Hari om everyone,
We have learnt verses till 24 from Chapter 2 of bhagavadgeeta.
We discussed chapter 15 of the Geeta this week. In this chapter, Krishna continues his discussion on the nature of reality which he likens to a tree. Reality emanates from an infinite divine and it is the great root from which the tree springs from but we become so enamored with the contents of the vast tree that we miss the source. There are some traits we must cultivate within us so that we may get to the root of the tree – freedom from pride and delusion, control of one's desires and non-attachment to pleasure and pain.
What do these traits mean? There is a lot of room for misinterpretation but we emphasized that non-attachment does not mean complete indifference to the world around you, similarly we are not advocating something so drastic as abandoning your family and retreating to the mountains. We are advocating a more modest goal of preventing our desires from controlling us. For instance, we discussed how we can remove distractions when work needed to be done – what do we do when homework needs to be done but there's our phone or computer offering us hours of entertainment? Some of the students stated that they cope with distraction by locking away their phones while doing their homework or removing them out of sight. This is a good start and we must continue this process towards non-attachment.
We will carry this discussion forward in the following weeks.
Regards,
Raghav and Rashmi.
