Living Bhagavad Gita 33: No More than Discarding Used Clothes

 

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for people living and working in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times filled with stress and fear. This scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully, achieve excellence in whatever we do and find happiness, peace and contentment.

 [Continued from the previous post.]

na jaayate mriyate vaa kadaachin

naayam bhootwaa bhavitaa vaa na bhooyah

ajo nityah shaashwato'yam puraano

na hanyate hanyamaane shareere // 2.20 //

vedaavinaashinam nityam ya enam ajam avyayam

katham sa purushah paartha kam ghaatayati hanti kam // 2.21 //

vaasaamsi jeernaani yathaa vihaaya

navaani grihnaati naro'paraani

tathaa shareeraani vihaaya jeernaany

anyaani samyaati navaani dehee // 2.22 //

“It was never born nor will it ever die; having come into existence, it does not ever cease to be. Birthless, eternal, changeless and ancient, it is not killed when the body dies. Knowing it to be indestructible, eternal, unborn and immutable, how can you, Arjuna, kill it or be the cause of its death? Just as a man casts off used clothes and puts on new ones, so does the self cast off used bodies and enter new ones.”  BG 2.20-22

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The great declaration of India: Death is no more than casting off used clothes. Krishna says it, Buddha says it, Mahavira says it, Guru Nanak says it, Kabir says it, Gorakhnath says it, Adi Shankaracharya says it, Vyasa says it, a thousand rishis of yore have said it,  all based on their own personal experiences. As when Krishna tells Arjuna, “Many times I have been born, and so have you. All those lives I remember, but not you.” As the more than 500 birth stories of the  Buddha, the Jataka Tales, tell us.

As far as the true you are considered, death cannot touch you. You are never born nor do you ever die. You are unborn, eternal, changeless and beyond time. Time was yet to be born when you came into being. And you exist in dimensions where time does not exist.

This is a truth you can experience yourself. It is not something you have to learn from others, nor from books. And you are not something subject to powers greater than yourself, for there are no powers greater than yourself. You are the greatest power in existence.

That is why Rumi says he is the wind and the surf, that he is the mast, the rudder, the helmsman and keel, that he is the tree with a parrot perched on its branches, that he is the rose and the nightingale lost in its fragrance, that he is silence and thought and voice, that he is all orders of being, that he is the galaxy, that he is all that is and is what isn’t.

That is why Vagambhrini of the Rig Veda says she moves with the Rudras and the Vasus, that she walks with the sun and Varuna and Indra and the Ashwins, that she is the one who gives wealth to the nations, she is the first among those to whom sacrifices are offered, that when Rudra pulls his bow it is she who stretches it for him, that she exists throughout the universe, that she has given birth to the progenitor of the universe.

And that is why Truishanku the thrice-cursed ancient man who turned into a seer could say his fame is as tall as the peak of the mountain, that it is he who gives life to the tree of the universe.

We are that which is not killed when the body is killed.

At the same time each one of us lives in a body that is subject to birth and growth, that gives birth to other bodies, that ages and dies. But that death is not the final end. It is not the final end to anything other than the body itself. Everything else continues to be, continues to exist even after what we call death, as every man andwoman who has ever existed has experienced, though they may not remember that.

Dr Brian Weiss had graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Columbia University and had received his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine. He had been a professor at several prestigious university medical schools and had had published over forty scientific papers in the fields of psychopharmacology, brain chemistry, sleep disorders, depression, anxiety states, substance abuse disorders and Alzheimer’s disease when his life changed completely through his fist encounter with a past life experience of one of his patients.

Dr Weiss was treating a patient of his in her late twenties called Catherine who suffered from fears, phobias, paralyzing panic attacks, depression, and recurrent nightmares. Her symptoms had been life-long and the doctor observed they were worsening in spite of treatments. In one of her hypnotherapy sessions, Dr Weiss gave her the suggestion to go back to the time from which her symptoms arose and, instead of going back to her childhood as she usually did, she went back to a lifetime of hers long, long ago. In Dr Weiss’s words, “she flipped back about four thousand years into an ancient near-Eastern lifetime, one in which she had a different face and body, different hair, a different name. She remembered details of topography, clothes, and everyday items from that time. She recalled events in that lifetime until ultimately she drowned in a flood or tidal wave, as her baby was torn from her arms by the force of the water.”

It is this experience with Catherine that piqued Dr Weiss’s interest in past life regression to such an extent that he became the world’s foremost authority on past life regression and the author of such bestsellers as Many Lives, Many Masters and Through Time into Healing.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, originally called Bardo Thodal, is a roughly twelve hundred year old book by Tibet’s greatest yogi Padmasambhava that was first translated into English by W. Y. Evans-Wentz in 1924. In his Foreword to the English translation by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., later added to the book, Lopez says: “Buddhism, like several other Indian traditions, does not see death as the cessation of consciousness. Instead, death marks the dissolution of the physical elements of the person. The mental elements, generally referred to as consciousness, persist, to once again take physical form through the process of rebirth. The question arose in Indian Buddhism as to whether consciousness moves immediately to a new lifetime after death, or whether there is some intervening period. Certain schools postulated the existence of an intermediate state between the moment of death and moment of conception in the next lifetime; according to some formulations the intermediate state could last as little as an instant or as long as forty-nine days.”  It is this intermediate state or states that is  known as the bardo or the bardos and Bardo Thodal is about what happens in the Bardos and what the intelligent thing to do is in the bardos, a Tibetan word meaning in between or between two.

The bardo or the bardos are thus our experiences in the bodiless state and these experiences are decided by our mental life while we are in the body, that is to say by life as we know it. The quality of life after death is thus decided by our life before death. If we have lived a life based on daivi sampada, positive virtues, then our life after death and after our rebirth will be pleasant and happy and if we live a life dominated by asuri sampada, negative qualities, then these will be hellish.

In fact talking of asuri people, Krishna says, “These cruel haters, the worst among men in the world, I hurl them forever into evil wombs.’ Krishna does not mean he selects such people for hellish lives and the good people for heavenly life. What he means is that evil people are led to evil life, both present and future, by their karmas/ life scripts, and good people are lad to good life, present and future, by their good karmas or daivi sampada.

Daivi sampada, the qualities that lead to happy life according to Krishna, are: Fearlessness, absence of anger, absence of crookedness, absence of covetousness, absence of hatred and absence of pride; harmlessness, purity of heart, steadfastness in knowledge, steadfastness in yoga, charity, control of the senses, the attitude of sacrifice, study of scriptures, austerity, truthfulness , renunciation, peacefulness, compassion towards all beings, gentleness, modesty, vigor, forgiveness, fortitude and purity of the heart and body.

