Bg 16.4
dambho darpo ’bhimānaś ca krodhaḥ pāruṣyam eva ca
ajñānaṁ cābhijātasya pārtha sampadam āsurīm
Bg 16.5
daivī sampad vimokṣāya nibandhāyāsurī matā
mā śucaḥ sampadaṁ daivīm abhijāto ’si pāṇḍava
Translation
4. Hypocrisy, arrogance and self-conceit, anger, and also harshness and ignorance, belong to one who is born, O Partha, for a demoniac-Estate.
5. The divine nature is deemed for liberation, the demoniacal for bondage; grieve not, O Pandava, you are born with divine qualities.
Commentary
HERE FOLLOWS A DESCRIPTION OF THE DEMONIAC (ASURIC) NATURE:
The dark features of the ugly personalities in the world were never before so strikingly brought within the embrace of a simple stanza. All the Satanic forces that can ever come to express in the bosom of man have been brought together under some all-comprehensive 'types' of devilish-ness, as indicated here. To know them would be a sufficient warning of what we must avoid and what all traits, in us, we must carefully weed out from our mental composition, so that the greater energy that is available to a well-developed man, may, without any obstruction, flow out of our bosom.
HYPOCRISY (Ostentation --- Dambha) --- 'Pretending to be righteous but living unrighteous ways of life' is the meaning that Shankara gives to this term. Hypocrisy is, certainly, one of the cheapest poses assumed by the vicious. To them, all their superficial glow of goodness and purity, of religiosity and sincerity are but attractive hoods to cover their deadly motives and ugly intentions.
ARROGANCE (Darpa) --- Endless pride of learning, or of wealth, or of social status, or of family connections, gives to an individual a kind of insufferable uppishness, and he looks at the world and the happenings around him through this misinterpreting and self-deluding medium and lives in a world of imagined self-importance resulting in an arrogance that drives away all inward peace. Such an individual gets exiled from the love of the community around. An arrogant man is a lonely creature in the world and his only companions are his own imagined self-importance and dreams of his glories which none but he can see. And naturally he becomes highly self-conceited (Abhimanah).
ANGER (Krodha) --- When such a self-conceited, arrogant, hypocrite looks at the world around him and finds that the world's estimate of him is totally different from his own estimate of himself, he revolts within and hence his wrath (Krodha) at everything around him. And once such an individual gets worked up with anger, in his speech and action, there must necessarily be a disconcerting insolence (Parushya).
Such arrogance, self-conceit, wrath and insolence --- arise from his own self-delusions (ajnanam). He knows not himself, that he is ignorant of the scheme of the world around him, and consequently, he is blind to the right relationship that he should maintain with the world around him. In short, he is extremely ego-centric and he expects the world to be what he wants it to be, and, in his delusion, he supplies a mad blue-print prescribing how the world of healthy beings is to behave and act in his field of actions. This ignorance of oneself and one's relationship with the things and beings around is the secret cause that generally forces one to revolt against the environments and act quixotically.
Such people are termed here by Krishna as the 'Diabolically Fallen,' the Asuric. Such a spectacular contrast provides by the picture of the Asuric, as given here, gloriously brings out the earlier picture of the 'Divinely Good' --- the Daivic, in relief.
THE EFFECTS OF THE TWO NATURES --- THE DIVINELY GOOD AND THE DIABOLICALLY FALLEN --- ARE SPOKEN OF AS FOLLOWS:
On hearing such an exhaustive enumeration of the qualities in the good and the bad hearts, it will be natural for every sincere student of the Geeta to feel a despair not knowing whether he himself belongs to the latter or the former category. Generally, one would find it easier to consider oneself bad rather than feel the confidence that one belongs to the good. Arjuna must have felt the same despair and, perhaps, reading this in his face, Krishna consoled him: "GRIEVE NOT, O PANDAVA! YOU ARE BORN OF THE DIVINE ESTATE." That a seeker has the necessary interest and perseverance to read the Geeta up to this chapter, itself shows that he belongs to the 'DIVINELY-GOOD' category!
