Chapter Two: Text 22:
Please read text 22 of chapter two along with the purport, and then read the following commentary. Afterwards, each participant should offer a thought or comment on this passage.
vasamsi jirnani yatha vihaya
navani grhnati naro 'parani
tatha sarirani vihaya jirnany
anyani samyati navani dehi
This is a relatively simple, yet very important, passage. It explains that the changing of material bodies by an atomic soul is similar to the changing of clothes by the material body. When a person rises in the morning they will put on a different set of clothes than they wore the previous day. After wearing a certain set of clothes for so long they will become worn out. When this happens, one will throw away the worn out clothes and buy a new outfit. The same is true of the material body. The atomic soul will wear a particular material body for a specific length of time. When the material body wears out, due to disease, illness, or old age, the atomic soul will replace the material body with a new one. As part and parcel of the Supersoul, the atomic soul is eternal whereas the material body is finite. This is why we say that we are not these material bodies. Our true nature is the eternal soul.
Comments
Hare Krishna!
Beautiful image illustrating the essence of this most important verse by Krishna endorsing the concept of Reincarnation which most religions refuse to accept.
But the reincarnation was extensively researched by Dr Ian Stevenson, a Canadian-born U.S. psychiatrist. He worked for the University of Virginia School of Medicine for fifty years, as chair of the department of psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002 until his death.
As founder and director of the university's Division of Perceptual Studies, which investigates the paranormal, Stevenson became known internationally for his research into reincarnation, the idea that emotions, memories, and even physical injuries in the form of birth-marks, can be transferred from one life to another.
This goes to prove that we are the not this body, but something that changes form from one body to another. When the purpose of the body is over and no more desires can be fulfilled by staying in this body, the infinitesimal, inconceivable, unmanifest spiritual beings that we are move from body to body, but we take our mind along which is full of unfulfilled desires.
Hence to fulfill those desires we take a new body in a womb that matches our mind and its desires.
The day we realize that fulfillment of desires brings in its wake sorrow and more desires. Hence we get into the endless cycle of birth, death, old age, disease, fault, misfortune, unhappiness which are guaranteed to every embodied being.
Hare Krishna!
Secondary or Indirect Rasas; Comedy, Compassion, Anger, Chivalry, Dread, Astonishment, Ghastliness. "The secondary rasas appear and then disappear after enhancing the flavors of the five primary rasas, and are; laughing, having wonderful visions, feeling anger and experiencing ghastliness and devastation". TLC, Ch 1.