Living Bhagavad Gita 21: Loser Mindset, Winner Mindset

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for people living and working in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times filled with stress and fear. This scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully, achieve excellence in whatever we do and find happiness, peace and contentment.

[Continued from the previous post]

Alas! How sad that we are ready to commit the great sin of killing our own people out of greed for the pleasures of the kingdom! It would be better for me if the Dhartarashtras kill me in battle with their weapons while I am unarmed and unresisting. BG 1.45-46  

Arjuna is a winner. Perhaps the most common among his many other names is Vijaya, meaning the victorious one, a winner.  His mindset is that of a winner, through and through. Among the many splendid warriors in the Mahabharata, he is the most consistent winner. Fearless in battlefield, a master of strategic moves, the greatest living master of the martial arts, he possesses the secrets of more weapons empowered with powerful mantras than anyone else [not counting Krishna, of course]. At the same time he is a sensitive human being, highly ethical, uncompromising in his values, ideal in his social behaviour towards his elders – he is the acme of what the ancient world expected a man to be.

His concerns about having to kill his grandfather and his guru are genuine, his guilt about killing one’s own people is genuine. We all should feel what he feels in similar circumstances, not feeling such concerns and such guilt makes us subhuman. Krishna is not going to ask Arjuna not to have such feelings but to do what needs to be done for the sake of dharma, virtuous ways of living and leading, for lokasangraha, the common good, in spite of such feelings, rising above such feelings. Not being able to do so, to rise above such feelings and do what needs to be done, is to behave like a loser – which is what he is doing at the moment, perhaps for the first time in his life. The winner mindset tells us to stand and face our challenges whatever they are and take the right steps needed to be a winner, whereas the loser mindset tells us to run away from them.

There is an invaluable lesson that Kunti, a winning mother in every sense of the term, gives us in the winner mindset exactly seven days before the incidents we are discussing happens. It is perhaps the most empowering message ever given by a mother to her son. The message was given not to Arjuna but to Yudhishthira and it was sent through Krishna. The message is known as Vidula Upakhyana and was one of the inspirations for our freedom fighters when we were trying to overthrow the yoke our colonial masters had put on the shoulders of Mother India.

The language of the message is harsh, the words as sharp as whiplashes, because Kunti felt nothing less than that would arouse her son who had sunk deep into the mire of the loser mindset. She gave this message to Krishna when he came to see her and take leave of her after the failure of the peace talks in the Kuru assembly. As he touched his aunt’s feet by way of paying respects to her and told her he was now hurrying to the Pandavas because there was no time to lose, she gave him this message for her eldest son and then added a few words for her other four sons and for Draupadi, with whom she shared an amazing relationship, as though they were twin souls.

Kunti never minces her words. She tells Krishna to tell her son what a shame he has become. He has forgotten his dharma and has became a worshipper of piece at all costs because of which she had to wait for the kindness of other people even for the food she eats for thirteen years, says she referring to the twelve years the Pandavas spent in the forest and the one year they lived incognito in Virata while she lived in Hastinapura. She says peace at all costs is not the way of kshatriyas who should live by the might of their arms and look after their subjects by it. She compares her eldest son whom the world calls the embodiment of dharma to a brahmana who does not know the meaning of the mantras of the Vedas but parrots them. As Kunti sees is it, Yudhishthira does not know dharma but only the words of dharma. She reminds Yudhishthira that kshatriyas are born of the arms of the cosmic person, the virat purusha, God, which makes them God’s arms on earth to establish righteousness, justice, equality, fearlessness, truth, kindness, compassion and all other godly ways that the Gita calls daivi sampada in its sixteenth chapter.  

There is a beautiful story of a master carpenter. He was a house builder and every house he made was a masterpiece. The doors were strong, the windows opened to the winds from the east and west, the roof could withstand any storm, and you felt you were stepping into a temple every time you entered one of his houses. Passing years did not touch them, the seasons were gentle to them and they delighted in the elements rather than quiver in fright.

But he had made enough houses and wanted to retire and live the rest of his days in quietude. Though he had thoroughly enjoyed every house he had built, he had discovered the passion for building was no more in him. He wanted to take morning and evening walks, watch children at play, be with the kids that gamboled in the field, sing again the songs he had sung as a child, swim in rivers, climb mountains, enjoy passing breezes and just lie under the open sky. No more house building for me, he decided.

So he went to his master, the lord whose servant he was, and told him he would build no more houses. The master shook his head and said, “Build just one more house. A last one. And I shall ask you no more to build houses.”

Reluctantly the master carpenter agreed. But there was no passion for building houses in him anymore. There was no magic when he held his tools in his hand, no rush of energy. They felt heavy for the first time in his hand. He felt no thrill, his heart did not dance when he used the chisel and the hammer.

The house he built was unlike any he had built earlier. There was no joy in the house just as there was no joy in him when he built the house.

