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00:00The first chapter begins with a conflict. Arjun is in the middle and he is now conflicted that should he fight, should he not.
00:08Chapter 1 is about us. That battlefield is our own lives. Two kinds of things Arjun is suffering from right in the first chapter.
00:15One, physical conditioning. How do I kill my own brothers out there? That is physical conditioning.
00:20The second, that sets the stage for what's going to come now. What's going to come now?
00:26So, Arjun is not even being motivated, let alone being instructed. He's being illuminated, right?
00:34And that illumination enables him to do what he must.
00:38I had this thought that because of that conflict, Arjun is going through an anxiety attack.
00:44The hair on his skin is standing, his mouth has gone dry. Typical symptoms of an anxiety attack.
00:51So, any crisis of mind is actually a crisis of the one who accumulated the mind.
00:58The agitation of the mind is a symptom, not the central cause.
01:02It's the self that is not restful. And the only thing that makes the self not restful is effort.
01:08One thing I really liked about the Gita, the last time I read it, was for the first time, I noticed how the first chapter begins with a conflict.
01:25And the stage, the setting of the story is so beautiful that Arjun is in the middle.
01:36And on the one side is all the people who rely on him.
01:40Other side is the enemy, but they are also his family.
01:45And he is now conflicted that should he fight, should he not.
01:49And the rest of the book is about resolving that conflict.
01:54Now, in this case, the conflict seems to be a very big one, war.
01:59But conflict is something that we go through every day.
02:04Every minute.
02:05Should I call up my friend or not?
02:07Should I order Swiggy or not?
02:09Whatever. Everything is a conflict.
02:12And I had never noticed it before, but it suddenly felt that, oh, this is a very practical book.
02:17Very practical book.
02:19That it begins with a conflict.
02:20Right.
02:21You know, chapter 1 that you mentioned, Sri Krishna doesn't utter a single word.
02:32Really? I didn't notice that.
02:34Not a single verse.
02:37And that's what makes the whole thing so relatable.
02:40Chapter 2 starts with...
02:41Chapter 2 is...
02:42Even in chapter 2, it's after a few verses that Sri Krishna...
02:49comes in.
02:50So, chapter 1 is us, you and me.
02:55Right.
02:56Chapter 1 is there to bring us into the picture.
03:00Everybody is talking.
03:02Dhritarashtra is talking.
03:04Yes.
03:04Sanjay is talking.
03:05Yes.
03:06Duryodhana is talking.
03:09Arjuna is talking.
03:11Sri Krishna is not talking.
03:13Chapter 1 is about us.
03:14That battlefield is our own lives.
03:18Right.
03:19People from all different places.
03:22And he's going to Bhishma and saying, you know, we need to protect him.
03:26Yeah.
03:26And he's saying, look at that side.
03:28They appear mightier than us.
03:31Apprehensions, greed, attachments, everything is there.
03:35Right.
03:36And Arjuna, especially.
03:40Very remarkable is this chapter 1.
03:43He comes up with two things.
03:46One, they are my friends, kin, kit.
03:54How do I fight them?
03:56They are related to me by blood.
03:59So that's physical conditioning.
04:01You know, even animals have that.
04:04They usually don't want to attack their own pack, their own tribe.
04:10Second thing that Arjuna talks of is social conditioning.
04:17If this war happens, then all the Kshatriyas might be killed.
04:23And then what happens to our women?
04:25Probably the women will go to those who do not belong to Arvarna or caste.
04:34And then what will happen?
04:36Arjuna goes on explaining.
04:41He says, you know, the kids that will be born out of such illicit relationships,
04:48they will not be qualified to offer the right rituals to our dead ancestors.
04:55And then their souls will suffer in various kinds of hells.
05:02So, no, this is, all this is religious dogma.
05:07All this is religious dogma.
05:09Social conditioning.
05:10Arjuna has heard of all these things from somewhere.
05:12They are not coming from the body.
05:13And it's all coming back.
05:15First of all, it has come to Arjuna from the society.
05:19It is not even arising from the body, right?
05:22You know, that there are higher castes and lower castes and that there are souls somewhere
05:27in the sky and that if you offer the right kind of rituals, then those souls are appeased.
05:33So, that's social conditioning.
05:35That's religious dogma.
05:37So, two kinds of things Arjuna is suffering from right in the first chapter.
05:43One, physical conditioning.
05:44How do I kill my own brothers out there?
05:49That is physical conditioning.
05:50The second is social conditioning.
05:52Higher caste, lower caste and the status of women.
05:55You know, there are women.
05:56How do we let our women go to the other side?
06:00And what about the kids that will be born?
06:02All kinds of things.
06:05That sets the stage for what's going to come now.
06:09What's going to come now is a demolition of physical and social conditioning.
