V.7 Bhaja Govindam Study Class Notes

SUMMARY: Bhaja Govindam Class 13 - 09/04/23

Chinmaya UK Study Class, Śaṅkarācārya, Swami Chinmayananda (Sw. C.)

bālastāvatkrīḍāsaktaḥ taruṇastāvattaruṇīsaktaḥ |

vṛddhastāvaccintāsaktaḥ parame brahmaṇi ko'pi na saktaḥ || 7 ||

So long as one is in one’s boyhood, one is attached to play;

so long as one is in youth, one is attached to one’s own young woman (passion);

so long as one is in old age, one is attached to anxiety (pang);

(Yet) no one (hardly anyone), is (ever seen) attached to the Supreme Brahman!

Verse 7: Autobiography of the 99%

Life is short. The pilgrimage is long.

"High above the clouds, veiled by them, rise the peaks of perfection that are to be scaled. The rational intellect is so powerful a mechanism that it can rocket a [hu]man of pure heart into the highest levels of incomparable divinity in a very short time, if only he/she is available for it."

As humans, we have come with the tool (a rational intellect that can reason, discern, intuit, imagine, decide etc.) to rise to perfection in this very short life if we are (1) pure of heart and (2) available.

The 'highest levels of incomparable divinity' sounds pretty damn AWESOME! And we have the tools?

So why don't we??

Firstly, most of us weren't taught about the highest reality and states of consciousness at school or at home, for that matter.

Thus, we naturally become attached to the passing sorceries of the flesh, enchantment by the illusory gold in brass (the baser things in life ) and sugarcoat sweetness on the very bitter agonies of life - because we are not taught to think clearly and see life as it is.

Śaṅkarācārya realises this universal folly of man and, in great desperation, sings the chronological autobiography of the Unthinking 99%.

Play, Passion, and Pang.

(1) In childhood, we spend every moment attached to toys and games.

Think when you were a child, how you would frustrate your parents by wanting to play rather than sleep or eat, never mind study!

(2) In youth, we drop toys and games for boys and girls. Our energies become dissipated in the passion of our beloved and in lusty sports, dressing up, giving a ridiculous amount of time to how we look, how to make the other person love and give us more etc.

(3) As we age and our hair greys and falls away, it conceals or reveals a heavy head full of anxieties and fears. Look around you at the seniors in your lives. Rare are the ones that don't fixate on their pasts, worry about the present and fear the future (actually, this is the condition of all of us, but it only intensifies with age)

Śaṅkarācārya, really?! Is this really our journey? 😅 Surely this is not the purpose of our existence?

We cannot struggle against the flow of time or against the law of growth. These are the natural laws of anything that is born.

For most of us, however, this unthinking way of attachment, passion and worry becomes our autobiography, and we MISS the very purpose of this birth.

Throughout life's pilgrimage, we rarely find the time to surrender to the Higher - the All-giving guardian, the Soul protector, the very Substratum of which everything plays out on - who is there at all times - always was and always will be...

What do we do about this? ... This is the topic of our next class...