Wasn’t Arjuna passionate about archery – can we be passionate about something and still be devotional?

Transcript

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Arjuna was developing a Vyarchani skill was he not passionate about it? can we be passionate about something and still be devotional? the word passion has different meanings in different contexts so there are terms and there are concepts so the term the concept is intellectual or it’s mental, the term is verbal the concept we could say is like a suitcase, the term is like the handle to the suitcase once I had gone to America and when I was going from one place to another my suitcase broke the last moment the devotee gave me another suitcase and when I landed at next place, I had forgotten what the suitcase looked like so I only remembered its handle so I remembered the handle was of a red colour so then on the carousel I was pulling out all the red coloured suitcases is this my suitcase? so what happens is that the same similar handle can be there are many different suitcases so the handle is like the term and the suitcase is the concept so the handle in this case is passion we are talking about the word passion and the concept is the suitcase so in the Vedic context the word passion is used in a particular way in today’s world passion is used in a different way so in the Vedic context the word passion refers to Rajoguna it is a disposition of the mind which keeps one perpetually dissatisfied so passion is insatiable desire, compulsive work constant competitive mentality that is the notion with which the word passion is associated in today’s world the word passion is often used in a very positive sense you have a passion for something and when we say have a passion for something means you have some spirit to strive to achieve to get something done so say Einstein had a passion for science now that is not necessarily in Rajoguna he was doing research which is intellectual work which is quite often fabric so if we are using passion in the positive sense of wanting to do something wanting to achieve something wanting to contribute something then having passion is natural so Arjuna definitely had a passion for archery without that he could not have been an archer so so we have to if we are going to do something if we are going to achieve something if we are going to have an ambition even to make a contribution in a particular field we have to have some driving spirit and that if we are using that driving spirit to make a contribution and we are using passion as a word to refer to that that’s perfectly fine so when that passion becomes all consuming and that passion just puts everything in the name of that passion we neglect everything else then that is where it becomes unhealthy so when we are doing something we need to be absorbed in it and we can say at that time if we are doing our job, if we are doing some research if we are doing some studies if we have passion for that we will be absorbed in that and that is good but if that is the only thing that we think about all the time and we can’t do anything else then that is not just absorption that has become a compulsion that has become an obsession and that is unhealthy so does this answer your question?