06:15I call it freedom from vritti and sanskriti.
06:22Vritti as in the physical tendencies, sanskriti as in the social culture.
06:27And that's what Krishna goes on to very successfully deconstruct.
06:35That's beautiful.
06:35So, that's what the entire Bhagavad Gita is devoted to.
06:40Freedom from the conditioning of the body and the conditioning of the mind.
06:46And it's not at too many places that Sri Krishna directly exhorts Arjuna to fight.
06:53That happens only rarely.
06:59Gita is about letting Arjuna know who he is.
07:04In a very liberal way, Krishna says,
07:06if you realize who you are, then you will know what to do.
07:11I do not need to instruct you.
07:14I do not need to command you.
07:15Or school you.
07:20That's for kids.
07:23So, Arjuna is not even being motivated, let alone being instructed.
07:31He is being illuminated.
07:33Right.
07:34And that illumination enables him to do what he must.
07:38I had this thought that because of that conflict, Arjuna is going through an anxiety attack.
07:49And there is a phrase that the hair on his skin is standing, his mouth has gone dry.
07:58Typical symptoms of an anxiety attack.
08:00I'm shivering.
08:01Shivering.
08:02Can't even stand.
08:03Weakness, limbs are weak.
08:06So, full sympathetic crisis.
08:09His adrenal gland is really active.
08:11Cortisol levels have gone up.
08:12Yes, yes, yes.
08:13He is now in that state of mind.
08:15He's panicking.
08:16Yes.
08:16And because of that, he is catastrophizing.
08:21He's only imagining worst case scenarios.
08:24He's imagining, he's spiraling.
08:27And you can see that.
08:29So, it's almost like you are listing the symptoms of an anxiety attack in chapter one.
08:34And later on, what comes in the next chapters, like you said, is an exercise in how to deal with somebody who is going through an anxiety attack.
08:46Because Krishna does not immediately say, hey, get over it.
08:51Or just get up and fight.
08:52Just get up and fight.
08:53Just do your job.
08:54It's not that straightforward.
08:56So, I thought also, what a great framework to deal with somebody who is going through a mental health problem.
09:03In fact, the way the mind is classically defined is that it is an aggregation of objects and structures around your sense of self.
09:18So, it's me, the I.
09:21At the center, you could say the linchpin.
09:24Yeah.
09:25And me being who I am, I accumulate a lot of stuff around myself, like one does in his home.
09:33And that, all that accumulation, that aggregation, and those relationships, that entire network is the mind.
09:43So, any crisis of mind is actually a crisis of the one who accumulated the mind.
09:51Because mind is just objects and objects in themselves are not conscious or sentient.
09:59Objects do not know anything.
10:01So, it's never the mind that is agitated.
10:08The agitation of the mind is a symptom, not the central cause.
10:12It's the self that is not restful and the only thing that makes the self not restful is absence of self-knowledge.
10:23So, when the self, the ego is not at rest, the mind will be agitated.
10:30The ego cannot be seen, but the mind can be experienced as the brain.
10:35And there can be very tangible and physical symptoms, nobody has ever seen the ego, but the mind is more tangible, and the brain as we know, the brain is the body, it is very tangible.
10:48So, we say the mind is agitated, just because we cannot see the ego at the center of the agitation.
10:58So, if the mind is not the root cause of agitation, if the ego is at the center of agitation, and if this diagnosis can be done, then the treatment of mind must begin with the treatment of the ego.
11:14For the ego to be treated, first of all, the disease has to be known.
11:17For the condition has to be known at least, the condition of ego is one of lack of self-knowledge, that is the very definition of ego, not even the condition.
11:29The ego is the self that does not know itself.
11:34So, because the ego does not know itself, it is sick.
11:40It's a cultivated sickness, it's a fake sickness actually, the ego is not really sick.
11:47It's a sickness that it has just superimposed upon itself.
11:53It's literally, the ego is struggling with lack of unity with, you see, it's like this, I think of myself as a bird.
12:03And now I am anxious that I cannot fly.
12:08The thing is, you are not a bird at all.
12:10The moment you realize that, the anxiety is gone.
12:13So, lack of self-knowledge can lead to all kinds of anxieties.
12:17If I take myself to be what I am not, I will expect myself to do things that I can't.
12:23And in today's world of social media, our identity has never been more fluid.
12:29Not fluid.
12:29You see somebody with a fancy car, you suddenly assume the identity of someone with a fancy car.
12:35And now not having a fancy car gives us sadness.
12:38And the problem with this fluidity is that it is an imposed fluidity born out of helplessness of the one it is being imposed on.
12:51What does this fluidity mean?
12:52It basically means that you can come and affect my identity in one way.
12:57Now you leave and somebody else comes and my identity becomes dependent on that one.
