Bhagavagd Gita - Session 11- Track 1112

There are many commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. There are many angles from which you can see, and there are many processes, which have been given. Take for example, to remain in the field of senses, and objects of senses, and yet to be completely master of all the senses, and the rasas: you cannot prescribe this to everybody. You cannot say to somebody, “Go and dance and music, disco dance you do, and then having no desire at all”. To the unripe individuals, you cannot make a prescription of this kind. Too many people, there is a need to restrain from objects of senses; to other people, mere restraint is not enough.

There is one very interesting example given by Kishore Lal Mashruwala. You must have heard of him, but many others may not have heard of him. Kishore Lal Mashruwala was the author who has given a complete digest of Gandhian thought. He is regarded of the best exponent of Gandhism. In my college days, I used to correspond with him. I used to write letters to him, and he used to answer my questions. Now in one of his expositions of his own personal life, he said: “I was experimenting with asvāda”: asvāda is a very difficult process in which, you do not enjoy, even when you eat certain objects, which are offered to you, of which you are very fond.

How to achieve a state of asvāda? He gave up all the objects in which he was really interested, all the objects of which he was very fond he gave up, because that is a normal thing, when you like something, you like to eat more and more of it; you want to enjoy it more and more. To achieve mastery, he gave up all the objects in which he was taking interest.

Then what happened, then he began to take other objects in which he was not interested; but then he found that he began to take interest in them also: you know, when you are completely bereft, then, even things you may not like, the dry loaf normally. But when you are completely hungry, and you have one dry loaf available to you, how sweet it is! All the rasa comes into it. So he said, “I began to enjoy even those things, which I was never enjoying before.” Then he said: “What to do?” So, he said, “I started to take Quinine”. Quinine is the bitterest thing. Suicide, we cannot take Quinine, “But even with regard to Quinine, I began to take interest in it”.

One who is really in that state of practising, one has to pass through so many stages of restraint, and use of senses, and then, consequent fall into the objects of senses, and yet training yourself again, and again, tirelessly. Therefore, it is a long, long process, but Sri Krishna says that unless you achieve that, the grief with which you are gripped, you cannot be free from it. And it is that difficult teaching that Arjuna is in need of, at that critical hour. And the importance of the Gita is that such is the state in which we are bound to come, at one stage of life or another. If you are not to come into the same stage, there is no relevance. But the point is that each one of us, at one stage or the other is bound to reach that crisis. Therefore it is better that we are forewarned, and we are told, how to prepare ourselves to meet that crisis, and that is why, the need to study the Gita.

Comment: These are the best Shlokas.

Answer: Oh! Yes, 2nd chapter is one of the best portions of the Bhagavad Gita.