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    Commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita
    Commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita
    Commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita
    Ebook225 pages3 hours

    Commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita

    By Sri Chinmoy

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    This book brings together in one volume Sri Chinmoy's commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, three ancient Indian scriptures which are the foundations of the Hindu spiritual tradition. His approach is clear and practical and at the same time profound and richly poetic. In a style unmistakably his own, Sri Chinmoy establishes direct and personal contact with the reader, who joins him on a journey through the wisdom of these celebrated classics. This book is both an excellent introduction for readers who are coming to the subject for the first time, and a series of illumining meditations for those who know it well.

    Only Sri Chinmoy could have written this book. On the strength of his own inner realisation, he is able to enter into these ancient Indian treasure houses of spirituality, and also into the needs and aspirations of seekers of today. He achieves the communication to our present lives of truths first taught thousands of years ago, so that they can be understood, appreciated and used. He is fresh and powerful in expression, but also lyrical and soulful as only a spiritual Master who is also a poet can be.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSri Chinmoy
    Release dateJun 29, 2016
    ISBN9781934972397
    Commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita
    Author

    Sri Chinmoy

    Sri Chinmoy was born in the small village of Shakpura in East Bengal, India (now Bangladesh) in 1931. He was the youngest of seven children in a devout family. In 1944, after the passing of both of his parents, he joined his brothers and sisters at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community near Pondicherry in South India. He prayed and meditated for several hours a day, having many deep inner experiences. It was here that he first began writing poetry to convey his widening mystical vision. He also took an active part in Ashram life and was an athletic champion for many years. Heeding an inner command, Sri Chinmoy came to the United States in 1964 to be of service to spiritual aspirants in the Western world. During the 43 years that he lived in the West, he opened more than 100 meditation Centres worldwide and served as spiritual guide to thousands of students. Sri Chinmoy’s boundless creativity found expression not only in poetry and other forms of literature, but also in musical composition and performance, art and sport. In each sphere he sought to convey the diverse experiences that comprise the spiritual journey: the search for truth and beauty, the struggle to transcend limitations, and the supremely fulfilling communion of the human soul with the Divine. As a self-described student of peace who combined Eastern spirituality and Western dynamism in a remarkable way, Sri Chinmoy garnered international renown. In 1970, at the request of U Thant, third Secretary-General of the United Nations, he began the twice-weekly peace meditations for delegates and staff members at UN headquarters that continue to this day. He offered hundreds of peace concerts, always free of charge, in the U.S. and many other countries. He founded the World Harmony Run, a biennial Olympic-style relay in which runners pass a flaming peace torch from hand to hand as they travel around the globe bearing the message of universal oneness. And he established the Oneness-Heart-Tears and Smiles humanitarian organization, which serves the less fortunate members of the world family by supplying food, medical and educational equipment and other urgent support. On 11 October 2007, Sri Chinmoy passed behind the curtain of Eternity. His creative, peace-loving and humanitarian endeavours are carried on worldwide by his students, who practise meditation and strive to serve the world in accordance with his timeless teachings.

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      Commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita - Sri Chinmoy

      Commentaries on the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita

      Commentaries on the Vedas,

      the Upanishads and the

      Bhagavad Gita

      The Three Branches of India’s Life-Tree

      Sri Chinmoy

      AUM PUBLICATIONS • NEW YORK

      Sri Chinmoy’s first book,

      Meditations, Food for the Soul,

      was published in 1970.

      Copyright © 1996 Sri Chinmoy

      Copyright © 2011, 2014 Sri Chinmoy Centre (eBook)

      ISBN 978-1-934972-39-7

      All rights reserved. No portion

      of this book may be reproduced in any form

      without express written permission

      from the publisher.

      Published by

      Aum Publications

      8610 Parsons Blvd.

      Jamaica, NY 11432

      www.srichinmoy.org

      You do not have to study the Vedas,

      The Upanishads, the Mahabharata

      And the Ramayana

      To dive into the secret

      And sacred wisdom-light

      Of those scriptures.

