December 29, 2024 • 49 mins
This episode focuses on Chapter 2, Sankhya Yoga, of the Bhagavad Gita, starting with verse 14. Kamala Rose and Nischala Joy Devi introduce the verse, which discusses the impermanence of material sensations and dualities like pleasure and pain.
The hosts explore the metaphor of the chariot, which is a central image in the Gita and Upanishadic texts. They explain how this metaphor represents the relationship between the body, senses, mind, and the true self or Atman.
Key topics discussed include:
- The impact of sensory experiences on our psychology and behavior
- The importance of training and managing the senses through practices like Pratyahara
- The subjective nature of perception and the need for objectivity
- Practical advice for maintaining inner peace amidst changing sensations
- The role of sacred spaces in calming the senses and facilitating spiritual growth
The hosts provide insightful commentary, drawing from yoga philosophy and their own experiences, to help listeners understand the Gita's teachings on mastering the senses and achieving equanimity.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:02):
Namaste. Welcome to a woman's Gita podcast, a modern
discussion of the Bhagavad Gitaby and for Western women. A
women's Gita featuresdiscussions on the Bhagavad
Gita, the timeless classic ofEastern wisdom, reinterpreted
from the perspective of twofemale teachers, your hosts are
(00:24):
nistula Joy Davie and KamalaRose, who have dedicated their
lives to the yoga tradition at atime when women's voices are
finally emerging, a feminineperspective of the wartime
treatise could not be moretimely
Kamala Rose (00:42):
now. Namaste.
Welcome to a woman's Gita, I'mKamala, rose and I'm nishchila,
Joy Devi. Welcome to all of ourlisteners. Thank you for making
time to be with us today in thispodcast, we're going to begin
where we left off last time inchapter two, which is called
Sankhya yoga. Today, we'rebeginning with verse 14, chapter
(01:06):
214, that is one of the firstthese are some of the
introductory teachings in theBhagavad Gita of Krishna. So
verse 214 has a lot in it. I'mgoing to read it in the
Sanskrit, and then nishchalaDevi and I will go about
(01:28):
discussing this. Matra sparsha,stukantea, shidosukadukada,
Agama paino, nithyaas tantitiksha, SVA Bharata, this
impactful verse talks about acouple of big ideas in the Gita.
(01:50):
One is material sensations, thenext is dualities and finally,
the idea of the coming and goingof sense impressions and the
impermanence of those this versereally sums up some of the
(02:12):
fundamental theory of theBhagavad Gita. And let's say
this is Krishna. Is big lead,this big reveal of why it is
that Arjuna should not be soconcerned about what he is
experiencing, the pain that he'sexperiencing with his senses. He
tells us that sensations of thesenses come and go. They are by
(02:38):
nature and permanent. Andcounsels Arjuna to bear them
patiently, in a way, saying thistoo will pass.
Nischala Joy Devi (02:52):
Let's read it in English too. Maybe that will
help people understand it alittle bit differently when one
is tossed about by the senses.
The dualities of heat and cold,pain and pleasure are
experienced, but they areimpermanent. Bear them
patiently. I think that's reallysignificant. Bear them
(03:15):
patiently. We're being told tobe patient because of those
dualities, really swing us fromone side to the other, to the
other, to the other. We feellike we're in a seesaw most
days. Why is that?
Kamala Rose (03:34):
Well, why is that?
Because when we are experiencingthe world. We're in a constant
relationship with the worldaround us, right? We sometimes
swing into a seesaw pattern whenwe get outside of our tolerant
zones, or the zones where it'sjust is and we can generally
(03:55):
accept things as being cool, notwe don't need to react to it,
but sometimes, when ourexperience of the present moment
gets outside of a tolerancezone, we say that it becomes too
hot or too Cold, painful or overthe line of pleasure and
(04:21):
indulgence. This is a main ideain the Gita dualities,
Nischala Joy Devi (04:28):
and it's something that we deal with
regularly. Even I just thinkabout this morning, I woke up
and it was a little cold, so Iput on certain clothes to help
me not feel that, and then thesun comes out, and you start
changing into something lighter,or you take off a shirt or a
sweater. And then the day goeson and it gets cool again. It's
(04:51):
a constant, constant change, andswing behind between these
dualities. You're very, veryhungry. You eat. Wait, suddenly
you're not hungry. Whathappened? You ate. And then a
couple hours later, you think,Oh, I'll never be hungry again.
I'm so full. And then a couplehours later, you're hungry
(05:14):
again. So this is what, this iswhat they're talking about. And
I love the word that they use,tossed in English, the tossed by
the senses. It's, it's a, I feellike I'm a basketball sometimes
being tossed back and forthbetween this nature and this
changing nature.
Kamala Rose (05:35):
That is a good description of of our experience
in the world. And for for thispart of the Gita, we've been
looking at some of the mainimages that are a part of the
Bhagavad Gita and examiningthose. Now, one of the main
images that we have is thechariot, and this is the chariot
(05:59):
that Krishna has been asked todrive into the middle of the two
armies, the chariot that Arjunahas stepped down out of, put
dropped his bow right? It'spaused in time. So we have under
the banyan tree, in the middleof two armies, a chariot that's
not moving right. So we'velooked at the banyan tree, we've
(06:22):
looked at the setting of thewar. I think one way we can look
at these two armies is thatwe're always put between two
polarities. Yeah, it's
Nischala Joy Devi (06:34):
a good this is a very classic metaphor,
isn't it? This has been talkedabout many, many times, in so
many different ways. I thinkit's a really good metaphor too.
It really explains things well.
But yes, here we are stuckbetween two worlds sometimes.
Which way do you go
Kamala Rose (06:54):
having the understanding that is
represented by the chariot,which is kind of a summary of
yoga philosophy, using the imageof the chariot to break down the
basic ideas that form what isthe Sankhya, or the theory of
yoga, something that confused meand kept me out of reading the
(07:18):
Gita for so Many years, I justdidn't understand what is meant
by tossed about by the senses Ididn't understand, and
Nischala Joy Devi (07:28):
yet you were even though you didn't know it.
Yeah, that's the but it's
Kamala Rose (07:33):
the exact way of describing feelings of overwhelm
or confusion. When we're tossedabout, we can't make sense of
what's going on is very real andhappens not you don't have to be
somewhere else, somewhereunfamiliar, for this to happen.
Sometimes the events of our ownlives become unfamiliar, the way
(07:55):
they have. For Arjuna, he nowwhat was up is now down. For
him, he's turned upside down.
He's like the fool. He it'snothing is stable any longer,
right? So when, when Krishnabegins to teach this at the
halted chariot in the middle ofthe battlefield, we can look to
(08:16):
the the source of the chariotmetaphor, which is the
Upanishads now before, before Iread from the Katha Upanishad I
just like to introduce one ofthe verses that is often used as
an honorific or a devotionalverse Before beginning our
(08:37):
studies in the Gita goes likethis, sarvo, upanishado, gavo,
dogda, gopalanandaha, Arto,vatsa, Sudhir, bhokta, dugdam,
gitamratam, mahata, and it's ait's beautiful. It says that all
of the Upanishads, which aremystical texts that were
(09:02):
probably recorded somewherebetween 300 before the Common
Era and maybe 800 in our commonera since the time changed,
Right. So the the ideas thatthese mystical texts that refer
to sitting and learning mysticalinsight from a teacher, it says
(09:29):
that all of the Upanishads arelike generous mother cows,
right? Which is, which is reallya symbol in Indian culture for
Mother Earth and her generosityand her giving of milk and
sustaining of milk, right? Sothese Upanishads are like a
(09:51):
mother cow, and Krishna as thecow herd he's milking the wisdom
of. Upanishad for who forArjuna, and Arjuna is now on the
battlefield drinking theinsight. The the grand nectar of
the Upanishads is what is in theGita, and it says that one of
(10:14):
good insight may enjoy itssweetness, and hopefully this is
us those of good insight. Ithink this is something when we
when we approach the BhagavadGita, we should remember that
there's a lot going on here, andone of the main things that's
going on is teaching us the s,the essence, the essential part
(10:38):
of the Upanishads, the KathaUpanishad and really the main
Upanishads throughout and Ithink in our podcast, we hope to
try to bring in some of this aswe're discussing the different
chapters, because it does jumparound. And for those who are
studying the Gita with us. Youmight want to take a look at the
(11:01):
chariot metaphor, which is foundin the Katha Upanishad in
chapter three. Right? So this iswhere it says, Know the self as
the writer in a chariot, and thebody as simply the chariot. Know
the buddhi, or the intellect, asthe charioteer and the mind, the
(11:25):
Manas as simply the reins, thesenses, the indriyas, they say,
are the horses and the mantras,the sense objects are the paths
around the horses, one who islinked in the body, the Atman,
(11:45):
the senses and the mind. Thewise proclaim this one as one
who enjoys, right? That's,that's the simple, the simple
beginning.
