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by Jayaram V
The scripture offers enough scope to accommodate different
interpretations as we have discussed before. At the same time, it
has consistency. Its main theme is liberation for which it provides
different alternatives that are in many ways complimentary. For
the spiritually inclined people, it offers the following seven fundamental
perspectives or thinking points. They sum up the philosophy of the
Bhagavadgita and its core teachings. The following account is written
from a modern perspective, but it is based on the same teachings
found in the scripture.
1. The world in which you live is impermanent. It is unreal.
It is created and maintained by Nature to be the source of your
bondage, ignorance, suffering and delusion. You should be careful
when you deal with it because in many ways it is a prison house
for the souls. It draws you in and binds you to things, keeping
you engaged, distracted, and disturbed. Whatever escape it offers
leads you in the end into a deeper hole and makes your life even
more miserable. With each step forward into it, you distance yourself
from yourself. With each thread of attachment you build with it,
you increase your enmity with yourself. As you become attached to
it deeply, you become your own enemy and delay your liberation.
In the end, you are bound to suffer anyway because you cannot hold
on to anything here for long and when you are separated from things,
you will experience sorrow, fear and anxiety.
2. Your identity and individuality are temporary constructions
built around your name and form. They hide you from yourself and
keep you disengaged from your true nature. Your name and form are
illusions. In their defense, you spend several lifetimes only to
realize in the end that you have been chasing false dreams. You
are neither of them. You are an eternal and indestructible Self
that can be neither slain nor injured. You are an aspect (amsa)
of God and you will always be so. The body is like a garment you
wear and discard overtime. When the body dies, you wear another
one to continue your existence in another form. Therefore, you should
not lose your peace over the impermanence and the modifications
of life to which we are subject. Think of yourself as an infinite
being, with no limits whatsoever and look at this world and yourself
from that perspective. You are here, but you do not really belong
to the world. Living here, you have lost your way. You have to find
it again to rediscover your true nature and stabilize in it. By
practicing the yoga of self-absorption (atma samyama yoga) stretch
your mind far into infinity. Enter into that limitless awareness
of Universal Self so that from that eternal perspective, your problems
begin to fade away and you look at yourself and this world with
wisdom, knowledge and discernment.
3. You are bound to the world. Your involvement with it arises
from the activity of your senses. They draw you out and involve
you with the world. As a result, you become attached to things and
experience restlessness, anger, pride, fear, attachment and the
like. Your involvement with the material world is the source of
your suffering. It deludes you into accepting as true the duality
and diversity of the world and believing that your happiness arises
from having things rather than being yourself. This thirst for things
and ownership is the cause of our suffering. What begins as a simple
expedition into a magical world ends up as a servitude of many lifetimes.
You become a prisoner inside your own body, while every action you
perform prolongs your sentence and delays your release. If you want
to be free from the world, you should restrain your senses and retrain
your mind to look within yourself to know who you are and what happened
to you over time.
4. The world is not what it appears to be. It is a trap. If you
live here ignorantly and negligently, you will never be free from
it. It binds you to things and deludes you into believing that you
can be secure and happy by having them. The spiritually blind are
led into darkness. Those who live here with their eyes half closed
suffer enormously. You cannot sleepwalk through this world. You
must live here with your eyes wide open, and you mind wide awake,
watching your steps carefully, as if you are lost in a forest that
is full of traps and unknown dangers. You must cultivate discriminating
wisdom (buddhi) to know the truth from falsehood and avoid making
mistakes. You must live here wisely, making your way safely out
of death and impermanence, avoiding sin and binding actions. True
wisdom comes from knowledge and true knowledge is the knowledge
of the Self. It arises not from perceptual experience but from transcendental
experience, which is possible only when one achieves perfection
in yoga.
5. You are responsible for your life, your actions and inactions.
You are not bound to this world by them, but by your desires and
attachments. Whatever you do or avoid doing in your life out of
desires shape your destiny. Both action and inaction arise from
the gunas. They are equally harmful when you indulge in them with
desires. You cannot avoid karma by avoiding actions or your duties.
True renunciation is not giving up actions or the world but giving
up desires with firm resolve. It may be painful in the beginning,
but in the end, it leads to liberation and freedom from death. You
must live, but not for yourself and perform actions as if you are
not performing them. It is possible when you perform them
selflessly, without desires, not for yourself but for God or some
divine cause. You should live here as if you do not exist and do
your duty as a sacrificial offering to God. Giving up your personal
needs and comforts, you should live here for the sake of God and
in His service, like a true a servant (bhagavata). Then you will
be free from the consequences of your actions. Your living becomes
an offering, a form of continuous worship. Instead of binding you,
your actions will free you from their consequences. Therefore, perform
your actions, without desires and expectations. Live as if you do
not exist, you do not matter and you are no one.
6. The underlying causes of our bondage and ignorance are much
deeper than we think. They are an integral aspect of our essential
nature and so deeply hidden within our beingness that to know them
we have to go all the way to the source of our creation. Our bodies
are our prison houses. They are made up of Nature. We cannot escape
from their influence easily because they are filled with gunas,
the primary qualities that determine our thinking and actions and
thereby our destinies. We are good or bad, wise or foolish, knowledgeable
or ignorant according to the gunas present in us. We act, react,
and seek things because of them. We must therefore know what the
gunas are and how they bind us through desires and actions. Wise
people know it and thereby remain untouched by their actions or
the changes that happen within them. We should also do the same.
Knowing that the gunas are responsible for our desires, like wise
yogis who have stable wisdom (sthitaprajnas), we should remain equal
to the dualities of life with unwavering mind and let events of
our lives unfold on their own.
7. When you live here, you serve many gods in the hope of finding
peace and happiness. Propelled by your gunas and desires, you serve
your own ego, worship your own interests and surrender to your whims.
The result of this self-love is bondage. When you worship false
gods of your own creation, you delude yourself and fall into greater
ignorance. Instead of worshipping material things and taking refuge
in your shadow self, you should take refuge in your real Self and
the Supreme Self, who is all pervading, eternal, indestructible
and true liberator of all. He is the cause of everything and the
real Doer of all actions. Those who are filled with rajas and tamas
worship themselves or ignorance, but those who are filled with sattva
worship the highest God. They offer themselves to God. They place
themselves at His feet. Symbolically, they become His sacrificial
food (bhatka) in the sacrifice of their lives. Therefore, cultivate
purity (sattva) so that you can stabilize your mind in the contemplation
of God, transcending your self-love, and experience oneness with
Him. Restraining your mind and senses, focusing your mind upon Him,
offer your thoughts and actions to Him. With surrender and gratitude,
prostrate before Him and offer yourself to Him. If you persist in
your practice, you will attain knowledge, wisdom and liberation
quickly. When you seek refuge in Him, He assumes full responsibility
for your life and guides you safely across the ocean of phenomenal
life towards the world of light and delight.
Source: An excerpt from the Essays on the Bhagavadgita
by Jayaram V
Suggested Further Reading
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