For greatest ease in understanding, i recommend that you read the Introduction before this Chapter and that you then read this Chapter in the order i recommend There.
on the Bhagavad Gita, by Victor Luis Villalon-Suarez
most recently reviewed on 4/17/2022 at 8:39
improvements since the immediately preceding review: Substituted “everlasting” for “eternal” throughout.
All the quotes that follow are from The Bhagavad Gita, translated by W. J. Johnson, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 1994.
Some of the quotes that follow appear either word for word or in similar words elsewhere in the Bhagavad Gita. For the most part, i have not cited these other verses.
page 8, 2.12: [Krishna speaks:] “There never was a time when I was not, or you, or these rulers of men. Nor will there ever be a time when we shall cease to be, all of us hereafter.” For why i believe time, thus God, had a beginning, and that unless God creates Heaven God Itself, thus all living things, shall cease to be, see the Chapter Heaven, everlasting happiness, This is: greater and greater happiness forever; or: begin with the Goal in mind.
page 8, 2.13: “Just as within this body the embodied self passes through childhood, youth and old age, so it passes to another body. The wise man is not bewildered by this.” page 9, 2.22: [Krishna speaks:] “Just as a man casting off worn-out clothes takes up others that are new, so the embodied self, casting off its worn-out bodies goes to other, new ones.” I deduce that these statements apply to all living things, thus to all people, thus to all men, thus to me. But i have no memory of ever having lived before this life. The young remember their childhood; the old, their youth, and can therefore learn from them. A man casting off worn clothes remembers these clothes and that he wore them. So these analogies are fallacious for me, because i do not remember, and i am aware of no passage in the Bhagavad Gita or the Vedas, which It is based and elaborates on, about the reincarnated remembering past lives. Because i have no memory of having lived before this life, i cannot learn from these past lives, if i lived them, so to me it is as if i had not lived them. Therefore i see no good reason to believe i did. However, when i learn about the actions of others now dead, especially of prominent leaders, God teaches me through the accounts i become aware of about them of their successes and failures without having to relive their lives myself, or, thus, feel the pain of their failures and death. So it is as if i had lived these previous lives, only that i have not had to suffer and die all those times to gain the benefits of the lessons God teaches me through accounts of these previous lives. As to a “wise man” not being “bewildered” by the idea of reincarnation, which does not bewilder me, because i just reject it as a hindrance, as something my mind repels, all we have to attest to the wisdom of this man is the say-so of whoever wrote this passage. Many consider the Bhagavad Gita to be revealed by God, and thus the words of God. But all we have as evidence for this is the word of who ever claims It is so that It is so. There is no evidence external to the writing. I do not believe this is the word of God because the God i believe in is far superior to the utterances of the God these words are imputed to, in my opinion blasphemously. In any case, all perceptions, thus all utterances, have no way to enter the mind of a perceiver but through this very mind. So the mind of every perceiver is the unavoidable filter through which all utterances cannot but pass. There is no way to get around it. So the only true authority of any text lies solely in the degree to which the mind of every individual hearer or reader of it accepts the text as true, as compelling. This belief cannot, intrinsically, be imposed. What can be done is to silence disagreement through intimidation, to force, and not through the force of reason, which is also a force, but through that of physical violence, thus whether only threatened or actual; perceptible expression, behavior, to conform to that the intimidator wants. If i am told or i read that someone is wise, an expert in some field, and i have no prima facie reason to doubt it, as i do in the case of any claim that reincarnation is real, i will give this person’s opinions a try. But if i find through this trial that they are faulty, her or his status as a wise person, as an expert, shall disintegrate in my mind and be replaced by the opposite: the certainty that the so-called wise person or expert is neither, but ignorant at best, and a fraud at worst. And fraud itself is but a manifestation of ignorance, that of good enough reasons to be able to be honest about them. Fraud evidences that the reasons of the deceiver are insufficient, in the