Nischala Joy Devi (12:03):
And if I remember correctly, weren't they
white horses? Because theyrepresented the satwa in in the
in the ability. So we're tryingto get the senses into the
satwa, if those of you whoremember the breakdown of the
Gunas, which we will talk aboutmuch more in our times together,
(12:27):
but we're talking about thatbalanced part of us where the
mind and senses are in a verybalanced state, not Going to one
side of overactive orunderactive. So we want these
senses balanced in that, andthat's the important addition.
(12:51):
And we have to hold those reins.
We have to control them. Butlightly, I was just reading
about training a horse, and howyou have to be so careful not to
pull too hard on their littledelicate faces and their mouths
with the bit, because you canhurt them. And I think that that
(13:12):
goes into this metaphor. I thinkwe have to be very careful with
our senses. If we restrict themtoo much, they're going to go
the other way. We're going tothey're going to get out of
control. But if we give themjust enough to keep them happy
and also direct them towardthings that will enhance us and
(13:34):
make us stronger and in ourspiritual quest, then we've,
we've won on both sides. That's
Kamala Rose (13:44):
really important.
What you're saying, let's say acompassionate understanding of
this metaphor, right? So thebody itself is the chariot. It's
our you know? It's what housesconsciousness, right? And it is
what locomotes. It's what movesaround, right? We have the
horses that are the vehiclesthat move us around, meaning we
(14:08):
are propelled around the worldby our sense engagement with the
world, the world around us,true. And those senses are
coordinated by the centralnervous system, and that's the
reins, right? Who's holding thereins should be the buddhi, the
(14:28):
intelligence of the individual,the the the thinking mind, the
discerning mind, and who,ultimately, yeah, the intuitive
mind. Who's ultimately writingin this is the soul or the
Atman. And you know you, I thinkyou very rightly brought up the
the part of the this metaphor,right? We can, we can understand
(14:53):
the dynamics as yoga teachersand yoga students we've likely
and. Encountered this before,the idea of our senses of
perception and the sense objectsaround us, and how important it
is and how key in Yoga it is tomake those senses more refined,
where we're no longer habituallydrawn to the same things, the
(15:18):
same addictions and the sameentanglements, right? So it
gives us a lot of practicalinformation, but I think the way
we perceive it is so important.
Initially, you brought up thehorse training, and I've trained
(15:40):
many a dog, and I know trainingis an art. I'll tell you that
working with an animal and somethat kind of nature, that kind
of raw nature, is really an art.
And I something that I'velearned in this is that the idea
of suppressing or oppressing theanimal is never going to work
(16:05):
for and for many years, this ishow horses and dogs were
trained. But in the about thelast 20 years, there's been a
lot of developments seeing thatactually positive reinforcement
works a lot better. So
Nischala Joy Devi (16:20):
can you from this training of the dogs? Does
that help training your mind?
Kamala Rose (16:26):
Absolutely? In fact, I walk with this metaphor
all the time, and I know that asa good charioteer, as the booty,
my job is to see ahead. I am.
I'm the one who's got to lookahead and instead go a different
direction than encounter thetriggering things you know when
you walk with an animal, you'resensing the world in a different
(16:50):
way. One thing you can ever dois go into yourself, and there's
no phones, there's nodistractions, there's no
thinking about me and my agenda.
You can't space out in a way gosomewhere else. You have to stay
entirely present and payattention not to yourself. But
(17:13):
what are we doing? What are wesmelling? And those dogs can
smell 10,000 times greater thanI can I am not in the same movie
at all. Right? They smellsubtle, tanmatras of all sorts
of things, and you can justwatch it and know it well enough
(17:34):
and work with it avoid dangeroussituations and reward the
positive is what I've learnedfrom it.
Nischala Joy Devi (17:44):
And you know, when you go the other the other
way, I was laughing because youwere talking about being in
nature with animals. The otherday, I was in an Apple store,
and I had to wait, and they gaveme their new little glasses to
wear that you see things thatare not real. However, the
(18:04):
interesting part about this asas I was wearing them, and I
knew I was rational enough tounderstand I was sitting in a
store on a stool, very safe, butat one point they showed this
woman walking on tightropebetween two mountains, and
(18:26):
literally, my entire body wentinto a sympathetic nervous
system reaction. I had a hardtime breathing. I could feel
even now talking about it, I canfeel my palm sweating, and at
one point she lost her balanceand she tripped and she fell,
but she was on a rope thatstopped her. Wow. My body
(18:47):
reacted as if I was there withit. So we start to see how they
senses really impact everythingwe do, everything we do. So if
you're taking a sweet walk inthe woods with your dogs, the
impact is very different thansitting in a store looking at a
(19:10):
virtual reality. And I seepeople doing this also with
watching travel shows. I'll say,like, I come back from a trip
and they say, Oh yeah, I saw atravel show like that. And I
said, it's very different. Whenyou're there, you smell it, you
hear it, you feel it, you tasteit, right. It's a very different
(19:35):
experience than seeing it in oneor two dimensions. So I think
that we really have tounderstand how big these sensory
experiences are. They justthey're mostly what we have our
inner life, for most people, isminiscule compared. The outer
(20:00):
life. And I think one of theaspects of yoga is to begin to
balance that more have as muchinner as outer. When we talk
about the senses, there's theinner senses as well as the
outer senses. There's what Icall the clairs, the
clairaudience, the clairvoyance,the clairsentience. We have all
(20:22):
that. So this is huge. When wetalk about being tossed about by
the senses, which senses right?
The outer senses, the innersenses, all of the senses. So to
be able to draw them in just alittle bit in the Pratyahara,
this is really one of the thingsthat would help us tremendously
(20:43):
in our lives and in ourspiritual quest,
Kamala Rose (20:50):
having the understanding of the way our
experience of the world worksthat we're at all times, unless
we're in unless We're sleepingright all the time in the waking
state, we're experiencing theworld around us. We're smelling
it, tasting it, seeing it,touching it, right, hearing it.
(21:15):
Not sure which one I forgot, butright, those are our gyana
indriyas, the way we perceivethe world and take we're tasting
it at 100% of our waking time. Alot of this our brains have
relegated to not really thatimportant. You know, as long as
you're in your comfortableplace, at home, it's tolerant,
(21:36):
it's fine, it's comfortable. Idon't really need to think about
it. But when you get outside ofthat temperate zone and you're
sensing something that isuncomfortable, right, your your
system has a reaction to thatright, a sympathetic nervous
system response. In the case ofseeing something very dangerous,
(21:59):
whether it's in real life, orit's given to us by AI, which is
a whole dialog as yogis, we needto have about right? There's
regular sense information aboutthe world around us that human
beings have experienced forhundreds of 1000s, millions of
years, millions of years. Sorry,but, you know, a sensory system
(22:25):
like my dogs are a sensorysystem in a in a different way.
I mean, I'm, I'm the driver ofthe system, and it's my job to
not get us into any danger,because that happens too. I'm
the charioteer, and it can gethairy. It definitely could get
hairy if we go the wrong way. Soand same with horses, they're
you five refrigerator sizeanimals. If they decide to do
(22:50):
their own thing, you're introuble. The chariots gonna
knock over. You're gonna falldown, hurt yourself. Hurt
yourself. I think there's apracticality to this. And one of
my favorite images is that, isthat if you take these, here's
these five horses that are onreins. That is the Manas, if we
(23:13):
took a, if we took a yoke, whichis what yoga means, a piece of
wood that would keep thoseleashes sorted out, not crossing
over each other all the time tohold and make driving easier.
This is a great metaphor forwhat yoga practice is. It is the
(23:33):
yoke that makes those dangeroushorses manageable.
Nischala Joy Devi (23:38):
That's great.
Yes, that makes it really clear.
