Vedic Literature | Ekamsat | Uddhava-Gita | Virtue and Vice
2. Adherence to action that comes within one’s power is good; the opposite is evil. Thus are virtue and vice determined according to their relevance in the spiritual advancement of man, and not owing to any thing inherent in them.
3. The system of determining the order of objects and actions as good or bad to be followed or avoided according to one’s power has been laid down in order to check one in the pursuit of one’s natural inclinations, first by generating a doubt in one about their inherent propriety.
4. For the sake of those who are burdened with an obsessive extrovert nature, I have laid down the rules of conduct in the form of smritis. Some of these rules are meant to help man in his spiritual progress in a given situation; some are relevant only from practical considerations of life; and still others are meant for the maintenance of life in dangerous situations.
There is no absoluteness in any of these rules of conduct. Their object is only to make man more inward-looking, step by step.
5. From Brahma down to the immovable objects like trees, all are created on the same pattern, their bodies being combinations of the five elements united with the atman.
6. Being constituted of the five elements, the basic nature of their bodies is the same. But their bodies have developed diversities of names, forms and capacities for the Jiva’s gradual attainment of the four great ends of life, namely, dharma, artha, kama and moksha. The Veda has, therefore, categorized them according to their capacities and laid down rules for their development from stage to stage.
7. Oh Uddhava! It is only to limit karma that propriety and impropriety have been laid down with regard to places, time, results, competent persons and ingredients.
8. The places where there are no black-bucks and where there is no respect for holy men are impure. Even if black-bucks are present, the regions of keekata, the places inhabited by people of low moral standards and deserts are considered impure.
9. An auspicious time for a rite is determined by the availability of the ingredients of worship at that time, or for some other reasons inherent in the time. The seasons when the required ingredients are not available or times when there are obstacles from external circumstances are considered inauspicious for the performance of rites.
10. The purity or impurity of ingredients is determined by contact with other ingredients, by authoritative pronouncements, by purificatory rites, by lapse of time or by relative size.
11. Purity or impurity is determined by one’s strength or weakness, by one’s knowledge or ignorance, or by one’s wealth or poverty. So a virtue or vice arises according to time and place.
12. The purification of objects like grains, wooden utensils, those made of ivory, textiles, oily substances, precious metals, skins and pots is effected by air, fire, earth and water singly or in combination, and by the passage of time.
13. The purifier is that which, with whatever agent, removes the filth and bad odour of an object smeared with dirt, and restores it to its pristine purity.
14. A dwija is to purify himself before he performs a scriptural rite with water, charity, austerity, attainment of proper age and capacity, sandhya-vandana, or meditation on the Supreme Being.
15. The acquisition of a mantra from a guru is the purification of the mantra. A work or a rite is purified by its being offered to Me. Anything conforming to dharma must be subject to purification in time, place, substance, mantra, the performer and the rite itself. Being non-purified in any of these factors reduces a rite into adharma.
16. What is right in one context can become its opposite in another by the force of Vedic injunction. So also what is wrong can become right. The difficulty of determining right or wrong affects the very basis of such distinction.
For example, receiving gifts is wrong conduct for a brahmana in normal times; but it becomes right in times of turmoil and danger. Not to care for the home is wrong conduct for a house-holder. But it is proper conduct for a sannyasin.
17. An act which is sin for a man morally elevated or in a particular station of life need not be so for a fallen man, or for one in a low state of evolution, or for one belonging to a different order of life. The reason is that a man who is lying on the ground cannot have a further fall. It is only a man who is at a higher level or erect that is liable to fall.
For example, drinking and immoral-living will not harm a man at a low level of evolution, but it will be highly sinful for a morally elevated man. To have attachment to his possessions and family, and to live with his wife is normal and natural for a house-holder, and he incurs no sin by it. But it is a sin for a sannyasin.
18. The lesson to be drawn from this indeterminate and flexible nature of dharma and adharma is that man should, little by little and to the extent possible, retire from the pursuit of desires and ritualistic works, and take to renunciation. To the extent he renounces, to that extent he is free. That is the way of life that will eliminate sorrow, delusion and fear, and establish him in bliss.
19-21. Man develops attachment to sense-objects when he falsely begins to think that they will promote his good. Such attachment matures into craving, and it is from the craving of intense desires that conflicts erupt among men. From conflicts arise uncontrollable anger. This is followed by delusion – complete inability to distinguish between right and wrong, the proper and the improper. Delusion quickly swallows his moral sense completely. Oh good friend! Man then becomes a zero as far as his humanity is concerned. He is as good as dead. He loses all the great values that obtain in human life.
22. He merely exists, absorbing food like a tree, and breathing like a pair of bellows. Owing to his excitement with sensuous pleasures, he knows not anything about his own real nature, nor does he have any love and sympathy for others.
23. The karmakanda (the ritualistic section of the Veda) is sweet with promises of enjoyment, as fruits of ritualistic works. They do not enlighten man on his ultimate good. They are only a means to stimulate man engrossed in sensuality to higher goals. Just as children are prompted to take medicine by promise of delicious edibles, the promises of ritualism are meant to stimulate man, stagnating in abject inertia, to the first steps towards the highest good.
