Welcome to the reading of the Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living by Eknath Eswaran.
I'm Rachel Peeples,
And today I'm sharing with you the wisdoms and benefits of meditation,
What happens when we meditate,
And the further challenges and agitations that allow us to continue to grow in our capacity to quiet our minds,
Even out our emotions,
And deepen our practice.
You may want to use this track as a meditation or as a study tool to learn about meditation.
If you'd like to use it as a study,
I recommend grabbing your journal and a pen or pencil and pausing the track as needed to jot down pieces that resonate with you or that trigger an emotional reaction for your further reflection.
You may instead want to find a comfortable position to sit or lie down,
Closing your eyes if you are in a safe space to do so,
And simply listen to the words and let them sink in to your consciousness.
Let's take a few deep breaths to prepare the mind to receive.
Chapter 4.
Wisdom in Action.
Verse 22.
They live in freedom who have gone beyond the dualities of life and who never compete.
They are a light in success and failure and content with whatever comes to them.
The nature of life is to bring us sunshine and shadow,
Pleasure and pain,
Success and failure,
Praise and censure.
Wherever we live,
In the west or in the east,
On the campus or in the bazaar,
This inescapable duality of life will always be around us.
It shows our pathetic condition that almost every one of us hopes that one day we will be able to isolate pleasure from pain.
This is the one everlasting project of humanity.
It may not have been done by anybody in history,
But I'm going to do this one day in my lab,
We say.
And when I have isolated the pleasure baseless,
I will be free.
There are others who would like to isolate praise.
Most of us appreciate praise,
But it is disastrous to become dependent on it.
If we are going to allow our security to be bolstered up by the praise,
Appreciation and applause of others,
We are done for.
I have even heard about a well-known movie star who goes to sleep at night with an applause record playing.
This is going to make him more and more insecure.
Under no circumstances should we be agitated if someone ignores us.
I,
For one,
Cannot find enough words for the advantages of being ignored.
Nobody recognizes me.
How good it is.
I can walk anywhere in freedom,
For nobody thinks I am anybody.
How good it is.
I always say that if I could write a play,
I would call it a place to be nobody,
Which means that I do not want any attention from others.
I do not want any appreciation from others.
I do not want any support from others because I have the source of all appreciation,
Support and security within me.
In life,
There are occasions when we are ignored and sometimes forgotten.
That is the time to remind ourselves.
Oh,
I am forgotten.
Very good.
Nobody attends to me.
Excellent.
Why should I need anybody's attention?
This is the attitude of the real mystics who are content because they are complete.
We have a standing invitation from the Lord within who says,
Anytime you feel like it,
You can make yourself free.
Come to me.
I have a banquet spread for you with ambrosia,
The nectar that gives everlasting life.
These attitudes can be cultivated skillfully.
When I see the kind of feats performed in the circus,
I know they must have required enormous endeavor.
Most of us have seen two trapeze artists swinging over and under each other across the tent to exchange trapezes in midair.
You don't just go on the trapeze one day and say,
I'm going to jump from one to another.
It's the same kind of practice,
The same kind of skill that people develop who,
For example,
Win tennis championships.
You do not go to Wimbledon on the first day you play tennis.
You keep practicing,
You develop your skills,
And one day you'll be at Wimbledon playing on the central court.
It is the same on the spiritual path.
These are attitudes that all of us can develop.
Even those of us who are the most sensitive to praise and appreciation can learn to be so secure within ourselves that the word rejected can be expelled from our dictionary.
The one person who will never reject us is the Lord,
And that is enough to make up for all the rejections we may have to undergo at the hands of everyone else.
One of the central ideas of the Gita is that as long as you look at life through the spectacles of pain and pleasure,
Success and failure,
Praise and censure,
You will never see life whole.
One of the fatal flaws of the intellect is that it can thrive only in the land of duality.
You take the intellect from the sea of duality and throw it on the land of unity,
And it dies.
It says,
You mean I can't divide?
I can't categorize?
I can't classify things?
I'm done for.
When Sri Ramana Maharshi used to tell people to go beyond pleasure and pain,
They would ask,
Do you mean be indifferent?
His answer would be,
When you go beyond pleasure and pain,
You reach abiding joy.
Pleasure is something that comes and goes.
Joy is something that abides.
And it is this state of abiding joy for which the mantra Rama stands.
We enter into this state when we gradually go beyond the duality of pleasure and pain,
The duality of pleasure and pain,
Success and defeat,
Praise and censure.
The next word is vimatsara,
Do not compete.
It is a strong word and a concept which is alien to us today.
We have come to believe it is only when we compete that we can give our best.
I think there are other ways in which we can be inspired to give our best,
And one is by reminding ourselves that when we contribute to the welfare of our family,
Our community,
Our country,
And our world,
We are actually serving the Lord.
If we want to be aware of the Lord,
If we want to be united with the Lord,
We must contribute as much as we can to the happiness of those around us,
Turning our back upon our own petty pleasures and profit when necessary.
This word,
Vimatsara,
Also touches upon the harmful way in which most of us tend to compare ourselves with others.
This,
Too,
Has become so common today that in order to esteem myself,
I should always be able to say,
I am better than he,
So I am good.
We have a distinguished American spiritual teacher in India,
Nearing his 100th year now,
Who took the Sanskrit name Atulananda.
It is a lovely name which means one who does not compare people.
As our spiritual awareness grows,
We will know that the Lord is present in everyone and that there is a uniqueness about everyone.
Truly spiritual people never try to compare themselves with others.
I have never been able to understand the origin of this phrase,
Keeping up with the Joneses.
It does not matter very much whether we keep up with Tom Jones or anybody else.
What is important is for us to keep up with the Lord by serving him in everyone around us.
Even here,
As long as we compete with each other and compare with one another,
A certain amount of envy is inescapable.
There is a girl in Kalidasa's play,
Shakuntala,
Who has a very beautiful name,
Anasuya,
She who is free from jealousy.
This is a very rare type,
An ideal we can all try to imitate by not competing among ourselves,
Or comparing ourselves to others around us,
Remembering that all of us have complete worth and value because the Lord is present in us all the time.
Siddha is success.
Asiddha is failure.
Siddha is failure.
Shri Krishna again repeats these important words,
Saying,
If you want to love me,
You must remain alike in success and failure.
In my humble observation,
It is not so very difficult to remain calm in failure.
It is much more difficult to remain calm in success,
Which goes straight to the head.
Those who have made money,
Who have become famous,
For example,
Sometimes drop their old acquaintances and move out of their old area.
In the spiritual tradition,
It is when you become famous that you go back to your old area and say to your old friends,
Now you can all bask in my success.
We have grown up together and you have taught me so many things that I owe my upbringing to you.
This is the kind of reverse perspective we can all try to follow.
The higher we rise,
The more we should remember those who are less fortunate.
Whether people recognize us or praise us or drop us or even denounce us,
There is no need for us to lose our calmness,
Our security,
And our awareness that the Lord is within us all the time.
Take a few deep breaths as you reflect on the words that were read today,
On the commentary,
On what resonated with you,
On what conflicted with something inside you.
Think about this concept of duality.
How does that show up in your life?
How can you know that to exist within it as the world around you operates in this way?
How can you become aware of this phenomenon and still be solid and grounded in yourself?
Existing within this framework of duality but not letting it affect your inner wisdom,
Your inner peace?
You are a solid foundation of the divine within.
Thank you so much for reading with me.
This brings this session to an end.
I look forward to our next reading together.
