The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita- 3.3 -Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Friday, October 02,, 2020. 

Chapter-3. The World is the Face of God - 3.

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1.

The life of a saint is a mystic Mahabharata itself. Every sage or saint has passed through all the stages of the Mahabharata conflict. No one lived as a great saint without passing through untold hardships, and no one ever left this world with the feeling that it is all milk and honey flowing. The truth of the world becomes evident to the eyes that are about to close to this world; the untutored mind takes it for what it is not. Hence the glory of the royal coronation and success ended in untold grief, because of a negative aspect that was hidden in the joy of the coronation. There was something lacking. It was a glory that was bestowed upon Yudhishthira by the power of people, like the ascent of a person to the throne of a ministry by the raising of hands of the vast public. But the hands can drop down tomorrow; they need not always be standing erect. There is always an unpredictable uncertainty about mob psychology, and therefore a dependent success cannot be called a success. If I have become great due to your goodness, that would not be real greatness, because your goodness can be withdrawn. If the greatness is at the mercy of another’s opinion or power, it falls.

2.

People cannot help us, because people are like us. Everyone is made of the same character, a chip off the same block, as they say, and so the help that we receive from people of our own type will be as fallible and unreliable as the passing clouds in the sky. The realities of life started to stare glaringly at the faces of the Pandavas, and they began to realise that there is a gap between the hopes of the mind and the joys that it had experienced earlier. It is not always the playful innocent joy of a child that will pursue us throughout our life. The pains of life are hidden like knives under the armpits of thieves, and they are unleashed at the opportune moment. Every dog has his day, as they say; everything has its own time.

3.

Individual strength is no strength; our efforts cannot be regarded as ultimately adequate to the task. We have observed that the world is too vast for us. It is mighty enough—it is all-mighty, we may say. Who can touch the stars, the sun and the moon with the fingers of one’s hand? The strength is inexorable; the law is very precise and unrelenting upon people, like the law of gravitation which has no pity for any person. Such being the world, such being the universe, such being the law of things, our endeavours, our efforts on the path of the spirit have to become reoriented according to the needs of the case. There is suffering on account of not knowing what to do. We are helpless—we have been thrown out of the chair and no one is going to look at our face. This is not a circumstance which can escape the experience of any individual. One day or the other we will be in the pit, and everyone has fallen into the pit and then got out. This was the case with mighty heroes of the past, what to say of the credulous masses who are walking the stereotyped path of the blind leading the blind.

To be continued ...

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