On 6/19/2014 6:38 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]
wrote:
But Richard, the entire Gita is the Lord telling Arjuna to act!
Krishna is not telling the gunas to act! In fact He's telling Arjuna
to be without the gunas and act!
>
According to MMY, we should act, but act from the level of
transcendence, free from the three gunas born of nature. All the ancient
Indian sages, with the exception of the materialist Charvaka, agreed
with the Samkhya philosophy concerning the self-generated Purusha, the
Being, and the relative nature of the thirty-two evolutes of prakriti.
There is Purusha, which stands alone, eternal and unchanging, and there
is prakriti, governed by three gunas, and thirty-two consitituents,
comprising the whole in one easily comprehended matrix of change. The
two are totally separate - one being an object of knowledge and the
other being the witnessing subject.
Maybe we can agree that it's a paradox...
>
"Two birds sat in a tree; one ate the fruit; another looked on." -
Shvetashvatara (4.7)
>
On Wednesday, June 18, 2014 9:54 PM, "'Richard J. Williams'
pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
wrote:
On 6/17/2014 8:43 PM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com
<mailto:sharelon...@yahoo.com> [FairfieldLife] wrote:
SoundofStillness, I used the concordance to Maharishi's Gita
translation and checked the references under "effort." Chapter 4, vs
12 to 15 seem useful wrt to your question. In vs 12, Maharishi makes
the point that animals depend on the force of evolution to move
upward. But humans have freedom of action and therefore development
"depends upon how he acts and what he does." Also in vs 12 Maharishi
introduces the idea that the Lord gives rise to all action AND at the
same time is separate from it. this is elaborate on in the next few
verses.
>
According to MMY in CBG: "The authorship of action does not in reality
belong to the "I". It is a mistake to understand that "I" do this, "I"
experience this and "I" know this. All action is performed by the
three gunas born of Nature." - MMY on BG - V: 14; 1967, p. 259.
The implications of these passages indicate that the nature of the
mind is appreciated as it is, separate from activity. The "goal" of TM
does not consist in achieving anything or reaching anything, but
simply in recognizing what already is the case, that the "I" is
essentially uninvolved with activity. Here, the ONLY criterion is
internal: the Self cognized as independent of action.
/"But he who knows the truth about the divisions of the gunas and
their actions, O mighty armed, knowing that it is the gunas which act
upon the gunas, remains unattached."/ MMY on BG - V: 27; 1967, p. 220
On Tuesday, June 17, 2014 6:01 PM, "'Richard J. Williams'
pundits...@gmail.com <mailto:pundits...@gmail.com> [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
<mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
On 6/17/2014 1:07 PM, soundofstilln...@ymail.com
<mailto:soundofstilln...@ymail.com> [FairfieldLife] wrote:
From my minimalist way of understanding, Shyam Ranganathan is
suggesting, as he did in his translation and commentary of the Yoga
sSutra that Purusha = Person indeed does have "Agency" according to
the great philosopher Maharishi Patanjali.
"The Sankhya Karika appears to state that it is nature that brings
about freedom, while Patañjali’s view seems to be that it is persons
that are the explanation of freedom (I write about this in my
introduction to my translation). The relevant points of comparison
are the Sankhya Karika 17, 44–45, 62–64, where the person is
described as irrelevant to the process of liberation, and Yoga Sutra
I.21, IV.18, and IV.29 where persons and their self improvement are
treated as instrumental to liberation . . ."
http://indianphilosophyblog.org/2014/03/07/moral-standing-and-yoga/
"irrelevant to the process of liberation" sayest the Sankhya Karika
"persons and their self improvement are treated as instrumental to
liberation" sayest the Yoga Sutra
Letting go for a moment (or two) everything you've read, thought and
talked about, concentrated on, contemplated . . . and based on your
Person(al) experience of tens of thousands of hours of meditation,
what sez you?
Do Purusha(s) = You have agency regarding their/Your realization,
enlightenment and liberation?
Or as the Sankhya Karika and Vedanta suggest, from my understanding,
Purusha, Person, Pure Awareness,
is but the observer with no capacity to act at all.
And what did Maharishi have to say?
>
In commenting on Bhagavad Gita, Maharishi has brought our attention
to the existence of the gunas, whose concern is action, which, in
every case, is the result of the interplay of three constituents born
of nature - eternal becoming, termed prakriti in the Gita. Rajas,
sattva and tamas - these three propensities regulate the state of
action and are relative to each other and to all that exists in the
phenomenal world. That is, nature, which is everything, is subject
to the law of causation - cause and effect. It is the gunas, without
exception, that govern all action-reaction in the material world,
according to the rishis.
However, Maharishi has also called our attention to the fact that
nature, governed by the three gunas, is entirely separate from the
transcendental field - the field of Being, termed Purusha in the Gita.
Work cited:
"On the Bhagavad Gita"
By Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
II., v. 45, p. 126 VI., v. 1, p. 384
>
