Commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad : 21. Swami Krishnananda.

=========================================================================

Sunday, January 15, 2023. 07:30. 

Part-3.

Post -21.

=========================================================================

What is reality? Whatever we accept as reality is reality for us, whether or not it is the Ultimate Reality. The acceptance of the reality of this body and the world is a temporal concession given to the working of prarabdha karma. This vehement action of prarabdha on this body and the world cannot be avoided as long as it is working in the direction of its own self-exhaustion. Fire will burn as long as there is fuel. When the fuel is not there, the fire subsides. This fire of longing for this body and the world will subside only when the fuel of prarabdha subsides. As long as the prarabdha karma continues, the body will not die even if we starve it. It will live somehow or the other. And when the prarabdha is exhausted, we will certainly die, even if we are eating the best food. We do not live and die because of eating or not eating, as we may imagine. Unprotected but God-protected, one can live. But protected by the whole world and not protected by God, one will perish. Unknown, unbefriended, but under the care of providence, a person can live even in a forest. But he can die even when perfectly taken care of in the midst of family and friends, when providence is against it.

The idea is that we should neither attach ourselves to our body and the work that it does in respect of the world, nor should we shun it. Do not say, “I will only work; I don't know anything else but work.” That is attachment. Do not say, “I don't want work,” because it is attachment. That will not work, because it is attachment to non-action. The concept of not-doing is also a kind of doing because all action is actually only the mind working. Action, so-called, is mental. What the mind thinks is action, and not so much what the body does. If the mind is absent, physical action is no action. But if physical action is absent, although the mind is acting, the real action is going on.

Thus, the Isavasya Upanishad goes together with the teaching of the Bhagavadgita, the great teaching that action and knowledge have to be combined. That is to say, work we must. But how would we combine them? No one can be here without any action. We must perform action because, as already mentioned, as long as we are in this body and this world, action is the law of this body in its relation to this world. We must participate in this action of this impulse to live through the body and the world, but not get attached to it. The idea of non-attachment cannot arise in the mind of a person unless he has knowledge, sankhya buddhi, vidya.

That action actually is a bondage, and that it is somehow to be carried on to discharge one's debts is the knowledge that is to be at the back of this action. We have to do the drudgery. We cannot free ourselves from that as long as it is necessary for us to live in the body and the world. But we need not be attached to it. This freedom from attachment can be possible only if we know why we have come into this body. That is called sankhya. So, knowledge and action should go together. This is one teaching of the three verses connected with avidya and vidya.

The other three verses tell us another aspect of the matter, relating us to the world and God. There are people who believe that the world exists, but God does not exist. There are those who think that God exists, but the world does not exist. These are two types of people in the world, and neither type is totally correct in their feelings. Those who feel that only the world exists, and God, or the Ultimate, does not exist, will go to darkness. Those who deny the world entirely, and think that God is extra-cosmic, go to greater darkness.

*****
To be continued

=========================================================================