I think that's really clear whenyou when we look at it that way,
because if they're all go Allfive are going off in different
directions, it's calleddisaster. We have to have them
going together, and they have tobe pacified. I don't like the
word controlled as much aspacified. We have to pacify the
(24:02):
senses. Give them something tolook at, give them something to
taste, give them something tofeel. But not so out of the
range. I want to go back tosomething that you were talking
about, the awake part of it.
There's also the sleep part ofthe senses. And these are one of
the vrittis. One of the mainvrittis is the idea that
(24:23):
sleeping and dreaming. I don'tknow if we understand how the
body and mind actually workphysiologically. Let's start
with that. We do all thesethings during the day, you walk,
you sit, you eat, you eliminateall kinds of things during the
(24:46):
day and at night is the timewhen the body cleanses. This is
the time where the body purifiesitself. It doesn't have any
digestion. It. Digesting to do.
Hopefully, it begins itselimination process. And then we
(25:07):
get up in the morning, thenatural experience is you go in
and you eliminate, and you'regetting rid of a lot of the
toxicity, things that aren'tnecessary for the body, and it
all goes out. This is, this ishow we we naturally live. And
the same thing happens with themind. And I don't think people
(25:29):
understand that as much, becauseit's not as dramatic. You don't
get up and release it all,although it's very interesting,
because some things we don'trelease, like people say, I get
really stiff in the morning, forinstance. And people, they don't
realize that it's lactic acidbuilding up. That's what it is.
And look at what you've done theday before. Have you done a lot
(25:52):
of exercise without drinkingenough water, etc, etc. So all
these things are physiological.
We can see them, we can feelthem. We can experience them.
The mind is a little different.
We go and we pick up things allday long with our senses, our
eyes are 75% of our sensoryinput, and then the others. We
(26:15):
hear things, we see things,maybe some things that are
pleasant and some things thataren't here. We get back to the
the sloka, pain and pleasure,unpleasant and pleasant, the
dualities. And what do we dowith them? Well, generally, we
don't do anything with them. Wedon't talk about them. We don't
(26:37):
release them in some way. Or wethink that if you do exercise,
you're releasing the mind. It'snot necessarily so. One is the
physical, one is the mental. Sowhen we lay down at night to go
to sleep, they all come back.
They all come back to us. Andsome are insignificant. They
(26:58):
just go, they just evaporate. Orsome of them go back down under.
If you've had a disagreementwith a friend or something, it
may go beyond below the surfaceto later come up. But there are
also those that then activatedreams, so you've seen something
on TV. You saw an incident onthe street. This then comes back
(27:24):
to you as you begin to go into adream state. And your dreams can
tell you, not analysis. I'm nottalking about dream analysis
right now. I'm just talkingabout your dreams can tell you
what you may need to avoid,like, say, the news is coming
back and there's a war, and theyshowed the war, and now you're
(27:47):
replaying it in your mind, inyour dream, perhaps staying away
from that kind of news, becauseyou can see how It affects you.
So these senses are soprevalent, 24/7, literally. And
sometimes we remember, andsometimes we just get up grumpy
(28:07):
and we don't know why somethinghas happened during the night.
Kamala Rose (28:16):
Our interaction with the world is really part
that part of what shapes us? Ithink we have the idea that here
in the chariot metaphor, thereis the indwelling, the innermost
self, the Atman, right, the theoriginal self that is beyond the
Gunas the innermost Yes, right?
We can, we can think many arefamiliar with even the Kosha
(28:39):
model of describing the subtlelayers around us, right? So all
of these models are meant tohelp us understand the workings
of our mind and how it is thatwe are an eternal being having a
temporary experience and thatit's not that it doesn't affect
(29:03):
you or it doesn't, you know, youdon't interact with the world.
It's learning what your limitsare, learning what the tolerance
zones are. And just like with mybeloved dogs, it takes years.
Really does take years to get agood training model where
everybody understands what'sgoing on and what's tolerated
and what's not right. It takestime you have to develop a
(29:28):
relationship. And I think thisis something that is important
to bring into the dialog on thischariot metaphor, which is, you
know, it's kind of a it's a warlike image, right? And it does
sort of speak about oppressingthe horses and subduing the
senses. We hear this over andover and again in yoga, that we
(29:49):
have to subdue the senses. Wehave to get them under control.
My experience is that we have tomake friends. We have to.
Something that is agreeable tothe peace loving person that's
me and the ultimately easilydistracted childish and primal
animals that are taking thelocomotion forward. And I think
(30:16):
understanding this as as yogis,as the process of refining one's
experience in the world, welearn to recognize the things,
as you said, that haunt us atnight, and that's those are
things to turn the other way,like the barking dog on the
(30:36):
corner. Just go a different way.
It doesn't mean we don'tinteract with the world any
longer, or we make some sort ofrule that is becomes difficult
to enforce. I think it speaksabout a relationship between the
outer world and the inner goalof Self Realization, or
(31:01):
realizing that atman as thedriver as the real identity,
Nischala Joy Devi (31:07):
I think one question I still ask myself,
especially as a as I wasbeginning on this glorious path,
I would every time somethingwould happen, I would always ask
myself, Is this bringing mecloser to my peace, or is it
taking me further away? Andwhether it was food, whether it
(31:30):
was the barking dog on thecorner, as you just mentioned,
watching a show, watching thenews, whatever it was, being
with somebody who afterwards, Iwas upset. Discrimination has to
be used, because this is whathappens. Typically, you have a
(31:51):
student that comes to you andwants to learn meditation, and
you begin the process ofteaching, and they come to you
one day and they said, you know,every time I sit down, my mind
just goes absolutely crazy.
There's just no calmness with itat all. And I always sort of
smile and ask them, What did youexpect? You let it run,
(32:15):
whatever, wherever it wants togo all day, and then you decide
you want to sit for a time formeditation, and it won't be
still. How could it be still?
It's not trained that way. Thetraining doesn't begin when you
sit on a pillow or a chair orhowever you get into a
(32:38):
meditative pose. The trainingstarts when you wake up in the
morning, and it goes on fromthere. Everything has to be
geared to that. And find aquestion that you can ask
yourself, Is this bringing mefurther from my peace or closer
to my peace? What do I want?
What do you want? I think that'ssomething that we have to ask.
(33:02):
And I think that's somethingKrishna is asking Arjuna here,
what do you want to do? Make adecision. This is your dharma.
But if you don't want to dothat, make some kind of
decision. So I think we're allin this and that's probably why
they talk about it as anallegory so much, because it
(33:23):
does relate to us in oureveryday life when we really
look at it. So keeping the mindcalm calmer, you don't want it
the same state as in meditation,but there's a certain calmness
and an ease that it has. Itdoesn't mean you can't have fun
or get excited, but always comeback to the neutral point.
(33:44):
That's the thing. Come back tothat sattva you can move through
rajas, have a great time, go outdancing, do whatever you want,
and then move it back. Move itback, but notice how it affects
you. That's the important thing.
Kamala Rose (34:05):
Great advice, because this is really the the
issue is that we areexperiencing Matra sparshaus
material conditions at all timeswe're we're having an experience
of that. We're referencing it toprevious experiences of this,
right? There's now psychologygoing on, some scaras, habits,
(34:30):
deeper levels of conditioning,vasanas, all of this is entering
with the mind stream, ourmaterial sensations, and it's
this is what we're using to makechoices about the way we act in
the world, the things that we dorespond to and the things that
we don't respond to. I thinkthis is such an important part
(34:54):
of it that sometimes we weperceive that if something is
painful. It must be ended. Ihave to do something to stop
that. Right? If something ispleasurable, I have to do
something to keep it going, toget more of it. And it's this
very premise that is whatcreates our suffering, that we
(35:16):
are always chasing somethingthat can't really ever be again.
So the practicality ofunderstanding how we're
experiencing the world, what wekeep with us, what we hold with
us, what we identify with in theworld around us, and as Nisha
(35:37):
has been giving us such greatpractical advice for managing
that as from the time you wakeup in the morning until you go
to bed at night. It's reallyabout how we are handling
ourselves in our environment andunderstanding why we make the
choices we make, which is thefundamental issue here in the
(35:57):
Bhagavad Gita is, what are yougoing to do? What? How are you
going to behave from thisinformation? And this is where
we get into this, this idea thatthese, these things that we're
experiencing through our senses,they are, they are coming and
going, as Krishna says, Agamaapaina and anityas, they are
(36:22):
coming, they are going, and theyare, by nature, impermanent,
yes. And you know, we seldom,seldom look at our own minds
with this kind of objectivity.