24-25. Man is naturally inclined to sense-enjoyment, to his own physical welfare, and to the promotion of the interests of his relatives. All these are hindrances in his spiritual development. How then can a centre of divine wisdom like the Veda – an authority to which men of such unregenerate nature wandering in the path of sin and unhappiness look with reverence and which they approach for guidance – confirm them in their sensuality and selfishness?
26. There are some men of perverted intelligence who do not understand this feature of the Veda, but take its flowery descriptions of the fruits of yajnas literally. But real knowers of the Veda like Vyasa do not do so.
27. Desire-ridden, greedy and pitiable, the former mistake the possibility of future acquisition of heavenly felicities for the fruit of sat-chit-ananda. Befooled by their exaggerated faith in the scope of fire-sacrifices, they at last go by the path of smoke, without knowing anything about the nature of their own self.
28. With ritualism as their main instrument and sense-enjoyment as their sole objective, they are like men blinded by darkness produced by mist which prevents them from seeing even the nearest object. For, thanks to ritualism and sensuality, they do not know Me, the source of this whole universe, though I am present in their very heart.
29-30. If people are fond of meat-eating, let it be confined to occasions of sacrifice. Let it be a mere permission and not a commandment. This view of Mine is indirectly expressed in passages dealing with the killing of animals at sacrifices. Without understanding this, these people, sensuous and cruel by nature, delight in organizing bloody sacrifices for inferior deities, manes and elementals, utilizing those occasions for obtaining satisfaction of their cruel instincts and their hunger for meat.
31. Just as an avaricious merchant wastes his wealth in speculation, they waste their resources in expectation of enjoyment in realms and regions, dreamlike in their substantiality, but immensely delightful for the ears to hear about.
32. Themselves dominated by sattva, rajas and tamas, the gunas of Prakrti, they adore Indra and other Devas of a similar nature, but not Me who am beyond these three gunas.
Even the worship offered to Indra and others is offered only unto the Supreme Being, because IT is the indwelling Spirit in all Divinities. But, as these votaries do not know this truth and adore the externally perceived deities dominated by gunas, their worship is ineffective as far as the path of devotion is concerned.
33-34. These conceited and sensuous-enjoyment seeking people listen to such dictums as ‘a votary can sacrifice here to the deities, and after death he will go to their heavens and have enjoyment. At the end of heavenly felicities, he will be born again on earth in a high family and become a great house-holder, performing sacrifices once again.’ Carried away by such dictums, they will abhor even any reference to Me, the Supreme Being.
35. The Veda, consisting of the three sections dealing with karma (rituals), upasana (meditation) and jnana (knowledge-cum-devotion), has the Brahman-Atman as its fulcrum and purport. The Veda is couched in language that is indirect, and cast in riddles. I favour this indirect way of expression.
It is said that it is so because people, who are otherwise fit only for karma on account of the impurity of the mind, would, otherwise, abandon karma, too, and lapse into the idleness of tamas.
36. The sabda-Brahman (the sound phenomenon - AUM) with its three subtle stages of manifestation known as Para, Pasyanti and Madhyama, expressed in and through the prana and the mind, besides the articulate form Vaikhari expressed through the organ of sound, is difficult to be understood in itself fully; it is infinite, deep and unfathomable like the ocean. For, of these four stages of its manifestation, only the Vaikhari is articulate sound; the others are inaudible and inarticulate.
37. Proceeding from Me, the Infinite Brahman, changeless and limitless in power, the sabda-Brahman is heard by the enlightened as subtle resonance (nada) pervading all living beings, like the slender filament within a lotus-stalk.
38-40. Just as the spider brings out its web from within itself through the mouth, the Supreme Being, the embodiment of Veda and the seat of bliss, manifesting as Hiranyagarbha, brings out of IT the stuff of subtle sound called nada. Through the instrumentality of the mind, the subtle sound fashions the body of consonants, vowels, aspirates, etc from the Pranava (AUM), the articulate body of sounds called the Veda which is decoded (couched) in wonderful language and in several metres, each successive one having four letters more than the previous one. The Veda is infinite in its scope and profundity. IT brings out and withdraws the Veda, which has a vast and varied vocabulary and employs numerous metres.
41. Some of these metres are the Gayatri with twenty four letters, followed by other metres, each with four more letters than the previous one. These are Ushnik, Anushtup, Brihati, Pankti, Trishtup, Jagati, Aticchandas, Atyashti, Atijagati and Virat.
42. No one but I know, in truth, what injunctions the Veda lays down in the Karmakanda, what it lays down in the Upasanakanda, and what prima facie views it states to deny them afterwards in the Jnanakanda.
43. In the Karmakanda, what I enjoin as injunctions am Me in the form of yajna. In the Upasanakanda, it is Me that I describe in the form of various deities. And in the Jnanakanda, what is first accepted prima facie and then negated is also Me. The Veda asserts this universe tentatively as an expression of My power, Maya. When, through the world of manifestation, the Jiva is taken to merge (dissolve) in Me, the Veda denies the manifestation and completes its task. This is the function of the Veda.