| Discourses On Gita By Acharya Vinoba Bhave |
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| Discourses On Gita |
| THE TEACHING IN BRIEF : SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND EQUANIMITY |
The Ideal Teacher20. The shaastra and the kalaa, the science and the art, have both been expounded - but even after this, the whole picture does not stand clearly before our eyes. Science is absolute and unqualified, art has quality; shaastra is nirguna, kalaa is saguna. But even a quality does not manifest itself to the eye, unless it assumes a form. The saguna, if it is not given a form, may be as elusive as the absolute. The way out of this difficulty is to behold the man in whom the quality has taken shape. This is why Arjuna says, "Lord, you have taught me the most important truth of life, and the art by which these can be bought into practice.But the picture is not yet clear. I wish you to illustrate them by citing an example? Tell me the marks by which one can know the man whose mind holds fast to these principles, and whose every pulse spells out the yoga of renunciation. Tell me about him whom we call the sthitaprajna (the man of steadfast wisdom), who shows us the profound depths of renunciation, who is absorbed in oneness with action (karma-samadhi) who is as firm as the great Mount Meru. How does he speak, how does he sit, how does he walk? What does he look like, how can one recognize him? Will you not tell me all this, my Lord?" 21. It is in answer to this
entreaty that at the end of the Second Chapter, the Lord has drawn
for us in eighteen slokas (verses) the heroic and sublime
character of the sthitaprajna. In these eighteen slokas
he has distilled the essence of the eighteen chapters of the Gita. |
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