Right the what I'm experiencingright now, whether I'm cold or
I'm hot, or whether I like it orI don't like it, by nature, like
the clouds, it's going to movealong. It will change. It will
(36:48):
transform into something else.
But, you know, I think that theidea that when it's inside of
us, we we come to cherish ouropinions and our the ways we see
the world, and we even arguewith each other and say, I'm
perceiving this correctly, andyou're perceiving this
(37:09):
incorrectly, when by nature. AndI think what the chariot
metaphor is trying to show us isthat by nature, everyone is
perceiving subjectively, yes,through your own lens, through
your own previous experience,from your own location, where
you are, who you've been, howyou were brought up. You know,
(37:32):
we were talking about thedifference in the ways we were
brought up, from growing up in awoodsy suburb to growing up in
the city. And you know how theexperience of our material
sensations as it were shapes us,right, the indwelling
consciousness, but the layers ofmaterial and substance that we
(37:53):
are that develop the psychologyof each individual right? Now we
add on from verse 13, ourprevious verse, A reincarnating
spirit and subtle materialbrought from other times that
precondition the individual toexperience that situation in
(38:15):
their own way. We can read thisin the Gita in chapter one that
Arjun is telling us exactly hisway of seeing it. He sees all
the important men all rankedhere on the battlefield, from
the most important to the to me,right? We're all in conflict.
(38:35):
It's not working. We're supposedto work together. We're on the
same side. I don't get it. He'slaying out his subjective
worldview. And I think if weunderstand that, that's more
where the Gita is coming from,of trying to help us to get a
little more objective about thesubjectivity about our
(38:57):
individual worldview.
Nischala Joy Devi (39:00):
Yeah. Yeah, that's it's making it so crystal
clear, at least in my mind. Andthe other thing is, I often
think of the senses, or theexperience of the senses,
because we have the senses arevery complicated in a lot of
(39:21):
ways, because we think of thesenses as we identify them as a
sense organs, and that's reallynot the senses. The senses are
more in the mind, and then theycome in, and then there's the
object of sense that's on theoutside. So there's the object
of sense, and there's the thereceptacle that tells us that it
(39:46):
identifies. So for instance, wesee something, and the eye says,
Oh, that's a piece of paper.
Okay, how did the eye? The eyedidn't do that. It was the booty
within the mind. That identifiedit. So we're constantly looking
and identifying, and ouridentification, a lot of it is
based on our experience. Sothat's why, when we see
(40:10):
something, we see it in aparticular way. I went out for
dinner the other night with somefriends, and I don't eat onions,
and they love onions, so Iwatched them pick out and eat
the onions separately, and Ipicked out the onions and put it
on the side of my plate. Two thesame dish, two different
experiences of it. One loves it.
(40:35):
One doesn't love it. Does thatmake onions great or not great?
Neither. Onions are just onions,if you like them, it's one
thing. So I see the senses as aball and then almost like a
comet with a long tail on it.
And that tail, to me, is asamskara. So what happens is you
(40:56):
have a sense experience, whethergood or bad. And then it doesn't
just go, it stays. And dependingon how strong it is, that's how
strong that tale remains. Andthat tale then comes back at
another time. It comes back atanother place where maybe it's
(41:18):
less appropriate or moreappropriate, but that this is
what happens. We start toexperience things based on our
experience of other things, andit keeps going like that and
breaking that cycle, which iswhat we're trying to do in
spiritual practice, is verydifficult, very difficult. First
(41:41):
you have to identify it, andthen you have to try to change
it. But depending on how thickthat tail is and how strong that
comet is, which is the sensethat's how difficult it might be
to change it. So when we sitdown for meditation and we start
(42:01):
to go within, if that has notbeen cleared, we can't get to
that Dhyana state. We can't getto that deep state of
meditation. There's too much inthe way. It has to be cleared,
and that's what the otherpractices do, the pranayama, the
(42:22):
Pratyahara, etc, to lead us tothe meditation
Kamala Rose (42:31):
so that the buddhi can drive. The buddhi can be the
driver of the chariot and we canmove forward in harmony with the
senses. We can be in the world,as they say, but not of the
world, not always taking it onand identifying it with it to
(42:51):
the degree that our worldteaches us to. I mean, we're
talking to about the Westernculture, which tells us to
identify ourselves as with ourfavorite brands, you know,
teaches us about, you know, allof the things that we can do to
indulge our senses, and gives us1000 things, millions of things
(43:17):
to choose from. The path ofyoga, we are really
intentionally taking up apractice of looking for balance
in that looking for a sense ofpurity. And we should never be,
as you said, we just shouldn'tbe naive about the amount of
(43:38):
work it really does take to, youknow, to train the senses to be
more subtle, to be interested inthings that are quieter, that
might not scream out as awesome,right? I love things like
chocolate ice cream, you know, Ilove things like that. I love,
(43:59):
we all love stimulants in someway. But we know, as yogis, it's
not good to have so much. Wehave to find a moderation in our
relationship with the outerworld. This is that yoke that
organizes the reins that areattached to the horses, so that
we are not, you know, so so muchwith what I what I see and what
(44:24):
I want. It's got to be tamed.
It's got to be brought in. LikeI said, What I know this from
working with it's taught me alot, working with my dogs,
working with myself, that youcan't just say, No, never, and
you have to work with it. Do youhave to recognize if that is a
tendency, you have to approachit with some compassion and some
(44:47):
training. And I often say that Irun my house on peanut butter
because I believe in I believein positive. Of reinforcement,
and that means I reward what Iwant. If I see calm states, I
give peanut butter. If I seelistening to me and coming when
(45:10):
I call and learning to say no towhatever I am talking about, I
give peanut butter. I reward thegood behavior, and I ultimately
most of the bad behavior, Iignore and find that neutrality.
You said you talked aboutneutral a little bit in the
beginning, and I think we shouldcome back to that important idea
(45:33):
that, you know, we can't alwayswe're not going to balance out
too much with nothing. We haveto find something in between,
where's a sense of neutrality,
Nischala Joy Devi (45:49):
you know. And I think that this is where the
religions have a little bit of astep up, some of them, if you go
into, especially if you go intosome of the ancient cathedrals
in Europe, or if you go into thetemples in India, some of the
mosques I've been in are justjaw dropping. What to me, what
(46:11):
it what it does, is veryinteresting. You're walking from
the material senses beingstimulated to more of an
uplifting stimulation. So it'snot you don't feel deprived when
you walk in because you see thebeautiful stained glass, you see
the beautiful you hear thebeautiful singing of the choir,
(46:34):
or of chanting, or the bellsringing, or something is
happening that brings yoursenses to that instead of what
it was outside. So it's almostlike we're taking steps, the
first step when we step into aplace of solemn place of
(46:57):
worship. It could be anything.
It could be a cathedral of treesin the in the forest. It doesn't
have to be a building, butsomething that that actually,
the early temples in India werecaves. They weren't physical
buildings. So when we walk intosomething like that, depending
on our level of need, the beautyjust takes us and we become
(47:23):
literally breathless with it,and we sit. I used to be this
was before the horrible firehappened at Our Lady of Notre
Dame in Paris. One of the thingsI used to do is love to go sit
there and watch when people camein and looked at these
magnificent windows, and perhapseven had some chanting on or
(47:49):
some prayers, and they wouldjust look at them, and in spite
of themselves, would sit down ona pew and be quiet for a few
minutes, even if that was nottheir intention, just the
beauty, just the solemnity ofit, just the the the depth of
(48:10):
the vibration that's held inthese ancient places, was enough
to stop and sit down, and thenthe senses become calm. So this
is, I would really suggest thisfor people in their own homes.
Make a beautiful spot formeditation. Put something
(48:32):
beautiful there. Draw yoursenses to that instead of
thinking about lunch or urinesor how you're going to start
your day, and then from there,it's much easier to let it go.
Kamala Rose (48:48):
That's wonderful advice, and I think that's a
great place to conclude ourpodcast for today. Thank you all
so much for joining us. We hopeyou'll subscribe to our podcast
so you can be notified each timewe have one comes out every two
weeks a woman's Gita, by and forWestern women, a contemporary
(49:08):
version, Namaste. Namaste.
