Commentary on the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Tad aham bhakty-upahrtam asnami: A leaf, a little particle sticking to the vessel in which Draupadi had her meal satisfied everyone in the whole universe. Their stomachs started bloating with the satisfaction of overeating on account of a little leaf that went into the mouth of this cosmic person, Bhagavan Sri Krishna. “I am easily satisfied if it is offered to Me with devotion. Because you have come to Me with an utter spirit of self-surrender, I shall accept what you give – even a spoon of water or a leaf, or even a thought. I shall be happy even with the thought of your surrender to Me. Forget the leaves, etc; even the idea is sufficient for Me. Your love for Me is enough for Me, and I know that your heart is for Me, and I shall take care of you.”

“Whatever you do, O Arjuna, offer it to Me.” Yat karoshi yad asnasi yaj juhoshi dadasi yat, yat tapasyasi kaunteya tat kurushva mad arpanam (9.27): “If you offer anything in sacrifice, yajna, let it be to My satisfaction. I am the universal bhokta, or the enjoyer of all sacrifices. If you eat anything – a meal, breakfast, lunch – let it be offered to Me.” This kind of offering of food which goes into our stomach as a dedication to the Almighty is described in the Chhandogya Upanishad. It is called pranagnihotra. Pranaya svaha, apanaya svaha, vyanaya svaha, samanaya svaha, udanaya svaha – people chant these mantras and sip water five times before they start their meal. This is a ritual known mostly to Brahmins. The idea is that we should not eat our meal like animals, gulping it like pigs or swallowing it like dogs. Our attitude towards food should not be that of an animal. Food is a sacred offering to the divinity inside who digests whatever we eat through the Vaisvanara fire – pachamyannam chaturvidham. The pranas are the digesters of the food. If the pranas are not satisfied with the food that we throw into our stomach, it is not going to be received. Disturbed pranas do not receive any kind of delicacy; and if the stomach is not operated by the Vaisvanara agni, the food is not going to be digested.

“Whatever you offer outside in the form of sacrifices – in yajnasalas – that is also an offering to Me, and whatever you offer inside also by way of a meal that you take, that is internal yajna that you perform as pranagnihotra. Therefore, may your actions be devoted to Me, dedicated to Me. Whatever be these actions, whether secular or religious – clerical, military, business, sweeping the floor, or anything that you perform according to the station of your life and location in society – let it be dedicated to Me, and you shall see that you are taken care of abundantly by the guardians of the Earth.”

“If you do tapas, spiritual practice, yoga sadhana, let that also be a satisfaction to Me.” Do not be under the egoistic impression that you are independently doing some yoga for your personal salvation. If you are a spiritual seeker, this ego should not even be in you. You are a humble, simple ray of the Almighty that is seeking unity with it. Therefore, your meditations are actually the highest kind worship that you perform, the greatest naivedya that is offered, the best gift that you can think of as pleasing to God. Tatkurushva madarpanam: “Let all this be given to Me.”

“Let there be no responsibility on your part. Place all responsibility in Me, and I shall feel very happy to take all the burden of the whole world on my head.” It is said that Dattatreya, the great sage, carries a bag when he goes for alms, and he asked for the sins of people. The alms that Dattatreya seeks from people are the sins. “How many sins you have committed? Bring. I will put them in the bag.” He digests the whole thing. Like that, God will absorb all our errors, mistakes, misconceptions, sins; and we will find we are purified in an instant by the repentance for the sins that we committed, the determination not to commit these sins again, and a whole-souled devotion to God in Whom we have such faith that we believe entirely – without any doubt, with all the recesses of our being – that He shall protect us. Whatever we think, that shall take place. Whatever we believe in, that shall materialise. Whatever we deeply expect, that shall be granted to us; and if we expect the grace of God, it shall be poured abundantly upon us.

Subhasubha-phalair evam mokshyase karma-bandhanaih, sannyasa-yoga-yuktatma vimukto mam upaishyasi (9.28). Sannyasa and yoga have already been discussed in earlier chapters – in the third, fourth and fifth chapters – and it is mentioned once again here. One who is an adherent to the dharmas of sannyasa and yoga – renunciation and actual practice – such a person is freed from all the results of good and bad deeds. Karma-bandha is broken. Karma is supposed to be binding, and no one can be freed from the bonds of karma. But here is a recipe to break the chain of karma; and the laws that usually operate in the world of space and time – the three-dimensional realm – do not operate in the four-dimensional realm. That is the meaning of saying that even sins are pardoned and destroyed. If we commit a mistake in dream, we are not punished for it when we wake up. Whatever be the mistake that we commit in dream, it is absolved merely by the fact of our waking. So is the case with any mistake that we commit here. Any error, even any sin is abolished completely, root and branch, because we have awakened into the consciousness of the eternal four-dimensional Absolute.

