Gita Introduction

The Bhagavad-Gita

The Bhagavad-Gita is a compilation of the teachings of a self-realized person.  You will read more about what that means as we continue.  The Gita describes what is our essential nature? Who am I? What am I?  You are not who you think you are, or what you think you are.  You look at the mirror and you think that is you, you have thrived in your accomplishments and in who you are, you like trace to yourself, I did this, you did this, but that is not the real you.  The real “you” is the energy inside you.  We will call that energy, the aatman.  That aatman or energy enlivens your body, which is your physical apparatus, your mind with which you think and feel and have emotions, and your buddhi (we will call that the intellect).  This “apparatus” needs some explanation.  All of us go through life without understanding the main workings of this apparatus, with which we live.  If we buy a video recorder, a camera, in this day of electronic and gadgets, we are careful to study in detail the explanations of this gadget or this apparatus, so we know how to use it properly.  However, our own body, our mind, and our buddhi does not come with any manual of explantation and the Gita gives us that manual to explain how we should conduct ourselves.  We all go through life thinking, “I know” what is that “I know?”  We think we know how to live, how to think, how to work, how life is.

The aatman is also known as the Self, or God, or Soul.  Moses said, “I am that I am” and Christ said, “the kingdom of heaven is within you.  He that finds himself…..”  Animals have a body, they have some minimal mind with some feelings, but they have no buddhi or intellect.  Lesser-developed animals have no mind either and no intellect, but as the animals start to evolve, it has feelings and desires, which come from the mind.  For example, a dog will, if his master is not around for a few days, feel sad and you can see the dog actually crying or missing its master or feeling depressed.  Human beings have the mind, which has all the desires and feelings and the intellect, which uses rationalization, judgment, and ability to make choices and decisions.  Humans are the only species that have that ability to make a choice and to make a decision.

THE BODY: The body has five organs of sense and five organs of action.  The five organs of sense are taking in stimulation from the outside.  The sense organs with – the sense organs taken from sense objects which are of the “world” outside and the five organs of action then give back to the world.  The five organs of action we know “those are the eyes through which we see, the ears, through which we hear, the tongue through which we taste, the nose through which we smell, and the skin through which we touch and feel.  The five organs of action are the hands and arms through which we act, the feet and legs through which we walk and run and kick.  The organs of excretion, from which we urinate and defecate.  The organs of reproduction through which we reproduce and lastly make voice box or the vocal cords through which we speak.  These five sense organs and five organs of action are considered among Hindu Mythology as the five-headed or ten-headed demons such as Ravan and are burned during festivals to signify that when you control or destroy your desires, which come about as a result of the sense organs and organs of action you are at peace within yourself.

THE MIND:  The mind has emotions, feelings, desires, likes, and dislikes also known in Sanskrit as raga and dvesha, impulses and other emotions.  The world has duality in everything.  The world has raga and dvesha and it has opposites of everything.  There is nothing in this world that does not have an exact opposite.  Where there is heat, there is cold.  Where there is honor, there is dishonor.  Where there is wealth, there is poverty, health, there is sickness, etc.  The mind prefers its and does not like it dislikes.

