Bhagwat Gita- Lessons for life

Bhagwad Gita is believed to contain the essence of life and happiness. It helps us become oneself with our soul or our inner being. But this would happen not just by learning Gita verses or participating in Gita classes. It will happen when we start imbibing and assimilating these learnings in our own lives and our own scenario. Life is actually a series of small situations and what we need in our pursuit of happiness is an alignment between our thoughts, words, and actions. All these things are easier said than done.

The first step in working out a solution to any problem is to identify the problem. The problem that we face is a conflict between emotions and Dharma(my to be done/duty). The recurring problem is the constant thought that I am not okay, things around me are not fine, which ultimately results in momentary happiness and our life is a bag full of miseries.

Now that the problem is identified, next step is self-growth and self-discovery. This self-growth or inner growth has to be deliberately initiated by oneself and it will help us become emotionally mature. We will learn to manage ourselves in the light of our emotions. We have to have self-worth and understand that self-esteem is what counts.

We are our own friend and our own enemy and hence find it difficult to avoid self-judgment. The key to having self-esteem is being your own friend, take care of yourself and everything else will fall into place.

Every human being is endowed with 3 things- Ichchashakti(desires), Kriyashakti(action) and Gyanshakti.

We have desires in all realms of life and unfulfilled desires outweigh the fulfilled ones, and the irony is that our happiness is dependent on the fulfillment of these desires. It is important to understand here that this does not mean that we should not have desires, in fact having desires is our privilege. Because of our unfulfilled desires, we fail to give credit to ourselves for our small achievements. We need to redefine success.

We have to act on desires otherwise we will end up being frustrated. Human beings have freewill – that is, we can choose to act or not to act or to act differently in any given situation. This will decide our course of action and the results will be taken care of by the laws. This does not mean ‘karm kar, phal ki ichcha mat kar’.

We need to acknowledge our limitations and success lies in our ability to handle results.

What matters most is our attitude to the action we choose and also to the result. ‘Dharma’ should be the main goal and everything should be in accordance with it. Knowing dharma is something that comes naturally, it cannot be taught and when followed gives a sense of achievement and fulfillment.

Talking about my key takeaways or what I have applied or will try to apply in my life, I would first like to mention that often during the Gita classes, I find myself retrospecting the situations in my life and the choices I made. However, that’s a different story. The point which has made a profound impact on me is that be your own friend. You are perfect the way you are. This sense of well being will ensure that my composure, my happiness is not disturbed by situations around me. The second thing that I already believe in and practice is doing the right thing(Dharma) and being apart of the Gita Classes further strengthened my belief.

One question that I still have is about the cycle of the ‘drishta(visible) and adrishta(invisible) or my paap and punya’. I understand that everything that is happening is because of this past karma, however, what I fail to understand is when, because of my previous paap, something bad happens, how do I control my actions then and ensure that I don’t end up adding to my ‘paaps’. However, I am also sure that by the 9th session I‘ll get some clarity about this.

I really hope that I am able to discover my inner self and am able to handle the smaller situations in my life, I am able to objectify myself and those around me(it will happen only with a lot of conscious efforts).

Before I end my reflection I would also like to mention that apart from learning Gita, it’s connection with our lives, I look forward to the wonderful vocabulary and phrases like- ‘when rubber hits the road’, ‘catch 22 situation’, ‘fortify yourself with breakfast’, let’s go on a detour and then we will pick up the thread again’; Guruji keeps using these and many more which makes me want to listen to him.