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The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 3.6. Swami Krishnananda

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======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01/03/2020. Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation -6. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. #Arjuna was such an individual. He had likes and dislikes. The whole story of the Mahabharata is a description of the conflict among the varieties of likes and dislikes. The spiritual seeker is taught, through the epic atmosphere of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita, the lessons of life and the morals that follow from these lessons. ##When our reasoning capacity is turbid, our knowledge is inadequate, and our adjustments with the world outside, including human society, are not strong enough. They collapse at the least touch of confronting situations, because human relationships are only an outer f...

The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 3.5. Swami Krishnananda

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======================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26/01/2020. Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation -5. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. We will be a little bit restless in the beginning stages. We will be unhappy for reasons we cannot easily know. We will like to get up and run away into the thick of human relations once again, because man is a social animal basically. And to ignore this aspect of the human individual would be not to properly comprehend the psychology of the human being. The attractions and repulsions, the likes and dislikes in relation to personalities, are inborn in us. We are born into this circumstance. We have something to say about the people around us. For or against, we have some opinion about people, and we always ...

The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 3.4. Swami Krishnananda

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======================================================================= ======================================================================= 02/01/2020. Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation -4. ======================================================================= 1. The context of the First Chapter of the Bhagavadgita is the atmosphere of tense feelings in the field of a tremendous Armageddon, each one imagining that one would win victory over the other, each one intent upon overcoming the other, so that each one musters in all the powers of oneself available for unleashing the same in this battle that is to ensue. The individual faces this world before it as a confrontation, a field of action and opposition. The child, in its moods of unintelligent enthusiasm, imagines that it can do anything with this world—possess it, enjoy it, overcome it, utilise it, harness it for its purposes. As we grow older, we become aware of the fact that the world is too much f...

The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 3.3. Swami Krishnananda

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======================================================================== ======================================================================== 27/11/2019. Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation -3. ======================================================================= Arjuna was such a person, and he stands as a symbol for any person, anywhere, at any time, a simple person embodying in his personality the forte and foible of anyone. The strength and the weakness of man can be seen in Arjuna. Every one of us, anywhere, has a strength but also a weakness. All these points have to be taken into consideration. We should not unnecessarily underline the weaknesses of ourselves, ignoring our strengths, nor should we go to the other extreme of imagining that we are all-in-all and that we are free from every defect. We are in a world of conflicts and forces, rajas, which pulls us outward in the direction of space, time and objects through the avenues of the senses, and satt...

The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 3.2. Swami Krishnananda

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======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10/11/2019. Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation -2. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The context in which Arjuna, the hero of this epic, the symbol of humanity in general, finds himself, is the total human situation. It is our situation, and everybody’s. The Mahabharata is not a book giving us merely a story of some historical event that occurred in ancient times. It is an exposition of the nature of the culture of the nation—one may say, the whole of humanity. It is a teaching which is intended to show the path to humanity in its entirety, leading it up to its destination by gradual stages; and the Bhagavadgita is the kernel of this intention of the Mahabharata epic. The purpose of t...

The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita-3.1 : Swami Krishnananda

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======================================================================= -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18/10/2019 Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation-1. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ After the brief introduction to the important features which are predominant in the whole of the Bhagavadgita, we have to enter into the main theme of the exposition. The setting of the occasion of the Gita, the context of the delivery of the gospel, is the human situation, which I tried to liken to the atmosphere of a battlefield, an air of war, conflict and confrontation, to be expected at every step, every moment of time, and under every circumstance. The structure of the universe appears to be such that it faces us as a complex of various layers of conflict which we are supposed to overcome, and which are...

The Philosophy of the Bhagavad gita-Chapter-2.10 : Swami Krishnananda

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======================================================================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15/09/2019 Chapter 2: The Battlefield of Life -10. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We are faced with a warring situation and our activities in daily life are our efforts to face the battle. The work that we do in our office, the labour that we put forth in a factory, or any other work that we do in any walk of life, is the effort we put forth to resolve a conflict and solve a situation. But we do not always do it properly, and so a factory worker need not be happy, and an office-goer need not be satisfied. Our activities need not bring us happiness. We stoop down to the state of utter hopelessness and wretchedness, because we have not found time to walk with the light of reason and the justice of th...