(Gita-6) The Mind's Battle: Arjuna's Search for Liberation

Acharya Prashant

27 min
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(Gita-6) The Mind's Battle: Arjuna's Search for Liberation
The word for a Guru does not really exist in the English language. So, they have borrowed Guru itself, Guru. But they have borrowed the word Guru and rather misunderstood it and misapplied it. So, anybody who seems to be an expert at anything, can be justifiably called a Guru in the English language. Now that's not the proper usage in spirituality or in Sanskrit. This summary has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation

गुरूनहत्वा हि महानुभावान् श्रेयो भोक्तुं भैक्ष्यमपीह लोके | हत्वार्थकामांस्तु गुरूनिहैव भुञ्जीय भोगान् रुधिरप्रदिग्धान् || 5||

gurūnahatvā hi mahānubhāvān śhreyo bhoktuṁ bhaikṣhyamapīha loke hatvārtha-kāmāṁstu gurūnihaiva bhuñjīya bhogān rudhira-pradigdhān

Meaning: It would be better to even beg to eat than to slay such high and noble teachers. If I slay them, then in this world, all my consumption would be rather drenched in blood.

~Chapter 2, Verse 5

Acharya Prashant: Śrīmad Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, verse 5:

Arjuna is continuing with the poignant expression of his dilemma and his rather unenviable predicament. He says, "It would be better to even beg to eat than to slay such high and noble teachers. If I slay them, then in this world, all my consumption would be rather drenched in blood. Look at my teachers. Look at my teachers, see how exalted they are. How am I to slay them? And if I do that, whatsoever then I receive as proceeds, won't it be stained with their blood? Am I expected to consume and enjoy that?" So that's Arjuna's position, his dilemma.

A few things are to be seen here because when you just superficially glance at what Arjuna is saying, it's difficult to pick a hole in the argument. "Look at how exalted my masters are. If I were to kill them, how am I to enjoy the resultant proceeds, 'ārtha-kāmāṁ'—whatsoever is then obtained to please my desires?"

Who is a teacher? Who is a teacher? At the core of Arjuna's indecisiveness lies this moot question, "Who is a teacher?" If you are a body-identified person, then the teacher to you is just a body like you are. If you are mind-identified, then the teacher to you is a bundle of memories, an apostle of an ideology, somebody you have been related to and drawn your identity from.

And Arjuna seems to be suffering on both counts—the body and the mind. It is indeed interesting, rather amusing, that to Krishna, Arjuna points that his teachers are all standing on the other side of the divide. To Krishna, Arjuna is saying, "Look that way. That's where my teachers are. How do I listen to you and fight them? That's where my teachers are."

You can't still see the irony? If the teacher is just a body to you, then he will not be someone who can be very fundamentally different from you. The body is pre-programmed to deal with other bodies in a specific way, and the body cannot exceed that programming. If the teacher is a body to you, then try as hard as you may; your association, your affiliation, your relationship with the teacher will not exceed a certain mark.

You know very well in advance how to deal with bodies, that's human beings. Just as animals know how to deal with one of their kind, you too, will know. So, then someone who teaches you certain skills, you will not hesitate in calling him a Guru. Then trainers will be labelled Gurus, people who impart you skills, physical or mental, will be labelled Gurus. And in doing that, you will miss out on exactly that which Arjuna is very ready here to miss out on—the real one. If the trainer has been taken as the Guru, then where now is the scope for the real one, the real Guru?

Obviously, the trainer holds a certain importance. How much is the importance that a trainer must hold? Exactly the importance that your body holds in your life. And the body being an important resource, rather the central resource, cannot be said to hold zero or minimal importance. Since the body is important, you feed the body, you clean the body, you keep the body healthy; similarly, the trainer too is important.

Then comes the teacher of the mind, the teacher of the mind. He trains the mind, fills it up, informs it, gives it a certain shape. Such teachers, I refer to as knowledge providers—KPs. They have a very important role obviously, because if you have not imparted the right knowledge, the result will be that you will fill yourself up with all kinds of ignorance, which is false knowledge.

So, the knowledge provider, who is commonly called as the teacher, definitely has a place, and that place is a higher one compared to the place that a trainer is going to hold. Why? Because as you stand, for you, the mind must be more important than the body. If the body is paining, that is something you can relatively easily tolerate; but, if the mind is suffering, it will be more difficult for you to accept, right?

