Bhagavad Gita classes: Where we are and what we are doing?
We recently finished the fourth chapter in our daily Gita class that I am giving on Zoom. Up until now, we have been reading the Gita with three Sanskrit commentaries, those of Sridhara, Vishwanatha and Baladeva. Occasionally we turned to Madhusudana Saraswati's Gūḍhārtha-dīpikā for insight, but with the above message, I announced that beginning with the fifth chapter, we would read Madhusudan in his entirety as well.
Though I have long recognized the justifiable reputation of Madhusudana's commentary, we are generally not encouraged to read him because he is a known opponent of Vyasa Tirtha, the accarya of the Madhva line and senior contemporary of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He is, ergo, a Mayavadi.
Nevertheless, because his impact on Vishwanath and Baladeva is so clear, I thought it would be foolish not to take what he has written into full account. And there is more to it than that--Madhusudana's commentary is also an excellent resource for learning Sanskrit philosophical prose, which can be quite well-written, even literary.
Where the Gita is concerned, I would say he is even more enjoyable to read than Vishwanath, who normally wins that prize for his often imaginative commentaries on the Bhagavatam. He and Baladeva are generally more circumspect. They go into much less detail than he, clearly ceding to Madhusudana nearly all the terrain that he has taken.
Madhusudana is so well versed in the Six Philosophies that he gives us an education in Yoga Sutra, Purva Mimamsa, Vedanta, etc., showing how the Gita encompasses the whole gamut of ancient Indian philosophy.
If we get the fuller picture of the Gita that Madhusudana paints, we also get a better perspective from which to read the Gaudiya commentators. Here and there Vishwanath and Baladeva may take exception to something he says, but for the most part they do not challenge him. Rather they revere him for several devotional verses he wrote to the Krishna of Vrindavan and quote them. Such as this from his commentary to Gītā 15.18.
So they revere him and indeed take light from him -- even though he is well known as an Advaita-vadi.
Most of the time, Sanskrit prose is (unlike kāvya) structurally very simple. Its art mostly lies in the clever juxtaposition of compound words, often quite lengthy and containing entire clauses of meaning, relating them to one another through the case endings. The syntax thus remains reasonably simple, but often difficult to render coherently into an English translation. Nevertheless, the capacity of Sanskrit to express ideas in this way is marvelous. It is the Sanskrit way of thinking.
In short, it is an excellent specimen of sophisticated but accessible Sanskrit prose.
I wrote to an old student who is currently not following the course:
Naturally those who have been following since the beginning have made a lot of progress, so one might find it a little intimidating to join at first if one is a bit behind. But now would not be a bad place to tune in, especially for you with your yoga background.
As I mentioned, Madhusudana uses the Yoga-sūtra a lot. We have seen quite a bit already of that in the fourth chapter in relation to prāṇāyāma, etc. But there will be even more later in the fifth and of course the sixth chapters.
For the time being, we are still struggling with the discussion about the relations of karma to jñāna, yoga to sankhyā, and pravritti to nivritti, etc. But the general intent of the Gita is to direct us inward, to take us from the gross to the subtle, to use the gross to enter the subtle. The principal is:
yat satyam anṛteneha martyenāpnoti māmṛtam ||
This is the intelligence of the intelligent and wisdom of the wise:
one attains Me who am the Truth and Immortal
here through this untrue and mortal body. (11.29.22)
So that is where we are now, turning inward. Studying the consciousness more directly. When we get to the seventh chapter we will get a different kind of subject matter.
On the whole I am really quite pleased with the way the course has been developing and feel as though I am personally benefiting a great deal myself.
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