Why is it crucial to broaden our perspective beyond ourselves when tackling problems and events? How does shifting focus from self-centeredness to the interconnected web of relationships enrich our understanding of the world?
In this episode, we delve into the significance of adopting a perspective that extends beyond our individual selves. We will explore the profound impact of widening our view to encompass the broader context of relationships and connections in understanding the world's complexities.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Why is it important to take a greater perspective that isn't centered around yourself when
(00:07):
we're considering problems and events happening around us?
Why is it important to not center the world around yourself but instead scope out to the
relationships you've built and the web that coalesces to describe your world, and why
is it important for us to take a look at the concept of a monotheistic one lord over creator
(00:33):
as opposed to multiple polytheistic ways of life as a potential philosophy to consider
and value?
Hello, and welcome back to Stoic Spirituality, the podcast where I look through, analyze,
and dissect various books and philosophies I've thought about or read over the last few
(00:54):
years.
My name is Jagan, and I'm a student of the Human Experience trying to spread some knowledge
out to the rest of the world.
So in previous episodes we discussed philosophies such as Stoicism and a little bit of strategy,
and then we also went through the Bhagavad Gita.
So I'm going to continue in this episode on an adventure through the Yoga of Knowledge,
(01:16):
Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita where we set up from last two episodes ago where Arjuna
sat completely broken in this state of grief, anxiety, and pity, and despondency trying
(01:36):
to figure out what he wanted to do and how he was going to throw away all his weapons
because he felt that he couldn't bring himself to do what is right.
And a few points from the two episodes ago to consider are that if he was really pacifist,
(01:56):
he would've considered all of these costs prior to taking up his arms and standing in
the battlefield.
And more often than not, he was just overwhelmed by emotions, something we're all sometimes
relatable and guilty of, causing us to perverse the way the world actually flows and tune
(02:20):
it to our own flawed perception.
And a lot of Stoicism talks about viewing the world objectively, and Arjuna in the end
of Chapter 1 is the foremost example of someone who has forsaken this objective view of the
world and instead seen it through these heavily tinted lens of his own self pity, forsaking
(02:45):
his dharma and looking at the world in the lens of his own misery and his own ego.
So now to start off the chapter, we're gonna look at verse by verse with a little bit of
analysis for each illustration or each verse.
So in verse 1, Sanjaya pretty much says to Dhridhrashtra who's the blind king overseeing
(03:07):
and hearing this entire story from his lips that, to him who was overcome with such pity
and despondency, with eyes full of tears and agitated, Madhusudana, who's another word
for Krishna, spoke these words.
So in this setting, we have Arjuna who's on the ground, thrown away his weapons, and
(03:28):
kind of immersed in this world of pity and misery, not knowing what to do, but knowing
that he will not fight because he should be peaceful, how will he be able to bear the
sins of killing those he has grown up with and those uncles and people he has revered
as mentors.
(03:49):
And so Krishna responds in the next verse, where does this perilous condition come from?
Where does this pity and despondency come from?
This dejection, this un'Aryan-like, Aryan referring to the Aryan race who came into
India, heaven excluding and disgraceful Arjuna.
(04:12):
So you can kind of see that in this case what Krishna is trying to do is he's trying to
point out all of these various qualities that lay in stark contrast to how Arjuna should
be as a person, or rather what his Dharma requires out of him.
This dejection that he pulls out illustrates the complete lack of morality or like the
(04:36):
lack of viewing the world objectively.
This heaven excluding disgraceful are more words used to stir him out of his misery or
his self-pity and anxiety that has resulted from seeing all of his mentors lined up in
front of him.
(04:56):
And just all of this phrasing is meant to illustrate the kind of discrepancy between
how he should be and how he is, and even how he was before the battle began or the battle
was to begin, and how he is now that he's staring at everyone who he's about to kill.
(05:16):
And so a little bit of philosophical analysis on this.
One thing to kind of understand is that in our lives one common thing that is going to
be there is change.
And change will be accompanied by bumpy roads, will be accompanied by people having problems
(05:41):
with what you're saying or what you're doing, it'll be accompanied by many sources of stimuli
that you're not expecting or that are meant to throw you off and make you take a step
back.
And what's important here is that everything depends not on your avoidance of the suffering
(06:04):
but rather in your dexterity in steering yourself along these bumpy roads of life.
Because if you try to live in this bubble where you think everything is good or where
you think nothing is going to happen to you, life will kick you down that slope very quickly
or most immediately.
(06:26):
Because as much as we like it or not, all of us go through our own journeys and our
journeys are marked by suffering, and that suffering is what really makes us who we are.
