♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...
➖➖➖➖➖➖
Video Information: Shastra Kaumudi Live, 9.2.20, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India
Context:
सदृशं चेष्टते स्वस्याः प्रकृतेर्ज्ञानवानपि।
प्रकृतिं यान्ति भूतानि निग्रहः किं करिष्यति।।3.33।।
Even a man of wisdom behaves according to his own nature. Being follows by their nature. What can restraint do?
एवं बुद्धेः परं बुद्ध्वा संस्तभ्यात्मानमात्मना।
जहि शत्रुं महाबाहो कामरूपं दुरासदम्।।3.43।।
Thus knowing Him Who is superior to the intellect and restraining the self by the Self, slay thou, O mighty-armed Arjuna, the enemy in the form of desire, hard to conquer.
~ Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta, Chapter 3, Verse 33 & Verse 43.
~ What are the characteristics of this nature?
~ Right place to restrained in one's life and what really comes under its purview?
~ How to fight right battle?
~ How to restrain oneself?
~ Which enemy is hard to conquer?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...
➖➖➖➖➖➖
Video Information: Shastra Kaumudi Live, 9.2.20, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India
Context:
सदृशं चेष्टते स्वस्याः प्रकृतेर्ज्ञानवानपि।
प्रकृतिं यान्ति भूतानि निग्रहः किं करिष्यति।।3.33।।
Even a man of wisdom behaves according to his own nature. Being follows by their nature. What can restraint do?
एवं बुद्धेः परं बुद्ध्वा संस्तभ्यात्मानमात्मना।
जहि शत्रुं महाबाहो कामरूपं दुरासदम्।।3.43।।
Thus knowing Him Who is superior to the intellect and restraining the self by the Self, slay thou, O mighty-armed Arjuna, the enemy in the form of desire, hard to conquer.
~ Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta, Chapter 3, Verse 33 & Verse 43.
~ What are the characteristics of this nature?
~ Right place to restrained in one's life and what really comes under its purview?
~ How to fight right battle?
~ How to restrain oneself?
~ Which enemy is hard to conquer?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Even a man of wisdom behaves according to his own nature.
00:21Beings follow their nature.
00:22What can restraint do?
00:26Because knowing him who is superior to the intellect and restraining the self by the
00:32self, slay thou, O mighty-armed Arjun, the enemy in the form of desire hard to conquer.
00:42So in verse 33, the questioner says, it is said, what can restraint do?
00:50And in verse 43, it is said, restrain lower self by the higher self.
00:56They seem to contradict each other.
00:58Please help me understand the right place of restraint in one's life and what really
01:02comes under its purview.
01:04No, the word is not really restraint in verse 33.
01:14What is implied is all mortal beings are following the dictates of Prakriti and the dictates
01:28of Prakriti cannot be disobeyed as far as the physical body is concerned.
01:40Be it an ignorant man or a realized man, Prakriti will operate the way Prakriti does.
01:50Prakriti cannot be disobeyed.
01:55So what is being said here is, nigraha kim karishyati.
02:02You cannot stop it.
02:06Stopping it is one thing and distancing yourself from it is totally another thing.
02:13Nigraha cannot be done.
02:19This is said in the context of the inviolable control of Prakriti on the body and the brain.
02:33So Arjun, you will have to act.
02:37Every being acts because Prakriti is all about action.
02:43In Prakriti there is nothing called stillness, Prakriti is change, movement, action.
02:53Then verse 43 says, thus knowing him who is superior to the intellect and restraining
03:01the self by the self, the self by the self has the first self as the small self which
03:10is aham and then the second self as the capital self which is the truth, slay thou oh mighty
03:19armed Arjun, the enemy in the form of desire hard to conquer.
03:27Here what is being said is that the entire mechanism, the whole apparatus of Prakriti
03:43can be distanced from one's identity.
03:56This distancing itself is the only way available to you to win Prakriti.
04:12It is beautifully captured when Shri Krishna says in another verse
04:25that Arjun has to be nirash and nirmam.
04:42He says that you just have to fight, give up hope from the world, give up attachment
04:55to the world and just fight.
05:13Prakriti allures us through hope, Prakriti allures us through the promise of completion.
05:24It says get attached and you will get something special.
