Skip to main content

Break for Glory: Plants Live Rich Sensual Lives!

August 20, 2012


Another break for glory (to celebrate the Lord's Vibhooti i.e divine glory). This time round, I found a reference to a fascinating book, "What a Plant Knows" by Daniel Chamovitz through my favorite blog Andrew Sullivan's The Dish. I haven't yet got the book, but in an interview published in the Scientific American, I came across this quote by Chamovitz:

If you think about it, rootedness is a huge evolutionary constraint. It means that plants can’t escape a bad environment, can’t migrate in the search of food or a mate. So plants had to develop incredibly sensitive and complex sensory mechanisms that would let them survive in ever changing environments. I mean if you’re hungry or thirsty, you can walk to the nearest watering hole (or bar). If you’re hot, you can move north, if you’re looking for a mate, you can go out to a party. But plants are immobile. They need to see where their food is. They need to feel the weather, and they need to smell danger. And then they need to be able to integrate all of this very dynamic and changing information. Just because we don’t see plants moving doesn’t mean that there’s not a very rich and dynamic world going on inside the plant.
We've seen verse 10-41 before, where Śrī Kṛṣṇa declares that "Whatever it is that is glorious, prosperous or powerful in any being, know that to be a manifestation of a part of My splendour." The previous verse, 10-40 is just as beautiful:

नान्तोऽस्ति मम दिव्यानां विभूतीनां परन्तप |
एष तूद्देशतः प्रोक्तो विभूतेर्विस्तरो मया ||१०-४०||

naanto.asti mama divyaanaa.n vibhuutiinaaM parantapa .
eshha tuuddeshataH prokto vibhuutervistaro mayaa .. 10\-40..
There is no end to My Divine Glories, O Parantapa; this is but a brief statement by Me of of My Divine Glories.

It appears that science continues to add to the glories enumerated in Geeta chapter 10 by bringing to light ever new glories of the Lord's creation. As the Brahmananda kirtan says,


करे कौन तेरे गुणों का निरूपण किताबें कवीश्वर मुनीश्वर भी हारा ।
kare kaun tere guNo.m ka nirUpaN kitaabe.m kaviishvar muniishvar bhii haaraa
Who can really describe thy glories, even the great poets and sages have failed

Previous 'break for glory' posts here.

Hari Om and Namaskaar until the next post

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Geeta Dhyānaṁ 2 - Vyāsā's Vast Intellect

January 7, 2013 Previously on Geeta Jayanti, I had posted on the eternal debt of gratitude to Mother Geeta that is the basis of Geeta Dhyānaṁ. I love Param Pujya Gurudev 's commentary on the Geeta Dhyānaṁ. Pujya Gurudev's commentary is after the introduction to the Bhagavad Geeta in the commentary on Chapters 1 & 2 published by the the Chinmaya Mission. I personally believe it should be a book by itself. After invoking Mother Geeta, we now pay tribute to the wise Vyāsa Rishi - the Guru whose Jayanti marks Guru Pūrnima every year. Pujya Gurudev starts His tribute to Veda Vyāsā in his commentary on the 1st verse of the Dhyānaṁ. Vyāsa, the father of the Vedās, who, first collected, edited and published the Veda texts and who thereafter, gave us the dialectics of Vedānta in his Brahma Sūtra, himself a great man of realization, was indeed well fitted for the job. The ancient seer had both the mastery of the theoretical science of religion - Hinduism and also the practical expe

Geeta in Literature - IF by Rudyard Kipling

September 12, 2011 I came across a nice YouTube video that is an animation of Rudyard Kipling reading his famous poem IF . The full text sourced from wikisource is below: If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And los

In every field, let Dharma flourish - क्षेत्रे क्षेत्रे धर्म कुरु

August 9, 2012 Swamini Vimalanandaji has done a series of talks at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) called "406 SMS – Sure Mantras for Success from Bhagwad Geeta" (item 406 at this AMA link ). In this she has a very interesting take on the 1st line of the Bhagavad Geeta. धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे  १-१ dharmakShetre kurukShetre 1-1 <i> on the holy plain of Kurukshetra... </i> Swamini turns that slightly and says,  क्षेत्रे  क्षेत्रे  धर्म कुरु -   kShetre  kShetre  dharma kuru. Swamini goes on to establish that we can use this mantra to make that: "In every aspect of society,  must be pervaded by Dharma" Hari Om and Namaskaar until the next post