In contrast to these are the asuri sampada. negative qualities that make our life hell while living, after death and in our future lifetimes. In his list of asuri sampada in Chapter 16 of the Gita, Krishna mentions only a few qualities:  hypocrisy, arrogance, self-conceit, anger, harshness and ignorance, but his discussion of asuri sampada is very thorough. After listing the asuri sampada, Krishna continues by saying that they lead to bondage. He says the asuri people know neither pravritti nor nivritti – they know neither the path of action nor the path of withdrawal from action. The path of action is the path leading to worldly good and the path of withdrawal is the path that leads to inner growth, to spirituality and mastery over oneself, over one’s mind, and to awakening. They know not how to make true achievements in the world, nor how to make spiritual progress.

The unique teaching of Krishna is the combining of the worldly with the spiritual. He combines pravritti and nivritti, blends the two into one. He teaches how the path leading to worldly achievements itself can lead to spiritual achievements, provided pravritti itself is practiced with spiritual awakening as your goal. Swakarmana tam abhyarchya siddhim vindati maanavah, teaches Krishna:. by worshipping Him through one’s actions, man attains the supreme. Our actions can be the path leading to fasting the ego and feasting the soul, the path leading to starving the ego and feeding the soul, teaches he.

But instead of fasting the ego and feasting the soul, instead of starving the ego and feeding the soul, the asuri people do the opposite. They starve the soul and feed their ego, making their own life hell and also making hell for everyone around them. For the asuri people, we are the body; born of the sexual union of the male and the female, and the mind and consciousness are by products of the body. For them we exist neither before birth nor after death – life begins in the mother’s womb and ends in the cremation ground. Bhasmee-bhootasya dehasya  punar aagamanam kutah, they ask rhetorically: Where does the body return from once it has been reduced to ashes?  For them nothing exists beyond the grave. So they live lives that lead to their own destruction and to the destruction of the world – the life of nourishing the ego, and starving the soul. Kaamam aashritya dushpooram dambha-maana-madaanvitaah mohaad griheetvaa asad-graahaan pravartante‘huchivrataah, Krishna says about them: “They are full of insatiable desires and hypocrisy and filled with pride and arrogance; holding on to evil ideas through delusion, they tread the path of evil, since their desires are evil.”

Our desires are important. The nature of our desires is important. “As a man's desire is, so is his destiny. For as his desire is, so is his will; and as his will is, so is his deed; and as his deed is, so is his reward, whether good or bad,’ says the Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad, one of the oldest  and the largest of Upanishads. The Upanishad adds, “' A man acts according to the desires to which he clings. After death he goes to the next world bearing in his mind the subtle impressions of his deeds; and, after reaping there the harvest of his deeds, he returns again to this world of action.”

The subtle impressions the Upanishad speaks of is what India calls karmas and modern western psychology calls life scripts. Our current and future life is determined by these impressions, they give direction to our life, they steer us in this world and the next world. So what desires we entertain and how we react to the incidents life brings us is vitally important for us.

It is for this reason that the ancient acharyas ask us to live our life intelligently. Desires are fine, but don’t be a slave to them, they tell us. For Krishna, desires are sacred, so long as they are not against  dharma, the common good, the good of others: dharma-aviruddho bhooteshu kaamosmi bharatarshabha, he tells Arjuna in the Gita, speaking of himself as divinity, as God: “I am desire in all – desire that is not against dharma.” Wealth is fine, they tell us, they even tell us to make us as much wealth as possible, and they teach us to worship wealth as the most beautiful of goddesses – Lakshmi, Shri. And they tell us power is good, so long as that power is not used against lokasngraha, the common good.

Instead of  living  in happiness and contentment with the wealth and power we have, instead of sharing them with others joyously in the spirit of sacrifice spreading joy all around, the asuri people live lives of more acquisitions, of competing with others, of destroying others, finding pleasure in harming others, in giving them pain. What motivates them is greed and power hunger. And just as good people find pleasure in giving away wealth and in using their power in doing good to others, the wicked ones find pleasure in the display of wealth and in oppressing others through their power. They say, in the words of Krishna, “I have destroyed this enemy and also I shall slay the others too. I am a lord. I enjoy thoroughly the pleasures of the world. I am perfect in every way. I am powerful. I am happy. I am rich. Who is equal to me? I perform grand sacrifices. I give away great wealth in charity. Who is as happy as I am?”

Deluded fools, Krishna calls them. Accursed to live hell here on earth and hereafter, Krishna calls them. Bound to suffer anger, jealousy, greed, lust and other insatiable passions life after life, Krishna tells about them.

In the language of the Harry potter books, possessed by the dementors,condemned to live in worlds of darkness.

They too do have their moments of joy – when others suffer, when others praise them... when they have many followers on the social media! But what they are denied is the joyfulness that is  our nature, the ocean of ananda that is in our heart, the kind of joyfulness that makes great masters sing nandati nandati nandatyeva – he rejoices, rejoices, and rejoices,

Give up the constant desire for more and more wealth, says Shankaracharya. Instead enjoy the wealth that comes through your work. Shift the focus, says the acharya, from acquiring more and more wealth  to enjoying the wealth we already have. Many of us become so obsessed with wealth, that we have no time for enjoying it. Our life itself becomes for collecting more and more wealth, mountains of wealth. There is no life more useless than the one spent in acquiring wealth. Na vittena tarpaneeyo manushyah, says Indian wisdom, wealth can never satisfy you.  It is anala, something for which nothing is ever enough.

Producing wealth is good, but living for acquiring wealth that you do not use is an accused life. Greed is not good. Wealth should be used – for oneself, for one’s family, for the good of others.

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Chogyam Trungpa in his classic Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior speaks about two differing lifestyles – one guided by the vision of the great eastern sun and the other guided by the vision of the setting sun, one guided by the vision that life is everlasting, death is no end to living, life continues even after death and every death is followed by rebirth; and the other guided by the erroneous belief that death is the end of everything, that there is only one lifetime, ‘we live only once’ and whatever we want to do we have to do fast, in this lifetime itself, we have to be constantly in a hurry, like a tourist on a conducted tour who is given a limited time for each place to visit, and a list of things to achieve within each day.

According to this latter vision, we have to make choices in life, decide what is important each moment, and ignore what is not important.  Since life is a constant journey from one destination to another, our focus should always be on the next destination, and we should never waste time on the sights on the way, should rush from one destination to the next. Hurry, hurry is the constant watchword.

When the Industrial Revolution began in the west, futurologists of the day predicted the age of leisure will arrive soon since machines will take over all production. They also predicted that soon words like hurry and haste would disappear from our languages. But we all know what happened – we are living now in a world of unprecedented haste and hurry, with no leisure available to us, people forced to work more hours than ever before.

The Japanese have a new word in their language now, a recent addition – karoshi, which means death from overwork. Instead of haste and hurry, the words that have disappeared from life are words like leisure and idle hours. I believe it is Carl Honore, the author of In Praise of Slowness, who pointed it out that his son’s first words in life were “hurry up!” We are living in the age of leisure and the predictions were words like hurry and haste would disappear from language and his son’s first words in life were ‘hurry up’, the words he hears most in his home!