When he finished he came to his master, the lord, and told him it was done. And the lord knew there was no need to look at the house – the master carpenter had built it.

With a glowing smile on his face, with the glitter of joy in his eyes, he told the carpenter, “This house is my gift to you! It is an expression of my gratitude for all the houses you have built for me. Go, spend your remaining days in that house!”

And the master carpenter was condemned to live the rest of his days in that shabby house he had built without any love.

We too are like that carpenter. Each one of us is condemned to live in the world we make.

Kunti reminds Yudhishthira that if he is suffering, if he is living a life of grief and misery and making his brothers and Draupadi live such a life, it is because of himself. As the king it is his duty to practice dandaniti which includes punishing the wicked too, she reminds him, but instead of that he kept speaking of peace at all costs even when the enemies were trying to kill him and his brothers all means including poisoning and setting fire to their house. There were times when he should have taken up arms and fought, but he did not. She quotes a well known statement of the day that I have quoted innumerable times in my leadership training programmes:

kaalo vaa kaaranam raajnah raajaa vaa kaala-kaaranam; iti te samshayo maa bhoot raajaa kalasya kaaranam.

“Let there be no doubt in your mind as to whether the age makes the king or the king makes the age. The king makes the age.”

We hear Bhishma quoting the same verse to Yudhishthira again after the war has ended and he goes to Bhishma lying in the bed of arrows to learn from the grandsire the art of governance.

The king then is responsible for making the age good or bad. Satya yuga, treta yuga, dwapara yuga and kali yuga do not come in succession as is generally told, but the king – the leader – has the power to create them on earth. Kunti explains to Yudhishthira:

raajaa kritayuga-srashtaa tretaayaa dvaparasya cha yugasya cha chaturthasya raajaa bhavati kaaranam.

It is the king that creates kali yuga on earth, and it is he who creates treta, dwapara and satya yugas. He makes all the four ages.

If he implements dandaniti rightly, says Kunti, he creates satya yuga and if uses it with partial effectiveness, then the other two yugas are born. If he fails completely in practicing dandaniti, then the age of kali is born.

And then Kunti adds: tato vasati dushkarmaa narake shashvatees samaah. And then [when he creates the age of kali on earth], he lives in hell for an eternity.

Arjuna has just expressed his fear if he will not be thrown into hell for an eternity for killing his own people even if they are wicked, and Kunti here, in her message to Yudhishthira just before the war begins, says a king is sent to hell for an eternity for not punishing the wicked!

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After these introductory words, Kunti tells Krishna the story of Vidula as her message to Yudhishtira. Vidula was the mother of a prince called Sanjaya [a name that means the winner!] who had been vanquished by his enemy, had psychologically accepted that defeat and was living a life of shame losing all his past glory. As we can see, Kunti who has been living in Hastinapura, as she says by looking up to her enemies even for the food she eats, is in the same position as Vidula and we must look upon Vidula’s words to Sanjaya as Kunti’s words to Yudhishthira. Fearless is the mother here, whether she is Vidula or Kunti, and her words give us goose bumps as we listen to them.

Kuinti’s words hit us with power of a thunderbolt. She says:

“You who increase the joys of your enemies, you are not my son! You are neither my son nor your father’s. Where have you come from? You with no anger in you, no thirst for vengeance, you cannot be counted a man. You look like a man and yet you are not a man – so what are you? A eunuch, that’s what you are!

“You have no right to sink into despair so long as you live, you coward! If you wish your own welfare, accept the burden of your challenges on your own shoulders.

“Don’t be a shame on your soul.  Never be satisfied with little. Fix your mind on your own good and don’t be scared. Abandon your fears! Rise, coward, rise! Don’t you lie down accepting your defeat, delighting your enemies and making your friends grieve. Don’t you have any sense of honour?

“Tiny streams are filled with a little water. The palms of a mouse are filled with little. And so does a coward become satisfied with little!

“Pull out the fangs of a deadly snake and die doing so – that’s honourable. Don’t you die like a miserable dog! Exerting your utmost, risk your very life and do all you can to be victorious! Be like the eagle in the vast sky that soars high and wanders infinite spaces. Keep your eyes on your enemies for the opportune moment and strike fearlessly!

“You are lying there as though you are but a lifeless body. Have you been struck by lightning? Rise up, coward! Aren’t you ashamed to sleep after you have been vanquished by your enemy? Why are you miserably hiding from the sight of all? Let the world know you by your deeds. Never be contented with anything less than the highest position. Nothing less than the best should satisfy you! Be a winner, be the very best, be the first! Don’t you be satisfied by being the second or the third or anything less.

“Be like the Tinduka wood! Blaze up! Blaze up even if it is only for one moment! Don’t smolder like chaff without flames! Cultivate your desires! Ignite them! Nourish their fire! And achieve glory!”