It adds these defining characteristics to mold us into someone capable of empathy and
sympathy and being someone that people can trust.
(06:51):
If you were to live an idealistic life where nothing bad happens to us, that kind of life
would not give us any moral qualities or any moral compass because as much as we can extract
from books, experience has a far longer lasting impact, at least initially for us.
(07:12):
In our quest to live this life to its fullest.
And another thing is, someone who refuses to take risks is also someone who is far less
likely to find themselves in situations where potential suffering could occur or where they
could feel uncomfortable or out of their comfort zone.
(07:35):
And what this kind of illustration is to provide is that your dexterity in handling situations
that will arise, that will threaten to throw you off balance, is what defines your life.
And what defines an intelligent person is their ability to deflect and to take in and
to adopt to any situation that arises.
(07:59):
So now continuing on with verse 3 and 4, Krishna continues his kind of belittling or almost
deriding of Arjuna's current state, while using stirring words to kind of lift him off
the ground metaphorically speaking.
So he says, yield not to impotence, because it does not befit thee.
(08:21):
Cast off this weakness of your heart and stand up.
And so one important part of Indian mythology in general is that when one person, they have
their regular name like Arjuna, but usually they are given many other names.
Like for instance, O Scorcher of Foes, which is the translation of a Sanskrit word, was
(08:45):
also one of the many names that Arjuna was given.
And so this kind of covers verse 3, where Krishna continues to half belittle and half
almost make Arjuna rise from this severely broken quote unquote state that he is currently
in.
(09:06):
And so now verse 4, Arjuna responds, So how, O mother Susana, which is another word for
Krishna, shall I in battle fight with arrows against Bhishma and Drona, who are my mentors
and who are fit to be worshipped?
So you can see here that Arjuna's loop back to his state of pity and despair, where he
(09:29):
refuses to acknowledge the kind of overall fight that is happening around him, and instead
looks at his own ego.
A lot of us look at all of our problems through our individual ego.
How does this affect me?
How do I get affected by this?
(09:51):
Or how does this decision affect me?
But rather, look at what you're championing, or look at the world from a bigger scale.
If something happens to you, and something that you were not expecting does happen to
you, think of the overall ideology or cause that you were championing, and kind of look
(10:15):
for what you are trying to build up in yourself, and then ask yourself, not looking at it through
your individual self-interest, but the overall world self-interest, if this is really something
bad for you.
Marcus Aurelius in Meditations talks about, look at things that happen to you that may
(10:36):
affect you negatively, but also consider the benefit for nature, and if something is beneficial
to nature, which in this case refers to the entire world, province, or however you want
to phrase it, was it really bad for you?
So in this case, Arjuna will be forced to commit these actions out of his own Dharma
(10:58):
for the sake of the entire world.
But when he looks at it through his individual ego, and his individual problems, it is seemingly
something that has a lot of negative effects, and something he does not want to do because
he thinks that it is wrong.
So our egoistic self can cause a lot of moral confusion and misconceptions, particularly
(11:21):
if we are emotionally not the most stable we could be, which Arjuna is in this case.
He is not scoped out or zoomed out to see the bigger plan, the bigger scale, what is happening
around him, and instead localizes it or granularizes it to just the single event happening at that
time.
(11:42):
And so, by allowing yourself just even today to not kind of focus or zoom in on just the
effects of something on yourself, but instead by zooming out and looking at the grander
scale of things, asking yourself if this little event that happened to me that threw me off
balance is going to have more harm or good in the long run, not only for me but for a
(12:06):
bigger scale, you can find yourself looking at everything more objectively.
Not letting your emotions and your ego collide your judgement.
And remember, there is the idea that you are the person that is not the mind but the awareness
behind the mind, and in the Bhagavad Gita, Hindu mythology and other mythology, this
(12:30):
is called the self.
Not the ego or the mind, but the person behind it is referred to as the self.
And so, perfect mortality in the Bhagavad Gita can be declared and lived by whoever
seeks to throw off this egoic delusion, controlled primarily by the mind, and by one who seeks
(12:55):
to live and discover his identity in his self, in the one beyond the mind, in the one who
is the awareness.
And so, Arjuna then continues in verse 5, Better indeed in this world is to eat even
the bread of beggars than to slay the most noble of teachers.
(13:21):
And even if I kill them, my enjoyments of wealth and desires will be stained with blood.
So you can see kind of the continuation of what we talked about before, where Arjuna's
individual ego has clouded the rest of his judgement.
