Shloka 52
Adhyāya 42 — Mahābhūta–Indriya–Adhyātma-Vyavasthā
Brahmā’s Instruction on Elements and Faculties
रोगशोकसमाविदष्टं पज्चस्रोत:समावृतम् पजञ्चभूतसमायुक्तं नदद्वारं द्विदिवतम्
rogaśokasamāviḍaṣṭaṃ pañcasrotaḥsamāvṛtaṃ pañcabhūtasamāyuktaṃ navadvāraṃ dvidhāvitam
Vāyu-deva said: “This embodied being is bitten and afflicted by disease and grief; it is enclosed by the five streams (the currents of sense-experience), compounded of the five great elements, furnished with nine gates (the openings of the body), and driven in two ways—pulled between opposing tendencies.”
वायुदेव उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse frames the body as a constructed, element-made ‘city’ with nine openings, vulnerable to illness and sorrow and swept along by sensory currents. Ethically, it urges discernment and restraint: do not mistake the body’s changing conditions and sense-flows for the true Self, and cultivate steadiness amid dual pulls.
Vāyu-deva is describing the condition of embodied life in instructive, metaphorical terms—highlighting how the jīva, while dwelling in the body, is constrained by elemental composition, sense-channels, and the inevitable experiences of pain such as disease and grief.