Kunti has only contempt for the kind of ahimsa that Yudhishthira speaks of and practices. That is not the way of kshatriyas, she says. She reminds him kshatriyas are an acursed lot, condemned to live by cruelty – by kroora karma. To kill and slaughter for praja paripalana, for looking after his subjects, is a kshatriya’s lot. To punish the wicked, if necessary with the ultimate punishment – that is the way of kshatriyas, kings. That is what he is born for, that is what the creator fashioned him for and for that reason that is how he should live.

Kunti’s advice to Yudhishthira and the story of Vidula she tells him are long – it runs into several chapters of the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata. But she did not foresee her son Arjuna would need the message as much as Yudhishthira needed it. Because Arjuna was a winner, the very epitome of winners. When he was born, the gods had predicted that Arjuna together with Bhima would vanquish all the Kauravas and shake up the whole world.  With the help of Krishna, he would slaughter his enemies in war and will achieve victory over the entire earth. His fame would reach the very skies.

So she did not foresee Arjuna would need her message as much as Yudhishthira needed. She did have a few words for him, though. And those few words are unforgettable. The essence of what this winning mother had to tell him was, “draupadyaah padaveem chara.” Follow the path of Draupadi. Follow the path that Draupadi treads, follow the path that she shows.

Kunti and Draupadi had an amazing relationship between them. They were the ideal mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, unlike the saas-bahu relationship we see in television serials today. They were twin souls.

And just as they were twin souls, Krishna and Draupadi too were twin souls too, says Indian culture – if anything, more twin souls than Kunti and Draupadi. They were one single entity, Krishna and Krishnaa were, born in two bodies, one male and the other female, but a single soul, born for the same purpose: the destroy adharma, to destroy the kshatriyas who had turned evil, and to reestablish dharma, virtues ways  of living and leading, says Indian culture.

Kunti says her grief is not about the failure in the dice game or the kingdom being stolen from them. It is not about her sons being sent to the forest on the exile. What she grieves over are the merciless words Draupadi had to hear from Duryodhana while she wept in agony and shame in the royal dice hall. 

Kunti wants Krishna to remind her sons the most hurting incident in their entire life. And she tells Krishna to tell Bhima and Arjuna: yadartham kshatriyaa soote tasya kalo’yam aagatah. Time has come for that for which a kshatriya woman gives birth to sons.   Powerful words that ask her sons to be victorious in battle or to die the death of heroes.

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Our deep buried traumas attack us in our weakest moments. Born of our psychological reactions to threatening real life experiences, they are like wayside robbers that attack us in our weary moments and loot us of everything we have. A single powerful traumatic experience can destroy our life. I have heard about a brilliant surgeon who was the best in his field but whose hands started shivering the moment he picked up a scalpel. What happened was that when he was a student one of the professors in the medical college was demonstrating a surgical procedure. The professor asked him to fetch a particular scalpel and he brought the wrong number. The professor shouted at him calling him an idiot, a good for nothing and said he would never amount to anything – he said this in the presence of the other students, several boys and girls, who were watching the demonstration as he was. He humiliation and insult he felt became a powerful traumatic experience. As a surgeon, every time he touched a scalpel, he heard the professor’s words from deep within him, “Idiot, good for nothing, you’d never amount to anything!” and his hands started shaking.

That’s the power of a single traumatic experience.

I have read about a girl whose left arm became paralyzed because one day while she was sitting at the dining table along with some of her friends, her father picked up a fork and threw it at her hitting that arm. He was angry at her for some small thing but that humiliation in the presence of her friends paralyzed her left arm for twenty years until she was healed of the trauma by a therapist.

Arjuna’s whole life is filled with traumatic experiences. He had grown up knowing that he is not the son of his father Pandu. That Pandu couldn’t have children and all his children were born through niyoga was not a secret to anyone. Then his father had failed to control himself and had sex with his wife Madri and died in the final moments of the act – on Arjuna’s birthday while Kunti was serving a feast to brahmanas. Pandu’s act was a kind of suicide because he knew sex would be death for him and yet he had given himself to it. Following Pandu’s death, Madri had committed ritual suicide by entering his funeral pyre. The years he lived in Hastinapura as unwanted cousins hated by Duryodhana were not happy years at al during which innumerable attempts were made on their life and they had to live in constant fear. And then there was the lacquer house incident, their escape and subsequent life in the forest for several years. And perhaps the most traumatic of all incidents – what happened to them in the dice hall and what was done to Draupadi there.  He had to live as a eunuch in the Virata palace, and more than that, he had to endure the shame of having to watch the glorious Draupadi living as a maid to the Virata queen. 

The list of traumatic experiences that fills Arjuna’s life is endless, any single one of which is enough to destroy a man. It is no less than a miracle that in spite of all this he not only survived but flourished and became the winner he became.

But traumas can strike us in our most vulnerable moments, which is what happened to Arjuna as he stood between the two armies and watched his grandfather, his guru and others standing on the opposite side whom he will have to kill in battle.

