How can we work dispassionately when doing our duty requires passion?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Doing anything well in this world, whether being professionally successful, whether parenting effectively or you're taking care of and having a good home, a happy home, it all requires passion. So how can we work this passionately when even doing our duty requires passion? I think there are two different meanings of the word passion being talked about over here. The word passion has a distinctly positive connotation in today's world.
Passion often means we have a passion for something. Say somebody has a passion for sports, somebody has a passion for a particular game, whatever it may be. And that kind of passion is what often makes them motivated and enables them to live wholeheartedly.
So if you're using passion in the sense of inspiration, drive, vigor, life is tough and doing anything in the world is not easy. Unless we have a drive, we can't do anything at all. So life definitely requires passion.
If you're using the word passion in the sense of vision, inspiration, drive, vigor. Now the Bhagavad Gita uses the word passion more in the sense of obsession, compulsive attachment and it is rajoguna, the mode of passion. I have written a Gita Delhi article, this thing that we need to have a passion but we don't need to be in passion.
So have a passion that is something which we, which gives life to our life. But to be in passion means to reduce our self-identity only to that. And the prominent characteristic of passion as Bhagavad Gita uses it to refer to rajoguna, the primary characteristic is that unending desires.
So, it has endless desire, that is the characteristic of the mode of passion. And that definitely is undesirable. So, obsession is what we should avoid.
While we are doing anything and we do it well, but we don't reduce our identity to that thing. We don't think that this is all that there is to my life. When I am a parent, I will be doing the role of a parent fully.
But my defining identity is not as a parent. It is an important functional identity. But my foundational or defining identity is that I am a soul who is a part of God.
I am doing a role over here. The role is important, but still it's a role. And unless we have this understanding, we can't move forward constructively.
We will sink into depression and self-pity and self-loathing or even excessive aggression if we reduce our self-conception to our particular roles. So, in the Bhagavad Gita says, we must work dispassionately. Arjuna was certainly not lacking in drive and vigor when he practiced archery.
He would practice late into the night. He was certainly not lacking in drive and vigor when he performed austerity so that he could grow, so that he could have more weapons. So, we need to not bring our own conceptions of what dispassion looks like when we study the Gita, which is, of course, natural.
We all have certain conceptions, but at least we can be open to how the Gita explains dispassion. So, the Gita has to be understood through the example of Arjuna and others who are living the Gita. So, yes, do whatever we are doing wholeheartedly.
Have the passion to do it well, but don't make that your sole identification. And of course, we know that we can only do our best to produce the results. The Bhagavad Gita says, don't be attached to the results.
We can set goals, but factors beyond us determine whether the results come or not. And we need to be careful enough to know our place and power within the overall scheme of things. And sometimes if results don't come, we understand that we did our part and we move on to continue our part in some other role.
So, that excessive attachment comes when we reduce our whole sense of self-worth and self-identity to a particular role. And that is what causes far more mental agitation and tribulation than what is necessary because of life's inevitable ups and downs. So, dispassion enables us to live with greater equanimity while also living purposefully with responsibility.
Thank you.