When dealing with the distressed focus not on their karma focus on your dharma Gita 18.73

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
When dealing with the distressed, focus not on their karma, focus on your dharma. Suppose a newborn baby is crying, should a mother neglect the crying and think that the baby is after all crying because of her own past karma, baby’s past karma? Obviously not.
The mother needs to do her duty, which is taking care of the baby. Our understanding of karma should increase our diligence in doing our dharma, our duty, not increase our negligence. So how can knowledge of karma increase the diligence? Suppose the baby is suffering from some incurable condition, then if the mother starts fretting, blaming, resenting, then she might become an emotional wreck and need some and not be able to care for her baby.
Far from it, she may need someone else to care for her. So to prevent such an emotional breakdown, the mother may need some intellectual framework to make sense of the situation and the knowledge of karma can be one such framework. So we need to always focus on our dharma, not on others’ karma and we can consider others’ karma to the extent that it helps us in doing our dharma.
In situations that we can rectify, we should and situations that can’t be rectified, we need to accept. It is for accepting that which is unchangeable that knowledge of past karma can act as a resource. The Bhagavad Gita also demonstrates this focus on dharma through its very narrative.
When at the start of the Gita Arjuna is in tears because of agony, Krishna doesn’t tell Arjuna that you are suffering because of your past karma and keep suffering. Krishna doesn’t dismiss his karma, dismiss Arjuna’s suffering. Rather Krishna gives him the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita as an intellectual framework to make sense of the situation and to thereby regain his composure.
So the same Arjuna who is in tears at the start of the Gita 2.1 becomes free from tears by the end of the Gita 18.73. So we too also need to avoid becoming judgmental and we need to make sure that we don’t neglect our dharma by obsessing over others’ karma. So we need to see the knowledge of karma as a resource for doing our dharma. That is the mood of the Gita, that is the mood of human compassion and that is the mood in which we understand the philosophy of karma.