(Gita-12) Desirelessness, Nishkama Karma, and Fulfillment || Acharya Prashant,on Bhagavad Gita(2024)
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Video Information: 22.06.2024, Vedant: Basics to Classics
Context:
जातस्य हि ध्रुवो मृत्युर्ध्रुवं जन्म मृतस्य च। तस्मादपरिहार्येऽर्थे न त्वं शोचितुमर्हसि।।2.27।।
Of that which is born, death is certain; of that which is dead, birth is certain. Over the unavoidable, therefore, thou oughtest not to grieve.
Bhagavad Gita - 2.27
Music Credits: Milind Date
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#acharyaprashant
Video Information: 22.06.2024, Vedant: Basics to Classics
Context:
जातस्य हि ध्रुवो मृत्युर्ध्रुवं जन्म मृतस्य च। तस्मादपरिहार्येऽर्थे न त्वं शोचितुमर्हसि।।2.27।।
Of that which is born, death is certain; of that which is dead, birth is certain. Over the unavoidable, therefore, thou oughtest not to grieve.
Bhagavad Gita - 2.27
Music Credits: Milind Date
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Though the matter at hand seems to be life and death, war and renunciation, what Shri
00:26Krishna is actually instructing Arjun is in the non-existence of the self.
00:51It would be a mistake to think that Krishna is saying that death does not matter.
01:14He is saying death does not happen and something is impossible to happen, is non-existent.
01:37How can it be important or material?
01:51It is in the deep insights of the Upanishads that Arjun is being instructed.
02:17Remember, the person has not been named here, though in the various commentaries and interpretations
02:30you might find the word person used, that the person who has taken birth will necessarily
02:42die and the person who has died will take birth, but that's not really the case here.
02:57Rakriti means rise and fall, change of form, arrival and departure.
03:10That is the very definition of Prakriti and since what we call as the human being is really
03:30different from the water droplet, therefore whatever happens to the water droplet also happens to the human being.
03:46If I ask you how is a water droplet really different from person, you will say the person
03:53says I.
03:56The person is alive.
03:59That exactly is the point.
04:02That which you call as life is fiction and therefore death is not possible.
04:13You and the water droplet are one.
04:19Therefore just as the water droplet goes through the various points in its life cycle, you too will.
04:31There was the vapour that condensed on the drop, then that drop goes about doing a lot
04:43of things, mixing with that, reacting with that and then a point comes when the drop
04:56is no more, either it has re-vaporized or it has split or it has reacted with something
05:10and lost its identity.
05:15It's no more in the form in which it can be still called a drop.
05:26The same thing happens to the human being.
05:30Such that there is the assumption called the ego which uses two very specific words, specific
05:44to human beings, life, rather birth and death.
05:50When the water drop vaporizes, you do not say it has died, you simply say it has vaporized
05:57but when a human being changes form, you say he has died.
06:09You take hydrogen and oxygen, the two gases and get them to react over a couple of electrodes.
06:27You get water droplets but you do not say water has taken birth whereas when the male
06:42cell and the female cell combine to form a human being, we say a human being has taken
06:54birth.
06:55That is the only difference but that difference is not existential.
07:03The difference is of nomenclature.
07:09You are naming a phenomena in one particular way and you are naming it another one in another
07:14way.
07:16Why?
07:19Because when it comes to the water droplet, there is no stake in identifying with it.
07:30When it comes to the birth of a baby, the one who is describing the process, the phenomena
07:36has a huge stake because he too was once a baby.
07:43Therefore when it comes to their own genesis, human beings start using very special, albeit
07:50preposterous terms like birth, like death, we should simply say the baby was formed.
08:03And the moment you say birth, nothing special takes birth, the ego takes birth.
08:13By using the word birth, you have given birth to the ego.
08:20By making the baby special, by making the baby different from the water droplet, a lot
08:32of people who are not versed in the tenets of Vedanta or in the Gita might be finding
08:49the discussion so far a bit outlandish but that's alright.
08:56Obviously there is a difference between a human being and H2O.
09:05I ask you again, get a little impartial, what really is the difference?
09:13What really is the difference?
09:17You will say consciousness, we have discussed that a thousand times, how our consciousness
09:22is all material.
09:26You will say thoughts, feelings, emotions and all that, well, those are just phenomena
09:34observed when huge polymer chains get together to make complex structures.
09:44Are you getting it?
09:52So superficially, it's about whether or not Arjun would fight the war.
10:01Deeply it's about whether or not Arjun comes to terms with the non-existence of the so-called
10:09fighters on both the sides.
