdom"

(Sthita-Prajna), means one who has, through direct realisation, come

to experience and live his Godly Self.

 

THE LORD NOW POINTS OUT THOSE CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDES IN A

REALISED SAINT, WHICH, SINCE ATTAINABLE BY ALL THROUGH RIGHT

EFFORT, CONSTITUTE THE MEANS AS SUCH:

 

shriibhagavaanuvaacha .

 

prajahaati yadaa kaamaansarvaanpaartha manogataan.h .

aatmanyevaatmanaa tushhTaH sthitapraGYastadochyate .. 2\.55..

 

The Blessed Lord said: 55. When a man completely casts off, O Partha,

all the desires of the mind, and is satisfied in the Self by the

Self, then is he said to be one of steady Wisdom.

 

By narrating thus the inner and outer life of the 'man-of-Self-

realisation,' Geeta helps us to detect for ourselves, the right type

of Masters from the charlatans who, though wolves, wear a

goat-skin and enter the fold of the faithful. Apart from this, these

passages have a direct appeal to all sincere Sadhakas inasmuch as

this section gives them an easy thumb-rule as to what types

of values and mental attitudes they should develop, during their

practice, in order to realise the ever-effulgent Divinity in them ---

the Pure Awareness.

 

This very opening stanza in this section, is a brilliant summary of

all that we should know of the mental condition of the Perfect. The

words used in this stanza can be understood fully, only

when we remember the significant fragrance of these words as they

stand dancing among the hosts of other blossoms in the Garden of the

Upanishads. He is considered a Man-of-Wisdom who has completely cast

away ALL DESIRES from his mind. Reading this stanza in conjunction

with what Krishna has so far said, we can truly come to enjoy the

Upanishadic fragrance in these inspired words of Vyasa.

 

An intellect, contaminated by ignorance becomes the breeding-ground

of desires, and he who has relieved himself of this 'Ignorance'

through 'Right-Knowledge' gained in Perception, naturally, becomes

'desireless.' By explaining here the absence of the EFFECT, the Lord

is negating the existence of the CAUSE: where desires are not, there

"ignorance" has ended, and "Knowledge" has already come to shine

forth. If this alone were the distinguishing factor of the Man-of-

Steady-Wisdom, then any modern man would condemn the Hindu Man-of-

Wisdom as a rank lunatic; a Hindu wise-man would then

become one who had not even the initiative to desire. Desire means a

capacity of the mind to see ahead of itself, a scheme or a pasttern,

in which he who desires will probably be more happy. "The wise-man

seems to lose even this capacity, as he goes beyond his intellect and

experiences the Self," --- this is a criticism that is generally

heard from the materialists.

 

This stanza cannot thus be condemned since it adds in its second line

that the Perfect-One is "blissful" in his own experience of the Self.

A Perfect man is defined here, therefore, not only as

one who has no desires, but also as one who has positively come to

enjoy the Bliss of the Self!

 

When one is an infant, one has one's own playmates, and as one grows

from childhood to boyhood, one leaves one's toys and runs after a new

set of things; again, as the boy grows to youthfulness, he loses his

desires for the fancy-things of his boyhood and craves for yet a

newer set of things; again, in old age, the same entity casts away

all objects that were till then great joys to him and comes to demand

a totally different set of objects. This is an observed

phenomenon. As we grow, our demands also grow. With reference to the

new scheme of things demanded, the old sets of ideas come to be cast

away. In one's ignorance, when one conceives oneself as the ego, one

has a burning desire for sense-objects, a binding attachment with

emotions, and a jealous preference for one's pet ideas. But

when the ego is transcended, when the ignorance, like a mist, has

lifted itself, and when the finite ego stands face to face with the

Divine Reality in him, it melts away to become one with the

Infinite. In the Self, the Man-of-Steady-Wisdom, 'SELF-SATISFIED IN

THE SELF,' can no more entertain any desire, or have any appetite,

for the paltry objects of the body, or of the mind, or of the

intellect. He becomes the very Source of all Bliss. Such a one is

defined here by Vyasa as the 'Man-of-Steady-Wisdom' (Sthita-

Prajna), and as the words come out from the mouth of Krishna they

gather the divine ring of an incontrovertible Truth.

 

MOREOVER:

 

duHkheshhvanudvignamanaaH sukheshhu vigataspR^ihaH .

viitaraagabhayakrodhaH sthitadhiirmuniruchyate .. 2\.56..

 

56. He whose mind is not shaken by adversity, and who in prosperity

does not hanker after pleasures, who is free from attachment, fear

and anger, is called a Sage-of-Steady-Wisdom.

 

 

In describing the attributes of a Perfect Sage, having explained that

he is one who has come to sacrifice all his petty desires, in his

self-discovered self-satisfaction in the Self, Krishna explains

that, another characteristic by which we can recognise a sage, is his

EQUANIMITY IN PLEASURE AND PAIN. If, in the last stanza, Krishna

considered the man as an "actor," herein he is considering him as an

"experiencer," A BEARER OF BODY-AFFLICTIONS.

