Passionate
What would life be like had we not certain beliefs? What if when our boyfriend/girlfriend tells us they’re going to be staying extra late at work we don’t believe them and trust their acts completely? What if when life brings hardships and we face obstacles, we don’t have the faith to know that it will all be okay? What if we didn’t have face? Then life as it is would cease to be the blissful haven it’s carved out to be.
In Teaching Seventeen, Krishna says there’s a “threefold nature of faith inherent in the embodied self—lucid, passionate, and darkly inert.” While explaining the relation to being lucid, he explains how a person’s faith amounts to their lucidity, their clear perception and understanding. In a way, it relates to people whose cups are not yet filled by society’s current judgments and ideas, and have the rationality to fill their own cup based on their beliefs and personal faith.
He then goes on to compare these types of men, in relation to food. When you taste food that pleases ‘lucid’ men, they promote “strength, health, pleasure, and delight.” As opposed to passionate men, who are brought in by pungent, harsh, burning, food that cause pain, grief, and sickness. In the case of men of dark inertia, the food is unsavory, putrid, spoiled and stale. Basically, he is classifying the three types of men in their classified categories, where ‘lucid’ men are moral men that life a plentiful and wholesome life, ‘passionate’ men are pulled towards harsh and painful situations that will lead to endless grief, and men of ‘dark inertia’ are plainly too spoiled, in a way like decayed and corrupt fruit, that are of no use and are saddled with selfish wants.
Lucid men give sacrifices, not for the possible chance of getting a reward, not for the passion and dark inertia that await for some kind of recompense, but just for the sake of doing good, unlike the other two types.
Basically, Krishna dives deeper into the wants and reasons between these three types of peoples’ act. Passionate men do good, only for their own benefit of gaining admirers, respect, and worship for their act. Men of dark inertia resort to acts of ‘good-will (not so much in their case) due only to some sick type of sadism whish brings them satisfaction. They never do it just because, for someone else’s happiness.
The whole point of this teaching is to understand the reality of our kind, the cruel, the good, the inspiring. People who are just so caught up in reaching fortune and accommodating to everyone’s best interests, they do things to be accepted. Others just live life down an endless dark path. And others, the ‘lucid’ ones, that at least help and care, for no other reason than their own free will.
In the Eighteenth Teaching, Krishna introduces us to the term ‘renunciation.’ In today’s words, we can mostly recognize it as ‘quitting.’ He views it as unnecessary and inappropriate. Acts are established in the same categories as the men in the previous teaching.
Whenever we act out of pure passion, without thinking, straight from our impulses, resolve is passionate, not the one we aim for.
Success is also brought into the picture in the way that, when one has a goal, and you achieve it, it is your own personal accomplishment and definition of success.
In verse 53, Krishna states that, man, “freeing himself from individuality, force, pride, desire, anger, acquisitiveness; unpossesive, tranquil, he is at one with the infinite spirit.” When we don’t let ourselves be bound by these unbecoming feelings, and let peace drift within us with nothing to break down our shields, we can achieve pure, untainted tranquility.
When you are with Krishna, you will transcend all dangers, but if you are all caught up in your individuality, on the belief that all you need is you, and you, on your own, can accomplish anything, well, you got your wish: you’re on your own. You will be deafened. You will be lost. You will be susceptible to nature, even when you have a clear resolve to do something, it will be tampered with.
This all brings us back to how being one with lord is the only way to handle it all. He is your refuge, your haven, your passage towards eternity.
Now here is where I have trouble in clarifying if the ‘lord’ he is talking about is, Krishna, himself, or God, ‘The Lord,”, etc. Either way, the explanation of how sacrificing for him and adoring only him with complete trust, life will be just a blink in time.
Krishna also states:
“If he listens in faith
Finding no fault, a man is free
And will attain the cherished worlds
of those who act in virtue.”
Faith is key for almost everything. Here, Krishna is making the same rules as in the Christian religion, where the ticket to Heaven, is pure faith, belief in God. In that same way he makes it out to be the key factor in reaching one’s entity with him. Believe, even if you haven’t seen with your eyes or heard with your ears.
It takes more courage to believe in something just with faith, with your soul, with no visible proof, than to take something of visible nature to truly understand a concept.
That is the true reality of Faith.
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