THE BUDDHI OR INTELLECT:  This is considered of a gross buddhi and a subtle intellect.  This intellect gives you the capacity to reason, to analyze, to judge what is good and what is bad what you should do and what you should not do, to refuse, temptations, and especially the intellects main domain and control is to decide whether the demands from the lower to which is the mind and the body are to be accepted or not.  The buddhi is the king presiding over the mind and body.  The mind and body are supposed to ask the buddhi for permission to respond to sense objects from the world, which are crying out to the sense organs and the buddhi is suppose to say yes to intelligence, indulgence, or otherwise dealing into this organs of action saying I want to perform an action.  When in our various religions, we have a sacred thread ceremony (janeo) or a barmitzvah or batmitzwah, or other such ceremonies in other religions.  This is to signify a second birth, in other words it is to signify that our intellect and Buddhi have now mastered the control over the mind and body.  In the olden days, when a child was born if his mind and sense organs said, I want that peace of candy that the other child is holding, immediately his arms (one of his organs of action and his legs, the other organ of action would start to crawl towards the other baby and grab the candy and put it into the tongue, organ of sense) and the deed would be done!  The organs of sense and the organs of action without asking the buddhi whether this was acceptable or not, just put into action their demands for instant pleasure of the candy, crawled over to the other child grab the candy and took it away from the child.  As our elders tell us that is a no, no, the intellect decides to tell the mind and body that one cannot crawl over and grab something that belongs to somebody else, because otherwise there will be consequences (mother will yell, I will get punished).  This intellect should be therefore in control as we get older to see all the things that the mind asked for and the senses to say to the combination of mind and body when the mind and body asks for something to be able to say yes or no.

So as the child gets older, there are demands from the sense organs to the organs of action along with the mind to fulfill the desires of both the mind as well as the sense organs.  The mind too has wishes and desires, which are self-centered.  In other words, the mind is always asking for satisfaction of its various emotions.  The child then as he gets older, learns to say no and to deny the demands of the mind and the sense organs and the organs of action.  When the intellect or Buddhi is considered to be completely in control of its lower levels (mind and sense organs and organs of action), that is considered a second birth.  Various religions call it various things, but that is when the second birth, the first is just a purely a physical or biological birth.  The second birth is when you are born as a human being and this differentiates you from an animal, which totally responds to your sense without any intellectual control.  Now intelligence and intellect are two different things, which we will talk about as we go on.  The next thing is that we train our buddhi and intellect to control the demands on it by the mind and body by, from an early age, using will power, fasting, doing pennons, etc.

Athman – Brahman:   The Ocean is made up of sea water.  The atmosphere is made up of space, similarly take the example of a wave coming out of the ocean.  That wave if it had a mind or intellect to think, would think to itself, “I am a beautiful wave, I am a small, I am a big, or I am a tsunami!”  But that wave and Tsunami, no matter how beautiful, how big, or how Tsunami like is still a part of the ocean and cannot exist without the ocean.  It starts in the ocean, is the ocean, and goes back to the ocean, and during its composition if you take that wave it really is just basically ocean water.  The Athman is similar.  The Athman is part of the Brahman and is the Brahman and will go back to the Brahman.  Space is the same whether it is inside a pot or in the sky.  The pot may think to itself that the space within me is mine, but really the minute the pot disintegrates that space within the pot becomes pot of the space on the outside.  The pot, or the clay that constitutes the pot is really a material enclosing the space within.

In Hindu mythology, the chariot is used a symbol of your life.  5 horses or 10 horses usually represent the five sense organs or the five organs of sensation and five organs of action.  The horses are constantly rushing towards the World or the sense organs are rushing towards the sense objects of the world.  The rains, which control the horses represent the mind.  The chariot here who is holding the rains in his hand is the buddhi or the intellect.  The passenger behind the chariot is the athman- the real you – totally under the control of the intellect and the mind to control where the chariot (your life) goes.  The Athman itself does not direct where and how you make decisions, as to where your life is going to go.  You make a bad decision and end up in jail, that is the decision that your intellect, your buddhi, allowed you to make because of the demands of your mind for power, fame, or greed, and you ended up in jail.  The Athman is known in Sanskrit as an innocent, hapless witness.  It is a witness and that is all it is.  It goes through life purely at the whims of the vasanas and the desires and those desires and vasanas play havoc within the mind and the organs of sense noted the organs of actions.  You yourself are a combination of spirit and matter.  The spirit that you are is essentially the Athman.  You are obsessed with the matter or rather than with the spirit.  As you move into the deeper layers – towards the spirits – towards your Self – your happiness and bliss increases.  The physical happiness is what you know that is your body.  For example when you eat ice-cream, you feel an immediate gratification, which is very short lived yet immediate; the emotional happiness (from your mind) is far superior to the physical happiness of the body.  For example, a mother is eating ice-cream and she loves the ice-cream, this is the only scoop she has, she may not get another ice-cream for a long time hereafter.  Her child, starving, comes and sits next to her and states mommy can I have that ice-cream.  She thinks for a second, and says okay here have it.  The child eats the ice-cream, the mother looks at the child and gets a tremendous sense of satisfactory watching her child eat.  In fact, the satisfaction that she gets is superior to having eaten the ice-cream herself.  What is that?  That is because the emotional satisfaction for her mind that her child ate is far superior to the satisfaction of the tongue from eating it herself.  Therefore the emotional pleasure of seeing the child eat is far greater than the physical pleasure of eating the food herself.

