Lessons on the Upanishads -1.6: Swami Krishnananda.

 

#Chinmaya Mission Ahmedabad:
Glimpses of Shri Hanuman Jayanti celebrations at ParamDham two days ago.
Jay Bajrangbali! Jay Shri Ram!!

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Saturday 27, Apr 2024. 06:35.
Upanishads
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Upanishads-6.
Post-6.

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The Manu Smriti tells us: namutra hi sahayartham pita mata ca tisthatah. na putradarah na jnatih dharmas tisthati kevalah. “When you depart from this world, your father will not come with you, your mother will not come with you, your brother will not come, your sister will not come, your husband will not come, your wife will not come, your children will not come, your money will not come, and even your body will not come.” What will come? What you have thought and felt and done, that will come. Be cautious, therefore. Every day check your personality and your behaviour. “What have I thought, what have I felt, what have I spoken, what have I done?” Ask these questions when you go to bed in the evening. And if satisfactory answers come to these questions, this will be a little credit to that which will come with you when you depart from this world. Otherwise, nobody will come. You will be dragged by the forces of nature to the justice of the cosmos and you will have difficulty in answering the question: “What have you done?”

This world is not in a position to satisfy the desires of even one person, finally. If the whole world is given to you with all its gold and silver, rice and paddy, wheat and whatever it is, you will not find it satisfying. “The whole world is with me.” All right. Are you perfectly satisfied? You will be unhappy even then, for two reasons. One of them is: “After all, there is something above this world. Why not have that also?” A person who has a village wants another village also. If you have all the villages, you would like the entire state. If the state is under you, you want the entire country. If the country is under you, you would like the whole earth. But why not have something above the earth? So there is a dissatisfaction. “What is above? No, this is no good; there is something above me which I cannot control, which I cannot understand.” The presence of something above the world, outside the world, will make you unhappy again. The second point is: “How long will I be in possession of this whole world, sir? Is there any guarantee?” Nobody knows. The next moment you may not be here. “Oh, I see. So, what is the good of possessing the whole world, if tomorrow I am going to be dispossessed of it?” Thus, the recognition of a supreme value in life, and the need to adore it as the objective and the goal of one's endeavour in life, became the devata or the Divinity of the Vedas.

There are four Vedas—known as the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda. The Rig Veda is the primary one and it is the foundation of all Indian thought, philosophy and religious consciousness. It is in poetic form; there are about 10,000 mantras. The Yajur Veda is partly in poetry and partly in prose. The Sama Veda is comprised of musically set verses, mostly from the Rig Veda, and they are sung in a melodious tune. The Atharva Veda is filled with a variety of subjects such as technology, art, and other scientific thoughts with which we are familiar in this world. Religiously, spiritually and philosophically, only three Vedas are important—Rig Veda, Yajur Veda and Sama Veda—and, therefore, they are called the Trayi in Sanskrit. Trayi means the threefold knowledge: Rig Veda, Yajur Veda and Sama Veda.

These four Vedas are also classified into four sections or four books, we may say. Each Veda has four section-wise categorisations. The first part is called the Samhita, which means the mantra portion, in which there is eulogising, an offering of prayer to the gods, to which I made reference earlier: the gods of the heavens, the realities behind the cosmos. The worship of these divinities through prayer is the subject of the Samhita section of the Vedas. While this is sufficient for us and we can work wonders by mere prayer itself, by the concentration of our thought in the act of meditation, all people are not intended for this purpose. Everybody cannot pray from the heart. They can utter or mutter some words, but the heart may not always be in it; the heart may be elsewhere. They require some suggestions from outside in order that the heart may also work together with the act of prayer. People who could not directly concentrate their minds abruptly on the divinities felt the necessity for some external gestures, such as rituals, which they could do with their hands by gesticulation, suggesting the coming out of a thought or a feeling in respect of the divinity that is going to be worshipped. When we go to a temple, we bow with folded palms. We need not do that; we may just stand erect and feel the presence of God. There is nothing wrong with it, but the heart will not do that; it requires a gesture. We fall down on the ground, prostrate and then offer our prayer to the divinity in a temple. If we see anything holy—a holy man, a holy person, a holy place, whatever it is that is sacred—we bow with folded palms. We would like to offer a flower; we would like to wave a lamp; we would like to light a scented stick. Why do we do all this? It is a gesture, a ritual that we are performing to bring out our deep feelings of acceptance of the divinity of that object which is before us.

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Continued

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