Unknown (49:14):
Thank you for joining us for a women's Gita with
nistula Joy, Davie and Kamalarose. We would like to express
our gratitude for the ongoingsupport for a women's Gita
podcast and book from yoga givesback a non profit organization
dedicated to the underservedwomen and children of India.
Please join us again for ournext episode coming soon.
(49:38):
Namaste. You.
Namaste. Welcome to a woman's Gita podcast, a modern
discussion of the Bhagavad Gitaby and for Western women. A
women's Gita featuresdiscussions on the Bhagavad
Gita, the timeless classic ofEastern wisdom, reinterpreted
from the perspective of twofemale teachers, your hosts are
(00:24):
nistula Joy Davie and KamalaRose, who have dedicated their
lives to the yoga tradition at atime when women's voices are
finally emerging, a feminineperspective of the wartime
treatise could not be moretimely
Kamala Rose (00:42):
now. Namaste.
Welcome to a woman's Gita, I'mKamala, rose and I'm nishchila,
Joy Devi. Welcome to all of ourlisteners. Thank you for making
time to be with us today in thispodcast, we're going to begin
where we left off last time inchapter two, which is called
Sankhya yoga. Today, we'rebeginning with verse 14, chapter
(01:06):
214, that is one of the firstthese are some of the
introductory teachings in theBhagavad Gita of Krishna. So
verse 214 has a lot in it. I'mgoing to read it in the
Sanskrit, and then nishchalaDevi and I will go about
(01:28):
discussing this. Matra sparsha,stukantea, shidosukadukada,
Agama paino, nithyaas tantitiksha, SVA Bharata, this
impactful verse talks about acouple of big ideas in the Gita.
(01:50):
One is material sensations, thenext is dualities and finally,
the idea of the coming and goingof sense impressions and the
impermanence of those this versereally sums up some of the
(02:12):
fundamental theory of theBhagavad Gita. And let's say
this is Krishna. Is big lead,this big reveal of why it is
that Arjuna should not be soconcerned about what he is
experiencing, the pain that he'sexperiencing with his senses. He
tells us that sensations of thesenses come and go. They are by
(02:38):
nature and permanent. Andcounsels Arjuna to bear them
patiently, in a way, saying thistoo will pass.
Nischala Joy Devi (02:52):
Let's read it in English too. Maybe that will
help people understand it alittle bit differently when one
is tossed about by the senses.
The dualities of heat and cold,pain and pleasure are
experienced, but they areimpermanent. Bear them
patiently. I think that's reallysignificant. Bear them
(03:15):
patiently. We're being told tobe patient because of those
dualities, really swing us fromone side to the other, to the
other, to the other. We feellike we're in a seesaw most
days. Why is that?
Kamala Rose (03:34):
Well, why is that?
Because when we are experiencingthe world. We're in a constant
relationship with the worldaround us, right? We sometimes
swing into a seesaw pattern whenwe get outside of our tolerant
zones, or the zones where it'sjust is and we can generally
(03:55):
accept things as being cool, notwe don't need to react to it,
but sometimes, when ourexperience of the present moment
gets outside of a tolerancezone, we say that it becomes too
hot or too Cold, painful or overthe line of pleasure and
(04:21):
indulgence. This is a main ideain the Gita dualities,
Nischala Joy Devi (04:28):
and it's something that we deal with
regularly. Even I just thinkabout this morning, I woke up
and it was a little cold, so Iput on certain clothes to help
me not feel that, and then thesun comes out, and you start
changing into something lighter,or you take off a shirt or a
sweater. And then the day goeson and it gets cool again. It's
(04:51):
a constant, constant change, andswing behind between these
dualities. You're very, veryhungry. You eat. Wait, suddenly
you're not hungry. Whathappened? You ate. And then a
couple hours later, you think,Oh, I'll never be hungry again.
I'm so full. And then a couplehours later, you're hungry
(05:14):
again. So this is what, this iswhat they're talking about. And
I love the word that they use,tossed in English, the tossed by
the senses. It's, it's a, I feellike I'm a basketball sometimes
being tossed back and forthbetween this nature and this
changing nature.
Kamala Rose (05:35):
That is a good description of of our experience
in the world. And for for thispart of the Gita, we've been
looking at some of the mainimages that are a part of the
Bhagavad Gita and examiningthose. Now, one of the main
images that we have is thechariot, and this is the chariot
(05:59):
that Krishna has been asked todrive into the middle of the two
armies, the chariot that Arjunahas stepped down out of, put
dropped his bow right? It'spaused in time. So we have under
the banyan tree, in the middleof two armies, a chariot that's
not moving right. So we'velooked at the banyan tree, we've
(06:22):
looked at the setting of thewar. I think one way we can look
at these two armies is thatwe're always put between two
polarities. Yeah, it's
Nischala Joy Devi (06:34):
a good this is a very classic metaphor,
isn't it? This has been talkedabout many, many times, in so
many different ways. I thinkit's a really good metaphor too.
It really explains things well.
But yes, here we are stuckbetween two worlds sometimes.
Which way do you go
Kamala Rose (06:54):
having the understanding that is
represented by the chariot,which is kind of a summary of
yoga philosophy, using the imageof the chariot to break down the
basic ideas that form what isthe Sankhya, or the theory of
yoga, something that confused meand kept me out of reading the
(07:18):
Gita for so Many years, I justdidn't understand what is meant
by tossed about by the senses Ididn't understand, and
Nischala Joy Devi (07:28):
yet you were even though you didn't know it.
Yeah, that's the but it's
Kamala Rose (07:33):
the exact way of describing feelings of overwhelm
or confusion. When we're tossedabout, we can't make sense of
what's going on is very real andhappens not you don't have to be
somewhere else, somewhereunfamiliar, for this to happen.
Sometimes the events of our ownlives become unfamiliar, the way
(07:55):
they have. For Arjuna, he nowwhat was up is now down. For
him, he's turned upside down.
He's like the fool. He it'snothing is stable any longer,
right? So when, when Krishnabegins to teach this at the
halted chariot in the middle ofthe battlefield, we can look to
(08:16):
the the source of the chariotmetaphor, which is the
Upanishads now before, before Iread from the Katha Upanishad I
just like to introduce one ofthe verses that is often used as
an honorific or a devotionalverse Before beginning our
(08:37):
studies in the Gita goes likethis, sarvo, upanishado, gavo,
dogda, gopalanandaha, Arto,vatsa, Sudhir, bhokta, dugdam,
gitamratam, mahata, and it's ait's beautiful. It says that all
of the Upanishads, which aremystical texts that were
(09:02):
probably recorded somewherebetween 300 before the Common
Era and maybe 800 in our commonera since the time changed,
Right. So the the ideas thatthese mystical texts that refer
to sitting and learning mysticalinsight from a teacher, it says
(09:29):
that all of the Upanishads arelike generous mother cows,
right? Which is, which is reallya symbol in Indian culture for
Mother Earth and her generosityand her giving of milk and
sustaining of milk, right? Sothese Upanishads are like a
(09:51):
mother cow, and Krishna as thecow herd he's milking the wisdom
of. Upanishad for who forArjuna, and Arjuna is now on the
battlefield drinking theinsight. The the grand nectar of
the Upanishads is what is in theGita, and it says that one of
(10:14):
good insight may enjoy itssweetness, and hopefully this is
us those of good insight. Ithink this is something when we
when we approach the BhagavadGita, we should remember that
there's a lot going on here, andone of the main things that's
going on is teaching us the s,the essence, the essential part
(10:38):
of the Upanishads, the KathaUpanishad and really the main
Upanishads throughout and Ithink in our podcast, we hope to
try to bring in some of this aswe're discussing the different
chapters, because it does jumparound. And for those who are
studying the Gita with us. Youmight want to take a look at the
(11:01):
chariot metaphor, which is foundin the Katha Upanishad in
chapter three. Right? So this iswhere it says, Know the self as
the writer in a chariot, and thebody as simply the chariot. Know
the buddhi, or the intellect, asthe charioteer and the mind, the
(11:25):
Manas as simply the reins, thesenses, the indriyas, they say,
are the horses and the mantras,the sense objects are the paths
around the horses, one who islinked in the body, the Atman,
(11:45):
the senses and the mind. Thewise proclaim this one as one
who enjoys, right? That's,that's the simple, the simple
beginning.
