Gita Introduction

The World is not the cause of your problems:


The world is not the cause of your problems. We usually blame the outside world for

how we feel, for our stress and strain and our problems. We believe it is the outside

world that causes our problems and the outside world that will be the solution to our

problems. If only I get that, I will be happy we say. The world has problems, challenges

and we are always looking to be happy, peaceful and content in it. Peace and happiness

cannot be obtained in the external world. You cannot, it’s within you. It’s how you

manage yourself in order to relate to the world. For example, a man says he can only be

happy if he gets a particular woman. That woman is already married to another man who

cannot wait to get a divorce from her. Therefore, it is not the woman who carries the

happiness within her because one man is very happy when he finds her but the other man

is unhappy in her presence. Similarly, a man who smokes cannot wait to get his next

cigarette and feels extremely happy which the cigarette touches his lips and he inhales.

Another man cannot stand the smell of cigarette smoke. So the happiness does not lie in

the cigarette but in the minds of the people who experience them.

An object in the world, or a person in the world and emotions do not have pleasure

inherent in them. It’s how you keep them, how you relate to them.

A good analogy would be a person who says he has no appetite to eat. He feels he wants

a robust appetite but he has none. He keeps going from one restaurant to the other asking

for more and more delicious food. The food can change in its quality or its flavors or its

smell. However, until he changes his appetite, nothing is going to taste good to him.

None of this is taught in schools, education, colleges, governments, etc.

A human being alone needs to know this. Animals have no choice of action. Their life is

fixed. Only human beings have a choice of action, “Am I to do this? Am I to do that?”

A dilemma that is faced by every human being along every step of the way. Every

moment a human being has a choice of action and he has to decide how to act. This

causes stress and strain if one does not know how to make that decision about how to

choose one’s actions.

There are two motivations in life. These are (1) Acquisition and (2) Enjoyment.

All your life, you are after this. “How to acquire more and more of the material wealth,

and having acquired it, how to enjoy it.” A wise man has said as follows: “Man

sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his

health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the

result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he is never

going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

So true. A man builds a tennis court and then enjoys the game. Making the tennis court

is not enjoyment but he can enjoy it having built it.

You build a house which is not enjoyable in the process. Then you enter the house and

you enjoy it. You acquire a partner in life with the hope of enjoying with the partner.

Most people spend their entire life acquiring, rather than enjoy. They are rushing,

rushing to acquire. No time to even enjoy any of the acquisitions. Once something is

acquired, they barely stop to enjoy it before they are already looking to acquire

something else.

One part of the world acquires a lot and these people who acquire are active, prosperous,

dynamic but without peace of mind and joy in life. There are other areas of the world

where the people are very peaceful but live in poverty. They have very little – they are

not very dynamic, not very active but they are “peaceful.” There does seem to be a

dichotomy between active, dynamic, productive, prosperous versus peaceful. So where

there is prosperity, there is less peace, where there is peace, there is less prosperity.

Learning a technique where one can learn to be dynamic, active, productive and

prosperous while being peaceful at the same time would be extremely useful.

The Upanishads were not written – this was a conversation between teacher and student.

When the Upanishads were no longer understood by the common man because of the

cryptic way in which they were written, several thousand years later, the Gita was written

in a far simpler language. The Gita is said to have been written approximately 3,000

years B.C.E. Where the Upanishad says something about Karma in just one verse, the

Gita uses 40 verses in Chapter 3 to talk about Karma. Thousands of years later, in the 8th

Century, the Acharyas wrote the Prakriyas. They brought the Gita to an even simpler

thought and language, which in today’s day and age is hard for people to understand.

So the question is: (1) What is the technique of action which produces prosperity? and

(2) what is the formula for peace?

The technique of action which produces prosperity is the question of how to draw the

wealth towards yourself. You need three disciplines: Concentration, consistency, and

cooperation. If you do all this, you will be dynamic and therefore prosperous:

Concentration: What is it? What is concentration? Your Buddhi/Intellect keeps (or

should keep) the Mind on the present action or job without allowing it to slip into the past

or the future. If you can do this, you are concentrating. For example, while one is

studying, one’s Mind switches to either the past or the future and worries about what will

happen if one doesn’t pass the exam or on the other hand what will happen when the

exams are over. The Hindu scriptures have analogized the Mind to either a rat or mouse,

or a monkey. A rat or mouse is a species that, no matter how much he has in his nest

already, is always running out to achieve and acquire more to bring it back to his next. In

the process, he often gets killed. Instead of enjoying what he has in his nest, he keeps

running out and runs the risk of being caught and killed.

