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I stand before you today to speak about them not as an academic not as a
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scholar I don't even speak Sanskrit very well I'm not a monk or a nun I am not a
lifetime lifelong practitioner of the ancient texts or the philosophies I
haven't been steeped in them since I was a child none of that I came to them rather late in life myself only about nine years ago when I started researching for the Gita for children and that too very reluctantly I was determined to prove to my editor who wanted me to write a version of the Gita for children that the Gita was not meant
for children at all that's how much I knew about it I had not engaged with it in any kind of depth.
I was I was intimidated by it because anyone I knew who talked about the Gita knowledgeably seemed to have you know
gone for Gita classes for years and everyone who spoke about it said you know we have only just peeled the first
layer and I said listen this is me who has not engaged with the Gita at all and
you want me you want to saddle me with the responsibility of interpreting it for a young and impressionable audience
certainly I'm the wrong person so it was really my fear that was keeping me from doing this and unlike the Greek unlike
Greek mythology made famous in the recent past by authors American authors like Rick Riordan who writes the Percy
Jackson series uh Rick Riordan can do whatever he wants he can take the Greek gods from Mount Olympus and put them on
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top of Empire State Building and nobody's going to bat an eyelid everyone is going to enjoy it because obviously
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nobody worships the Greek gods anymore but in India for the last I mean I don't know how
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many thousands of years because it's very difficult to date these texts they were always overly transmitted there's
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no material evidence of when they were first compiled uh Sanskrit is a language of sound not of writing and although we
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have now started writing Sanskrit using the devnagri script it didn't have a script of its own it was never meant to
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be written down it's a it's a language of sounds that was meant to be heard so these uh texts are very difficult to
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date but for thousands of years they have remained on India's and the world's best seller lists and continue to be
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vibrantly alive in the land of the above so one cannot be too irreverent about them there is a limit to the kinds of
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Liberties you can take when you're interpreting the Gita and therefore I I was in a you know fever of
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incomprehension and fear and I said I don't want to do it although I put it across as oh I'm sure it's not for
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children I'm sure it's for people over 65 you know all these excuses I was trotting out and my editor said you know
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this is unlike you why don't you give it a chance you shouldn't be saying that you don't want to do it without even
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knowing what it's about and that I thought was fair so I said okay I'm going to take a month engage with it but
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if it's going to be patriarchal if it is in the least bit castiest if it is sexist if this that the other I am not
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going to whitewash it for children I'm going to you know say it or I'm going to not do it at all plus there was
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the other thing you see I had just finished writing what became India's first fantasy Adventure series for
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children so I was being regarded as the school author and cool children's authors do not write about scripture you
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know that was the other thing so all these things were keeping me away from it but when I honestly and sincerely
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engaged with it for just one month and I don't even speak Sanskrit I was looking at various commentaries and things I was
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so Charmed within within 15 days within a month I had turned around entirely 180
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degrees and in fact I was telling my mom and everybody else why did you not have
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a copy of the Gita in the house why was I not exposed to this great text and I had made it my mission within 30 days
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that this great Tech should go out to people in any which way now as uh Mr
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nandir jaiswal said I am going to talking when I refer to the ancient Indian texts today
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we know there is such a large volume of ancient Indian texts some of it is not
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if some of it is lost much of it is still inaccessible in the sense that it hasn't been translated it's lying in
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archives there is so much and there is spiritual literature there is secular literature there is scientific
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literature there's a whole wealth of literature and there's never going to be a time when one person is going to be
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able to access or talk about all of it and therefore for the for the purpose of this talk I am going to only refer to
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three texts or three bodies of work that I have some familiarity with given that
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I have written books for children and those and they are The Vedas upanishads
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and the bhagavad-gita
Now While most of you here perhaps are familiar with these terms The Vedas the
upanishads and the bhagavad-gita I suspect many of us do not know how they relate to each other and you know where
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they are where they are situated in India's uh chronological and geographic history so I'd like to take just a few
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moments to locate them to situate them before we proceed and if you already know this please indulge me because I
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think there may be people who don't know uh it was the way of the ancient rishis of India to when they were going when
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they were trying to explain an idea that was new or unfamiliar they would start with an idea that was already familiar
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and proceed from there and if we had to use the same technique today uh between
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The Vedas upanishads and the Gita it's clear that the bhagavad-gita is the most popular most beloved text best known so we will start from there and then go back so the bhagavad-gita most of you know is a conversation
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it's a conversation between two best friends the pandava prince Arjuna The Greatest Warrior the greatest Archer of his day and his best friend and Mentor Krishna this conversation happens in a Battlefield just moments before A great battle that would divide that was going to divide and Destroy Bharat for a while was was about to happen.