As we shall see when we journey into the Gita further, Krishna begins by giving him a shock treatment, which is one of the ways of shaking up people deep in traumas out of their helplessness and awakening them to reality. When Kunti sends her message to Yudhishthira and her other sons, what she does is no less than a shock treatment. Sometimes that is the only way to bring people out of their apathy that traumas push them into. It is interesting that Krishna attacks Arjuna as he begins his teaching by calling him a kleeba [eunuch, which was a shocking term of abuse for a warrior in the Mahabharata times] and Kunti uses the same term for Yudhishthira at the beginning of her message to wake him up from his apathy.

What Kunti is teaching Yudhishthira and her other sons through her message is the winning mindset. And what Krishna teaches Arjuna through the Gita too is the same: how to be a winner. Of course, a winner in a still higher sense than what Kunti means. Kunti sees things through a mother’s eyes, while Krishna sees things through God’s eyes.

Krishna wouldn’t let his friend be a loser. On one occasion in the epic, Krishna says such is his friendship with Arjuna that he would pull out his very flesh and give it for his sake. How can he then let Arjuna act like a loser as he is doing now?      

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Living Bhagavad Gita 013: Arjuna’s Emotional Hijack

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for people living and working in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times filled with stress and fear. This scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully, achieve excellence in whatever we do and find happiness, peace and contentment.

[Continued from the previous post.]

Arjuna seeing all the relatives gathered there was overcome by great compassion and said, “Seeing my kinsmen standing here eager for battle, my limbs are failing me, Krishna.  My mouth is dry, my body is shivering and my hair is standing on end. The gandiva is slipping from my hand, my skin is burning, my head is reeling and I am unable even to stand steady.” BG 1.27-30

Kamboji is a brilliant Malayalam movie based on a widely published real incident that happened in Kerala in my younger days. It is the story of a man named Kunjunnni besotted with the highly sophisticated performing art kathakali which takes years of training to master. Kathakali is what Kunjunni lives for, all his dreams are about it. He has seen the great masters of the art performing and what he wants to become is what they are.

At a rather advanced age to learn kathakali, he comes to the guru he adores most and begins studying under him in his small school in a remote village. He is soon recognized as highly talented and almost fully accomplished in the art. A loving father-son relationship soon develops between the guru and his disciple. After some time the aged guru hands over the kathakali school to Kunjunni and goes away. Kunjunni is given a place to stay in the large house of the family that owns the school and soon their daughter Uma, herself an accomplished dancer, and Kunjunni develop love for each other.

The ugly face of jealousy now enters the picture and the village prostitute is bribed to accuse Kunjunni of making her pregnant. Without allowing him to say a word in his defense, he is asked to leave the school and go away immediately. It is the girl of the house who asks him to leave, her parents being away, thus bringing to an instant end his dream of becoming a great kathakali artiste and teacher as well as living the rest of his life with the girl as his wife. He rushes to his teacher – but the teacher too drives him away accusing him of shaming him. All these things happen in the first half of a single night, driving Kunjunni insane with pain and loss. In a state of fuming rage, Kunjunnni goes to the home of the prostitute and stabs her to death.

What happened to Kunjunni that night is what is called an emotional hijack. Under normal circumstances Kaunjunni wouldn’t harm an insect, but under the impact of the emotional hijack he brutally kills a woman. 

Modern psychology speaks of emotional hijacks as states in which we are completely taken over by our emotions, our thinking and reason are suspended, our intelligence itself is blocked by the amygdala glands in our brain and we either go wild and do the craziest things or collapse helplessly under the burden of our emotions, paralyzed, unable to stand on our legs, our body drained of all energy, our mind losing all clarity.

It is Daniel Goleman, famous for his masterly books on Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence who coined the term amygdala hijack. As Goleman explains, even though evolution has taken us a long way ahead, we still retain within our brain the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass of nuclei, one in each of our brains, the left and the right. The amygdala is essentially a survival tool and what it does is to instantly respond to threats. Thinking takes time, assessing a threatening situation takes time but the amygdala that functions based on memories, instincts and impulses does not. The amygdala is fast, really fast, whereas our intelligence is not.

For instance, if we are driving on a fast road and all on a sudden another driver cuts in from a side road, our response to it has to be instant. If it is left to the intelligence to take a decision and then respond, it would try to assess the distance between the two vehicles, their speeds and so on. But the amygdala gives the order for instant action and your foot goes up from the accelerator and comes down on the break without any loss of time. 

However, this system designed for instant action has its weaknesses too. Since actions are taken before thorough assessments are made, they can often be wrong. Also, the amygdala does not differentiate between real threats and imagined threats. The amygdala reads a threat to the body or life and a threat to the ego – an emotional threat – the same. And, unless we are in control, guided by the amygdala we react the same way to a physical threat and an emotional threat. We experience increased heart rate and blood pressure, our breathing becomes quicker, faster and shallower, our body begins to shake, we sweat, our thinking brain is shut off and we respond to the situation with an instant and intense unconscious reaction produced by our emotional brain, sometimes frightening ourselves as in the case of Kunjunni.