Nischala Joy Devi (12:03):
And if I remember correctly, weren't they
white horses? Because theyrepresented the satwa in in the
in the ability. So we're tryingto get the senses into the
satwa, if those of you whoremember the breakdown of the
Gunas, which we will talk aboutmuch more in our times together,
(12:27):
but we're talking about thatbalanced part of us where the
mind and senses are in a verybalanced state, not Going to one
side of overactive orunderactive. So we want these
senses balanced in that, andthat's the important addition.
(12:51):
And we have to hold those reins.
We have to control them. Butlightly, I was just reading
about training a horse, and howyou have to be so careful not to
pull too hard on their littledelicate faces and their mouths
with the bit, because you canhurt them. And I think that that
(13:12):
goes into this metaphor. I thinkwe have to be very careful with
our senses. If we restrict themtoo much, they're going to go
the other way. We're going tothey're going to get out of
control. But if we give themjust enough to keep them happy
and also direct them towardthings that will enhance us and
(13:34):
make us stronger and in ourspiritual quest, then we've,
we've won on both sides. That's
Kamala Rose (13:44):
really important.
What you're saying, let's say acompassionate understanding of
this metaphor, right? So thebody itself is the chariot. It's
our you know? It's what housesconsciousness, right? And it is
what locomotes. It's what movesaround, right? We have the
horses that are the vehiclesthat move us around, meaning we
(14:08):
are propelled around the worldby our sense engagement with the
world, the world around us,true. And those senses are
coordinated by the centralnervous system, and that's the
reins, right? Who's holding thereins should be the buddhi, the
(14:28):
intelligence of the individual,the the the thinking mind, the
discerning mind, and who,ultimately, yeah, the intuitive
mind. Who's ultimately writingin this is the soul or the
Atman. And you know you, I thinkyou very rightly brought up the
the part of the this metaphor,right? We can, we can understand
(14:53):
the dynamics as yoga teachersand yoga students we've likely
and. Encountered this before,the idea of our senses of
perception and the sense objectsaround us, and how important it
is and how key in Yoga it is tomake those senses more refined,
where we're no longer habituallydrawn to the same things, the
(15:18):
same addictions and the sameentanglements, right? So it
gives us a lot of practicalinformation, but I think the way
we perceive it is so important.
Initially, you brought up thehorse training, and I've trained
(15:40):
many a dog, and I know trainingis an art. I'll tell you that
working with an animal and somethat kind of nature, that kind
of raw nature, is really an art.
And I something that I'velearned in this is that the idea
of suppressing or oppressing theanimal is never going to work
(16:05):
for and for many years, this ishow horses and dogs were
trained. But in the about thelast 20 years, there's been a
lot of developments seeing thatactually positive reinforcement
works a lot better. So
Nischala Joy Devi (16:20):
can you from this training of the dogs? Does
that help training your mind?
Kamala Rose (16:26):
Absolutely? In fact, I walk with this metaphor
all the time, and I know that asa good charioteer, as the booty,
my job is to see ahead. I am.
I'm the one who's got to lookahead and instead go a different
direction than encounter thetriggering things you know when
you walk with an animal, you'resensing the world in a different
(16:50):
way. One thing you can ever dois go into yourself, and there's
no phones, there's nodistractions, there's no
thinking about me and my agenda.
You can't space out in a way gosomewhere else. You have to stay
entirely present and payattention not to yourself. But
(17:13):
what are we doing? What are wesmelling? And those dogs can
smell 10,000 times greater thanI can I am not in the same movie
at all. Right? They smellsubtle, tanmatras of all sorts
of things, and you can justwatch it and know it well enough
(17:34):
and work with it avoid dangeroussituations and reward the
positive is what I've learnedfrom it.
Nischala Joy Devi (17:44):
And you know, when you go the other the other
way, I was laughing because youwere talking about being in
nature with animals. The otherday, I was in an Apple store,
and I had to wait, and they gaveme their new little glasses to
wear that you see things thatare not real. However, the
(18:04):
interesting part about this asas I was wearing them, and I
knew I was rational enough tounderstand I was sitting in a
store on a stool, very safe, butat one point they showed this
woman walking on tightropebetween two mountains, and
(18:26):
literally, my entire body wentinto a sympathetic nervous
system reaction. I had a hardtime breathing. I could feel
even now talking about it, I canfeel my palm sweating, and at
one point she lost her balanceand she tripped and she fell,
but she was on a rope thatstopped her. Wow. My body
(18:47):
reacted as if I was there withit. So we start to see how they
senses really impact everythingwe do, everything we do. So if
you're taking a sweet walk inthe woods with your dogs, the
impact is very different thansitting in a store looking at a
(19:10):
virtual reality. And I seepeople doing this also with
watching travel shows. I'll say,like, I come back from a trip
and they say, Oh yeah, I saw atravel show like that. And I
said, it's very different. Whenyou're there, you smell it, you
hear it, you feel it, you tasteit, right. It's a very different
(19:35):
experience than seeing it in oneor two dimensions. So I think
that we really have tounderstand how big these sensory
experiences are. They justthey're mostly what we have our
inner life, for most people, isminiscule compared. The outer
(20:00):
life. And I think one of theaspects of yoga is to begin to
balance that more have as muchinner as outer. When we talk
about the senses, there's theinner senses as well as the
outer senses. There's what Icall the clairs, the
clairaudience, the clairvoyance,the clairsentience. We have all
(20:22):
that. So this is huge. When wetalk about being tossed about by
the senses, which senses right?
The outer senses, the innersenses, all of the senses. So to
be able to draw them in just alittle bit in the Pratyahara,
this is really one of the thingsthat would help us tremendously
(20:43):
in our lives and in ourspiritual quest,
Kamala Rose (20:50):
having the understanding of the way our
experience of the world worksthat we're at all times, unless
we're in unless We're sleepingright all the time in the waking
state, we're experiencing theworld around us. We're smelling
it, tasting it, seeing it,touching it, right, hearing it.
(21:15):
Not sure which one I forgot, butright, those are our gyana
indriyas, the way we perceivethe world and take we're tasting
it at 100% of our waking time. Alot of this our brains have
relegated to not really thatimportant. You know, as long as
you're in your comfortableplace, at home, it's tolerant,
(21:36):
it's fine, it's comfortable. Idon't really need to think about
it. But when you get outside ofthat temperate zone and you're
sensing something that isuncomfortable, right, your your
system has a reaction to thatright, a sympathetic nervous
system response. In the case ofseeing something very dangerous,
(21:59):
whether it's in real life, orit's given to us by AI, which is
a whole dialog as yogis, we needto have about right? There's
regular sense information aboutthe world around us that human
beings have experienced forhundreds of 1000s, millions of
years, millions of years. Sorry,but, you know, a sensory system
(22:25):
like my dogs are a sensorysystem in a in a different way.
I mean, I'm, I'm the driver ofthe system, and it's my job to
not get us into any danger,because that happens too. I'm
the charioteer, and it can gethairy. It definitely could get
hairy if we go the wrong way. Soand same with horses, they're
you five refrigerator sizeanimals. If they decide to do
(22:50):
their own thing, you're introuble. The chariots gonna
knock over. You're gonna falldown, hurt yourself. Hurt
yourself. I think there's apracticality to this. And one of
my favorite images is that, isthat if you take these, here's
these five horses that are onreins. That is the Manas, if we
(23:13):
took a, if we took a yoke, whichis what yoga means, a piece of
wood that would keep thoseleashes sorted out, not crossing
over each other all the time tohold and make driving easier.
This is a great metaphor forwhat yoga practice is. It is the
(23:33):
yoke that makes those dangeroushorses manageable.
Nischala Joy Devi (23:38):
That's great.
Yes, that makes it really clear.
I think that's really clear whenyou when we look at it that way,
because if they're all go Allfive are going off in different
directions, it's calleddisaster. We have to have them
going together, and they have tobe pacified. I don't like the
word controlled as much aspacified. We have to pacify the
(24:02):
senses. Give them something tolook at, give them something to
taste, give them something tofeel. But not so out of the
range. I want to go back tosomething that you were talking
about, the awake part of it.
