ADMONITION OF ARJUNA IN SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE.
Arguments--The causes of the feelings of Pleasure and Pain, and
Happiness and Misery in this world, and the modes and means of their
prevention and avoidance.
The lord continued:--Listen moreover, O mighty armed Arjuna, to the
edifying speech, which I am about to deliver unto you, for the sake of
your lasting good and welfare.
2. Know O progeny of Kunti, that the perception of the senses, or the
feelings conveyed to our minds by the organic sense, such as those of
cold and heat and the like, are the causes of our bodily pleasure and
pain; but as these are transitory, and come to us and pass away by
turns, you must remain patient under them.
3. Knowing neither the one nor the other to be uniform and monotonous,
what is it thou callest as real pleasure or pain? A thing having no
form or figure of its own, can have no increase or decrease in it.
4. Those who have suppressed the feelings of their senses, by knowing
the illusory nature of sensible perceptions; are content to remain
quiet with an even tenor of their minds, both in their prosperity and
adversity; are verily the men that are thought to taste the ambrosial
draught of immortality in their mortal state.
5. Knowing the soul to be the same in all states, and alike in all
places and times; they view all differences and accidents of life with
indifference, and being sure of the unreality of unrealities, they
retain their endurance under all the varying circumstances of life.
6. Never can joy or grief take possession of the common soul, which
being ecumenical in its nature, can never be exceptional or otherwise.
7. The unreal has no existence, nor is the positive a negative at any
time; so there can be nothing as a positive felicity or infelicity
either in any place, when God himself is present in his person every
where. (They are all alike to God and Godly soul).
8. Abandon the thoughts of felicity or infelicity of the world (nor
be like the laughing or crying philosopher with your one sided view
of either the happiness or misery of life), and seeing there is no
such difference in the mind of God, stick fast in this last state of
indifference to both.
9. Though the intelligent soul, and the external phenomena, are closely
situated in the inside and outside of the body; Yet the internal soul
is neither delighted nor depressed, by the pleasure or pain which
environ the external body.
10. All pleasure and pain relating the material body, touch the mind
which is situated in it; but no bodily hurt or debility affects the
soul, which is seated beyond it.
11. Should the soul be supposed to participate, in the pleasure or pain
which affect the gross body, it is to be understood as caused by the
error, rising from our ignorance only.
12. The gross is no reality, and its feelings of pain or pleasure
are never real ones, as to touch the intangible soul; for who is so
senseless, as not to perceive the wide separation of the soul from the
body?
13. What I tell you here, O progeny of Bhárata, will surely destroy the
error arising from ignorance, by the full understanding of my lectures.
14. As knowledge removes the error and fear of the snake, arising from
one's ignorance in a rope; so our misconception of the reality of our
bodies and their pleasures and pains, is dispelled by our knowledge of
truth.
15. Know the whole universe to be identic with increate Brahma, and is
neither produced nor dissolved by itself, knowing this as a certain
truth, believe in Brahma only, as the most supreme source of all tree
knowledge.
16. You are but a little billow in the sea of Brahma's essence; you
rise and roll for a little while, and then subside to rest. You foam
and froth in the whirlpool of Brahma's existence, and art no other
than a drop of water in the endless ocean of Brahma.
17. As long as we are in action under the command of our general, we
act our parts like soldiers in the field; we all live and move in
Brahma alone, and there is no mistake of right or wrong in this. (Act
well our part and there all honour lies).
18. Abandon your pride and haughtiness, your sorrow and fear, and your
desire of pain or pleasure; it is bad to have any duality or doubt in
you, be good with your oneness or integrity at all times.
19. Think this in yourself from the destruction of these myriads of
forces under your arms, that all these are evolved out of Brahma, and
you do more than evolve or reduce them to Brahma himself.
20. Do not care for your pleasure or pain, your gain or loss, and your
victory or defeat; but resort only to the unity of Brahma, and know the
world as the vast ocean of Brahma's entity.
