Gita & Yoga.

Bhagavad Gita: Yoga manual

Anand M Kulkarni, Nov 26, 2010, 12.00am IST

Does the Bhagavad Gita contain anything that defines its purpose? It does. Not once or twice, but its purpose is unequivocally asserted at the end of each chapter, that is, eighteen times!

So repeat 18 times and it becomes the essence of all teachings in Gita. Mr. Kulkarni cites the end of chapter two to explain his theses. Why he missed the first chapter? Might be that he is embarrassed to quote “Arjuna Vishada Yoga” meaning ‘thoughts of Arjuna’s sadness’. Yoga cannot be connected to sadness. Thanks Mr. Kulkarni. Why did he not mention that Gita is Upanishad? This word also repeated 18 times at the end each chapter. All well-known commentators have emphasised that Gita is really Upanishad. 

For example, at the end of Chapter II, it is stated that this chapter is in fact an exposition of an aspect of yoga known as Sankhya Yoga. All chapters deal with one aspect or the other of yoga.

We poor folks might be thinking that Sankhya is a branch of Indian philosophy not connected to yoga but Kulkarni tells us that it is yoga.
One may ask, why yoga was being explained in the middle of a purported battle to be waged between two clans, the Kurus and the Pandavas. As Paramhamsa Yogananda says, the Bhagavad Gita is evidently a spiritual metaphor used for the exposition of yoga. Persons portrayed are in fact ingenious depictions symbolising the various stages in the devolvement of spirit into matter.

So according to Paramhamsa and Kulkarni,

the battle of Kurukshetra is an ingenious depiction of our own spiritual and mental states.

The battle proper, represents the real struggle that ensues within a person who realizes that all along it was the mind and its deep-rooted tendencies that was playing a devious game of deception with him, leading to false perceptions of truth and happiness and so, under proper guidance, sets out to rectify all this.

Kurukshetra, the battlefield refers to our own bodily domain, where the action must take place. Kuru in Sanskrit, is derived from the root "kri" meaning action and kshetra means domain.

Pandu was the rightful and noble monarch of Bharata, the bodily kingdom.

The Mahabharata itself clarified that Pandu was afflicted because at the time of love making with Sage Vyasa, Ambalika his mother was pale at the site of the Rishi and the resulting child was afflicted and hence Pandu. Not because he was pure. He was hunting in deep forest and killed a rishi mating. The ‘pure’ got cursed by Rishi’s son to the effect that he will die if he makes love to any woman. Pandu died while trying to make love to his second wife Madri. Kulkarni circumvents this story.

Pand in Sanskrit means white or pure, referring to the faculty of discriminating between right and wrong, which humans inherently possess. If man lives as per this discriminating power he will live life in such a way that slowly but surely, the soul's body-consciousness ascends to spirit-consciousness and thus one attains independence from false providers of happiness, namely, the five senses.

As the story goes, Pandu has five sons, three from his wife Kunti -- representing the power of dispassion-- and two from Madri, the power of persisting in dispassion.

Pandu had no sons because of the curse. Unable to sire any he asks Kunti to get pregnant by a Brahmin. Instead Kunti used her knowledge of Mantra to invites gods Dharma, Vayu and Indra and gets her sons Yudhisthira, Bhīma and Arjuna. Why Kulkarni hides these?
The five brothers unwittingly lose their kingdom in a game of dice, deceitfully loaded by Duryodhana (material desire) against them. The bodily kingdom comes to be ruled by the blind king Dhritarashtra who represents our own sense-infatuated and hence "blind" mind.

The blind king's eldest son Duryodhana represents vain, material desire, most difficult to fight off (Duh means difficult and yodhana means to fight). His ninety nine other sons represent other sense-entrenched tendencies of the mind.

What are the other sense-entrenched tendencies? Are there only hundred an exact number? What about Dussala the lone daughter of Dhritarashtra? She might be senseless or even non-sensual to Kulkarni.

However, as portrayed in the story, since the five Pandu sons are born of rightful discrimination and dispassion, they together possess qualities needed to recover this lost kingdom.

The youngest, Sahadeva represents the discriminating knowledge which says, "I have to resist that". Nakula represents the knowledge which says, "I have to adhere to that". Arjuna is the knowledge which asserts, "I must have self-control". Bhima, the knowledge that asserts, "I am strong", and Yudhisthira, the knowledge that asserts, "I am calm even in war."

These are qualities necessary for the ascent of consciousness from mere body-consciousness to immortal soul-consciousness. However, knowledge without the kinetic power cannot produce any movement. Hence enter Draupadi who "belongs" to all the five brothers as wife.

One should point out for Kulkarni to know that in the 600 odd stanzas in Gita there is no mention of Droupadi or even Pandu or Kunti anywhere. He is importing the word for indiscrete commentary.

Droupadi represents the otherwise dormant divine life force known as Kundalini Shakti which when awakened, unites with various aspects of discriminatory intelligence within us all. In kundalini oriented meditation, this "living electricity" rapidly traverses the storehouse of karma results in their internal cauterization by precipitating appropriate yoga-kriyas which would be physical, mental or even emotional in nature.

This represents self-purification and consequently, in day-to-day working life too, one starts taking right action, all this eventually leading to total realization of Self.

The entire tenure of this article hangs on his knowledge of Sanskrit words that could be manipulated to mean anything. The words are based on roots that could be derived from assembling and reassembling them in all manner of connections. That allows importing contradictory meanings to the same texts. Take the example of Brahma Sutra that has several sets of commentaries from Dvaita, Advaita, Vishishtadvaita etc. Commentators of Gita also took such liberties. For Tilak Gita is the advocacy of Karma, to Gandhi it’s teaching is ahimsa, to Sankara it is advaita, to Madhva it is dvaita, to Ramanuja it is undivided Bhakti so on so forth to infinite.
(PS. The original text is in black straight letters and my intervening notes are in blue and Italian.)

K.N.Krishnan.

Dec. 2.2010.