The Bhagavad Gita Is a Mirror
Ankit Tyagi: In your book, you say, “the Gita does not talk of an ancient war — it talks of the war right now. "Do you also see how difficult it will be for you to remain with the Gita and Shri Krishna, if you have a particular attitude towards women, or towards caste, or something else?"
Acharya Prashant: Definitely.
Ankit Tyagi: I just want to ask you — a lot of people would claim, "Main to Gita padhta hun roj and “I am a Hindu,” and so on and so forth — “I identify myself with this and that.” Can people claim or hold the Gita in their hand and still have prejudice against women or anybody or any caste or creed?
Acharya Prashant: No way. If a thousand people claim to have read the Gita, or understood the Gita, or to be following the Gita, I would be surprised if even one of them is deserving of going beyond Chapter one. Because chapter one is where we are all stuck.
See, Arjuna has a particular attitude towards Varna — loosely translated as caste — and Arjuna has a particular attitude towards women. And Arjuna is superstitious. He is talking of all kinds of souls and superstitions — you know, diseased ancestors — and they will come, and the dead ones are going to curse us.
So, there is woman, there is caste, there is superstition, and there is physical attachment: “These are all my blood relatives. How do I shoot arrows at them?” These four things.
People talk of following Shri Krishna, but the fact is we are all followers of the culture that dominates Arjuna.
And Arjuna is very resistant to the words of Shri Krishna in the initial chapters of Gita. At one point, he actually tells Shri Krishna, “Why are you confusing me? Just let me go. I don't want to fight, because I have my other priorities. I have my ancient notions, and I don't want to give them up.” So, that's how we all are — remaining in the state of Arjuna. We claim to be followers of Shri Krishna.
Ankit Tyagi: So we are stuck at chapter one.
Acharya Prashant: We are stuck at chapter one. Arjuna didn't remain stuck at chapter one. Arjuna chose to follow Shri Krishna through the remaining 17 chapters — what came ahead — and Shri Krishna kept on dismembering Arjuna. Shri Krishna kept on demolishing Arjuna, and Arjuna stood through that.
Most people who say they are reading the Gita — when they are demolished, when their notions are shown to be false, they just run away. That's why staying with the Gita is so very difficult.
Or, you can just be a hypocrite and stay with the Gita and say, “Well, here I am. I'm done, even with chapter 18, and now I am a pandit of the Gita.” And you can claim all those things, but that's sheer hypocrisy.
The real thing is: have those four things disappeared from your life — has gender prejudice disappeared? Has caste distinction disappeared? Has superstition disappeared? Has physical attachment disappeared?
If these things are disappearing from your life, only then you can claim to be really devoted to Shri Krishna or being a student of Shri Krishna. Otherwise, you're just blabbering.
Ankit Tyagi: So, essentially, there is a difference between reading Gita and understanding Gita.
Acharya Prashant: Gita has to become your life. Gita is not literature, Gita is a mirror. You look at the mirror, and if there is a speck or blemish here (pointing to face), you want to change something on your face when you look at the mirror. If you look at the Gita and that doesn't result in changes in your life, then you are misusing the Gita. In some sense, that is disrespect to the Gita. Anybody who holds the Gita must be very, very ready to look within and discard all that which is unnecessary, superficial, borrowed, and therefore antithetical to life. If that is not happening, then that's disrespect to the Gita.
Ankit Tyagi: I think that's why they say that Gita is a way of life. It teaches you how to conduct your life. But, you know, just probing you further on this — like you said, a lot of people are just stuck at chapter one because of these four prejudices that you have counted for us. Why don't people then understand? Why is it difficult for them to leave chapter one, go to chapter two, still think that they are reading Gita, but not understand the essence of the chapter?
Acharya Prashant: Because they do not understand that the Gita is a medicine. And all medicines are for a patient's specific disease, right? All medicines are, in that sense, customized — we may say, bespoke. So we do not want to see that we are Arjuna, but we want to benefit from Shri Krishna.
The thing is, Shri Krishna was not speaking to everybody on the battlefield. Shri Krishna was speaking to one particular person who was revealing his insecurities, his doubts, his fears and attachments, and all those things. So you have to first of all see, that you are very similar to Arjuna, and only then Shri Krishna's message can be relevant to you. Because Gita is something between a Shri Krishna and an Arjuna, right?
If you're not Arjuna, the Gita is not for you. So, chapter one is actually the most important chapter for a seeker, for a student of the Gita. But chapter one is the one we just flip through. Chapter two is when Shri Krishna starts speaking. So that's the real deal.
Chapter one, okay, fine — fast forward — because it opens with Dhritarashtra speaking, and there is something from Sanjay, and then even Duryodhan is there, and then Arjuna speaks. Shri Krishna is hardly found there. So we don't want to see what is there.
But the fact is, all improvement is for me. Therefore, it begins with my condition. First of all, I have to have a mirror to look at myself. And only then improvement will ensue. But we do not look at ourselves. The way I pick up Gita is, "Okay, what is Shri Krishna saying?" The question is, to whom? To whom are these words being said? If I do not realize that they are being said to me, in my particular condition, then this remains just holy literature to be worshipped and to be kept away. This will not become life.
Ankit Tyagi: So I think it will start from first identifying your own flaws, identifying your own shortcomings, and then trying to seek an answer of how Shri Krishna could have helped Arjuna in that sense and possibly identifying with that.
Thank you so much for this very interesting, enlightening and in the current context, I mean, it may seem that Gita was written in a different era altogether — but it's very relevant.
Acharya Prashant: Very relevant. It's as if it's written for us today.
Ankit Tyagi: Yeah, true. In the online age also, it gives you a lot of answers of why we behave in a certain manner as we do. Thank you so much for speaking to us.
