[Advaita-l] Discussion on Bhagavat Gita

Suresh mayavaadi at yahoo.com
Thu May 22 00:12:20 CDT 2008


Thanks, Jaldhar, it's clear now. As a side note, is it
possible to make some changes to the message board to
make for easy reading? With this format, it becomes
extremely hard to 'spot' the messages, if you know
what I mean.
--- "Jaldhar H. Vyas" <jaldhar at braincells.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 10 May 2008, Suresh wrote:
> 
> > Here's another verse, which is quite popular and
> often
> > quoted.
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > 2.59
> > viSayA vinivartante
> >
> > nirAhArasya dehinaH
> >
> > rasa-varjam raso 'py asya
> >
> > param dRSTvA nivartate
> > --------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I'll be honest. The words make sense individually,
> but
> > as a verse, it's quite difficult to understand.
> Any
> > insights will be appreciated. If the words from
> 'raso'
> > to 'nivartate' mean 'Seeing the Supreme, even his
> > taste ceases,' how is the rest interpreted?
> 
> "The sense-objects withdraw from the desireless
> embodied one but not sensations.
> On seeing the Supreme even the sensations cease."
> 
> Rasa is not taste as in the sense recognized via the
> tongue but more like 
> how we say in English e.g. "he has good taste in
> music."  A rasika is one 
> with a highly developed aesthetic and cultural
> outlook.  He is not a mere 
> hedonist, on the contrary he has to be very
> disciplined in order to get 
> the maximum sensation out of a poem or raga etc.
> 
> When one takes up the even more rigorous disciple of
> triple-brahmacharya 
> (of body, mind, and speech) the desire for the
> external objects 
> apprehended by the senses becomes less and less
> until it completely goes 
> away.  In this matter many other philosophies are in
> agreement with the 
> Advaitin.  However where we part company is that
> while we think vairagya 
> is good and vitally necessary, it is not enough
> because such vairagis may 
> still identify with the body as a seperate entity.
> They are repressing 
> sensation but still subject to it.  So there also
> has to be jnana which is 
> the understanding that "I" is really Brahman not the
> limited ahamkara. For 
> the one who has "seen" this (i.e. has used his
> senses to ultimately 
> transcend the senses) even the duality implicit in
> the idea of sensation 
> ceases.
> 
> Krishna Bhagavan brings this up because Arjuna
> thinks the solution to his 
> problems is renunciation of his rights to the Kuru
> kingdom and withdrawal 
> from the battlefield.  This is vairagya in the
> literal sense but it is 
> motivated by his fear, sadness and other negative
> thinking.  Thus it is 
> useless and counter-productive.
> 
> -- 
> Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
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