The Tree of Life 1-3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, September 23, 2022. 06:00.
Discourse 1: The Twofold Character of Cosmic Life - 3.

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Chapter 15 – Purushothama yogam :

The Yogam of the Supreme Divine Personality : 

Lessons from the Analogy of a Banyan tree :

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All this, when it is enquired into profoundly, will naturally go over the heads of people. We are not taught to think in this manner. We have an education which is supposed to be for earning our bread; today it has failed even to earn our bread, and it has not succeeded in getting anything worth the while. We are in sorrow in the beginning, we are in sorrow in the middle, and we are in sorrow at the end. That is all we see in life. The shape of sorrow may change, but it is there in one form or the other. Whether our creditor is this man or that man, it makes no difference; we have a creditor at our door, and that is enough for us. It does not matter which person it is and when he will come and stand at our gate. So is the sorrow of life.

There is, therefore, a need to be serious in our pursuits and not to continue to behave like babies or children asking for toys, which are only a temporary relief for their tears. We give a toy to the child, and it stops crying. Why it cries, nobody knows. These toys are temporary contrivances to suppress the outward expression of the sorrow of the child, but the inner difficulty persists whatever be the outer adjustments we make in the various walks of life.

The various outer adjustments are well known. The gaining of wealth, making money, increasing the bank balance, getting a good job, enhancement of status of oneself in human society, dainty dishes, palatial houses, vast gardens, and so forth, are the avenues of approach of the mind that seeks immediate relief. We have seen people with large areas of land. Are they happy? We have seen people with large bank balances. Are they happy? We have seen people with everything that the world can give, but they are grief-stricken for a cause they cannot explain, and nobody can explain.

In the commencing verses of the Fifteenth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita we have a complete picture of the whole of life in every one of its aspects. The way in which the Fifteenth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita starts is the way in which we have to start thinking if our thinking is to be right thinking. We are used to thinking in terms of family, relations and properties, but in these verses of the Fifteenth Chapter, the Bhagavadgita does not think in terms of family and relations, of I and mine, of my property, my belonging, my friend and foe. There is a magnificent picture before our mental eye. The whole world is placed before us in a nutshell.

The analogy the Bhagavadgita places before us to explain the nature of life as a whole is the well-known analogy of a tree. The whole of life is compared to a large tree spreading itself in every place, in and out of things, and extending from heaven to the nether regions: 

ūrdhvamūlam adhaḥśākham (B.G. 15.1). 

We have never seen a tree of this type whose roots are above and branches are below. It is an unthinkable tree. How can the roots be above in the skies and the branches be below on the Earth? But such is the tree which life is.

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To be continued ....

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