10:19Arjun has to realize that there is no point deciding from the center of the ego because
10:25the ego is anyway non-existent.
10:32There is nothing under your feet when you are trying to run.
10:38You are trying to run in empty space.
10:48You won't have to do anything special to fall.
10:54You are falling all the time.
10:55There is nothing under your feet.
10:56Are you getting it?
10:57So Arjun, at the level of the fact, there is Prakriti and then when you realize that
11:14Prakriti is only to itself, Prakriti is only to itself, just as magnetism is only to the
11:30iron piece, put wood next to a very powerful magnet, nothing happens.
11:40So at the level of the fact, there is Prakriti and when you get deeper into it, you realize
11:49Prakriti too is only to itself.
11:56Then you say, well, truth is non-dual.
12:06The truth is that even Prakriti is very subjective and it's very quaintly subjective.
12:14Prakriti is the object, Prakriti is also the subject.
12:22Look at the magnet and the iron piece.
12:27One of them is the object, one of them is the subject, both of them belong to Prakriti.
12:34So therefore, the truth is that Prakriti too is kind of fictitious at one level.
12:45Why?
12:47Because truth has to be independent, that's the basic qualification.
12:54The truth is not independent, its existence is dependent on itself.
13:01Who can verify that Prakriti exists?
13:04Only Prakriti.
13:09Who can verify that a piece of iron is magnetized?
13:14Another piece of iron.
13:18Therefore there can be no independent verification.
13:21Hence, if we want to be really rigorous with our definitions, then Prakriti too turns out
13:29to be well fictitious as the truth is a pure, beautiful emptiness.
13:41Hence only these two are worthy of consideration, either Prakriti or truth.
13:51At the level of fact, Prakriti.
13:56And then at the absolute level, the truth.
14:00Apart from these two, what are you busy with, Arjun?
14:11There is a truth, there is a fact and if there is something besides these two, that must
14:16be just fiction, imagination.
14:22You are suffering in your imagination, Arjun.
14:31The ego is imaginary.
14:40The sufferer is imaginary and that recognition is the most powerful way to relieve the sufferer
14:53of its suffering.
14:58Nothing has happened to you in particular.
15:02What are you so busy suffering with?
15:07What is happening is universal.
15:09Prakriti is universal.
15:11What is happening is universal.
15:13Nothing is happening to you in particular.
15:15The ego is a particularity.
15:17Something happened to me in particular.
15:19Something happened to me in particular.
15:22It's a general phenomena.
15:24Who are you to claim such a special position that special things will happen only to you
15:32specifically in particular?
15:36But that's what the ego wants to say, you know, I'm special, stuff happened to me.
15:42It's a general thing.
15:46The general thing, you are a part of the whole.
15:49In fact, if something is happening to you, is actually happening in the whole, you're
16:00getting it.
16:06You're not apart from the whole.
16:07You are the whole.
16:09You are Prakriti.
16:14And that also very smoothly then shows why you cannot be consumers of Prakriti because
16:22you are Prakriti.
16:28There is no point trying to consume the jungle because you are the jungle.
16:36You haven't come to the earth.
16:39You are the earth.
16:41Therefore, when you are saving the earth, you are not saving the earth.
16:48You never took birth.
16:49You are always here as the earth.
16:52Oh, that rhymes, poster material.
17:00You never took birth.
17:02You are always here as the earth.
17:11But that's not how our culture sees it.
17:15We say, you know, we came to this earth and then one day we will depart.
17:21What do you mean by depart?
17:23You rose from the soil.
17:25You are the soil.
17:28You will remain the soil.
17:30What kind of departure are you alluding to?
17:35No departure is possible.
17:38Some people want to say, you know, no, no, no.
17:40This is like some kind of hotel or sarai or something in lodge.
17:52We checked in.
17:54We'll check out.
17:55We are visitors here.
17:56We are guests.
17:57What do you mean by you are a visitor here?
17:59Such ignorance.
18:02You came visiting.
18:03From where?
18:06You went back too?
18:10You haven't come visiting here.
18:12You haven't checked in.
18:13You are always here.
18:15There is no place to go to.
18:16You aren't special.
18:18You aren't separate from this place that you are calling as the lodge or the tavern or
18:23whatever.
18:29You were always here.
18:36It's just that the nature of the particles in the universe is to keep changing, colliding,
18:49taking this form, taking that form.
18:52All kinds of mischief is constantly happening in Prakriti, chanchal.
