Search:
Bhakti List Archives

Re: 'Akshara' etc. in the BhG

From the Bhakti List Archives

Martin Gansten • April 13, 2002 


Dear Suresh,

Thank you for your comments. If I understand them correctly, you object to
the interpretation of prakriti-samsrishta ('united with [material] nature')
as 'embodied'. In this you may of course be correct -- the expression is
not absolutely unambiguous -- but I would direct your attention to
Ramanuja's gloss on BhG 15.16, where he uses a very similar phrase:
jiva-shabda-abhilapaniya-brahma-adi-stamba-paryanta-ksharana-svabhava-*acit-
samsrishta*-sarva-bhutani 'all creatures, denoted by the term jiva [and]
united with insentient [matter], the nature of which is to perish, from
Brahma to a clump of grass'. Here 'embodied' seems to translate acit- (or
prakriti-) samsrishta very well. There is also some justification for this
interpretation in 3.8 (text as well as commentary), where inactivity --
associated with jnanayoga -- is said to be incompatible with the
maintenance of the body.

Robert Lester, in his 'Ramanuja on the Yoga', has also understood the word
in the same sense.

Ramanuja Dasa,
MG





--------------------------------------------------------------
           - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH -
To Post a message, send it to:   bhakti-list@yahoogroups.com
Group Home: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bhakti-list
Archives: http://ramanuja.org/sv/bhakti/archives/
 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/