05:39Krishna says all that is sheer excitement won't help you.
05:42He says just fight and be beyond such temperamental excitation.
06:03Again essentially the battle of Kurukshetra is the battle of Arjun against his own Prakriti.
06:19The stranglehold of Prakriti upon Arjun can be clearly seen in the opening chapter.
06:30The opening chapter is what is being fought against in the remaining 17 chapters.
06:39Vikata Jor means one whose excitation has subdued.
06:53In the first chapter, all you see is excitation, fever, Jor is fever.
07:00In fact Arjun puts it quite literally.
07:03He says I am feverish and my hair are standing on their ends, my legs are shivering.
07:16I am feverish.
07:19This is Prakriti.
07:23It will do what it will do.
07:30You must do what you have to do.
07:38And it took 17 chapters and more to fight that which Arjun demonstrated in the first
07:53chapter.
08:00Are you getting it?
08:10Then in the same chapter comes the beautiful message.
08:28It took Krishna a lot to explain to Arjun that Prakriti itself is Paradharma.
08:46Dharma is that which tells you how to live, what to do, how to make your decisions.
08:50When your decisions happen under the influence of Prakriti, then this is not Dharma but Paradharma.
08:59And Krishna says fight here against Prakriti and die in the process.
09:10Fight here and die in the process.
09:12But don't succumb to what your physical and mental tendencies are imploring you to.
09:31Are you getting it?
09:44The message is subtle.
09:46It has to be understood.
09:50You cannot fight against your situation in which action is unavoidable.
10:11You cannot fight, Arjun.
10:16You cannot fight against your situation in which action is unavoidable.
10:23Arjun is insisting that it is possible to somehow avoid action.
10:31Arjun is trying to fight against action itself.
10:39Arjun is saying I will not act.
10:42So Arjun's fight is against action itself.
10:46Krishna says no, that is not possible.
10:50You cannot fight the fight.
10:52The fight is not avoidable.
10:56Therefore what to do?
11:00The answer to this question opens up something glorious for the entire mankind.
11:05The answer is if fight you must.
11:12And if fighting is mandatory, if fighting is an inalienable part of living, then instead
11:20of trying to fight the fight, fight the right fight.
11:30Arjun is saying I will fight the fight and Krishna is saying fight the right fight because
11:38you cannot fight the fight.
11:42If you think that if you can somehow avoid getting in the fight, if you think you can
11:54somehow avoid taking sides on the battlefield, it is not possible.
12:00Many people try that.
12:03Many people say it is not really important and we can take some kind of a neutral position.
12:11We need not fight.
12:17Krishna mocks at them.
12:18He says they are all hypocrites.
12:20You cannot take a neutral position because even if you are taking a neutral position,
12:24you are still positioning yourself somewhere in the fight.
12:29Where have you now positioned yourself?
12:35At some so-called middle or neutral point.
12:40Maybe you are not fighting from either side, but you are fighting the fight.
12:48So you are still fighting.
12:49Rest assured, there is nobody who is born who can avoid fighting.
12:55To be born is to be born into a fight.
13:00So if you have to fight Arjun, fight the right fight.
13:05That is dharma.
13:08Let us not entertain any delusion that we can comfortably stay unaligned or safe in
13:23our happy and secure houses.
13:33Those who decide not to fight are actually fighting the wrong fight.
13:40They meet a fate worse than the fighters on either side.
13:53In a battlefield, one side emerges as the winner, the other side as the loser.
13:59And then there is a third side as well.
14:07Which is this third side?
14:11The one who fought the fight and therefore did not enter the battlefield at all.
14:17These are the mega losers.
14:22These are bigger losers than even the ones who got physically eliminated on the battlefield.
14:40That's what makes the Bhagavad Gita such a commanding scripture.
14:48It addresses the situation on a battlefield.
15:01It addresses the very complex question of right action.
15:21Prakriti has no swabhav.
15:25Prakriti only has traits, guna.
15:37So for the sake of convenience, they have been classified into just three, satrajitam.
15:51These three traits essentially just tell about three fundamental tendencies of the
16:03mind.
16:06There is the tendency that we all sometimes display to remain drowned in dark unconsciousness
16:19and we derive pleasure out of it, don't we?