If an organ starts malfunctioning, you may even decide to give up on the organ. If your legs develop gangrene, you may decide to get them amputated. But if your mind goes corrupt, that's a far bigger tragedy. You cannot give up on the mind. You cannot slice away a portion of the mind, right? As we stand, being mentally deformed is definitely a bigger tragedy than being physically deformed, no? Being mentally ugly is a more serious thing than being physically unattractive, right? So, the teacher holds a higher place over the trainer just because the mind holds a higher place than the body.

But the teacher, this knowledge provider, is still not a Guru. Why? Because he does good things to the mind, but still keeps you within the mind. He fills up the mind in a nice way, but does nothing to clean, purify and empty it. A mind filled with incense or jewels is obviously a better place than a mind filled with trash and stink, but it still is a very heavy mind. Irrespective of what it is full of, it remains filled up, it remains occupied.

In a relative sense, better to be occupied with something worthy rather than something ignoble, useless. But any kind of occupation, after a while, becomes unbearable, becomes a disease. The natural state, the highest state of the mind, is an empty one. A mind relieved of everything, mind as a void, that's what the ego really aspires for.

What is the mind?—The ecosystem that the ego creates around itself. The ego is an entity that does not like itself too much, then how can it bother to like what it has accumulated around itself? The ego says, "I cannot stand to bear my own identity, the doer that I am. Then how do I please myself with the result of all my doings over time?" And the mind is nothing but the results and the remnants of the doings of the doer. Who is the doer?—The one who is at the centre of the mind, the ego. Are you getting it?

So, the contents of the mind never really please the ego. They may do so for a limited while, episodically everything appears beautiful and desirable. There is nothing that is continuously undesirable. If something is continuously anything, then that beats the law of duality. Just as nothing can be continuously desirable, equally, nothing can be continuously undesirable. So, all that is quite cyclical. And the ego has had enough of that, it's trapped in that cycle since eternity.

And in its own depths, the ego knows, “All this that I have accumulated around myself is no good—wealth, gems, relationships, knowledge, memories, concepts, ideologies; none of that takes me beyond a point, and that point is me.” There is nothing in the mind that helps the ego transcend itself. And so even the knowledge provider, in some sense, beyond a point, actually starts irritating the ego.

The ego starts getting fed up of this KP, says, "Come on, all this that you tell me and give to me sounds so high, so sublime, so scholarly. When I heard you for the first time, I actually felt like falling for you. Streams of pure knowledge coming forth from you to me. But I have received enough of the stream, and it's not quenching my thirst." Are you getting me? So, that's where KP ends his part. He must bow down and depart.

Now begins the role of the Guru. His brief is to expunge the mind of whatever it has. Does the Guru bestow knowledge? No! He uses knowledge. Please understand the difference between a teacher and a Guru. The sole role of the teacher is to impart knowledge. And when it comes to the Guru, the Guru uses knowledge as an instrument. He does not seek to impart knowledge; he uses knowledge to wipe you clean. And therefore, the knowledge that the Guru uses has a certain unique quality, it is camphor-like. What's peculiar about the camphor? What's that quality called?—Sublimation.

What’s sublimation? So, you keep something on camphor, and you ignite the camphor. What happens to the thing you had kept on camphor? It gets burnt down, right? Disappears maybe. And what happens to that piece of camphor as well? That too, disappears without trace. So, camphor is unique. The knowledge that Guru uses must be camphor-like. So, if you find two people imparting knowledge, and you want to discern which one of them, if any, deserves to be called a Guru, then try to detect a qualitative difference in the knowledge being imparted by the two.

If the knowledge that's coming to you is likely to settle down in your mind—settle down is a beautiful thing, no doubt—settle down like a very expensive piece of furniture in your drawing room, no doubt it adds to the ambience, it's royal. People walk in and say, "Wow, that's regality, wonderful." Nevertheless, it just starts sitting in the room, occupying space. It becomes a presence. It takes away from the void. That's a teacher, it gives you something very beautiful, very worthy, very scholarly. You can display it and gain respect. “Victorian furniture, see.” “Oh, he is a scholar of medieval European poetry. So, Victorian furniture.” That's the kind of knowledge he's provided you with.

And you will be overawed. You will say, "Wow." But, is he cleaning you up? That's the question. People don't realize the difference. They don't see that knowledge is of three different kinds. There is knowledge that enters your mind and spoils it. There is knowledge that enters your mind and decorates it. And there is knowledge that enters your mind and cleans it.

The first kind of knowledge is not necessarily provided to you by persons. A lot of that is inbuilt in your system since birth. So that first kind of knowledge comes to you majorly from your body itself. The newborn need not be told that he is the body. The body itself has indoctrinated the newborn into believing that he is the body. It was not from TV or newspaper, or social media that he gathered his identity, first identity. The first identity was inbuilt, ready-made.

