00:00Even a man of wisdom behaves according to his own nature.
00:21Beings follow their nature.
00:22What can restraint do?
00:26Because knowing him who is superior to the intellect and restraining the self by the
00:32self, slay thou, O mighty-armed Arjun, the enemy in the form of desire hard to conquer.
00:42So in verse 33, the questioner says, it is said, what can restraint do?
00:50And in verse 43, it is said, restrain lower self by the higher self.
00:56They seem to contradict each other.
00:58Please help me understand the right place of restraint in one's life and what really
01:02comes under its purview.
01:04No, the word is not really restraint in verse 33.
01:14What is implied is all mortal beings are following the dictates of Prakriti and the dictates
01:28of Prakriti cannot be disobeyed as far as the physical body is concerned.
01:40Be it an ignorant man or a realized man, Prakriti will operate the way Prakriti does.
01:50Prakriti cannot be disobeyed.
01:55So what is being said here is, nigraha kim karishyati.
02:02You cannot stop it.
02:06Stopping it is one thing and distancing yourself from it is totally another thing.
02:13Nigraha cannot be done.
02:19This is said in the context of the inviolable control of Prakriti on the body and the brain.
02:33So Arjun, you will have to act.
02:37Every being acts because Prakriti is all about action.
02:43In Prakriti there is nothing called stillness, Prakriti is change, movement, action.
02:53Then verse 43 says, thus knowing him who is superior to the intellect and restraining
03:01the self by the self, the self by the self has the first self as the small self which
03:10is aham and then the second self as the capital self which is the truth, slay thou oh mighty
03:19armed Arjun, the enemy in the form of desire hard to conquer.
03:27Here what is being said is that the entire mechanism, the whole apparatus of Prakriti
03:43can be distanced from one's identity.
03:56This distancing itself is the only way available to you to win Prakriti.
04:12It is beautifully captured when Shri Krishna says in another verse
04:25that Arjun has to be nirash and nirmam.
04:42He says that you just have to fight, give up hope from the world, give up attachment
04:55to the world and just fight.
05:13Prakriti allures us through hope, Prakriti allures us through the promise of completion.
05:24It says get attached and you will get something special.
05:39Krishna says all that is sheer excitement won't help you.
05:42He says just fight and be beyond such temperamental excitation.
06:03Again essentially the battle of Kurukshetra is the battle of Arjun against his own Prakriti.
06:19The stranglehold of Prakriti upon Arjun can be clearly seen in the opening chapter.
06:30The opening chapter is what is being fought against in the remaining 17 chapters.
06:39Vikata Jor means one whose excitation has subdued.
06:53In the first chapter, all you see is excitation, fever, Jor is fever.
07:00In fact Arjun puts it quite literally.
07:03He says I am feverish and my hair are standing on their ends, my legs are shivering.
07:16I am feverish.
07:19This is Prakriti.
07:23It will do what it will do.
07:30You must do what you have to do.
07:38And it took 17 chapters and more to fight that which Arjun demonstrated in the first
07:53chapter.
08:00Are you getting it?
08:10Then in the same chapter comes the beautiful message.
08:28It took Krishna a lot to explain to Arjun that Prakriti itself is Paradharma.
08:46Dharma is that which tells you how to live, what to do, how to make your decisions.
08:50When your decisions happen under the influence of Prakriti, then this is not Dharma but Paradharma.
08:59And Krishna says fight here against Prakriti and die in the process.
09:10Fight here and die in the process.
09:12But don't succumb to what your physical and mental tendencies are imploring you to.
09:31Are you getting it?
09:44The message is subtle.
09:46It has to be understood.
09:50You cannot fight against your situation in which action is unavoidable.
10:11You cannot fight, Arjun.
10:16You cannot fight against your situation in which action is unavoidable.
10:23Arjun is insisting that it is possible to somehow avoid action.
10:31Arjun is trying to fight against action itself.
10:39Arjun is saying I will not act.
10:42So Arjun's fight is against action itself.
10:46Krishna says no, that is not possible.
10:50You cannot fight the fight.
10:52The fight is not avoidable.
10:56Therefore what to do?
11:00The answer to this question opens up something glorious for the entire mankind.
11:05The answer is if fight you must.
11:12And if fighting is mandatory, if fighting is an inalienable part of living, then instead
11:20of trying to fight the fight, fight the right fight.
11:30Arjun is saying I will fight the fight and Krishna is saying fight the right fight because
11:38you cannot fight the fight.
11:42If you think that if you can somehow avoid getting in the fight, if you think you can
11:54somehow avoid taking sides on the battlefield, it is not possible.
12:00Many people try that.
12:03Many people say it is not really important and we can take some kind of a neutral position.
12:11We need not fight.
12:17Krishna mocks at them.
12:18He says they are all hypocrites.
12:20You cannot take a neutral position because even if you are taking a neutral position,
12:24you are still positioning yourself somewhere in the fight.
12:29Where have you now positioned yourself?
12:35At some so-called middle or neutral point.
12:40Maybe you are not fighting from either side, but you are fighting the fight.
12:48So you are still fighting.
12:49Rest assured, there is nobody who is born who can avoid fighting.
12:55To be born is to be born into a fight.
13:00So if you have to fight Arjun, fight the right fight.
13:05That is dharma.
