The Geeta: Her Special Charm - 1. Swami Chinmayananda

20/04/2018
The Geeta: Her Special Charm-1.

The culture of a people must continuously serve them, nourishing their inspirations, guiding their actions and providing consolation and comfort, balance and equanimity in both their joys and sorrows.

A culture when sustained through its religious practices, if it has no elasticity, will come to choke the growth of the community and the people will then outgrow that culture. If an unyielding iron ring is put around a growing tree, in time, as the tree grows, the ring will be swallowed up into the very dimension and growth of the vigorous tree.

Our Bharatiya culture, as expressed through Hinduism, never died through all these millenniums, only because our culture had the required elasticity to embrace all the new dimensions into which our society grew during the march of time.

The ideas enshrined in the Upanishads, couched as discussions held by the Rishis and their disciples in the forest vastnesses along the Ganges banks, the way of life and the eternal values that were preached therein, gathered in the minds of the people an association with the mountains, the trees, the silence, and the spirit of retirement of the jungles.

In short, the Upanishadic philosophy came to carry about itself, for no fault of its own, the fragrance of the forests, the hum of the Ganges and the hymn of the eternal snow peaks. In the history of our cultural growth, thus, a time came when people felt that to live Hinduism was to live in retreat away from the rush of the people, the noise of the market-place, the struggles of the rustic fields and moving into the silence and quietude of the Himalayas.

To be continued ..