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Re: gItA shloka

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Tatachar • February 12, 2000 


Sriman Chandrasekaran said:

I have a doubt in the purport of the following verse in the 3rd chapter of 
gItA.

    ..........
 >>>   tAn akr~thsna vidhO mandhAn kr~thsnavin na vichAlayEth ||

    Meaning for this is given in a book as,

    "let the wise men, who have no attachments, not unsettle the mind of the 
foolish men, 
     who do actions with attachment"

    I am confused about this advice of the Lord. I request gItA experts in 
this list to clarify 
what is exactly meant here.<<<

 My observations on this verse are as follows: 

  In an earlier shloka (V 26, ch.3) also similar advice is given:

"One should not produce fragmentation of the mind 
among the ignorant who are attached to action. 
The wise one should cause them to enjoy all actions,
 while performing actions himself in a disciplined manner."

In V67, Ch 18 , we see more or less similar advice:

"This (gItA) shall not be spoken of by thee 
to one who is without austerity,
nor to one who neglects worship,
 nor one who does not desire to hear 
what is to be said. nor to one who speaks evil  of Me"

Even knowing Arjuna, the Lord does not start giving advice until 
Arjuna surrenders to Him as shishya and asks for guidance
(v7, ch2).

For everything there is a prerequisite. 
A fertile soil, water, light, heat and air are necessary for 
seed germination. However, seed has to be
viable in the first place!  

Lord Krishna has tremendous experience in this area 
of dealing with many raw (apakhwas, not ready yet)
characters such as DuryOdhana, Kamsa, Shishupala,
etc.  

 Advice to people who appear to be relishing their 
activities may simply go waste and may even lose
it's value. Worse yet, the advice may even be
misunderstood. This will cause more damage than good.
I am sure we all  can quote many misunderstood practices
in world traditions (including Hindu)  which have
 caused more harm than good.

The Hindu belief is that those who are not ready yet 
will come around, at some time or the other, in one life or the other.
One shouldn't be hasty in bringing everyone around
at the same time. 

Here is a story adapted from the Panchatantra :

A monkey herd was feeling very cold.
They decided to make fire to keep warm.
They all went around making a pile
of twigs and dry leaves. That was easy.
The tough part was how to light the pile.
As the day was sinking, it was getting colder,
and the need to keep warm was becoming
more intense.  All their effort of gathering
twigs was going waste. Luckily, the monkeys
 spotted a bunch of glowing fire flies.
They were so happy that they found fire. Now they
went after gathering as many fire flies as they could.
They would put those flies on the pile and started to blow!
Of course they were all already feeling warm
(all that running around).
Now a bird named needle face, thought this whole
thing was foolish and kept advising the monkeys that
the fire fly is a bug and it is not fire. He even ate a couple
of glowing fire flies to prove the point. 
The monkeys which were fully convinced about their
efforts (as noted above they were feeling warmer) and did not
relish the bird's advice.  To prove the point,
the bird even brought in a Biochemist, who gave 
an eloquent presentation on how 
an enzyme called luciferase present in the fire flies
converts  luciferin to produce ATP (Chemical energy)
for the flies to fly . In this reaction some of the energy 
is also let out as light (energy).
This made monkies even more angry.
long behold, a monkey  slapped the bird and that was the
end of needle face. 

(Moral: If someone is fully convinced it is working, don't be in
haste to tell it is not)

Daasan

Sreekrishna Tatachar