 

One who is a stable being, whose heart is undisturbed in sorrow or in

joy, unattached, fearless, and sans-anger, is described here as a

muni --- a silent sage. Of the emotions that must be

absent in an individual, who is a master in all situations, we are

here pointedly told only of these: (a) attachment (Raga), (b) fear

(Bhaya) and © anger (Krodha). In fact, when we read the biographies

of perfected-ones, in the entire history of man, we find in

almost all of them an antithesis of the ordinary man. The hundred

emotions common to the ordinary man are not at all seen in a Perfect-

one, and therefore, we feel surprised, when the absence of only these

three qualities is asserted so emphatically here. Naturally a careful

student gets suspicious. Has Vyasa overlooked all other features? Can

this be a complete statement? But on a closer study we shall discover

that, he has not committed "the crime of inappropriate emphasis upon

the non-essentials," as critics have been tempted to point out.

In the previous stanza we were told that "he is Perfect who has

forsaken all cravings that bubble up in his mind," and this stanza

asserts the mental stability of such a one. In the world outside, in

our intercourse with the sense-objects, we can very easily realise

that our attachments with things create in us the pains of the

perplexing fear-phobia. When an individual develops a desire

strong enough to make a deep attachment, instinctively, he starts

entertaining a sense-of-fear for the non-winning of the object so

deeply desired; and, if it has been secured, then again he fears

for the security of the same acquired object.

 

Similarly, when an object has charmed one to a point of deep

attachment, and when fear itself has started coming up in waves to

disturb the individual, then, such an individual's attitude

towards those that come between him and the object of his attachment,

is called

 

ANGER.

Anger is thus nothing but a feeling that rises in us, because of our

attachment to an object, towards an obstacle between ourselves and

the object of our attachment; the anger thus arising in a bosom is

directly proportional to the amount of fear one entertains on the

score of the obstacle holding one back from winning one's object-of-

love. Anger, therefore, is only our Raga for an object, expressed at

an obstacle that has come between us and the object of our

desire.

 

Shankara says that a Man-of-Steady-Wisdom is not distressed by

calamities (a) such as those that may arise from the disorders of the

body (Adhyatmika); (b) those arising from external

objects, such as tigers, etc. (Adhibhautika); and © those arising

from unseen causes such as the cosmic forces causing rains, storms,

etc. (Adhidaivika). Fire increases when fuel is added.

 

But the 'fire of desire' in a Perfect One does not increase when more

pleasures are attained. Such a person is called a man-of-steady-

Knowledge, a silent, serene sage.

 

MOREOVER:

 

yaH sarvatraanabhis{}nehastattatpraapya shubhaashubham.h .

naabhinandati na dveshhTi tasya praGYaa pratishhThitaa .. 2\.57..

 

57. He who is everywhere without attachment, on meeting with anything

good or bad, who neither rejoices nor hates, his Wisdom is fixed.

An inspired artist, trying to express his idea on the canvas in the

language of colour, will off and on stand back from his easel, and

will again, with growing tenderness and love, approach the

product of his art, to place a few more strokes with his brush; here

Krishna, inspired by his own theme, is again and again choosing right

words to add more light and shade to the picture-of-the-Perfect, the

one which he was painting upon the heart-slab of his listener ---

Arjuna. He who, without attachment, squarely meets life with all

equanimity and poise, is one who is "established in Wisdom." Here

also we have to understand the entire stanza as a whole, or else,

there will be the danger of misinterpreting its true meaning. Mere

detachment from the things of life is NOT the sign of perfection, nor

of true discriminative understanding. But many

unintelligent enthusiasts actually desert their duties in life and

run away, hoping that, since they have developed perfect detachment

from the sensuous world, they will gain their "goal" in the

quietude of the jungle. Arjuna himself had earlier stated that he

would renounce the call of duty and the field of activity. By thus

retiring into quietude, the Pandava-hero hoped to reach

Perfection and Peace. To dissuade Arjuna from taking this calamitous

step, Krishna started his discourse with a serious note in the second

chapter. Detachment from suicidal affections and unintelligent

tenderness cannot by itself take man to the higher realms of

Divinity. Detachment from the world outside must equally be

accompanied by a growing balance in ourselves to face all challenges

in life --- ' auspicious' (Shubha) and 'inauspicious' (Ashubha) ---

in perfect equipoise without either any uncontrolled rejoicing at the

Shubha, or any aversion for the Ashubha experiences. A mere

detachment in itself is not the way of perfect life, inasmuch as it

is only a negative existence of constantly escaping from life. To

live in ATTACHMENT is to live in slavery to the things of the world.