Bharat is of course India's word for India and this particular episode of this
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conversation 700 verses of it is part of a sprawling epic uh the Great Indian
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epic called the Mahabharata and the Mahabharata as we said in bharata it was
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just the Indian name for India and the Mahabharata can simply be translated as the Great Indian story it has every
element of drama in it it is said that there is not a single human emotion that
has been unexplored in the Gita in the Mahabharata and it continues to be a
compelling story that engages people 2500 years at least after it was first
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composed
and I said the Mahabharata is a sprawling text with many many characters how many shlokas do you think it has
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ashloka is a couplet or a verse how many shlokas in the Mahabharata anyone
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more than ten thousand way more than ten thousand
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thirty thousand getting warm yeah actually there are a hundred
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thousand a hundred thousand shlokas in the Mahabharata and remember these were meant to be learned by Heart by wrote
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there was no Google to go back and refer and see what does it actually say and you had to listen to it it wasn't even
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written down so when I talked to children I always joke aren't you glad you were born in the 21st century otherwise this would be good holiday
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homework you know learn all the hundred thousand verses of the Mahabharata thankfully that didn't happen hundred
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thousand verses which when compared to the other great epic of India which is the ramayana the Mahabharata is four
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times more than four times the length of the of the ramayana what about the the great epics that are the Cornerstone
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foundational texts of uh Western literature the Greek epics The Iliad and the Odyssey The Iliad and the Odyssey
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put together are less than half the size of the ramayana and the Mahabharata is a hundred
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thousand versus long which makes it the longest epic story and perhaps the oldest of that size that we know in the
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world and in the middle of the Mahabharata is embedded this tiny conversation called
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the bhagavad-gita it is only 700 verses
I mean only 700 verses only relatively speaking but 700 verses out of 100 000 which makes it less than one percent of the size of the Mahabharata and yet and yet it is this point seven percent of the Mahabharata that has captivated people of all ages and all countries whatever culture they come from whatever gods they worship it has captivated people from the beginning of time
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but where does the philosophical content of the bhagavad-gita come from that many of us may not know but Veda
vyasa who the author of The Mahabharata who also composed the bhagavad-gita brought all those he distilled the
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wisdoms of the upanishads which were sprawling texts again and very abstros abstract not easy for common people to
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understand and he was he was determined that these wisdoms would be passed down to Future Generations so he distilled
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all those wisdoms into the compact form that we know as the bhagavad-gita so that is the relationship of the
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bhagavad-gita to the upanishads which were way older texts they were written first and then Veda vyasa distilled all
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their wisdoms into the bhagavad-gita where where do The Vedas come into it the upanishads are part of The Vedas
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which are even older texts and The Vedas as far as we know are the oldest extant
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Indian texts and the Veda what does it mean it means
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knowledge because with the root word of Veda is with which is also the root sound of
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Vidya so it's basically means knowledge and I was discussing with one of my friends just before the event started
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what kind of knowledge when when the Veda says knowledge what does it mean what knowledge
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and that knowledge is not book knowledge is not knowing the capitals of all the
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countries of the world it is not rocket science it is not quantum mechanics what what the ancient texts mean by Veda is
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the knowledge that is timeless Eternal and unchanging and what that knowledge is is the knowledge that all
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of us each one of us is neither our bodies nor our minds nor our emotions we
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are in fact our Invincible Indus in indestructible spirits that exist inside
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each of us so that is the Veda and all the ancient Indian texts basically guide
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us the purpose of all of them is to guide us towards what is called darshana
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seeing the ability to see that all external differences among people and
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animals and trees and birds and insects and mountains and rivers they all look like very very different forms but
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darshana is being able to see that all those externalities are only the illusion that on the inside we all carry the same Divine spark of creation and in
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that sense we are all the same so these are the stated goals of the ancient Indian texts
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now where and when they were they composed so The Vedas the oldest extent
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texts at least 3500 years ago and I'm I'm not going to say this with any kind of this is written in stone because as I
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said very difficult to date but The Vedas the oldest one the rigveda was around at least 3500 years ago who
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composed them the people the brightest minds of a civilization called The Vedic
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civilization for want of a better word because they compose The Vedas so we call them The Vedic civilization where
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where did they base themselves like all other ancient civilizations they base themselves on the banks of a river which
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river was this the mighty River Indus which actually is a Greek term Greek
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word for Indus Greek name for the river the uh The Vedic people called it the