deceiver’s own mind, to persuade the one she or he is trying to deceive. Those with good enough reasons want only to spread them Worldwide, not conceal them. Those who are truly wise, which i define as having great Knowledge, explain what they say in terms that those lacking this Knowledge understand. We can do this because we ourselves understand, and so can translate this understanding into words that communicate it to others. “Be not wise in your own eyes”, says Proverbs 3:7 (English Standard Version). But one recognizes wisdom in whomever one finds it, so even in oneself if one finds it in oneself, as i do in myself. It is just that i think the wisdom in me—not “my” wisdom—came solely from God, not from me apart from God. It is God’s wisdom, the only true wisdom, and i would be lying and being ungrateful to God and cowardly if i denied i think i have it. Part of this wisdom, and evidence of its reality, is my God-taught readiness to consider evidence that i am not as wise as i think God has made me; that someone else may outshine me, someone for whom i am always on the lookout, for if i found such a person my chance of making it to Heaven would improve, and living in Heaven is all i want, so not merely what i want above all, as though i wanted anything else, which i do not. So the attitude toward a fraudster should be to want to Educate her or him, not humiliate her or him for the ignorance through which alone Evil, the very source of this ignorance, drives her or him to want to deceive. I have compassion for the deceiver, because ignorance and dissembling are inherently painful. But if the deceiver physically attacks me, my compassion shall not get in the way of my doing all in my power to neutralize this attack as soon as i can, even unto killing my attacker. Precisely because i know myself to be key to the attacker’s emerging from what drives her or him to attack. Without me, she or he shall remain in her or his poverty. God—alone!—has made me better, superior, until God lifts this person out of her or his ignorance even to make her or him better than me. It is the hope for this possibility through which God drives me to defend myself, albeit with the least amount of violence consistent with my surviving in the best possible condition. So if it comes down to a life-or-death-or-mentally-incapacitating-injury choice between her or him and me, it is i who must survive, and with my mental powers intact.
page 8, 2.15: [Krishna speaks:] “[…] Bull among men[…].” This passage imputes to Krishna, Who is God, admiration for a man, the warrior Arjuna, for his bull-like qualities. But a bull is physically stronger than the physically strongest man, who in turn is physically stronger than the physically strongest woman, so no man is “strong as a bull”. And a bull has a mind far inferior to that of a man free of mental defect, so in the first case the metaphor is erroneous, and in the second it is in addition insulting, for a man with the mind of a bull, besides being impossible, would be contemptible, an inferior being, like a bull in relation to a man. And no man is a beast, or even beast-like.
page 8, 2.15: [Krishna speaks:] “[…] do not perturb that wise man for whom pleasure and pain are the same; he is ready for immortality.” page 10, 2.38: [Krishna speaks:] “Making yourself indifferent to pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, commit yourself to battle. And in that way you shall not transgress.” Consciousness is action; mental, it is true, and possibly not accompanied by bodily manifestation. But whoever is conscious acts, even if only by thinking. And the only way to act is to do so in a way that gains for one happiness, of which pleasure is but a form and which includes relief from pain and the avoidance of pain altogether. No other possibility enters my mind. So it is impossible to make oneself “indifferent to pleasure and pain”, of which “gain and loss, victory and defeat”, are but causes. And as to the wisdom of the allegedly wise man who supposedly has achieved the impossibility of this indifference, see my Commentary on 2.13 and 2.22, above.
page 11, 2.49: [Krishna speaks:] “[…] Those motivated by results are wretched.” Becoming “indifferent to pleasure and pain”, “commit[ting] oneself to battle” and “not transgress[ing]’ (2.38) are all results, to which the very words of the passages these phrases are embedded in express attachment, the desire to achieve them, so motivation by the desire to achieve these results, and yet this verse claims that “Those motivated by results are wretched”. So 2.15 imputes to Krishna the commandment to Arjuna to “commit” himself to a course of action that 2.49 claims shall make him “wretched”. This is contradictory, and therefore unable to be believed, for contradiction repels belief. Consistency is what causes it.
