yaavaanaartha udapaane sarvathaha samplutodake |
taavan sarvheshu vedeshu braahmanasya vijaanataha || 46 ||

Just like there is no use for a well when water is flooding everywhere, so does a brahmana know all the contents of the Vedas.

yaavaan : just like
aartha : use
udapaane : well
sarvathaha : everywhere
samplut : flood
udake: water
taavan : similarly
sarvheshu : everything
vedeshu : contents of the Vedas
braahmanasya : a braahmana
vijaanataha : realized

In the last shloka we asked a question : if we were to reduce our dependence on worldly things, wouldn’t we have to give up TV, music, games, parties etc. Wouldn’t that be a boring life?

Think about your childhood. All of had a craving for toys when we were kids. But there came a stage when most of us outgrew toys because we began to think about higher things like career aspirations etc. So all toys began to look the same to us, regardless of the price, shape, size, colour, brand etc. , from a simple spinning top to an expensive model airplane.

Similarly, Shri Krishna says that once our thoughts become high quality, i.e. they pertain to our svadharma and to spiritual contemplation, then automatically we will begin to feel less need for any external entertainment and enjoyment.

Therefore, this shloka says that one who always maintains equanimity will have known all there is to know about the material world, and will begin to transcend worldly matters and knowledge.

In this shloka we notice that the word “braahmana” appears. Braahmana here does not refer to the caste system meaning. It refers to an individual who is always contemplating about brahman, which is nothing but the eternal essence that we learned about in the early part of this chapter. Also the word Veda, like in previous verses, refers to worldly knowledge.

Now, the two techniques prescribed so far, reducing unnecessary thoughts and improving quality of thought, were preparatory techniques. They are meant to prepare us for learning the main technique of the teaching, which is covered in the next shloka. It is probably the most famous and oft-quoted shloka in the Gita. We shall cover it in great detail.