16:24That is called Tamsa.
16:30We say we will drown ourselves in liquor, don't people do that?
16:41Even at this place there is so much hash and weed and I am talking of the city.
16:49Why do people do that?
16:53There is a certain pleasure in losing consciousness.
16:59So that was observed by the seers and they said that is one very prominent trait of Prakriti.
17:09We love losing consciousness, it's a strange thing, but we love losing consciousness.
17:18We love to be drunken and drowned and then there is the trait that we all display of
17:33energetic and frenzied action, running around here and there, sometimes motivated, sometimes
17:46frantic, I will get this or I will avoid that, that is to be achieved, I am a superstar,
17:58I am happy, that kind of a thing that has been called as Rajas, Rajoguna.
18:07That is just a tendency of the mind, that is the way we behave, we operate and then
18:16there is another tendency that we all display.
18:23That tendency is to know, I want to know, I want to know what is going on, I want light.
18:38Nobody likes lies for example, do we?
18:45In general we do not, we ask for the truth, even if that which we mean by the truth is
18:53not really truth, but we at least want facts, don't we?
18:59That is Satoguna, tell me what is really going on, that is Satoguna, that again is a tendency
19:04of the mind.
19:07So that is Prakriti, it does not really have a center and if you insist on determining
19:22a center of Prakriti, the center is merely of continuity, all that Prakriti wants is
19:31continuity in time, it wants to remain as it is, it wants to remain as it is in middle
19:39of all the changes that are called as Prakriti.
19:43So a lot of things will change, everything changes in Prakriti.
19:50Species come, species go, species evolve, so much keeps happening, universes rise, universes
19:56fall, but Prakriti in itself reaches nowhere, the center does not change, time continues,
20:06within time these events keep happening.
20:10So yes, means Prakriti is also a series of changes, Prakriti is an unchanging series
20:20of changes, Prakriti is a permanent temporariness, Prakriti is a temporality that is very permanent,
20:44everything is temporary and this temporariness is permanent, that is Prakriti, so what is
21:00beyond this temporariness and permanence, so those who investigated Prakriti, they said
21:10fine there is Satrajitam, but there has to be real life beyond the three, so they said
21:17the purpose of all spiritual inquiry or advancement is to go beyond the three traits or Gunas,
21:32they said you have to go Gunatit or Trigunatit, beyond Prakriti, so you are talking there
21:45is an inquiry in Prakriti also, but that inquiry is different from this spiritual inquiry,
21:52that spiritual inquiry is not born from the inquiry which is there in Prakriti, no, when
21:57you inquire, Prakriti is all that you have to inquire into, except for Prakriti, what
22:06else is available to be inquired, inquiry surely requires an object to be inquired and
22:14all objects are in, so Prakriti alone can be inquired into.
22:22You said three things are there in Prakriti, the third thing is it wants to know, so that
22:31is not inquiring, that is inquiry, so all inquiry is Satoguna, but then inquiry alone
22:38does not suffice, liberation means inquiry and a strong urge to be free of that which
22:51has been now known, therefore knowledge by itself is often very insufficient, that is
22:59the reason you often find very knowledgeable people neck deep in slavery or bondages, because
23:09knowledge is again just Satoguna and all the three Gunas are bondages, Satoguna is
23:28the highest because it offers you half a way to move out of your slavery, but only
23:38half a way, the remaining half comes from a strong urge to be liberated of that which
23:46has been known, otherwise you will face a peculiar situation, you will come to know
23:59that you are in a bad position, but you will not act to redeem yourself of your bad position
24:10Acharya ji, inquiry comes from Satoguna, so even an inquiry into Prakriti comes from
24:34the Satoguna of Prakriti, but liberation requires both inquiry and an urge for towards
24:43liberation, where does that urge come from, it is called grace, it comes from grace, it
24:57comes from prayer, it comes from your tears, it comes when you are really desperate, can
25:16you talk something about evolution also, like it is in Prakriti, it is an individual species,
25:30it depends, everything is evolving, but it is individualistic, you look at one individual
25:40thing and you say it is evolving, the fact is in Prakriti everything is evolving, change
25:46is evolution, when the change appears kind of favorable to you, then you start calling
25:51it by the positive name of evolution, actually evolution is just change.