19:01She is never at rest, always moving and in the random course of her movement, sometimes
19:09this thing called the human being is formed.
19:14Sometimes.
19:17May form, may not form, probabilistic, probabilistic.
19:25Are you getting it?
19:32Soil becomes what you call as the sentient being.
19:36The sentient being becomes the soil.
19:39The soil will once again become another sentient being when nobody knows.
19:46It's all stochastic of what kind, what shape, what species.
19:59Not predictable.
20:01Something will happen.
20:02It's also random like Brownian motion.
20:07Are you getting it?
20:13So that's what is happening Arjuna.
20:16Now let's address the problem at hand.
20:18The problem at hand is human suffering.
20:23All suffering comes from taking the self as real.
20:27Therefore, whenever you find a person suffering, if you really are a well-wisher, the only
20:34authentic route is to educate that person in the non-existence of the ego.
20:44How you do that depends on your wisdom and the situation.
20:50Remember how the wise Buddha instructed that woman who came to him.
21:00She had lost her kid and she thought that the Buddha too is one of those magicians.
21:14He will conjure up some miracle and get her baby back.
21:21Pay attention to what the Buddha really did.
21:23Look at the technique used.
21:27He tells her, you go and get me some something.
21:31He said, don't remember the details.
21:33Some salt or rice or something.
21:38You go and get me some stuff from some house that has never ever lost one of its members.
21:53The woman found hope.
21:58I can see her very briskly walking to the village, knocking at doors, asking for some
22:05rice and saying, just one question, nobody ever died here, right?
22:14The entire village, she could not find a single such house.
22:22She must have ran to the next village and there again, the same thing.
22:36And after she had exhausted all the villages and was thoroughly spent in her effort, something
22:48cracked inside her.
22:56The shell broke open and tired and exhausted, she returned to the Buddha.
23:06And then there was no need of words.
23:10Everything was understood.
23:14Nothing has happened to you in particular.
23:19You do not exist.
23:20Your baby does not exist.
23:21It's a general happening.
23:23What are you grieving over?
23:29The Buddha was not an academician.
23:41You ask him, he would never say I'm a scholar.
23:43He would say I'm a doctor.
23:47I would not make the woman sit and throw sutras and principles and theories and dictums at
23:59her.
24:00I'm not going to do that.
24:02Instead, he conducted a very practical experiment, but the objective was the same.
24:13What is happening is in the course of Prakriti, which is universal, general.
24:21What are you so excited about?
24:28Look at the sun setting, that's you.
24:35At the birds, that's you.
24:40You're not special.
24:41You're not different.
24:42You're not unique.
24:43You're not separate at all.
24:44The water that's flowing, that's you.
24:45I connect it.
24:46That's you.
24:47The dualistic apparition, that's you.
24:48The water that's flowing, that's you.
24:55I connect it.
25:02That's you.
25:12The dualistic apparition that that is out there somewhere and I am the observer who
25:20is in somewhere here.
25:23This dualistic separation is the cause of all misery.
25:32This and that are one and if you don't want to accept that, show me one way in which you
25:38are special.
25:40Show me one way in which you are special, unique.
25:49Now you see why the man of wisdom does not get excited too easily.
26:05Everything is just so quotidian, regular, general, repetitive.
26:20Something happened.
26:21No, the happening is ubiquitous.
26:24How do I get excited?
26:29You can get excited only over something that is special, but there is nothing special.
26:39It's all over, all over the place and it's all over the place.
26:45It's all over for you.
26:46Finished once you see that.
26:47Gone.
26:48Are you getting it?
27:00So why must Arjun fight?
27:03Mine Arjun has understood all, why would he fight?
27:08So that human suffering can be alleviated.
27:22It's not about getting the throne, why?
27:24Because there is nobody to wear the throne.
27:28Arjun does not, if Arjun does not exist, who is to be throned?
27:38It cannot be about the, I don't, it's about the millions at least will be influenced by
27:46state policies and that's a huge thing.
28:00It moves a man of compassion.
28:06I understand I don't exist, but that fellow there, he does not understand that he doesn't exist.
28:12To him he does and since to him he does, he suffers and if there happens to be an occupant
28:21of the throne who will further self-centered ignorance, then there is a problem.
28:40So it's not that Arjun must be on the throne or wear the crown, the thing is not that Arjun
28:51must occupy the throne or wear the crown.
28:58Duryodhana has to be stopped.
29:03Well if he ascends to the throne, then he's going to cause widespread anguish.
29:12That's the thing.
29:16Are you getting it?
