Class Summary for Feb 2, 2025 - Bhagavad Gita Chapter-9 Slokas- 18-20

 Summarized by Prasanna Kumar:

We started with prayanam and meditation
Then we went through the following verses.

Chapter 9 verse 18
gatirbhartaa prabhuh saakshi nivaasaha sharanam suhrita |
prabhavah pralayah sthaanam nidhaanam beejamavyayam || 18 ||
I am the outcome, nourisher, master, witness, abode, refuge and well-wisher. I am the origin, dissolution, sustenance, repository and the imperishable seed.
verse 19
tapāmyaham ahaṁ varṣhaṁ nigṛihṇāmyutsṛijāmi cha/
amṛitaṁ chaiva mṛityuśh cha sad asach chāham arjuna//19//

 I radiate heat as the sun, and I withhold, as well as send forth rain. I am immortality as well as death personified, O Arjun. I am the spirit as well as matter.

verse  20
trai-vidyā māṁ soma-pāḥ pūta-pāpā
yajñair iṣhṭvā svar-gatiṁ prārthayante/
te puṇyam āsādya surendra-lokam
aśhnanti divyān divi deva-bhogān//20//
Those who are inclined to the fruitive activity described in the Vedas worship Me through ritualistic sacrifices. Being purified from sin by drinking the Soma juice, which is the remnant of the yajñas, they seek to go to heaven. By virtue of their pious deeds, they go to the abode of Indra, the king of heaven, and enjoy the pleasures of the celestial gods.

Discussion:

 We don’t have to visit temple to experience Bhagwan. as the divine presence is considered to be everywhere, including within yourself; therefore, you can find and experience the divine around you regardless of location. It’s in every breath and every step we take.
We have to remember to thank God and we need to practice it till it becomes a habit. We should give our best  and accept the outcome though good or bad as a Prasad from God. A prasad could be sweet ( good outcome) or bitter ( bad outcome) but surrender the outcome and learn to accept it as a prasad from God .

• Shift in self not scene 

A person changing houses wont change his luck , but one has to change from within to change our destiny.

• Sincerity, purity, and clarity

This " represent a core spiritual ideal, emphasizing the importance of acting with genuine intention, maintaining a clean inner state, and having a clear understanding of one's actions and motivations while performing one's duty; essentially, doing everything with a pure heart and focused mind, without hidden agendas or self-serving desires. 

• Go beyond letter to spirit /passive good actions no good

Not just attend the class or hear Gita principles but Implement this in your day to day life and only when we practice what we learned or we embody them we are able to follow this path to God. We need to be an active participant to this process.

Imaginary emptiness cannot be fulfilled, we have to require a real and ultimate goal. An example is given of a man jumping to action and rushing to put out his car fire, then realizing he doesn't own a car. 

• Pursuits can be three types
• Selfish pursuits (desire based): lead us to hell
• Selfish but without desire : we will obtain the rewards and Reward is like nectar. 
• Unselfish pursuits (havan  - Yagna)

( the material below quoted from art of living org)

• Focus on your work, not on the results

“karmany evadhikaras te

ma phalesu kadachana..”

The most famous adage of the Bhagavad Gita is that we should focus on the task at hand, not on the outcomes - for we can only truly control our actions, while the results are a permutation of many different variables. Internalizing this concept in our day to day lives makes us more productive, as we can expend all of our energy into the task at hand without worrying about the results.

2. Be stoic
Noted Indian writer Khushwant Singh believed that the Bhagavad Gita’s philosophical essence was that of stoicism – adopting a mindset of being indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain. If we are to truly enjoy a joyous existence, we should not be too attached to labels or objects. Suffering comes from being obsessed with one’s success and failures. Being stoic frees us from the bondages of pain and suffering.
3. Cultivate empathy
Love is at the core of Bhagavad Gita’s message. One might think that because the Bhagavad Gita was delivered by Lord Krishna on a battlefield, it focuses only on the principles of duty and action. But the Gita is actually a treatise on life as a whole. Krishna’s call to Arjun to perform his duty is ‘Karma Yoga’ while the principles of love and devotion explained by the Lord form the essence of ‘Bhakti Yoga’. Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that a spiritually advanced person can understand both the happiness and the distress of others. Thus, empathy is a key step in aligning one’s mind with spiritual mastery. In our day to day lives we come across many different people, each with their own joys and sorrows. Cultivating empathy towards them sets us on a path of spiritual enlightenment and also helps to lessen the misery of people around us.

4. Don’t give in to gratification
‘ye hi samsparsha-ja bhoga
duhkha-yonaya eva te’
‘The pleasures that arise from contact between the senses and their objects are in truth the sources of all suffering.’
What often deviates us from our goals is the habit of sense gratification – doing things for the mere purpose of pleasuring one or more of our senses. It breaks our focus, wastes our energy and stops us from achieving our full potential. By applying this teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, we can make or day to day life more rewarding and productive.

Class Summary for Jan 26, 2025 - Bhagavad Gita Chapter-9 Slokas- 15-17

Summarized by Anand Santhanam:

Bhagavath Gita Chapter 9 Verse 15

Versa 14 explanation: When do you follow devotion, worship, all these are paths towards good. “I am not this, I am that”. In the light of new understanding, to burn the old stupidity is called as the “Jyana yagya. Here, when we burn our false notion using knowledge, this is called “Education”. As education comes, we give our childishness, then we become a cultured man. We may know all vedanta, and become eloquent speakers, there is no point, if we don’t burn up our old motions. Never enter spirituality, if you are not ready for change. 

Spoke 15 explanation as per certain other schools of thought:

 There are three levels of worship. First level of worship is “Self-level” worship. It refers to the one with the lord. We are workshopping the lord within you. Second, is the one who creates an image of the lord. The third, is the universal form of the lord. The brahman is everywhere and is an abstract concept.

Sankara-charya came in a time when there are a lot of buddhism. 

Ramanuja-charya focused on a blend of bhakti and jana as a solution. His guru was a shaivite. He came when there were lots of fights between shivites and vaishnavites. Vishistadvaita says, I am part or extension of the brahman.  

Madhva-charya focused only on Bhakti as a solution. 

How should I consider lord ?, is it one lord only? You follow whatever you want. You may consider it as one mass of consciousness. If it is hard to consider, then consider the davit bhaava. The rest will automatically come. You adore and give him good food. If you don’t even believe that, if you think the sanskaras, believe that the good is the people around you. Do social work and the people’s happiness is the god’s happiness. If so, consider that as good and continue in that direction. 

Verse 16 explanation.

Store: On my 20th birthday, my dad bought me a beautiful car. This is first car that came to US. The son jumps into the car and goes and crashes the car. The son was lying down in the carpet, who woke up from the dream. Now the question is, where is the car, father road, accident etc., everything is in my mind. Similarly, when we wake up to that consciousness you will see that everything is just ripples created in your mind. “Aham kratu” I am the elaborate. You will realize that everything is just the “waking” mind and you will only realize it when you wake up.

Verse 17 explanation 

The non-apprehensions of the reality gave wrong understanding. The only truth is the supreme conscience. The total vasanas in the mind is the iswara. I am the father of this entire universe. I am the mother, the protector, sustainer, and the destroyer. The dream in your dream world, you are the father. You are the mother. The mind sustains the dream. The dream is just a projection of the mind in the non-apprehension of the waking state. This is the thing to be known. In the objective world, everything is “knowledge of” the science. The greatest purifier where the vasanas are exhausted, is the representation of the “Om”. When the mind quietens, the god who was always there will appear before you for your understanding. This is the key thing to be known.