Approaching the Gītā

Śrīmad-Bhagavad-Gītā is the most valuable spiritual text to not only Vaiṣṇava-s but to all adherents of Vedic culture (currently, the people identified as Hindus). 

The below hymn chanted by all spiritual traditions brings out the importance of Gītā:

sarvopaniṣado gāvo dogdhā gopālanandanaḥ |
pārtho vatsaḥ sudhīr-bhogtā dugdhaṃ gītāmṛtaṃ mahat ||

During Kūrmāvatāra, the tortoise manifestation of Viṣṇu, He rescued the deva-s, divine beings, by giving them a nectar called amṛta. The word mṛta means the dead. We are all blinded by the darkness of saṃsāra (material existence). Those who have submitted themselves to demoniac nature are satisfied with this blindness. They go through worldly existence dying and being reborn, again and again. This process of repeatedly accepting bodies and traveling towards death is the path of the dead, mṛta. Its opposite is amṛta. Liberation from this cycle of birth and death is possible only through this. 

Ācārya-s who have realized the true form of God consider that the milk ocean, Kṣīrābdhi on which the Lord reclines, is the form of Vedānta. The Vedānta reveals Viṣṇu as its core message. This is indicated by the Lord reclining in the milk ocean. Only those who adopt or are endowed with a divine nature (deva-s) are capable of understanding the core message of the Vedānta. They alone partake of the knowledge which destroys the disease of saṃsāra. This liberating knowledge is amṛta. 

The demons (asura-s) are deluded by Māyā. They do not perceive the true nature of God. They experience God only as Mohinī or the enchantress. Their minds are deluded by external appearances and forms. Due to this delusion, they cultivate desire. On account of desire, they lose amṛta.

The Purāṇa carries an important message. However, it does not reveal to us what that liberating knowledge is. How do we obtain amṛta?

It is to reveal the message of Vedānta, amṛta, that Viṣṇu, God pervading and mastering everything from within, appeared as Kṛṣṇa, the cowherd boy. God, Himself, milked the cows of Upaniṣat-s to extract the amṛta contained within them. He provided this to the entire world as Gītāmṛta. Arjuna only provided Him the excuse as a calf provides the reason for a cow to produce milk. The  Gītāmṛta is always available as the savior of human race. It is cherished by saints of pure intellect. 

The horses are our senses, the leash is the mind or intellect, the chariot is our body through which we are going through the tumultuous field of saṃsāra. Arjuna is the Jīvātmā or the soul. Kṛṣṇa as God (Paramātma, Parameśvara, Parabrahman, Antaryāmin) is present, ready to assume the role of driving the chariot. He is within all of us ready to reveal to us His greatness and pure knowledge. 

What is necessary to receive the grace of Kṛṣṇa? The grace of Kṛṣṇa can only be received by complete surrender. Arjuna adopted this disposition to obtain Gītāmṛta itself. He said,  

ahaṃ te śiṣyaḥ | śādhi mām |  [SBG 2-7]

I am Your disciple. Instruct me. 

However, this declaration alone is not enough to properly understand God. There is another disposition necessary. 

śādhi māṃ tvāṃ prapannam | [SBG 2-7]

Instruct me. I have fully surrendered to You!

Are we deva (divine) or are we asura (demoniac)? An easy way to find out is to see if we can surrender fully to God. The knowledge of Gītā is impossible without fully surrendering to Kṛṣṇa. It can be known only through His grace. Surrender is an invitation to His grace. The text here can be read of millions of readers online but only those who receive the grace of Kṛṣṇa are capable of understanding its true import. Only their lives will be illuminated by the guiding light of Gītā. 

At the end of the Gītā,  Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that this message can be received by only someone of divine orientation. It has to be approached with devotion, not with mere rational intellect. One cannot take the approach: "I want to know everything in the Gītā right now!" or become excited by some teaching and get carried away or adopt a 'purely academic' approach to show oneself as a scholar. Kṛṣṇa makes this clear to Arjuna at the end,

idaṃ te nātapaskāya nābhaktāya kadācana |
na cāśuśrūṣave vācyaṃ na ca māṃ yo~bhyasūyasi || SBG 18-67 ||

The Gītā  is a great secret. It is a secret not in the sense that only a selected few can hear it, but in the sense that only a selected few can understand it. So, it must be treated as a secret and revealed carefully. It must be approached very carefully.

