The Breakdown🔗

1.47 Sanjaya said:

Having said this on the battlefield, Arjuna cast aside his bow and arrows

And sat down on the chariot, his mind overwhelmed with grief.

Arjuna was ready to give up. He was all set to run away from the battlefield and escape from the reality of his duty.

He had convinced himself through his own illusory arguments that what he had embarked upon was pure evil, nothing but evil and therefore wanted no part of it. He said, 'I am ready to lay down arms and be defenseless. Let Duryodhana and his men kill me.'

For a kshatriya to say this means one of two things: his act is one of total surrender or of a feeling of the helplessness of extreme confusion. A kshatriya warrior, a supreme warrior such as Arjuna knows no fear. It is neither fear of his death nor fear of injury that compels him to say what he did.

As I remarked earlier, Arjuna was not in a mode of total surrender, not yet. He was not in the mode of ahimsa, nonviolence. He was not in tune with the cosmic consciousness to say that 'Killing others is killing myself, as I feel they are one with me.' His arguments about killing his kinsmen being like killing himself were born out of his ego and not out of self-realization.

Arjuna's desperation, his feeling of helplessness arose from his dilemma, which was becoming more extreme by the minute. Arjuna was an intelligent man, a thoughtful man. He was a man accustomed to the light of clarity but who was now in darkness. He did not know where he was headed. He was confused between what he was required to do as a kshatriya prince, and the apparent contradiction of that with the scriptural truths of morality.

Arjuna's distress was complete. He sat down, unable to bear the weight of his emotions. He put down his bow and arrows, which signified that he was out of the battle.

Arjuna's delusion was complete. He was as far away from reality as he could possibly get. The greatest of warriors of his time, the greatest of men, was in the depths of despair based on the inner turmoil that he was going through.

The inner conflict between his upbringing and value systems, his samskaras and what he was about to do by waging war against his kinsmen, had reduced him to a pitiable wreck, who had now abandoned his weapons and collapsed inside his chariot. Arjuna, at this point was no example of a true kshatriya.

Arjuna was now a true example of mankind. He was being human. He was torn between darkness and light. He was in deep conflict between the unconscious samskaras that were driving him and the reality of what he ought to be doing. The clarity that would come about with the help of the great master, would be his enlightenment.

The darkness that surrounded Arjuna at this stage was maya, the illusion that prevents all human beings from perceiving the Truth of Reality that pervades all of our experiences. Ma ya, iti maya, that which is not real but appears as absolute is maya. Maya is not unreal in the sense that it does not exist. Maya truly exists as reality. It veils, it covers Reality, the ultimate Truth, the Truth of our inner awareness, the Truth of our inner divinity; and therefore it is un-real, an illusion.

Had Arjuna been Krishna, had Arjuna been enlightened, he would not have been tormented with the play of his maya. Had Arjuna been a Duryodhana, or even a Bhima whose individual consciousness was not awakened, he would have accepted the maya without question, and again not be tormented by it. But, Arjuna is intelligent. He is partially awakened, a seeker. He is in the presence of the greatest of all masters. He is struggling to rid himself of his maya and seek clarity.

It is Arjuna's ego that created the maya in him. His own identity and his own identification with who he was, along with his conviction that he should preserve his lineage - all these factors created the illusion in him that he was something other than who he was. These created the scepter of doubt in him that he should do something other than what he was there to do.

All of us come into this world with no identity. As we grow we collect labels describing ourselves - mother, father, brother, sister, relative, employer, employees, colleagues, enemies and so on. We become so associated with the labels and their accessories that we forget who we really are. Our life is then about seeking fulfillment in the wrong places.

A small story:

Every one in the village knew Yogi Maharaj to be an eccentric man. One day when friends and neighbors found him walking up and down in front of his house, beneath the street lamp, they did not

take any notice. ‘That is Yogi,’ they said and moved on.

But when they found him there late at night, still walking up and down, they were concerned. ‘Yogi, what are you doing?’ they asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ he said.

‘Why are you walking up and down outside your home, instead of sleeping?’ they asked.

‘Oh, I am searching for my gold ring,’ he replied. ‘It is precious, an heirloom from many generations ago. I must find it.’

‘Ok’, they answered. ‘We will help you,’ and they searched along with him. Even after several hours they could not find the ring.

His neighbor, who knew Yogi Maharaj well, suddenly had a doubt. ‘Where did you lose that ring, Yogi?’ he asked.

‘Oh, it was inside a box in my bedroom, but I cannot find it now, that is why I am searching here,’ said Yogi.

‘If you lost it in your bedroom, why are you looking for it under the street lamp?’ demanded the neighbor. ‘Yes, yes, why out here?’ chorused the other friends.

‘Oh,’ said Yogi, ‘there is no light in my bedroom. I can only search where there is light. That is why I am out here.’