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We saw how what Arjuna sees and what Duryodhana sees are very different, though they are looking at the same thing. To the power-intoxicated, war mongering Duryodhana the people assembled in the battlefield are fierce warriors whereas to Arjuna they are grandfathers, fathers, sons, uncles, nephews, brothers, gurus and so on, all his own people. And his limbs suddenly fail him, his mouth dries up, his body trembles, his hairs stand on end, his grip on his bow goes lose, his skin burns all over and his mind reels. He is unable even to stand, let alone fight. All these are typical signs of an emotional hijack.   

The Mahabharata speaks of several emotional hijacks. Later, during the war, when Abhimanyu is killed, for instance, such is Arjuna’s pain in spite of all Krishna’s teachings that undergoes another emotional hijack. On another occasion during the war Yudhishthira, defeated and humiliated by Karna, experiences an emotional hijack. He loses all control over himself and insults Arjuna’s prowess in war and his celestial bow gandiva leading to Arjuna taking a vow to kill him.

A young man was once sent to me by his father who had attended one my emotional intelligence workshops for corporate executives. The son used to work for a multinational company and was under tremendous pressure to perform for a boss obsessed with deadlines and constantly growing targets. Over time unable to manage his work stress, the young man developed low blood sugar, a physical condition ideal for emotional hijacks, and in that condition losing control over his emotions he exploded at his boss, shouting at him, abusing him and publicly humiliating him, which cost him his job. His father wanted me to help him master his emotions so that such situations did not arise in the future.

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One of the greatest lessons the Bhagavad Gita teaches us is samatvam, remaining balanced under all circumstances. Again and again, throughout his teachings, Krishna stresses the importance of samatvam and asks Arjuna to remain balanced in victory and failure, praise and censure, gain and loss, while dealing with enemies and friends. In spite of what the situation is and who you are dealing with, remaining mentally balanced is absolutely essential.  A warrior who is intimidated by the situation and loses his mental balance has no chance of victory, whether he is in a real battlefield or in a corporate one.

For success in any endeavour, we need what Krishna calls vyavasayatmika buddhi, mind that is resolute and one pointed. And that is possible only if our minds are steady and undisturbed by thoughts of success and failure, or any distracting thoughts for that matter, while engaged in doing something. That is why Krishna asks us to remain unaffected by thoughts of victory and failure while engaged in action.

Krishna does not mean pleasure and pain are the same, gain and loss are the same. What he means is none of these should make us lose our balance of mind. We have to remain unperturbed, collected and composed, fully in control, while we are acting if we are to succeed.

Which does not mean we should not celebrate when victory comes. The Mahabharata shows us Krishna celebrating joyously victories, for instance after Karna used on Ghatotkacha his all powerful, never failing shakti called Vaijayanti given to him by Indra. The shakti could be used only once, Karna had been keeping it for use against Arjuna, and Krishna was happy beyond words it had been used against Ghatotkcha and Arjuna was safe from it, which called for celebration.      

Krishna makes the importance of remaining balanced and not getting carried by our emotions absolutely clear repeatedly throughout the Gita. In spite of that, unless we have an open mind it is easy to misunderstand him. I remember an occasion when I was explaining to a large group of senior business school students the importance of remaining sama in all circumstances using a verse from the Gita when one of the students objected and asked me rather aggressively how we could deal with enemies and friends the same. She asserted she would never do that, she was going to deal with friends the way friends should be dealt with, and with enemies the way enemies should be dealt with.

Well, the Gita does not ask us to deal with enemies and friends the same. For instance, Krishna certainly does not want Arjuna to treat the warriors on his side and the warriors on the enemy side the same. You should stand with the people on your side and support them; and with those on the enemy side, you should fight. What Krishna says is that you should do this with a balanced mind, with a calm mind, centered and focused, without letting your emotions carry you away, without giving your emotions a free reign to take your decisions for you.

An HR manager, for instance, will have to take tough decisions against a corrupt person, whatever his feelings for him. To fail to do so will be to fail as a responsible manager. A person who is habitually unpunctual, who is lazy, who consistently shirks his responsibilities, will have to be dealt with as he deserves in spite of the fact that he may be your friend or nephew and you love him. But you should do it with a calm mind, and not in anger or vengefulness. That is what samata or samatvam means.  

We are familiar with the story of how Krishna killed his cousin Shishupala. Right from the beginning Shishupala was abusive of Krishna and Krishna quietly endured it all, never reacting. He had promised Shishupala’s mother, who was Krishna’s aunt, that he would not do anything against her son until he crossed a hundred occasions of insulting him.  There were numerous occasions that called for punitive action by Krishna but it was only when he went beyond all limits during Yudhishthira’s rajasuya sacrifice that Krishna acted against him, reminding him that he has crossed the limit of one hundred instnces. Before doing so, Krishna had warned him again and again. That is samatvam.

