SHRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA ADHAYA 1- COLLECTION

That nobody can every decipher the sacred words of Bhagavad Gita is not a recondite fact yet "we continue to beat against the currrents." In the same manner, I too, am trying to unravel what I can to the best of my intellectual abilities which obvious fall extremely short of even understanding the mere words of the sacred conversation between Lord Krisna and Arjuna. So, here is the first part of 

MY THOUGHTS ON SHRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA ADHAYA 1[CLICK HERE]

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

52 years of unparalleled writing.

Salman Rushdie unequivocally avows the following for this exceptional piece of work:

“The greatest novel in any language of the last fifty years”

And I won’t dare digress a whit from this statement. The insuperable amalgamation of magic and realism that Gabriel Garcia Marquez endues to this novel is nothing less than an imperishable incantation. Moreover, the pain, the pleasure and especially the solitude as expounded in the novel seems so much realistic and every serious reader would have a predilection to fall into the cobwebs of Marquez’s unparalleled imagination.

This novel is for everyone. The contours of the book seem boundary-less for the books encompasses all sorts of human emotions. Be it obsession, love, discovery, pain, abhorrence, lust or envy, everything has a special place in this figment of Marquez’s ingenious thought. And above all nothing can be as incisive to a reader as is the pain of solitude that Marquez has imbued his characters in. The most intriguing thing about the story is that there is no convoluted plot, no hidden subterfuge and no awe-inspiring ruses but the mere reality of the human life and how we all evolve to fall slowly but certainly into the abyss of solitude. Besides that, there is no protagonist in the whole story. Every character is special for every person in the story no much how much extraneous he/she seems to appear in the inception, is indispensable and goads out a wide range of different feelings in the character.

The simplicity of the story is the first thing that will catch you eye. It seems to belong to us all, it has human desires and concocted fantasies, it foments emotions and sometimes also shows how much impassive and nonchalant the world can be. Also, one more thing that truly corroborates Marquez’s exception story-telling ability is his deft virtuosity at maneuvering your emotions. The thing that stupefied me most was that the author has indited the plot in such a way that he can make you loathe or love a character at his whim, whenever he wants he can give you reasons to deplore one particular characters and just after turning some more pages, he can give you substantial reasons to feel sympathy and love for the same character. Such is the greatness of Marquez’s writing that we you end reading the novel, your arbitration skills at judging the characters of the actors will be clobbered and what will be left will be serene reverence for Marquez and a feeling of melancholy making you realize the harshness and asperity of solitude.

Nobel Prize in Literature (1982) winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Solitude, as obvious from the title, is the most significant theme of the whole book. Every character here is condemned to solitude throughout his life. And here Marquez takes out a very vital issue. Solitude as per Marquez’s characters is not the absence of people around, solitude is not being solitary but solitude is being so much indifferent to others and that we stop living itself. None of the character is the novel is living, they are all surviving and compounded by their great life expectancy, all of them are living lives of complete solitude. Every person has immured himself in solitary confinement and sheer breakdown in their life generates pathos in the mind of the every reader. Yet in between we find glimpses of realism where we realize that we too as part of this techno-savvy generation are part of the same canker. In this age of technology, we have so many ‘friends’, yet no one to talk to; we have so many who know us, yet no one who understands us; so many who meet us, yet no one to share our feelings; so many who talk with us, yet no one who believes in us. This sheer similarity between Marquez’s magnum opus truly invokes a sense of profound respect for the deceased author. It seems as if this 1967’s novel could peep into this 21^st century’s melee and taunt us all with its sharp similarity to the present day world. All of us today are feeling the pain of solitude that has been edified in the book. Just as the advent of new technologies in Macondo village (fictional village where the whole plot is set) widened the cleft between people so is the present rise of the technological juggernaut is doing to the current generation. Our geographical and spatial distances have been curtailed to a great extent, yet our emotional distances have developed deep chasms. On one hand, we have made communication possible, yet on the other hand we are excommunicating ourselves from the world. Our basic lifestyle has unskeptically ameliorated, but whether the quality of our life has followed the same trend is a question worth musing. Technology is not the culprit here, in fact, we are the ones who are banishing ourselves from the world. We too have transfixed ourselves just like Marquez’s characters and this engenders in every reader a feeling of grave poignancy.