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Sindhu so on the banks of the Sindhu and my Banks of another river called the Saraswati this great civilization Rose
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and from there they come they were the people who composed and gave us the gift of The Vedas
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um the the two rivers of the two rivers only the Sindhu exists anymore uh the
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Saraswati is gone but these two were part of a river system of seven rivers in fact the Indus being the main river
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its tributaries being the Ravi the China the jilam the settlage and
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BS so these were the seven rivers and the ancient Indians The Vedic people
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they called it they called the whole river system the sapta Sindhu the Seven
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Rivers these this was the kind of natural Northwest boundary of the
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geography of the land that was called Bharat and to the west of that was the Persians now the Persians in their
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language uh substituted the word the sound sir in Sanskrit with the word her
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with the sound her and therefore to the Persians the sapta Sindhu was in fact
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the Hindu and the people who lived beyond the
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Hindu they called the Hindus the land that was that existed beyond
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the Hindu River was to them Hindustan and that is the origin of the word Hindu
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it never referred to a religion it referred only to the people who inhabited a certain geography and
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therefore it is for this reason that the word Hindu is not to be found in any of
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our ancient texts neither is the word Hinduism because that is only about
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200 years old that terminology did you know that it's only about 200 years old there was no word called Hinduism so why
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is why does why do our ancient texts not have the word Hindu in them for a very simple reason the ancient texts were
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written in vedics in a language called Vedic Sanskrit from which the Sanskrit that we speak today classical Sanskrit
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is derived and the word Hindu is a Persian word so obviously it wouldn't find a place in a sanskrit's text and so
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what did the people of The Vedic Age what did they refer to themselves as they call themselves The Arya
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and what did they call their philosophy as they called it not Hinduism not
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hindut they called it sanatana Dharma and what does that mean the Eternal law
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something that is universal beyond the bonds of race Creed caste color
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geography truths that apply to all Humanity forever and they seem to have a
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good thing going because they still apply to this day we are looking to them for guidance and solace
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because while the world around us has changed unrecognizably uh since the
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world of The Vedic people the world inside us has not changed at all
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this is the problem and this is the this is the wonderful thing about it that the world outside may change as you can
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bring in technology everything is improved you're living much much more comfortable lives with living longer lives medicine has improved to such an
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extent that we are now dreaming of living forever freezing our brains all kinds of things but has the inner world
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of human beings changed at all we are still beset with the same questions obsessed with the same anxieties the
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same fears and nothing has changed in that world and that is why these texts because they appeal to that world
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because they address that world continue to be relevant so what are the questions that these
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texts purpose to answer what are those existential questions that have troubled Humanity since time immemorial
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simple questions who am I where did the universe come from
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where am I going what is the purpose of my life and most important how can I be happy
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and most importantly what happens after death because if there is one thing certain In
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This Very uncertain chaotic world of ours where we cannot even imagine or predict what is going to happen in the
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next minute one thing we all can be sure of is that we are all going to die
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and not just us I know it's a morbid thing to say but it's but it's true and not just us but everyone and everything
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around us that we know and love from the moment of its birth is hurtling
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inevitably towards its death so obviously these are the questions that have obsessed Humanity from the
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beginning and every religion in the world every philosopher all of them have tried to answer these questions which
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other branch has tried to answer these questions in a different way science science is on the same quest to answer
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these very same questions but coming at it from a different angle so and these
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texts purpose to give us answers to those questions so let us let us do an
experiment and let's see what the what the ancient Indian texts say about say where did the world come from where did
the universe come from right every civilization every religion every culture has its own origin myths
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uh origin stories its creation myths uh anybody familiar with any creation myths
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[Music] okay Brahma is the Brahma is the creator all right any other creation it's not
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necessarily Hindu creation myths yeah
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vibrations okay okay The Big Bang Theory that's right that's
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the creation we I I'm not sure people will be amused if we call it a creation myth but it's an origin story