      He who realises God

      Not only embodies all the scriptures—

      Their essence and quintessence—

      But also goes far, far beyond

      The knowledge-seas of the past.

      — Sri Chinmoy

      CONTENTS

      The Vedas:

      Immortality’s First Call

      The Vedic Bird of Illumination

      The Glowing Consciousness of Vedic Truth

      The Inner Revelation-Fire

      The Rig Veda

      The Song of the Infinite

      Intuition-Light from the Vedas

      The Wisdom-Sun of Vedic Truth

      The Upanishads:

      The Crown of India’s Soul

      India’s Soul-Offering

      The Revelation of India’s Light

      The Beauty and Duty of India’s Soul

      Glimpses from the Vedas and the Upanishads

      The Crown of India’s Soul

      The Brahman of the Upanishads

      The Gāyatrī Mantra

      The Journey’s Start, the Journey’s Close

      Life and Death, Ātman and Paramātman

      Existence, Non-Existence and the Source

      Flame-Waves from the Upanishad-Sea, Part I

      Flame-Waves from the Upanishad-Sea, Part II

      The Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality and Yoga of the Upanishads

      Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita:

      The Song of the Transcendental Soul

      Introduction

      I. The Sorrow of Arjuna

      II. Knowledge

      III. Action

      IV. Knowledge, Action and Sacrifice

      V. Renunciation

      VI. Self-Control

      VII. Knowledge Illumined

      VIII. The Imperishable Infinite

      IX. The Secret Supreme

      X. The Perfection Divine and Universal

      XI. The Vision of the Universal Form and the Cosmic Manifestation of the Lord

      XII. The Path of Devotion

      XIII. The Field and the Knower of the Field

      XIV. The Three Gunas

      XV. The Supreme Puruṣa

      XVI. Forces Divine and Forces Undivine

      XVII. The Threefold Faith

      XVIII. Abstention and Renunciation

      INTRODUCTION

      This volume brings together for the first time in English1 Sri Chinmoy’s commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, ancient Indian scriptures which are the foundation of the Hindu spiritual tradition. These talks were originally given at American universities and colleges in the early 1970s.

      Sri Chinmoy’s approach is clear and practical, and at the same time searching and richly poetic. The book is both an excellent introduction for readers coming to this subject for the first time, and a series of illumining meditations for those who already know it well.

      The Vedas

      The Veda is a vast body of Sanskrit poetry, ritual treatises, dialogues and philosophical discourses which are the oldest surviving literature of India, and among the oldest literature anywhere in the world. It was composed over a period of many centuries by inspired seers, or rishis, probably (in the form we have now) beginning in the second millennium before our era. At the same time the Veda, or ‘knowledge’, is considered to have no date or human author, since the rishis did not invent but ‘saw’, in experiences of enlightenment, eternal truths which they transmitted in the form of sacred speech. The Veda is called ‘the breath of the Supreme’. Its holy words embody the same Power as that which created the universe, for the goddess Speech, the imperishable, is the first-form of Truth, mother of the Veda, the hub of Immortality.

      The central religious practice of the Vedic people was the fire sacrifice, in which Agni, the fire god, was the intermediary between humans and the gods, great elemental yet also personal and spiritual forces of the cosmos. Agni is the sacrificial fire; he is in the sun and lightning and all the energies of nature—and he is that Light which emerged from the abyss of the Unmanifest at the very beginning of creation. Agni is also the mounting flame within the human heart which Sri Chinmoy calls ‘aspiration’: the inner cry to transcend ourselves. Seated before the outer, ceremonial fire, the Vedic seeker contemplated the presence of the divine and invoked Agni as his own inner light to open to him the world of the gods and the mysteries of sacred speech, or mantra, which embodies in sound-form the fundamental realities of existence.

