|
 Bhagavad Gita Commentary–Fifteen
by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Religiosity Versus Religion
Seeing should not always be believing
“All that glitters in not gold” is especially true in the realm of religion. I can never hear that adage without remembering a walk I once took with the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Chicago. We were just wandering around aimlessly in the pre-spring weather, getting rather far from his small apartment next door to the renowned Holy Trinity Cathedral. I was spending the weekend with him as I usually did at that time.
As we walked along, suddenly to our right loomed a huge church. It was painted a dark blue in the tradition of the Ukraine and topped with immense sparkling gold “onion” domes. At the peak of the roof in front was a gigantic Orthodox-style triple-bar cross, also covered in gold leaf.
“Oh, look!” I exclaimed while pointing. “An Orthodox church.”
The archbishop looked at me reproachfully. “All that glitters in not gold,” he snapped. “Go see.” And he waved his hand toward the structure. So over I went and found by reading the sign by the door that it indeed was not an Orthodox church–not at all. “You must watch,” was the laconic admonition I received upon returning to the bishop. “Do not believe your eye all the time.”
This is very much true in the world of religion. All that looks godly is not godly. Often the opposite. Speaking of the religionists of his day, Saint Paul simply said: “They have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.”
Just because we believe in God (or at least in our concept of God) and are sincere and motivated means little in the sphere of the spirit. Rather, it is imperative that our religion be “according to knowledge.” Religion
Nobody is more intent–at least verbally–on “doing good” than adherents of religion. So Krishna is not abandoning karma yoga for the subject of religion. Instead he is discussing the extension of karma yoga into religious activity. And this is what he has to say as an opener:
“Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the scripture, but they are really denying its inner truth.” He has already told us that the sole purpose of karma yoga is the realization of the Self and the liberation that produces. It is not hard to conceive that this should also be the intent of religion. But it rarely is. For, lacking true knowledge and wisdom they set forth ways and means that are oriented toward just about everything–but never toward knowledge of the Self or the means to attain it. Just the opposite, they push their followers further into the mire of material consciousness, even promising them eternal physical embodiment after a “resurrection from the dead.” Imagine: a resurrection into matter instead of resurrection into spirit!
I do not mean to be pointing the finger only at Western religion. The popular religion of the East is even more adept at turning words of wisdom into nonsense–and very intelligently and plausibly, too. To gauge the truth of this assertion, read the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita in the translations of Swami Prabhavananda, then take a broad look at contemporary Indian religion. Are they the same? Almost never, no matter how much the upanishads and Gita may be invoked by those whose entire religious practices are contrary or extraneous (irrelevant) to the philosophy of the ancient sages. This is a very serious and unfortunate situation. So often those who want to follow the way of the Gita and the upanishads are deflected from that path by the very ones who claim to teach it and whom they trust as viable authorities. Again: “Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the scripture, but they are really denying its inner truth.” A profile of ignorance
Krishna outlines the character and methods of such misleaders. “They are full of worldly desires, and hungry for the rewards of heaven. They use beautiful figures of speech. They teach elaborate rituals which are supposed to obtain pleasure and power for those who perform them. But actually, they understand nothing except the law of Karma, that chains men to rebirth.” “Full of worldly desires”
I must confess: these words of Krishna take me back to the religion of my childhood. I was fortunate enough to be raised in a spiritually serious church. The theology was full of holes and absurd in many (most) aspects, but the attitude was right on the beam: “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
We understood that the “world” spoken of here was not the world of divine manifestation but the artificial structure of “society” based on the egoic ignorance of human beings. To be a friend of the world means to be trapped in the realm of time and space as well as the delusions perpetuated by humanity through the ages.
Not only Jesus, but we, too, can say with confidence: “I am not of the world.” For the “world” is everything that denies and covers who we really are. It is only rational, then, to heed the admonition: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
We must note that the evils here listed are not said to come from “the devil,” but from the world. Most religion is sociopathic, and a fundamental trait of a sociopath is denial of any responsibility. Everything and everyone is responsible for the sociopath’s problems–never himself. So religion usually teaches people that some invisible evil forces or visible instruments of those forces are what makes them do or be “bad.” But Saint John tells us that it is the distortion produced by our association and identity with the material and the relative world that impels us to folly.