That is the way of the setting sun, the philosophy that guides the west. To west every moment unoccupied is a waste, every moment spent in leisure is a waste. Successful people have to show that they are constantly busy, even when they are not!

So in our train compartments we do not see people sitting idle, watching the sights you pass through. I once took a series of photographs during a train journey and called it India by the railside. Most of India is fascinatingly beautiful as seen from a train, be it the thickets of wild bamboo, my favourite, or the paddy fields, palm clusters, the thick jungles or whatever. I remember watching an entire evening of sunset as the train  sped for miles and miles at high speed across vast plains of North Karnataka, where red chilies were either growing and spread out to dry! I was on my first trip to Hubli in Karnataka, travelling all alone some half a century ago and I still remember the magical spell of the occasion.

But today you don’t see children or young people, or even old people doing that – everyone is busy with one electronic gadget or the other in their hand. The world outside, the wonderful places they are passing through, the vast empty plains of India and the crowded cities and towns, the sleepy villages, the mountains and rivers each of which has a thousand of legend and myths to tell us, do not exist to them anymore.

That is the life of the setting sun.

In the vision of the eastern sun, traffic delays are not delays but opportunities life provides us to enjoy the roadside views. And side trips are not distractions, not wastes of time, but invitations from the unknown to hitherto unknown realities, frequently of splendor and magic. If we look back leisurely we find that most of the beautiful things that happened to us happened on these side trips, we have never regretted a single side trip we made. In the vision of the rising sun we enjoy the journey itself; destinations are important, but not so important as to ignore the journeys.

One of the most beautiful movies I have seen in many years is the 2005 Malayalam movie Charlie. The two central characters in the movie, Tessa and Charlie, live from moment to moment, meeting life’s challenges as they come, enjoying the beauty of every moment, going where the winds of life take them – and their lives are filled with pure magic. They meet by pure chance, fall in love with each other by pure chance and become each other’s by pure chance.  At the beginning of the movie Tessa is asked by her brother, “What is your plan?” and she replies, “My current plan is to see how to live without any plans.”

Yes it is a risky way of living, and not all of us is ready for that. But that is the way of living by the vision of the eastern sun. That is the way Krishna taught, that is the way the Buddha and Mahavira taught, that is the way Jesus taught, that is the way Bodhidharma and Laozi taught, that is the way Zarathhustra and Meera and Andal taught, the way Adi Shankara taught when he sang in the 18^th shloka of Bhaja Govindam:

sura-mandira-taru-moola-nivaasah’ shayyaa bhootalam ajinam vaasah; sarva-parigraha-bhoga-tyaagah, kasya sukham na karoti viraagah

“Life under a temple tree, the earth for your bed, barks of trees for clothes, giving up all possessions and all sensory pleasures – this is vairagya and who does it not give pleasure to?”

Bhagavan Shankara does not mean you have to give up your home and only then you will be happy. He does not mean that to be happy you have to live under a tree, give up your comfortable bed and sleep on the earth, wear bark clothes, walk away from all your possessions and pleasures. If you can be happy only under these conditions, then you are bound by them, your happiness s dependent on these; it is not absolute happiness, happiness that is your nature, it is something you achieve under some conditions and not others. As Bhagavan Shankara himself points out in Jivan-muktananda-lahari, the external conditions do not matter. The wise man, the enlightened man, is equally happy in the forest and the palace, in the city and on river bank, in the company of the rich and of the poor, in the company of the wise and of fools, in the middle of crowds and in solitude.

Just as Bhagavan Shankara teaches us, what Krishna teaches too, both through his life and the Gita, is that we can be in the middle of these things and yet be unattached to these things, not cling to these things. We can possess a house and yet not be possessed by it, we can possess wealth and yet not be possessed by wealth, possess a wife or husband and children but yet not be possessed by these.

For Krishna the ideal is the lotus leaf in water – padma-patram iva ambhasaa. Be in water like a lotus leaf and yet be untouched by water. Krishna calls this anasakti yoga.  This is what India has always called sannyasa, but came to be misunderstood later. So Krishna clarifies beyond any doubt that a true sannyasi is not one who physically gives up possessions and actions, na niragnir na cha akriyah, but performs all his life calls him to do and yet remains unattached. Krishna takes the name of Janaka, a king surrounded by all kinds of power, possessions, comforts and pleasures and yet remains unattached to all these, as an example for a sannyasi.

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Death is inevitable, all of us are bound to die, there is no escape from that, and it is no more than discarding worn out clothes and getting new ones. And as inevitable as death is rebirth – tatha deha-antara-praapti, attaining a new body. Therefore live intelligently knowing this truth, says our timeless wisdom.

Do not be obsessed with wealth – give up the constant desire for more and more wealth, jaheehi dhana-agama-trshnaam. And enjoy whatever comes to you through your honest work – yal-labhase nija karmopaattam vittam tena vinodaya chitttam. Do not be obsessed with sensuality – enjoy them but do not be a slave to them. The beautiful body of a woman, her full breasts and deep naval, seeing these do not become slaves to them – naaree-stana-bhara-naabhee-desham  drshtvaa maa gaa mohaavesham. Or the handsome male body, for that matter.

Do not be a slave to any sense object – the pleasure you get from enjoying them is actually your own ananda, your own essential nature. You desire these and the desire makes your mind restless and you lose the stillness of your mind, lose contact with your own nature. You get those things, enjoy them, for a few minutes your mind becomes still again and  the still mind reflects the ananda that is your true nature – that is all there is to sensory pleasures and all else we pursue in life. We are like the dog that picks up a dry bone and chews it. The bone wounds its mouth, blood oozes out and the dog enjoys it thinking the bone is giving it pleasure, whereas the truth is that  it is its own blood the dog enjoys.

Realizing this truth and living in the world as a master is wisdom. A master means not a slave to our desires, not a slave to external events. That is what Krishna means when he says such a one is a man is rooted in consciousness, a sthitah-prajna, who does not run after the desires in his mind but is happy with himself, whose mind is not shaken by situations of grief or happiness; who is without raga, bhaya, or krodha, without longings, fears, or anger, who is content with himself.

Wisdom is living what you are, being what you are, untouched by whatever life  brings to you; accepting all with gratitude but at the same time remaining rooted in your own nature. Like a tree on the hilltop, a mighty tree with branches reaching out to the sky, dancing with the wind, subject to the change of seasons, but at the same its root sunk deep in the womb of earth, drawing its nourishment from that earth, not letting anything that goes on outside touch its heart, its soul, transforming the very seasons into opportunities for its growth, transforming thundershowers and burning sun and freezing cold and the violent storms as opportunities for growth.

Be part of nature and yet live above it, live untouched by it, singing your own song, dancing your own dance.

