Let the Gita lead from the voluminous ambiguous expanse of
the Vedas to their essence by Chaitanya
Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita
The Vedas are a voluminous body of knowledge. Often compared
to a desire tree, they provide guidelines for people at all levels of
consciousness to fulfill their desires.
Vedic knowledge can be ambiguous because guidelines for
people at one level of consciousness may not apply at another level, and
readers may not be able to figure out what applies to which level. The Vedas
are like an unabridged dictionary. Just as finding thirty-five meanings for one
word can overwhelm a linguistic neophyte, the many Vedic guidelines on one
subject can overwhelm a religious neophyte.
How can we go beyond such ambiguity in the Vedas?
Just as finding thirty-five meanings for one word can
overwhelm a linguistic neophyte, the many Vedic guidelines on one subject can
overwhelm a religious neophyte.
By going to their source.
The Vedas are divine in origin, and Krishna is the highest
manifestation of divinity. So, he is the best authority for conveying the Vedicessence. And he declares in the Bhagavad-gita (15.15) that the ultimate purpose
of all the Vedas is to know him. This is not a self-promoting claim of an
egoistic speaker – it is the philosophical truth shared by the supreme seer,
the Absolute Truth manifesting in a personal form.
The Vedas are meant to fulfill our desires, and the deepest
of our desires is the desire to love and be loved. Indeed, nothing can satisfy
our heart as fully as love. Krishna, being the all-attractive, all-loving
Supreme Person, is the object wherein our loving propensity finds perfect and
perennial fulfillment. Vedic wisdom comprises a progressive program for
increasing our faith by satisfying our many surface desires till we take the
leap of faith towards loving the one who will fulfill our deepest desire. What
the Vedas point towards, the Gita focuses on.
Thus, the Gita takes us from the voluminous ambiguous
multi-level guidelines to the top-level goal of all the guidelines: Krishna.
No comments:
Post a Comment