Vedic Literature | Ekamsat | Uddhava-Gita | Limitations of Vedic Ritualism
Bhagavata-dharma means the dharma of a devotee for realization of the Divine God-head.
2. A man of purified understanding should always reflect on how the actions of sense-bound people with an eye on the fruits of their action and an assumption of their ultimacy bring only contrary results in the end. Happiness which they seek always eludes, while suffering which they want to avoid always results.
3. The experiences of the man in the state of sleep and of the day-dreamer are without any substance, because of their unstable variety. The same is true with regard to the diversity of the objects experienced by the senses in the waking state.
4. One devoted to Me should perform works conducive to renunciation which consists in the daily and periodical rites of an obligatory nature, and works that form one’s duty and those that serve charitable purposes. One should avoid rites, rituals and works for the fulfillment of selfish ends. One who has firmly set one’s foot on the path of enquiry for realization need not care for the Vedic commandments on works.
5. The moral disciplines called Yama (sense-control) should be practised, and the rules of external conduct called Niyama should be practised to the extent possible under varying circumstances. One should seek a guru who has realized Me and serve him as if one were serving Me.
6. A person while serving such a guru should be humble enough to render all services, devoid of personal possessions and attachments, having cordial and loving relationship with the guru, calm and tranquil, keen in his quest for Truth, free from jealousy, and controlled in speech.
7. The Atman being the same in all, it is meaningless to think of any particular person or object as one’s own. Realizing this, a person should become detached towards his wife, children, house, lands, relatives, wealth, etc.
8. Just as fire, because it has burning and lighting properties, is different from the fuel it burns and illumines, so also the Atman, the self-luminous seer, is different from all objects seen, including the gross and the subtle bodies forming its instruments of perception.
9. Just as the fire with which the fuel is joined assumes all the conditions and properties of the fuel like origination, dissolution, smallness, brightness, manifoldness, etc., in the same way the Spirit within the body, though different from the latter, assumes, through identification with it, all the changes the body undergoes.
10. The Jiva’s involvement in samsara, consisting in recurring birth and death, arises from its identification with the subtle and gross bodies generated by the gunas of Prakrti. So the knowledge of the real nature of the Atman will put an end to Jiva’s entanglement in samsara.
11. Therefore, through enquiry, one should understand that the Spirit within is distinct and aloof from the body. Understanding this, one should deny the identification with the gross body, subtle body, etc, one after another.
12. The guru is the lower fire-stick, and the disciple the upper one. The churning stick introduced between them for producing fire is the instruction, and the fire produced, when churned, is the blissful illumination of knowledge arising from the instruction.
13. The pure fire of spiritual illumination thus imparted to the disciple effaces all the bondage caused by the gunas of Prakrti, as well as the gunas themselves, before it subsides, like the fire that has exhausted the fuel.
14-15. There is a view that there is plurality of the Jiva doing karma and enjoying the beneficent and baneful fruits, according to the nature of the karma performed. The world, Time, the Veda and the Jiva are all eternal. The objects of enjoyment are also eternal through their unending recurrence as a stream. Just like all other entities, consciousness too is ridden by plurality, as each apprehension comes into being, changes and perishes with each of the objects of perception.
16. If this view (of the Purvamimamsakas) is accepted, all Jiva will have to be subject to repeated birth and death, as they have to get repeatedly embodied from time to time in order to have continuous consciousness.
17. According to this doctrine, the Jiva that performs karma and reaps the fruits yielding enjoyment and / or suffering is without any freedom. What joy can there be for a slave?
18. Even wise men are not found being happy sometimes, nor are ignorant persons found always unhappy. Thus it is in the nature of things to have both happiness and misery in the embodied state. Vain, therefore, is the boast of the Vedic ritualists that by their rituals they can have pure happiness in an embodied state.
19. Even if their claim that they can secure joyous experiences and avoid painful ones is accepted, there still remains the fact that they, too, do not know how to ward off death.
20. How can wealth or pleasures make one happy, when one knows that death is near at hand? How can a condemned criminal, who is being led to the hangman’s scaffold, feel joy in pleasurable things?
21. The heavenly states we hear about as attainable hereafter are vitiated by the same evils as of this world – mutual antagonism, jealousy, surpassability and finality. Besides, like agriculture, its fruits are uncertain because of many obstacles, and even when obtained, they are not worthwhile, as they are time-bound.
22. Now listen how Vedic rituals, even if done without any obstruction or breach of procedure, yield only perishable results.
23. Performing a yagna by way of worship of a deity in this world, a Vedic ritualist attains to heaven, and like a celestial, he enjoys there the heavenly felicities for which he has made himself eligible by the performance of the Vedic rituals.
24. By virtue of the merits he has acquired, he finds himself in a brilliant mansion full of delightful objects of enjoyment, sports there amidst a bevy of handsomely dressed celestial damsels and enjoys the music of gandharva singers.
25. Sitting in the aerial vehicle having innumerable mini-bells and capable of carrying one wherever one wants, and steeped in and excited by the joy of amorous indulgence with celestial women, the Jiva lives oblivious of the imminent downfall that is in store for it.
26. It can enjoy the felicities of heaven only till the exhaustion of the effects of the meritorious actions making it eligible for the same. Immediately after the merits are exhausted, it will be forced to move to inferior regions, even against its will, by the power of Time.
27 - 28. There are other Jiva who give themselves up to unrighteous living due to the influence of evil company. They become enslaved to the senses, filled with desires, and dominated by greed and sexuality. They turn into persecutors of living beings. They make sacrifice of animals against scriptural commandments to elementals and ghosts. Such Jiva helplessly go to the purgatory where they undergo punishment, and are then reduced to the state of trees and vegetation covered with the darkness of tamas.
29. Performing with one’s body actions that bear evil fruits, one gets new bodies, in succession, generated by those evil actions for undergoing the suffering due to them. What happiness can there be in this way of life leading to birth and death repeated?
30. All the worlds and their protecting deities with the life-span of a kalpa live in fear of Me as Time. Even Brahma with a life lasting two parardhas lives in such fear.
31. The senses which are the products of the gunas of Prakrti perform actions; and it is the gunas that prompt the senses to action, not the Atman. The embodied being, the Jiva, enjoys the fruits of action by identification with the products of the gunas like the body and the mind.
32. Only as long as the evolutes of gunas like the ego-sense, the body, etc exist, there is the experience of plurality for the atman, and it is only so long as there is this plurality that the atman experiences bondage.
33. So long as there is absence of freedom resulting from the perception of multiplicity, Iswara, perceived as Time, the consumer of all is a terror to the Jiva. So the followers of the philosophy of ritualistic action, who emphasize the plurality of the Jiva, are bound to be obsessed with sorrow and fear arising from death.
34. When the creative cycle starts with the unsettling of the perfect
equilibrium of the gunas, I am known in several aspects under different names
such as Time (Kala), Atman, Scriptures (Agama), the World (Loka), Nature (Swabhava),
Dharma, etc.
36. How can I recognize a being that is not bound and attached? How does he live? How does he behave? How can he be distinguished? How does he eat, evacuate, lie, sit and walk?
37. Oh Achyuta! Thou art the most competent to answer questions on such profound subjects! How can the same Atman be eternally bound and eternally free as seems to be taught? I am confused and confounded by such thoughts.