Under his dharma and under the plan of the one above, who is represented by Krishna in
(13:46):
an avatar, there is meant to be a battle to cleanse the field, to cleanse the nation right
now, to bring about change in the longer future.
There is a plan, and there is also the dharma of each warrior who has taken up their arms,
which is to fight the other side to claim victory.
(14:13):
From a dharmic, kind of karmic, defining illustration, this is what must happen.
However, as you can see by Arjuna's staining of blood, quote, that his ego is what's
driving his sentiment or his ideology.
(14:35):
Not the over-overlooking dharmic purpose or the overall plan that the one above has, but
a singular clouded ego.
Please think of it in our regular lives.
When was the last time you misread a situation?
(14:57):
Or misfired a kind of accusation?
Would you not say that when you were looking at the situation subjectively, your sentiments
and emotions clouded your understanding?
Your ego forced you to perverse the way you were looking at a situation from an objective
(15:18):
standpoint to a subjective one, using confirmation bias to continually feed upon what you thought
was right?
In this case, we too will then act like Arjuna did, in a state of clouded judgement, may it
be from pity, misery, victimhood, or whatever name you want to call it.
(15:42):
From the subjective point of view we act, instead of allowing ourselves to see the grander
scale of things from an objective standpoint.
And so, he continues, because Arjuna is in this state of immense despair, which sets
the tone for the Bhagavad Gita, where he is so broken by the fact that his individual
(16:05):
arms will have to do a lot of the killing, not knowing that he is only an instrument
of the one above, he stands there, completely despotent.
And he continues, I can scarcely say which will be better, that we should conquer them
(16:26):
or they should conquer us, them and us referring to the Kauravas, the hundred brothers that
are the villains of this story, or the Pandavas, who are the five brothers, who are fighting
for their share of the kingdom.
Even the sons of Dhridhrashtra, after slaying whom you do not wish to live, stand facing
us.
(16:49):
Remember when our mind does not function with our self, and it is clouded by the maya, the
illusion, the ego, the dukkha from Buddhism, we shatter our own individual personality,
we shatter the inner world inside of us, and instead give in to these delusions of grandeur,
(17:09):
delusions of the world circling around us, and delusions of what is right from a subjective,
very flawed point of view.
So Arjuna says my heart is overpowered by the taint of pity, my mind is confused as
(17:30):
to what my duty should be, and he kind of at this point decides to proclaim himself
as a student to mother Sudhana of Krishna, his teacher, begging him, asking him to tell
him decisively what is good for me.
(17:50):
He proclaims himself as his disciple to the Lord and requests his understanding and instruction,
taking refuge in Bhagavan.
Because he recognizes finally that the sorrow that he will accumulate will not be depleted
(18:11):
or gotten rid of even if he should attain prosperous and unrivaled dominion on earth
or lordship over the gods.
And saying that, giving up his weapons, throwing them on the ground, once more, he says I will
(18:31):
not fight and just sits there.
And so one definition of Dharma that we're all used to is the definition of it being
our purpose.
A lot of books, a lot of modernized Hindu mythology talks a lot about the idea of Dharma
(18:52):
being our purpose, what drives us or what strives us.
But the Bhagavad Gita takes a more tied in per se definition of what Dharma is.
Dharma in the Bhagavad Gita is defined as the nature of what makes a thing itself.
(19:14):
It's not a purpose which is done by actions, but it is the defining nature of something
that is what is defined as Dharma.
And so we can kind of see a bit of a almost in a sense imagery slash extended metaphor
(19:34):
for what's happening in this battlefield.
The ego, which is a been art by Arjuna, sits back in his chariot, which is in this case
the body, and has thrown down all instruments of ego-centric activities, which in this
case is his weapons.
(19:56):
The sense organs, which are the horses, are all held back by the mind, which are the reins,
and the charioter, in this case which is Krishna, or the intellect, lends to the ego a divine
strength with its guide to triumph over Adharma or ego-clouded, ego-centric activities.
(20:24):
And so for us as human beings, we must follow through with the same extended metaphor.
We must allow ourselves or allow our ego or force our ego to sit back in our body, throw
down all of our instruments of ego-centric activities, desire-based activities, that
are not fixated on a goal without worrying for the future or the fruits of our actions,
(20:54):
and we must allow ourselves to be reigned in, or rather reign in, our sense organs with
our mind, and allow our intellect to give the ego divine strength to be channeled in
(21:14):
toward contemplation of the self, triumphing over Adharma, and instead following the path
of Dharma.
And so this kind of ends a bit of Arjuna speaking and begins the philosophical part of chapter
2, which is where Krishna starts talking about the pure self versus the ego, worrying about
(21:44):
those you should not grieve for, and understanding the spiritual considerations of people as
opposed to the physical.