page 12, 2.58: [Krishna speaks:] “When [a holy man—2.56], like a tortoise retracting its limbs, entirely withdraws his senses from the objects of sense, his mentality is stabilized.” 2.59: “For the embodied being who does not feed on them, the objects of sense disappear[…].” The senses perceive. And what they perceive, by the very meanings of the words themselves, is objects of sense. There is no way to impede this other than through unconsciousness. So there is no way to withdraw the senses from the objects of sense other than by ending the operation of the senses, possible only through the loss of consciousness. Again here there is a claim that someone, a “wise man” in some verses, a “holy man” in this one, has actually accomplished this impossibility, But there is no evidence to support this claim. All there is is the bare claim. So i have no reason yet to believe in the holiness of this allegedly holy man who i believe is an impossibility, and i may never, in which case i shall perish in my incredulity unless God creates Heaven first.
page 12, 2.62: [Krishna speaks:] “When a man meditates on the objects of sense he becomes attached to them; from attachment desire is born, from desire anger.” It is an automatic response of the mind to everything it becomes aware of, such as through perception of “the objects of sense”, either to become attached to it, namely by wanting to keep perceiving it, in the case of perceptions, or thinking about it, in the case of ideas, or to repulse it, namely by wanting to stop perceiving or thinking about it, respectively. The will has nothing to do with the reaction, with the response: attachment or repulsion. The will enters in immediate response to this first reaction. One does not choose attachment or repulsion: they happen spontaneously. And one also spontaneously, and again by the very meanings of the words, will want to meditate on what one likes to think about, such as a desired object of sense. Desire leads to the anger of frustration only when one cannot satisfy it. When one does, it leads to disappointment eventually, because God drives us constantly to want only more and more happiness, and this could be satisfied only in everlasting happiness, in Heaven, thus with no object of desire before Then. And if we do not find something that satisfies, at least initially, our desire for a new source of pleasure after the one we had resorted to until it became dissatisfying did so, this, as frustrated desire, again, leads to anger. The best response to this anger is to consider whether one Needs what one wants. One may, or one may not. If after this evaluation one decides one Needs it, then one’s mind will of “its” own accord do all “it” can think of to attain the new object of sense one desires to perceive, in my case Heaven, simply searching out the best way to skirt every obstacle that appears. So this behavior is internally driven, so solely in one, by either of the only two drives that exist: God as the drive only to live in Heaven or by Evil, thus does not result from imposition, such as through a commandment or any external idea of duty: the only duty is one’s own to oneself, which means to God, and it flows solely from desire: i want It, so i must do all i can to attain It, but i must only because It is all i want. My desire is what compels me, so either God as the drive to live in Heaven, or Evil. There can be discouragement along this path, perplexity in the face of an obstacle, unless one finds a way around it. Or one (God or Evil) may change one’s mind about what one desires, switching to some other goal one discovers one desires more.
pages 17-18, 3.34: “In the case of a sense, desire and aversion adhere to the object of that sense; you should not fall into the power of those two, for they will block your path.” This confirms my Commentary on 2.62, immediately above, “desire and aversion”, only that above i call aversion “repulsion”. They are equivalent. And the injunction not to “fall into the power of those two” is another impossibility to follow. The mind does fall into their power, or rises into it, for through this power one discovers, if one has enough time, the greatest happiness, even if only at first, for the pathfinder, for the trailblazer, for the pioneer, through trial and error. But then, equipped with this experience, this leader can enable all the rest to jump directly to the desire for the greatest happiness, catalyze the learning process, compress it nearly into nothing, so that the rest pass directly from ignorance to it, thus saving them all the pointless pain of everyone’s having to start from scratch, reinvent the wheel. The wheel exists! So why not use it?
page 21, 4.34: “Know this: through your submission, through the questions you ask, through your service, those who have knowledge, who see things as they are, will teach you knowledge.” This verse confirms the Definition of knowledge (see the Glossary): “an accurate thought about reality or about a reality”, namely: of “things as they are”. But the claim of some having this knowledge, as i have explained above, is subject to testing through trial of the purported knowledge, and if the one testing it does not understand, then, if the one supposedly having the knowledge truly has it, she or he will explain to substitute understanding for its lack. Otherwise, the alleged knower also does not understand, nor, thus, know. The mere claim on a page of writing by itself has no power to persuade. “El papel aguanta todo lo que le pongan”: “Paper puts up with everything they put on it.”
page 25, 5.22: [Krishna speaks:] “For pleasures deriving from outside contact are sources of unhappiness, […] because they have a beginning and an end; the wise man takes no delight in them.”
