211. Blueprint of Life.



Creation is said to be His Leela or divine drama and there is nothing to be taken seriously. This divine play follows certain rules. Krishna explains these rules and says, “A part of My eternal Self, manifests as a living soul in the world of beings and attracts five senses and the mind which are a part of prakriti (15.7). Presiding over the mind and the senses of hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell, he (the embodied soul) experiences the objects of the sensory world” (15.9).  Krishna earlier talked about prakriti (nature) and purush (spirit) as beginningless. Gunas (qualities) and vikar (evolution or change) are born of prakriti (13.20). Prakriti is responsible for cause-and-effect; purush is responsible for experiencing the polarities of sukh (pleasure) and dukh (pain) (13.21). Together, these verses present a blueprint for life.

Firstly, a part of Him is inside each living being which we call the soul, and in that sense, we are never separate from Him. It is just that we forget who we really are while experiencing the sensory world. Secondly, there is no answer to why the soul attracts senses and gets into the business of pleasure and pain. That’s why it is just a Leela (Divine drama) and that’s life.

Our general understanding is that the senses are very powerful, and we should learn to control them. However, Krishna offers a paradigm shift when he says that these senses are attracted by the soul in the first place. Once they meet their sense-objects, they are bound to create polarities of pleasure and pain (2.14). The goal is to end this attachment and become the master of senses - to use them like any other instrument.


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