Speaking of the teachers of such religion, the Apostle says: “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.” As Krishna states, these religionists are full of worldly desires. Their minds are so warped by the fever of these desires, they see themselves and others in a completely twisted perspective. Their fundamental impulses are corrupted and lead to increasing corruption and ultimate destruction. Their whole way of looking at life is hopelessly distorted. And being sociopathic their major intent is to force everyone into their world view. These people are the enemies of both the wise and the foolish. The wise they wish to subvert, silence, or destroy lest truth free their dupes from their grasp. On the other hand they are determined to keep the ignorant in the dark and in servitude to them and their ideas. So vast is the number of the ways in which they accomplish this, it difficult to delineate them. Just take a look around, and everything you see will be or at least reflect their wiles and ways. If they were not a real danger to the sadhaka, Krishna would not bother to speak about them to Arjuna. “Hungry for the rewards of heaven”
They obsessively grasp at every wisp of the world they see and proudly proclaim that their possession is a sign of divine favor, proof that they are “pleasing to God” and right in their views. Yet they know that earthly gain inevitably ends in loss, and that even before the loss many defects are encountered and many failures to please or satisfy. This would turn any sensible person away from externality to seek the true satisfaction that is only found within. But they are not sensible, these dwellers in their own mirage, so they look, not within themselves but beyond this world to “a better world,” a heavenly world of blessed reward where no defect can mar their enjoyment of astral materiality. Consequently their scriptures and their propaganda is filled with descriptions of bright, beautiful, and happy worlds which will be the reward of those who subscribe to their religion and follow their demands. Although they seem to have their sights on heaven, they are really hankering after the things of earth without their innate deficiencies. So even when they supposedly yearn for heaven they are really desiring earth. Some of them are so mired in this obsession that they assure their adherents that some time in the future they will all rise from the dead in immortal physical bodies and live here in an earth that has been somehow cleansed and perfected. “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come,” they declaim.
And these delights are not just for the picking up. They are “rewards” of a pleased and placated divinity. They are the carrots held out to the eager donkeys that follow them. “They use beautiful figures of speech”
For they are not only “hungry,” filled with a million cravings, they make others hungry as well, hopeful swillers at the same trough. They goldplate and polish their greed and materiality by making them appear religious–even God-centered. After all, they trust in the mercy and goodness of God to give them whatever they want. The televangelists tell us that God wants us to have “abundance” of all that the earth and materialistic society can offer. More, they set forth the dogma that possession of “goods” is proof of divine favor, whereas lack of anything is symptomatic of either our lack of faith or lack of our worthiness in God’s eyes.
Painting pictures with glowing words they incite or evoke in others the same gnawing desire that burns in their hearts. How well do I remember a Jehovah’s Witness describing to me at the age of nine all the benefits to be had in a “renewed” world (no one could any longer go to heaven since the quota of one hundred and forty-four thousand had been filled up long ago). One of them was having a lion as a pet! She no doubt rightly figured that a little boy would rather play with lions than walk on streets of gold and go in and out of gates made of a single pearl.
However much they speak of “spiritual” matters, as the Beloved Disciple said: “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.” “They teach elaborate rituals which are supposed to obtain pleasure and power for those who perform them”
Lord Krishna is not speaking of the people “next door” to India. Throughout the subcontinent right now millions are streaming in and out of temples, paying money for rituals and blessings that are intended to give them whatever they might want, and the three deities of ritualism–Pleasure, Power, and Prosperity–are diligently served by a greedy and material priesthood. Those of us in the West whose contact with India has been in the form of visiting Indian spiritual teachers and yogis look at all this with a spiritual perspective completely incongruous with the truth. “Look at those vast and beautiful temples!” we enthuse, “all monuments to the spiritual aspiration and devotion of the people.” Not at all. And almost never. Those temples are monuments to greed and superstition as well as fear–both fear of lacking material things and of incurring the wrath of the skittish deities whose scriptural “biographies” are welterings of lust, anger, jealousy, vengefulness, and ego–just like their devotees.