Every pleasure before everlasting pleasure, Heaven, “[has] a beginning and an end”, because it could be only in eternity that it did not end, other than in the sense of evolving into an even greater pleasure, which would mean that the immediately preceding one had ended, but only to give way to the superior one. It is impossible not to delight in pleasure, else it would not be pleasure, or not to feel “unhappiness” when it ends. But the source of the unhappiness is the finiteness of the pleasure, not the pleasure itself. All delight, before Heaven, unavoidably wears off with repetition, and the experiencer is left without support, the legs knocked out from under her or him, left to seek a substitute. Through this painful path God drives us to discover the greatest happiness, Heaven, the substitute to end forever the need anymore to find substitutes for what has lost its erstwhile appeal. Can there be a pleasure that does not “[derive] from outside contact”? The senses and the drive to perceive, thus through them, arise simultaneously, so pleasure derives from both, the internal cause of the drive to perceive, and the external one of perception, which is “outside contact”. So it is a mistake to specify “pleasures deriving from outside contact”, because pleasure has the two causes i have named, not just the one of perception, which is what i understand by “outside contact”.
5.23: “The man able to withstand in this world, before liberation from the body, the violent disturbance caused by desire and anger is disciplined and happy.”
But to be “disciplined and happy” is here an object of desire, and frustrated desire, so also for discipline and happiness, leads to the “violent disturbance” of anger. The “violent disturbance” is the anger, not an effect of anger.
5.24: “He who has inner happiness, inner delight, and thereby inner radiance—that yogin, being Brahman, achieves the nirvana of Brahman[…].”
And “inner happiness, inner delight, and thereby inner radiance”, as well as “the nirvana of Brahman” are all objects of desire, the results of actions intended to achieve them, and the opposites of “wretched[ness]” (2.49).
5.25: “Seers whose impurities have been destroyed, whose doubts have been dispelled, who have restrained themselves, who delight in the welfare of all beings, reach the nirvana of Brahman.”
Here “the nirvana of Brahman” is the supreme goal, and the “destruction” of “impurities”, the “dispelling” of “doubts”, “self restraint” and “delight in the welfare of all beings” are the means to this goal, this is, goals subordinate to the supreme one, which derive their necessity only from that of the supreme one. The goal is the supreme object of desire, to be achieved through action intended to achieve it
5.28: “The wise man, whose senses, mind and intelligence are controlled, who is wholly intent upon release, whose desire, fear and anger have vanished, is liberated forever.”
But not all desire has vanished for this “wise man”, because he desires the supreme goal of “liberation forever”, and thus, as the means to this blissful condition, the sub-goals of: (I) the “control” of “his senses, mind and intelligence”, (II) “release”, which he is “wholly intent upon”, this is: which he desires “wholly”; and (III) the “vanishing” of his “desire, fear and anger”, but this is a contradiction, because here he desires to stop desiring, and yet the reason for this contradictory desire is the ulterior desire for “liberation forever”, a state in which he would forever desire to continue, so his desire would never “vanish”.
5.29: “Seeing that I am the consumer of sacrifices and austerities, the great lord of all the worlds, the companion of all creatures, he attains peace.”
So here the goal is peace, which the “wise man” of 5.28, “he” here, desires to “attain”, and the means to this goal is the sub-goal of “seeing that [Krishna is] the consumer of sacrifices and austerities, the great lord of all the worlds, the companion of all creatures”.
page 27, 6.2: [Krishna speaks:] “Know[…] that what they call renunciation is in fact yogic discipline; no one at all becomes a yogin unless he has renounced the intention to obtain a particular result.”
