Gita in Detail
Karma
- Material Activities
The Bhagavad-gita discusses five topics: ésvara, the Supreme Controller; jiva, the living entity; prakrti, material nature; kala, time; and karma, activities. The living entities, material nature, and time are eternal energies of the Lord. Karma, however, is not eternal. "Karma" means work and its results, or action and reaction. "Action pertaining to the development of the material bodies of the living entities is called karma," says Bhagavad-gita (Bg. 8.3).
Actions performed in accordance with scriptural injunctions are considered right and are technically called karma. They lead the performer to the heavenly planets for prolonged sensual enjoyment. However, when a person's pious credits are exhausted, he must return to Earth, just as a person returns from a holiday and resumes his work.Who am I? The face I see every morning in the mirror? The eyes that scrutinize it? The heartbeats within my chest? Or the thoughts that race through my brain while I am wondering about all this?
"For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time," the Bhagavad-gita explains. "He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain" (Bg. 2.20). "As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from childhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change" (Bg. 2.13). "As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones" (Bg. 2.22).
Isvara - The Supreme Lord The Absolute Truth, Krsna, can be realized in three phases: Brahman, Paramatma and Bhagavan. These aspects of the Absolute Truth are comparable to the sunshine (Brahman), the sun's surface (Paramatma) and the sun planet (Bhagavan)&emdash;three different features of the same reality. Kala - Eternal Time According to the Vedic version, Lord Brahma, the four-headed cosmic engineer of this universe, lives in a body that is subtle, because it is made primarily of intellegence, and he lives for the duration of this universe, the equivalent of 311 trillion of our years, which seem to him to be only one hundred of his years. From our viewpoint, 311 trillion years is an eternity, but from the point of view of Lord Visnu, the original cause of the material creation, that's the time it takes Him to exhale one breath. When Visnu exhales, all the universes come out of the pores of His skin in seedlike forms, then they develop, and when He inhales, all the universes merge within Him.
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