Samo’ham sarva-bhuteshu na me dveshyo’sti na priyah (9.29): “I have neither friend nor foe. Like sunlight and rain, I pour myself on all people equally. But if you do not open yourself to Me, the light will not shine upon you and the rain will not affect you in any way. I am equally accessible to all.” The basic fundamental reality behind all the names and forms is one and same: satchidananda svarupa – Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. It is equally present in all names and forms – in inanimate matter, in insects, in ants, in reptiles, in animals, in plants, in human beings, in the gods in heaven. It is equally present everywhere, as the ocean is equally present and at the root of all the ripples, waves, etc., that appear on its surface.

“I am equal to all. I have no friend or enemy, and I do not have any partiality in respect of any person. The intensity of your meditation will be the determining factor of the extent of grace that will be poured upon you automatically, and I do not look upon you as a friend or an enemy. You shall reach Me by the spirit of sannyasa, renunciation in respect of all names and forms, and yoga, which is inner communion that you practise daily as your sadhana.” He is like a judge of the supreme court whose dispensation is totally impartial.

Samo’ham sarva-bhuteshu na me dveshyo’sti na priyah, ye bhajanti tu mam bhaktya mayi te teshu chapy aham: “I am always inside you, and you are inside Me, if you are devoted to Me as Sudama was devoted, as Vidura was devoted, as Draupadi was devoted, as the saints were devoted.” God is so kind as to say that He shall dwell in us and take care of us, and shall put us inside Him and save us from all the sorrows of life.

Even the worst of sinners can be saved. There is no sin that cannot be burnt in the fire of wisdom. Api chet suduracharo bhajate mam ananya-bhak, sadhur eva sa mantavyah (9.30): “He is to be considered as a saint – even though in the eyes of people he is a culprit, a criminal, a sinner – provided he has resorted to Me, and his heart has been purified by the repentance that he has felt in his heart and the devotion that he has shown to Me honestly, sincerely, without any kind of restriction.” There is no sin before God. There is no hell before Him, as there is no heaven before Him. If there was really a hell, God would also see it; and if He saw it, it would be in front of Him. But the Universal Being, Who is bliss and eternity incarnate, does not see hell in front of Him.

The mistakes, the karmas, the sorrows and the hells and heavens that we speak of are the reactions set up from the forces of nature to our own actions; and these reactions cannot cease as long as we are bound hand and foot through this body in terms of space, time and objectivity. But if our soul rises beyond the limitations of this body and does not get attached to anything that is in space and time, the very concept of sin is destroyed because it is relevant only to the world of space and time. So when we are free from space and time, and our worship is through the soul rather than through the mind or through the hands and feet, then all forces – even the greatest gravitational forces of the planets – are overcome, because no law in this world is a law in that eternal realm. The laws of eternity and of temporality which catch us here bit by bit and annoy us, and manmade laws, or scriptural laws, or laws made by anybody – every law is completely negated. This is because they are valid only in the three-dimensional world of space and time, and are completely invalid in the waking of the soul into Universal Existence.

As I mentioned, all experiences of dream are invalidated in waking. Whatever be the experiences of sorrow or joy, emperorship or beggary – whatever we have been undergoing in dream – the whole thing is abolished in one stroke merely because we have woken up. Waking consciousness is superior to dream consciousness. A beggar in waking is certainly happier than a king in dream. The point is not whether one is a king or a beggar; the point is whether one’s consciousness is superior or inferior. One’s superior consciousness of that eternity abolishes all the laws of this temporality of earthly existence. “So he is to be considered as a saint who has resorted to Me whole-heartedly, even if in the eyes of society he has been a very bad fellow, because ananya-bhak bhajate mam – undividedly, wholeheartedly, he is melting his personality. He has poured himself into Me.”

Devotion to God is the subject of Chapters Seven and Nine, and it is difficult to put into words the spirit of the kind of devotion that is actually expected from us by the Almighty. An ordinary devotion of a ritualistic type, or gauna bhakti, as it is called – a secondary type of devotion – will not do. Only a devotee can have the vision of the Universal, and nobody else. Even with all one’s learning, with all one’s sacrificial merits and all one’s tapasyas, one cannot have this vision. “Only bhaktas can see Me” is the statement in the Eleventh Chapter. But what kind of bhakti is it? What kind of devotion is it that transcends tapasya, transcends charity, transcends Vedic knowledge, and transcends every kind of good thing in the world?

It is not something that we offer by way of scriptural study or a garland or ritualistic performance in a temple or a shrine. Superior to all this is the soul wanting God – not merely our mind or our physical personality feeling pain and expressing a desire to unite ourselves with God. The deepest in us asks for the deepest in the cosmos. That is the highest devotion, which is described here in various forms in the Seventh and the Ninth Chapters. It reaches its culmination in the coming chapters until the Eleventh, where only God is shining, to the exclusion of even the existence of the devotee.