There are four ways to lose sight of the import of Gītā:

1. Lack of tapas: Tapas is discipline of mind, speech and action. Without some basic regulation or discipline or at least an inclination to develop discipline, it is not possible to understand the Gītā. 

2. Lack of bhakti: Bhakti is unconditional love towards God. The listener must either have such love or at least an inclination to develop love to God. 

3. Lack of attention/patience: One must be patient to listen and practice the message of Gītā. If not, one might have all the right intentions and yet fail to understand the Gītā. The Gītā is revealed only to the patient listener. 

4. Pointless envy: This is the worst of evils. If one's heart is consumed with pointless envy when God reveals His glories, the message of Gītā will remain farther than the farthest galaxy. Demons like Hiraṇya, Rāvaṇa and Śiśupāla knew the greatness of Hari. But to them, knowledge only fueled their misguided envy or hatred.

God is the greatest. That is why He is called ParaBrahman. What is there to become agitated or envious about this fact? It is a simple fact of our existence that we are subordinate to God. It is a simple fact that God is glorious. For some, this knowledge would prompt only anger, hatred and envy. They would deny His existence. Or, they would adopt some perverted technique to convert His glory into a blemish and blaspheme Him.

Kṛṣṇa speaks of four categories of people who cannot surrender to Him:

na māṃ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ |
māyayāpahṛta jñānā āsuraṃ bhāvam āśritāḥ ||  SBG 7-15

All four categories are deluded by Vaiṣṇavī or Viṣṇu-Māyā.

The first category is like the demons who churned the milk ocean. They are just simply incapable of God-vision as they are completed deluded by the charms of the world. They are called idiots or mūḍhāḥ.

The second category is like Hiraṇya. They are aware of the greatness of God but cannot come to accept His greatness. They are consumed by doubt and cannot accept that they are subordinate to God. In the extreme cases, they turn out like Hiraṇya. They are called the lowest of men or narādhamāḥ because their theoretical knowledge does not translate to discipline. 

The third category is like Rāvaṇa. They understand His greatness but not that they (and the universe) belong to Him. So, they want to fight Him. They want to face God in battle and win away what belongs to Him. Even though they realize His greatness, they engage in such pointless actions because their knowledge, though initially emergent, becomes snatched away by Māyā before it matures. So, they are called māyayāpahṛta jñānāḥ. They delude themselves thinking that they have captured / carried away what belongs to God. Instead, it is only their own good sense which has been carried away by Māyā. 

The last category is like Śiśupāla. This type is fully drowned in demoniac nature. So, they are called āsuraṃ bhāvam āśritāḥ. They fully understand His greatness and His lordship. But, this knowledge only spurns them to endless hatred. They do not think that they are God, nor do they directly fight Him to take over what belongs to Him. Instead, they blaspheme Him day and night. They abuse God and spread nonsensical thoughts about Him. 

Before we study Gītā, we must check ourselves if basic demon-hood or Hiraṇya or  Rāvaṇa or Śiśupāla is secretly hiding within us. If one or more of them are, please expose them to God and chase them out. The holy saints, Āzvār-s, repeatedly sing of the Lord's valor and prowess in destroying these demons. Such repeated meditation removes the obstacles to vision of God. Unsurprisingly, surrender to God is the only way to become free of these demons. Do not approach the Gītā in haste or out of sudden curiosity or to show yourself as a spiritual person. Become free of inner demons, first. The teaching of Gītā will not reform us otherwise. If we do not have love for God, we must at least become free of hatred, envy, doubt and distraction. The grace of God cannot be received fully as long as demoniac qualities abide in us.

