Pariprasna Q & A with Srimat Swami Tapasyananda (1904 to 1991), Vice-President of the Ramakrishna Order.
April 2019
Question: “Relinquishing all Dharma, take shelter in Me. I shall liberate you from all sin,” says the Lord in the Gita. What do Dharma and ‘seeking shelter’ mean here? Maharaj: As this verse occurs at the end of the Gita, it is taken to summarize the teaching of the Scripture and is therefore of great importance. So different Acharyas have interpreted it differently in the light of and in agreement with, the philosophies they uphold. We shall therefore give here the interpretation given by a few of them. Sankara says Dharma here includes also its opposite Adharma and interprets the word to mean ‘Karma or all actions bringing merit or demerit’. And ‘seeking shelter’ means realizing oneness with Him who is the soul of all, who is equally everywhere, who is indwelling everything, who is Lord of all and who is undecaying and beyond the pale of birth, death, etc. In other words, on realizing that there is none other than He, a person is liberated by the unitary consciousness from the bondage of sin i.e., of Dharma and Adharma. According to Sankara the last stage of spiritual life consists in abandoning every form of action, whatever be its nature and seeking union with the Supreme Being. In the light of this philosophy, all actions are prompted by the ego and, so long as the ego is present, oneness cannot be realized. Continuance of actions which are born of egotistic impulse will only help to emphasize the ego and will obstruct the discipline of reflection for its effacement. Hence work of every description, whether moral or immoral or of an indifferent nature from the worldly standpoint, have to be abandoned in the last stage and the effacement of the ego sought through union with the Supreme recognized through reflection. But it must be carefully noted that the abandonment of work is not the practice of idleness but the spontaneous falling away of actions as the ego-sense is attenuated through reflection. Ramanuja takes Dharma in a pure devotional sense and gives it two meanings: 1. Abandonment of all Dharma means the abandonment not of actions but of all the ‘fruits of, and the sense of agency involved in, the practice of the disciplines of Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga’; and ‘seeking shelter’ in the Lord means ‘recognizing simultaneously that one’s sole support and refuge consists not in any of these disciplines, but in the Supreme Being, the only ultimate agent and object to be worshipped.’ In regard to a true devotee the Lord promises that He will destroy all obstructions and obstacles in the way of the attainment of devotion, resulting from the sinful tendencies and the sins of omission and commission accumulated through several births. 2. A second meaning given by Ramanuja is this: The obstruction in the way of the generation and growth of devotion consists in the sins and sinful tendencies accumulated in many past births. For freeing oneself from the effects of these sins of omission and commission there are many expiatory ascetic practices prescribed, like Krichra, Chandrayana, Vaiswanara, Prajapatya etc. These practices are innumerable and are rather difficult to accomplish and life on earth is too short for one to take to all these practices. Realizing this, one should abandon all these Dharmas (expiatory prescriptions of the scripture), and depend on the Lord, who is supremely merciful, who is
31 The Vedanta Kesari
PA G E S P O N S O R : D R . S U B R A M A N I YA B H A R AT H I YA R R . , K A N C H E E P U R A M
Approach the wise sages, offer reverential salutations, repeatedly ask proper questions, serve them and thus know the Truth. — Bhagavad Gita