But to “become a yogin” one must have “the intention” to “obtain” the “particular result” that is becoming a yogin, so to become a yogin one cannot “renounce” all “intention to obtain a particular result”, and there have been other “particular results” in previous verses: “discipline and happiness” (5.23), “the nirvana of Brahman” (5.25), “liberation forever” (5.28), and “peace” (5.29), for example. And to “attain” a “result” one cannot but have the intention, which flows solely from the desire, to do so.
6.3: “For the sage who aspires to yogic discipline action is said to be the means; for that man who has already attained yogic discipline quiescence is said to be the means.”
Means imply goals, and goals the desire to attain them; goals are “particular results” (6.2), here “yogic discipline”, for to “aspire to” is to desire; here the means to this discipline is “action”, but a means is a sub-goal, itself an object of desire, only for its goal, nor for itself. Now comes a contradiction: “that man who has already attained yogic discipline” must have employed “action” as his means, for this is what the first half of the verse says, but the second half claims that the means was “quiescence”, which is the opposite of action, and hence the contradiction.
6.4: “For when a man has renounced all intention to obtain a particular result, and clings neither to actions nor to the objects of the senses, he is said to have attained yogic discipline.”
“Renouncing all intention to obtain a particular result” is itself a particular result, namely of whatever “action” led to this renunciation, for the renunciation is a change in status: the yogin did not always renounce, for he was not always a yogin. He desired to become and and for this sole reason, due to the “intention to obtain” the “particular result” of becoming a yogin, he chose, had the “intention”, to “cling neither to actions nor to the objects of the senses”. But consciousness implies action, because to be conscious means to think; it is impossible to be conscious and not to experience a continuous stream of mental images, whether internally generated or externally, by the senses, and thinking is something one does, and so is an action, to it is impossible to cleave oneself from action; one clings to it because it is in one’s nature to, the mind clings to what the mind cannot but do. And to be conscious and have functioning senses is to have mental impressions of the objects of those senses, so as long as we perceive, our senses cling to their objects the way the concave clings to the convex, which is but its flipside.
6.9: “The man who has the same mental attitude towards friends, allies, enemies, neutrals, arbiters, the hateful, and kinsmen—toward the good and the evil alike—is set apart.”
But one can be “set apart” for an awful fate, not for a desirable one. And it is impossible to have the same mental attitude to “friends, allies”, who give us cause to trust them, which is a mental attitude and results automatically, spontaneously from the evidence of trustworthiness that is the actions of “friends, allies” toward one; as to “enemies, the hateful”, who give us cause to fear them and thus protect ourselves from them, which are yet other mental attitudes. And “neutrals” inspire indifference in us: they give us reason neither to trust them nor to fear them. As to “kinsmen”, as mere relatives they can love us just as much as hate us. Merely being a kinsman or -woman does not imply love. A brother can hate a sibling of his and still be a brother. But a friend as God has taught me to define a friend, as one who loves the one she or he is said to be a friend of, can only love, because if she or he does not, she or he ceases to be a friend to become a neutral or an enemy, by the very definitions of these words. There is nothing in the definition of “kinsman” that necessitates his being a friend of his kin in addition to being kin. This is the fallacy of addressing others whom we love and trust as “brothers”—or as “sisters”—, for they may not love us back and dissimulate their true “mental attitude” toward us so well that we may not notice it if one does not know what true love is, let alone its highest-possible form: Love. As to “arbiters”, if they are true ones, thus wise, they cannot but inspire respect, love or fear, all of which are mental attitudes. And if they are sham arbiters, thus in fact ignorant, they inspire disgust, contempt or hate, all of which, again, are mental attitudes.
page 28: 6.10: “A yogin should always discipline himself, remaining solitary, his self and thought restrained, desireless and possessionless.”
