|
 Chapter
1
Text 7
Asmakam tu
visista ye
tan nibodha
dvijottama
nayaka mama
sainyasya
samjnartham tan
bravimi te
O best of the
brahmanas, for your information, let me tell you about the
captains who are especially qualified to lead my military force.
Text 8
Bhavan bhismas ca
karnas ca
Krpas ca
samitim-jayah
Asvatthama
vikarnas ca
Saumadattis
tathaiva ca
There are
personalities like yourself, Bhisma, Karna, Krpa, Asvatthama,
Vikarna and the son of Somadatta called Bhurisrava, who are
always victorious in battle.
Bhagavad-Gita is
meant for a pious person, who has decided to follow the way of
realization. This is a psychological directory for those, who
have gotten into a difficult and unclear situation, and for
those who are ready to solve their problems with ennobled ways.
A righteous person never uses harmful and wrong methods even at
the most difficult time. Both pious and not pious people suffer
in this world. Like we found out earlier, suffering helps a
person become sober and choose the right way for development.
But the same suffering, like fire, can cleanse a good person and
show him the way to perfection, but burn an unrighteous person
to ashes. For a good person – suffering is a friend, but for a
bad person – it is an enemy. People say: difficulties test a
person, they turn him upside down and inside out. And they are
right.
Bhagavad-Gita
lists all the difficulties that a person encounters when he
starts his path of spiritual development. Bhagavad-Gita also
clearly explains how we can overcome these difficulties. It is a
desktop book which is often used if a person is ready to search
for higher methods of solving the problems that enter his life.
This book is about crises. It begins with the crisis of Arjuna,
who got into a very difficult situation. He became discouraged,
when he thought about the future and tried to find a way out of
the situation. Each of us regularly gets into a similar
situation, so there is no other subject, which is more important
for smart people, than the crisis of Arjuna in Bhagavad-Gita.
Soft crisis
Crisis is meant
to save us from a deadly danger. We cannot expect it to be
gentle and soft. Crisis must be hard and painful by nature, only
than it can help quickly. One person told me about experiments
with frogs, which were put into hot water. Yes, the experiment
is scary, but the conclusion is very interesting. One frog was
put into boiling water. It quickly jumped out of the water and,
even though it was burnt, it was still alive. The other frog was
put into cold water. The scientists slowly raised the
temperature of the water. The frog got used to the water, it was
relaxed and, as a result it was boiled and died. The frog didn’t
even notice that death came. Like this, a real crisis wants to
save us, not kill us. It has to be bright and fast, so that the
person wouldn’t be able to relax, get used to the pain, and
start thinking that everything’s fine, “we can tolerate it”.
Story
Once, in the
evening, after a hot day, a teacher went to the river. A young
man came up to him and asked:
“How can I find
God?”
The teacher
grabbed him and put into the water with his head. The young man
tried to free himself, but the teacher held him tightly.
When a critical
moment came, the young man gathered all his strength and freed
himself. Panting heavily, he yelled:
“Why did you do
that?”
“When you will
want to find God as much as you want to breathe, only then you
will be able to find Him,” answered the teacher.
A crisis can be
met face to face, or we can try to run away from it. Our
behavior depends on how pure our consciousness is. If our heart
is not pure enough, we will try to run away. We try to retreat,
we will be sly and try to escape the crisis. Let’s list the
following methods.
The remote
control of realities
If we don’t want
to think about the seriousness of a crisis, the easiest thing to
do is turn ourselves off, take ourselves from one reality to
another. This is done with the help of drugs, narcotics,
alcohol, tobacco, This is why they are so popular. The
difficulty of getting rid of a bad habit is not the addiction,
but not wanting to be in reality. Reality without God becomes
hell. This is easy to understand.
For example, it
is nice to live in an apartment if there is electricity, water,
heat, and so on. However, if all of this stops working, the
apartment building will become like a prison – they will be cold
and will kill the people living in them. This is how nice living
can easily transform into hell. The same thing happens in our
life. As soon as we stop believing in God (which is the power of
all energy) our nice life becomes a cruel and difficult one. If
a person doesn’t understand philosophy, it is easier for him to
escape this reality, turn himself off, than to always be afraid
and wait for the next time when they turn the electricity or
water off…
Around the world
in 80 days
Another way to
escape an encounter with a crisis is just to just run away,
drive or fly away, or to go on a tour across the world. However,
it is impossible to run away in this world because everything
that is in the limits of the Universe is under the control of
the law of karma. People say the world is round… It’s the same
thing as going from one corner of a prison cell to another and
think that the problem is solved. There is no place on this
Earth, where the laws of karma turn off. However, if the person
tries to improve himself and becomes a saint, he will escape the
effect of the laws of karma naturally. These laws won’t affect
him no matter where he is. There are lizards in India and, when
you enter a room, you see that these not so smart creatures are
hiding in every corner. Why are they not so smart? Because their
tails are seen and they are joyfully wagging them. This means
that the lizards are very happy to have hidden themselves so
well…
Love revolution
The third way of
escaping reality is to dive into love and sex. The love between
people of the opposite sex is a form of illusion and it acts
like a drug or like vodka. First it’s very pleasurable, joyful,
and wonderful, but in the morning we don’t want to live until we
have another dose. There is a saying in Russia – love is cruel,
it can make you fall in love with a goat (or a bad person). But
the wise men of the East would say – love is cruel, it can make
you fall in love with a material body. This is what we do – we
don’t love what we need to love. If there is tea in a cup, but a
person starts eating the cup – he’s simply crazy. Like this, in
our cup of body, there is a subtle tea of the soul, but we
prefer to chew the cup.
