Our Upanishads teach “Prithivyaam Na Ashru paatayet” — We should not “cry”. Crying is to be interpreted as stress , anxiety or sadness which we should not be feeling or causing. But how? We fall to crying if we don’t check “criticizing”. To check criticizing , we should stop “complaining”. Crying, criticizing and complaining (3 Cs) can end once and for all if we know that our nature is “contentment”. The fabric of “I” is contentment. We still complain, criticize and cry because we dont “know” our nature. We only “believe” that our nature is contentment.There is a large gap between belief and knowing. The belief has to evolve to faith, faith has to evolve to trust, and trust has to evolve to knowing. Practice/application is what helps with all of this evolution. That is the vision of this course.
Arjuna (Aarjavam or simple or honest) attracts Achyutha (the one who never falls, one who has no crisis and knows himself/herself). Prince Arjuna is going through an identity crisis and asks Achyutha for help. We too are experiencing a crisis, we don’t know that we are joy and we want to evolve. In Shloka 7 of Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2, Bhagavan Krishna is guiding prince Arjuna to “not take your thoughts for granted”. Arjuna is not experiencing pity but justifying his vice. Arjuna tells Lord Krishna that he needs Krishna’s thoughts to help his thoughts and to guide him definitively. Not taking anything for granted encourages us to think deeply. The deeper we think about objective matters, the more deeply we will think about subjective matters.
Chapter 8, verse 24: AgniH (fire) here is to be felt as grace. When we have an activity that we love to do we feel that fire inside us, and we don’t want to rest! JyotiH means light or morning. If we feel that grace, we are awake to greet light. AhaH(day) is iconic for being energetic. ShuklaH (bright) here means growth (like the waxing moon). Shanmasa means six months and uttarayanam means rising or northern. Here “Shanmasa Uttarayanam” is indicative of momentum. Grace should be leading us to momentum and once you have momentum, you cannot stop and it just continues. For someone who is evolving, that person will “go” (gacchanti) inside or “change” or evolve” . One will evolve from being an extrovert to an introvert, from someone who seeks “attention” to someone who seeks “intention”. Only those people who know “Brahman” (existence, awareness, joy) are those who rediscover the nature of “I” as contentment.
In this shloka, we see how our day should be. AgniH is as if a “minute” , jyotiH is like a particular “hour” , ahaH is a “day”, shhuklaH is a “week”, maasa is a “month”. What is indicated here is that, once one starts putting effort to evolve, it has to be all the time (full-time).
The first shloka of this course (Chapter 2 shloka 7) highlighted honesty, and this second shloka (Chapter 8, shloka 24) highlights simplicity.
To be able to wake up before the sun, be energetic and not break the momentum, we have to simplify our lifestyle. To understand the fullness of this shloka (which highlights the path of the sun), we need to understand the opposite path indicated in the next shloka, which highlights the path of the moon. Those who follow the path of the moon are following dependent joy (moon has no independent light) , path of materialism, and they live for valuables. Path of the sun is a path of independent joy, the path of values. Swami Chinmayananda describes path of the sun as raising your standard of life and the path of the moon is raising your standard of living. Is our time being invested in valuables or values — that will determine how we die!