Why Body is important? and what we shall do to use it properly?

This article is in response to question raised by one of the participant in our Bhagavad Gita class and meant for limited circulation 

Thank you for the insightful question you raised. Our Body encages two important personalities:

1.   Our Living soul who is none other than Brahman Himself

2.   Paramatma or Supersoul

There is three realizations of Supreme personality of Godhead. One is Brahman,2^nd is Paramatma and third is Bhagavan. Bhagavan stays in Vaikuntha but rest two stay in our body. Hence our Body is extremely important. As I keep on saying we can do Bhakti or devotional service only when we are in this Human body. Every human body we get after crossing 84Million bodies and in all those bodies we only enjoy the reaction of our action. Even if we are in demigod body and we stay in Heaven we can not do any devotional service as there is so much to enjoy we forget Him

So in Veda human Body has has been compared to a temple where Brahman stays. We need to take care of our body and keep it fit so that we can use it for God’s service.

In Vedanta and Srimad Bhagavad  Human Body is compared to a Boat through which we can cross this material ocean( Bhava sagar).. the facilities of the human body are like the Ore , the Vedas and scriptures are like strong favorable wind and Guru is the Captain who helps us to navigate. And the living soul who own the body is  the passenger.

Despite of all these facilities if we do not use the body as intended we are called “ Miser”, “ Fool”. So too much over indulgence of Enjoyment…forces us to forget this key focus area

As long as that mentality of serving God  is there /mindset is there we shall make progress. But it is difficult to keep that mindset for long without “sadhana”. We fall in sense gratification  mood and we concentrate on enjoying. We forget that “Bhokataram Yagnatapasam” sloka which says He is the supreme enjoyer and we are meant to serve Him. And in that mood we forget Him and take care of only body which then nullifies the need of the body.. The body is like car. It is important for reach a destination .But other than Car the driver also to be taken care off.The driver is the soul.

I liked your point that if we approach fire hand comes back..That is because in BG “Maya tatamidam sarvam” sloka Lord has said that he has pervaded the entire universe..how it is done ?.. in our body Brahman has His own nature which is called “ Adhyatma” and in colloquial language we call’’” consciousness”. Consciousness is like sunlight which is still there even when Sun is covered by cloud. The consciousness gets changed based on the three gunas and it forces us to behave in a particular way. So if some one is habituated to cook, for her touching hot utensil is no challenge, but the person like me who has never gone near fire my hand gets retracted.. and consciousness directs intelligence to retract the sense organs as necessary

So in conclusion: the body is extremely critical and we have a choice : either to use it for God’s service and we go back to Godhead or use for our sense organs satisfaction and continue in the cycle of birth and death in material world

In our Scripture Yoga and Pranayam has been recommended to take care of body and keep it fit for Lord’s service.

Hope I have explained well. Let us keep discussion on..