So Krishna starts off by saying, you have grieved for those that should not be grieved
for, and yet you speak words of wisdom.
(22:07):
The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.
A few concepts to understand, in Hinduism there is the idea of our soul versus that
of our body.
So in Hinduistic philosophy, our soul cannot be damaged by any physical actions that are
(22:29):
happening to us, our soul is a part of ourselves that is inside imbued deeply inside of us,
and then there is our body.
Our body is kind of like our ego, and our soul kind of treats our body like a pair of
clothes.
Through the concept of reincarnation, which refers to the idea of re-birthing multiple
(22:55):
times until you reach moksha or liberation, our soul puts on a body like a new pair of
clothes, tries to whittle away the karmic energy that it has gathered throughout its
many lifetimes, get to a zero-sum, and attain liberation or moksha.
(23:20):
So in this case, why Krishna says the wise grieve neither for the living nor for the
dead is because they aren't really in this case spiritually dead, their physical body
has died, but their soul still lives.
(23:48):
Our physical manifestation of the world we see them in has departed, but their soul, which
is still seeking liberation, still continues to live.
And so in future episodes, we're gonna go more into the idea of the soul, how our ego
(24:11):
rises when the self is not recognized along with egocentric ideas, and the idea of the
intellect, and how we must differentiate between the ego, the intellect, and the self using
methods such as the three gunas, and drawing from other philosophies such as the power
(24:32):
of now and the untethered soul.
And so I'm gonna spend the last few minutes of this episode introducing the concept of
Advaita Vedanta or non-duality, the idea that there is just one creator that kind of manifests
(24:53):
and cannot be described in words but can be given attributes.
And so in this Advaita Vedantic philosophy, this person is called Brahman, not even a
person but just a state, or just a creator above that cannot be given a word to fully
describe them, is referred to in a way we can understand as Brahman.
(25:16):
And so this Brahman is also a state of being, where all these subject-object distinctions
in our life are obliterated, everything is snapped together, and it's a name, rather
for the experience of being.
There is no he, there is no it, but there is just an infinite state of being.
(25:40):
And so Advaitans, which are people who believe in this idea of Advaitic Vedantic philosophy,
talk about Brahma or call Brahma a Satchitananda.
Once again, Satchitananda is a term that is used to describe him but cannot be encompassed
as his nameless, formless figure.
(26:02):
And so Satchitananda refers to three parts, Sat, which is being, or the concept of unity,
Chit, which is consciousness, or the principle of awareness that informs the being, referring
to the unchanging witness of our being, or Ananda, Bliss.
Joyous being pointing to the principle of value that the Brahman experience kind of
(26:26):
cuts out all partial value.
These aren't attributes, but terms that seek to provide a man-made understanding of the
Brahman experience.
Overall, Brahman is just the fullness of being that enlightens and provides joy with the
basis and experience, which is the goal of human life.
(26:49):
A lot of our egocentric activities are stuck in our own body and in our own mind, but the
idea of Brahman is the idea of the awareness behind the mind and an experience where we
are so present and so still that we do not think any thoughts.
(27:12):
And so, to kind of reach to this state, we must understand that it is not something we
can intellectualize or use our mind to figure out, but it is something we must experience.
And it sounds counterintuitive because from the way we think about everything, it all
seems and all requires to be rational.
(27:35):
But God as a concept cannot be envisioned in its pure form by our mind.
We can only seek to capture a part of this divine cosmic essence in many forms we take
a look at from all religions, may it be Jesus, may it be Shiva, may it be the Buddha, or
may it be any other form that we seek to provide or try to allow ourselves to perceive.
(28:01):
But these are only characteristics or rather terms to provide for understanding, but in
no way describe something that cannot be described.
Taking so much from this episode on the idea of the Bhagavad Gita, the first ten verses
(28:32):
as he walked through Arjuna's despondency as he refuses to accept his Dharma, throwing
away his weapons, and being so immersed in a subjective view fueled by his ego that he
refuses to see reality along with a bit of a dip into the Vedic-Vedantic philosophy.
(28:59):
Over the next few episodes, we'll look into the idea of grand strategy and continue our
adventures into the Bhagavad Gita talking more philosophically about the idea of reincarnation,
and the idea that our soul cannot be harmed by the physical actions that we take or that
(29:20):
happen to us, and the idea of the Brahman from the Vedic-Vedantic philosophy.