The downright analogy between ours and Macondo’s time is enough to horripilate any conscientious reader. One thing to learn from Macondo would be that it is high time we rectified ourselves otherwise the same fatalism and perdition that ensued for Macondo would follow the suit for our own society. We need to accept that human being can’t survive alone and the way we are confining ourselves would one day do nothing less than asphyxiating us through our own hands and then when we will decipher the whole code in the end, it would be a lost cause (just like Aureliano’s) and a hurricane would blow everything away.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Shrimad Bhagavad 2.20,2.21,2.22

य एनं वेत्ति हन्तारं यश्चैनं मन्यते हतम्।

उभौ तौ न विजानीतो नायं हन्ति न हन्यते।।2.19।।

Whosoever views this to be the slayer and whosoever believes this to be the slain, both these do not understand: This does not slay, nor is this slain.

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न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचि

न्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः।

अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो

न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे।।2.20।।

This is neither born; nor ever dies; nor, having not been at one time, will this come to be again. This is unborn, destruction-less, eternal and ancient and is not slain [even] when the body is slain.

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वेदाविनाशिनं नित्यं य एनमजमव्ययम्।

कथं स पुरुषः पार्थ कं घातयति हन्ति कम्।।2.21।।

Whosoever realizes this to be changeless, destruction-less, unborn and immutable, how can that person be slain; how can he either slay [any one]? O Partha!

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वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय

नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि।

तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा

न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही।।2.22।।

Just as rejecting the tattered garments, a man takes other new ones, in the same way, rejecting the decayed bodies, the embodied (Self) rightly proceeds to other new ones.

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Here the lord goes on to reveal some primordial and vital veracious facts about life. He avers that the ‘atman’, the conscious that can never be destroyed, its power is ineffable, its existence irrefragable, its basis incontrovertible, its realm unfathomable. It stands as destruction-less, no force can clobber it, nothing can make its grandeur totter, nothing can transmute it and nothing can ever pervade its contours. Lord avers that the atman is insurmountable. Infernos are inefficacious in torching it, even death can’t slay it and apocalypses can’t annihilate it. It remains aloof from the bounds of our imagination for we can’t gauge its depth neither can we ever unravel its gravity. But one things remains constant: it changes from one form to another, one life to another. Just as the human beings change clothes so does the Atman change its dwelling and goes on to reside in some new abode. Moreover, Lord says that if nobody can kill it then why should we be despondent over other’s demise, if nothing can produce it why should be ecstatic over someone’s birth. For the Atman’s existence is far beyond the reach of human, why should we deem ourselves as the slayer or the producer of the same. Something that is neither bound by the space nor by the time and can’t be decimated and can never be begotten. One should accept the limits of mankind and should forsake the egoist notions that one is the architect of the soul. As long as we cling to these prejudiced notions, we will not be able to the limpid reality and will thus continue to fall in the cobwebs of our thoughts. Those who can’t see the lucid truth of the existence of Atman will never be able to feel one with their existence and thus their spirit will continue to wander in confusions and life would seem too arcane and recondite. Rather than fighting the supremacy of Atman, we should rather connect with it and the first step to connect with it is through acknowledging its eternity and existence.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Shrimad Bhagavad 2.16,2.17,2.18

नासतो विद्यते भावो नाभावो विद्यते सतः।

उभयोरपि दृष्टोऽन्तस्त्वनयोस्तत्त्वदर्शिभिः।।2.16।।

Birth (or existence) does not happen to what is non-existent, and destruction (or non-existence) to what is existent; the finality of these two has been seen by the seers of the reality.

