The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 10-4: Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Thursday 06, February 2025, 09:30.
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity:10-4.
Chapter 10: The Need for Sankhya-4.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita: 
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti

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Anyway, this physical body has a beginning and an end. However much we try to guard it by our imagined state of non-action, it will not survive. So why be so greedy about this body? Mrityu, death, should not deter us from entering into the field of duty, whatever that duty be as sanctioned in accordance with our stature in this world of nature and of human society.

Now comes the third argument. Emotionally, you will be disturbed. If you are a renegade, a runaway, or a parasite, you would consider this life of degradation worse than death. Suppose that nobody wants to talk to you. “This stupid ass,” they call you, and nobody considers you as worthwhile. You would be a nobody in this world. You would be considered as a renegade, and for a person such as yourself who has enjoyed a reputation as a respected hero, worshipped, adored, to live with this ignominy would be worse than dying.

Now, these are tentative replies, not the real reply. You cannot start replying in a positive and philosophical, mathematical, logical manner in the beginning itself. Whatever has been said up to this time is a kind of reply, as a friend speaking to a friend. “It is good, it is interesting, it is understandable, and I accept it, yes. But still, that is not sufficient.” The more potent aspect and pertinent feature of this argument is that all these things that the individual trots out as arguments for non-action are based on non-understanding. What makes you conclude that non-action is a great virtue and is going to bring you great good? How do you conclude that this is the way of living? It would be the argument of many people that not doing anything and keeping quiet is a blessed way of living. 

“Why should I do anything? Let me be happy.” Now, how do you come to this conclusion? On what grounds? This is not possible. There is some mistake in your way of thinking. Your understanding is clouded. Let alone what little things I have told you in a friendly manner from the point of view of pure common sense, but there is something more serious about it, namely, that your understanding itself is unclear. You do not know the nature of things. You have no idea as to how the world is constituted. 

Sankhya is what you lack. The great Lord has put his finger on the knob. You have no knowledge of sankhya. Sankhya means originally the wisdom of life, the knowledge of life, the art of living, and an insight into the structure of the world. This you lack. If you know what this world is made of and how you are related to it, you will certainly understand what your position is in this world. Then one need not tell you what you should do. If you know your position under a given condition, you will know what to do at that time. But you do not know where you are placed. You are clouded in your understanding of the circumstances of your very existence; therefore, yoga, which is right action, is barred from you due to the absence of sankhya, which is right knowledge.

You cannot have access to the field of right action unless you are equipped with right knowledge first. All right action is based on right knowledge. Understanding always comes first, and behaviour comes afterwards. You cannot move a finger unless you know how to move it, so it is theory first and practice afterwards, as it is in the case of our secular sciences also. The methodology is to be clear first. The technology has to be appreciated in the beginning. We have to be trained well in the theoretical side, the logical side, the scientific side; then we will come to the practical side. So in one way we may say that the word 'yoga' used in the Bhagavadgita, especially in the earlier stages, say from the beginning of the Second Chapter, may be considered as indicating action rightly performed; and sankhya is knowledge.

The word 'sankhya' is to indicate the nature of the knowledge that is necessary to live in this world. Many explanations have been offered by teachers and exponents to make out the meaning of the word sankhya. Sankhya means 'number'. Categorisation, classification, numbering, counting – all these mean sankhya. And originally the system of philosophy known as the Sankhya was mainly concerned with the categorisation or the classification of the principles of cosmic evolution. From that system which was engaged in this work of the classification of the basic principles of the cosmos, the word 'sankhya' may have got identified with the word 'knowledge', jnana. 

Sankhya and jnana mean the same thing. We may consider sankhya as right understanding of theS operation of nature, the structure of things and the character of the whole of creation. This you lack. Therefore, you go on blabbering something, saying whatever you like, and imagining that what you said is correct. If you had an insight into the basic components of the world, you would have also known your relationship to it, and you would not have said anything. 

You would have known everything clearly, as in daylight. Why should anybody tell you that something is there in daylight? You can see it for yourself. But your eyes are blind; therefore, someone has to tell you something is here, something is there. Your eyes have not been opened. Sankhya is not here.

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Continued

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