Thank you so much for listening, if you'd like to hear more content feel free to drop
me a follow at stoicspirituality on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, and feel free to drop
a follow on whichever platform you're listening to on, and leave a review if you'd like to
(29:42):
see some feedback or some things change in the future.
Thank you so much for listening, and see you guys next time.
Why is it important to take a greater perspective that isn't centered around yourself when
(00:07):
we're considering problems and events happening around us?
Why is it important to not center the world around yourself but instead scope out to the
relationships you've built and the web that coalesces to describe your world, and why
is it important for us to take a look at the concept of a monotheistic one lord over creator
(00:33):
as opposed to multiple polytheistic ways of life as a potential philosophy to consider
and value?
Hello, and welcome back to Stoic Spirituality, the podcast where I look through, analyze,
and dissect various books and philosophies I've thought about or read over the last few
(00:54):
years.
My name is Jagan, and I'm a student of the Human Experience trying to spread some knowledge
out to the rest of the world.
So in previous episodes we discussed philosophies such as Stoicism and a little bit of strategy,
and then we also went through the Bhagavad Gita.
So I'm going to continue in this episode on an adventure through the Yoga of Knowledge,
(01:16):
Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita where we set up from last two episodes ago where Arjuna
sat completely broken in this state of grief, anxiety, and pity, and despondency trying
(01:36):
to figure out what he wanted to do and how he was going to throw away all his weapons
because he felt that he couldn't bring himself to do what is right.
And a few points from the two episodes ago to consider are that if he was really pacifist,
(01:56):
he would've considered all of these costs prior to taking up his arms and standing in
the battlefield.
And more often than not, he was just overwhelmed by emotions, something we're all sometimes
relatable and guilty of, causing us to perverse the way the world actually flows and tune
(02:20):
it to our own flawed perception.
And a lot of Stoicism talks about viewing the world objectively, and Arjuna in the end
of Chapter 1 is the foremost example of someone who has forsaken this objective view of the
world and instead seen it through these heavily tinted lens of his own self pity, forsaking
(02:45):
his dharma and looking at the world in the lens of his own misery and his own ego.
So now to start off the chapter, we're gonna look at verse by verse with a little bit of
analysis for each illustration or each verse.
So in verse 1, Sanjaya pretty much says to Dhridhrashtra who's the blind king overseeing
(03:07):
and hearing this entire story from his lips that, to him who was overcome with such pity
and despondency, with eyes full of tears and agitated, Madhusudana, who's another word
for Krishna, spoke these words.
So in this setting, we have Arjuna who's on the ground, thrown away his weapons, and
(03:28):
kind of immersed in this world of pity and misery, not knowing what to do, but knowing
that he will not fight because he should be peaceful, how will he be able to bear the
sins of killing those he has grown up with and those uncles and people he has revered
as mentors.
(03:49):
And so Krishna responds in the next verse, where does this perilous condition come from?
Where does this pity and despondency come from?
This dejection, this un'Aryan-like, Aryan referring to the Aryan race who came into
India, heaven excluding and disgraceful Arjuna.
(04:12):
So you can kind of see that in this case what Krishna is trying to do is he's trying to
point out all of these various qualities that lay in stark contrast to how Arjuna should
be as a person, or rather what his Dharma requires out of him.
This dejection that he pulls out illustrates the complete lack of morality or like the
(04:36):
lack of viewing the world objectively.
This heaven excluding disgraceful are more words used to stir him out of his misery or
his self-pity and anxiety that has resulted from seeing all of his mentors lined up in
front of him.
(04:56):
And just all of this phrasing is meant to illustrate the kind of discrepancy between
how he should be and how he is, and even how he was before the battle began or the battle
was to begin, and how he is now that he's staring at everyone who he's about to kill.
(05:16):
And so a little bit of philosophical analysis on this.
One thing to kind of understand is that in our lives one common thing that is going to
be there is change.
And change will be accompanied by bumpy roads, will be accompanied by people having problems
(05:41):
with what you're saying or what you're doing, it'll be accompanied by many sources of stimuli
that you're not expecting or that are meant to throw you off and make you take a step
back.
And what's important here is that everything depends not on your avoidance of the suffering
(06:04):
but rather in your dexterity in steering yourself along these bumpy roads of life.
Because if you try to live in this bubble where you think everything is good or where
you think nothing is going to happen to you, life will kick you down that slope very quickly
or most immediately.
(06:26):
Because as much as we like it or not, all of us go through our own journeys and our
journeys are marked by suffering, and that suffering is what really makes us who we are.
It adds these defining characteristics to mold us into someone capable of empathy and
sympathy and being someone that people can trust.
