avajaananti maam moodhaa maanusheem tanumaashritam |
param bhaavamajaananto mama bhootamaheshwaram || 11 ||
Resorting to a human form, foolish people insult me, not knowing my supreme nature as the overlord of all beings.
avajaanantaha : insult
maam : me
moodhaahaa : foolish people
maanusheem : human
tanum : form
aashritam : resorting to
param : supreme
bhaavam : nature
ajaanantaha : not knowing
mama : my
bhootamaheshwaram : overlord of all beings
Removal of all misconceptions of Ishvara is one of the recurring themes of this chapter. Even though Shri Krishna has repeatedly defined Ishvara as infinite, many people still get stuck with one form of Ishvara or the other. In this shloka, Shri Krishna terms such people foolish, and their behaviour insulting.
Now, many of us were conditioned by our cultures to believe that Ishvara is something that is far away, and will take years and years of devotion to achieve. But Shri Krishna, through the Gita, has revealed to us the true nature of Ishvara as infinite, all-pervading and available right here and now. To ensure that we do not revert back to our old ways of thinking, Shri Krishna uses a strong term to refer to such people: foolish.
Even before we go to the level of Ishvara, we commit the error of thinking that our eternal essence, our self, is our human body only. Removing this erroneous notion was the message of the second chapter. In the same way, we are likely to think of Ishvara as a finite form, and in doing so, treat everything else in the world with disregard.
Shri Krishna says that such an attitude is personally insulting to Ishvara, who is the supreme controller of the universe. It is like introducing a Nobel peace prize winner as an ordinary citizen, or to think that a junior police officer is the be-all and end-all of a country’s government. People with such erroneous notions can cause a great deal of harm to themselves, as is pointed out in the next shloka.
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