Gita Rahasya -Tilak 372

Karma Yoga Sastra -Tilak

CHAPTER XI RENUNCITATION AND KARMA-YOGA On the other hand, Visnu has been mentioned more often, and in some places Ganapati and other deities are also mentioned. Besides, as both the deities Siva and Visnu are Vedic, that is, as both have been, mentioned in the Vedas, it is not proper to refer to only one of them as 'Smarta'. Besides, Sri Samkaracarya is looked- upon as a protagonist of the Smarta religion ; yet, Sarada (goddess of learning — Trans.) is the deity worshipped in the Samkara monasteries ; and wherever there has been occasion- in the Samkarabhasya to refer to the worship of an idol, the Acarya has referred, not to the Siva-linga, but to the Saligrama that is, the image of Sri Visnu . There is also a tradition that the worship of the Pancayatana (group of five deities) was first started by Samkaracarya. Therefore, it follows that according to the original meaning of these words, people disregarded whether a person worshipped Siva or Visnu, and considered those as SMARTA, whose ultimate ideal; was to first go through worldly life in youth as prescribed by the Sastras, and consistently with the arrangement of the four states laid down systematically and in detail in the Smrti texts, and to take Sarhnyasa, or the fourth state, by giving up Action altogether in old age; and considered those as BHAGAVATA, who believed that all the Actions appropriate to the state of a householder should be performed desirelessly till death, according to the advice of the Blessed Lord, simultaneously with the acquisition of Knowledge and with the possession of a passionate devotion to the Blessed Lord ; and in these meanings, these two words are respectively synonymous with Samkhya and Yoga or Samnyasa and Karma-Yoga. Samnyasa subsequently ceased to exist as a state of life, whether as a result of the incarna- tions taken by the Blessed Lord, or because the importance of the state of a householder, which included Spiritual Knowledge, began to be realised; and it has been included among the Kali- varjya, that is, those things which are prohibited in the Kali- yuga according to the Sastras But, later on the protagonists of the Buddhist and the Jain religions accepted the opinions of the Kapila-Samkhya school, and brought into prominence the -doctrine that Release is impossible unless a man takes Samnyasa, and gives up worldly life.