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although even science is not sure that that's how it happened it's just a theory but I'm surprised nobody mentioned the biblical creation myth yeah which is actually the most popular when I travel around in India and talk to children in
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schools and I ask them about origin stories they will tell me the Greek ones they will tell me Egyptian ones and they
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will tell me the biblical ones but none of them will have any idea what the Vedic creation myths are
and to be very fair and to be very honest hand on heart I wasn't familiar with them either until I began to engage with The Vedas so the creation myths that are presented the the creation myth that is presented in the Veda is in the oldest Veda of them
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all the rigveda but here's the plot twist while every other culture and religion has one creation myth that you're expected to believe the rigveda offers four
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it says here's a creation myth this is how we think it all happened this is how we think it began
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you don't like it not impressed here's another one try this for size do you like it any better no okay here's the
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third one not happy try another one this is a fourth and if none of these impress you you are
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entirely at Liberty to go off and create or discover your own creation myth
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because The Vedas tellers The Vedic sages said this is what we think happened there is no way we can be sure
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imagine that what a gift across Millennia to us to be able to say to be
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given the Liberty to say maybe I don't know
nothing is cast in stone nothing is
written in stone Everything Changes even the truth they say there is nothing
called the truth that is your truth and your truth and his truth and her truth and that is what the four creation myths
presented uh tell us that you know there's this is one person's view of it this is another this is another this is
another uh we are not going to Hazard saying that this is exactly what it was and
I'm going to take this opportunity to read out to you one of the creation myths from the rigveda
it's quite dramatic and visual and I'd like you if you if you want to to close your eyes and imagine it as I read it
out in suitably dramatic fashion I will try uh and then we can discuss what it
says so this is a hymn or a sukta called the NASA Diya sukta which means the hymn of
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that which is not non-existent don't worry about that The Vedic sages were
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Masters at this word play and double negation and things like that so it so that it would take a while to wrap your head around it but never mind the title then
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there was nothing that was non-existent nor anything that was
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No Air No Light No Heaven no space
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no death no life no night no day
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Darkness hidden in darkness except for something that stirred In the
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Still by its own will and then was born of its own fire its own desire
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cleaving into above and below giving and receiving seed and womb it swelled the
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universe where chaos was Rife with power and life
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and now just listen up who really knows where it all came from this creation
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who can declare that this is how it was done even the gods came later
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and then the final nail in the coffin only he knows he who fashioned it all or
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does he and that's the note it ends on a passage
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a creation myth from one of our oldest texts and in that way it not only
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validates doubt it encourages it it urges us not to accept received wisdom
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not without questioning it if God himself can be questioned if his omniscience his existence can be questioned what other sacred cows can there be there are none left so it and the the
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ancient text encourages us to question doubt everything and in that sense it is
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as contrary to a religion as can be expected when religion is all about
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believing in the omniscience the omnipresence even the existence of God Hinduism or at least The Vedic religion which now we call Hinduism which started then questions everything and that is the that is The Wonder of it
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what does that mean when you're given the Liberty to create to come up with your own creation myths
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it means you're given the Liberty to Fashion your own universe
and it must be said that while there is a universe outside of us that we
physically inhabit the universe that we are most affected by is the one that we create in our heads
that is the universe we all inhabit all the time and that is why everybody's universe is different
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and Hinduism is all about customizing things no one size fits all a buffet of
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options if you don't whether it's God's goddesses you know food whatever it is
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rituals Traditions there's a buffet always and you pick what you want or create your own
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even the Gods gods and goddesses
this is my favorite question to ask and when I talk to Children um is Hinduism a polytheistic religion or a monotheistic religion and then of course I have to explain what polytheistic is and monotheistic is but if I asked you as this audience today
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the same question would you say how many of you would say Hinduism was polytheistic
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okay don't be shy yeah polytheistic means many gods yeah
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yeah I can't actually see you yeah now I can see yeah okay so not so many
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how many of you would say Hinduism is monotheistic okay and there are can I change my mind
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and there are a lot of you who haven't put up your hands at all who are like okay I shall just sit on the fence which
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is perfectly valid no problem yeah so the the answer the right answer is that although it looks to all intents and
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purposes like a polytheistic religion I mean you just have to visit a South Indian temple and look at the gopuram to
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see so many different gods and goddesses we have we have I mean I'm any Indian Hindu child can rattle off the names of at least 10 12 gods and goddesses but for all that Hinduism is a monotheistic religion.