Our situation is very much like that of some friends of mine who often went to India to visit the ashram of a renowned spiritual figure. Since they could not understand the saint’s language, every word spoken in the ashram by the saint and the visitors seemed embodiments of spirituality, and the Western devotees felt edified every moment. But when my friends began picking up some knowledge of the language they found that most of the conversation was mundane and inane–in keeping with the consciousness of the local people who came to the ashram for the same motives they went to temples: “Give Me!”
Once I went with several people to visit Sri Anandamayi Ma at her ashram in Brindaban. Since there was going to be a special function with hundreds of people in attendance, Ma said that the next morning would be devoted to private conversations with each one of us. And so it was. For four hours individual members of our group had private talks with Ma. The last private interview was ended around noon. When Me emerged from her room there was a radiance and joy in her eyes and manner that I had rarely seen. I wondered what was making her so happy, but only momentarily. Right away I understood: Ma was so happy because for four hours people had only spoken to her of spiritual life and spiritual aspiration rather than the mundane pleadings and demands she usually had to sit and listen to. Certainly, over the years many people came to her for spiritual motives, but they were still a small minority. Most “devotees” in India are devoted only to themselves and to the saints as fulfillers of their desires. As one very famous saint said a few years ago to a crowd of several hundred thousand: “When I give you what you want you love me, but when I do not give you what you want you hate me.” This saint, like Jesus, certainly “knew what was in man.”
But back to the ritualists. They do indeed prescribe labyrinthine rites whose complexity demand a trained and competent priesthood–a well paid priesthood. Sometimes the rituals are very obvious pullings of the Divine Vending Machine’s handle, and sometimes they are masked with sentimentality passed off as devotion. One such, for example, is the extremely popular Satyanarayan Puja. This takes hours of ritual offerings, singing, and recitation of the glories of Vishnu (Narayana). But the “glories” recited are really accounts of all the amazing worldly advantages that have supposedly been gained through the ritual. In other words, God is not gloried at all–the ritual is glorified. It is just a Hindu religious version of the old patent remedy shows so popular in nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Sort of a holy infomercial for the puja. To sponsor or attend such an event is considered a mark of devotion, but of devotion to what? Or whom? Do they worship “the gods” or “the goods”?
Such purveyors of worldly goods through worldly gods also teach elaborate modes of behavior as well to gain “the goods.” These range from long and arduous pilgrimages culminating in more rituals and generous gifts to temples and priests, to avoiding things the gods “don’t like” and always having at hand what they “do like,” to the wearing of emblems honoring the chosen deity, to long recitations of the deity’s praises, to elaborate personal worship of the deity in a home shrine, to fasting or abstaining from work on days specially devoted to or favored by the deity. Millions of poor Indians fast and worship annually on a day whose observance is guaranteed by the “scriptures” to bring lifelong prosperity by a single observance. No one seems to notice they stay poor year after year. They even assure others that the observance is sure to gain wealth to all who engage in it. The same is true of another day whose observance guarantees the conception and birth of a son (sorry, girls). So barren and sonless couples devoutly observe it year after year with no result–not even a resulting skepticism regarding its efficacy. The money just keeps rolling in–or out, depending on which side you find yourself. And that is the whole idea, really. For notice that Krishna does not say the rituals convey power and pleasure; only that they are supposed to. “But actually, they understand nothing except the law of Karma, that chains men to rebirth”
How true this is of most religionists, whether clerical or lay. Desire for external material things or situations must come to fulfillment–this is the fundamental law. For karma is thought as well as act. Those who desire aught of the world shall inherit the whole world over and over through constant rebirth. Even desire for a “heaven” that is really only the earth without fault or loss brings us back to the earth itself. What to say, then, of the doctrine of the eventual resurrection of the body and eternal dwelling in that body? Such a “hope” can only lead to more and more births in a physical body. Even the heaven of such people is only really the earth–just as their “God” is only themselves.
The great Teachers come and proclaim that freedom from karma and rebirth is possible. And they show us the way to freedom. But their “devotees” instantly degrade the message and build up a religion that only perpetuates the old bondage. They promise life and deliver death. “A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so.” (This is proof that no one religion has a franchise on ignorance and bondage.) The unhappy result
“Those whose discrimination is stolen away by such talk grow deeply attached to pleasure and power. And so they are unable to develop that concentration of the will which leads a man to absorption in God.”