29:22And as long as Arjun keeps believing in his identity as Duryodhana's kin and Drona's student,
29:38he'll not fight, at least not wholeheartedly.
29:46Therefore Arjun has to be relieved of his identity.
29:52If you do not expunge Duryodhana and Drona and Bhishma from the insides of Arjun, he
30:01will not fight.
30:03The opponents are not situated outside there in the enemy lines.
30:11The opponents are all sitting within Arjun as his flesh and blood.
30:19So Arjun has to be relieved of his identity and that's what is being done.
30:24The non-existence of the ego, the self, is being impressed upon him.
30:33No, I'm no more your kid, Pitamah.
30:50No Duryodhana, no my hundred other brothers.
31:01I'm no more your brother.
31:03Who am I then?
31:06I am a void.
31:12I am someone who has been relieved of his suffering and I'm fighting to relieve.
31:20others of their suffering and I'm fighting you just because you come in the way.
31:29Otherwise I have no purpose in fighting you.
31:36I covet neither the throne nor the riches nor the prestige that accompanies them.
31:41I covet none of them.
31:43Why?
31:45Because to covet something, somebody must exist.
31:50No, I don't exist to covet anything.
31:55I'm a void, a pure nothingness.
32:05I'm fighting not for myself.
32:08Why?
32:09Because my self does not exist.
32:12So I cannot fight for myself.
32:22Can you put the war in perspective now?
32:26Can you see why the Gita was necessary and why nothing else would have succeeded?
32:41If you want a person to do the best he can, relieve him of his personality, his personhood.
32:51As long as the person remains the person, he will act within the confines of the personality
33:01and that won't take him far.
33:05See the next one, verse 28 of chapter 2, all beings are unmanifested, then they manifest
33:14and then they again move into unmanifestation.
33:19That's it.
33:20What's there to grieve about?
33:24Mind you, Shri Krishna uses the word bhutani, plural for entities.
33:32Plural entities may include human beings.
33:37Bhut simply means something that exists.
33:46In the classical languages, bhut simply means something that exists.
33:55That means all beings.
33:58All beings, including sentient as well as insentient beings, because the same thing
34:07applies to both the sides.
34:11Didn't exist, found existence and then lapsed again.
34:19Go back to the water droplet, did it always exist?
34:25Found existence and then was gone again.
34:32So actually what is it that takes form, a name, nothing else.
34:41The water droplet was always there, but when it takes a specific form, then you give it
34:49a specific name.
34:54So much for a name.
34:59That is happening constantly with every being, including human beings.
35:09Show me one thing that is eternal, just as nothing is eternal here, from the tiniest
35:19atom to the biggest galaxy, everything is in the process of formation, continuation,
35:36dissolution, forms, stays, goes.
35:48Is that not the thing, the story with every entity that you can think of, experience?
36:04There are microorganisms whose entire life is of a few seconds.
36:13Just like there exist beings, you would want to call them conscious beings, they come,
36:23they stay for seconds, they are gone, that's their entire life cycle.
36:32Equally there are subatomic particles whose entire life is of the order of 10 to the power
36:43minus 3 seconds, 10 to the power minus 5 seconds, even 10 to the power minus 10 seconds.
36:51You know of particle accelerators, right?
36:55Such specific particles can be produced only under very special conditions.
37:08You would say, oh, they have such short lifespans, no, to them that is their eternity.
37:24Human beings last 80 years, so because of our identification with this body, 80 or 100
37:32becomes our gold standard.
37:36So we measure everything from there, 80 or 100.
37:42There are trees that live for hundreds and thousands of years, we marvel at them, and
37:50tortoises, they are so old, oh my god, they live for so long.
37:57When we look at those insects that come and go, we say, oh, they hardly exist.
38:08And then there are bosons and mesons, again with very small lifespans.
38:16You can say very small, no, not small, small compared to what?
38:25Your answer will be my lifespan.
38:31The point is everything, every entity is following the same cycle, comes, stays, goes.
38:45If that is what is continuously happening, what are you grieving over, Arjun?
38:55You cannot kill them because on your side, you don't exist to kill, on their side, they
39:03don't exist to be killed.
39:05But you can realize that, since I am instructing you, they have refused to realize that, you
39:34can realize that, they don't realize that.
39:36And because they don't realize that, they will not let others realize that.
39:43And if people do not realize the fact of their non-being, then they suffer.
39:50So these chaps, they are going to become the reason for widespread suffering.
39:57That's why, Arjun, you must fight.
39:59That's all.