And then, obviously, we know. Later on, we have all the nonsensical forces around us, draining trash into the mind. So, all that together constitutes the first kind of knowledge. Knowledge, that your body keeps impressing you with and knowledge that is drained into your mind by your various contacts. Your contact with your family, with TV, with the educational system, all the contacts that you are having with your environment continuously. So, all that is no good.

Then there is organized knowledge. Knowledge that's based on facts. Knowledge that's so worthy, so beautiful, you feel like keeping it on your head. Knowledge you want to worship. Knowledge that's a product of research in universities and laboratories. Knowledge that fetches you the Nobel Prize. That kind of knowledge, that's the second class of knowledge.

And then the topmost class. Knowledge that does not fill up your mind, rather directly addresses the one that you are. Because if your mind is being filled up, something is being done around you, not to you. You are the ego, and the mind is all around you. The space around you is being filled up—that's knowledge accumulation. The third kind of knowledge, the knowledge that comes to you from the Guru, does not intend to fill up the space around you. It directly addresses the one that you are.

And if someone claims to be a Guru, and yet his knowledge, or his method, or any other equipment, or resource that he is using, does not directly address your fundamental central identity, then that fellow does not belong to the top class. Are you getting it?

That's a Guru. The word for a Guru does not really exist in the English language. So, they have borrowed Guru itself, Guru. But they have borrowed the word Guru and rather misunderstood it and misapplied it. So, anybody who seems to be an expert at anything, can be justifiably called a Guru in the English language. Now that's not the proper usage in spirituality or in Sanskrit. It's not as if there is no word for the Guru in the English language, Preceptor—so there is a word. And sometimes, the Guru is also called a master.

Having built this foundational framework, now please see where Arjuna's suffering lies. He is not recognizing who the real Guru is. So, the real one is standing right in front of him, very much available, and yet Arjuna is crying hoarse for those who are definitely much below the real one. In fact, he is ready to disregard the advice of the real one for the sake of the lower ones. Do you see this?

Shri Krishna would have taken it with a pinch of salt. But actually, this is some kind of lack of respect towards Shri Krishna. Right in the middle of the Gita discourse, the only disciple that the Guru has, is complaining to the Guru that all his Gurus are lined up on that other side. How is the real one supposed to feel? The real one is not supposed to feel anything. He must have a very thick skin. He must be able to bear nonsense and ingratitude of all kind, continuously.

The whole thing here is that only the real one knows that the disciple is being ungrateful. Because the disciple is unconscious, therefore the disciple is unconsciously ungrateful. Therefore, the disciple cannot even be fully blamed for being ungrateful. Now the teacher is conscious. So, the teacher knows that this one is ungrateful.

Arjuna, in his own eyes, is not doing anything wrong. In fact, he feels that he is being wronged by being pushed into the battle. At this moment, he actually holds a bit of a grudge against Shri Krishna—"Why are you doing this? Why are you pushing me? Do you want me to kill them? What kind of a heartless, warmonger are you? I am a dove; you are a hawk. I am a pigeon carrying the message of love and amity, and you are a kite, an eagle, just bloodthirsty." That's Arjuna's world inwardly right now.

Only Shri Krishna knows how deeply Arjuna is missing the Truth, and therefore, how deeply Arjuna is being ungrateful right now. Arjuna says, "They are all Mahānubhāvān." That's the word he uses—Mahānubhāvān. So, they are all Mahānubhāvān. And who is Krishna? Someone who is getting Arjuna to fight the Mahānubhāvān. By implication, Shri Krishna cannot be Mahānubhāvān. Do you know Mahānubhāvān, understand? Someone great, great of mind, that's called a Mahānubhāvān. What else has he said? "I would rather in this life beg and eat, than to enjoy the pleasures that come with murdering my teachers."

See how badly and totally he is missing the point. As if Shri Krishna wants him to fight for the sake of artha-kāmāṁ. As if Shri Krishna is saying, "You fight so that later on you can enjoy the riches and pleasures in Hastinapur." For Arjuna, it's all personal; for Shri Krishna, the battle has much, much bigger significance and importance. For Arjuna, it's about fighting his brothers and elders and teachers; for Shri Krishna, it's about establishing Dharma. And that's where the conflict between these two is. They two definitely are not on the same page.

