Bhagavad Gita, the song of revelation, is for everyone, and it is specially salutary for householders!!!
That is like saying that the Gita is only for ascetics-for men who have renounced the world and all. But this is not true. Although the Gita is primarily for persons who tread the path of spiritual quest, it is also in good measure for those who aspire to step on to it.
This song of revelation is for everyone, and it is specially salutary for householders-for men and women who are rearing a family and struggling to support and sustain it, because such individuals stand at the point where the action is commenced.
Lord Krishna tells Arjun that the initial step taken in the undertaking of selfless action is never destroyed. Attempted in even a small measure, it, at last, provides liberation from the terror’ of birth and death. Now, who besides an overburdened and harried householder is expected to act in a small measure? He has so little time to devote to the task.
Arjun is told in the thirty-sixth verse of Chapter 4 :
“Even if you are the most heinous sinner, the ark of knowledge will carry you safely across all evils.” (4.36)
Now, who possibly is expected to be the greater sinner, the person who is incessantly absorbed in spiritual seeking or the person who only contemplates embarking on it? So the garhastya-order-the order of the householder-is the stage that marks the beginning of an action.
In Chapter 6, Arjun asks the lord: “What is the end, 0 Krishna, of the feeble worshipper whose inconstant mind has strayed away from selfless action and who has, therefore, been deprived of perception which is the final outcome of yoga?” Is it that this deluded, shelterless man is dissipated like scattered clouds, deprived of both God realization and worldly pleasures?
Lord Krishna then proceeds to assure his friend and disciple that even this irresolute man who digresses from yoga is not destroyed, for one who has performed good deeds never comes to grief. With his sanskar, such a person is either born in the house of a nobleman or admitted to the family of an enlightened yogi. Such a person is thus on both ways induced to worship and, treading this appointed path through several births, he or she finally achieves the ultimate state.
All this is relevant to a householder more than to anyone else. Isn’t a person in fact,re-born as a householder because of wandering from the Way of Selfless Action? And this accident of birth is what bestows on that individual an inclination towards spiritual seeking and worship.
In this context Lord Krishna further declares in the thirtieth verse of Chapter 9 :
“Even if a man of the most depraved conduct worships incessantly, he is worthy of being regarded as a saint because he is a man of true resolve.”
Who can be more fallen, the man who is already absorbed in divine adoration or the man who has not yet been initiated into the process? What is pledged here is thus for all mankind. Even persons of sinful conduct can achieve final emancipation by finding shelter under God.
A householder is not essentially a sinful man. Moreover, the order to which he belongs is, as we have already seen, the starting point of the scripturally ordained action. Climbing ever higher, although step by step, the householder will also achieve the state of a yogi and become a part of the supreme essence and, then, his form will be, as Yogeshwar Krishna says, like the form of God himself.
Swami Adgadanand Jee Paramhans
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