Both the ethical beauties and the non-ethical ugliness are painted here not for the purpose of sending the good to an eternal heaven and of damning the vicious to a perpetual hell! Here, the theme is taken up on a more scientific basis. Ethical virtues are the intelligent ways of reviving man's exhausted energies and fatigued spirit to live. By living these healthy values of a righteous life, the individual unshackles his psychological personality from its self-made entanglements: "THE DIVINE ESTATE LEADS TO RELEASE." As a contrast to this, the negative tendencies cultivated by the 'Diabolically Fallen' are self-made shackles that chain a man to a realm of confusions and sorrows, forbidding him to grow into the ampler fields of his own inner possibility: "THE DEVILISH TO BONDAGE."
GRIEVE NOT (Maa shuchah) --- To become sentimental and desperate or to exhaust oneself in self-pity, or self-condemnation, is a psychological malady, and one suffering from it can never discover in oneself, the energising cheer, the sustaining confidence, and the steady will that are required for an intelligent self-diagnosis and an effective self-cure. To a seeker, living the ethical values is, in itself, a kind of treatment to cure him of some of his personality-diseases. To the Hindus, a sinner is not a dangerous mental leper, or a failure of the Omnipotent Lord. To a Vedantin, Satan is not a perpetual challenge to God.
The good, contaminated by weakness and 'ignorance,' is the evil. And the evil, when cured of 'ignorance,' itself becomes the good. A looking glass covered with dust, cannot reflect light, and mirror properly the objects in front of it. This is not because the glass has lost its capacity to reflect, but because its effectiveness has got veiled at present by the accumulated dust, which is essentially something other than the glass. To wipe it clean is to bring forth from it more clarity and light for the reflection. A 'Diabolically Fallen' one has also the same Infinite Light of Pure Wisdom --- but alas, extremely dimmed by false values and wrong concepts in his bosom.
Sources: Vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
dambho darpo ’bhimānaś ca krodhaḥ pāruṣyam eva ca
ajñānaṁ cābhijātasya pārtha sampadam āsurīm
Bg 16.5
daivī sampad vimokṣāya nibandhāyāsurī matā
mā śucaḥ sampadaṁ daivīm abhijāto ’si pāṇḍava
Translation
4. Hypocrisy, arrogance and self-conceit, anger, and also harshness and ignorance, belong to one who is born, O Partha, for a demoniac-Estate.
5. The divine nature is deemed for liberation, the demoniacal for bondage; grieve not, O Pandava, you are born with divine qualities.
Commentary
HERE FOLLOWS A DESCRIPTION OF THE DEMONIAC (ASURIC) NATURE:
The dark features of the ugly personalities in the world were never before so strikingly brought within the embrace of a simple stanza. All the Satanic forces that can ever come to express in the bosom of man have been brought together under some all-comprehensive 'types' of devilish-ness, as indicated here. To know them would be a sufficient warning of what we must avoid and what all traits, in us, we must carefully weed out from our mental composition, so that the greater energy that is available to a well-developed man, may, without any obstruction, flow out of our bosom.
HYPOCRISY (Ostentation --- Dambha) --- 'Pretending to be righteous but living unrighteous ways of life' is the meaning that Shankara gives to this term. Hypocrisy is, certainly, one of the cheapest poses assumed by the vicious. To them, all their superficial glow of goodness and purity, of religiosity and sincerity are but attractive hoods to cover their deadly motives and ugly intentions.
ARROGANCE (Darpa) --- Endless pride of learning, or of wealth, or of social status, or of family connections, gives to an individual a kind of insufferable uppishness, and he looks at the world and the happenings around him through this misinterpreting and self-deluding medium and lives in a world of imagined self-importance resulting in an arrogance that drives away all inward peace. Such an individual gets exiled from the love of the community around. An arrogant man is a lonely creature in the world and his only companions are his own imagined self-importance and dreams of his glories which none but he can see. And naturally he becomes highly self-conceited (Abhimanah).