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अविनाशि तु तद्विद्धि येन सर्वमिदं ततम्।

विनाशमव्ययस्यास्य न कश्िचत् कर्तुमर्हति।।2.17।।

          And know that to be destruction-less, by which all this (universe) is pervaded; no one is capable of causing destruction to this changeless One.

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अन्तवन्त इमे देहा नित्यस्योक्ताः शरीरिणः।

अनाशिनोऽप्रमेयस्य तस्माद्युध्यस्व भारत।।2.18।।

These destructible bodies are said to belong to the everlasting, indestructible, indeterminable, embodied One. Therefore, O descendant of Bharata, join the battle.

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Here the Lord gainsays about presumptions of life by saying that life is like an ethereal gossamer with no inception and no denouement. This thread has unfathomable depth and insuperable altitude, yet it begins where it ends and ends where it commences. It never ceases to stop and can’t be made to capitulate to the worldly forces. Its existence is not questioned by the influence of nature, nor can its sanctity be contravened by the human actions. That which has ever been begotten can’t be debilitated in any manner, that which has never been engendered can’t be created through any process, the world we live in is constant, all of us tergiversate from one body to another. Wherever there is death, somewhere else life will sprout us as a consequence because as per the Lord, death is nothing but the inception of a new form of life. Those who believe that demist symbolizes a coda of a human life will always be eluded by the veracity of the universe, because death is nothing but a catapult for new life. In this world nothing biotic can be expunged, it can only be made to change its countenance. This is the ultimate truth of life. Those who can console them to accept this truth will never achieve the covetous unity with the atman, they will continue to see disparity in processes which are inherently coherent, they will continue to see anachronism in process which are innately coeval, and this will continue to produce various philosophical and emotional imbroglios and mires for them. For they are restraining themselves from seeing the reality, only pain and self-meditated notions would be visible to them and thus redemption will never come.

The incessant process of transformation of lives and the truth of confluence of pleasure and pain, love and hate, life and death, unity and disparity, inception and destruction are the only truths of life that a man must acknowledge and concede to. Though at first these things seem plumb opposite to each other, yet they complement each other like none other. Deeming them in the manner that the Lord prescribes will be an arduous task because there is nothing as strenuous as steering one’s own thoughts and mind at one’s command. Since we have inured ourselves to the convention of watching these things as opposite to one another, we must unlearn our facile knowledge, flay off our sense of insecurity through regular scholarship and then only we will be able to reconcile those differences in our own heart. I must warn you beforehand that this is going to be a formidable journey replete of hindrances and difficulties. For we are acclimatized to celebrate birth and mourn death, sing praise for origination and lament for the end, it would be extremely difficult to get the reigns of our emotions. You can infer about the challenge posed by this task by thinking of the yogis. The only truth that a yogi needs to learn is hidden in these three shlokas, yet our human predilections and subconscious mar our progress and curb our amelioration and thus make it very difficult to conquer our mind.

It is only through constant practice and toil that we will be able to clobber our base instincts and reach the supreme truth of the universe that Lord wants us to recognize.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Shrimad Bhagavad 2.13, 2.14, 2.15

देहिनोऽस्मिन्यथा देहे कौमारं यौवनं जरा।

तथा देहान्तरप्राप्तिर्धीरस्तत्र न मुह्यति।।2.13।।

2.13. Just as the boyhood, youth and old age come to the embodied Soul in this body, in the same manner is the attaining of another body; the wise man is not deluded at that.

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मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदुःखदाः।

आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत।।2.14।।

2.14 But the contacts of the organs with the objects are the producers of cold and heat, happiness and sorrow. They have a beginning and an end, (and) are transient. Bear them, O descendant of Bharata.

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यं हि न व्यथयन्त्येते पुरुषं पुरुषर्षभ।

समदुःखसुखं धीरं सोऽमृतत्वाय कल्पते।।2.15।।

2.15. O the best among persons! That wise person becomes immortal whom these (situations) do not trouble and to whom the pleasure and pain are equal.