When Shri Krishna says, "Fight," and when Arjuna hears, "Fight," it's not the same meaning that the word carries for them. For the two of them, the word ‘Fight’ carries very different meanings. Arjuna being a person, is operating strongly from his personal centre. Shri Krishna is not seeing persons at all, Shri Krishna is seeing Dharma. Shri Krishna is not concerned about the few people that have gathered on the battleground.

Oh, you will say they are not just a few, they are a few hundred or a few thousand, some like to ever that they were a few million. History would say they were closer to a few thousand. But, irrespective of what the number is, that number is a very small number compared to the population of Hastinapur and the entire Indian subcontinent at that time. Equally, that number, who are assembled as soldiers, fighters on the battlefield, is an insignificant one compared to the numbers that would be affected in due time in future by the result of the battle.

So, there are those who condemn Shri Krishna for getting a few thousand or a few lakh people killed. What they do not see is the number that Shri Krishna saved, and that number is 100x or 1000x, and I might be just understating; it could be a million x. For every person who bled on the battlefield, for every head that rolled on the field, there were probably a million that were saved by Shri Krishna.

But just as we are talking here of Arjuna's ingratitude, we must realize how ungrateful we have been as writers of history, interpreters of history, and recipients of Shri Krishna's blessings. We have received what he had to give us, and yet very frequently, we keep implicating him of the charge of violence. There has been no dearth of people who have been continuously accusing Shri Krishna, "Oh, he got so many people killed." So that stream of ingratitude flows unabated.

Christ came several centuries after Shri Krishna, and a lot of people say that what he brought to his land, the Middle East, was actually something very, very foreign, and that's the reason he got killed, or at least he was tried to be killed. So, they say he probably came to India and learned from here. Nobody can be sure, there is no historical record. But when you look at what he is saying, that is so very different from the Old Testament that one feels intuitively, “Is this coming from India?” So, one is reminded of his statement on the cross, "Oh Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing."

So, talking of ingratitude, how does one not remember Christ? And whenever you will remember Christ, you will have to wonder, did he come to the place of Shri Krishna? We can only guess.

Verse 6, Chapter 2:

न चैतद्विद्म: कतरन्नो गरीयो यद्वा जयेम यदि वा नो जयेयु: | यानेव हत्वा न जिजीविषाम स्तेऽवस्थिता: प्रमुखे धार्तराष्ट्रा: || 2.6 ||

na chaitadvidmaḥ kataranno garīyo yadvā jayema yadi vā no jayeyuḥ yāneva hatvā na jijīviṣhāmas te ’vasthitāḥ pramukhe dhārtarāṣhṭrāḥ

Meaning. It's difficult for me to decide what would be better, that we should conquer them or they should conquer us. I cannot really say which one is better. These sons of Dhr̥itarāṣhṭra who stand in front of us are the ones, we should not care to live after they are slayed.

~Chapter 2, Verse 6

Arjuna continues. It's difficult for me to decide what would be better, that we should conquer them or they should conquer us. I cannot really say which one is better. These sons of Dhr̥itarāṣhṭra, he is referring to them Dhr̥itarāṣhṭra , just as Arjuna being the son of Pritha is referred to as Pārtha. So, these sons of Dhr̥itarāṣhṭra who stand in front of us are the ones, we should not care to live after they are slayed."

Look at the exuberance in emotion and attachment. "There those sons of Dhr̥itarāṣhṭra who stand facing us, I will not care to live after I have slayed them." This kind of relationship, this kind of association, "Shri Krishna, I really do not know what is better, whether to slay them or get killed by them. They are the ones I love so much, that I would not want to live if they are no more." That's the mark of the person who has totally lost, the state of 'Vibhramā'—complete inner haze and confusion.

You remember what Shri Krishna says when we begin here? This is verse 11: "Arjuna, you are mourning for them who should not be mourned for. Those who do not deserve much pity or consideration, you are bothering too much for them. You are regretting something that does not deserve any regrets. You are sorrowful for something that merits no sorrow."

And that's the mark, I said, of the person in an inner haze. He does not know where to place value. In contrast, the person who is operating from the right centre, may display much the same emotions and signs as the person operating from confusion; but there will be a critical difference. Please understand this.

The fellow operating from clarity, too, might be found mourning and regretting. But he will be regretting something of a very different value. In contrast, the fellow operating from confusion, too, might be found regretting something. But the object of his regret will be entirely different. So, the difference between clarity and confusion is not that one regrets and the other does not. The difference is that they regret for different values. The reasons and the objects associated with their regret are very different.

