Zitat von Vedanta am 22. April 2017, 21:52 Uhr

Class on Hinduism (Part 8, second continuation)
HH Shri Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji Maharaja

Verse number 14 now describes Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, who are the main heroes here in Bhagavad Gita, now the focus comes onto them.

tataḥ śvetair hayair yukte   mahati syandane sthitau
mādhavaḥ pāṇḍavaś caiva   divyau śaṅkhau pradadhmatuḥ

Then, Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, seated on a magnificent chariot yoked by white horses, blew their divine conches.

Bhagavad Gita 1.14

Now Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna are also blowing their conches which means that they are saying:

We accept your challenge.
We are ready.

It is spoken here of their divine conches. After that he describes the conches blown by the others, those conches also had names. Then he says:

sa ghoṣo dhārtarāṣṭrāṇāṁ   hṛdayāni vyadārayat
nabhaś ca pṛthivīṁ caiva   tumulo 'bhyanunādayan

The terrible sound, resounding through sky and earth, tore the hearts of your sons and supporters.

- Bhagavad Gita 1.19

Why it shattered the hearts on the side of the Kauravas and not of the Pāṇḍavas? Because they were fighting for the wrong cause, everybody knew this, Duryodhana and his supporters, they all knew. Therefore, the sound was terrifying to them, not to the Pāṇḍavas.

If we want to remain free from fear
we should not act wrongly.
Whenever we act
in an unjust manner
we are sowing the seed of fear
in our heart.

If I don‘t do anything wrong then I don‘t need to fear. If you are speeding on the highway then you have fear that you might get caught by the police. But if you are going properly by the assigned speed limit, there is no fear. Whenever you do some illegal act, immoral act or behave in an unjust manner then fear comes.

With verse number 20, we are now actually entering into the main plot of Bhagavad Gita.

atha vyavasthitān dṛṣṭvā   dhārtarāṣṭrān kapi-dhvajaḥ
pravṛtte śastra-sampāte    dhanur udyamya pāṇḍavaḥ
hṛṣīkeśaṁ tadā vākyam   idam āha mahī-pate

Then, O Emperor, seeing your sons and supporters arrayed and ready to shoot, Arjuna, the son of Pāṇḍu, whose flag carries the symbol of Hanuman, took up his bow and addressed the following words to Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

- Bhagavad Gita 1.20

This verse is very important because from here now, the scene changes. If you look at verse number 20, it starts with the word atha. This word atha is a very important word in Sanskrit and it is commonly used when there is some change coming, something new is coming. Anybody here has read the yoga sutras? How to they start? They start with atha, right? Atha yoga-anuśāsanam. It is the same word. Atha is translated as now. It signifies something new. Atha yoga-anuśāsanam means:

You have done
all kinds of things.
Now come, listen to the yoga sutras!

Atha vyavasthitān dṛṣṭvā means: Now change! Ok, now all this description of the army, this is gone. Now, let‘s come to the real thing, Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, because they are the heroes here.

He [Sañjaya] says that Arjuna takes his bow and he is ready to shoot. Because when the conches are blown from both sides, now you can start shooting, now it is allowed. Before that it was not allowed to do that. Just like when there is some match going on, when the whistle is blown, then they start attacking. So when he takes his bow and arrow and he is ready to fight, then he does something unusual. And this is what brings Bhagavad Gita into existence. He should have just fought, but he tells Kṛṣṇa that:

arjuna uvāca
senayor ubhayor madhye   rathaṁ sthāpaya me 'cyuta
yāvad etān nirīkṣe 'haṁ   yoddhu-kāmān avasthitān
kair mayā saha yoddhavyam   asmin raṇa-samudyame

Arjuna said:
O Acyuta, place my chariot between the two armies, so I can carefully observe these warriors arrayed desiring to fight, and can see with whom I have to fight in this war.

- Bhagavad Gita 1.21-22

Acyuta is another name for Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa has got many names as you will see in Bhagavad Gita. Sometimes He is called Hṛṣīkeśa, sometimes Acyuta, sometimes Madhusūdana, sometimes Arisūdana … He had many, many names. Kṛṣṇa is a very popular name, but besides Kṛṣṇa, He has hundreds of other names. If there is a person with that many names - that is Kṛṣṇa. Usually, you may have two or three names. At home maybe your parents call you with one name, your friends with another, maybe at college with another name. But Kṛṣṇa, He had so many names like Keśava, Acyuta, Govinda, as you will see. And all these names have a meaning. In Sanskrit, all the names have a meaning. Therefore, it also has a significance, why a particular name is being used, although it is difficult to convey the significance within the translation. In the translation, either you just use the name or you can say it is Kṛṣṇa‘s name, that‘s all.

So Arjuna said: O Acyuta, place my chariot between the two armies, so I can carefully observe all these warriors desiring to fight, who are arrayed on the battlefield and with whom I must encounter in this enterprise of war. This is a very unusual thing. If there is a fight going on, the enemies are facing each other - then who would like to go in the middle of both? That means, you are asking for trouble, right? Because you are going to get shot from both sides. Therefore, it is very unusual for Arjuna to say that. Besides, the conches had already been blown, i.e. the signal has been given for war. And then he says: Please place my chariot in the middle of both armies. What is the significance of this? As he says: I want to see with whom I have to fight. kair mayā saha yoddhavyam asmin raṇa-samudyame. „With whom I have to fight“ implies both meanings: Those who are on my side who will fight with me, and who are my enemies with whom I have to fight. This means he wants to gaze the strength of the enemy and his own strength.

For us who are on the spiritual path, the significance is that:

When you come to the spiritual path
there is going to be a war,

because you are trying to change your lifestyle. You are getting into something new. Now, your old habits are going to trouble you. Some of the old habits may be good habits. Maybe you are already a little bit spiritual, you had some good lifestyle. And there may be some things that are unwanted. You have to know which of your qualities are favorable for your journey, and which ones are not favorable. So you have to fight with them. There are some which will oppose you which you have to fight with, and there are some which will assist you in the fight. Therefore, when you begin your journey on the spiritual path you have to do introspection. That is the meaning of being situated in the center of both armies. Now I introspect and see. This is a tough job. Why it is a tough job? Because we have our own attachments. And attachments they make us conditioned. How do they condition us?

We don‘t want to see our bad side,
we only want to see the good side.

It is difficult to see one‘s own defects and flaws. Even when someone points them out to you, you are not willing to accept, right? Therefore, Arjuna is being very bold that he is asking Kṛṣṇa: Please put my chariot in the center, I want to know. This is the reason why Arjuna is a person who is fit for spiritual life. One who decides to see like this, that means the person wants to bring a change in his or her life. Otherwise, we continue following our nature - our instinct, basically. We don‘t take stock of our good and bad sides, we don‘t do this introspection. Of course, the purpose of introspection is to bring a change in yourself. Generally, however, we are happy that some people are praising us, we feel satisfied with that. And if some people are criticizing us, then we defend ourselves against that criticism and we say:

These guys don‘t understand me.
They don‘t know who I am.

Arjuna is willing to take this step of knowing who is on his side and who is on the other side. That is the significance.