ANGER (Krodha) --- When such a self-conceited, arrogant, hypocrite looks at the world around him and finds that the world's estimate of him is totally different from his own estimate of himself, he revolts within and hence his wrath (Krodha) at everything around him. And once such an individual gets worked up with anger, in his speech and action, there must necessarily be a disconcerting insolence (Parushya).
Such arrogance, self-conceit, wrath and insolence --- arise from his own self-delusions (ajnanam). He knows not himself, that he is ignorant of the scheme of the world around him, and consequently, he is blind to the right relationship that he should maintain with the world around him. In short, he is extremely ego-centric and he expects the world to be what he wants it to be, and, in his delusion, he supplies a mad blue-print prescribing how the world of healthy beings is to behave and act in his field of actions. This ignorance of oneself and one's relationship with the things and beings around is the secret cause that generally forces one to revolt against the environments and act quixotically.
Such people are termed here by Krishna as the 'Diabolically Fallen,' the Asuric. Such a spectacular contrast provides by the picture of the Asuric, as given here, gloriously brings out the earlier picture of the 'Divinely Good' --- the Daivic, in relief.
THE EFFECTS OF THE TWO NATURES --- THE DIVINELY GOOD AND THE DIABOLICALLY FALLEN --- ARE SPOKEN OF AS FOLLOWS:
On hearing such an exhaustive enumeration of the qualities in the good and the bad hearts, it will be natural for every sincere student of the Geeta to feel a despair not knowing whether he himself belongs to the latter or the former category. Generally, one would find it easier to consider oneself bad rather than feel the confidence that one belongs to the good. Arjuna must have felt the same despair and, perhaps, reading this in his face, Krishna consoled him: "GRIEVE NOT, O PANDAVA! YOU ARE BORN OF THE DIVINE ESTATE." That a seeker has the necessary interest and perseverance to read the Geeta up to this chapter, itself shows that he belongs to the 'DIVINELY-GOOD' category!
Both the ethical beauties and the non-ethical ugliness are painted here not for the purpose of sending the good to an eternal heaven and of damning the vicious to a perpetual hell! Here, the theme is taken up on a more scientific basis. Ethical virtues are the intelligent ways of reviving man's exhausted energies and fatigued spirit to live. By living these healthy values of a righteous life, the individual unshackles his psychological personality from its self-made entanglements: "THE DIVINE ESTATE LEADS TO RELEASE." As a contrast to this, the negative tendencies cultivated by the 'Diabolically Fallen' are self-made shackles that chain a man to a realm of confusions and sorrows, forbidding him to grow into the ampler fields of his own inner possibility: "THE DEVILISH TO BONDAGE."
GRIEVE NOT (Maa shuchah) --- To become sentimental and desperate or to exhaust oneself in self-pity, or self-condemnation, is a psychological malady, and one suffering from it can never discover in oneself, the energising cheer, the sustaining confidence, and the steady will that are required for an intelligent self-diagnosis and an effective self-cure. To a seeker, living the ethical values is, in itself, a kind of treatment to cure him of some of his personality-diseases. To the Hindus, a sinner is not a dangerous mental leper, or a failure of the Omnipotent Lord. To a Vedantin, Satan is not a perpetual challenge to God.
The good, contaminated by weakness and 'ignorance,' is the evil. And the evil, when cured of 'ignorance,' itself becomes the good. A looking glass covered with dust, cannot reflect light, and mirror properly the objects in front of it. This is not because the glass has lost its capacity to reflect, but because its effectiveness has got veiled at present by the accumulated dust, which is essentially something other than the glass. To wipe it clean is to bring forth from it more clarity and light for the reflection. A 'Diabolically Fallen' one has also the same Infinite Light of Pure Wisdom --- but alas, extremely dimmed by false values and wrong concepts in his bosom.
Sources: Vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
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