Chapter 4 Gnana Yoga Verse 28

Chapter 4 Gnana Yoga Verse 28

Shloka

Ajnashchaashraddhadhaanashcha samshayaatmaa vinashyati;
Naayam loko’sti na paro na sukham samshayaatmanah.

Translation

The ignorant, the faithless, the doubting self proceeds to destruction;
there is neither this world nor the other nor happiness for the doubting.

Interpretation

In this sloka Lord Krishna talks about a person who is a non-believer in the concept of education. He says that like there are three qualities to acquire knowledge, there are three qualities that prevent a person from getting knowledge. They are ignorance, lack of faith and self doubt.

Lord Krishna says that any person who is ignorant of things around him, doubt everything that he does and has no faith in what he does proceeds towards destruction. Such a person would totally destroy himself and will not find a place in this world or in any other worlds nor they ever get any happiness says Lord Krishna.

Extending Interpretation to Mankind’s Life!

Here we need to understand how ignorance, lack of faith and self doubt brings destruction in an individual. We all do many works and have many goals to achieve. Some tasks we complete, some we leave them midway. Why do we leave the tasks midway? It is because of the three mentioned reasons.

First is ignorance. Ignorance comes from a total lack of awareness on the task that a person is doing. Like many people do management education without having any idea as to what a manager is supposed to do. Such a person might get a degree but can never become an effective manager.

The other two qualities that bring destruction are faithlessness and self doubt. When you do a task and you dont have a faith in what you are doing then you can never complete it. Continuing the above example, let us assume that a manger was given a specific task by his boss. If he is an ignorant manager who doesn’t understand what he is doing, he has no faith on what he is doing. He is doing it because he was asked to do that and because he is getting paid for it.

Such person approaches everything with a self doubt and even if he succeeds he will still have a doubt on the work he is doing. Such people not only destroy themselves with such behaviour but also destroy the entire society by spreading these qualities. Such people can never get happiness and will always be doubting everything they do.

Published by Sriram

A Teacher trying to Learn new things and explore the world each day! Believe in Happiness by the virtue of sacrifice and forgiveness.

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