(06:51):
If you were to live an idealistic life where nothing bad happens to us, that kind of life
would not give us any moral qualities or any moral compass because as much as we can extract
from books, experience has a far longer lasting impact, at least initially for us.
(07:12):
In our quest to live this life to its fullest.
And another thing is, someone who refuses to take risks is also someone who is far less
likely to find themselves in situations where potential suffering could occur or where they
could feel uncomfortable or out of their comfort zone.
(07:35):
And what this kind of illustration is to provide is that your dexterity in handling situations
that will arise, that will threaten to throw you off balance, is what defines your life.
And what defines an intelligent person is their ability to deflect and to take in and
to adopt to any situation that arises.
(07:59):
So now continuing on with verse 3 and 4, Krishna continues his kind of belittling or almost
deriding of Arjuna's current state, while using stirring words to kind of lift him off
the ground metaphorically speaking.
So he says, yield not to impotence, because it does not befit thee.
(08:21):
Cast off this weakness of your heart and stand up.
And so one important part of Indian mythology in general is that when one person, they have
their regular name like Arjuna, but usually they are given many other names.
Like for instance, O Scorcher of Foes, which is the translation of a Sanskrit word, was
(08:45):
also one of the many names that Arjuna was given.
And so this kind of covers verse 3, where Krishna continues to half belittle and half
almost make Arjuna rise from this severely broken quote unquote state that he is currently
in.
(09:06):
And so now verse 4, Arjuna responds, So how, O mother Susana, which is another word for
Krishna, shall I in battle fight with arrows against Bhishma and Drona, who are my mentors
and who are fit to be worshipped?
So you can see here that Arjuna's loop back to his state of pity and despair, where he
(09:29):
refuses to acknowledge the kind of overall fight that is happening around him, and instead
looks at his own ego.
A lot of us look at all of our problems through our individual ego.
How does this affect me?
How do I get affected by this?
(09:51):
Or how does this decision affect me?
But rather, look at what you're championing, or look at the world from a bigger scale.
If something happens to you, and something that you were not expecting does happen to
you, think of the overall ideology or cause that you were championing, and kind of look
(10:15):
for what you are trying to build up in yourself, and then ask yourself, not looking at it through
your individual self-interest, but the overall world self-interest, if this is really something
bad for you.
Marcus Aurelius in Meditations talks about, look at things that happen to you that may
(10:36):
affect you negatively, but also consider the benefit for nature, and if something is beneficial
to nature, which in this case refers to the entire world, province, or however you want
to phrase it, was it really bad for you?
So in this case, Arjuna will be forced to commit these actions out of his own Dharma
(10:58):
for the sake of the entire world.
But when he looks at it through his individual ego, and his individual problems, it is seemingly
something that has a lot of negative effects, and something he does not want to do because
he thinks that it is wrong.
So our egoistic self can cause a lot of moral confusion and misconceptions, particularly
(11:21):
if we are emotionally not the most stable we could be, which Arjuna is in this case.
He is not scoped out or zoomed out to see the bigger plan, the bigger scale, what is happening
around him, and instead localizes it or granularizes it to just the single event happening at that
time.
(11:42):
And so, by allowing yourself just even today to not kind of focus or zoom in on just the
effects of something on yourself, but instead by zooming out and looking at the grander
scale of things, asking yourself if this little event that happened to me that threw me off
balance is going to have more harm or good in the long run, not only for me but for a
(12:06):
bigger scale, you can find yourself looking at everything more objectively.
Not letting your emotions and your ego collide your judgement.
And remember, there is the idea that you are the person that is not the mind but the awareness
behind the mind, and in the Bhagavad Gita, Hindu mythology and other mythology, this
(12:30):
is called the self.
Not the ego or the mind, but the person behind it is referred to as the self.
And so, perfect mortality in the Bhagavad Gita can be declared and lived by whoever
seeks to throw off this egoic delusion, controlled primarily by the mind, and by one who seeks
(12:55):
to live and discover his identity in his self, in the one beyond the mind, in the one who
is the awareness.
And so, Arjuna then continues in verse 5, Better indeed in this world is to eat even
the bread of beggars than to slay the most noble of teachers.
(13:21):
And even if I kill them, my enjoyments of wealth and desires will be stained with blood.
So you can see kind of the continuation of what we talked about before, where Arjuna's
individual ego has clouded the rest of his judgement.
Under his dharma and under the plan of the one above, who is represented by Krishna in
(13:46):
an avatar, there is meant to be a battle to cleanse the field, to cleanse the nation right
now, to bring about change in the longer future.
There is a plan, and there is also the dharma of each warrior who has taken up their arms,
which is to fight the other side to claim victory.
