Let emotion inform, but not form, your decision

Our emotions are a big part of who we are, but they are not all of us. We are bigger than our present emotions, most of which relate with our external material shell, not our spiritual core.

At the Bhagavad-gita’s start, Arjuna becomes emotionally overwhelmed. Krishna responds (02.02) by reproaching him for having succumbed to weakness of the heart. If a maestro delivers a lousy performance, such a lapse is uncharacteristic and unworthy. Similar, Krishna indicates, is Arjuna’s pusillanimity, while being a celebrated archer-warrior. Krishna underscores the unwholesomeness of those emotions by pointing out their consequences: they will sentence him to ignominy in this life and inauspiciousness in the next. To help ground Arjuna’s conceptions and emotions in spiritual truth, Krishna speaks the message of the Gita. Its philosophical worldview creates a stable foundation that empowers Arjuna to think clearly and act intelligently.

That the Gita urges us to subordinate our emotions doesn’t mean that we are to entirely reject them – we need to use higher intelligence for cultivating elevating emotions instead of being carried away by degrading emotions. Emotions can and should inform our decision by contributing to our decision-making process, lest we succumb to hardheartedness. But emotions alone shouldn’t comprise that process, lest we succumb to sentimentality.

The Gita’s conclusion demonstrates how we can cultivate higher emotions: Krishna expresses his intense affection for Arjuna (18.64). Such expressions are intended to awaken reciprocal emotions in Arjuna, thus channeling the energy of emotions in the project of elevating his consciousness and inspiring him towards a wise course of action.

By meditating on Krishna’s unfailing, unflinching love for us, we too can energize our spiritual endeavors with emotional power. Still, we may not be able to trigger such elevating emotions consistently, so we need to base our decisions in the Gita’s philosophically-grounded worldview.

Devotion makes the head clear and the heart pure |

Devotion is essentially the disposition of our heart to love and serve Krishna. And from that devotional desire, all auspiciousness emerges, as the Bhagavad-gita indicates in its four nutshell verses (10.08-11).

The Gita conveys first the supreme position of the object of devotion (10.08) and the absorption of the devoted (10.09). It then (10.10-11) outlines how such devotional desire removes inauspiciousness. Krishna gives the devoted the intelligence to come to him (10.10). That is, when we strive to serve him lovingly, he helps us overcome the misconceptions that obscure our awareness of the levels mentioned earlier: from understanding Krishna to be the Absolute Truth (10.08) and from becoming absorbed in him (10.09).

The next verse (10.11) declares that Krishna from within the heart destroys the darkness of ignorance with the torchlight of knowledge. Intriguingly, this verse refers to knowledge and heart together. Knowledge is usually thought of as a function of the head, while the heart is usually thought of as the seat of emotion. By this paradoxical juxtaposition of knowledge and the heart, the Gita points to the special nature of this knowledge – it is the knowledge of the heart, knowledge about the most worthy object of our love. When this special knowledge illumines our heart, we see clearly that Krishna alone is the best object of our love – everything else is meant to be not a competitor for that love, but a pointer to it. Being guided by such knowledge, we increasingly concentrate our love on Krishna, thus becoming purified. We break free from our attachments to impure things and connect our devotionally dovetailable attachments with him.

Thus, devotion makes our head clear, freeing it from various misconceptions, and our heart pure, freeing it from various misdirections, thereby enabling us to march straight and swift towards Krishna.

Determination is the fruit of purification – and its root too By Chaitanya Charan Das

The Bhagavad-gita (07.28) indicates that we will become determined in our devotional practices when we live purely and stop impure actions. This begs the question: how can we come to that level of pure living without first having determination?

To understand, consider bodybuilding. A well-muscled body results from a diligent regimen of exercise. It’s unrealistic to expect strong muscles in the early days of our working out at a gym. And yet we do have some muscles initially that we use to start working out. When we exercise regularly and fully whatever muscles we have, we develop stronger muscles.

Similarly, it’s unrealistic to expect unbreakable determination in devotion right from the early days of our spiritual life. But we need to use whatever determination we presently have to choose Krishna instead of worldly temptations, thus choosing the pure instead of the impure. Such choosing gradually fosters a habit of purity. Further, our willingness to sacrifice worldly pleasures for Krishna’s service pleases him and attracts his mercy, which manifests as an increased taste for the pure, ultimately the supremely pure object, Krishna. Thanks to such a taste, choosing him becomes easier and sweeter, thereby strengthening our determination to choose him. Thus, determination is the fruit of purification – and this fruit manifests from the root of our using whatever determination we presently have.

So, meditating on the Gita statement that determination is the fruit of purification can protect us from fretting futilely about our weak determination. Instead, we can just focus on using our present determination to make the pure choices within our capacity. By consistently making small but significant pure choices – akin to diligently exercising daily according to our present muscle capacity – our inner muscles, our determination to choose Krishna, will strengthen, thus making our devotional practices steadier and sweeter.

To stop defeating yourself, stop deceiving yourself

Suppose a sick person denies their sickness not just to others but also to themselves. By their denial, they deprive themselves of good health that comes from proper treatment. Thus their denial and the self-deception underlying it turns out to be self-defeating.

All of us are presently in a diseased condition, being afflicted by the malady of selfish desires. When we take to spiritual life, we strive to become principle-centered, refusing to give in to our selfish desires. But we may still find ourselves occasionally overpowered by those desires, thus creating a distance between our talk and our walk.