The above is a remarkable statement. To scramble and scratch after the things of this world and the fulfillment of desire is certainly a manifestation of will. Yet in the perspective of Krishna, desire and attachment erode the true will, the power of the atman that is to be set forth to reveal itself. That is why he has already urged Arjuna “to break the chains of desire which bind you to your actions” which lead only to rebirth. “The yogi…must free himself from the hopes and possessions of this world. He should meditate on the Atman unceasingly.”
“What is man’s will and how shall he use it? Let him put forth its power to uncover the Atman, not hide the Atman. Man’s will is the only friend of the Atman: his will is also the Atman’s enemy. For when a man is self-controlled, his will is the Atman’s friend. But the will of an uncontrolled man is hostile to the Atman, like an enemy.”
Krishna outlines to us the hierarchy of control in our own makeup, saying: “The senses are said to be higher than the sense-objects. The mind is higher than the senses. The intelligent will is higher than the mind. What is higher than the intelligent will? The Atman Itself. You must know Him who is above the intelligent will. Get control of the mind through spiritual discrimination. Then destroy your elusive enemy, who wears the form of desire.”
Putting forth our will to obtain the objects of desire destroys the true will of the self and substitutes the false will of the ego. “And so they are unable to develop that concentration of the will which leads a man to absorption in God.” How terrible! Yet there is a hopeful truth here, as well. If we constantly cut off our desires and addiction to their objects, we will develop the will that enables us to unite ourselves to Brahman.
“Renounce all your desires, for ever. They spring from willfulness. Use your discrimination to restrain the whole pack of the scattering senses. Patiently, little by little, a man must free himself from all mental distractions, with the aid of the intelligent will. He must fix his mind upon the Atman, and never think of anything else. No matter where the restless and the unquiet mind wanders, it must be drawn back and made to submit to the Atman only.
“Utterly quiet, made clean of passion, the mind of the yogi knows that Brahman: his bliss is the highest. Released from evil his mind is constant in contemplation: the way is easy, Brahman has touched him, that bliss is boundless.”
Read the Bhagavad Gita online: The English text of the Gita posted on this Web Site is arranged according to the meter of the original Sanskrit text so it can be sung–as it is done every morning in our ashram and in most of the ashrams of India.
1) Formerly head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Latvia, Archbishop John had fled from the Communists and come to America where he was a bishop in the “Russian Metropolia”–now known as the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). [Go back]
2) It had been built by an architect known as “the father of the modern skyscraper.” (I forget his name.) The cathedral was considered an architectural landmark as a result. [Go back]
3) Romans 10:2 [Go back]
4) Bhagavad Gita 2:42 [Go back]
5) There are eleven principal upanishads: Isha, Kena, Katha, Prashna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Taittiriya, Aitaryeya, Chandogya, Brihadaranyaka, and Svetashvatara, all of which were commented on by Shankara, thus setting the seal of authenticity on them. [Go back]
6) The Upanishads, Breath of the Eternal, and The Song of God, Bhagavad Gita, published by the Vedanta Press. [Go back]
7) Bhagavad Gita 2:43 [Go back]
8) James 4:4 [Go back]
9) John 17:14 [Go back]
10) I John 2:15,16 [Go back]
11) I John 4:5 [Go back]
12) This is the final phrase of the Nicene Creed. See The Gnosis of the Creed for a spiritual understanding of these words. [Go back]
13) “And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.” (Revelation 21:21) [Go back]
14) I John 4:5 [Go back]
15) “But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” (John 2:24,25) [Go back]
16) Jeremiah 5:30,31 [Go back]
17) Bhagavad Gita 2:44 [Go back]
18) Bhagavad Gita 2:39 [Go back]
19) Bhagavad Gita 6:10 [Go back]
20) Bhagavad Gita 6:5,6 [Go back]
21) Bhagavad Gita 3:42,43 [Go back]
22) Bhagavad Gita 6:24-28 [Go back]
|
