Shloka 7
Bondage and Liberation Under Māyā; Two Birds Analogy; Marks of the Saintly Devotee
आत्मानमन्यं च स वेद विद्वा- नपिप्पलादो न तु पिप्पलाद: । योऽविद्यया युक् स तु नित्यबद्धो विद्यामयो य: स तु नित्यमुक्त: ॥ ७ ॥
ātmānam anyaṁ ca sa veda vidvān apippalādo na tu pippalādaḥ yo ’vidyayā yuk sa tu nitya-baddho vidyā-mayo yaḥ sa tu nitya-muktaḥ
အသီးမစားသော ငှက်သည် အလုံးစုံသိသော အမြင့်ဆုံးဘုရားဖြစ်ပြီး၊ မိမိ၏ အနေအထားနှင့် အသီးစားသော ချုပ်နှောင်ဇီဝ၏ အနေအထားကိုလည်း ပြည့်စုံစွာ သိတော်မူသည်။ သို့သော် အသီးစားသော ဇီဝသည် မိမိကိုယ်ကိုလည်း မသိ၊ ဘုရားကိုလည်း မသိ; အဝိဒ္ဓာဖြင့် ဖုံးလွှမ်းနေသဖြင့် “အမြဲချုပ်နှောင်” ဟု ခေါ်ရပြီး၊ ပြည့်စုံသော ဉာဏ်တရားမယ့် ဘဂဝန်သည် “အမြဲလွတ်မြောက်” ဖြစ်သည်။
The word vidyā-maya in this verse indicates the internal potency of the Lord and not the external potency, mahā-māyā. Within the material world there is vidyā, or material science, and avidyā, or material ignorance, but in this verse vidyā means the internal spiritual knowledge by which the Personality of Godhead is fixed in omniscience. The example of two birds in a tree, which is given in many Vedic literatures, demonstrates the statement nityo nityānām: there are two categories of eternal living entities, namely the Supreme Lord and the minute jīva soul. The conditioned jīva soul, forgetting his identity as an eternal servant of the Lord, tries to enjoy the fruits of his own activities and thus comes under the spell of ignorance. This bondage of ignorance has existed since time immemorial and can be rectified only by one’s taking to the loving devotional service of the Lord, which is full of spiritual knowledge. In conditioned life the living entity is forced by the laws of nature to engage in pious and impious fruitive activities, but the liberated position of every living entity is to offer the fruits of his work to the Lord, the supreme enjoyer. It should be understood that even when the living entity is in a liberated condition, his knowledge is never equal in quantity to that of the Personality of Godhead. Even Lord Brahmā, the supreme living entity within this universe, acquires only partial knowledge of the Personality of Godhead and His potencies. In Bhagavad-gītā (4.5) , the Lord explains His superior knowledge to Arjuna:
FAQs
This verse states that bondage is due to association with ignorance (avidyā), while liberation is the soul’s natural state when established in knowledge (vidyā)—thus the liberated condition is intrinsic, and bondage is a misidentification.
Pippalāda is used as an example of a worldly designation: the wise know the Self beyond names and identities, so they are ‘not’ the temporary persona created by bodily identification.
Practice distinguishing the observer (ātman) from roles, labels, and emotions; reduce identity-based reactions, and cultivate spiritual knowledge through sādhana (hearing, chanting, remembrance) to live from the liberated standpoint.