Intellectual happiness from the buddhi and intellect is even greater happiness than that of the mind.

The real Self is when you reach that Self you are said to transcend the pleasure of the body, the mind, and the intellect.  Buddha was born a Prince.  He was confined to the palace walls by his father, the king, because a fortune teller had told the father that Buddha would relinquish all his wealth and material pleasures and become a monk.  One of the greatest monks the world has ever known.  His father, therefore, blocked him in the palace and did not allow him to see the outside world.  When Buddha ultimately insisted on leaving and left the palace walls he was horrified to see the suffering outside and went into the woods and forest to seek a liberation from this world.  He sat with monks who told him that in order to gain self realization and come into contact with his own Athman, he had to give up pleasures of the world.  By hearing this, Buddha said the first desire he wanted to control was the desire for food.  He gave up wearing clothes and just wore a lion cloth and gave up food until he became so emaciated and thin that he almost died.  His teachers told him that giving up attachment to the world is similar to a stringed instrument being played.  They told him that when a string instrument has the strings too loose the instrument cannot play any music.  When the strings are pulled too tight, the strings will break and you cannot play any music or either.  Similarly things such as food and pleasures of the world are necessary for the body and the mind, but it is essential to not become so attached to those that they rule your life.  Thereafter, Buddha became a monk who was able to indulge in the pleasures of life, but with tremendous control as to how much he indulged.  He ate food, he got married, he had children, and lived a worldly existence, but the pleasures of the world were completely under his control.  As you move towards the self, the happiness that you get is the highest, higher than the physical, emotional, and intellectual happiness.  Therefore, you cannot give up and sacrifice anything.  You can only take up something higher.  When you get attached to the higher, the lower draw will automatically fall off.  If you force yourself to give up the lower, you will become frustrated.  So that if you have a desire for the body asking for pleasures of the five senses, until and unless you take up something at a higher level meaning the body is the lowest, the mind is the second lowest, intellect is higher, and the reach for the self, the Athman and the Brahman is the highest.  For example, a child is attached to his marbles and his toys, his “things”.  They mean everything to the child.  As he gets older he has no value for those toys.  Why?  Now you have taken up “higher toys” as an adult for you name, fame, power, status, family, and therefore, the marbles and the toys (the lower objects) mean nothing.  Therefore, as you pick up the higher, the lower drops off.  When you are playing with your five-year-old adult you play with his marbles and his toys etc, but you are not attached to those marbles or toys not to anything else, because you recognize that they are of insignificance, but you are playing the game.  This is exactly how one has to go about life itself where you indulge yourself in life, you take advantage of your “toys” your fame, your name, but you are just acting in the same way as when you are playing with your five-year-old child.  The child may be attached, but you are not attached.  You are only playing the game.  That is how we should speak of life and we will be speaking about attachment, as we go on.  When the charioteer (the intellect) is asleep, (the rains become loose), the senses (horses) go amuck-they run wherever they wish and your life is out of control, like the chariot.

