I must admit folks, I am getting tired of having to knock HH Jayadvaita Swami so hard most of the time.  And here is his undisputable revenge on the opposing party, and that would have to be the Bhagavad-gita As It Is version 1 party. It really looks like this humble self is becoming here some sort of an umpire in some major global contest game of Vedanta devotional philosophy and English expression as well, even though and I repeat it again and again, English is not at all my first language. The business of the umpire is to be fair to all parties. Let me try to be fair.

“What’s happening to the world?” one may ask. Is this another effect of the poor CoronaVirus, who gets blamed for so many ills it is not responsible for at all? Probably not, even though we may attribute to the devotional Coronavirus a marked increase in Bhagavad-gita As It Is sale. This fact at least is indisputable. At least in my part of the world, the fever temperature of the world has decreased. Things are settling. And sale of Bhagavad-gita As It Is is markedly up. Thinking people are beginning to emerge. I mean to say people thinking self-realization. That is wonderful indeed.

IMHO, the outstanding , most humanely touching and characteristic qualities of the Australian People and Nation are the sought after fairness in their dealings, as well as their ubiquitous courtesy. To that I should perhaps add their remarkable and unwavering generosity. I have ben allowed to adopt this wonderful country as my own home nation, and feel therefore that I have an obligation to follow in the traditions mentioned above. I sometimes feel that Australia is really on the way to the heavenly planets, especially compared to the European countries and remembering well that Srila Prabhupada says that the standard of enjoyment in the heavenly planets is one or many thousand times superior to the standards of enjoyment on planet earth. I also feel sometimes that Australia should be renamed Nava Bharata or New India, as the climatic conditions are extremely favorable for the business of self-realisation, the most important thing in life being not only to keep one’s Krishna Consciousness intact but to increase it as far as is possible. We love you Australia!

But after this brief digression, let us get back to the real point of this article.

HH Jayadvaita Swami has really done an excellent and squeaky clean job on BGAII V2, verse 2.50.

BGAII V1, verse 2.50 presents two misrepresentations of Sri Krishna’s actual words.

Please guess what they are. Can you guess?

The first mistake is very apparent. In BGAII V1 translation you will find the apostrophe “O Arjuna.” Because there is no antecedent in the Sanskrit, we may comfortably conclude that this “O Arjuna” is a pure invention and concoction of the relevant editor. Therefore we strike it out, just as HH Jayadvaita Swami has rightly done in his editor’s wisdom.

I have to go now to attend to some other matters and I am calling for submissions and comments on the second mistake and incorrectness. Here is an opportunity to show your Krishna conscious jnana and vijnana. Please come forward. Thank you very much.

After 24 hours hours no submissions have been received and here is the answer.

The second and more serious misrepresentation of BGAII V1, verse 2.50 is the proposal that “A man engaged in devotional service rids himself of both good and bad actions even in this life.” 

In itself, the statement is true because devotional service being transcendental has nothing to do with good and bad actions. Additionally in the previous BGAII 2.49 verse, Krishna enjoins Arjuna to “keep all abominable activities far distant by devotional service…” So BGAII V1, verse 2.50 seems to make sense.

However, there is plenty of evidence that Krishna actually says in Sanskrit the equivalent of “A man engaged in devotional service rids himself of both good and bad reactions even in this life” And from that perspective V 1 is a misrepresentation of Krishna actual words. The evidence is as follows:

1 ) In the word for word: sukrita-duskrite-good and bad results. Result represents the reaction of our work, not the work itself.

2 ) In the purport, Srila Prabhupada immediately, in the first sentence, talks about “ the various reactions of his good and bad work.” and He means to comment on the truths enunciated in the verse.

3) In the purport again an equivalent of “reaction” is given as “resultant action” and the meaning of the verse is confirmed in the very last sentence.

4 ) Finally the proposal is confirmed in the next verse, 2.51. 

All glories to HH Jayadvaita Maharaja for rightly spotting and correcting these two faults of BGAII V1, verse 2.50!