Solitude is necessary for the deepest thought, but the fruit of this thought is knowledge that naturally inspires the thinker to share it with others, and thus to emerge from her or his solitude for this purpose, to communicate. The purpose of solitude is to acquire this knowledge through Prayerful introspection, so those who choose periods of solitude do so to gain this knowledge, hence out of the desire to acquire it, so they are not “desireless”. The only thing one “should” do is what one wants to do. In this way one learns whether one needed what one wanted and in this way in the future pause before acting on desire to consider whether it is good or evil, as far as one can tell, thus within the inescapable prison walls of the limits of one’s knowledge. For when one learns all that happens is that the new knowledge pushes these walls out, giving us more space to think and thus to act. And thus what one wants changes. Discipline is only a means. One is naturally disciplined in pursuit of what one wants, deviating from it only by mistake and as quickly as possible correcting one’s course to realign oneself with one’s goal, with what one desires. Indiscipline is prima facie evidence of lack of interest in the goal the discipline it deviates from serves. To make a person discipline it is necessary to kindle in her or him the desire for the goal that is the sole justification of the discipline. Interest, desire, cannot be imposed. It arises only from the conditions that naturally, spontaneously, automatically, give rise to it, the same way that if a plant is commanded to thrive without the conditions without which it shall not thrive and with which it shall, one might as well not have issued the command, only that in a person, a command to do something she or he does not desire causes resentment, at least passive resistance, moroseness, and the poorest performance. Where desire for the goal of a means is lacking, all the more so shall desire for this means.
page 28, 6.13: [Krishna speaks:] “Firm, motionless, holding body, neck and head in a straight line, focusing on the tip of his own nose, not looking around him, [6.14:] Tranquil, free from fear, locked in a vow of chastity, controlling his mind, his thought on me, disciplined, he should sit intent on me.”
Following the discipline of performing this meditation ritual faithfully demands enough desire for the goal of the goal of the discipline. The verse prescribes what to do with one’s body to achieve some goal the verse does not state, but that other verses identify variously as yogic discipline, which in turn is a means to the end goals of “the nirvana of Brahman”, “peace”, “inner delight” and so on. These are the various forms of the true supreme goal: happiness, which necessarily implies happiness in its greatest form: everlasting happiness, which would increase forever, because if it stayed the same it would lead to the un-happiness of boredom. As to fear, as long as we are not in everlasting happiness, there shall, by definition, be pain, and the awareness of the possibility of pain automatically, spontaneously, causes fear, to it is impossible for us to be “tranquil, free from fear” as long as we remain somewhere other than in everlasting happiness. Vows are pointless. Since i think it is impossible to know the future, thus for anyone or anything, even for God, one has no control over the conditions one shall encounter and so cannot promise, vow, anything. All one can do is express a present, and possibly transitory, intention to do something, based only on the reasons one has for wanting, desiring, to do it. And these reasons may change in an instant, even if they had been present for a long time. If this has been the case one can further express a sense of certainty in these reasons’ future durability that increases with the duration and imperviousness to challenges of these long-lasting reasons: because one has wanted the goal in question for so long and despite so much, one finds it extremely unlikely—but never impossible!—that one will switch to some other goal. As to the desirability of chastity, the desire for sex, like any other desire, naturally leads to disappointment when one satisfies it, either because in itself it is not satisfying or because although it is at first, with repetition its charm wears off, one becomes jaded to it. If one has not been exposed enough to great enough beauty, whose highest, most powerful, form is sexual beauty, beauty sparking sexual desire, then one’s mind shall not be able to synthesize from these perceptions a mental image of sex such that one would never tire of it if it became a tangible reality. In the absence of this image, frustration results, and this can lead to anger. But its is the poverty of imagination that causes this anger, not the desire itself, which combined with the necessary perception of the necessary objects of sense is what generates the mental image desirable enough to drive the subject to desire its materialization by whatever means shall effect it quickest.
page 28, 6.16: [Krishna speaks:] “Yoga is not for the over-eater, Arjuna, nor for him who does not eat at all; it is not for him in the habit of over-sleeping, nor for him who keeps himself awake.”
