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BG II: Sh 59-61, Swami Chinmayananda's Commentary
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To: alt-hindu@uunet.uu.net
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Subject: BG II: Sh 59-61, Swami Chinmayananda's Commentary
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From: lchiluku@ucsd.edu (R. & L. Chilukuri)
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Date: 4 Jun 1995 22:40:17 GMT
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From news@network.ucsd.edu Sun Jun 4 18: 29:02 1995
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Newsgroups: alt.hindu
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Organization: Univ of California at San Diego
Bhagavad Gita Chap II: Shlokas 59-64
Excerpts/highlights from Swami Chinmayananda's commentary.
59: Vishaya vinivartante niraharasya dehinah
rasavarjam rasopyasya param drishtva nivartate
....an individual may be abstinent from sense-objects due to some
physical incapacity or some special mental mood of temporary
sorrow... In all these cases, the inclination of the sense organs for
their objects merely remains dormant for the time being. Similarly, is
the capacity of the Yogin to withdraw from temptations also
temporary?
....objects of sensuousness reach only those who are courting them
and are panting to possess them. Wine cellars get emptied when the
bottles "walk out" to replenish the side boards of drunkards. Ploughs
made by the smithy must necessarily reach the homes of farmers....
>From one who is completely astinent, the sense objects must
necessarily get repelled.
Krishna assures us that the deep taste for the objects (the mental
impressions of sensuous lives lived in the past by the ego) will be
totally erased when the seeker transcends the ego and comes to
experience the Self. This is not very difficult to understand since the
"kingship of a dreamer" does not add to the dignity of the "waker".
Similarly, the sensuous impressions of the ego are transcended in
the plane of God-consciousness.
60: yatato hyapi kaunteya purushasya vipaschitah
indriyani pramathini haranti prasabham manah
....the common cause by which 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 meditation...
61: tani sarvani samyamye yukta aseeta matparah
vashe he yasyendriyani tasya prajna pratishtita
....Arjuna is warned that the seeker should constantly struggle to
control the sense organs and their mad lustful wanderings.....
According to western psychology, to CONTROL is to SUPPRESS...
But Vedic theory is only advising an inward blossoming, an inner
growth and development, by which one's earlier fields of enjoyment
drop out to make room for a newer more satisfying bliss.
Lord Krishna, as though in the same breath, advises not only
withdrawal from sensuousness, but also constant attention "ON ME,
THE SUPREME". To expose the mind to the quiet atmosphere of
meditation upon the All-perfect Being, is to heal its ulcers.
The concealed suggestion of this stanza is that no one, who, with
excessive force and by sheer strength of will controls his indriyas,
has any chance of flowering into a full-blow spiritual beauty.