The saint dances, so does the sinner; but there is a fundamental difference in the reason. The saint laughs, so does the sinner; but the laughters are very different. The saint weeps, so does the sinner; but the reasons are very different. The saint does run after something just as the common householder, but the object that the saint might run after is going to be very different from the object that the householder would run after. The difference lies not in the act, but in the actor. The difference lies not in the running, but in the runner. Are you getting it?

And that's the reason Shri Krishna admonishes him by saying, "You are grieving for something that does not deserve your grief." Mind the word ‘deserve’, and the word ‘deserve’ relates to value. You have to see what is it in the world that is deserving of your attention, your energy, your time, your money, your dedication, and your tears. Not everything in the world deserves what you have to give. Not everything deserves to be seen, not everything deserves to be heard, not everything deserves to be coveted, not everything deserves to be spurned.

The mark of the one operating from the right centre is that he knows exactly what is to be taken and what is to be dropped; what is to be admitted and what is to be denied. Admission and denial are things that must happen with everyone, irrespective of whether you are operating from clarity or confusion. It's just that when you are operating from clarity, you will know exactly—because you are clear, because you are clear— you know exactly what to admit into your insides. You will know when and for what to rejoice.

And it's not as if the fellow who is operating from ignorance and inner haze does not rejoice, he does rejoice. In fact, he could be found rejoicing more frequently than the one with clarity; but he would be rejoicing with respect to all the wrong objects and for totally wrong reasons. Now what is wrong here? Is it a thing of morality? No! Right and wrong are only with respect to your consciousness and its ultimate objective.

Because your consciousness desires freedom, liberation, and clarity; so, the wrongness of something is determined by the extent to which it fails in bringing you clarity. The rightness of something is decided by the extent and the ease it displays in bringing you clarity. This definition you could state in other terms as well. Instead of saying that if the thing brings you clarity, it is right for you, you could say if the thing brings you liberation, it is right for you. If the thing brings to you selflessness, it is right for you. You could put it in many other ways, and all those ways are surely interrelated, right? Just like the same sentence translated in five languages.

That is the first response that Shri Krishna has to offer. All this emotional outburst, and beating of the chest, and welling up of the eyes, rather overflowing of the eyes; Shri Krishna is observing all this and then he finally says, "Dear friend, dear student," that's his first response, or one of the first responses because he has said a few things at the opening of the second chapter as well; so don't quote me wrong here. In the opening of the second chapter, too, he has said a few things. But this is amongst the first things that Shri Krishna has to say. "You are weeping for those who do not deserve to be wept for," that's all.

He does not say, "Don't weep." He says, "Weeping is all right, but do you know whom to weep for? It's all right to weep, weep buckets, but weep for the right reason and the right people. They do not deserve your sympathy, your grief, and all this that you are offering to them."

The mark of inner delusion is misplaced value. Misplaced value. There would be nobody here who does not value stuff, this or that. Do you value something? You do. Do you value something? Of course. Do I value something? Surely. The difference lies in the one who values. If I know who I am, then I will know what I need. The value that I accord to something will then correspond to the utility that thing really brings to my core, and that's the way to assign value to stuff. What is stuff? Prakṛti . When I say stuff, I mean Prakṛti .

There are objects all around you. How do you know which one to go for? You have limited time and limited energy. There are so many books around you, how do you know which one to read? So many people, how do you know which one to associate with? So many movies. So many movies, and you surely have great movies as well, but which one is the great one for you? How do you determine that? That's the test of clarity. Clothes, which one and why? Food, company—most important thing, words, your own emotions. Why got hurt? How much emphasis, how much importance do you want to attach to your hurt? That's what. “Oh, I got hurt?”

And if you will get illuminated or polished, you will get hurt. It is impossible to be polished and not be hurt. Now, what is it that you place higher value on? The fact that you have been given a shine, a lustre, or the fact that you have been given a blister? Yes? And when you will get that lustre, blisters too, are likely to accompany. Are they not?

So value is everything. Knowing what is important. And I have said that a few times. This was the first question that struck me very powerfully when I was a teen, rather a pre-teen. "Who am I," etc., came much later. This was the question, "But what is important?” That time I didn't have the Vedantic insight to ask, "For whom?" Today you all are smart enough and you will immediately say, the moment somebody says, "But what is important?" Very coolly, you will shoot back, "For whom?" I had nobody to, and probably I was too young to be taught that. But this question kept looming large, "What is important?"

How do I know what is important? And that's the entire thing here with Arjuna. He does not know what is important. Would you learn what is important? Yes? Then the Gītā is for you. The Gītā in some sense, is a document on valuation, the subtle art of valuation. How do you value something? Value is everything.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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