we believe that all those different manifestations are just fractions of the whole and even the sum of all of them does not add up even to a fraction of the whole this is what because the truth about God which is described as a genderless nameless formless energy
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so there is no gender no name and no form and it's just a cosmic energy
and that kind of God that kind of an idea of God is very difficult for human beings
to absorb or understand and
human beings need some kind of personal deity to be able to engage with
to be able to find Solace and reassurance and so once again
Liberty was given create your own Gods whatever you want it is in other religions say God created man in His
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image and here we say you can create gods in your image whatever Gods you want and and and it is a and there's a beautiful story I want to share about that somewhere in one of the texts it says there are 33 koti 333 crore gods and goddesses in the Hindu Pantheon and because it's very unlike a Hindu or an Indian to put a cap on the number of gods or to be so precise about anything we thrive in vagueness we leave always options open for new data to flow in and change we are very much again saying this is how it was as you can see from The Vedic text itself so that is 330 million gods and goddesses
and I've always wondered who came up with this number and was I was quite convinced it must have been a British person at some
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point you know researching documenting classifying the things the Western mind loves to do he must have come up with
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this 330 million and I I was still puzzled though what 330 million and once I met a Brit person that I was taking on
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a tour on a tour of the temples and talking about Hinduism to him and he said yes I'm sure it was a Brit who
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brought it who came up with the number and for a very good reason and I said what was the reason he said that was the population of India at that time and that really explains what Hinduism is
one God for every single person customizable gods for everyone while
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everybody is quite quite sure understands very deeply that none of
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them are actually the real thing but this is what I like to engage with what about relationships while in many other religions God is a father figure uh all usually a father a male and
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usually a judgmental one sort of like Santa Claus
sitting and watching you have you been naughty have you been nice
where have punishments to be given
where have you know rewards to be given
the Hindu god because its genderless formless and nameless is none of those things and therefore once again you are
free to have whatever kind of relationship you want with your god there are a few father Gods perhaps I'm not sure how many are called are referred to as father Gods Shiva maybe but he's a very absent father he's he's
always on his own trip somewhere in the Himalayas so he's not and I mean the only story the story we know about him is that he cut off his son's head so not a very good father figure he's just a cool guy and there are there are many
other gods but you can have relationships like mother
mother is very very very strong the mother goddess you
can have relationships like you can your God can be your child best exemplified by Krishna because the kind of
unconditional love that you give your child is the kind of love you share with your God uh he can be your partner
you know uh girlfriend boyfriend any of those things again exemplified by Krishna and God can be your friend best
exemplified by Arjuna and Krishna in the bhagavad-gita and the Mahabharata so all
these are possible because no rules exist and and that is why Hindus have no
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problem going and lighting a candle in a church or bowing down at the tomb of a Muslim Saint or going into a Gurdwara
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and offering worship because we realize that all these are just different names
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and manifestations but the one God is the same it's just an energy and the
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upanishads had a name for this energy they called it Brahman
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and it was always referred to as an it an energy what does Brahman mean the
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root sound of Brahman is which is also the root sound of bruhat which just
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means vast large something that is so large that it can hold space for
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everyone and everything in the universe within itself that is the idea of God
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and the upanishads went one step further if as if questioning the existence of God and his omniscience was not enough
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the upanishads which came later went ahead and said something far more blasphemous
they said when you ask the question so we talked about where did the universe come from another question that is answered and a lot in these in
these texts are who am I and when the question came to the upanishadic sages who am I
they said simply you are God not even you're in the image of God not that you will get to God when you die not even that you you are different from God but you're trying to be him nothing like that
you are God already in this moment
you don't need to go anywhere
you don't have to wait in time space nothing