The desire for a pleasure more intense than that of eating naturally replaces the desire to over-eat, leading the erstwhile “over-eater” to moderate her or his eating to fit it to the needs that pursuing the new goal imposes. But it is in our nature always to persist in indulging in whatever gives us the most pleasure. To change this it is necessary to replace the object of the indulgence with a higher one, eventually leading to the highest one, which it is Godly to indulge in, as in everlasting happiness we would indulge in it or in something even better more and more forever. And it is impossible for a person not to “eat at all”, for this leads to death within two months if one has access to enough fluids; less the less fluids one has access to. It is also impossible to oversleep, for one wakes up automatically as soon as one has had enough sleep. What people normally call “oversleeping” is actually staying in bed awake. Similarly, one cannot keep oneself awake beyond a certain point any more than one can hold one’s breath indefinitely: the body automatically shuts one’s eyes and puts one to sleep no matter how much coffee one drinks or how loudly one screams or how vigorously one moves one’s body to try to keep from falling asleep. This is why it is so dangerous to drive when sleep-deprived: one has no control over when the body shall give up on one and go to sleep. And prolonged abstention from breathing triggers inhalation: the diaphragm reflexively pulls the lungs down to create the vacuum that establishes the differential in air pressure leading to air entering the nose, then the windpipe, the bronchi, and finally the lungs. Some people need more sleep than others. This is the right amount of sleep for them, thus the opposite of over-sleeping.
6.17: “But for him whose food and recreation are properly disciplined, whose exertions are channeled in activities, who is disciplined in his sleeping and waking, there is the yoga which destroys suffering.”
To “discipline” one’s food intake and recreation one must desire to do so. It is impossible to exert oneself other than through activities, whether of the body primarily or of the mind, so there is nothing to channel and nothing to channel it into, because the exertion is the activity, but even if this were possible, to “channel one’s exertions into activities”one must desire, again, to do so. To be “disciplined” in one’s “sleeping and waking” one must desire to do the things that shall make one thus disciplined. One must have the intention to do these things, to attain these “particular results”, which are in turn but means to an ultimate result, here the “destruction” of “suffering”. But there are two ways to destroy suffering: one is to cease to feel and the other is to replace the suffering with a happiness great enough to crowd out all pain, and this would be everlasting happiness.
page 29, 6.27: [Krishna speaks:] “For supreme bliss comes to the yogin whose mind has grown calm, whose passion is stilled, who has become Brahman, without taint.”
Supreme bliss is impossible in this life, for to be supreme it would have to be impossible to excel, and this could only be everlasting bliss. So any bliss we may enjoy before everlasting bliss, and i fear that many people feel none, must necessarily be interrupted by pain. This causes mental torment, “passion”, which comes from Latin for “suffering”, whether the pain is bodily or mental, and a tormented mind can grow calm only by reflecting on whether the frustration causing the anger, the torment, is justified, whether one needs what one wants that one does not know how to attain. In spite of mental torment, what can also grow calm is one’s demeanor in the face of this torment, possible only through the hope that supreme bliss may be attainable, even though it also may not be. So driven by the desire only, so not just above all, for it, because “above all” would mean there were other desires, but that the one for supreme bliss was the most intense. In my case, my sole desire is supreme bliss, or everlasting happiness, Heaven. And again, it would be only in Heaven that we could have “no taint”; as long as we have not attained Heaven, this is: as long as God has not created It, by this very fact we shall know that we are not yet good enough, have not yet found the means necessary for God to create Heaven, and this defect is and shall remain a “taint”. But we need not be discouraged by this imperfection: all we need to be is good enough for God to create Heaven through and with those parts of God’s body and mind that all people are.
page 30, 6.44: [Krishna speaks:] “[…] Even the person who just has a desire to know yoga goes beyond the word-Brahman[…].”
This is another verse that explicitly acknowledges not just a desire, but a desire for a good end, if “knowing yoga” is this, so a desirable desire. The “word-Brahman” refers to the Vedas, the corpus of descriptions of the elaborate sacrificial rites of Hinduism, which believers think necessary to achieve success in the World.
6.45: “But striving with great effort, the yogin whose defilement has been purified is perfected through many lives, and then he attains the highest goal.”
