The verse and its meaning · Uddhava Gita · Uddhava Gita — Right Action and the Elements

One Body, Many Names

Bhagavata Purana 11.21.5

भूम्यम्ब्वग्न्यनिलाकाशा भूतानां पञ्चधातवः। आब्रह्मस्थावरादीनां शारीरा आत्मसंयुताः ॥ वेदेन नामरूपाणि विषमाणि समेष्वपि। धातुषूद्धव कल्प्यन्त एतेषां स्वार्थसिद्धये

Meaning · English

Earth, water, fire, air and sky are the five constituents of every embodied being, from Brahma down to the plants that cannot move, and the self is joined to each body. Though all are equal in this, the Veda assigns unequal names and forms among these same constituents, so that these beings may reach their own ends.

Krishna begins with a plain fact: every body, high or low, is built from the same five things. The word for them is dhatu, from dha, to hold or set in place, so they are what holds a body up. Beings range from Brahma to a blade of grass, and the self is joined to each of them. Then comes the puzzle. If the stuff is the same, why does the Veda speak of high and low, clean and unclean, fit and unfit? Krishna answers with two more words. Nama-rupa means name and form, the labels and shapes by which things are told apart. Sama and visama mean equal and unequal: the substance is equal, the naming is unequal. The Veda lays these names over the same elements, and Krishna gives the reason in the last words, svartha-siddhi, the accomplishing of one's own aim. The distinctions are there so that beings can act, and act in order. The commentators read it this way, tying it to the verses nearby on place, time and person. This is why Krishna says it here. He has been explaining why one thing is pure in one setting and impure in another. The listener is asked to hold both facts: the sameness underneath, and the use of the names on top.

Picture one large bag of clay at a potter's yard. From it come cooking pots, water jars and lamps, each with its own name, its own use, its own rule about what may be put in it. The clay is one. That is the five elements and the Veda's names: one substance, many labelled uses.

1. Today, when you see a name or role that sets one person above another, such as a title, a job or an age, pause for three breaths. 2. Remind yourself that the body in front of you is made of the same five things as yours. 3. Then do whatever the role asks of you, with the courtesy it calls for. 4. In the evening, note whether the pause changed your tone with anyone.

A woman stands in a line at a blood donation camp, between a retired clerk and a college boy she has never met. The nurse checks each arm the same way. The form asks for blood group, weight and recent illness. It does not ask who anyone is. Krishna's teaching here has three steps in that moment. First, the same stuff is under every sleeve. Second, the labels on the form, group and weight and health, are not decoration. They exist so the right blood reaches the right patient, which is what the text means by names assigned for a purpose. Third, she can sit among strangers without ranking them. Today's mainstream biology agrees that human bodies share the same basic materials, and that matching by group is a practical sorting, not a verdict on worth. The five elements are not a modern chemical list, and the text does not offer them as one. They sort matter by how it behaves: solid, liquid, heat, motion and space. The verse does not take away her nervousness about the needle, and it does not replace the nurse's screening.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Three Reasons for Purity Rules · Bhagavata Purana 11.21.3
• Next: Where the Antelope Roams · Bhagavata Purana 11.21.7
• All of Uddhava Gita · Ask Krishna about it

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