you are God and that is one of the mahavakyas of the upanishads
me you tell yourself I am Brahman
but it's not enough to just say I am Brahman
you have to live the sentiment of I am Brahman
and how how do you live that sentiment
by making yourself so vast as to incorporate everybody else's ideas
every other point of view with no disrespect
I don't mind what religion you profess what the color of your skin is what gods you worship what food you eat if you whatever different ideas you have
but it's only by listening to you and you and you and you that I might get
a glimmering of the truth that is Brahman
and for that reason I will make myself vaster and vaster and faster to embrace you
not make myself smaller and smaller and smaller and think of myself as a limited being
this is me this is all me this body is me this mind is me
these thoughts are me and you you are the other you are different
and I fear you and I don't know you and I hate you and that's why I will fight you this is me this is mine they they advise you leave all that why would you imprison yourself in a little body and a little mind when you are in fact Limitless when you are in fact infinite
instead let this be your quest in this life to make yourself larger and larger and larger so you Embrace everyone and everything in it in the Gita Krishna says when you can see a bit of yourself in every single thing around you and when you can see a bit of every single
thing around you in yourself then you have become Brahman imagine that if each
of us could see a little bit of ourselves in everything around us would we not hesitate before we thought a bad
thought before we said a wrong word a hurtful word before we did some hurtful action towards anybody or anything else
because harming them would be exactly like harming ourselves and that is the
sentiment contained in and it it is scary perhaps to think of
ourselves and involves a lot of work to get there but imagine how empowering it is
if I'm sure many of us have been to when often when we are on a trek up a hill
we've reached there it is late in the night we're lying down on our backs there's no pollution and we are staring up at this wondrous pudding bowl of the sky studded with stars seeing the Milky Way and we tell ourselves or our companions man I'm a nothing I'm inFitness infinitesimal I'm irrelevant I'm powerless and look at the heirs we give ourselves we are nothing in front of this Cosmos, and most likely your companion would agree with you
the same thing may have happened to you when you're on a beach and looking out at the vast expanse of ocean and you're telling yourself oh my God there is this Cosmos is so big and so giant and we we are mere specs we are nothing we are insignificant and once again your companions may agree with you
but if an upanishadic Sage happened to be passing by and overheard you he'd probably come over and give you a knock on the head for free and he would tell you how dare you think of yourself as a nothing when in fact you contain the cosmos and you would say I contain the cosmos
how do you say that and the ancient sages were nothing if not scientific empirical they examined things and came up with answers and he would have told you perhaps that so tell me what is the universe made of
and if you went by the ancient ways you would say it was made up of the five the great elements that make up everything in the cosmos and what are they water air fire Earth and space or ether but we call it space Akasha which holds it all which holds everything in it and they would have said what is a man made of and you would have said I don't know well
let's see shall we so what happens when a man dies
what is the first thing that happens he stops breathing aha so there was air in the man before and the air has now gone out of him so a man is made of air
what happens next his body grows cold
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aha so a man was made of fire I mean he had fire burning in him and now he doesn't it's extinguished so a man is made of Fire
what else happens the liquids the fluids stop flowing
no more digestive juices no more saliva no more blood flow everything comes to a standstill congeals so there was water flowing in him and now there isn't so a man is then made of water
what else happens his body shrinks
it begins to shrink as all the spaces inside get compressed his lungs his stomach his intestines all his blood vessels they all fall in upon themselves they collapse and there is no more space inside of him so the body shrinks
aha so a man is made of space and then if you leave the body for a little more time maybe you cremate him and then he turns into Ash and returns to the Earth
if you bury him once again the microbes get to work on him and he returns to the Earth so a man is made of Earth and they say do you not see the very same elements that make up the universe make you up
you contain the cosmos
you are as radiant as the sun you are as vast and deep as the ocean you are as mobile and Powerful as air
you are as giving and generous as the Earth
and you have the ability to hold all of humanity and everything else within yourself how dare you say that your insignificant powerless irrelevant
you are everything
you only we have to reach for that power inside of yourself and you will be strong you will realize how much power you have
and there's no question of becoming anything you already are
so the quest is only to go inwards and find it now
coming to the Gita itself the most beloved text
I love telling the story always it's my favorite and uh we talk we're talking about the uh what what the very just
the opening scene of the Gita holds so many lessons for us
so what is the opening scene there are these two armies arrayed about to fight the Battle of their lives
on one side are the hundred karva Brothers they are
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the ruling Kings so they have managed to amass a much larger Army of 11 akshahinis or battalions on the other