One “strives with great effort” only for a “particular result” one intensely desires. As to “many lives”, see above on reincarnation. And the verse explicitly states the existence of “the highest goal”, else it would not speak of “attaining” it, so again a “particular result” that is desired above or to the exclusion of all else.
page 33, 7.6 [Krishna speaks:] “[…] I am the origin and dissolution of this whole universe.”
In the Religion we believe that if God saves the Universe, thus Itself, God shall transform all matter in It into Its Heavenly forms, Which would include the Heavenly beautiful bodies of humans in Heaven, so God would dissolve all matter at the instant of the Salvation, but simultaneously, as God dissolved it all, reconstitute it into its Heavenly forms. This verse sees only the negative of the Salvation, the dissolution, so not the positive, the reconstitution, which as the sole purpose of the dissolution would be the true essence, the character, of the Salvation.
page 33, 7.11: [Krishna speaks:] “In beings I am that desire which does not run counter to proper conduct.”
“Proper” conduct is a straightjacket if it does not allow for the pursuit of happiness, thus of the greatest happiness, Heaven, untrammelled by anything other than the experience of failed attempts to attain it, which chastise us away from relapsing into them, thus setting bounds to our pursuit, structure, that which limits and channels action.
page 34, 7.19: [Krishna speaks:] “[…] [Krishna] is everything. […].”
In the Religion we believe that God, which Krishna is, indeed is everything—with the sole exception of nothing(ness), which is the absence of space and time, and as that out of which God came into existence, remains residually outside of space and time, a concept we can only define, not comprehend, because our minds are limited to spatial and temporal conceptualization.
7.20: “Those whose knowledge has been charmed away by this or that desire turn to other gods, following this or that injunction, ruled by their own natures.”
To me this implies that “turning to other gods”, this is: worshipping them, is an error resulting form the loss—the “charming away”—of knowledge, namely that “Krishna is everything” (7.19). So here is a precedent for monotheism in the Hindu tradition.
7.21 “Yet whatever the divine form, any devotee who aspires to worship it with faith is unshakably established in that faith by me.” 7.23: “Yet for those whose understanding is limited, the reward is limited. Those who worship the gods go to the gods, but those who are devoted to me go to me.”
Here again i sense disapproval in Krishna for the worship of other gods, even though in 7.21 He says He “unshakably establishes” in their faith in other gods those who worship them.
page 38, 8.11: [Krishna speaks:] “Now I shall tell you briefly about that state which those who know the Veda call the imperishable, which strivers who are free from passion enter, and desiring which they lead a celibate life.”
On “freedom from passion” and “celibacy” (“chastity”), see above. Those who strive suffer, this is: are subject to passion because striving implies overcoming resistance, which is painful. And this is another verse that explicitly mentions desire approvingly, here because it is for the desirable state of freedom from passion.
page 45, 10.2: [Krishna speaks:] “[…] I am comprehensively the source of all gods […].”
I think that if there is a god that created all other gods, is their source, then it is much simpler and more efficient, powerful, focused, to worship the Creator, the Originator, instead of the creat-ed, the originat-ed.
page 75, 18.2: [Krishna speaks:] “Seers understand renunciation as the rejection of actions motivated by desires; the discerning describe abandonment[…] as the giving up of the results of all actions.”
This verse directly contradicts all those others that praise desires, thus actions motivated by them, and the pursuit of “parricular results” of actions. So the status of the “Seers” and of the “discerning” as enlightened, as advanced above others, as wise, as superior, is negated. They are in fact none of these things.
page 79, 18.45: [Krishna speaks:] “A man achieves perfection by contenting himself with his own work[…].”
On the impossibility of perfection as “freedom from taint” see above. But further, because in Heaven we would always be feeling greater and greater happiness forever, we would keep getting better and better and thus never reach perfection, because we would always be improving, and “perfect” comes fro Latin for “done through”, so completed. Heaven, if God creates It, shall forever be an ever-more-beautiful work in progress.
Comments