21. Being alike in or unchanged by your loss or gain, and thinking
yourself as nobody; and go on in your proper course of action, as a
gust of wind takes its own course.
22. Whatever you do or take to your food, whatever sacrifices you make
or any gift that you give to any one, commit them all to Brahma, and
remain quiet in yourself. (With an assurance of their happy termination
by the help of God).
23. Whoever thinks in his mind, of becoming anything in earnest; he
undoubtedly becomes the same in process of time; if therefore you wish
to become as Brahma himself, learn betimes to assimilate yourself to
the nature of Brahma, in all your thoughts and deeds. (It is imitation
of perfection, that gives perfection to man).
24. Let one who knows the great Brahma, be employed in doing his duties
as occur unto him, without any expectation and any reward; and as God
does his works without any aim, so should the Godly do their works
without any object.
25. He who sees the inactive God in all his active duties, and sees
also all his works in the inactive Gods; that man is called the most
intelligent among men, and he is said the readiest discharger of his
deeds and duties.
26. Do not do thy works in expectation of their rewards, nor engage
thyself to do any thing that is not thy duty or improper for thee. Go
on doing thy duties as in thy yoga or fixed meditation, and not in
connection with other's or their rewards.
27. Neither be addicted to active duties, nor recline in your
inactivity either; never remain ignorant or negligent of thy duties in
life, but continue in thy work with an even temper at all times.
28. That man though employed in business, is said to be doing nothing
at all; who does not foster the hope of a reward of his acts, and is
ever contented in himself, even without a patron or refuge.
29. It is the addictedness of one's mind to anything, that makes it
his action, and not the action itself without such addiction; it is
ignorance which is the cause of such tendency, therefore ignorance is
to be avoided by all means.
30. The great soul that is settled in divine knowledge; and is freed
from its wont or bent to any thing, may be employed in all sorts of
works, without being reckoned as the doer of any. (One is named by the
work of his profession, and not by his attendance to a thousand other
callings in life).
31. He who does nothing, is indifferent about its result (whether of
good or evil), this indifference amounts to his equanimity, which leads
to his endless felicity, which is next to the state of God-head. (The
sentence is climacteric rising from inactivity to the felicity of the
Deity).
32. By avoiding the dirt of duality and plurality (of beliefs), betake
yourself to your belief in the unity of the supreme spirit, and
then whether you do or not do your ceremonial acts, you will not be
accounted as the doer.
33. He is called a wise man by the learned, whose acts in life are free
from desire or some object of desire; and whose ceremonial acts are
burnt away by the fire of spiritual knowledge. (It is said that the
merit of ceremonial observances, leads a man only to reward in repeated
births; but divine knowledge removes the doom of transmigration, by
leading the soul at once to divine felicity, from which no one has to
return to revisit the earth.)
34. He who remains with a peaceful, calm, quiet and tranquil equanimity
of the soul, and without any desire or avarice for anything in this
world, may be doing his duties here, without any disturbance or anxiety
of his mind.
35. The man who has no dispute with any one, but is ever settled with
calm and quiet rest of his soul; which is united with the supreme
soul, without its Yoga or Ceremonial observance, and is satisfied with
whatever is obtained of itself; such a man is deemed as a decoration of
this earth.
36. They are called ignorant hypocrites, who having repressed their
organs of actions, still indulge themselves in dwelling upon sensible
pleasures, by recalling their thoughts in this mind.
37. He who has governed his outward and inward senses, by the power of
his sapient mind; and employs his organs of action, in the performance
of his bodily functions and discharges of his ceremonial observances
without his addictedness to them, is quite different from the one
described before.
38. As the overflowing waters of rivers, fall into the profound and
motionless body of waters in the sea; so the souls of holy men enter
into the ocean of eternal God, where they are attended with a peaceful
bliss, which is never to be obtained by avaricious worldlings.