(14:13):
From a dharmic, kind of karmic, defining illustration, this is what must happen.
However, as you can see by Arjuna's staining of blood, quote, that his ego is what's
driving his sentiment or his ideology.
(14:35):
Not the over-overlooking dharmic purpose or the overall plan that the one above has, but
a singular clouded ego.
Please think of it in our regular lives.
When was the last time you misread a situation?
(14:57):
Or misfired a kind of accusation?
Would you not say that when you were looking at the situation subjectively, your sentiments
and emotions clouded your understanding?
Your ego forced you to perverse the way you were looking at a situation from an objective
(15:18):
standpoint to a subjective one, using confirmation bias to continually feed upon what you thought
was right?
In this case, we too will then act like Arjuna did, in a state of clouded judgement, may it
be from pity, misery, victimhood, or whatever name you want to call it.
(15:42):
From the subjective point of view we act, instead of allowing ourselves to see the grander
scale of things from an objective standpoint.
And so, he continues, because Arjuna is in this state of immense despair, which sets
the tone for the Bhagavad Gita, where he is so broken by the fact that his individual
(16:05):
arms will have to do a lot of the killing, not knowing that he is only an instrument
of the one above, he stands there, completely despotent.
And he continues, I can scarcely say which will be better, that we should conquer them
(16:26):
or they should conquer us, them and us referring to the Kauravas, the hundred brothers that
are the villains of this story, or the Pandavas, who are the five brothers, who are fighting
for their share of the kingdom.
Even the sons of Dhridhrashtra, after slaying whom you do not wish to live, stand facing
us.
(16:49):
Remember when our mind does not function with our self, and it is clouded by the maya, the
illusion, the ego, the dukkha from Buddhism, we shatter our own individual personality,
we shatter the inner world inside of us, and instead give in to these delusions of grandeur,
(17:09):
delusions of the world circling around us, and delusions of what is right from a subjective,
very flawed point of view.
So Arjuna says my heart is overpowered by the taint of pity, my mind is confused as
(17:30):
to what my duty should be, and he kind of at this point decides to proclaim himself
as a student to mother Sudhana of Krishna, his teacher, begging him, asking him to tell
him decisively what is good for me.
(17:50):
He proclaims himself as his disciple to the Lord and requests his understanding and instruction,
taking refuge in Bhagavan.
Because he recognizes finally that the sorrow that he will accumulate will not be depleted
(18:11):
or gotten rid of even if he should attain prosperous and unrivaled dominion on earth
or lordship over the gods.
And saying that, giving up his weapons, throwing them on the ground, once more, he says I will
(18:31):
not fight and just sits there.
And so one definition of Dharma that we're all used to is the definition of it being
our purpose.
A lot of books, a lot of modernized Hindu mythology talks a lot about the idea of Dharma
(18:52):
being our purpose, what drives us or what strives us.
But the Bhagavad Gita takes a more tied in per se definition of what Dharma is.
Dharma in the Bhagavad Gita is defined as the nature of what makes a thing itself.
(19:14):
It's not a purpose which is done by actions, but it is the defining nature of something
that is what is defined as Dharma.
And so we can kind of see a bit of a almost in a sense imagery slash extended metaphor
(19:34):
for what's happening in this battlefield.
The ego, which is a been art by Arjuna, sits back in his chariot, which is in this case
the body, and has thrown down all instruments of ego-centric activities, which in this
case is his weapons.
(19:56):
The sense organs, which are the horses, are all held back by the mind, which are the reins,
and the charioter, in this case which is Krishna, or the intellect, lends to the ego a divine
strength with its guide to triumph over Adharma or ego-clouded, ego-centric activities.
(20:24):
And so for us as human beings, we must follow through with the same extended metaphor.
We must allow ourselves or allow our ego or force our ego to sit back in our body, throw
down all of our instruments of ego-centric activities, desire-based activities, that
are not fixated on a goal without worrying for the future or the fruits of our actions,
(20:54):
and we must allow ourselves to be reigned in, or rather reign in, our sense organs with
our mind, and allow our intellect to give the ego divine strength to be channeled in
(21:14):
toward contemplation of the self, triumphing over Adharma, and instead following the path
of Dharma.
And so this kind of ends a bit of Arjuna speaking and begins the philosophical part of chapter
2, which is where Krishna starts talking about the pure self versus the ego, worrying about
(21:44):
those you should not grieve for, and understanding the spiritual considerations of people as
opposed to the physical.
So Krishna starts off by saying, you have grieved for those that should not be grieved
for, and yet you speak words of wisdom.
