Isn’t the Gita’s instruction to remain equipoised seem too idealistic?

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Transcript

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Thank you You can seem very idealistic now it’s important to look at the Bhagavad Gita in context the Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata and soon after the Bhagavad Gita is spoken the Kurukshetra war starts and if we look at Arjuna or specifically Arjuna because Bhagavad Gita is spoken to Arjuna do we really see him exactly living in this way Arjuna is completely equipoised in happiness and distress we see soon after that Abhimanyu is killed brutally, unfairly and Arjuna is devastated he is shattered, then he is infuriated and initially he lashes out his own brothers he says all of you or all your weapons, just some ornaments could any of you protect my son he even turns around and Krishna you must have known what is happening why didn’t you tell me so now at that time Krishna doesn’t become judgmental and say I told you the Bhagavad Gita, have you forgotten it already and he doesn’t say even that you know nobody is the body Abhimanyu is the soul why are you so attached to the body when the soul is eternal nor does he say at that time that oh it was Abhimanyu’s karma because of which he died or because of your karma that you had a son you had to lose the son so there is no there are no philosophy is not used to give pat answers to life’s challenges nor is philosophy used to to repress normal human emotions and this is just one example of Abhimanyu’s death but we see Arjuna goes through a whole panorama of emotions during the Kurukshetra war and Krishna doesn’t tell him to repress his emotions so the point is that as you rightly said this can seem idealistic there are the stars and there are the stairs so normally our stairs won’t take us to a star they will take us to a higher level of a building but the idea is that the stairs have small small accessible steps and the stars are high up in the sky so when Krishna tells Arjuna that be equipoised that is like the level of a star high up in the sky but at least knowing that that is a state that is what those who are spiritually completely well situated will have understanding that can help us move in that direction and in our situation even if say if we consider the graph of our consciousness in good situation it just goes high up and in bad situation it goes way down like an extreme sine wave now instead of just extreme if it just becomes a little lesser then it can make a significant difference so the emotional extremes that we all go through they are just at one level just a part of our human condition so we cannot deny or repress them but even if they become a little less extreme that can improve the quality of our life the quality of our decisions and so we can see this more as a more as a stairs ok this is the direction in which we need to go it’s not necessary that we have to be at that level and also if we see some places what Krishna says let’s consider 520 he says don’t be elated when there is joy and don’t be dejected when there is don’t be elated when good things happen don’t be dejected when bad things happen so we often focus on this don’t be elated, don’t be dejected but let’s look at the other half of it that means Krishna is not saying that you have to be blind and unfeeling that sometimes good things happen sometimes bad things happen so it’s not that we don’t even we are so immune we are so inert that we don’t even notice good or bad things not like that we will notice them but he says don’t get carried away by them don’t get swept away by them so and how will that happen if one is situated in spiritual knowledge situated in spiritual understanding then one will not get swept away that much so to become spiritual spiritualizing our consciousness is not dehumanizing ourselves there are normal human emotions and those will come naturally but we make sure that we don’t get swept away too much by them in many ways if we consider what is the difference between a child or a teenager and an adult normally when somebody is adult or they are mature what it means is that they don’t go through so much emotional extremes they are emotionally stable so now of course emotional stability is only one kind of stability we could also have intellectual stability sometimes some people they are so intellectually influenceable that one person provides one kind of perspective and they say that this is the only way to do things and somebody else gives another perspective and such people are quite easily manipulable and it’s not just based on emotions actually the reasoning gets completely twisted they hear one side of the story and they say this person is right the other person is terrible and then they hear the other side oh you are right that person is terrible so when we avoid these extremes that’s how so rather than expecting the consciousness to be like a flat even if it becomes less modulating less wavering the amplitude becomes lesser instead of this much it just becomes this much that also is an improvement does that address the question? thank you Hare Krishna Hare Krishna