Lets take the example of a boss yelling at his employee.  The employee’s mind his resentment and anger.  He wants to yell back at the boss.  The mind is ready to feel the anger, the voice box (an organ of action) is ready to yell back, both are ready to jump at the boss.  In fact the legs and arms are also ready to run and kick and hit, but the intellect/buddhi-the king has to be asked for permission first.  The buddhi and intellect reasons it out, analyzes it, and says “you will lose your job, therefore, control yourself.”  The buddhi tells the mind, calm down, tells the voice box, “shut up.”  But normally we do not ever ask or listen to our buddhi and intellect.

Another example is a diabetic whose doctor has told him he may not sweets and candy, yet when he is passing store that has a jelabi or burfee, his mind, tongue, and eyes all the senses ask for the sweets.  The buddhi meekly says, if it is a weak buddhi, “please do not do this, the doctor says you will have dire consequences.”  However, if the mind and body is in control, the patient will buy the sweets and eat them regardless of the consequences.  If the intellect is in control the intellect says you may not buy these sweets, just keep walking and the consequence is much better.

So the next example is of President Clinton and a woman.  A woman is considered to be the most difficult stimulation for the senses and the organs of action to fight the temptation of.  Because a female apparently has draw towards all five organs of the senses as well as organs of action at the same time, much more so than say music, which is an easier temptation to walk away from because the only organ of sense that music stimulates is the ears, food will stimulate the mind, eyes, and tongue, but there are certain stimuli, which will stimulate many sense organs and organs of action, which are harder to control as we saw with President Clinton.

The difference between intellect and intelligence is that intelligence is merely an accumulation of information from an external source.  We will talk about this later.

Conscience is also known in Sanskrit as Sukshma Buddhi.  It is part of your of your subtle intellect.  It is a combination of your convictions in life and what you believe.

Most human beings are caught in “matter.”  They pursue material objects – things, plus it is fodder for the mind to feel.  Anything that gives them power, fame, beauty, enhances their external physical being, wealth, money, etc is what human beings pursue.  Money is only translated into material for the sense objects.  We look for the sense objects – tangible, perceivable, material objects.  When you get money, money itself is of no use.  You cannot eat it, you cannot feel it, it does not satisfy any desire of the sense objects, but money can be translated into enjoyment for the sense objects.  Human beings do not usually concentrate on this, the Athman, the sole, the guard within.  We disregard the self because it is easier.  The material objects give us immediate, instant gratification, but it is only momentary – then the price to pay is high.  Take the examples above of the diabetic and president Clinton.  It is rewarding immediately, but distasteful and punishing as you progress.  To pursue the spiritual part f life – it is distasteful in the beginning, but very rewarding as you progress.  Take the example of two roads.  You are the cross roads of the two roads.  For as long as you can see is smooth and beautiful.  The second is rough and full stones, which one do you take?  How many of you when asked would ask how much longer does that smooth road continue to be smooth and how much longer would that rough road continue to be rough?  What appears as smooth in the beginning gets rough later on and what appears as rough in the beginning gets to be very smooth from therefore for infinity.  So what appears as nectar in the beginning is poison in the end and what appears as poison in the beginning is nectar in the end.  This is a rule of life.  The first way of improving yourself is to wake up at what is known as the Brahma muhurtam, which is between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.  This is when you should wake up and get more knowledge by studying this spiritual and sacred knowledge.  After 6:00 a.m. comes the rajas, which is your body and mind full of action and activity and after sunset comes the tamas, which is when you are lazy and your lowest desires come out asking for stimulation.

Jumping to chapter 20:  Knowledge is resulting in action.  We also must act.  Your pleasure should be from doing what you ought to do, not from the fruits of your action.  Learn, teach yourself, to do what you ought to do and force yourself not to look towards the fruit.  You will notice that your work actually bears much, much more fruit – your rewards increase, your work becomes more valued and valuable – but do not keep your eye on the fruit even after it comes to you – ignore it, but put it aside safely, your fruits, your money, don’t squander it.  Let your buddhi and intellect deal with the money that accumulates not your mind.  Handle the money as a necessary part of your life, but do not give it undue respect or value.  Be satisfied with whatever fruit you get – little or a lot.  Work cooperatively with the community.  The three seas – we will talk about this more as we go on, the yagna – we will talk about this later.  Set an ideal beyond your self centered wishes ….  By doing this you will remove your existing stock of self centered desires.  We will talk about why you should eliminate your self centered desires as we continue with this.