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side are their cousins The Virtuous Noble pandavas only five of them and because they are not in power they have
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managed to amass a smaller Army many people on the corowa side would rather have fought for the pandavas because
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they are much better loved but they are under obligation to the king they have to fight on that side so only seven akshahinis on this side and if you had
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been on a hill and were asked to call the result of the battle take a take a gamble most likely you would have said
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obviously the korvers will win look at their army look at their numbers in fact the mightily out numbered Panda was one
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and you would have guessed that if you knew that the field on which they were fighting which was called kurukshetra
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was also dharmakshatra a field that always favored the good so they had that
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huge Advantage anyway it's almost done at sunup is when the war begins the conscious have begun to blow in a few
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moments the Great War of the of the Mahabharata which is the centerpiece the Mahabharata is about to begin
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and then Arjuna the pandava gets it gets it into his head that he wants to be driven to the center of the battlefield
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and he tells Krishna who is his Chariot here Krishna can you drive me to the center of the battlefield please and goodness says why you know it's going to
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start in moments can we just please stay here and he says no no I want to lock eyes with everybody on the other side I
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want them to know that their personal angel of Doom is coming to get them that they will be gone by Sundown you know some psychological warfare is good
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Krishna come on take me to the center of the battlefield so Krishna says okay if you so much want it fine takes him to
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the center of the battlefield imagine that visual two glittering armies everybody wondering what Arjuna and
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Krishna are doing in the center of the battlefield there is Arjuna the pandava broad shouldered slim hipped golden in
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the sunrise with his mighty bow the gandhiva clutched in his hands looking at everybody on the other side
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and then a most unprecedented thing happens The Greatest Warrior in the
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world has a nervous breakdown right in front of everyone watching the
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gandhiva slips from his hands his hands are clammy his knees begin to buckle and he collapses to the floor of the Chariot
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turns to his friend Krishna and says Krishna I can't do this and Krishna says what just now you were like oh my God
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I'm going to lock eyes with them and kill everyone what happened to you and he says I don't know what I was thinking
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Krishna do you see who was on the other side there's my grandfather bhishma who has been more than a father to me since
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my own father died there is my Guru dronacharya who taught me to pick up a bow in the first place everyone on the
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other side are my cousins they're all my cousins maybe they are bad people but they are my cousins what about their
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sons my nephews who have dandled on my knee what about all those friends the Kings who are fighting on that side what
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was I thinking in which Heaven is there a place for someone who has murdered his teacher his grandfather surely this is
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an ignoble War I do not want to fight this thank God I have come to my senses
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please take me away from the battlefield and Krishna who should have just said yeah thank God you've come to your
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senses and what is never a good idea in any situation let's go turned around and gave him the lecture of his life and
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that lecture we call the bhagavad-gita and he told him in 700 verses
why it was so important
to fight
not run away from his responsibility
to stand his ground not use excuses
do his duty
okay it isn't it is no coincidence that this conversation happened on a chariot
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because if you went back to the qatopanishad that the upanishads the katopanishad has has a conversation
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between the god of death Yama and his young Protege nachiketa
and they're talking about the Chariot and what Yama tells uh nachiketa is that the Chariot the master the self rides in The Chariot of the body
so the Chariot is supposed to be our
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bodies the five horses that pull the Chariot are supposed to be our five senses
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always distracted by the world
always in pursuit of something selfish