On the other
hand, love between the two sexes is like a bad illness. The
person starts getting thinner, like before death. He doesn’t see
the reality adequately, he starts seeing things, doesn’t eat,
and doesn’t sleep. If we don’t understand what is happening and
make simple conclusions, we will think that the person is in
agony and will soon die. Sometimes, unfortunately, that’s how it
ends. It’s like wrong treatment of illness. We want to be happy
and we know that happiness is in love. However, instead of
curing ourselves with love toward the soul, we start taking the
poison of wanting sex. This is a mistake. This is not the right
treatment. Actually, this is not treatment at all. They lied to
us! The body is like a dead body, it is not possible to love it.
It is like a sleeping bad, which doesn’t have anything to do
with the person sleeping in it. It’s just a commercial complain
of this world and we bought it. Imagine that you bought a TV,
took it out of the box, put the box on the table and are trying
to turn channels. You put the TV in the attic. This is like us –
we are trying to get happiness from communication with the body
of a person. We forgot that the person has a soul. Sex – is just
meaningless attempts of turning the channels of the box of a TV.
Each time, when we open the box, we just find emptiness. This
process of opening the interest goes away as soon as the box is
opened. After that a person says: “My mother always said that
all boxes are the same inside.”
However, if a
person has at least some experience in doing good deeds, he
achieves courage and, having accepted the challenge, tries to
find the right way to solve the problem. A crisis is our chance
to purify ourselves and choose the right way of development.
Like fire, it has the ability to cleanse ourselves of all our
sins. Therefore, the first chapter is called “Arjuna-visuddha-yoga”,
which means “the yoga of Arjuna’s despair”. This is our yoga
because we all practice it. The only thing left to do is to
accept the teacher of this yoga. He is capable of leading all
our actions toward wisdom.
Story
Next to Akbar’s
castle was a beautiful lake. Almost every spring white swans
came to the lake and nested. People really loved them and waited
for them. However, sometimes these wonderful white birds flew to
the lakes on the mountains to nest. Then, people became sad. It
was said that that year will be unlucky. People waited for the
birds’ arrival with enthusiasm.
Once, Akbar said
to Farid: “As a sign of our love for the swans I have ordered
the people to fill the lake with milk this very night. Each
farmer from the nearby villages has to bring a bucket of milk.”
Farid answered:
“This is an interesting idea. Let’s see what comes from it.”
The next morning
Akbar came to Farid with the news that the lake is filled with
water. Each farmer poured a bucket of water into the lake
instead of milk.
“This is very
surprising! This means that I don’t know my own people,” said
Akbar.
Farid laughed and
said: “Each farmer thought: “if I everyone pours a bucket of
milk and I pour a bucket of water, no one will notice. One
bucket of water will dissolve in a lake of milk without a
trace”. But the fact is that every farmer thought this way! This
is the way people think. It comes from the nature of duality:
good – bad, favorable – unfavorable, better – worse. Your order
means that your thinking is also inclined to duality. Think
about that!
Fear is a sign of
an unclean conscience
Those, whose
conscience is not clean, are always afraid. They think that
their lie with milk and water will soon be known to everyone. A
person, who has a calm and clean conscience, does not know what
fear is. His life is calm and steady. Even Ravana, who was a
very mighty demon, was troubled by fear ever since he stole Sita,
Rama’s wife. Whichever level we are on in this world, however
much money or power we have, as soon as we commit a sinful act,
karma will come to us in the form of fear. And fear will make us
run away in terror. This running away now usually takes the form
of alcohol, smoking, or drugs. If this person doesn’t drink or
smoke, or take drugs in time, he will again be caught by fear of
the consequences of his terrible acts. Therefore, when one takes
the path of reasonable limits and stops committing sins, this
person easily gets rid of fear and his bad habits.
If a person
cannot or does not want to be friends with other people, his
fear increases several times. This leads to loss of sleep, the
person simply cannot relax. Friends are the best medicine from
all illnesses because the state of stress and fear is one of the
most common causes of illnesses. On the other hand, fear
increases if a person does not have the ability to say what he
thinks. Inner stress increases and the person simply can no
longer keep all his thoughts and feeling inside of him, they
start tearing him up. Therefore friends are always like
medicine, doctors, and saviors of our fear-filled psyche.
This is the
result of studying true spiritual philosophy. Only this can
truly solve our material problems and make us truly free. One
someone asked Aristotel: “What did studying philosophy for many
years give you?” And he answered: “Philosophy taught me how to
do willingly the things that others do out of fear”…
Story
In the ancient
times, traders travelled in Siberia, Russia. There was one
trader amongst them, who allowed people to be in debt to him,
when they had no money to pay for what they wanted. He said:
“Look, I am writing your name down in my book. The next time I
come, you will give me the money you owe me”.
If the next time
the trader came the person who owed him had no money to pay he
back, the trader said: “All right, I won’t take anything from
you now, but I will put a cross next to your name in my book and
the next time I come you will have to pay me back”. The next
time, if the person again had no money, the trader put another
cross next to the person’s name in the book.
If the next time
the person again had no money, he said the following: “All
right, I relieve you of your debt. See, I cross out your name
and the crosses next to it. Let God take the debt from you, now
you owe Him…” |