The whole focus should be in shifting your goal from the fruit – outcome – gain – benefit to the work itself.  You have to do what you ought to do.  As opposed to doing what you like to do.  Adopt action to obligation.  This is my obligation, therefore, this is what I ought to do.  Your action has to be synchronized with pure nature – your swadharma.  What is it that you ought to do as a human “to gain the self” that is your mission and your purpose in life.  What you ought to do refers to the intellect, your buddhi, not to the desires or wishes and nor to the mind.

Satisfaction, peace, happiness, bliss is all “a lack of sorrow” or cessation of mental agitation or cessation of desires.  If while you are reading this right now, you have no pain, no stomach cramps, and you are reading this while sitting on the couch.  Imaging that all of a sudden you develop severe, severe cramps in your stomach.  You are taken to a hospital and you are rising in pain and the doctor gives you something for it and that takes your pain away.  As you take the injection that takes your pain away you will say Ah! I am in so much bliss, so much happiness that the pain has gone away.  You are actually happy and blissful that the pain has gone away.  However, right now as you read this you have not pain, but you are not happy and nor in bliss.  It is only when the pain that you are suffering goes away that you fell happiness or satisfaction.  So similarly a person who is a smoker as he finishes his last cigarette the craving for another cigarette continues until it reaches a fever pitched state of demands from the mind and the sense organs for another cigarette.  When he puts the cigarette in his mouth and lights it, before he even takes his first puff he feels happy and satisfied because the cessation of the desires for the cigarette causes him happiness.  We will talk about this in more detail, but it is an important aspect for you to know that the cessation of mental agitation, the cessation of self-centered desires, a lack of sorrow, a removal of pain, causes what we think is satisfaction, peace, bliss, and happiness.  Therefore, if you are able to remove these demands, you can achieve happiness on your own.

It is not the desires themselves, which cause mental agitation – not all desires cause you to be agitated.  Rather, it is the selfishness or self centeredness in the desire, which causes the mental agitation.  Not all desires are selfish – if you have a desire to reach the Self (the Athman) it is a self less desire.  If you want to help the community and be totally anonymous about what you are doing, then that desire is not a selfish one and therefore, will not create mental agitation.  At the subtlest level, it is necessary to get rid of your internal feeling that you have done something good – the kartitva bhavana.  Constantly get rid of your internal feeling that you have done something good – the kartitva bhavana.  Constantly have your buddhi – intellect keep checking “is this what I ought to do?”  But do not make a Frankenstein out of the duty you create for yourself – where the duty comes to destroy you.  “Take to work as a prince, take to stoke sport.”  What does this mean?  Why do you have desires?  You have desires because you feel empty within yourself.  Therefore, you have to act, but the action has to be done in a spirit of renunciation of the ego.  We will explain this as we continue.  You will experience great harmony if you do not focus on the fruit and just do your duty, your work because you ought to do it.  You hope for naught, therefore, you have no anxiety about the results – the fruit; then control the desires, wishes, anxieties, fears of the mind and the body.  Do not be attached to your possessions – you can have the possessions – do not let the possessions possess you.  Give the example of an expensive car, bump in the road, rental car etc., etc.

Significance of Vishnu being married to Laxmi.  Vishnu is the god of preservation.  Any preservation requires wealth.  Therefore, Vishnu requires Laxmi.

Sin equals pappam equals desires.  When you act on your desires.  You incur more desires.

Content with whatever, unsought, free from envy.  Though acting, he is not bound.  If you are focused on the fruit, you cannot focus on the a