Shrimad Bhagavad Gita: Renunciation Through Action (Chapter 4)

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Nothing in this world is more sacred or more potent than this Knowledge of the Self it is the key to happiness, success and prosperity.

The fourth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, the Yoga of Renunciation of Action in Knowledge, is an extension of the ideas propounded in the previous chapter on the Yoga of Action. It dwells on the technique of self-perfection, on the nature of action, as well as inaction, and establishes the supremacy of Knowledge. It concludes with Sri Krsna stating the necessary qualities for acquiring this knowledge of the Self and urging us to 'Arise, O Bharata!' to achieve our true potential.

Swami Chinmayananda's commentary on the Gita is both compelling and enlightening. Never short of humour or wit, he is able to relate these wise principles of the highest nature to the most common incidents of life.

For the Aryan mind, novelty in the spiritual kingdom. has no charm. Any new idea, however logical and intellectual it might be, is not readily accepted by the children of the Aryan culture as a part of their Brahmavidya, unless the interpreter of the new idea can show that his technique has already been envisaged in the existing scriptures of this culture. In this way, we can say that we, as a cultural unit, are followers of Vedas.

In the last chapter, Krsna propounded a revolutionary idea in the form of Karma-yoga, which sounded as though it was a novel intellectual theory conceived in Krsna's own brain. Arjuna, as a true student of the Hindu culture, would not willingly accept it unless his teacher gave an endorsement that what he had lectured upon was nothing other than an intelligent reinterpretation of the ancient sacred Vaidika science. In this chapter, an all-out effort is made by Krsna to bring home to Arjuna that the Lord Himself, the author of the Vedas, had been asserting the same old Vaidika Truth and nothing new.