13:08Let us not entertain any delusion that we can comfortably stay unaligned or safe in
13:23our happy and secure houses.
13:33Those who decide not to fight are actually fighting the wrong fight.
13:40They meet a fate worse than the fighters on either side.
13:53In a battlefield, one side emerges as the winner, the other side as the loser.
13:59And then there is a third side as well.
14:07Which is this third side?
14:11The one who fought the fight and therefore did not enter the battlefield at all.
14:17These are the mega losers.
14:22These are bigger losers than even the ones who got physically eliminated on the battlefield.
14:40That's what makes the Bhagavad Gita such a commanding scripture.
14:48It addresses the situation on a battlefield.
15:01It addresses the very complex question of right action.
15:21Prakriti has no swabhav.
15:25Prakriti only has traits, guna.
15:37So for the sake of convenience, they have been classified into just three, satrajitam.
15:51These three traits essentially just tell about three fundamental tendencies of the
16:03mind.
16:06There is the tendency that we all sometimes display to remain drowned in dark unconsciousness
16:19and we derive pleasure out of it, don't we?
16:24That is called Tamsa.
16:30We say we will drown ourselves in liquor, don't people do that?
16:41Even at this place there is so much hash and weed and I am talking of the city.
16:49Why do people do that?
16:53There is a certain pleasure in losing consciousness.
16:59So that was observed by the seers and they said that is one very prominent trait of Prakriti.
17:09We love losing consciousness, it's a strange thing, but we love losing consciousness.
17:18We love to be drunken and drowned and then there is the trait that we all display of
17:33energetic and frenzied action, running around here and there, sometimes motivated, sometimes
17:46frantic, I will get this or I will avoid that, that is to be achieved, I am a superstar,
17:58I am happy, that kind of a thing that has been called as Rajas, Rajoguna.
18:07That is just a tendency of the mind, that is the way we behave, we operate and then
18:16there is another tendency that we all display.
18:23That tendency is to know, I want to know, I want to know what is going on, I want light.
18:38Nobody likes lies for example, do we?
18:45In general we do not, we ask for the truth, even if that which we mean by the truth is
18:53not really truth, but we at least want facts, don't we?
18:59That is Satoguna, tell me what is really going on, that is Satoguna, that again is a tendency
19:04of the mind.
19:07So that is Prakriti, it does not really have a center and if you insist on determining
19:22a center of Prakriti, the center is merely of continuity, all that Prakriti wants is
19:31continuity in time, it wants to remain as it is, it wants to remain as it is in middle
19:39of all the changes that are called as Prakriti.
19:43So a lot of things will change, everything changes in Prakriti.
19:50Species come, species go, species evolve, so much keeps happening, universes rise, universes
19:56fall, but Prakriti in itself reaches nowhere, the center does not change, time continues,
20:06within time these events keep happening.
20:10So yes, means Prakriti is also a series of changes, Prakriti is an unchanging series
20:20of changes, Prakriti is a permanent temporariness, Prakriti is a temporality that is very permanent,
20:44everything is temporary and this temporariness is permanent, that is Prakriti, so what is
21:00beyond this temporariness and permanence, so those who investigated Prakriti, they said
21:10fine there is Satrajitam, but there has to be real life beyond the three, so they said
21:17the purpose of all spiritual inquiry or advancement is to go beyond the three traits or Gunas,
21:32they said you have to go Gunatit or Trigunatit, beyond Prakriti, so you are talking there
21:45is an inquiry in Prakriti also, but that inquiry is different from this spiritual inquiry,
21:52that spiritual inquiry is not born from the inquiry which is there in Prakriti, no, when
21:57you inquire, Prakriti is all that you have to inquire into, except for Prakriti, what
22:06else is available to be inquired, inquiry surely requires an object to be inquired and
22:14all objects are in, so Prakriti alone can be inquired into.
22:22You said three things are there in Prakriti, the third thing is it wants to know, so that
22:31is not inquiring, that is inquiry, so all inquiry is Satoguna, but then inquiry alone
22:38does not suffice, liberation means inquiry and a strong urge to be free of that which
22:51has been now known, therefore knowledge by itself is often very insufficient, that is
22:59the reason you often find very knowledgeable people neck deep in slavery or bondages, because
23:09knowledge is again just Satoguna and all the three Gunas are bondages, Satoguna is
23:28the highest because it offers you half a way to move out of your slavery, but only
23:38half a way, the remaining half comes from a strong urge to be liberated of that which
23:46has been known, otherwise you will face a peculiar situation, you will come to know
23:59that you are in a bad position, but you will not act to redeem yourself of your bad position
24:10Acharya ji, inquiry comes from Satoguna, so even an inquiry into Prakriti comes from
24:34the Satoguna of Prakriti, but liberation requires both inquiry and an urge for towards
24:43liberation, where does that urge come from, it is called grace, it comes from grace, it
24:57comes from prayer, it comes from your tears, it comes when you are really desperate, can
25:16you talk something about evolution also, like it is in Prakriti, it is an individual species,
25:30it depends, everything is evolving, but it is individualistic, you look at one individual
25:40thing and you say it is evolving, the fact is in Prakriti everything is evolving, change
25:46is evolution, when the change appears kind of favorable to you, then you start calling
25:51it by the positive name of evolution, actually evolution is just change.
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