This distance is itself not deceptive – it can spur us positively if it inspires us to intensify our purificatory practices. But it can make us like the sickness-denier if we deny that anything is wrong with our situation, if we believe that the talk alone is enough as long as we can conceal our inability to walk the talk. When our primary endeavor shifts from striving for purification to improvising for concealing our lapses, then we descend to self-deception that leads to self-defeat.

Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (03.06) warns that those who do nothing more than put on a façade of spiritual advancement end up deceiving not just others but also themselves. And they keep defeating themselves by depriving themselves of the characteristic of spiritual health: spiritual happiness.

To give up self-defeating self-deception, we don’t have to wash our dirty linen in public, telling everyone about our personal challenges. Nor do we have to entirely give up our services because we are unable to maintain high standards. We do need to, however, invest as much, if not more, effort in walking as we do in talking. By such diligent practice, we can purify ourselves, gradually becoming not just exponents but also exemplars of spiritual truth.

Learn to see Krishna’s love with the eyes of knowledge

Our culture often bombards us with explicit images of what is considered to be love. If we equate love with such gushy expressions alone, we will miss out on love’s many subtler expressions.

For example, if parents come from a culture conservative about public displays of affection, they may not express their love for their children through any effusive displays or declarations of love. But their love will be evident instead in their working tirelessly to pay for their kids’ high-quality education. Similarly, a teacher may express affection for a student by spending extra time helping them understand a difficult subject.

Krishna exhibits such subtle affection for Arjuna towards the end of the Bhagavad-gita. Of course, the whole Gita is spoken by Krishna out of affectionate concern for his dear friend. He wants to help Arjuna come out of the paralyzing delusion that had afflicted him on seeing his relatives assembled, bellicose, on the Kurukshetra battlefield. Still, despite the Gita’s affectionate intent, its content can be intellectually demanding, discussing as it does various levels of dharma and their complex inter-relationships. The cognitive challenge of processing the Gita’s multi-level message can make us blind to the love that underlies and unifies it.

Thankfully, Gita commentators provide us with the eyes of knowledge to appreciate this thread of love. The last verse Krishna speaks (18.72) is an enquiry: Has Arjuna’s illusion been dispelled? The erudite commentator Vishvanath Chakravarti elucidates the loving concern that animates Krishna’s enquiry: If Arjuna has not understood any part of the Gita, Krishna is ready to repeat that part – he is ready to repeat even the whole Gita if necessary.

Thus, with the eyes of knowledge, we can appreciate how the message that began with love and centered on love concludes in love.

To beat problems, first beat the problematic mind down to size By Chaitanya Charan Das | Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 06

When an army is fighting a war, it depends on its intelligence – its information sources – to know the strength of the enemy. But if the army’s intelligence has been penetrated and compromised by that very enemy, then this untrustworthy source will give misleading information. For example, it may misinform that the enemy forces are far bigger than what they actually are, thereby demoralizing the army and thus defeating it mentally even before the war has begun physically.

When we battle life’s inevitable problems, we are often targeted by a similar misinformation campaign. The inner misleader is the mind, which misinforms us about the size of the problem. It depicts the problem to be gargantuan, making us seem like ants utterly incapable of dealing with it. And the more we uncritically listen to the mind’s assessment of the problem, the more we feel dwarfed and demoralized. Thus, our mind-shaped perception of the problem can become a bigger problem than the problem itself.

To avoid being thus misled, we need to resist the temptation to immediately tackle the problem and instead invest time for beating the problem-magnifying mind down the size. For subduing the problematic mind, the most effective way is meditation, specifically spiritual meditation. Such meditation connects us internally with our unchanging side: our indestructible spiritual core and the highest spiritual reality, Krishna. The Bhagavad-gita (06.27) outlines the fruit of such meditation: the mind becomes peaceful, being purged of the obsession with matter that makes it misperceive material things and misinform us.

Additionally, spiritual meditation enables us to experience Krishna’s shelter, helping us realize that no matter how big the outer problem, the shelter of a far bigger reality always awaits us within. By the resulting calmness and confidence, we can assess the problem objectively and tackle it intelligently.

Purity leads to freedom from misery By Chaitanya Charan Das

We all strive for freedom from misery. Enslaved people, for example, strive for freedom from slavery, seeing that as the way to freedom from misery.

When it comes to attaining a life free from misery, we need to be free from impure desires. The Bhagavad-gita (02.65) indicates that misery is destroyed for those who attain mercy, which manifests during the course of spiritual growth as purity. How does purity lead to freedom from misery?

Let’s analyze with a health metaphor. Suppose a person has become diseased because of excessive alcohol indulgence. While the physical disease is a danger that needs medical attention, an equal, if not greater, danger is the patient relapsing into alcoholism. That relapse will probably make the patient sick again, thus undoing the effort done for curing the patient.

For many alcoholics, enduring the pain of the disease and the discipline of the treatment is not as demanding as sustaining the resolve to consistently refrain from alcohol. If they were somehow freed from the addiction, that would herald the beginning of freedom from misery. Not only would they be freed from the sickening desires that dragged them into misery, but they would also be largely free from the danger of the recurrence of the disease.

A similar dynamic applies to our various sufferings during material existence. They are usually caused by our misdirected desires due to which we seek pleasure in temporary material things. Gita wisdom explains that we are eternal souls meant to delight in pure eternal love for the supreme spiritual being, God, Krishna. As long as we are attached to temporary things, that very attachment becomes the cause of our suffering. When we practice yoga, especially bhakti-yoga, and purify ourselves, the doors for walking out of this worldly arena of misery open for us.