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In the battlefield of life, we all need control over our mind, control over our emotions, and should be able to resist the tendency of emotions to hijack us. Emotions are like the horses that pull the chariot of our life, and we should keep our mastery over them unless we are to end up in the nearest gutter or in a hospital.

Meditation is a powerful way of developing control over the mind and not letting our emotions hijack us. Practicing mindfulness while engaged in all kinds of activities like having a cup of coffee, taking a walk, trying to solve a tough problem, having a conversation with someone, or, to use some traditional examples, mowing the garden, splitting wood, or pulling up water from a well, helps us develop mastery over the mind. The Shiva Sutras, a book of Kashmir Shaivism frequently considered to be among the most advanced books on meditation and spirituality, asks as to be constantly mindful.

Regular practice of deep breathing can be very helpful. The first thing an emotional hijack affects is our breathing – it becomes rapid and shallow. So if we can keep breathing deeply – breathe abdominally, allowing our abdomen to expand and shrink as we breathe in and out, and not from the chest by holding our stomach tight – it will be of immense help. No emotional hijack is possible so long as our breathing is abdominal.

Arjuna’s grandson Parikshit is an unforgettable reminder to us for what happens when we are emotionally hijacked. He was on a hunting trip chasing a deer, was tired, hungry and drained of all energy. The deer had disappeared and seeing a rishi sitting in meditation nearby, he asks him if he had seen it. Unknown to Parikshit, the rishi, Shamika by name, was observing mauna, a vow of silence, and does not respond to the king’s repeated questions. Losing control over himself, Parikshit does the unthinkable: he picks up a dead snake he finds nearby and drapes it around the rishi’s neck, something no sane man would do, something unimaginable in a Bharata king, unless he had lost all control over his emotions, unless, to use the modern expression, he had been emotionally hijacked. When the rishi’s son Shringi later learns about the incident nd curses Parikshit to die within seven days. And that is how Parikshit loses his life.

One of the most brilliant examples for a woman who amazes us with her self-mastery is Draupadi in the dice hall of Hastinapura during what is perhaps the most shameful incident in all of Indian history. Wagered and lost by her husband in the game he was playing with Duryodhana, this magnificent woman is brought dragged into the dice hall by her hair from the women’s quarters of the palace by Dusshasana. There Karna calls her a prostitute for living with five men. Duryodhana calls her a slave and revealing his naked left thigh asks her to come and sit on it as though she was a common whore, while her husbands remain helpless spectators to the whole monstrous incident. On the orders of Karna, Dusshasana tries to disrobe her in that assembly of men that included her husbands, their cousins, her father-in-law, men like grandsire Bhishma and guru Drona and scores of other kings come to watch the dice game. And all this happens when she was in her monthly period and as custom required in those days was wearing a single piece of cloth. In spite of all this, she retains mastery over her emotions and has the presence of mind to ask if she had really become a slave to Duryodhana since her husband had already lost himself when he wagered her.

Not once does she allow her emotions to hijack her throughout the whole incident. When her appeals to the elders in the assembly fail, she prays to Krishna for help and is miraculously saved. Following the miracle and the terrible omens that began appearing everywhere, a terrified Dhritarashtra begs her for forgiveness. He then asks her to ask for boons and she asks for just two boons, first that Yudhishthira be freed from slavery and then that her other husbands who had also become slaves in the dice game be released from slavery and given their weapons and chariots. Asked to ask for still more boons, this woman, dignity personified, says no, saying a kshatrani is entitled to ask for only two boons and she has already asked for them.  And then she adds calmly that if her husbands are freed and have their weapons with them, then she does not need anything else, giving us goosebumps as we read of it after five thousand years, making us to want to stand up and clap for her from across five millennia.

Krishna teaches Arjuna throughout the Bhagavad Gita the importance of such self-mastery. He teaches him through the words of his divine song how to develop such self-mastery even in the middle of the most challenging situations. Through Arjuna, he teaches us how to fight the battles of our life without surrendering to feverishness, in full mastery of ourselves, without allowing emotional hijacks to overpower us – so that victory and glory are ours.    

O0O

Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra

Thank you in advance for your questions and comments.

Living Bhagavad Gita 006: Take My Chariot between the Two Armies, Krishna

Short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for busy, stressed people living and working in these volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times. The teachings of the Gita, originally meant for leaders, can help us improve our relationships, combat energy drain and solve our personal and professional problems. The scripture born in a battlefield teaches us to live fully and achieve excellence in whatever we do. Based on my years of experience as a Management Professor and Corporate Officer Trainer.

