Contents
Shri Sankara's Gita Bhashya
(Sri Sankaracharya's Commentary on the Gita)
CHAPTER -5
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Objection - What is the need for the qualification ? (i.e. for qualifying ' the resting' with-' in the city of nine gates', i.e., 'the body'?) Verily, any person, whether sarhnyāsin or other, rests in (his) body only. The qualification is therefore meaningless. Reply - As for the embodied person, who is devoid of dis criminatory knowledge and sees himself merely as the combination of body and senses,-every such person thinks, "I rest in the house, on the ground, or on a seat"; and, indeed, to that man who sees the mere body as himself the idea that he rests in the body, as in a house, can never arise. On the other hand, the idea that he rests in a body is appropriate for him who sees the Self as distinct from the combination of body etc. And, it is possible for him to mentally renounce through wisdom, discriminatory knowledge, the actions of the (these) others (viz., body and senses) superimposed through ignorance on the Supreme Self. Even in the case of him who has attained discriminative knowledge and renounced all action, the (idea of) resting only in the body, the city of nine gates, as in a house, becomes possible (merely) because of the continued influence of the impression produced by the residue of his prārabdha-karma (the karma which brought about his present body) giving rise to the peculiar knowledge of resting in the body alone. Thus, there is significance in the ex pression, "he rests in the body alone", owing to the need to bring out the difference between the conceptions of the wise and of the ignorant. |
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