LORD KRISHNA’S TWO IMPORTANT TEACHINGS
Lord Krishna’s birthday is called
Janmashtami. It is being celebrated today in India as well as in some other
parts of the world as piously as possible.
In the literary and religious
history, Lord Krishna is famous as the
author of Bhagavad Gita ---The Song of God
which is divided into eighteen chapters titled as :
The Sorrow of Arjuna, The Yoga of
Knowledge, Karma Yoga, Renunciation Through Knowledge, The Yoga of
Renunciation, The Yoga of Meditation, Knowledge And Experience, The Way To
Eternal Brahman, The Yoga of Mysticism, Divine Glory, The Vision of God In His
Universal Form, The Yoga of Devotion, The Field And Its Knower, The Three
Gunas, Devotion To The Supreme Spirit,
Divine And Demonic Tendencies, Three Kinds of Faith, and The Yoga of Renunciation.
This write-up is concerned with only
two most important chapters --- The Yoga of Knowledge and The Yoga of Renunciation.
In The Yoga of Knowledge Lord
Krishna acts as a teacher , the remover of ignorance, because Arjuna who was to fight against his rivals
firmly refuses to perform this duty since who will die in the war were either his
relatives or superior elderly persons.
According to Lord Krishna Arjuna is
ignorant about the reality of death, He regards the death of the body as the
total death of an individual who is composed of not only of the body also of
the soul.
The body, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna ,
is perishable , but not the soul. The soul is birthless, deathless, endless,
changeless, etc. It does not die but assumes a new form. The body when it becomes
old is like a worn-out garment, thrown
away to don a new one. Thus whom Arjuna will be killing will not die; they will
be reborn in a different form. So fighting is not really murderous. This
enlightenment by Lord Krishna is eternally inspirational for all humans.
In The Yoga of Renunciation, the
great Lord asserts that our actions should not be motivated by desire. They
should be done with non-attachment i.e. without expectation of their fruits. However, this teaching of the great Lord
should not lead to inaction. Humans are selfish. They are desirous for an attractive
fruit for their actions. They work for some return, not fruitlessness. That is why
they are advised to adopt the sacred attitude of renunciation. Act you must but
without love for its reward. Thus, you have mandatory right to work but not for
its reward.
The ultimate moral of
the Bhagavad-Gita is dedication of all actions to God with no ego, no
attachment, no desire for reward, and no claim for self-advancement.
True renunciation is the soul of The Song of God.
*****
G.R.Kanwal
4th September 2026
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