Wager of Ambrosia

The Debt we Owe to Vyasa

Chapter 2

Jnaneshwar likens the Gita to a rain-bearing cloud. No doubt   from its gleaming contents it is the abundant sea that supplies water to the nimbus; but it is the cloud, and not the sea, which pours beneficences on creature-kind. In that sense it proves more gainworthy than the source from which it comes. The formless incomprehensible Brahman is All-Knowledge and may be all right; but it is not accessible to the understanding and cannot be seized by expression, nor does it in any immediate way participate in our affairs. Of what direct use is it then for us? Yet it is the same All-Knowledge that the Gita brings to us in a great plentiful measure. The blank featureless Absolute wears the body of verses and gives to vision a recognisably surer and sharper form. In its consciousness-force is the transmuting glow of its own unknown and unknowable divinity. The Impersonal assumes personality and as a “preceptor, father, mother, friend, master, guide or lover” establishes an approachable relationship with the aspirant to fulfil his thousand fold longing. The Gita’s advice to abandon all rules of conduct and remain in the oneness of the supreme Person then becomes dynamically meaningful. But this dynamism is not a one-way dynamism. Indeed, the supreme Person lets himself loose in the rush of a creative delight and one wondrous way to breathe that delight could be through the Truth-Word’s assertive luminosity. That is what the Gita is. Vyasa received it and put it in a metrical form of the Anushtubha. This truly is a marvellous gift to sorrowing mankind who should always be grateful to him. Our best way of being thankful to him would be to practise what he urges us to do.

About the greatness of this work Jnaneshwar gives a very glowing account in a number of places. Thus at the beginning of the eighteenth chapter he describes the Gita-Palace or the Gita-Temple as follows: Imagine a mountain of precious stones and jewels; imagine somewhere there a quarry master busy with the excavation work; imagine also a wide flat land where an imposing temple is built using the unlimited supply of this construction material. From the quarried

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stones of life is raised a fortification around the edifice of the Mahabharata. The architectural minutiae, and the magnificence, are planned by the great Seer and the Upanishads are the mine of that imagination and the Vedas its mountain of gems. The dialogue between the Lord and the chosen Disciple provides the rocky blocks which are put one above another in a pile of knowledge reaching heaven. This Gita-Palace of Vishnu, gita-vaishnava-prasada, is the exceptional miracle that has come into existence through the genius of Vyasa. Some chant its glory while circumambulating it; some lean against the walls inside the temple and hear its recitations; some others with a copper piece and a betel leaf in their hand as their humble offering enter into the sanctum sanctorum of its meaning. There, by the Understanding of the Self, they unite themselves with Srihari. Thus it proves to be a Temple of Salvation, moksha prasada, for those who come to it. A philanthropist does not make a distinction between the high and the low, child or grown-up, rich or poor, when he is entertaining people at a banquet and, in the same manner, the Gita offers to all such an abundant and generous feast of benediction. Be it therefore reciting and chanting, or listening, or pondering over its sense, the Gita leads every one on the path of liberation.

This is the excellence which the verses of Vyasa bring to us. In it the sublimity of poetry is as natural as the beauty of a flower or the sweetness of sugar. The radiance that is everywhere gathers itself into a gleaming marvel and becomes the sun; this sun then stands at the centre of creation to give light to it and to sustain it with nourishing energy. The Lord of the Universe is now amidst us as the Word of the Gita. She is his puissant arm to establish his will in life. In the phrase of Jnaneshwar she is mantrapratipadya bhagawati, the Goddess Parvati expounding and firming up the might of the Supreme in a delightful revelatory manifestation.

The Gita appears in the Book of Bhishma, Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata, and begins with a description of the battle-scene. Two formidable armies are standing face to face and are poised to engage themselves in the War of Destruction of the World. Dhritarashtra’s hundred sons with the Axis Commanders are proud

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of their vast oceanic prowess and harbour no doubt of victory. The Pandavas on the other side, with a relatively smaller army, have the support of the virtuous Allies, with Krishna as the wise counsellor as well as the charioteer of Arjuna. War-conchs are blown and the call has come. But at that precise moment sags the spirit of the Hero. This of course cannot be allowed to determine the fate of the nations and the divine Charioteer intervenes and takes the reins in his hand; he makes the human Warrior fight the battle of life. The unAryan attitude is an infirmity and the chosen Winner of the Trophy has to throw it away; by the acceptance of the highest Will he has to rise in thought and feeling and action, in conformity with his nature, swabhava, and wield the defeatless weapon. Though in the immediate context the Gita is an exhortation and is meant to bring back the fighter on the path from which he has deviated in a moment of weakness, the purpose is to establish the Law of Righteousness in the dynamism of a thousand workings. The divine Teacher is on the battlefield, in the full splendour of avataric divinity, and has taken control of the world and of all the occult forces that have precipitated here now. He has come to exterminate evil and to uphold the supreme Dharma. “Though unborn,” to paraphrase the Teacher's words according to Jnaneshwar, “I take birth by the process of Prakriti-Yoga. In the least affected by it is the indivisibility of my consciousness, my imperishable and immutable nature. My coming and my going are but the reflections of Maya and, though active in works, my freedom remains uncircumscribed. Imaged I cannot be, but by the potency of my Prakriti I take form for special purposes. Then I remove the darkness of ignorance and demolish the foundations of falsehood and tear to pieces the formats of retrograde and sombre powers. By supporting the actions of good and noble and virtuous souls I hoist the flag of happy victory. I destroy the crookedness-mongers and the demon-hosts and I protect the holy and the saintly. The soot of impiety and non-reason and faithlessness accumulated over ages I cleanse and I keep the lamp trim and make it burn with a steady and bright flame. This then becomes a joyous desirable festival of light for the Yogis. The world gets filled with truthful bliss, satsukha; everywhere people follow in the conduct of righteousness; devotees remain in the nobility and fullness of graceful calm. Howsoever huge be the

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mountain-heap of sins, it gets dissolved with my birth of incarnation. For this work from age to age I come and I uphold the order of the worlds. Those who live to serve me, or those who take pleasure in the knowledge of the Self, or those who are verily the dazzling mass of spiritual austerities, shining in their tapas, the ones who by their holiness give holiness to the holy and sacred places—they indeed dwell in me and come to me, become one with me, madbhavam-agatah.”

Such is the assurance of the avataric divinity and it has come down to us by the most well-disposed and kindly act of Vyasa. He wrote it out in splendid poetry and fixed it permanently for us. How can we be sufficiently faithful to it in the conduct of our daily transactions should be the thing of concern for us. Sri Krishna enfolds Arjuna in his arms and, without breaking their two-ness, makes him one like himself, dwaita na modita kele apana aise, says Jnaneshwar. This is a spiritual possibility opened out to man and man should avail himself of it for his own well-being.

Sanjaya, the war reporter, is giving his account to the blind king Dhritarashtra in his palace. He could see what was happening on the battlefield and hear the exact words spoken by Vasudeva to the great-souled Partha. Sanjaya owes to Vyasa the exceptional boon of subtle sight and hearing. In his exultation he says so and asserts further that wherever the supreme Master of Yoga and the Wielder of the mighty Bow are, surely Fortune and Victory and the luminous executive Power in full majesty and the Right in her steadfastness are there. The whole experience for him, of listening to the Gita was that of the Embrace of the Eternal, brahmatvachi mithi in the language of the Marathi Adi Kavi. The gripping felicity of Jnaneshwar’s poem also has that bright and lucid astounding quality which is as fresh as when it was composed seven hundred years ago. That indeed is the authentic mark of its overhead-spiritual character.

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