How to preserve something over time?
People have tried carving in stone. Can someone please decipher?
Building pyramids... okay what are they for? Take a guess.
How will you preserve valuable information?
Krishna's solution is the best. A living line of disciplic succession. Passing the important information down without changing it from generation to generation.
But now there is another problem.
"This supreme science was thus received through the chain of disciplic succession, and the saintly kings understood it in that way..."BG 4.2
In order for that to work each link in the disciplic success must be pure. They cannot add anything or take anything away. That means they must have fully assimilated the information themselves. Fully realized the information. They must be living the message. Not so easy.
From time to time the succession gets broken.
"...But in course of time the succession was broken, and therefore the science as it is appears to be lost." BG 4.2
All it takes is a little sand in the sweet rice or salt instead of sugar in the charanamrta and the whole thing is spoiled. If the candidate for disciplic succession place-holder is not fully purified in devotional service he is sure to have the four defects of the conditioned soul.
" In the introduction of the Sri Isopanishad, Srila Prabhupada lectured about the four kinds of defects of the conditioned soul namely: 1. he must commit mistakes 2. to be illusioned 3. cheating propensity 4. imperfect senses."
What to do? What to do? Ever and always there are no material solutions, no mechanical means that can ever contain, limit or control spirit. We are fully dependent on the mercy of the Supreme Being. He can empower anyone to perform the needed service. He can and does.
He empowers Arjuna to carry on the disciplic succession. Why Arjuna? Was he a scholar? A brahmana? Here's why:
"That very ancient science of the relationship with the Supreme is today told by Me to you because you are My devotee as well as My friend; therefore you can understand the transcendental mystery of this science." BG 4.3
"... You are my devotee as well as my friend..."
That is how we have Bhagavad gita As It Is (1972)
Krishna's solution is the best. A living line of disciplic succession. Passing the important information down without changing it from generation to generation.
But now there is another problem.
"This supreme science was thus received through the chain of disciplic succession, and the saintly kings understood it in that way..."BG 4.2
In order for that to work each link in the disciplic success must be pure. They cannot add anything or take anything away. That means they must have fully assimilated the information themselves. Fully realized the information. They must be living the message. Not so easy.
From time to time the succession gets broken.
"...But in course of time the succession was broken, and therefore the science as it is appears to be lost." BG 4.2
All it takes is a little sand in the sweet rice or salt instead of sugar in the charanamrta and the whole thing is spoiled. If the candidate for disciplic succession place-holder is not fully purified in devotional service he is sure to have the four defects of the conditioned soul.
" In the introduction of the Sri Isopanishad, Srila Prabhupada lectured about the four kinds of defects of the conditioned soul namely: 1. he must commit mistakes 2. to be illusioned 3. cheating propensity 4. imperfect senses."
What to do? What to do? Ever and always there are no material solutions, no mechanical means that can ever contain, limit or control spirit. We are fully dependent on the mercy of the Supreme Being. He can empower anyone to perform the needed service. He can and does.
He empowers Arjuna to carry on the disciplic succession. Why Arjuna? Was he a scholar? A brahmana? Here's why:
"That very ancient science of the relationship with the Supreme is today told by Me to you because you are My devotee as well as My friend; therefore you can understand the transcendental mystery of this science." BG 4.3
"... You are my devotee as well as my friend..."
That is how we have Bhagavad gita As It Is (1972)
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