Panchajanyam hrsheekesah-2

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Arjuna exhausted himself and seemed to be at crossroads and said "

I am utterly confused please tell me what is good for me. " He uses

the word shreyas. So long he had been talking about what was preyas

to him,  what he wanted to do. .Now he was asking what he should do.

Then and then only the Lord started talking .In our life too we go on

telling the lord what to do and never ask Him what we should do. When

we do ask He starts telling us what to do .Similarly when Arjuna

said sishyastheham shaadhimaam thwaam prapannam, I am your desciple

I surrender to you, only then Krishna starts giving him the advice

because advice given unasked will not be taken well!

Arjuna's arguments were blown into  shreds by Krishna who says

kuthasthwaam kashmalamidham vishame samupasthitham 'wherefrom did

you get this nonsensical ideas at the most inopportune moment?'

Krishna dismisses all the seemingly lofty arguments of Arjuna as

being unaryajushtam ignoble, aswargyam that which shuts the gates of

heaven for you , akeerthikaram disgraceful for a hero like you He

calls it klaibyam unmanliness. Then comes the real reason for

Arjuna's mental conflict. He says " How can I fight Bhishma and Drona

on the battle field as they are worthy of my reverence? Finally he

surrenders to the Lord by saying sishyastheham.

Now starts the real discourse of Bhagavatgita. Krishna

says asochyaananvasochasthwam prajnaavadhaamschabhashase`You are

grieving over those who need not be grieved about.' What Krishna

means here is that Bhishma and Drona  had no compunction to fight

against their own grandson and pupil respectively, not because they

were heartless but because they had no confusion about their duty,

svadharma like Arjuna. Further Krishna says that Arjuna had tried to

conceal his confusion under his arguments as though they were words

of wisdom prajnaavadhaamscha bhaashase. The arguments of Arjuna are

ridiculed by Krishna because if he were really wise panditha he would

not have worried over life and death. .Then Krishna starts giving

Arjuna the divine wisdom.

Nathwevaamham jathunaasam nathvam neme naradhipaah states Krishna, '

there was never a time when you, I, and all these men in front ceased

to be nor will there be a time when we all will cease to be. This

is the answer to the question who am I. You are not what you think

you are , says the Lord .The anxiety about living and dying comes

only through identifying yourself with the body. Death is not the end

of you but it is only a change of circumstance. You are not overly

worried about changing from boyhood to youth or to old age which you

consider a natural occurrence. So too death is only natural change

about which you need not worry.

Then Krishna goes on to talk about what is real and what

is transient

 

 

 Naasatho vidhyathe bhaavo naa bhaavo vidhyathe sathah, says

Krishna. What exists can never cease to exist and what does not

exist can never come into existence. This sounds like high

philosophy but this can be applied to our everyday life. Most of

our  problems arise because we imagine something to be real when it

is not. We identify ourselves with our body ,mind ,and intellect

while the real `I' is different from all these. This can be

verified through a simple exercise by trying to answer the question

Who am I ? The obvious answer would be ` I .am so and so.' But that

is only your name. You may say that I am father of so and so or

husband of so and so. But it is only your relationship. Even when you

say I am a professor or I am an intellectual, it only denotes your

professional and intellectual status. So, who are you in reality ? We

commonly speak about our body as when we say " My body aches all

over. " This proves that you are not your body. Similarly when we use

expressions like " My mind is upset " or " My intellect has failed to

grasp this " it is obvious that we are separate from our mind and

intellect.

 

 That the real self must be something different from our

body, mind, and intellect  we are able to perceive with no difficulty

at all .But there is another `I' which  we have to reckon with , and

that is our ego, which is the consciousness that I am.  Even this is

absent when we are in deep sleep because we are not aware of

ourselves then. But there is some entity who is aware of our

existence even at that stage which makes us say that we had a

sound sleep. This is the real `I' which is even different from our

ego .This is what Krishna calls avinaasi or sariri. Except that ,

everything else can be termed as transitory or antavantah.

 All our experiences, joy and sorrow, heat and cold etc

are also transitory ,which have to be endured. There is no stoicism

involved in this as we cannot fail to see that all our problems or

difficulties pass after some time whether we face them boldly or

cringe away in fear. That is what Krishna means when He says  that

all experiences are due to the contact of the senses with the sense

objects and they are fleeting and transitory aagamapayino anityaah

and advises Arjuna to bear with them patiently .They have nothing to

do with the real ' I 'which is the pure self, different from body

mind and intellect.

The real self is  thus shown to be different from body,

mind and intellect.  Krishna tells Arjuna that it is impossible for

him to kill anyone. Bhishma and Drona have existence beyond their

bodies which are only outer covering and when one dies he only sheds

off this body to acquire another as we discard our old clothes to put

on new ones.

  This sounds alright if death occurs at old age when the

body has become jeerna or old. But how can this analogy of discarding

old clothes and putting on new ones be applied when death occurs at

young age or childhood when the body cannot be termed as old? Jeerna

here means that it had served its purpose. A body is acquired for the

purpose of exhausting a particular karma and when the result of that

karma has been experienced, that body has served its purpose and

becomes jeerna. The residue of karma cannot be exhausted in that body

and hence it is shed to acquire a different one suited for the

purpose. So death is not something to be feared or grieved about at

any age