But the Perfect One is he, who, with divine freedom, lives

in the world, dexterously meeting both joys and sorrows which life

may provide for him. In winter, to be out in the sun and lie basking

in its rays is to enjoy its warmth and at the same time to suffer its

glare. To complain of the glare is to bring sorrow into the very

enjoyment of the warmth. One who is intelligent will either try to

ignore the glare and enjoy the warmth fully, or shade off the glare

and bask in the enjoyable warmth. Similarly, life, by its very

nature, is a mixture of both good and bad, and to live ever adjusting

ourselves --- avoiding the bad and striving to linger in the

experience of the good --- is to live unintelligently. The Perfect-

One experiences the best and the worst in life with equal detachment

because he is ever established in THE TRUE AND THE ETERNAL, which is

the very Self.

 

In his question, Arjuna had enquired of Krishna, how a Perfect Master

would speak. This stanza may be considered as an answer to it. Since

the Perfect man-of-Wisdom neither feels any aversion to the sorrows

nor rejoices in the joys of life, he neither compliments anything in

the world, nor does he condemn anything. To him everything is

wonderful. He sees things AS THEY ARE, uncoloured by his mental

moods. Such a Perfect One is beyond all the known

principles of behaviourism of Western psychology.

 

MOREOVER:

 

yadaa sa.nharate chaayaM kuurmo.aN^gaaniiva sarvashaH .

indriyaaNiindriyaarthe.abhyastasya praGYaa pratishhThitaa .. 2\.58..

 

 

58. When, like the tortoise which withdraws its limbs from all sides,

he withdraws his senses from the sense-objects then his Wisdom

becomes steady. After explaining that a Perfect-One is: (a) ever

satisfied in the Self, (b) that he lives in perfect equanimity in

pleasure and pain, and © that there is, in him, a complete

absence of attachment to rejoicing or any aversion, it is here

mentioned that a Man-of-Steady-Wisdom has the special

knack of withdrawing his senses from all the disturbing 'fields of

objects.' The simile used here is very appropriate. Just as a

tortoise can, even at the most distant suggestions of danger,

instinctively withdraw all its limbs into itself, and feel safe

within, a man-of-Perfection can consciously withdraw all his antennae

that peep out through his five arches-of-knowledge, called

the sense-organs.

 

In the theory of perception in Vedanta, the mind, bearing the

consciousness, goes out through the sense-organs to the sense-

objects, and, there it takes, as it were, the shape of the sense-

objects, and so comes to gain the "knowledge" of the objects

perceived. This idea is figuratively put in the Upanishad --- the

Light of Consciousness, as it were, beams out through the seven

holes in the cranium, each special 'beam' of awareness illuminating

only one specific type of 'object.' Thus, the 'Light' that passes

through the eyes is capable of illumining only the FORMS

and COLOURS, while that which emerges through the ears illumines

SOUNDS. In the material world, we can take the example of the

electric-light that expresses through an ordinary bulb

illuminating the objects in the room, while the electricity, as

light, emerging from the X-ray tube penetrates through the form and

illumines things that are ordinarily not visible to the naked eye.

Thus, in each individual, five distinct beams of the same Awareness

protrude like antennae and give him complete "knowledge" of the

eternal world. These five avenues-of-knowledge bring to

him the innumerable stimuli from the outer world, which, reaching the

mind, provide all the disturbances that man feels in his life of

contacts with the outer world. If I am blind, the beauty

that is passing by cannot disturb my mind; if I am deaf, I cannot

over-hear criticism against myself, and naturally, it cannot reach me

to agitate my bosom! The untasted or the unsmelt or

the unfelt sense-objects can never bring any pang of sorrow into the

bosom. Here Krishna re-assures Arjuna that a Man-of-Steady-Wisdom is

he, who has the ready capacity to fold back his senses, from any or

all the fields of their activity. This capacity in an individual to

withdraw his senses at will from the fields-of-objects is called in

Yoga Shastra as Pratyahara, which the Yogin accomplishes through the

control-of-breath (Pranayama). To a devotee this comes naturally,

because he has eyes and ears only for the form and stories of his

beloved Lord. To a Vedantin, again, this (Uparati) comes from his

well-developed and sharpened discriminative faculty, with which his

intellect makes his mind understand the futility, of licking the

crumbs of joy and happiness in the wayside ditches of

sensuousness, while he, in his Real Nature, is the Lord of the very

store of Bliss Infinite.

 

THE SENSES OF A MAN WHO IS ILL, AND CONSEQUENTLY NOT ABLE TO

PARTAKE OF THE SENSUOUS OBJECTS, ARE SEEMINGLY UNDER CONTROL,

BUT THE TASTE FOR THEM DOES NOT THEREBY CEASE TO EXIST. HOW DOES

EVEN THE TASTE FOR SENSE-OBJECTS FINALLY END? LISTEN:

 

vishhayaa vinivartante niraahaarasya dehinaH .

rasavarja.n raso.apyasya para.n dR^ishh{}Tvaa nivartate .. 2\.59..