Though you are a tree that grows on the earth, that draws its nourishment from the earth, you are in fact a tree whose roots are elsewhere, somewhere far above, in some other dimension: oordhva-moolam adhah-shaakham ashwattham which ancients called avyayam, changeless while changing, growing and perishing while remaining imperishable. 

For years in the ashram where I lived, our lunch every day began with this shloka that opens the fifteenth chapter of the Gita.

What an amazing shloka in an amazing book by an amazing teacher!

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Photo courtesy: Unknown artist

Living Bhagavad Gita 024: The Miracle of Listening

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for people living and working in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times filled with stress and fear. This scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully, achieve excellence in whatever we do and find happiness, peace and contentment.

[Continued from the previous post.]

One of the fascinating things about the Gita chapter we are about to finish discussing is that Krishna says just a single sentence of five words here: partha pashya etaan samavetaan kuroon – Arjuna, see these assembled kurus. After that he remains totally silent, listening to Arjuna. As Arjuna passes through various stages of confusion, frustration, depression, melancholy and finally reaches the depths of his vishada, Krishna pays full attention to him. He speaks again only after Arjuna has collapsed in his chariot abandoning his bow and arrows at the end of the chapter and the next chapter begins. He gives Arjuna space to say all he wants to say without interrupting once. And after he has stopped speaking, Krishna provokes him to speak again, helping him to expresses anything more that might be lurking in the depths of his mind. This is like emptying a vessel and then pouring some water into it, shaking the vessel well and emptying it again to clean out anything that might have been still  be in it. As Krishna does so, Arjuna brings out the rest of his pain and agony and confusion from his inner depths, thus making his mind empty and receptive to Krishna’s teachings. That emptiness at the end of pouring out all that is in your mind is a requirement to receive the teachings of the Gita.

Very little of Gita can go into a crowded mind, which is the reason why we too must practice some sadhana for emptying the mind along with the study of the Gita, like a meditation. A few minutes of meditation every day and living the whole day meditatively will take us a long way. Living the whole day meditatively is not difficult because all you have to do is to focus completely on whatever you are doing. Meditation is focusing your attention on a single thing, whether it is your breath, abdominal movement, a mantra, a sound, an image or anything else.  In his classic The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of transforming everyday actions like washing vessels into meditation by the simple practice of paying full attention to them. 

One of the most famous Zen stories is about a university professor who went to meet a Zen master to learn Zen from him. While the professor began introducing himself, the master ordered tea. A disciple brought tea and the master began pouring the tea into a cup while the professor talked about the researches he has done, the researches he is engaged in at the moment, his future research plans and so on. Listening quietly without saying a word, the Zen master kept pouring the tea into the cup which had by then become full and had started spilling over. Suddenly the professor noticed this and said, “Master, the cup is full. No more will go in!”

And the master stopped and said, “You are like this cup, professor. You are so full of yourself that no Zen will go in now. Empty yourself and come back.”

Without emptying ourselves, we cannot receive wisdom. Wisdom is given only to those who have become silent inside and not to those with crowded minds. Krishna is allowing Arjuna to go on talking so that his mind becomes empty and receptive to what he has to say.

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There is another reason why Krishna listens to Arjuna attentively without interrupting. The greatest thing anyone can do for a man who is in pain and grief is to listen to him. Being heard is healing.  Just the fact that someone is listening to us attentively, the fact that someone feels what we have to say is important, will have a positive effect on us, as anyone who has ever wanted to talk to someone and has found someone to listen to him knows.

I remember my days as the principal of a large junior college. One day a girl student in her teens came to me weeping, her whole body shaking, the power of each sob sending violent tremors through her whole body. I seated her conformably on a sofa in my chamber and gave her plenty of time to relax and catch her breath. It was only after quite some time that she started sharing her problem. It took me a long time to get the whole picture from her as she shared her pain in words interspersed with periods of sobbing.

This young girl was extremely beautiful and very sweet. One of her plain looking teachers could not tolerate her beauty or the fact that all the boys liked her. So she began insulting her in class, finding fault with her for everything, calling her an idiot for the smallest errors she made and also saying things like she has no interest in studies but was interested only in drawing boys to her, she was a trap and a danger to the boys and bad example to other girls. The teacher went to the extent of calling the young girl a slut in the classroom.

It took me more than an hour of more or less silent listening to put her at ease and then to assure her she would be fine, nothing would happen to her. I had instructed my secretary who sat just outside my chamber not to let anyone come in so that I could listen to her uninterrupted, paying full attention. I can’t say she was healed of her pain by the time she left my room, but she had certainly become relaxed, with even a gentle smile appearing on her face as she was thanked me and left.

Krishna listens with complete attention to whatever Arjuna has to say because listening with complete attention is in itself healing.

By the way, listening with complete attention is also the greatest compliment you can give anyone. We all need attention – that is one of the greatest people truths.  

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The following passage is from Brenda Shoshanna’s beautiful book Zen Miracles: Finding Peace in an Insane World, a book that I have used as a text in a course called Zen and the Executive Mind that I taught for several years in one of the top business schools of India, XLRI School of Business and Human Resources.    

“A Zen student, Leila, went to the beach for the weekend. After a hectic week she looked forward to peace, to the smell of the ocean, to the sand dunes. There was a woman cleaning in the guest house Leila was staying at. This woman, Frieda, sang very loud love songs in Spanish as she swept the floors. In addition, she was noisy and clumsy.

“As usual, Leila woke up early in the morning and wanted to do zazen. She tidied her room, and placed a cushion on the floor to sit on. Just as she sat down on it she heard a bang against the door. Frieda was sweeping outside and had knocked the door with her broom. She was also singing loudly, “My heart’s breaking, breaking today.”

“Leila sat on the cushion, listening to the shrill song. “What will I do without you?” Frieda kept wailing. Finally, Leila got up, opened the door and called, “Frieda, can you be a little more quiet?”

“Frieda didn’t fully understand English and kept right on singing.

“Leila went back to sit down again, but not only did the song get louder, the broom started banging her door consistently.  Finally, she got up from the cushion wondering what was wrong with the woman. Negative thoughts started to brew but thanks to years of zazen, she caught herself. “Stop it,” she said to the dark mind that was forming. Leila realized that when we want to be apart from something, it clings to us; when we want to be too close, it runs away.

“She opened the door and went out of the room. The minute Frieda saw her, she flew over, standing no more than two inches away. It seemed she had taken a great liking to Leila. Leila turned to go outside in the street, and Frieda followed along.  “Where are you going?” she said. “To the beach,” Leila said. Frieda grinned. “Me too. Going along.”

“As they walked down the dirt road to the ocean, Frieda kept humming and Leila resisted, trying to shut her out. She started concentrating on other things. Then the humming turned into loud singing again. Leila focused on the delicious salt air and took deep gulps of it. The singing got louder still. Whatever Leila did to block it out, it only got louder. Then, suddenly Master Rinzai’s words came to her: “If we master each circumstance, then whatever we do is the truth.” How am I going to master this? she wondered.  They arrived at the beach with Frieda singing relentlessly.”