[Continued from the previous post]

Then, O Lord of the earth, seeing Duryodhana's men in position and the armies about to clash, Arjuna, raising his bow, told Krishna, “O Krishna, take my chariot between the two armies. I want to see the warriors I am about to fight. I want to have a look at those gathered here for battle, wishing to please the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra. BG 1.20-23

Arjuna already knows who the main warriors on his side and on the enemy side are. But in spite of that he wants to have a look at them before the battle begins.

Arjuna could not have meant that he wants to have a look at the hundreds of thousands of ordinary soldiers gathered in the battlefield. Obviously, if he meant to assess his chances of victory and the magnitude of the challenge, he must have meant the leading warriors on the enemy side. And who are they? Karna will not be fighting so long as Bhishma stands in the battlefield, so Arjuna couldn’t have meant him. Could he have meant Bhishma, Drona, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Duryodhana, Dusshasana, Shalya, Bhoorishrava and so on? But he does not have to take a good look at any of them – they are his grand uncle, his gurus, his uncle, cousins and so on. He knows them only too well. Still he says he wants to take a good look at them: “I want to have a look at those gathered here for battle, wishing to please the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra.” Why does he say so?

A lot of the time in our life, particularly on momentous occasions crucial for us, for others or for the world in general, words come out of us in spite of ourselves, we do certain things not originating in us but happening through us, for which we are just instruments, just nimittas.

Ancient Indian literature talks of several such incidents. In the Ramayana we have the example of Kaikeyi who loved Rama more than her own son Bharata but in a weak moment, under the influence of the jealousy and intolerance incited by Manthara, asks Dasharatha to exile Rama to the forest for fourteen years and in his place crown Bharata as the yuvaraja of Ayodhya. Kaikeyi’s action here is completely uncharacteristic of her. Reading the original Ramayana of Valmiki, we find that Kaikeyi is a loving, generous, talented, highly competent person untouched by cunning and other evils of the world – in fact, there is no one like her in the Ramayana, she is so beautiful as a person. Nothing she had done before that or anything she does subsequently explains her stubborn demand in those moments. Various Ramayana traditions explain her behavior in those moments as Goddess Saraswati sitting on her tongue and saying through her the words she speaks so that the purpose of the gods, the slaying of Ravana, could be achieved. Kaikeyi here is just a nimitta for the purposes of the gods.

In the Mahabharata itself we have the story of close friends Devayani and Sharmishtha, one the daughter of Guru Shukracharya who was the priest and advisor of the Asura king Vrishaparva and the other Vrishaparva’s daughter. The two girls go out to bathe and sport in a nearby river and enter the water after leaving their clothes on the bank. When they come out later, their clothes have been mixed up and Sharmishtha by mistake wears Devayani’s clothes. In the social order of the day the position of the guru and the brahmana was far above that of the king and socially Devayani, Shukra’s daughter was much superior to Sharmishtha, the princess. When Devayani angrily asks Sharmishtha why she wore her clothes, the princess arrogantly tells the guru’s daughter that she had no right to protest, after all she was the daughter of a man living on her father’s wealth. For her act of wearing Devayani’s clothes, and much more for her haughty words, Sharmishtha had to live her entire remaining life as Devayani’s slave. The consequences of this incident are far reaching and become the crux of several incidents in Indian mytho-history, including why the Yadavas [Krishna is a Yadava.] came to be considered of lower caste status than kshatriyas who they originally were.

The epic tells us the whole incident was orchestrated in the world of the gods. It was Indra who commanded the wind god Vayu to blow and mix up the clothes, thus confusing Sharmishtha and making her pick up and wear Devayani’s clothes. Sharmishtha and Devayani are mere tools for their purposes.

Sometimes we all become helpless tools in the hands of daiva, the samashti. That is what is happening here, which is one way understanding Arjuna’s demand to Krishna to take his chariot between the two armies standing ready to pounce upon each other. Had he not asked Krishna to do that, the momentous event of the birth of the Gita, the scripture that has guided vast chunks of humanity over millennia, would not have happened.

Sometimes the samashti, or God if you will, makes us do strange deeds and say strange things that puzzle us later. We wonder why we said or did such those things.  All of us experience moments when events happen through us, we say things that are not spoken by us but through us, for which we are mere nimittas.  

A few days ago the city in which I live celebrated Khatu Shyam Mahotsav, the festival of Khatu Shyam, also known as Barbarika, the son of Ghatotkacha and his wife Maurvi. In folk imagination, Barbarika was the fiercest of all warriors in the Mahabharata. He was sacrificed by Krishna before the Mahabharata war begins, with a blessing given to him that his head would, as he wanted, remain on a peepal tree in the Kurukshetra battlefield and witness the whole war. According to folk traditions, again, after the war was over an argument broke out among the Pandava brothers as to who among them should be given maximum credit for the victory and each of the five brothers claimed that honour. Krishna took all the brothers to the peepal tree and asked Khatu Shyam to tell them who among the brothers should be credited for the victory. Barbarika laughs and says during the entire war he saw only one thing: Krishna’s Sudharshana chopping off the heads of all the warriors and Draupadi drinking up all the blood.

