Saturday, February 21, 2015

GITA 2.3

GITA 2.3
Tirumangai Alwar and Swami Manavala Mamunigal

Today the second sloka of chapter 2 was taken up. The lecture was from the Swamy Sri Manavala Mamunigal sannidhi at Sirupuliyur temple. Sri Manavala Mamunigal is considered as the rebirth of Sri Ramanuja and was Acharya for Lord Sri Ranganatha. He has offered a number of commentaries and they are all related to the discussion on Gita.
In the 2nd sloka Sri Krishna tells Arjuna:
sri-bhagavan uvaca
kutas tva kasmalam idam
visame samupasthitam
anarya-justam asvargyam
akirti-karam arjuna
The Supreme Person [Bhagavan] said: My dear Arjuna, how have these impurities come upon you? They are not at all befitting a man who knows the progressive values of life. They do not lead to higher planets, but to infamy.

“ Arjuna! How these inferior thoughts have grabbed you. They do not fit higher [thinking] persons nor lead to higher worlds nor bring fame”.
Here the Lord is not using very soft words to wake up Arjuna from his sorrow but like patting a sleeping person to get up. He is telling that casting away the bow and arrow and sitting with a determination not to fight is unfitting for heroes like Arjuna. He is going to tell him that nothing great has been lost for Arjuna to get depressed. We see people complain that they are depressed and taking medicines. They should read thisChapter. If we compare what Sri Rama suffered, our problems are nothing. Sri Rama tells Lakshmana that He was denied the kingdom. Not only that, He was asked not to stay in Ayodya and go to forests. There, His wife was abducted. To cap all these His family friend Jatayu, was killed. What more sufferings one needed? Comparatively we do not face such serious problems and so they are all resolvable. Sri Krishna tells Arjuna that history will blame him for running away from the battle. No one is going to see his reasons for not fighting but will only speak of the end result and that is going to plunge him in disrepute.
                                                                 (continued)

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