always pulling in five different directions at once now if you let those horses of your senses you know let let them free if the rains are even a little slack they will pull away in five different directions
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and your chariot will be wrecked that's the end what is needed you need reins to be able to hold the senses back and which are the reins what are the reins the reins are our lower mind Manas but just lose reins are no use you need a capable Chariot here to hold those reins to apply just the amount of pressure that
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will allow them not to run away but will also not hold them back too much so that it becomes uncomfortable and
who is the charioter
the charioteer is our higher intellect our discrimination
which if trained, will be able to hold on to the reins of the mind, which will pull back the horses of the senses
and prevent them from going away in seven different in five different directions and Lead our Chariot on the path that it should be led are in the center of the battlefield
it's the same thing
Krishna the charioter is arjuna's discrimination his higher mind
and he is able
the conversation that Krishna and Arjuna have is really a metaphor
for what we should be having with ourselves
our confused lower self with our higher self that is Krishna
and this is why, even though the bhagavad-gita was delivered in a far away field in India thousands of years ago, and in which one friend was telling the other friend why he should stand up and kill his family
it is still relevant to us today
why hopefully none of us will ever be in a situation where we are asked to stand up and kill our families
but it's relevant because kurukshetra is not just a far away field in haryana kurukshetra is the world
kurukshetra is in our hearts
kurukshetra is in our minds
and every day we go out to do battle
moral dilemmas for fighting with ourselves is that the right thing to do
or is this the right thing to do what
what is what is right what is easy
what is convenient what is harder
but more right
these are the conversations that we are having
all the pandavas live inside us so do all the karwas
they are not outside of us and there are always 100 covers and 11
akshahinis and only five pandavas and their seven akshahinis so whenever we
are on the horns of a dilemma what do
I do the korvas are always louder guiding us towards paths we would rather
we should not take
and the pandavas are registering their resistance but it's very weak and we don't hear them and the pandavas resistance also comes from various conditioning of our own minds and therefore we should do what Arjuna did
because the purpose of Our Lives is not never mind
what the Declaration of Independence says it's not the pursuit of happiness because happiness is a transient thing
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it comes and goes
there is no point putting so much energy chasing happiness
chasing something that is so transient
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so we'd rather Chase something that is long-lasting eternal that actually helps us lead a better life
and what is the point of of what is the purpose of Our Lives according to the ancient Indian texts it is to be Fearless to live fearlessly
when we can be free of our fears when we can have freedom from our fears
then we can be absolutely free and that is what we call mukti Moksh
that is the purpose of human life
not happiness
to to live so fearlessly that we can be free
and Arjuna epitomizes that by his body language when he collapses to the floor of the Chariot
imagine this
he's the greatest warrior in the world he's trained not to show his emotions
he he imagine if we were in his position that these people are watching
these people are watching
if I show with my body language that I have I'm in despair
the karvas will already begin to celebrate thinking that he's now going to leave their morale will increase the pandavas
on the other hand the immoral will fall my people will feel betrayed everybody is going to be worried and just because of that psychological uh you know problem they may not be able to win the war if I stay here and win and think about that later Generations will praise me songs will be sung about me
and I would have won the war
if I go away people will probably spit on my memory
and you know I will be a traitor and if if we were in such a position
most of us would have said you know what just get this over with
it's too late just finish it
we will think about it later and while it looks to us
as if Arjuna collapsing to the floor of the Chariot as a picture of fear
abject fear
it is actually the greatest picture of fearlessness to be able to shut out the pandavas shut out the karvas
not worry for one instant what other people think of you
that is fearlessness
that is courage
and that's what we should be able to do
shout out our pandavas
shout out our karvas inside
because only then will we hear the still small voice of our Krishna
who is only our own higher self who always has our back
who knows what is good for us
if we only encourage him to speak
if we spend make the effort to get to know him day after day after day
just like Arjuna did
Arjuna and Krishna were best friends forever
they had spent years getting to know each other and in each other's company
and that is why Arjuna trusted him so much that he was able to put his dilemma in krishna's hands
and say you tell me what to do Krishna
I'll be I will do it and we can develop that kind of relationship
with our own Krishna by not only doing action mindful action
but also then introspecting on the action and finding out what sits well with us just because something sits well with everybody else
it may not sit well with us be fearless and customize your own response to every
situation
there is no standard response there is no one-size-fits-all
that's the only way to mukti Freedom
thank you very much [Applause]
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