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DEVOTION TO TRUTH DOES NOT PRECLUDE DEVOTION TO GOD BUT REINFORCES IT

DEVOTION TO TRUTH DOES NOT PRECLUDE DEVOTION TO GOD BUT REINFORCES IT

Bhagavad Gita, On Facebook, Ask a Hindu

Raghavendra Rao

Christian Alejandro

If f you read more carefully, you should note that I did not say that Bhagavad Gita is not without value. It is of immense value, depending on how you use it for personal emancipation and this changes during the course of one’s life, if one is sincerely looking for truth in terms of gyana and karma. So, in my case I used to in the 1980s treat the Bhagavad Gita as sacred, it was a guide fine, but those remain words. They do not have explanatory notes attached to them in any given and required degree of satisfaction to a devotee depending on the strength of his devotion to truth. So form time immemorial we have had Swamijis like Swami Gambhirananda whose explanatory notes became widely acceptable, and we have these publications to reflect upon even now. Each devotee is at a different stage in the development of his or her knowledge, and elaborates likewise on the true value of the scriptures for themselves through the passage of their individual lives. So I am not denigrating the intrinsic value of the Bhagavad Gita. I am just saying be intelligent and develop yourself accordingly until you get to a point that you do not need the Holy Book any longer, and then you have arrived at the point where it is merely the ‘darshan’ to even see the book on your bookshelf to be regarded still as sacred. It is when one has total knowledge that this happens, when one is permanently in ananda that one has acquired the necessary knowledge and wisdom, having fixed one’s mind over the long period since one’s awakening to seek better means of acquiring truth and wisdom than just from reading the shastras. For look at the limitations, first you have to master Sanskrit, or English for the examination of the interpretations of Bhagavad Gita, then you have to have time to test it all out for yourself in your own life and come up with your own interpretation of the lessons of Bhagavad Gita in accordance with other selected ‘scriptures’ that you value on knowledge and wisdom, such as going to university and learning about Nature, the Biology, the Geology, the History since the very beginning, and try and figure out whether if Bhagavad Gita is truly reliable there would also have been a Grand Design of Creation. So, my point is do not be restricted to the Holy Book, as you should not be restricted to a specific guru. When you do all this in a sincere and unrelenting search for the Truth, fearless of the consequences in simultaneously living in the jungle of Nature with opposition from vested interests whose paths you come to cross.

As @RitaGupta knows by now, I also get ‘darshan’ now from selected film songs and their lyrics from our beloved India as these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz7C0MEaMfQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReFDB8cexLg

When one arrives at a full understanding of Reality, everything seen and heard is a ‘darshan’, idol worship is darshan, likewise, and our karma, if it survives to let one reflect upon what one has done in bhakti is ‘darshan’ too. Call me mad, but that is what devotion to God brings one to in my experience of the ananda of being free, in liberty, and seen that what I had contemplated, namely, that God made Nature for all living beings to live freely in independence of freethought and expression to assert their truths, has come true for me. Dharma is that pursuit of truth nonchalantly, spontaneously and unpremeditately in surrender to God through truth-based karma that proves that He is ‘Duniya ke Rakhwale’.

http://vishistaadvaitavedanta.bravesites.com/

 

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