The lord commences by carving out the distinction between the body and the atman, between our senses and our consciousness and tells that thought may seem indiscernible, yet the gravity of discreteness is them can’t be eschewed. He tells us that just like the aging process of a body the soul too is going through a metamorphosis. As we grow from an infant to fall into the laps of senility, so too the soul is transmuting from one form to another. Nature teaches us that the world progresses by evolution; that species mould themselves to make themselves comme il faut for the time; that the only everlasting thing in the world is evanescent change; that if we don’t prepare ourselves to nestle in the cast of befitting time, we will be vanquished and clobbered by the forces of nature itself. Similarly, Lord tells us that soul is also not excused from the process. Change is ineluctable, though in some cases it is momentarily and in others extremely protracted. Furthermore, Lord edifies that all the emotions and sentiments that we believe are part of our soul and consciousness are not at all any integral part of our emotions. They are just ephemeral stimulation of our external organs and nothing carries enough power to transfix our soul. Our biggest mistake is to believe that we comprise of our emotions, notwithstanding knowing that they will pass sooner or later, we linger onto them and cling to them thinking that they are indispensable. This folly makes us to go through the ups and down of emotions through which those who know the truth of atman are not made to go through. They are never made to tread the formidable path being administered by our emotions and external stimuli because they know that these things are mere illusions created by the body and our impervious soul is not bound by them. Thus Lord asks Arjuna to be unfazed by death and life, grief and merry, hate and love, loath and certainty, indecision and decision, evolution or decadence, equivocation or vehemence. He asks him to concede to the cardinal truth of life that atman is above all and nothing carries enough competence to penetrate the atman. In fact, Lord even goes further to say that those who snub pain and pleasure equally are immortal. That is so because, when we stop dwelling over the matters of our destructible body and raise above the trifles of the external world, silence pervades inside us all. When this silence is further strengthened by our equanimity, nonchalance and indiscrimination, it leads to our unification with the atman and since atman is adamantine, we rise above the bagatelle to become immortal. Immortality thus, comes after accepting that our body is a mere apparel and our soul is what we are made up of.       

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Shrimad Bhagavad Gita 2.12

न त्वेवाहं जातु नासं न त्वं नेमे जनाधिपाः।

न चैव न भविष्यामः सर्वे वयमतः परम्।।2.12।।

Never indeed at any time [in the past] did I not exist, nor you, nor these kings; and never shall we all not exist hereafter.

One of the first revelations appurtenant to the world we live in has been brought forth here. That our existence doesn’t depend merely on time is in itself a hard nut to crack. All of our assays germane to the human life germinate in the lap of time. Time girths around our discussions and ideologies, yet Lord says that time has been immaterial in our existence within the universe. Lord Krishna asks Arjuna not to be engulfed in the dilemma that his actions will destroy his gurus and beloved one and contrastingly tells him that nothing in this world can vanquish their existence from the universe. Each one of us was here in the past and will continue to be extant in the future and hence rather than making his heart look woebegone with the terrors of war, he should rather march ahead and fight for victory.

This discourse pertinent to the continuity of life forms the basic tenet of Hinduism. In fact, a very similar ideology is present in the field of Physics. Physics has seen quite a lot of ‘upheavals’ in the last century, Newtonian Mechanics has been left almost redundant in the microscopic world, wave-particle duality and de-Broglie’s hypothesis of matter waves opened a new realm of science which finally led to Quatum Mechanics and then in Quantum Mechanics too, phenomena like Quatum entanglement continue to bemuse physicist around the world; yet one principle that came purely unscathed out of all this churning is the principle of conservation of energy. Physics avers that no matter how you play with the system, energy remains constant: it can neither be created, nor be destroyed. We know this (in Physics) not because of some experiment, but because it has always been observed. Though some elementary proofs regarding basic energy forms are there, yet there stands no proof which coalesces all the different types of energies existing in the universe. Even a single contradictory datum can prove it wrong, yet in the whole history of science (in macroscopic as well as microscopic world), no such case has ever been observed.

