Index…

Kathopanisad

Chapter 2 Valli 1 Mantra 15

Lecture

Mantra

yas tu a̍vi̱jñāna̍vān bhavaty a̱mana̍skas sa̱dā’śu̍ciḥ
na sa̍ ta̱t pada̍m āpno̱ti̱ sa̱ṁsāra̍ṁ cādhi̱gaccha̍ti

yaḥ tu = but that [intellect]; bhavati = becoming; avijñānavān = unskilful, having no insight and discrimination; amanaskaḥ = whose mind is uncontrolled; sadā = always; aśuciḥ = impure; saḥ = he, that person; na = does not; āpnoti = obtain; tat = that; padam = goal; ca = and/but; adhigacchati = obtains, reaches; saṁsāraṁ = worldly existence.

The sense (and the instincts) they say, are the horses, and their roads are the sense-objects. The wise call Him the enjoyer (when He is) united with the body, the senses and the mind.

by Swami Chinmayananda:

Continuing the analogy, the Mantra here explains what the horses in the chariot-picture stand for. The senses are the horses. Without the sense-organs such as the ear, the eyes, the nose, the tongue and the skin the body-chariot cannot move. It is a well-known truth observed in modern psychology that a child born without any of the sense-organs is a dead one. We generally observe that a blind man has invariably an extra power of hearing. Rarely do we find in life an individual who is both blind and deaf. And still more rare are persons (or indeed, such men are not) who have neither the eyes nor the ears nor the sense of touch. In short, we may have among us an unhappy man who has not one or two sense-organs but rarely, indeed, do we have one living among us who has at once, more than two sense-organs missing in him.

This is not a strange phenomenon. After all, there is a purpose behind our taking up the bodies and coming here to live this mortal existence, The individual ego-center take their individual embodiments and come to live under a set of circumstances, during fixed periods of time, to Earn the experiences of living that fixed life. The instruments through which we can gain the experiences of the outer world are our five Indriyas. If our Indriyas are all shut up, the world outside rolls up into nothingness so far as we are concerned. For example, in our deep-sleep state we are not aware of the outer world at all, because, none of our sense-organs functions for us during our sleep-state.

If the eyes are not, the forms are not; with our ears surely, we know we cannot grasp ideas of forms. So too, with every other sense-organ. If the organs were not with us, our birth in this life would have been a mad man’s maddening extravagance, purposeless and idle. Lord, the Creator, is no mad man. There is a purpose, definite and sure, in each one’s arrival here; ‘be it a worm or be he a king. Since without the sense-organs the purpose of our embodiment is defeated, the Law sees to it that no child is born with none of the sense-organs, for, in that case, the child would be defeating the purpose of its Creator.

The Sruti here says that the horses that draw the body chariot are the sense-organs. The word Indriyas collectively means pot only the sense-organs, but also the organs of actions and, as such, it would be complete only if we translate the term as organs of sense and instincts. This interpretation is according to the fully developed Sankhya and Vedanta philosophies. The first clear reference to the ten sense-organs is in Prasna, which is a later composition than the Kathopanishad. There is, indeed, a masterly thoroughness in the inimitable expressions of the Hindu scriptures. Though they are so brief in their style, they never leave any statement half said. When they have discussed the chariot, the rider, the driver and the horses, the picture would not have been complete without the explanation of the road on which the horses are to run. The Upanishad says that the sense horses trot on the sense objects.

The eye can illumine or function only in the realm of form; that is, we can never come to hear with our eyes | So too, the ears; they can perceive only sound; with the cars we can never come to “see” | The tongue can walk only the path of taste, and the skin, the road of touch. On the whole, it means that the sense-organs, because of which the body exists, function each only in its own field of objects.

The wise, in the stanza, means the sages and saints, who have realized in their life the Total Perfection, which is God-head and also those who, in declaring their intuitional experiences, have become the authors of the Upanishads, They, declare that the true entity in us, who seems to experience the joys and sorrows of life, is not the Atman, the All-witnessing Intelligence, but the conditioned Atman. The Supreme Intelligence as conditioned by the body and mind is the ego-center (Jiva), which seems to enjoy and suffer the passing Circumstances of this evanescent life, called the Samsar. By thus defining the enjoyer in us the Sruti is definitely making a differentiation between the two entities in us, one, the Truth Principle, the non-doer and the non-enjoyer, and the other, the delusion-created ego-center (Jiva), which is but a reflection of the Supreme Intelligence in the mental lake.

by Swami Gurubhaktananda:

1. Yah tu vijnānavān bhavati    But he who is of a discriminating intellect
2. yuktena manasā sadā;         having restrained his mind always
3. tasya indriyāni vashyāni     his senses are controllable
4. sad ashvāh iva sāratheh.     like the tame horses of the charioteer.

The Vijnana-vani: This is the discriminating driver who is cautious about following all the road rules, who is skilled in driving, who takes great care to rein in the mind so that the horses are well-controlled. A good intellect is the key to a successful journey.