(22:07):
The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.
A few concepts to understand, in Hinduism there is the idea of our soul versus that
of our body.
So in Hinduistic philosophy, our soul cannot be damaged by any physical actions that are
(22:29):
happening to us, our soul is a part of ourselves that is inside imbued deeply inside of us,
and then there is our body.
Our body is kind of like our ego, and our soul kind of treats our body like a pair of
clothes.
Through the concept of reincarnation, which refers to the idea of re-birthing multiple
(22:55):
times until you reach moksha or liberation, our soul puts on a body like a new pair of
clothes, tries to whittle away the karmic energy that it has gathered throughout its
many lifetimes, get to a zero-sum, and attain liberation or moksha.
(23:20):
So in this case, why Krishna says the wise grieve neither for the living nor for the
dead is because they aren't really in this case spiritually dead, their physical body
has died, but their soul still lives.
(23:48):
Our physical manifestation of the world we see them in has departed, but their soul, which
is still seeking liberation, still continues to live.
And so in future episodes, we're gonna go more into the idea of the soul, how our ego
(24:11):
rises when the self is not recognized along with egocentric ideas, and the idea of the
intellect, and how we must differentiate between the ego, the intellect, and the self using
methods such as the three gunas, and drawing from other philosophies such as the power
(24:32):
of now and the untethered soul.
And so I'm gonna spend the last few minutes of this episode introducing the concept of
Advaita Vedanta or non-duality, the idea that there is just one creator that kind of manifests
(24:53):
and cannot be described in words but can be given attributes.
And so in this Advaita Vedantic philosophy, this person is called Brahman, not even a
person but just a state, or just a creator above that cannot be given a word to fully
describe them, is referred to in a way we can understand as Brahman.
(25:16):
And so this Brahman is also a state of being, where all these subject-object distinctions
in our life are obliterated, everything is snapped together, and it's a name, rather
for the experience of being.
There is no he, there is no it, but there is just an infinite state of being.
(25:40):
And so Advaitans, which are people who believe in this idea of Advaitic Vedantic philosophy,
talk about Brahma or call Brahma a Satchitananda.
Once again, Satchitananda is a term that is used to describe him but cannot be encompassed
as his nameless, formless figure.
(26:02):
And so Satchitananda refers to three parts, Sat, which is being, or the concept of unity,
Chit, which is consciousness, or the principle of awareness that informs the being, referring
to the unchanging witness of our being, or Ananda, Bliss.
Joyous being pointing to the principle of value that the Brahman experience kind of
(26:26):
cuts out all partial value.
These aren't attributes, but terms that seek to provide a man-made understanding of the
Brahman experience.
Overall, Brahman is just the fullness of being that enlightens and provides joy with the
basis and experience, which is the goal of human life.
(26:49):
A lot of our egocentric activities are stuck in our own body and in our own mind, but the
idea of Brahman is the idea of the awareness behind the mind and an experience where we
are so present and so still that we do not think any thoughts.
(27:12):
And so, to kind of reach to this state, we must understand that it is not something we
can intellectualize or use our mind to figure out, but it is something we must experience.
And it sounds counterintuitive because from the way we think about everything, it all
seems and all requires to be rational.
(27:35):
But God as a concept cannot be envisioned in its pure form by our mind.
We can only seek to capture a part of this divine cosmic essence in many forms we take
a look at from all religions, may it be Jesus, may it be Shiva, may it be the Buddha, or
may it be any other form that we seek to provide or try to allow ourselves to perceive.
(28:01):
But these are only characteristics or rather terms to provide for understanding, but in
no way describe something that cannot be described.
Taking so much from this episode on the idea of the Bhagavad Gita, the first ten verses
(28:32):
as he walked through Arjuna's despondency as he refuses to accept his Dharma, throwing
away his weapons, and being so immersed in a subjective view fueled by his ego that he
refuses to see reality along with a bit of a dip into the Vedic-Vedantic philosophy.
(28:59):
Over the next few episodes, we'll look into the idea of grand strategy and continue our
adventures into the Bhagavad Gita talking more philosophically about the idea of reincarnation,
and the idea that our soul cannot be harmed by the physical actions that we take or that
(29:20):
happen to us, and the idea of the Brahman from the Vedic-Vedantic philosophy.
Thank you so much for listening, if you'd like to hear more content feel free to drop
me a follow at stoicspirituality on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, and feel free to drop
a follow on whichever platform you're listening to on, and leave a review if you'd like to
(29:42):
see some feedback or some things change in the future.
Thank you so much for listening, and see you guys next time.
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