The entire content of this mail is from Swami Chidbhavananda's translation of The Bhagavad Gita, published by Ramakrishna Mission.
1 Gita Sloka every day - Chapter 2 - Samkhya Yoga - Sloka 63
Krodhat bhavati sammohah sammohat smriti vibhramah I
Smriti bhramshat buddhi nashah buddhinasat pranashyati II sloka 63
क्रोधात् भवति संमोहः संमोहात् स्मृति विभ्रमः ।
स्मृति भ्रंषात बुद्धि नाशः बुद्धिनाशत प्रणश्यति ।। श्लोक ६३
From anger proceeds delusion; from delusion, confused memory; from confused memory the ruin of reason, due to the ruin of reason he perishes
This sloka may be explained with a concrete example. :
A man goes to office every day seeing on the road many people, but not taking note of them. Like mere phantoms they appear and disappear. An attractive figure one day, left a faint impression in his mind. On the following day the same figure drew a little more of his attention. Subsequent sights of that lovely figure made him cogitate.; it was a pretty young woman that took possession of his mind. He developed attachment to and picked up acquaintance with her, which steadily grew into friendship. Then came in him the desire to make the charming woman his own. Rivalry now ensued between him between him and another young man courting her. Competition between the two changed into bitter anger.
What else is anger if it is not an obstructed desire?From the sort of anger provoked in one, the nature of the desire lurking in one can easily be detected. Anger is temporary insanity. When the mind is occasionally upset it is anger, when permanently, it is lunacy. In effect both are the same; delusion ensues in either case.
In the woodlands the trees, creepers and plants are all easily discernible. But when there is a dust laden tempest the trees are tossed so much that one cannot be distinguished from another. It is a mass of confusion. Akin to this is the state of mind given to anger. It gets deluded first; next comes the loss of memory of things good and bad. A violence is resorted to indiscriminately, paving the way for elf destruction.
The prolonged bitter anger in the two wooers of the woman burst one day into a rage. A scuffle ensued in which one tried to do away with the other. They forgot in the excitemtn about the severe punishment that the law of the land metes out for attempted murder. Both were jailed and the woman had her own lover to marry. Loss of discrimination paves the way for self destruction.
A minute peepal seed gets into a crack in the wall. sprouts, grows and rents the wall asunder. Similarly an evil thought germinates in the mind, develops in its own way and wrecks the man ultimately. Thought can make or mar man. Good thought mends and makes man while the evil one ends him.
A holy man was living in a temple. Nearby was the house of a harlot. Noticing how the profligate ones were frequenting her house, he once called the woman and warned her against her evil ways. She lamented over her lot and prayed to the Lord for forgiveness although she could not put an end to her base profession. The annoyed anchorite now started recording her lapses by piling a pebble every time a libertine visited her. When the heap of pebbles grew large, the holy man summoned the harlot to his presence and censured her severely pointing out to her the pyramid like enormity of her sins. The heart broken whore died that very night appealing to the Lord for deliverance from the debauched body. Strangely enough, that very night the holy man also departed. The defiled remains of the former was cast away as food to the vultures and jackals; but that of the latter was interred with due honours. Lo, the development of this scene was quite different in Ymaloka. The soul of the prostitute was escorted to Vaikunta while that of the anchorite was consigned to hell. The excited holy man demanded an explanation for this injustice. The reply came that inviolable justice alone prevailed in the creation of the Lord. Although living in a polluted body, the prostitute's mind was ever fixed on the Divine, whereas the mind of the man in a holy body was always wandering on unholy concerns. While the earthly remains of both were fittingly disposed, their souls as well were assigned their fitting regions. Beware of your thoughts and everything will be alright with you
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
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