“When they got to the sand, Leila spread out a blanket and sat down; Frieda planted herself right beside her again. As Leila watched the waves of the ocean roll up on the shore, she suddenly stopped pushing Frieda away, and fell into zazen. She stopped wanting things to be different. She stopped wanting quiet time alone at the beach. This was the circumstance she was in now, hearing Frieda sing over and over that her heart was breaking...”

As we shall see, this incident Brenda Shoshanna shares is about listening, but it is about other things too. It is about accepting things as they are, people as they are, life as it is, and many more things. As a practitioner of Zen,

Leila is trying to use every situation that life presents as an opportunity for practicing Zen. Let’s continue with Shoshanna’s narration. Something beautiful happens now. 

“Frieda was swaying as she sang, and Leila found herself swaying as well. As the two of them sat there swaying, Frieda’s voice became softer. Leila turned and looked at Frieda. Tears were pouring down her face.

“Frieda said, “You, my mamma. Missing my mamma.” Leila finally understood that Frieda was missing her mother, who was far away. She must have reminded Frieda of her mother.  Frieda was sitting there crying and in a moment Leila started crying as well. She was also missing her mother, who had died a year ago. The two of them sat there crying on the blanket together until Leila turned and gave Frieda a hug. Soon the crying subsided, the singing subsided—they were simply sitting together, listening to the sound of the waves.”

What a beautiful experience! Leila could have rejected Frieda, shouted at her, instead she accepts her, listens to her attentively. A woman in great pain and loneliness is consoled. The pain she had been storing inside her suffocating her melts and comes out in the form of her tears and an amazing relationship is formed between the two women who were strangers just a few minutes ago!

Listening can do miracles. Paying attention to others can do miracles.

Unfortunately in today’s world no one has time to listen to others! All of us are in such hurry and we all have so much to say! How can we listen to others then?

O0O

I remember a sad story reported by newspapers several years ago.

As the parents were getting the little baby ready for school she was resisting and saying she did not want to go. Well, that was nothing unusual, so they continued. But as they put her foot in one of her shoes she started screaming but they ignored that too. Just the daily drama taken to just another level, they thought. They tied up the shoe laces after putting the other foot in the other shoe and hurried her out as they heard the school bus coming.

The baby kept screaming in the bus and then continued crying aloud in the school too for two more hours. It is only then one of the teachers noticed blood was draining from her face and her body was slowly turning blue while the child kept up with the screaming which had by now become weak. Soon the baby collapsed in a swoon and the teacher loosened her uniform and removed her shoes. It was then she saw it – there was a scorpion inside the child’s shoe, still alilve! It was the scorpion bite that had made her scream in the first place and now her foot was all swollen up and the poison had spread to other parts of her body too.  As I remember the news said the poor baby died of the scorpion poisoning.

Just the other day I saw a sad You Tube video about a little child fighting with her mother insisting that she did not want to go to school. The mother asked her why and she said it was no fun, they didn’t allow her to play, it was only study and study all the time, and you had to sit without moving and do all the teacher asked you to do. The mother asked her if they don’t sing songs in school, if they don’t dance and she said it was just abcd and numbers and nothing else. The baby kept saying she did not want to go to school, wept, begged her mother not to send her to school. As you watched the baby’s helpless frustration, tears welled up in your eyes and you felt it difficult to breathe. But I felt that was not how the mother saw it – I could hear her laughing at what the baby was saying, as though she found it all amusing rather than painful.

I know perhaps mothers today have no choice, such is what education has become, particularly in India with such high premium placed on education and with so many first and second generation learners. I remembered all those lectures on Rousseau I gave to future teachers in a College of Education where I taught for many years. Speaking about the right kind of education, Rousseau said “education practices the art of delay,” meaning we must delay sending children to schools as much as possible. The father of modern education also said the best education is negative education, meaning we much give children as little book education as possible, and instead send them back to nature for natural education. Sadly all those ideas have been wiped away by the tides of time and what we see today all around us is little babies going to school bent under the weight of heavy backpacks. They look like mountain climbers with huge trekking bags. Education should be pleasurable, said Rousseau, but that is not exactly what we see when we look at our schools. Even then shouldn’t parents at least give a sympathetic ear to children when they say they do not want to go to school?

In his book Is the American Dream Killing You? Paul Stiles speaks of how we have all become servants of an all-powerful entity called Market and how that entity has made in the short span of just two generations joint families disappear from the face of the earth. True, joint families had their own problems, but they were wonderful places for children to grow up in, with many generations living together, and several children of near ages growing up together and there was always someone to listen to you when you wanted to talk. Today instead of parents and grandparents, it is the paid caregivers at the day care centers who look after you. More than Anything Else in the World is a powerful, award winning Brazilian movie I once saw in a film festival. It talked about the loneliness of a little girl growing up with her single mother who works nine to five in modern Rio de Janeiro and the hell life has become for her and the mother.

Much of the insanity and violence in the world today is because no one has time to listen to children in their most important years of growing up.  

O0O

One of the greatest leadership skills is listening skill, some would even say it is the greatest leadership skill. A story from third century China tells us of King Ts’ao taking his son Prince Ta’i to Pan Ku, the best guru in the country who lived near the Ming Li forest. The king requested Pan Ku to give the prince the best possible education as the future ruler of the country.

When the king left, Pan Ku turned to the young boy and told him, “Go the forest and build a small hut there for yourself. Live in that hut for a full year listening to the sound of the forest. Come back to me after the year is over.” The boy was completely confused by the order. He had expected to be taught strategic leadership skills, people skills, planning skills, the vision and mission of a king and all else he would need tomorrow as a ruler. Instead he was being asked to go and live in the forest all alone listening to the sound of the forest. But since there was no one he could complain to since his father himself had left him with the guru, he quietly went and lived in the forest as he was told to. He listened to all the sounds of the forest – the rustle of leaves, the chirping of crickets, the buzzing of bees, the roar of lions, the song of birds, the laughter of hyenas, the chattering of the monkeys... He waited impatiently for the year to be over and then went back to the master.

“Did you listen to the sound of the forest?” asked the master and the prince said, “Yes, master.” And when Pan Ku asked him what he had heard, he started naming the different sounds he had heard. As the list grew, the guru’s face began growing darker and darker and when he finished, the guru shouted, “Back to the forest. Come back after one more year.”

The furious and frustrated young man went back to the forest and for a while continued listening. But he had already spent an entire year listening just to the sounds of the forest and there was nothing new to hear. Eventually he gave up and spent his time just relaxing under trees, walking by streams and lying in shades. He was no more trying to listen to forest sounds but had surrendered to a forest dweller’s life, became part of the forest, no more separate from it but one with it.

