Bg 2.67
indriyāṇāṁ hi caratāṁ yan mano ’nuvidhīyate
tad asya harati prajñāṁ vāyur nāvam ivāmbhasi
Bg 2.68
tasmād yasya mahā-bāho nigṛhītāni sarvaśaḥ
indriyāṇīndriyārthebhyas tasya prajñā pratiṣṭhitā
Bg 2.69
yā niśā sarva-bhūtānāṁ tasyāṁ jāgarti saṁyamī
yasyāṁ jāgrati bhūtāni sā niśā paśyato muneḥ
Translation:
67. For, the mind, which follows in the
wake of the wandering senses, carries away his discrimination, as the wind
carries away a boat on the waters.
68. Therefore, O Mighty-armed, his
knowledge is steady whose senses are completely restrained from sense-objects.
69. That which is night to all beings, in
that the self-controlled man keeps awake; where all beings are awake, that is
the night for the Sage (MUNI) who sees.
Commentary Excerpts:
As a ship with sails up and helmsman dead
would be completely at the mercy of the fitful storms and reckless waves, and
will not reach any definite harbour, but is destroyed by the very tossings of
the waves, so too, life gets capsized and the individual drowned, if his mind
is unanchored and left to be carried hither and thither by the uncertain
buffets of passionate sense-storms. Therefore, the senses are to be controlled
if man is to live a better and more purposeful life, designed and planned for
enduring success.
Arjuna has been told earlier all the
necessary arguments, and here in the stanza, Krishna re-asserts the same
proposition: "Life in self-control alone is life worth living, if we
demand from it anything more than tears, sobs, sighs and groans." He alone is a man of Wisdom, rooted in joy
and bliss, who has completely restrained all his senses from their wild
roamings among their sense-objects.
"BY DESTROYING THE SENSE ORGANS
ROAMING IN THE SENSE-OBJECTS," it does not mean that a man of
Self-development should destroy his capacities for perception of the world
outside; nor does it mean that he is one who has been rendered incapable of
enjoying life. Sense-debility is no sign of better-knowledge. It is only meant
here that the sense-objects filtering through the five archways of knowledge
will not, in a Perfect man, flood his mind to bring chaos and destruction of
his established inner peace and tranquillity.
The ordinary individual, in his ego-centric
existence, becomes victimized by the sense-organs, while he who has conquered
the ego and has transcended his matter-identifications, comes to live in
freedom and perfect control over the tyrannical sense organs.
Here, two points-of-view --- of the
ignorant and of the wise --- are contrasted. The ignorant person never
perceives the world as it is; he always throws his own mental colour on to the
objects and understands the imperfections in his mind to be a part and parcel
of the objects perceived. The world, viewed through a coloured glass-pane, must
look coloured. When this colouring medium is removed, the world appears AS IT
IS.
The Consciousness in us is today capable of
recognizing the world only through the media of the body, mind, and intellect.
Naturally, we see the world imperfect, not because the world is so, but because
of the ugliness of the media through which we perceive it.
A Master-mind is he who, rooted in his
Wisdom, opens up the windows-of-his-perception and looks at the world through
the eye-of-Wisdom. When an electrical engineer comes to a
city, and when at dusk, the whole city smiles forth with its lights, he
immediately enquires: "Is it A. C. or D. C. current?"; while the same
vision, to an illiterate villager, is a wondrous sight and he only exclaims:
"I have seen lights that need no wick or oil!" From the stand-point
of the villager, there is no electricity and no problem of A. C. or D. C.
currents. The world the engineer sees among the very same lamps, is not
realised or known by the unperceiving intellect of the villager. Nor is the
engineer awake to the world of strange wonderment which the villager enjoys.
Here, we are told that the ego-centric,
finite, mortal is asleep to the World-of-Perception enjoyed and lived by the
Man-of-Steady-Wisdom; and that the Perfect One cannot see and feel the thrills
and sobs which the ego experiences in its selfish life of finite-experience.
Sources: Vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
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