Purāṇa / Uddhava Gītā / Bhikṣu Gītā

Bhikṣu Gītā (भिक्षुगीता)

Bhāgavata 11.23, still Kṛṣṇa speaking to Uddhava inside the last talk. The story is a brāhmaṇa of Avanti. Wealth comes to him and leaves. Family and neighbors turn. He is beaten in the road. Out of that he sings. The song's claim is the claim of the swan, lived through a particular ruin: the mind is the friend and the mind is the enemy. The people who struck him were the occasion. The suffering took the shape his own mind gave it. A person who has seen that can live on alms, a bhikṣu (भिक्षु), without needing the world to apologize before he is free.

The chapter numeral is the received Bhāgavata's. The song is a story about a man who lost his money. It is a diagnosis of the mind. The page keeps the story and the claim. No śloka is supplied from memory to look like the text.

What the losses are for

• Each loss removes a witness the brāhmaṇa had been using: wealth, kin, the good opinion of the street.
• The beating is the last of those witnesses. The body is still there, and the song begins.
• The enemy he names is the mind that took every blow as a statement about who he was.
• Uddhava is about to lose Kṛṣṇa's company. The Avanti story is told so that loss has a shape he has already understood.

नेपालीमा

भिक्षुगीता भागवत ११.२३ हो, अझै अन्तिम कुराकानीभित्र कृष्णले उद्धवलाई भनेको। कथा अवन्तीका एक ब्राह्मणको हो। धन आउँछ र जान्छ। परिवार र छिमेक फर्किन्छन्। बाटोमा उनलाई पिटिन्छ। त्यसैबाट उनी गाउँछन्। गीतको दाबी हंसको दाबी हो, एउटा खास भत्किएको जीवनमा बाँचेको: मन साथी हो र मन शत्रु हो। पिट्नेहरू अवसर थिए। दुःखले उनको मनले दिएको आकार लियो। यो देखेको मानिस भिक्षु भएर भिक्षामा बस्न सक्छ, संसारले माफी माग्नुअघि नै मुक्त।

अध्याय अङ्क प्राप्त भागवतको हो। गीत धन गुमाएको मानिसको कथा हो। यो मनको निदान हो। पृष्ठले कथा र दाबी राख्छ। पाठजस्तो देखाउन सम्झनाबाट कुनै श्लोक हालिएको छैन।

Where it sits

Read it with the sixth chapter of the Gītā, where the same sentence about the mind is spoken to Arjuna before a war, and with the Haṃsa Gītā, where it is spoken to sages who had not been beaten. Three hearers, one diagnosis. The twenty-four teachers, sat at 11.7.33–35, are the earlier contents page of this same talk.