SAMA DṚṢṬI

Without further ado, Shri Krishna addresses Uddhava’s despondency in Bhāgavata Purāṇa 11.7.6–10 by reiterating the philosophical foundations of the Gita.

HE counsels Uddhava to relinquish attachment to relationships and the material world and to roam freely with an evenness of vision (sama dṛṣṭi). The obvious question is how to attain sama dṛṣṭi. Krishna’s answer is deceptively simple: by fixing the mind on HIM.

What Krishna says is that at the root of human bondage lie two intertwined illusions: attachment and the ego’s insistence on “I” and “mine”. On the path of self-realisation, the first step is to move beyond such attachments towards a universal vision (Gita 5.18). As Krishna says in Gita 6.29, “A true yogi sees ME in all and all in ME”.

Krishna further explains that this fundamental misperception arises from Māyā, HIS creative potency and an instrument of HIS Līlā, which causes the one indivisible Reality to appear as many. Māyā creates the delusion of “I” and “mine” within the being. The deluded mind, therefore, perceives multiplicity where there is unity and becomes trapped in dualities such as like and dislike, pleasure and pain, gain and loss, etc.

But how to transcend it? Krishna illuminates the path. HIS prescription: first, control of the senses and the mind (Gita 6.26), and second, more importantly, a shift in our vision, a change in how we perceive the world.

Seeing this world not through the lens of our ego of “I” and “mine”, “You” and “Your”, but seeing everyone as “HE” and “HIM”. Recognising that all are manifestations of the same energy flowing from a single source. As Krishna says, see the entire universe as the Self (Ātma) and the Self in HIM, the Supreme (Gita 13.28-29). Realise that the Ātma that resides in all embodied beings comes from the same Paramātma, just as the same electricity flows through all appliances.

This is Sama dṛṣṭi: recognising the one Ātma that pervades Māyā’s diverse animate and inanimate forms, dissolving all notions of separation and “otherness”!  / DAILY WORLD /

(The author is a senior IAS officer. Views expressed are personal.)