Chapter II (VERSE 62 & 63) & CHAPTER XVI ( VERSE 21)
Sankhya Yoga – The Yoga of Knowledge
CHAPTER II
(Verse 62)
ध्यायतो विषयान्पुंसः सङ्गस्तेषूपजायते ।
सङ्गात्सञ्जायते कामः कामात्क्रोधोऽभिजायते ॥ २-६२॥
When a man thinks of objects, “attachment” for them arises; from attachment “desire” is born; from desire arises “anger”
(Verse 63)
क्रोधाद्भवति सम्मोहः सम्मोहात्स्मृतिविभ्रमः ।
स्मृतिभ्रंशाद् बुद्धिनाशो बुद्धिनाशात्प्रणश्यति ॥ २-६३॥
From anger comes “delusion” ; from delusion “loss of memory” ; from loss of memory the “destruction of discrimination” ; from destruction of discrimination, he “perishes.”
From this verse onwards, Lord Krishna explains in five noble stanzas, the Hindu psychological theory of the fall of man from Godhood. This is only to bring home to Arjuna that he, the mighty-armed, must try to conquer all his Indriyas from all sides. Such a man, concludes Krishna, is a-man-of-Perfection as conceived in and contemplated upon, as explained in and glorified by the scriptural books of the Hindus.
This section also gives us a clear pattern of the autobiography of all seekers who have, after long periods of practice, come to wreck themselves upon the rocks of failure and disappointment. To a true seeker in Vedanta, no fall is ever possible. Instances of unsuccessful seekers are not few, and in all of them the mistake that we notice is that they ultimately fell back to be victims of sense entanglement; and in all those cases we also notice that the fallen one drank the very dregs of it; there is no half-way house for such victims — a slip for them means total destruction !!
The ladder-of-fall is very beautifully described here. The path of destruction for a seeker is so elaborately detailed in these stanzas that, fallen as we are, we shall know how to get back to our pristine glory and inward perfection.
Like a tree emerges from a seed, the source of all evil starts from our own wrong thinking, or false imaginations. Thought is creative; it can make us, or mar us. If rightly harnessed, it can be used for constructive purposes; if misused, it can totally destroy us. When we constantly think upon a sense-object, the CONSISTENCY OF THOUGHT creates in us an ATTACHMENT for the object of our thought; and, when more and more thoughts flow towards an object of attachment, they crystallize to form a BURNING DESIRE for the possession and enjoyment of the object-of-attachment. The same force of the motion, when directed towards obstacles that threaten the non-fulfilment of our desires, is called anger (Krodha).
An intellect fumed with anger (Krodha) comes to experience DELUSION and, the deluded intellect has no power of discrimination, because it loses all MEMORIESOF- THE-PAST. Any one filled with anger is capable of doing acts totally forgetting himself and his relationship with all others. Sri Shankaracharya says in this connection that a deluded fool, in this mental condition, might even fight with his own teachers or parents, forgetting his indebtedness to these revered persons.
Thus, when an individual, through wrong channels of thinking, becomes ATTACHED to an object, the attachment matures into a burning DESIRE to posses that object. Then, when an obstruction to possess that object of- desire shoots him up into a fit of ANGER, the mental disturbance caused by the emotion DELUDES the intellect and makes the individual FORGET his sense of proportion and his sense of relationship with things and beings around him. When thus, a deluded intellect forgets its dignity of culture, it loses its discriminative capacity, which is called, in common parlance, as ‘conscience’ (Buddhi). Conscience is that knowledge enjoyed for differentiating the good from the evil, which often forms a standard in ourselves, and, whenever it can, warns the mind against its lustful sensuousness and animalism. Once this ‘conscience’ is dulled, the man becomes a two legged- animal with no sense of proportion, and with no ears for any subtler call in him, than the howling urgent hungers of the flesh. Thereby, he is guaranteeing for himself a complete destruction inasmuch as such a bosom cannot come to perceive, or strive for, the Higher, the Nobler and the Diviner.
Daivasura Sampad Vibhaga Yoga – The Yoga of Divine and Devilish Estates
CHAPTER XVI
(Verse 21)
त्रिविधं नरकस्येदं द्वारं नाशनमात्मनः ।
कामः क्रोधस्तथा लोभस्तस्मादेतत्त्रयं त्यजेत् ॥ १६-२१॥
These three are the gates of hell, destructive of the Self — lust, anger and greed; therefore, one should abandon these three.
The Lord indicates here that there are three gateways to reach HELL. Earlier in a stanza, in the very same chapter, He described that HELL and HEAVEN are conditions created by the mind only; they are merely subjective experiences in life, and the three false values mentioned here are the main causes of the former.
DESIRE, ANGER, GREED — The main theme of the entire chapter is to call man away from a life of sense gratification into the ampler fields of desireless actions and egoless perfections.
Where there is desire, anger is a natural corollary. The constant flying of an individual’s thoughts towards an object of gratification is called ‘desire,’ and when the steady flow of these thoughts of aggrandisement and possession are deflected by some obstacle, the refracted thoughts are called ‘anger.’ When disappointed in desire gratifications, a storm of revolt rises in the mind, as a consequence of which anger soars up to toss, wreck and sink the boat of life.
If ANGER is thus the thought-storm arising in our mind at the disappointment of a desire, GREED is the erosion of our mental strength and inner peace when desires are more and more satiated. When a desire gets fulfilled, an insatiable thirst for more and more joy holds the individual, and this endless appetite ruins the mental strength and saps dry the personality-vitality in the individual. Greed is a sense of dissatisfaction constantly pursuing and poisoning the sense of satisfaction that we have already experienced. In an undisciplined man, there can be no satisfaction at any time; even when his desires are satisfied he is unhappy, because his appetite for enjoyment is thereby sharpened and he hungers for more if the desires are throttled, the disappointment brings into him anger, and he suffers the consequent wretchedness.
If this logic about the action and interaction between desire, anger, and greed is accepted, then we are forced to accept Krishna’s conclusion in this stanza: “THEREFORE ONE SHOULD FORSAKE THESE THREE.”