THE BHAGAVAD GITA

Introduction:

What is "Arjuna's dilemma"? What is a dilemma? Is this really a dilemma? (Logic -- a western invention...) Does it matter? And who, really, is Arjuna? "Not all is... as it seems on the suface," said a wise sage superficially.

These are important questions, and following them farther will likely take us farther into the heart of this strange material. So dig deeply, and dig again. Look at the hole you create as well as the pile you make. Reflect on both, and all you actions in doing and 'progressing'.... ('progress' -- another western notion....).

The texts below are meant to be supplements to the Reilly excerpt. Concentrate on Reilly's Gita to consider Arjuna's Dilemma.

Text:

II:22: As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.

II:55: "He is called a man of steady wisdom (sthitaprajna) who has banished all sensuous desires and rests in complete bliss in God through His grace."

VII:24 "Unintelligent men, who do not know Me perfectly, think that I, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krsna, was impersonal before and have now assumed this personality. Due to their small knowledge, they do not know My higher nature, which is imperishable and supreme."

II:70-2. On attaining perfect peace: "He attains peace, into whom all desires enter as waters enter the Ocean, which, filled from all sides, remains unaltered; but not he who desires objects. That man attains peace, who abandoning all desires, moves about without attachment, without selfishness, without vanity. This is the Bramhic state, O Son of Pritha. Attaining to this, none is deluded. Remaining in this state even at the last period of life, one attains to the felicity of Bramhan.

II:56-8. On the wise sage and the world around: "56. He whose mind, even amidst the threefold suffering stays unperturbed is the anudvignamanah. When pleasures come, he does not crave for them, his mind being unlike the fire fed on fuel. From him have departed attachment, fear and wrath. He, the silent sage and renouncer, is said to be the man of stable wisdom. The silent sage does not care even for his own body, life-style and so forth. He is devoid of all attachment and aversion when good and evil occur to him. He neither seeks the one nor shuns the other. The discriminating wisdon of such a sage, free from gaiety and depression is stable. Actively engaged in the discipline of the Yoga of knowledge, when he withdraws his senses from objects, just as a tortoise tucks up, due to fear, its limbs on all sides, his wisdom is stabilised.

18:2. The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: The giving up of activities that are based on material desire is what great learned men call the renounced order of life [sannyasa]. And giving up the results of all activities is what the wise call renunciation [tyaga].

18:51-3: Being purified by his intelligence and controlling the mind with determination, giving up the objects of sense gratification, being freed from attachment and hatred, one who lives in a secluded place, who eats little, who controls his body, mind and power of speech, who is always in trance and who is detached, free from false ego, false strength, false pride, lust, anger, and acceptance of material things, free from false proprietorship, and peaceful--such a person is certainly elevated to the position of self-realization.