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This chapter is commonly called as ‘Sankhya Yoga’.
This chapter is the essence of entire Gita, and the real teaching begins
from this chapter. In fact Sri Adi Sankara began his chapter wise
commentary from this chapter alone. The chapter begins with the grief of
Arjuna and concludes with the description of a Man of Perfection. Thus it
encompasses the entire spiritual journey of man. Sankhya means knowledge
and thus it has the basic knowledge which is required by man to attain that
ultimate state of fulfillment. It is a big chapter comprising of 72
shlokas. The chapter reveals the main subject of Gita, its purpose, the
problem of the student and the bird's eye view of the solution offered by
Lord Krishna.
The chapter dramatically begins with the description
of the despondent state of Arjuna. He had already kept his great bow ‘Gandiva’
aside. He was in no state to hear anything else, so the first thing Lord
Krishna does was to shake him up with some real harsh words. He is told
that his act of leaving his rightful duty will not do him any good – from
any angle whatsoever, it was rather an act, which does not behoove a real
man. If he did consider him to be a ‘man’ then he better get up and face
the situation which has come his way.
The strong words act like a first aid, and the fellow
starts talking. He says ‘O Krishna ! Why don’t you
understand my problem? How can I ever dream of raising my hands on someone
I always revered. He says that he would rather go
around living like a recluse instead of killing these people. He confesses
that on one side his mind says that he should get up
& fight, and on the other hand wants to leave. He is no position
to do either and this indecisiveness as to what is right under the
situation is tearing him apart. He wants to do that which is right and
under the circumstances he cannot decide what is right and that is his real
problem. This incidentally is the real subject of Gita. It addresses the
problem of indecisiveness, and provides a way to come out of this problem
once for all. Arjuna surrenders to Lord and it is only then that the real
discourse starts. The song of Lord starts flowing out of his compassion for
rooting out the problem of a righteous, sincere but an ignorant person.
The first thing which Lord says that even though you
talk like a knowledgeable person, but one should remember that grief is
only a product of ignorance and not anything else. So the moment one
experiences grief then very humbly we should accept that there is lot to be
still understood about life. The basic problem is only ignorance and when
the basic ignorance is eliminated then great clarity dawns, and thus
decision-making becomes easy. The ignorance which really matters is the
ignorance about ones real Self. Baseless perceptions
about oneself brings about wrong priority and thus un-called-for
expectations. Even if these expectations are fulfilled still one is where
one was. So the problem needs to be handled very fundamentally. One should
start from the knowledge of one Self.
Lord reveals that basically we are not a limited or a
transient being. We are basically that eternal truth we call Brahman, and
this is something which needs to be directly seen. In order to directly see
this fact one needs to have a quiet & an unconditioned mind. Thus comes the necessity of Art of Right Action. This is what
Karma Yoga all about. The famous shloka of ‘Karmanye vadhikaraste’ is found
in this chapter alone. He who has purified his or her mind with Karma Yoga,
sees the fact about oneself clearly, and becomes a ‘Sthita-Pragnya’ or the
Man of Perfection. In the last section of this chapter Lord describes this
kind of person very elaborately, and thus ends the second chapter of Gita
called ‘Sankhya Yoga’.
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