13:02This is the fluidity we are talking of.
13:04It's a state of helplessness.
13:06I am not in charge of who I am.
13:08Anybody comes and starts determining my sense of self.
13:12My state of mind.
13:13My state of mind.
13:14Why?
13:14Because I do not know who I am.
13:16If I do not know, let's say, my own name.
13:18And you come and address me as AB.
13:22Then I am AB.
13:23For the while.
13:24Then that one comes and calls me CD.
13:27I become CD.
13:28Again.
13:29For a while.
13:30So that's fluid identity.
13:32Fluid identity.
13:32And it's a state of great slavery.
13:36Helplessness and powerlessness.
13:38Just because I do not know who I am.
13:41But if I know that my name is something.
13:44Why?
13:45Why?
13:46You can come and address me the way you want.
13:49I won't even mind.
13:50It will be a nice joke.
13:52He too can address me the way he pleases to.
13:56And I won't even mind.
13:57And there will be no crisis within.
14:01Arjun does not know himself.
14:05He is a victim to both these conditionings.
14:08The social one and the physical one.
14:11As we all are.
14:13So, I advise my students.
14:18First of all, see that you are Arjun.
14:21Because the Gita was instructed to Arjun.
14:26Only an Arjun can be rightful recipient of Gita.
14:30If you are not Arjun, the Gita will not help you.
14:32First of all, you should see that you are the victim of multiple identities and all kinds of conditionings.
14:40Just as Arjun is.
14:42And then, step by step, verse by verse, there will be some resolution, as you said.
14:49So, that's the reason the Gita is so useful.
14:55And also became so commonplace.
14:57Because the very setting is of familiarity.
15:03Unlike the Upanishads, where the entire setting is idyllic and far removed from the usual householder's life.
15:14The setting of the Bhagavad Gita is extremely relatable.
15:19Everybody can relate to the Bhagavad Gita.
15:22The Upanishads and the Gita, they carry exactly the same message.
15:24They form part of the core of Vedanta.
15:30But still, the Upanishads are not as famous, not as relatable.
15:36But they carry the same message.
15:37They carry the same message.
15:38In fact, the Bhagavad Gita is called the very essence of Upanishads.
15:44And Vedanta is supposed to be having three legs, just to explain it.
15:57Not legs exactly, not stump exactly.
16:00But the audience would understand it this way.
16:02That's called Prasthan Tray.
16:05Prasthan Tray.
16:06The three pillars, you could say.
16:08One of the pillars is Upanishads.
16:13And one of the pillars is the Bhagavad Gita.
16:15And then the third one is the Brahma Sutra.
16:18So the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, they belong to the same bracket of scriptures.
16:26Much the same.
16:27Yet, Gita is far more famous than the Upanishads.
16:32Because of the packaging and the relatability quotient.
16:37There is feeling, there is emotion, there is drama, there is bloodshed, and there is history.
16:42It is a part of the Mahabharata.
16:44And the Mahabharata has so much that fascinates us.
16:47So the Gita became far more famous.
16:49Which is better scripting overall.
16:51Much better scripting as well, yes.
16:52One analogy that I observed, and I don't know if this is true or not, is that the entire story is written from the perspective of a blind king being told what is happening with somebody with second vision.
17:11Yes, yes, yes.
17:12I wondered if there is a metaphorical explanation to this, which is that it is not easy to look inside our own conflict.
17:22Yes, yes, yes.
17:23Was I reading too much into that?
17:25No, no, you are not.
17:26No, you are not.
17:27Okay.
17:28Everything there has layered meanings.
17:31Yeah.
17:32And the more we get unlayered, the more the layers upon the core meaning, also just remove and the core is uncovered.
17:47You could very well say that the blindness of Dhritarashtra is metaphorical and indicative of a deeper inability to see.
18:05When the second chapter starts, that's where we get into the, or we start getting into the meat of the matter, the conversation.
18:13Now, the way the advice goes through the different yogas, karma yoga and the sanya, why is it arranged in that specific order?
18:28Why is it karma yoga first, sanyasa yoga?
18:29The arrangement is not really original.
18:32Okay.
18:33The arrangement came later.
18:35Oh.
18:36The division of chapters in this particular way, and particularly the naming of the chapters.
18:43That came later.
18:46So, we need not read too much into why one particular chapter is named in one particular way.
18:53Okay.
18:53But what I find interesting there is that the war lasted 18 days.
18:58Yeah.
18:59And there are 18 chapters.
19:02That is true.
19:05So, was it one per day?
19:06Just, you know, cute little things to keep us engaged, and pointers and reminders that there is still something more to it.
19:20More to it.
19:20But one must not read too much into these things.
19:23Otherwise, one will miss the central message.
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