And then one day it happened. He heard something he had never heard before. The sound of the grass growing, the sound of the trees drinking up water with their roots, the sound of green leaves yellowing, green fruits ripening, plants flowering, seasons changing. He had goose bumps all over, great joy spurted from within him as water from an underground spring, and bathed in this bliss he ran to the guru, without even waiting for the completion of the year. The guru took one look at him and then hugged him, telling him he had heard that he wanted him to hear, he had heard the sound of the forest. Pan Ku sent him back to his father with his blessings, telling him his education was complete, he would be a great king like his father.

What the boy had heard was the sound of silence – it is in silence that the grass grows, it is in silence that fruits ripen, it is in silence that seasons change. He was able to listen to the sound of silence because he himself had grown silent inside by surrendering to life, accepting it without resisting it, and by totally relaxing, letting go. And with the birth of that inner silence, he had become capable of listening – for the first time in his life. He could now listen not only to what was spoken, but also to the unspoken. He could not only listen to sounds but also to silence. Intelligence had been awakened in him, because the secret of intelligence is inner silence. Sensitivity had been awakened in him, because the secret of sensitivity is inner silence. Imagination had been awakened in him, because the secret of imagination is inner silence. Love had been awakened in him, because only with a silent mind can you really love others.

His education was now truly complete. Everything that he did will now have the quality of excellence. When he touched things, they would sparkle. When he spoke, people would run to fulfill his wishes. He would be surrounded by an aura of tranquility and stillness. His energy would now be inexhaustible. He would now be what Tibet called wang thang, a center of serene power. He would see beauty in the most ordinary things. He would radiate love. He would no more have to manipulate people because his least wish would be a command for them.

That is what happens when you become silent inside.

Says Zen: To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

O0O

Learning to listen is a great blessing on us. It is also a blessing on others. When you give your attention to others, they are healed, made whole.

Doctors need to listen to their patients, says the latest discoveries in medicine. It is as much the doctor who heals as the medicine.

Parents need to listen. Teachers need to listen. Husbands and wives need to listen.

Leaders need to listen.  It is only then that they can understand the private hells within peoples and efficiently motivate them; coach, mentor and guide them and build effective teams. It has been said by experts that leadership is 80% listening and 20% talking – probably the opposite of what is widely practiced.  

Amazing is the power of loving attention. It transforms people. If you have seen the movie Munnabhai MBBS, you know the instant transformation that happens when Munna pays loving attention to Maksood Bhai, you know the secret of Anand Bhai’s metamorphosis from a living dead man to the narrator of the movie. Like love that transforms both the lover and the loved, attention paid to others too transforms both them and you. 

Krishna listens to Arjuna and encourages him to speak more and that opens the door to wonderful teachings we call the Bhagavad Gita.

The Gita teaches us what exactly we are seeking and why we seek it. The Gita helps us discover the meaning of life, shows us the only path worth travelling for our own good and the good of the world. The Gita teaches us the difference between shreyas and preyas. The Gita helps the river of our life to flow towards the ocean as it should and not towards dreary deserts, to borrow an expression from Gurudev Tagore. The Gita can make life what it is meant to be – an utsava, a celebration, a festival,

Thus ends Chapter One of the Bhagavad Gita.

Shri krishnarpanam astu! Tavaiva vastu govinda tubhyam eva samarpaye! 

O0O

Living Bhagavad Gita 023: Journey to the East

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for people living and working in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times filled with stress and fear. This scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully, achieve excellence in whatever we do and find happiness, peace and contentment.

[Continued from the previous post.]

The name given to the first chapter of the Gita is Arjuna Vishada Yoga – the Yoga of Arjuna’s Vishada. The word vishada is translated variously as melancholy, sorrow, grief, depression, despondency, sadness, misery and so on.  

We just saw in the last article how Arjuna surrendered to melancholy, dropped his bow and arrows and collapsed into his chariot telling Krishna he will not fight, he finds no point in fighting and killing, no point in winning the kingdom, no point in pleasures or even in life itself. Kim no rajyena govinda, kim bhogair jeevitena vaa, he asks: “What good is the kingdom, Krishna, and what good are pleasures or life itself?”

All over the world today there is a lot of discussion about depression which is fast spreading and assuming the form of a wild fire that can consume everything. I was part of the faculty team giving an intensive training programme for doctors at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources and we were having a pre-programme dinner when the topic of depression came up. Several professors felt depression is fast becoming the most dangerous problem the world is facing today with a large number of lives claimed every day. This was of course in the days before the covid-19 pandemic.  

Bright young people seem to be particularly susceptible to depression. In his bestselling book The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology, Shawn Achor speaks about depression in Harvard University where happiness was the subject of his research for several years. Achor says “despite all its magnificent facilities, a wonderful faculty, and a student body made up of some of America’s (and the world’s) best and brightest, it is home to many chronically unhappy young men and women. In 2004, for instance, a Harvard Crimson poll found that as many as 4 in 5 Harvard students suffer from depression at least once during the school year, and nearly half of all students suffer from depression so debilitating they can’t function.” Shawn Achor then goes on to say that “This unhappiness epidemic is not unique to Harvard. A Conference Board survey released in January of 2010 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling. Depression rates today are ten times higher than they were in 1960. Every year the age threshold of unhappiness sinks lower, not just at universities but across the nation. Fifty years ago, the mean onset age of depression was 29.5 years old. Today, it is almost exactly half that: 14.5 years old.”

Speaking about depression, the Himalayan monk Om Swami says in his book When All Is Not Well: Depression and Sadness: “Depression isn’t just sadness. It is emptiness, it is misery. It is pain and nothingness at once. When you are truly depressed, you lack the ability or will to cheer yourself up. No one just ‘has depression’. You suffer from it.”

Continuing, Om Swami explains what depression feels like. “You will wake at 5, 6, maybe 7 a.m., feeling as though you had only just fallen asleep... If you don’t have to be somewhere, you could lie in bed for another three hours; too tired, too miserable and pathetic to crawl out of your bed. Or maybe you will sleep until 1 p.m., because it’s so much easier to sleep through most of the day than actually live it, and you’re so unbelievably tired anyway. You will push through the day, knowing that every hour will be a struggle and not knowing how you will feel tomorrow. People will ask what is wrong, and you will simply smile and say, ‘Nothing, I’m just tired.’ ...You will spend your days not only lost in the haze of depression, but your mind will be so consumed with these thoughts of escaping and self-destruction that you think you could explode…”

But the important question is why so many people are feeling depressed today. Why is depression spreading across the world like a deadly epidemic today?

