Those who are avoiding all the three gateways to hell are complimented here. It is promised that those who avoid derailing themselves into any of these dangerous by-paths of self-exploitation and self-ruination, will steadily progress on the straight path to their life’s goal. To wander into fields of desire, anger and greed is to dissipate our energies. Devoid of the divine vitality of a fully grown and well-balanced human personality, the seeker feels fatigued and not strong enough to meet the terrible challenges that arise from within himself. To overcome the strong temptations of the sense-objects, the mind and intellect should re-charge the individual’s inner abilities with which the individual can strive hard and effectively achieve self-expansion. He who is avoiding THESE THREE GATES OF DARKNESS — which are sure to lead him into deeper and deeper confusions and despairs and ultimately take him to the sub-human level of existence — will be, it is promised here, practising WHAT IS GOOD FOR HIM.
The term ‘Shreyas’ has no equivalent word of the same import in English. It does not merely mean ‘good’ but it has a deeper and wider import in Sanskrit. Shreyas, when practised, not only brings happiness to the practitioner, but also contributes much to the well-being of the people around him.
Progressing thus in the right direction, the individual “GOES TO THE GOAL SUPREME.” Cultural unfoldment cannot be a miraculous overnight development. The bud should grow, open and bloom, under the careful nourishment of steady discipline, vigorous study and perfect understanding. The unfoldment is more delicate than that of a flower.
This stanza explains to the seeker what is to be avoided by him and indicates how he will thereby have a positive development and inner growth. But it may be asked how a POSITIVE growth can be effected as a result of a NEGATIVE act of denial. Avoiding bad food can preserve health but it cannot give the positive joy of taking a healthy full dinner. Similarly, avoiding the dissipation of our energies through desire, anger and greed, would, perhaps, end all our agitations caused by these three. But how can that create any positive development in ourselves? The Geeta preaches a positive way-of-life; and the stanza, as it stands, suggests this positive achievement when it says that such an individual “PRACTISES WHAT IS GOOD FOR HIM.”WHAT IS THE POSITIVE PRACTICE?