Let us also look at two positive examples.
Mahābalī, the grandson of Śrī Prahlāda, was led to the mistaken belief that he could possess the world. He invested in efforts to gain sovereignty over the worlds. The Lord, who is Trivikrama and is the real master of the worlds, appeared as a dwarf, Vāmana. Vāmana is what Mahābalī thought God is; He is just a small fellow who does not matter: "God is someone who needs to be propitiated by my offerings so that I may have more and more". I can do business with God. Even God needs my offerings. He felt proud that he was giving gifts to God.  Only later did he wake up to the realization that everything truly belongs only to God, who is also our sovereign master.  God showed Himself as Trivikrama. The offering, the one who is giving the offering and the reward of the offering - all belong to God. After this realization, Mahābalī offered his head to the lotus feet of Trivikrama. He realized not only that all the worlds measured by Trivikrama belonged to Him, but that even he belonged to God. Realizing that everything - property, family, relationships, ourselves - belongs to God is the first step in God-awareness. It is not hard! Who else can everything possibly belong to?

The second instance. Rāvaṇa had a brother by name Vibhīṣaṇa. Rāvaṇa was also consumed by the foolishness that he could own what truly belonged to God. Vibhīṣaṇa tried to reason with Rāvaṇa. Unlike Mahābalī,  Rāvaṇa was fully consumed by Māyā and refused to listen to good words. He even banished Vibhīṣaṇa. Even within us, our good sense tries to prevail upon us when we engage in stupidity. If we are trapped by Māyā, we are likely to banish that good side within us. The good voice would try for sometime to reform the dark side. Today the dark side is so strong that a bigger medicine is needed. The spiritual side within us can be strengthened only by God. When Vibhīṣaṇa realized that his words didn't carry weight, he resorted to the Lord. Eventually, the dark side lost its grip of Laṅka and Vibhīṣaṇa became its ruler.  It should be obvious to the reader that Laṅka, an island, is nothing but each one of us. We all think that we are alone and have no connection to God due to the influence of Māyā. There are brother tendencies within us: the Rājasic Rāvaṇa, the Tāmasic Kumbhakarṇa and the Sāttvic Vibhīṣaṇa. For spiritual growth, the domination of Sāttvic tendencies is important. To make Sāttva dominate, one must surrender to God, who is the refuge of all. Svāmī Rāmānuja teaches that He is anālocitaviśeṣa-aśeṣa-loka-śaraṇya - He is the natural refuge of everyone of us; He does not look for any special qualifications in the one who has surrendered to accept the surrender. So,  Vibhīṣaṇa said, sarvalokaśaraṇyāya rāghavāya mahātmane  nivedayata māṃ kṣipraṃ vibhīṣaṇam upasthitam | Yuddha Kāṇḍa [17-17] "Please inform Rāghava immediately that Vibhīṣaṇa is here. After all, He is the refuge of all the worlds and the Highest Being!" Vibhīṣaṇa had been long associated with Rāvaṇa. Yet, he did not spend time gaining some special qualifications before surrendering to God. He did not go to God and declare his qualifications. He did not try to distance himself from Rāvaṇa's acts. He did not speak about how he was always on the good side. He simply came to the realization that Rāma is the refuge of all and resorted to Him quickly. And what did Rāma say?
sakṛdeva prapannāya tavāsmīti ca yācate | abhayam sarvabhūtebhyo dadāmi etad-vrataṃ mama ||  Yuddha Kāṇḍa [18-33] It is my vow to offer refuge from all sources to one who comes asking to Me, even once, with the realization: 'I belong to You'.

The purpose of learning Gītā is to realize our relationship with God and to fully attain the fruits of this relationship. The Gītā can be understood only if one sets this as the only motivation for its study. 

 

May Kṛṣṇa be gladdened by this study of Gītā.

May Kṛṣṇa guide us from darkness to light. 

May Kṛṣṇa enjoy us, churned out from saṃsāra, as He would enjoy butter.

sarvaṃ śrīkṛṣṇārpaṇameva

pārthasūtāya namaḥ