The reasons are not too difficult to find. For one thing, our life has become too fast. We are obsessed with speed – in real life as well as in virtual life. We have become intolerant of slowness. And stillness? Of course, we have grown strangers to it. We have forgotten that all that is beautiful in life comes from stillness. Creativity comes from stillness. Intuition comes from stillness. Art and music come from stillness. The essence of dance is not movement but the stillness that is its substratum, from which arises and into which it goes back. All inventions and discoveries are made in moments of stillness. Intuition comes from stillness, insights come from stillness, healing comes from stillness. Medical professionals have long recognized that silence plays an important part in healing. For instance, the experience of even a little real silence can produce physiological changes that neutralize the effects of stress.“When you are still, you find that your perception of life is at its purest,” says Ron Rothbun in his book The Way Is Within.

We are all familiar with the story of Archimedes who ran through the streets of Athens shouting eureka, eureka. The Athenian ruler had given him an assignment. Someone had gifted the ruler a crown and he wanted to find out if the crown was of pure gold or some alloy had been mixed with the gold. The specific gravity of gold was known then, but no one knew how to measure the mass of an irregular object like the crown. Archimedes was the best scientist of the day and he struggled for weeks to find a solution to the problem. If only there was a way to measure the mass of the crown! Then you could decide whether the crown was pure gold or not.

Eventually Archimedes gave up his struggles admitting defeat and sank into a tub for a relaxed bath. It was then, in that moment when there were not struggles in his mind and the mind had become still with his acceptance of defeat, that he noticed water spilling over from the tub as his body sank into the tub. That very instant insight was born, a great discovery happened: the mass of water that spilled out was equal to the mass of his body that had submerged in the water. The quantity of water that flows out when a substance is immersed in a vessel full of water is equal to the mass of the substance.

In that still moment, his problem had been solved and climbing out of the tub he ran through the streets of Athens shouting that word that has now become part of every language in the world: eureka, eureka!

We all have had the experience of something, a name, we had forgotten coming back to us the moment we give up the struggles and the mind becomes still.

All science and all technology is the product of still moments. All that is precious to humanity are products of inner stillness, of the mind is that is empty of restless thoughts. The saying that the empty mind is the devil’s workshop is completely wrong. The empty mind is God’s workshop!

Indian culture says the universe is born of God’s empty mind. The Taittiriya Upanishad says, “Sa tapo’tapyata. Sa tapas taptvaa idam sarvam asrjata. Yadidam kincha.” “He did tapas. Having done tapas, he created all this. He created all that exists.” It is from the mind of God that has become empty because of tapas that the universe comes into being.      

There is story told about the world famous painter Raphael and an unknown woodcutter. One morning as the woodcutter was going to the forest to cut wood, he saw Raphael sitting by a lake, lazily picking up pebbles and dropping them into the lake. The woodcutter shook his head in disapproval – what a waste of time! – and went on his way. As the woodcutter was returning home with his load of firewood, he saw Raphael still sitting there picking up pebbles and throwing them into the lake! What an idiot, he thought! I have done a whole day’s work and the moron is still sitting there and throwing pebbles into the lake!

We know today that such a woodcutter existed because of Raphael, one of the greatest painters the world has known.

In the ancient Indian tradition, in fact all over the world, we began everything with a few moments of silence, of mental stillness, of prayer. But today stillness, and even slowness, is looked down upon. It is one of the greatest casualties of the age of speed.      

The virtues of slowness are unlimited, says Carl Honore in his book In praise of slowness. In his book Slowing Down to the Speed of Life, Richard Carlson says more or less the same thing. And it is that slowness that we have rejected in favour of speed! Faster, faster, ever faster, says our culture!

Slowing down and experiencing stillness is one of our basic needs – it is as essential as breathing. Our brains go completely haywire unless we experience slowness and stillness on a regular basis. Which is exactly what is not happening today. And that is taking a heavy toll on young minds today, especially gifted young minds, leading to depression and all that depression leads to. The philosophy aaraam hai haraam has to go. Laziness is bad, sluggishness is bad, sloth and apathy are bad, but relaxation is not. It is the most healing thing most of us know, apart from sleep. In fact sleep is a form of relaxation too. The second highest form of relaxation, after meditation which is the highest form of relaxation in existence.

We need to spend more time ‘plucking daisies’, we need to spend more time climbing mountains, we need to spend more time unfocused and in ‘purposeless’ activities, like Raphael picking up pebbles and throwing them into the lake. We need to give our souls time to catch up with us. That is the medicine for fighting the insane obsession with speed that drives us away from our own calm inner centre.  

A European explorer was in the Amazon forests, exploring the flora and fauna there. He had hired a supervisor and the supervisor had hired native people to help him in his work. One day passed the explorer and the natives hurrying from one thing to another, then another day and then yet another day. On the fourth day when the explorer was ready to start he found not one native was ready. When enquired, the supervisor gave him an incredibly beautiful reply. He told the explorer: they are giving time for their souls to catch up with them!

We all need to give time for our souls to catch up with us.  

One of the most beautiful Chuang Tzu stories ever says:

The prince discovered when he returned from the top of the mountain that he had mislaid the Priceless Pearl up on the mountain.

He sent his generals and their armies to search for it, but they could not find it. He employed Huang-Ti, the vehement debater, to find the Pearl, but Huang-Ti was unable to find it. He sent his skilled gardeners and his artisans to find it, but they too came home empty-handed.

Finally, in despair, having tried everyone else, he sent Purposeless to the mountain, and Purposeless found the pearl immediately.

"How odd it is", mused the Prince, "that it was Purposeless who found it!"

We are all birds meant to fly in the open sky. Those who have known the truth, the Upanishad rishis for instance, call us amritasya putraah – children of the Immortal, each one of us a divine spark. The Mundaka Upanishad tells us: yathaa sudeeptaat paavakaad visphulingaah sahasrashah prabhavante saroopaah, tathaa aksharaad vividhaah somya bhaavaah prajaayante tatra chaivaapi yanti: Just as sparks in their thousands are born from a roaring fire, each of the same nature as the fire itself, so do, dear one, beings come forth from the Imperishable One and return to It. [Mu.Up.2.1]   

No, we are not meant to spend our lives hopping about on the ground searching for worms but to stretch out our wings, soar up and enjoy the bliss of the boundless skies – the boundless skies of consciousness. We are meant for the bhooma, the vast, and not for the alpa, the small. The owl will be satisfied with the rotting body of a mouse, but not the phoenix which will touch no food other than certain sacred fruits and drink only from the clearest springs. The chakora lives on moonbeams, says Indian mythology, and will touch nothing else. The way man lives today is like the phoenix being forced to live on rotten mice and the chakora being forced to live on the food that pigs eat.

By and large, man has forgotten the higher. We have become flotsams with no roots in our spiritual selves. We are living not the philosophy of the rising son as we did in the past but the philosophy of the setting sun. Frustration and depression are bound to be there.        

O0O

As we saw, the vishada that happened to Arjuna in the battlefield is called by different names such as melancholy, sorrow, grief, depression, despondency, sadness, misery and so on

But there is a different name for it. India calls it vairagya, dispassion, and considers it sacred. Vairagya is the first step in the journey to the east, the journey to the land where the sun rises, the journey to the source of all light. Light as bright as the light of a thousand suns, light before which all other lights pale.