A good charioteer is sane and sober, thoughtful and discerning, understanding and knowledgeable, he is patient, careful and alert to avert any danger on the road. For the owner’s peace of mind, it is worth giving the intellect the highest salary.

The Vijnana-vani is capable of choosing Sreyas instead of Preyas. He possesses the fortitude to walk the path of Vidya. As discrimination is the key to the whole journey, it pays to take time and get the intellect trained to do this task well – even if that means spending two years on a Vedanta Course!

The message we take from these two verses is: “Let the Lord be the charioteer of our lives. He makes all the difference. Let us place our intellect in His hands. Let us invoke the Grace of Gayatri to raise our Buddhi towards the Light and keep it there. Let it not linger in the darkness of ignorance.”

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Index…

Kathopanisad

Chapter 2 Valli 1 Mantra 2

Lecture

Mantra

parā̍caḥ kāmān a̱nuya̍nti bā̱lā̱-
ste̱ mṛ̱tyor ya̍nti vi̱tata̍sya pāśam
atha̍ dhī̱rā a̱mṛta̍tvaṁ vidi̱tvā̱
dhru̱vam a̍dhruveṣv iha na̱ prārtha̍yante

bālāḥ = the children, immature people; anuyanti = they pursue; parācaḥ kāmān = the external objects of desire; te = they; yanti = become entangled; pāśam = in the noose, snare; mṛtyoḥ = of death; vitatasya = spread far and wide everywhere; atha = hence; dhīrāḥ = those who are wise and discriminating; viditvā = having known; amṛtatvaṁ = the immortality; na prārthayante = do not aspire after or pray for; dhruvam = the abiding, stable, permanent; adhruveṣu = in that which is impermanent; iha = here is this samsāra.

The ignorant (child-like) pursue the external pleasures (and so) they fall into the snares of the widespread death. But the wise do not desire (anything) in this world, having known what is eternally immortal in the midst of all non-eternals.

by Swami Chinmayananda:

The forgetfulness of our real divine nature is Ignorance. This Ignorance (Avidya) manifests itself in the mental plane as desires. Prompted by these desires the mind whips the sense-organs to run their errands in the world of their objects which together are called by us as the Karmas or the actions. It is the “Ignorance” in the Plane of the Spirit that gets transformed into “desires” in the mental plane which itself is again expressed as “actions” in the outer world-of-objects. Ignorance, desire and action; these three are technically termed in Vedanta as the knots of the Heart (Hridayagranthi). It is this set of knots that causes the actions, and man, in order to reap the results of his actions, is compelled to take various new forms and independent lives, in varied circumstances of uncertain joys and endless Sorrows.

In these two Mantras we have a clear indication of two great obstacles that stand in our way to the realization of the Self: (1) the natural tendency of the sense organs to run outward eloping with the entire wealth of attention that man is capable of and (2) the desire for enjoyments of the objects of this world and the next.

The majority belongs to this type of existence. They are, viewed from the highest standards of spiritual perfection, mere children in their growth and evolution. They fail to recognize the possibility of an existence greater in scope and diviner in contents, where the sense organs stop their rambling into the pits-of-sorrow, wherein they generally revel as an ordinary man, living in his day-to-day delusions. Indeed, it is only too true when the Srutis classify such men as mere children.

Haunted by desires and goaded by the mind, the sense-organs vainly trot on the paths of their objects, seeking for a perfect joy, which is continuous and unbroken. Man can be satisfied only with the eternal. Finiteness always despairs man. Seeking the Infinite, in our ignorance, we exhaust ourselves among the sense objects. Tired and weary, fatigued and exhausted with the futile haunt, each of us falls prostrate soon to breathe our last! Hence, Sruti declares that such childish men who have hot come to an adults discrimination, will fall ultimately into the fruits of delusions, the widespread snares of death (finiteness).

Against these men of childhood, Sruti contrasts the wise men who live a life of sleepless discrimination and Knowledge. The wise maintain a vigilant discrimination between the Real and the unreal, the True and the false. They naturally escape from the suicidal urges of a deluded mind.  They do not covet the unstable, the perishable, the finite sense objects, for they want nothing but the Immortal and the Infinite.

Since the inner enemies are the ignorance, desire and action, the wise through an intelligent control of their actions earn for themselves a state of desire lessness, and since desires are manifestations of the deep-seated Ignorance, in the state of desire lessness there is naturally an end of all ignorance. When ignorance is ended, desire and action, which are but the same ignorance in different forms, are also ended. With the end of ignorance, Knowledge comes to shine forth. Avidya is ended in Gyan. And such Gyanis are here termed as the wise. Such men are those who, as Blake expresses in Auguries of Innocence, tried successfully:

“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”

They naturally would never yearn for the fleeting sense-objects of the world for their own sake, as any ordinary deluded Samsari; also at the same time they will not detest anything, because to them everything is but the glorious manifestation of the Divine Self.

“Desire promoted means normal vision is turned outward thirsting to acquire, striving to possess and hoping to enjoy. But the wise turns his vision inward and experiences the Eternal Essence in the bewildering finitude.”

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