 

59. The objects of the senses turn away from the abstinent man

leaving the longing (behind) ; but his longing also leaves him on

seeing the Supreme.

 

Without Pratyahara (or Uparati), we can observe cases wherein an

individual comes to maintain sense-withdrawal from the sense-objects

due to some physical incapacity or due to some special mental mood of

temporary sorrow or misery. In all those cases, though the sense-

organs come to feel an aversion for the respective objects, their

inclination for these objects merely remains dormant for the time

being. Similarly, Arjuna doubts that, even in a Yogin, the

capacity to withdraw from the temptations of the sense-world, may be

temporary and that, under favourable or sufficiently tempting

circumstances, they may again raise their hoods to hiss

and to poison. His doubt is answered here. If you observe the flight

of the objects of sensuousness from the shops to their customers, you

can understand this point very clearly. They always reach only those

who are courting them and are panting to possess them. The wine-

cellars get emptied when the bottle "walkout" to

replenish the side-boards of the drunkards! Ploughs made by the

smithy are not purchased by artists and poets, doctors and advocates,

but they must necessarily reach the homes of the

farmers. Similarly, all sense-objects ultimately reach those who are

courting them with burning desires. From one who is completely

abstinent, sense-objects must necessarily get repelled.

But even though the sense-objects may, temporarily, seem to turn away

from him who is abstinent, the deep taste for them, ingrained in his

mind, is very difficult to erase completely.

 

Here Krishna, in his Supreme Wisdom, assures the seeker that these

mental impressions of sensuous lives, lived in the past by the ego,

from the beginning of creation to date, will all be totally erased,

or at least made ineffective --- as roasted seeds --- when the

seeker transcends the ego and comes to experience the Self.

This is not very difficult to understand, since we know that the

objects of sorrow and occasions of tragedy in one plane-of-

consciousness are not available in another. The kingship that I enjoy

in my dream, does not add even a jot to my dignity when I wake up to

realise my insignificant existence; so too, my meagre existence in

the waking-state will not debar me from the full kingly

glory in my dream-kingdom!!

 

Similarly, the ego, existing now through the waking, dream and deep-

sleep states, has gathered to itself a dung-heap of impressions, all

purely sensuous. But these cannot be effective when the same ego,

transcending these three planes, comes to experience the plane of

God-consciousness.

 

HE, WHO WOULD ACQUIRE STEADINESS OF RIGHT KNOWLEDGE (Prajna)

SHOULD FIRST BRING HIS SENSES UNDER CONTROL. FOR, IF NOT

CONTROLLED, THEY WILL DO HARM. SO, THE LORD SAYS:

 

yatato hyapi kaunteya purushhasya vipashchitaH .

indriyaaNi pramaathiini haranti prasabhaM manaH .. 2\.60..

 

60. The turbulent senses, O son of Kunti, do violently carry away the

mind of a wise-man, though he be striving (to control them) .

In his discourse so far, the Lord has emphasized that a perfect-

Master is one who has complete control over his sense-appetites. In

India, a mere philosophical idea, in itself, is not considered

anything more than a poetic ideology, and it is not accepted as a

spiritual thesis unless it is followed by a complete technique by

which the seeker can come to live it, in his own subjective

experience. True to this traditional Aryan faith, in the Geeta too,

the Lord indicates to Arjuna the practical method, by which he should

struggle hard, in order to reach the eminence of

perfection in all men-of-steady-Wisdom. The ignorance of the

Spiritual Reality functions in any individual in three

distinct aspects: "Unactivity" (Sattwa) "Activity" (Rajas); and

"Inactivity" (Tamas). When the Sattwa aspect in

us is molested by the "veiling of the intellect" (Avarana) and the

"lack of tranquillity" of the mind (Vikshepa), then we come to the

sorrows caused by their endless roamings through the sense-

organs. Unless these are well-controlled, they will drag the mind to

the field of the sense-objects, and thus create a chaotic condition

within, which is experienced as sorrow.

 

That this happens even to a highly evolved seeker, is here accepted

by the statement of the Lord. With this assertion, he is warning the

seeker in Arjuna, that he should not on any score let his "objective-

mind" take hold of, and enslave his "subjective-intellect." This

warning is quite appropriate and timely in the scheme of thought in

this chapter.

 

Invariably, among those who are practising religion, the common cause

by which very many true seekers fall away from the Path, is the same

all over the world. After a few years of practice, they, no doubt,

come to live a certain inexplicable inward joy, and over-confident,

and often even vainful of their progress, they relax in their Tapas.

Once they come back to the field of the senses, "the turbulent senses

do violently snatch the mind away" from the poise of perfect

meditation!