Therefore, Ganesh is shown to have a mouse at his feet, hands folded and looking

upwards towards Ganesh as if asking permission to partake of the desserts in front of the

mouse. In other words, Ganesh has tamed his rodent-like mind completely. Similarly, a

monkey if imprisoned in a cage or in the wild, cannot sit still. He either jumps from one

branch to another or if forced to remain in one spot keeps shifting from one spot to

another. This motion of the monkey is known as being Asthira and Chanchala,

constantly moving and unsteady. The Mind is like this. thus, if one can use one’s

intellect to keep the mind steadily on the task at hand without allowing it to shift

backwards to the past or forwards to the future, one does not have depression or anxiety

and that concentration on the task at hand produces dynamism, power and prosperity.

Consistency: Unless you apply the same action over and over again, you won’t reach

anywhere. All your actions must be channelized with one single goal, an ideal, and mind.

You must concentrate and think consistently what is your goal in life, what is your

mission in life, whatever that goal be, either material or spiritual. You may think you

want to become the chairman of the company. You may want to become a multi-

millionaire. You may want be become self realized. The most modest of goals wanting

to be a manager in your company or the most lofty of goals, wanting to be the chairman

of your company, either way, that goal, that ambition has to be uppermost in your mind.

You have to live it, think it, dream it so that you’re constantly thinking and all your

energy, all your thoughts, your mind, your intellect are focused on that goal. Once your

goal is firm and fixed, your intellect channels all your activities and thoughts toward that

goal. When anything is channeled towards one goal, the power is unmixable. When

water is focused in one direction, the power of water is immense. Similarly with wind

and light. Actions focused in one direction gives consistency in action, dynamism and

power.

Cooperative endeavor: One must function with cooperation. That gives power and

dynamism. Whatever you can do by yourself, if you get a number of people to cooperate

and work with you, that cooperative endeavor goes a long way. Anything that can be

done with one person can be done with so much more efficiency, power and shape with

many people involved.

Formula for peace: Peace has to be earned. You have to live your life so that you can

extract happiness from the world. Peace and happiness is not in the world. It’s within

yourself. Arthur Schopenhauer said, “It is difficult to find happiness within oneself; but

it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”

A mind has its own place. It makes a heaven out of hell, or a hell out of heaven.

Remember, it’s not in the woman, it’s not in the cigarette, it’s not in the meal, it’s within

you. You get what you deserve, not what you desire. You must do good Karma.

To get peace, you must attend to your Mind. What is it that disturbs you and causes you

stress and strain. It’s your mind. You must get to the root cause, otherwise trying other

techniques to get rid of the stress and strain is the same as spraying a room with

deodorizers when there is a dead rat behind the furniture. Until you get to the source of

the problem, nothing else will help. Once you know the source of the problem, you can

eliminate all your stress and strain and be peaceful and happy while being productive and

dynamic at the same time.

The mind constantly worries about the past, constantly anxious about the future. It is

constantly agitated. Therefore, you lose your energy when your mind is agitated.

Therefore you feel tired because of that. A child is a small fraction of your size. The

child is much weaker than you and constantly in motion, yet the child is full of energy,

joy and cheer. He is effervescing with energy. The reason for this is no child is worried

about the past nor anxious about the future. If you learn that art, you will be peaceful and

dynamic at the same time.

If your intellect can keep your mind on the action, you will not feel the depression nor the

anxiety. You will be energetic yet peaceful and dynamic.

At the crucial moment in any sport, when victory is at the fingertips, the stress of making

the right move causes the sportsman to fail because his mind starts thinking about the

future – What if I win? What if I fail?

Secondly, the mind also constantly throws up Desire. It is unstoppable! The minute it

gets what it asks for, it asks for more. As long as the Desire is unfulfilled, your mind

remains agitated with that desire. It is unfulfilled, it is unhappy. And every human being

has too many Desires. You don’t regulate your desires – constantly without regulation.

The Mind is the child in you, it is undisciplined. The Intellect is the adult in you. The

adult must govern the whims and fancies of the child. The Intellect must govern the

whims and fancies of the Mind. An undisciplined child causes havoc in the home. A

child who is disciplined is a pleasure in the house. An undisciplined mind creates havoc

and a disciplined controlled mind causes tremendous achievements.

The third problem of the mind is its desire what it doesn’t have and being attached to

what you do have. Your mind gets attached to whatever it obtains being fearful of losing

that acquisition. You have a wife and a family. You become attached to it. You have a

child, your business, profession, your wealth, your power, you become attached to all of

those things. Wherever there is attachment, there is worry and sorrow and anxiety about

losing that object that one is attached to. As an example, you have a car, a brand new car

and the car gets scratched. You feel as if your heart has been scratched because you are

attached to the car, you identify with the car as if you and the car are one and the same.

If that car is a rental car, as new as it is and is fully insured, you shrug your shoulders and

you don’t worry as much.

The trick is to live life as if everything in life is rented, not belong to you. When we

think that something belongs to us, we become attached to it and anything that happens to

that possession causes us grief. It has been said that we should live life as if it is a rented

life that every object should be treated as if it is a rented one and not a possessed one.