According to this legend, the war was actually fought by the two did not actively participate in it: Krishna and Draupadi. All the others were nothing but instruments in their hands, or let’s say, instruments in the hands of the power that uses all of us for its purposes.

The Unknown makes us tools in its hands for the purposes of the samashti.  

O0O

The Unknown works in mysterious ways.

I spent the summer months of 1979 in Uttar Kashi, staying in Tapovan Kuti, the ashram in which my param guru Swami Tapovanam used to live. One day hearing that the Mahamandaleshwar from Rishikesh had come to the nearby Kailas Ashram and was giving a lecture there, I went to listen to him. The Mahamandaleshwar was an engaging story teller and told us a beautiful story about a passenger in a bus on a Himalayan road.

From the moment this passenger got into the bus, the other passengers noticed strange, inexplicable things happening. Once they saw a tree just falling across the mountain road ahead of them, making further journey impossible until it had been removed and the road cleared. Another time the engine heated up and had to be cooled before the journey could continue. A third time the driver felt unwell and had to rest. On mystery filled mountain roads where danger lurks at every turning, people tend to be superstitious, as it happens whenever we feel in the presence of powers greater than ourselves over which we have no hold. Soon a whisper started making rounds among the passengers of the bus – it’s all because of the new passenger, before he boarded the bus everything was fine, now nothing seems to be all right.

Two more incidents, and the passengers started demanding loudly – the new passenger had to get down from the bus. It was because of him all these bad events were happening. They started threatening the driver too, saying that they wouldn’t allow the bus to proceed unless the passenger was sent out of the bus.

Eventually that is what was done. And after the passenger was forcibly disboarded on the lonely mountain road, the bus had travelled not more than five minutes more when all on a sudden the old bridge on which they were started loudly cracking and violently shaking. And then, before the driver or the passengers could realize what was happening, the bridge collapsed under them and the entire bus plunged into the deep gorge beneath, killing everyone on board.

The Mahamandaleshwar concluded the story saying all the passengers on board were destined to die, except the new passenger. It was destiny that made the passengers vociferously demand that the new passenger be thrown out of the bus, he said, so that the accident could take place.     

We do not do everything that happens through us. We become the corridor for much that the samashti does for its own purposes. We tend to take pride in those actions and incidents if they are good, and feel guilty when they are bad. Wisdom is neither taking pride for the good things that happen through us and nor feeling guilty about the bad things that happen through us.

Which does not absolve us from responsibilities for the actions originate in our ego.  We must pay the price for such actions, says the Indian tradition: avashyam anubhoktavyam kritam karma shubhaashubham. naabhuktam ksheeyate karma kalpakotishatairapi. “We must experience the results of actions we have done, both good and bad. Even after endless years our karmas are not exhausted unless they are lived.” 

Later in the Gita Krishna asks Arjuna to fight the entire battle without ego. In verse 30, Chapter 3 of the Gita, Krishna asks Arjuna: “Surrendering all your actions to me, with your mind rooted in the self, without any selfish motivation, without the sense of ownership and without feverishness, fight!”  

mayi sarvaani karmaani sannyasya-adhyaatma-chetasa
niraasheer nirmamo bhutva yudhyasva vigata-jvarah

This is one of the central verses that summarises of the philosophy of action Krishna teaches in the Gita.

Actions happen through us whether we like it or not. But by letting our ego come in between, we can disturb their free flow. The wisdom of the Gita asks us not to let our ego come in the way of this flow of the will of the samashti and to become free paths for actions originating in the samashti. That is what Krishna means when he asks Arjuna to become a mere instrument in the hands of God: nimittamaatram bhava savyasaachin.

Interestingly, modern neurobiology and performance psychology tell us that in our moments of the highest performance excellence, we are without our ego, we transcend the ego. In fact modern performance psychology insists: without ego transcendence high excellence is just not possible. And once the ego is transcended, whatever we do will have the stamp of excellence.   Ego transcendence is the basic requirement for excellence in action.

Ego transcendence is also the secret of all creativity. Our most creative ideas come to us in moments when we temporarily go beyond the ego. Ego transcendence is the secret of intuition. All scientific discoveries and all technological inventions are made by us in those moments when we are without the ego. So is all great art, all great music, dance, literature and everything else that is beautiful in the world.  

When Arjuna asks Krishna to take his chariot between the two vast armies, the samashti is acting through him so that the Bhagavad Gita could be born. Arjuna of course does not understand this, but Krishna does. I am sure Krishna’s beautiful smile must have appeared on his face as he obeyed his friend Arjuna’s ‘command’!

O0O

Image courtesy: Devender Malhotra

Thank you in advance for your questions and comments.