      Over hundreds of years communion with the gods thus developed into an elaborate series of rituals with a fertile symbolic imagery. The hymns and incantations were sometimes devised as enigmas and might play with many levels of meaning. The symbol system of the Vedas became a key to the workings of the entire universe: visible nature, invisible realms, and the human mind, heart and soul. It was a language in which the seer-poets asked and answered the ultimate questions of life: What is the source of everything that we see and know? What is the secret of our own ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’? What is the basic pattern of all things? Who and what am I? As Sri Chinmoy has put it in this book:

      A philosopher is a poet in the mind.

      A poet is a philosopher in the heart.

      The Upanishads

      Their aspiration for understanding drew the Vedic sages at last to deep meditation on That One, the supreme Brahman or the Person, God, Who existed before the gods themselves came into being. The teachings of the ancient seers of Truth, emerging from their spiritual realisation, are most succinctly expressed in the Upanishads, the final part of the Veda. In the words of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan:

      The ideal which haunted the thinkers of the Upaniṣads, the ideal of man’s ultimate beatitude, the perfection of knowledge, the vision of the Real in which the religious hunger of the mystic for divine vision and the philosopher’s ceaseless quest for truth are both satisfied is still our ideal.2

      The Upanishads have been the source for much of Indian philosophy, both traditional and modern, but their influence is no longer confined to India. Their brilliance and depths of intuition are always fresh, compelling and provocative. Their essential teaching is that the innermost self or soul of every living being is one with the divine. When one knows one’s own true self or atman, one then also knows the highest reality and the ground of all existence. This realisation of oneness is the root of a universal love for all beings. It is reached by the practice of contemplative disciplines called yoga or ‘union’. The aim of the yoga of the Upanishads is a total self-transformation culminating in God-knowledge and God-union: He who knows Brahman becomes Brahman. As a modern seer-poet, a yogi and a knower of Brahman, Sri Chinmoy brings to his unique reflections on the meaning of the Upanishads his profound inner identification with their composers.

      The Bhagavad Gita and the Age of the Epics

      As the Vedic age drew to its close in the middle of the first millennium BCE, a new civilization was taking shape in India, and with it a new Hindu scripture. The Vedas were not accessible to everyone. Their sheer size and complexity, as well as their ancient symbolic language and ritual technicalities, by this time made Vedic study the work of many years. The sages who held this tradition came to feel that a ‘new Veda’ was needed which would contain, in a form available to all, everything which was necessary for human life. From history and legend, from the devotions of the people and from the Vedic revelation, two great epics were created: the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. Both are built around the lives of great heroes and saints and the war between good and evil. The Rāmāyaṇa tells of the deeds of Prince Rama of Ayodhya, for the Hindu faith one of the human Avatars, a ‘descent’ or incarnation of God. The Mahābhārata has as its core the story of five royal brothers, the Pāṇḍavas, and their rivalry with their cousins for the throne of the kingdom. They are helped in their struggles by Krishna, also a hero and a king, and another of the human Avatars. Both of the epics offer a vision of dharma, the right order of human life, along with teachings and abundant examples of how this vision can be manifested through right action.

      The Mahābhārata contains the Bhagavad Gita or ‘Song of the Lord’, the teachings of Krishna given to his intimate friend and disciple Arjuna as the great battle climaxing the epic is about to begin. It is the best known of all Indian scriptures, and as Sri Chinmoy says, the common property of all humanity. Countless seekers have found in the Gita not only inspiration and consolation, but also lucidly stated spiritual principles which they can apply in every inner and outer situation. Life is indeed a battle like the one Arjuna faces, and indeed Krishna teaches the way this battle can be faced, fought and won. Sri Chinmoy’s commentary explains how and why. The teaching of the Bhagavad Gita is love, devotion and surrender, and the dynamic yoga of action which is possible only when we live in love. It is, in essence, Sri Chinmoy’s own teaching as well—ancient, modern and eternal.