There is mantra that is traditionally chanted when we do arati, ritually show burning lamps before a sacred idol. Na tatra sooryo bhaati na chandrataarakam nemaa vidyuto bhaanti kutoyam agnih; tam eva bhaantam anubhaaati saravam tasya bhaasaa sarvam idam vibhaati, says the mantra. “The sun does not shine there, nor the moon or the stars. How then will this fire? That alone shines and everything else shines after it, reflecting its light.” The journey to that source of all light begins with what Arjuna is experiencing now and that is why India considers vairagya sacred.   

This is something that happens only to sensitive people. Much of the time the kind of questions Arjuna asks, the feelings Arjuna feels, come to us from a great shower of blessing that descends upon us. It is ishwra-anugraha, the grace of God, says India.

The rishi of the Svetashvatara Upanishad declares boldly and unhesitatingly:

vedaaham etaṃ puruṣhaṃ mahaantam aaditya-varṇaṃ tamasaḥ parastaat;
tam eva viditvaa atimṛtyum eti naanyaḥ panthaa vidyate'yanaaya. Sv. Up. 3.8

“I know the Great Purusha, He who is luminous like the sun and beyond darkness. Only by knowing Him does one go beyond death. There is no other path worth travelling!” 

Vairagya is the invitation to begin our journey on the only path worth travelling.

It is not only Arjuna who has grace showered on him as he stands in the chariot driven by Krishna in the middle of the two armies in Kurukshertra, but all of us, the entire humanity. Because it is in response to this vairagya he felt that the Bhagavad Gita was born on a shukla paksha ekadashi day, on the eleventh day of the bright lunar fortnight in the month of Margashirsha, more than five thousand and one hundred years ago. 

A well known story from the Mahabharata says that both Arjuna and Duryodhana went to meet Krishna seeking his help before the war began. Duryodhana was the first to enter Krishna’s bed chamber and he went and took a seat by the head of the bed. A few moments later Arjuna entered the chamber and he too could have gone and taken a seat at the head of the bed as Duryodhana had done. Instead, he went and stood at Krishna’s feet. When Krishna opened his eyes a few moments later it was naturally Arjuna who was standing at the foot of the bed that he saw first. As we all know, it was on him that Krishna’s grace fell in the form of his presence with him during the war and as his driver.

Krishna is grace. The greatest possible grace! With Krishna on your side, the impossible becomes possible. With Krishna on your side miracles happen. Mookam karoti vaachaalam pangum landhayate girim, yat-kripaa tam aham vande parama-ananda-maadhavam, says one of the shlokas traditionally chanted before the study of the Gita: “I bow down to Krishna, who is supreme bliss itself, with whose grace the speechless become eloquent and the lame crosses over mountains.”

The choice that Arjuna made in Krishna’s bedchamber, rejecting the Narayani Sena, rejecting the power of a mighty army and choosing just Krishna, Krishna’s grace, it is that choice that is now showering on him in the form of the Bhagavad Gita. All we have to do is to make that choice, everything else happens by itself. That is why Krishna concludes his teachings in the Gita by saying:

sarvadharmaan parityajya maam ekam sharanam vraja; aham twaa sarvapaapebhyo mokshayishyaami maa shuchah BG 18.66

“Abandoning all dharmas, take refuge in me alone; I will liberate you from all sins. Have no grief.”   

Duryodhana missed Krishna’s grace throughout his life. After the war was over, Gandhari curses Krishna saying he could have and should have helped her son but did not. But grace can shower on you only when you are open to it. If a pot remains upside down when the sky showers rains, not a drop will go inside even if an entire season passes. In fact, the only thing you need to deserve grace is openness to it, receptivity to it, which is what Duryodhana did not have.  There were a thousand occasions in his life when he could have taken refuge in Krishna, but rejects every single one of them.

There is a famous Indian story about a beggar who was crossing a bridge, walking with a stick in hand. The story says that Goddess Parvati takes pity on the poor beggar and requests Shiva to bless him with wealth. Shiva says there is no point because even if he gives wealth to him, he will not get it because he is not open to his blessing. But the heart of the goddess is the heart of a mother and she insists that the man be given wealth. Shiva agrees and a treasure chest appears on the bridge. The moment the chest appears on the bridge, the beggar has a thought: “I am young now and I can see well, but what will happen to me when I grow old and lose my eyesight? I must practice walking blind right from now.”  With that thought, he closes he eyes and walking with the help of the stick crosses the rest of the bridge, missing the treasure completely!

Throughout his life Duryodhana behaved like that beggar.

Whereas Arjuna chose Krishna lifetimes ago. The Mahabharata tells us they have been friends across lifetimes, meditating in the Himalayas together.

There is a mantra in the Mundaka Upanishad that my teacher Swami Dayananda Saraswati was very fond of. During the years when I was in the Sandeepany Gurukula and learning timeless Indian wisdom from him, he must have quoted this mantra hundreds of times.

pareekshya lokaan karmachitaan braahmano nirvedam aayaan naastyakrtah krtena tadvijnanartham sa gurum evabhigacched samitpaanih shrotriyam brahmanishtham. Mu.Up.1.2.12 

“Having examined all in the world that is gained through actions, after attaining nirveda and realizing that the uncreated cannot be achieved through actions, let [him who has thus become] a brahmana, approach with samit in hand a guru who is learned [in the traditional spiritual lore] and rooted in the Brahman.”

The soul of the entire Indian spiritual culture could be found in that one mantra. Before approaching the guru and being qualified for his grace, we must developed nirveda towards all that can be attained through our own power, through our actions. Nirveda means vairagya – what Arjuna is experiencing at the moment. It is when this vairagya is born in your heart that you become a brahmana – one whose entire focus is on  attaining the Brahman, one whose concentration now is only on attaining the spiritual goal. And then he should go to his guru with samit in hand. Samit is kindling used in sacrificial fire. Carrying that to your guru is the symbol of your joyful willingness to serve the master.

Duryodhana is still far from the nirveda the Upanishad talks about. He is not willing to surrender to Krishna and therefore is not ready for the grace. He has not yet developed what makes you a brahmana ­– the all consuming urge to abandon everything else and walk the path of shreyas to reach the land of the ultimate good, the land of light, having reached which you never return – yad gatvaa na nivartante. He is still very much with the loka of wealth, power, position, sensual pleasures and so on.

Arjuna has developed that urge and he is ready. That is why he is asking, “What good is the kingdom, Krishna, and what good are pleasures or life itself?” The vishada he is experiencing at the moment is the clear sign of that.

All vishadas, depressions, are not bad, some are good. Some can take you to the higher. They come to you from divine grace. With them begins our journey to the east, the greatest journey we will ever make.

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