There's also the sleep part ofthe senses. And these are one of
the vrittis. One of the mainvrittis is the idea that
(24:23):
sleeping and dreaming. I don'tknow if we understand how the
body and mind actually workphysiologically. Let's start
with that. We do all thesethings during the day, you walk,
you sit, you eat, you eliminateall kinds of things during the
(24:46):
day and at night is the timewhen the body cleanses. This is
the time where the body purifiesitself. It doesn't have any
digestion. It. Digesting to do.
Hopefully, it begins itselimination process. And then we
(25:07):
get up in the morning, thenatural experience is you go in
and you eliminate, and you'regetting rid of a lot of the
toxicity, things that aren'tnecessary for the body, and it
all goes out. This is, this ishow we we naturally live. And
the same thing happens with themind. And I don't think people
(25:29):
understand that as much, becauseit's not as dramatic. You don't
get up and release it all,although it's very interesting,
because some things we don'trelease, like people say, I get
really stiff in the morning, forinstance. And people, they don't
realize that it's lactic acidbuilding up. That's what it is.
And look at what you've done theday before. Have you done a lot
(25:52):
of exercise without drinkingenough water, etc, etc. So all
these things are physiological.
We can see them, we can feelthem. We can experience them.
The mind is a little different.
We go and we pick up things allday long with our senses, our
eyes are 75% of our sensoryinput, and then the others. We
(26:15):
hear things, we see things,maybe some things that are
pleasant and some things thataren't here. We get back to the
the sloka, pain and pleasure,unpleasant and pleasant, the
dualities. And what do we dowith them? Well, generally, we
don't do anything with them. Wedon't talk about them. We don't
(26:37):
release them in some way. Or wethink that if you do exercise,
you're releasing the mind. It'snot necessarily so. One is the
physical, one is the mental. Sowhen we lay down at night to go
to sleep, they all come back.
They all come back to us. Andsome are insignificant. They
(26:58):
just go, they just evaporate. Orsome of them go back down under.
If you've had a disagreementwith a friend or something, it
may go beyond below the surfaceto later come up. But there are
also those that then activatedreams, so you've seen something
on TV. You saw an incident onthe street. This then comes back
(27:24):
to you as you begin to go into adream state. And your dreams can
tell you, not analysis. I'm nottalking about dream analysis
right now. I'm just talkingabout your dreams can tell you
what you may need to avoid,like, say, the news is coming
back and there's a war, and theyshowed the war, and now you're
(27:47):
replaying it in your mind, inyour dream, perhaps staying away
from that kind of news, becauseyou can see how It affects you.
So these senses are soprevalent, 24/7, literally. And
sometimes we remember, andsometimes we just get up grumpy
(28:07):
and we don't know why somethinghas happened during the night.
Kamala Rose (28:16):
Our interaction with the world is really part
that part of what shapes us? Ithink we have the idea that here
in the chariot metaphor, thereis the indwelling, the innermost
self, the Atman, right, the theoriginal self that is beyond the
Gunas the innermost Yes, right?
We can, we can think many arefamiliar with even the Kosha
(28:39):
model of describing the subtlelayers around us, right? So all
of these models are meant tohelp us understand the workings
of our mind and how it is thatwe are an eternal being having a
temporary experience and thatit's not that it doesn't affect
(29:03):
you or it doesn't, you know, youdon't interact with the world.
It's learning what your limitsare, learning what the tolerance
zones are. And just like with mybeloved dogs, it takes years.
Really does take years to get agood training model where
everybody understands what'sgoing on and what's tolerated
and what's not right. It takestime you have to develop a
(29:28):
relationship. And I think thisis something that is important
to bring into the dialog on thischariot metaphor, which is, you
know, it's kind of a it's a warlike image, right? And it does
sort of speak about oppressingthe horses and subduing the
senses. We hear this over andover and again in yoga, that we
(29:49):
have to subdue the senses. Wehave to get them under control.
My experience is that we have tomake friends. We have to.
Something that is agreeable tothe peace loving person that's
me and the ultimately easilydistracted childish and primal
animals that are taking thelocomotion forward. And I think
(30:16):
understanding this as as yogis,as the process of refining one's
experience in the world, welearn to recognize the things,
as you said, that haunt us atnight, and that's those are
things to turn the other way,like the barking dog on the
(30:36):
corner. Just go a different way.
It doesn't mean we don'tinteract with the world any
longer, or we make some sort ofrule that is becomes difficult
to enforce. I think it speaksabout a relationship between the
outer world and the inner goalof Self Realization, or
(31:01):
realizing that atman as thedriver as the real identity,
Nischala Joy Devi (31:07):
I think one question I still ask myself,
especially as a as I wasbeginning on this glorious path,
I would every time somethingwould happen, I would always ask
myself, Is this bringing mecloser to my peace, or is it
taking me further away? Andwhether it was food, whether it
(31:30):
was the barking dog on thecorner, as you just mentioned,
watching a show, watching thenews, whatever it was, being
with somebody who afterwards, Iwas upset. Discrimination has to
be used, because this is whathappens. Typically, you have a
(31:51):
student that comes to you andwants to learn meditation, and
you begin the process ofteaching, and they come to you
one day and they said, you know,every time I sit down, my mind
just goes absolutely crazy.
There's just no calmness with itat all. And I always sort of
smile and ask them, What did youexpect? You let it run,
(32:15):
whatever, wherever it wants togo all day, and then you decide
you want to sit for a time formeditation, and it won't be
still. How could it be still?
It's not trained that way. Thetraining doesn't begin when you
sit on a pillow or a chair orhowever you get into a
(32:38):
meditative pose. The trainingstarts when you wake up in the
morning, and it goes on fromthere. Everything has to be
geared to that. And find aquestion that you can ask
yourself, Is this bringing mefurther from my peace or closer
to my peace? What do I want?
What do you want? I think that'ssomething that we have to ask.
(33:02):
And I think that's somethingKrishna is asking Arjuna here,
what do you want to do? Make adecision. This is your dharma.
But if you don't want to dothat, make some kind of
decision. So I think we're allin this and that's probably why
they talk about it as anallegory so much, because it
(33:23):
does relate to us in oureveryday life when we really
look at it. So keeping the mindcalm calmer, you don't want it
the same state as in meditation,but there's a certain calmness
and an ease that it has. Itdoesn't mean you can't have fun
or get excited, but always comeback to the neutral point.
(33:44):
That's the thing. Come back tothat sattva you can move through
rajas, have a great time, go outdancing, do whatever you want,
and then move it back. Move itback, but notice how it affects
you. That's the important thing.
Kamala Rose (34:05):
Great advice, because this is really the the
issue is that we areexperiencing Matra sparshaus
material conditions at all timeswe're we're having an experience
of that. We're referencing it toprevious experiences of this,
right? There's now psychologygoing on, some scaras, habits,
(34:30):
deeper levels of conditioning,vasanas, all of this is entering
with the mind stream, ourmaterial sensations, and it's
this is what we're using to makechoices about the way we act in
the world, the things that we dorespond to and the things that
we don't respond to. I thinkthis is such an important part
(34:54):
of it that sometimes we weperceive that if something is
painful. It must be ended. Ihave to do something to stop
that. Right? If something ispleasurable, I have to do
something to keep it going, toget more of it. And it's this
very premise that is whatcreates our suffering, that we
(35:16):
are always chasing somethingthat can't really ever be again.
So the practicality ofunderstanding how we're
experiencing the world, what wekeep with us, what we hold with
us, what we identify with in theworld around us, and as Nisha
(35:37):
has been giving us such greatpractical advice for managing
that as from the time you wakeup in the morning until you go
to bed at night. It's reallyabout how we are handling
ourselves in our environment andunderstanding why we make the
choices we make, which is thefundamental issue here in the
(35:57):
Bhagavad Gita is, what are yougoing to do? What? How are you
going to behave from thisinformation? And this is where
we get into this, this idea thatthese, these things that we're
experiencing through our senses,they are, they are coming and
going, as Krishna says, Agamaapaina and anityas, they are
(36:22):
coming, they are going, and theyare, by nature, impermanent,
yes. And you know, we seldom,seldom look at our own minds
with this kind of objectivity.
Right the what I'm experiencingright now, whether I'm cold or
I'm hot, or whether I like it orI don't like it, by nature, like
the clouds, it's going to movealong. It will change. It will
(36:48):
transform into something else.
