Gita Rahasya -Tilak 29

Gita Rahasya -Tilak

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY I do not say that the Gita has not preached Vedanta, or Devotion or the Patanjala Yoga at all. But the combination of these three subjects which has been made by the Gita must be such that thereby Arjuna, who was on the horns of a terrible dilemma of conflicting principles of morality, and who had on that account become so confused about his proper duty as to say : " Shall I do this, or shall I do that ? ", could find a sinless path of duty and feel inclined to perform the duties enjoined on him by his status as a warrior. In short, it is perfectly clear that the proper preaching in this place would be of Energism (pravrttij and that, as all other things are only supporting Energism, that is, as they are all auxilliary, the purport of the Gita religion must also be to support Energism, that is, to support Action. But no com- mentator has properly explained what this Energistic purport is and how that implied moral can be authoritatively based on Vedanta philosophy. Whichever commentator is taken, he totally neglects the upakrama of the Gita, that is, its first, chapter and the concluding upasamhara, and the phala, and becomes engrossed in discussing from a Renunciatory point of view how the preaching in the Gita about the Realisation of the Brahman or about Devotion support their respective cults: as though it would be a great sin to link together a permanent union between Knowledge and Devotion on the one hand and Action (karma) on the other ! The doubt mentioned by me was experienced by one of these commentators who said that the Bhagavadgita must be interpreted keeping before one's eyes the life of Sri Krsna himself. and the Non-Dualistic philosopher Paramahamsa Sri Krsnananda Svami, who has recently died at Kasi (Benares) has in the short Sanskrit monograph written by him on the Gita entitled Gitartha-paramarsa made the definite statement that : "tasmat gita nama Brahmavidyamulam nitisastram" — i. e., " therefore, the Gita is the philosophy of Duty, that is, the philosophy of Ethics based on the science of the Brahman (brahmavidya) " t The German philosopher Prof. Deussen, in his work called The Philosophy of the Upanisads has given expression to the same thoughts in one place with reference to the Bhagavadgita, and several other Eastern and Western critics of the Gita have expressed the same opinion.