In exactly the same terms, Sanatan Dharma avows that life (atman) remains constant, it can’t be impales, immured, destroyed or created. Its ostentatious apparels (our body, our thoughts) may be exuviated, yet its deep ingredients are perennial and will never cease to exist. It flows incessantly and relentlessly (just like energy) from one form to another, it can change its shape, structure or size, yet it will exist in the universe no matter what. It will continue to bear up new apparels, then add a bauble or too, yet beneath the surface it is same and has always been like that.

The only difference between the physical law of conservation of energy and the law of continuity of life is that the former exists in the dimensions of space while the latter exists in the dimensions of time and unfortunately, the human brain can only deal in the dimensions of space and hence energy laws are verifiable but those of life are not. But this should not detract from the immaculate analogy that exists between Physics and Dharma and how both stand on the shoulders of the same giant.

This is one the few shlokas in which Lord enunciates a revelation of universe, which can consume a deluge of descants, in such a terse yet exact manner. Yet, Lord is ineffable in his own ways and we, the mortals, can just try to decipher what he meant using the best of our mediocre senses.   

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

Shrimad Bhagavad Gita 2.10, 2.11

तमुवाच हृषीकेशः प्रहसन्निव भारत।

                   सेनयोरुभयोर्मध्ये विषीदन्तमिदं वचः।।2.10।।

2.10 To him who was despondent in the midst of the two armies, Krishna, as if smiling, O Bharata, spoke these words.

श्री भगवानुवाच

                     अशोच्यानन्वशोचस्त्वं प्रज्ञावादांश्च भाषसे।
                 गतासूनगतासूंश्च नानुशोचन्ति पण्डिताः।।2.11।।

2.11. While lamenting for those who cannot be lamented on and those who do not require to be lamented on, you do not talk like a wise man! The learned do not lament for those of departed life and those of non-departed life.

Lord commences by shedding light on Arjun’s misconception that indecision stands as a better alternative and then in one single utterance he crashes the notion of Arjuna that after the war, he would be left with nothing but lamentation. He reprimands Arjuna for thinking like a fatuous person amidst the battlefield. In essence, this is the first taste of cosmic reality that Arjuna has been introduced to by the Lord. The first question that comes here is who is Arjuna to lament over others and why should he ever be lugubrious and melancholic regarding to the deaths of the warriors in the world. However surprising it may seem, Arjuna’s saturnine thoughts emerge from his ego. In the deepest realms of his heart, he deems himself as the spearhead of the battle. He thinks that he can bring destruction and wreak havoc on the opposing lines through his might and power and hence Lord deems him to be too silly on this aspect. You can be sad over something that happens because of you but the cosmic reality says that in this world nothing can happen because of us, we are mere evanescent fabrics in the net of reality. If some other fabric gets twitches or extricated, it happens on the will of the weaver of the net rather than the will of some other fabric, yet our preconceived notions compel us that our inner might is capable of bringing about changes in the universe. Similarly, Arjuna believes that if he takes up weapons and Acharya Dron or Pitamah Bhismah die then that would be because of his taking up weapon but he doesn’t know that he is just some other fabric in the cosmic reality net. Nothing can be done on his will, nothing can be stopped on his whims. The reality net doesn’t heed to the capriciousness of his behaviour. The net has existed since much before the existence of Arjuna and will continue even after the demise of Arjuna. When, how and why other fabrics will be plucked depends only on the will of the weaver and hence if Arjuna can affect no outcome and engender no change in the reality, then why should he be so Eeyorish. He, just like other, is a mere impotent thread that must function just as a thread, yet he is thinking of himself as the creator and destroyer of the net. It is as if a child has refused to study because he believes that if he ranks first in the exam, others would have to go away with a lower rank. Here, the child is considering himself the supreme reality, just like Arjuna. Though his own study would never affect the outcome of other’s work, yet he believes that he can generate and alter consequences of various action. It is as if a drop of water is unhappy that it led to a tsunami that killed thousands. Is it the drop that caused the tsunami? Certainly not! Then why should the drop lament?

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI