India’s T20 World Cup Victory & Chokers’ tag: Making sense with Bhagavad-gita

Transcript

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Hare Krishna India’s triumph in the World Cup and shedding of the choker stack making sense with the Bhagavad Gita India’s victory in the T20 World Cup has brought an eruption of joy across the country and for many including the players it’s not just joy, it’s also relief there has been more than a decade of drought in getting global trophies and many times India got in the finals and lost and of course on the other side sports is cruel South Africa has continued to have its bad streak and some people had billed this match as the final between the biggest chokers in history and the biggest chokers in present times so today we will try to discuss what is this idea of chokers and does it have any basis in the Bhagavad Gita or how can the Bhagavad Gita help us make sense of it the Bhagavad Gita in its 18th chapter explains that actions and the results that come from them have a causal link that is multi-level and the causes can be broadly classified into physical, psychological and philosophical now of course philosophy can be said to explain all of reality and in that sense the physical and practical and psychological can also be included into it but we are using philosophical in the sense where we try to make sense of the things that don’t make sense by normal means so with respect to the cause of the result in a match the physical factors among the five factors the Gita talks about are the venue and the players and the particular skills of the players so the Gita talks about five factors adhishtanam tathakarta karanam jyaprutakvida vividhashyapudaksheshta daivam jayvatra pancham this is the place where a particular event is happening the doers, the individuals which are ultimately spiritual beings then the karanam, the senses here refers to the specific skills that the individuals have which manifest through their sensory organs and then there is the endeavor that they make and finally there is the role of destiny so from these three level perspective the venue and the skills fall at the physical level, the endeavor falls at the psychological level and the destiny falls at the philosophical level even the soul, the spiritual being is at the philosophical level so whenever a result doesn’t come out depending on the individual perspective everybody tries to gravitate towards certain explanations so for example some people may try to blame the pitch or some countries may bash their players sometimes earlier in India also in 2007 when India had an ignominious exit from the world cup very early then the players were garlanded with or actually the effigies of players were garlanded with chappals and footwear so everybody can single out one factor and blame it, some people might just say that oh destiny is rotten, some people may claim that oh you know our players are not tough enough they just not, they don’t have the mental game for it some people may say they don’t have skills so everybody gravitates towards their favorite explanation based on their agendas, biases conceptions but if you want a holistic picture all these three, the physical, psychological and philosophical factors need to be considered that means that when we use a reductionistic label like chokers what are we doing? We are reducing the complexity of reality including the complexity of how results come out to solely the psychological weakness of the players.
Now is it possible that the players can be psychologically weak? Yes, of course they are human beings and sometimes nerves can get to them and in some cases of course the players may just make foolish choices, not because they are foolish but because they are just overwhelmed by emotion as happened in the historical run out when Ronald just didn’t run and South Africa lost from a winning position because of just one run so those factors are there but just because a person has got or a team has got a repeated number of failures that doesn’t mean it makes it right to reduce everything to one cause Yes, India lost on many occasions in the last decade and sometimes it was the other team played better, we were outclassed sometimes it was that the pitch changed and while batting the pitch was of one kind and while we were bowling the pitch changed. Sometimes it could be that the players didn’t perform so using a tag like a choker, it has two problems. It is from an explanatory perspective it is inaccurate.
It is reducing a complex thing to a very simplistic one unifactor analysis and more relevantly it is actually damaging that when such labels are fixed on players or teams then it becomes an unnecessary burden the mind is something which we all need to train and we can train and the cheshta, the endeavor that we do, it is not just the physical workout or the practice that we put in, it is also the mental effort that we are able to put in with it and the mind is always trainable and rather than labeling anyone in a negative way we try to find and get the necessary resources for training the mind. The Bhagavad Gita says that it is best for us to focus on our endeavors now of course in sports results is what matters. Winners are the people who are remembered.
So victory is important but at the same time understanding that there is a complex set of factors that lead the translation of efforts into results we can avoid simplistic labeling and have the best wishes for everyone including those who have won and those who have failed to win this time. Thank you