      Only Sri Chinmoy could have written this book. On the strength of his own inner realisation, he is able to enter into these ancient Indian treasurehouses of spirituality, and also into the needs and aspirations of seekers of today. He achieves the communication to our present lives of truths first taught thousands of years ago, so that they can be understood, appreciated and used. He is fresh and powerful in expression, but also lyrical and soulful as only a spiritual Master who is also a poet can be. Even when he is at his most philosophically subtle or sublimely mystical, he never loses his compassionate connection with the immediate human concerns of the reader. One has only to read a sentence or two to recognize an unmistakable voice. One has only to read a page or two to find not only a great teacher but also a true friend.3

      —Kusumita P. Pedersen

      Jamaica, NY

      1996

      The Vedas:

      Immortality’s

      First Call

      The Vedic Bird of Illumination

      Dear sisters and brothers, I shall be giving seven talks on the Vedas at the Seven Sisters colleges. Interestingly, the Rig Veda itself deals with seven special sisters. It tells us that there is a divine chariot with only one wheel, and that this chariot is drawn by one horse with seven names. Seven sisters sing spiritual songs while standing before the chariot. While singing, the seven sisters reveal the concealed message of life’s liberation and humanity’s perfection. (Ṛgveda I.164.3)

      Seven is an occult number. In the spiritual world the number seven has a most special significance. In the hoary past there were seven great Indian sages who saw the Truth, lived the Truth and became the Truth.

      There are seven important rivers in India. A river signifies movement; water signifies consciousness. The movement of consciousness is a continuous progress toward the farthest Beyond.

      There are seven notes in the musical scale. Each note has a special value of its own. Music is the mother tongue of humanity. God is the Supreme Musician. It is through music that we can enter into the universal harmony. It is through music that God’s Beauty is being manifested in His all-loving creation.

      There are seven colours in the rainbow. These colours indicate the stages of our spiritual journey toward the ultimate Goal. We all know that a rainbow is the sign of good luck and future progress. In the spiritual world, each colour of the rainbow is the harbinger of a new dawn.

      There are seven higher worlds and seven lower worlds.4 An aspiring human being enters into one of the seven higher worlds and makes progress in the inner life. Like a bird, his aspiring consciousness flies from one world to another, until finally he finds himself in the seventh world, Saccidānanda, the world of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss. There he becomes consciously and inseparably one with the Supreme Pilot. But when a human being deliberately and knowingly does wrong things, heinous things, he is compelled to enter into one of the seven lower worlds, which are the worlds of darkness, bondage and ignorance.

      Mother India is an aspiring tree. This aspiring tree has the Vedas as its only root. The root is Truth, the tree is Truth, the experience of the tree is Truth, the realisation of the tree is Truth, the revelation of the tree is Truth, the manifestation of the tree is Truth.

      The Vedic seers saw the Truth with their souls, in their Heavenly visions and in their earthly actions.

      Satyam eva jayate nānṛtam

      (Muṇḍakopaniṣad 3.1.6)

      Truth alone triumphs, not falsehood.

      This Truth teaches us how to be true brothers and sisters of humanity, conscious and devoted lovers of God and perfect masters of nature.

      The Vedic teachings are universal. In the Yajur Veda we clearly observe that the teachings of the Vedas are for all—the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas, the Sudras, even the Chandalas, who are the degraded and the abandoned. Men and women alike can study the Vedas. God is for all. The Vedas are for all. In the Vedic church no one is superior, no one is inferior; all are equal, all are children of God. These children of God can live in the heart of Truth and become the veritable pride of God.

      Each Vedic seer is a poet and a prophet. In the case of an ordinary poet, his poems are quite often based upon imagination. Imagination gives birth to his poetry. In the case of the Vedic poets, it was intuition that gave birth to their poems. This intuition is the direct knowledge of Truth. As regards prophets, very often we see that an ordinary prophet’s prophecy is based on a kind of unknown mystery. But in the case of the Vedic prophets, it was not so. Their prophecies were based on their full and conscious awareness of direct and immediate Truth. They brought to the fore this dynamic Truth to operate in the cosmic manifestation.

      The present-day world believes that the mind can offer the highest possible experience of reality. The Vedic seers

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