This is how it is for most of us! We search for happiness in the external world because that is where we have been taught to look for fulfillment. We have learned only how to look outside. Unfortunately, the truth about the fleeting nature of sensory fulfillment is not well known. We keep believing that our bliss is outside of ourselves rather than at the core of our being. We have not learned how to look within and experience it.

Happiness comes from within. Eternal happiness that constantly flows as bliss is always from within. You cannot find it outside. You cannot reach it through material possessions, through relationships, through selfish philanthropy. It is a state of no mind that you reach within yourself.

As very young children we were all in bliss. Have you ever seen an unhappy baby, except when it is physically disturbed by hunger, thirst or pain? A young child is forever in bliss, always curious, always seeking, always energetic. As we grow, as we learn from others, we are taught to shift our attention away from that bliss. We learn from elders, from teachers, from people around us who have been at it longer than us. In short, we learn how to stop feeling blissful.

Just as we learned how to stop feeling blissful, we can also learn how to ‘un-stop’ that stopping of bliss. We can relearn how to connect with our blissful nature again. We can learn to become aware of who we really are.

That is the process Arjuna was going through. He had lost his awareness of inner bliss because of his samskaras and was in the deep throngs of despair. The process of

relearning the process of transformation at the hands of the master was about to begin. If we become aware of that process, if we follow that process carefully over the eighteen chapters that the master takes His disciple through, we too can become aware.

Sankara says beautifully:

If you imbibe even a little of the Bhagavad Gita, if you drink even a drop of the Ganga water, if you think even once about that great master Krishna, you will never have to face Death.

Q: Master, how does the tale of a war help us in day- to-day issues? There have been hundreds, if not thousands of wars in the history of mankind, and many have been well documented. These have not stopped other wars. They have not helped humankind learn. How does one expect Bhagavad Gita to transform peoples' attitudes?

Mahabharata is not merely the tale of a war. It is a tale of many lives, which get involved in a war. The war itself is incidental to the story of the Pandava and Kaurava princes. What led to the war, how it could have been avoided and most importantly why it was not avoided are the experiences from this epic.

Contrary to most accounts of wars, written as historical documents, Bhagavad Gita is about how an expression of the divine convinces its human aspect to go to war as a part of fulfilling its responsibilities.

Bhagavad Gita is not about war; it is about how one should act in awareness, whatever be the circumstances before us. We cannot always choose the events of our lives but we can choose to live them with awareness and spiritual maturity.

The scriptural authority of Gita stems from the assurance of Krishna guaranteeing Arjuna that His words are the Truth. It is the Divine instructing the human. You may not know or even believe that some one like Krishna ever lived on this planet Earth. But many great masters throughout the ages have meditated upon these truths expounded by Krishna and affirmed them with their own direct experiences. I affirm them with my own inner experiences of the cosmic truth. Every word of this scripture resounds inTruth.

The truth of the Bhagavad Gita exists at many levels. What you read from a translation or even a commentary is still only superficial. It is at the physical level. There are many more energy levels at which the Bhagavad Gita needs to be understood. These can only be conveyed in the intimacy of the master-disciple relationship.

Any personal transformation is dependent upon two things. First, we must want to be transformed. No master, no book, nothing can be of help if we do not wish to transform. We must seek to be transformed. The universe is not bothered about whether we are transformed or not; it is up to us. Second, we must be in the present moment in order for that transformation, that alchemy to happen. You cannot live in the past or fantasize about the future and expect to be transformed.

That is why meditation is such a powerful tool of personal transformation. In fact it is the only real tool of personal transformation in addition to the enlightened master. No one can meditate on our behalf; we need to do it for ourselves. With practice, meditation immediately brings us into the present moment. We can be transformed, liberated, enlightened.

Unlike addictions that lower our consciousness and require more and more for the same effect, meditation raises our consciousness and takes less and less to get the same and deeper benefits. With experience, we will find that we flow through our days in mindful awareness and bliss.

Bhagavad Gita is meditation. Each verse is a sutra that we can meditate upon. These verses, these profound truths, will take us deeper into inner awareness in meditation as we contemplate upon them and transform ourselves as nothing else can. That is why Sankara says that even a little reading of the Bhagavad Gita will liberate us.

Metaphorically, this epic is the story of our own inner war. It is the fight between our positive and negative tendencies, our fear and greed. In many ways we are at war from the moment we are socialized and conditioned.

Unfortunately, we are constantly at odds with ourselves. We do not know how to accept and celebrate everything that happens in the inner world and the outer world. We have yet to learn that life is good and our nature is bliss. So we struggle to define and bring 'order' to everything in life with the hope that we can succeed in being happy or at least not unhappy. In doing this we only bring chaos and suffering to ourselves and others.

Mahabharata is the story of this inner war. That is why this great expression, the Bhagavad Gita, touches and transforms us even today. It is Arjuna's story but it is our story as well!

Thus ends the first chapter of the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, called as Arjuna Vishada Yoga, in the Brahmavidya Yogashastra Bhagavad Gita Upanishad.