But, you know, I think that theidea that when it's inside of
us, we we come to cherish ouropinions and our the ways we see
the world, and we even arguewith each other and say, I'm
perceiving this correctly, andyou're perceiving this
(37:09):
incorrectly, when by nature. AndI think what the chariot
metaphor is trying to show us isthat by nature, everyone is
perceiving subjectively, yes,through your own lens, through
your own previous experience,from your own location, where
you are, who you've been, howyou were brought up. You know,
(37:32):
we were talking about thedifference in the ways we were
brought up, from growing up in awoodsy suburb to growing up in
the city. And you know how theexperience of our material
sensations as it were shapes us,right, the indwelling
consciousness, but the layers ofmaterial and substance that we
(37:53):
are that develop the psychologyof each individual right? Now we
add on from verse 13, ourprevious verse, A reincarnating
spirit and subtle materialbrought from other times that
precondition the individual toexperience that situation in
(38:15):
their own way. We can read thisin the Gita in chapter one that
Arjun is telling us exactly hisway of seeing it. He sees all
the important men all rankedhere on the battlefield, from
the most important to the to me,right? We're all in conflict.
(38:35):
It's not working. We're supposedto work together. We're on the
same side. I don't get it. He'slaying out his subjective
worldview. And I think if weunderstand that, that's more
where the Gita is coming from,of trying to help us to get a
little more objective about thesubjectivity about our
(38:57):
individual worldview.
Nischala Joy Devi (39:00):
Yeah. Yeah, that's it's making it so crystal
clear, at least in my mind. Andthe other thing is, I often
think of the senses, or theexperience of the senses,
because we have the senses arevery complicated in a lot of
(39:21):
ways, because we think of thesenses as we identify them as a
sense organs, and that's reallynot the senses. The senses are
more in the mind, and then theycome in, and then there's the
object of sense that's on theoutside. So there's the object
of sense, and there's the thereceptacle that tells us that it
(39:46):
identifies. So for instance, wesee something, and the eye says,
Oh, that's a piece of paper.
Okay, how did the eye? The eyedidn't do that. It was the booty
within the mind. That identifiedit. So we're constantly looking
and identifying, and ouridentification, a lot of it is
based on our experience. Sothat's why, when we see
(40:10):
something, we see it in aparticular way. I went out for
dinner the other night with somefriends, and I don't eat onions,
and they love onions, so Iwatched them pick out and eat
the onions separately, and Ipicked out the onions and put it
on the side of my plate. Two thesame dish, two different
experiences of it. One loves it.
(40:35):
One doesn't love it. Does thatmake onions great or not great?
Neither. Onions are just onions,if you like them, it's one
thing. So I see the senses as aball and then almost like a
comet with a long tail on it.
And that tail, to me, is asamskara. So what happens is you
(40:56):
have a sense experience, whethergood or bad. And then it doesn't
just go, it stays. And dependingon how strong it is, that's how
strong that tale remains. Andthat tale then comes back at
another time. It comes back atanother place where maybe it's
(41:18):
less appropriate or moreappropriate, but that this is
what happens. We start toexperience things based on our
experience of other things, andit keeps going like that and
breaking that cycle, which iswhat we're trying to do in
spiritual practice, is verydifficult, very difficult. First
(41:41):
you have to identify it, andthen you have to try to change
it. But depending on how thickthat tail is and how strong that
comet is, which is the sensethat's how difficult it might be
to change it. So when we sitdown for meditation and we start
(42:01):
to go within, if that has notbeen cleared, we can't get to
that Dhyana state. We can't getto that deep state of
meditation. There's too much inthe way. It has to be cleared,
and that's what the otherpractices do, the pranayama, the
(42:22):
Pratyahara, etc, to lead us tothe meditation
Kamala Rose (42:31):
so that the buddhi can drive. The buddhi can be the
driver of the chariot and we canmove forward in harmony with the
senses. We can be in the world,as they say, but not of the
world, not always taking it onand identifying it with it to
(42:51):
the degree that our worldteaches us to. I mean, we're
talking to about the Westernculture, which tells us to
identify ourselves as with ourfavorite brands, you know,
teaches us about, you know, allof the things that we can do to
indulge our senses, and gives us1000 things, millions of things
(43:17):
to choose from. The path ofyoga, we are really
intentionally taking up apractice of looking for balance
in that looking for a sense ofpurity. And we should never be,
as you said, we just shouldn'tbe naive about the amount of
(43:38):
work it really does take to, youknow, to train the senses to be
more subtle, to be interested inthings that are quieter, that
might not scream out as awesome,right? I love things like
chocolate ice cream, you know, Ilove things like that. I love,
(43:59):
we all love stimulants in someway. But we know, as yogis, it's
not good to have so much. Wehave to find a moderation in our
relationship with the outerworld. This is that yoke that
organizes the reins that areattached to the horses, so that
we are not, you know, so so muchwith what I what I see and what
(44:24):
I want. It's got to be tamed.
It's got to be brought in. LikeI said, What I know this from
working with it's taught me alot, working with my dogs,
working with myself, that youcan't just say, No, never, and
you have to work with it. Do youhave to recognize if that is a
tendency, you have to approachit with some compassion and some
(44:47):
training. And I often say that Irun my house on peanut butter
because I believe in I believein positive. Of reinforcement,
and that means I reward what Iwant. If I see calm states, I
give peanut butter. If I seelistening to me and coming when
(45:10):
I call and learning to say no towhatever I am talking about, I
give peanut butter. I reward thegood behavior, and I ultimately
most of the bad behavior, Iignore and find that neutrality.
You said you talked aboutneutral a little bit in the
beginning, and I think we shouldcome back to that important idea
(45:33):
that, you know, we can't alwayswe're not going to balance out
too much with nothing. We haveto find something in between,
where's a sense of neutrality,
Nischala Joy Devi (45:49):
you know. And I think that this is where the
religions have a little bit of astep up, some of them, if you go
into, especially if you go intosome of the ancient cathedrals
in Europe, or if you go into thetemples in India, some of the
mosques I've been in are justjaw dropping. What to me, what
(46:11):
it what it does, is veryinteresting. You're walking from
the material senses beingstimulated to more of an
uplifting stimulation. So it'snot you don't feel deprived when
you walk in because you see thebeautiful stained glass, you see
the beautiful you hear thebeautiful singing of the choir,
(46:34):
or of chanting, or the bellsringing, or something is
happening that brings yoursenses to that instead of what
it was outside. So it's almostlike we're taking steps, the
first step when we step into aplace of solemn place of
(46:57):
worship. It could be anything.
It could be a cathedral of treesin the in the forest. It doesn't
have to be a building, butsomething that that actually,
the early temples in India werecaves. They weren't physical
buildings. So when we walk intosomething like that, depending
on our level of need, the beautyjust takes us and we become
(47:23):
literally breathless with it,and we sit. I used to be this
was before the horrible firehappened at Our Lady of Notre
Dame in Paris. One of the thingsI used to do is love to go sit
there and watch when people camein and looked at these
magnificent windows, and perhapseven had some chanting on or
(47:49):
some prayers, and they wouldjust look at them, and in spite
of themselves, would sit down ona pew and be quiet for a few
minutes, even if that was nottheir intention, just the
beauty, just the solemnity ofit, just the the the depth of
(48:10):
the vibration that's held inthese ancient places, was enough
to stop and sit down, and thenthe senses become calm. So this
is, I would really suggest thisfor people in their own homes.
Make a beautiful spot formeditation. Put something
(48:32):
beautiful there. Draw yoursenses to that instead of
thinking about lunch or urinesor how you're going to start
your day, and then from there,it's much easier to let it go.
Kamala Rose (48:48):
That's wonderful advice, and I think that's a
great place to conclude ourpodcast for today. Thank you all
so much for joining us. We hopeyou'll subscribe to our podcast
so you can be notified each timewe have one comes out every two
weeks a woman's Gita, by and forWestern women, a contemporary
(49:08):
version, Namaste. Namaste.
Unknown (49:14):
Thank you for joining us for a women's Gita with
nistula Joy, Davie and Kamalarose. We would like to express
our gratitude for the ongoingsupport for a women's Gita
podcast and book from yoga givesback a non profit organization
dedicated to the underservedwomen and children of India.
Please join us again for ournext episode coming soon.
(49:38):
Namaste. You.
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