isha upanishad in English | isha upanishad chanting verse 12 | ishavasya upanishad | Idol Worship vs Ideal Worship vs Nature Worship

Dear readers,

Welcome back to our blog. Today we will discuss eleventh shloka of Isha Upanishad.

You can recite the shloka. So, let's start.

अन्धं तमः प्रविशन्ति येऽसम्भूतिमुपासते।

ततो भूय इव ते तमो य उ सम्भूत्यां रताः ॥

In English:

“andhaṁ tamaḥ praviśanti ye'sambhūtimupāsate |

tato bhūya iva te tamo ya u sambhūtyāṁ ratāḥ ||”

Translation in English:

Those who worship unmanifested alone enter blinding darkness; and those who worship manifested alone fall into even greater darkness.

Let me tell you a short story of a nature lover Nisarg and his best friend Gurupada associated with a spiritual organization. He blindly follows his Sadhguru who himself declared him as Godman. On a sunny day Gurupada took his friend Nisarg to the ashram of his Guru in Tamilnadu. The Ashram is situated in a forest of foothills. The forest is destroyed to develop the ashram. Nisarg was unhappy about this fact. Gurupada guided Nisarg in different beautiful locations in the ashram. Later, they joined a question answer session of his Gurudeva. As Gurupada was already disappointed by the fact that the inhabitants had moved from this place, once a jungle and many trees were cut down to develop this ashram, he thought of grilling the fake guru at that point of time. The sudden unexpected tough questions were not welcome by the grand old man. He instructed him to get away from his place immediately. Even Gurupada started augmenting with his best friend. Gurupada knew everything but because of his blind faith, he preferred to break the year-long friendship. After this incident Nisarg filed a petition against the fake guru but because of the Guru’s reach to the government and media, nothing happened. Then he created a plan to murder him to take revenge for the injustice to inhabitants of that forest and hundreds of trees and thousands of animals, birds, insects and water animals.

Before we explain this Shloka, we recommend you to read previous Shlokas to understand Vidya and Avidya and of course other shlokas if you missed them. Links to those blogs are given at the bottom of this page.

Let us now understand the Shloka with the example of this story. Nisarg is a nature lover. That means he worships unmanifested Brahman (consciousness). In this universe whatever does not have life like river, hill, celestial body. Gurupada on the other hand worships a living being that means manifested Brahman (consciousness). Nisarg does care about nature only. Even for that he can take the life of a person. Gurupada is too blind in the worship of a person that he does not care about anything else. At least Nisarg wants to create a better world for everyone on the planet, but the blind disciple cannot see any wrong and does not work for anything fruitful for others or himself by gaining knowledge.

In the modern world we can see both types of people. One type is hardcore nature lover or crusader. They do not love human civilization and modern technologies. Some of them are hardcore Vegans. Some of them created nude villages to live with nature in the most natural way. These are not bad at all. We should show our care for nature. We should keep more forests. We should not kill any animal or birds or fish to satisfy our taste buds. But the problem is with the hardcore approach. Evolution or civilization are like rivers. It flows. It cannot be stagnant. The intelligence developed by humans today is the experience of millions of years. The knowledge we acquired is the result of millions of species have been gaining knowledge since the beginning of life. Today if we are living in comfort in the era of AI and Robotics that has become possible because someone in the prehistoric period developed the technology of artificial fire. If we stop the wheel of civilization suddenly then we will be dead. We cannot do that. We cannot stop human innovations. But we can be more creative to utilize our knowledge to make this planet for all. We can reduce the population because today we are not struggling with survival and AI and robots can share our load of work. We can reduce pollution by developing earth friendly technologies. As we no longer need physical ability in this world of automation, we do not need huge animal protein in our everyday diet. We can easily survive having cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruits and nuts. Let the animals and birds live freely.

Now let's talk about worshipping any manifested. We can find people worshipping living humans, or cows, or snakes or monkeys or any other living beings. You have freedom of worship. Do it according to what your heart says. But, worshipping one does not give you the authority to hurt or harm or kill others. If you are following any godman blindly, then it is like a blind showing a path to another blind person. If your purpose in life is to gain knowledge, there is a high chance of misguidance if the Guru is fake. If you still want to follow any self-claimed Babas / Gurus / Avatars / God or Godman or son of God / Prophets / Mulla / Shri Shri ___ / Sadhguru __ / Gurudev __ / Sai Avatars, then ask them tough questions and evaluate their answers with open mind. Do not just follow someone because the person is trending in social media, or the person is talking sweetly or your close one is following that person. Be rational before giving your whole life to anyone. Be like Swami Vivekananda in choosing a Guru. Read the story of Swamiji to understand that. Now let's see about animal worshipping or loving. If a cow should be worshipped, then before that, all humans should be treated well. If you are hurt when a dog is hurt, then all other animals should be treated with the same love and affection. On one side you are loving your dog or worshipping a cow and the same person having a delicious meal with chicken breast or beef or pig’s ribcage or fish fry then that is dual standard. So, if you are worshipping any living being then respect all living beings, show empathy to all living beings, love all humans and other creatures.

Another perspective is worshipping idols or ideals makes no difference. Following either of them will take you to darkness. Idols are created from material. That means they are unmanifested. Despite, in some faith, it is believed that idols are alive as any alive person after the ritual of giving life to the idol. Worshipping an Idol without understanding the subtle meaning of the idol is the same as playing with dolls in your childhood. The same person in his childhood plays with dolls and does not get attracted in his adulthood. Because with growing age his consciousness also grew. The same way idol worshipping is good at the initial step to your spiritual journey but as you progress you should shift to knowledge and truth. That does not you need to stop idol worshipping. Continue that in a more meaningful way. In the last para we spoke about Ideals in form of Guru. Keeping an ideal is always good but becoming blind for an ideal is nonsense.

Hence, if you are worshipping anyone as mentioned in the Shloka, you are seeing one side of the story and thus you are in the darkness of ignorance.

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