| Discourses On Gita By Acharya Vinoba Bhave |
 |
| Discourses On Gita |
| BHAKTI : SAGUNA AND NIRGUNA |
| But his heart did not grieve in the least over the news, as if nothing had happened. You know the saying, "The master died and the pupil cried. The teaching and the learning were both wasted!" Such was not the state of Uddhava. He did not feel that there was any separation. All his life he had performed saguna worship and lived in the presence of the Lord. But now he had begun to experience the joy even of nirguna. In this way he had traversed the path to nirguna. Saguna may come first, but the next step of nirguna has to follow; otherwise there is no completeness. 27. Arjuna's state is just the opposite. What had Krishna asked
him to do? He had entrusted to him the duty of protecting the women after his life-time. Arjuna had gone
from Delhi to Dvaraka and was returning with the ladies. At Hissar, in the Punjab, on the way, some
robbers stopped and plundered them. Arjuna was
considered the most valiant man of his age; he was famous as a hero. He was
celebrated as
Jaya, the And this Arjuna, in the neighborhood of Ajmer, too to his feet and fled. Because he had parted from Krishna, his mind was quite upset; it was as if he had lost his life. All that remained was an unsupported corpse. The fact is that, Arjuna, the nirguna worshipper who had constantly performed karma and lived far away from Krishna, found in the end that this separation was unbearable. His nirguna gave way at last under this stress. It was as if he had come to the end of all karma. Saguna experience came at last to complete his nirguna bhakti. That is, saguna has to go towards nirguna and nirguna has to come towards saguna. Thus each completes the other. |
|
|
