The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 5-3. - Swami Krishnananda.

Swami Chinmayananda:

Someone asked Gurudev, I sleep too long, I feel always always sleepy. What is the healthy minimum of sleep?

What Bhagavad Gita says on this and how much sleep is good for yoga or any activity you wish to pursue, swipe to read! 

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Saturday 22, June 2024, 06:50.
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita: 
Chapter 5: The Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata-3.

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Sometimes a sincere question is raised: How can a gospel which has an eternal value, which seems to be a permanent message coming from a divine source, be associated with a peculiar human context which we call a battle? Often, in moods of partial understanding and on the basis of an emphasis of one aspect of the matter, the Bhagavadgita is called a war gospel. It urges us to act by raising arms and taking up cudgels, but it can be understood in any other way also. There are many standpoints from which we can photograph different kinds of pictures of this Bhagavadgita context. It is not a war gospel, though it looks as if it is that from the point of view of a surface reading of the grammatical meaning of the language used. But it is naturally, and perhaps very rightly, a gospel which has relevance to the inner meaning of what we call a battle, a war.

What exactly is meant by the words 'battle' or 'war'? We have our own prosaic, human, political and historical ideas about this very unpleasant event which has always been part and parcel of history and human existence. But while it is true that people engage themselves in battles and wars to solve a particular problem or a situation prevailing at a given moment of time, it is not the intention of the Bhagavadgita to say that any problem of human existence can be solved merely by reading the historical aspect of the human side of empirical existence.

We never do anything unless we are sure that our doing is going to solve a particular problem or necessity in our life. If a necessity does not arise, we will not budge an inch, and we will not act. There is a need felt for action, and that need is commensurate with a difficulty behind it. What is meant by 'a need' or 'a necessity'? It is an urge to set right a particular condition that is prevailing at present, implying thereby that the present condition is not a happy, perfect, expected condition. A finitude of the prevailing situation, an irregularity of it, an oddness about it, an unhappiness that is attached to it, may be considered as what we call the need of the hour.

Now, our actions are actually a kind of movement on our part to solve a situation which has to be understood very carefully in its subtle, threadbare meaning. It is a state of conflict, a kind of confrontation in which we find ourselves every moment of time, practically every day, in a situation when we are face to face with some circumstance with which we cannot reconcile ourselves as it looks on its surface, or as it is capable of our understanding in our present state of intellect and mind. We have to understand here again the subtle shade of meaning behind the word 'conflict', which enlarges itself into the cruder meanings of what we call battle and war, etc. They all mean the same thing finally, though the dimension they take may vary, and their grossness or subtlety may also be different.

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Continued

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