Chapter Two. Knowing Yourself. Please read through the story of chapter two before you begin.

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1 Chapter Two Knowing Yourself T Please read through the story of chapter two before you begin. he totality of the Gita s teachings are summarised in chapter two. Arjuna is overcome with weakness and despondency, his mind confused and his will paralysed. And then suddenly, like the moon appearing from behind the clouds in the darkness of night, Arjuna surrenders his self-will to Krishna and says, Please teach me, for I do not know what to do. This is a magical moment in the Gita, and now Krishna is able to deliver His first and most important teaching that of the immortal nature of the soul. This beautiful pearl, which he drops into the lake of wisdom, will take Him the next 17 chapters to fully explain. The implication is that those who are wise do not grieve for something which cannot die. Everything is eternal and perpetuates itself eternally (brahmavidya). The law of this age, known as yugadharma, is something which, when you can align yourself to it, means that you can never know grief or sorrow again. The core messages of this chapter are that: 1) there is an indivisible divinity existing in all life, which is in everything and in everyone from the smallest plant to the greatest living being, and 2) the purpose of life is to discover that infinite, loving source. In the last 18 verses of this chapter Krishna outlines the qualities of a man of steady wisdom or sthitaprajna. These verses are said to have formed the backbone of Gandhi s greatness, for he studied them daily in great depth, knowing they contain the secret of how to attain steady wisdom. He who inhabits the sky, but is within it, Whom the sky does not know, whose body is the sky, And who constricts the sky from within, is the eternal ruler, your own immortal self. - Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

2 BHAGAVAD GITA ONLINE COURSE Week 1 This week we will study slokas 1-9 T First Quality for this week: Emotional Intelligence he journey is now well under way. As we have seen, chapter one alerts us to the danger of falling into negative states of mind. We have all either experienced the whole range of negative emotions or witnessed them in other people. Even though these experiences enable us to empathise with other people s suffering, the point Krishna makes here in chapter two, with some forcefulness, is that just because we have experienced them doesn t mean that we have to live there. In fact, He creates a template to ensure that we never go there again. Sloka 1 Chapter two begins with Sanjaya, who represents our intuition, making an observation about Arjuna s despair. Sanjaya, the observer, reminds us to respect the fact that we need to know what is going on inside ourselves and around us. Once we are able to admit that we are responsible for our own troubles, we can decide to do something to change them. > What do you need to observe in yourself that robs you of your joy and clarity? > How can you ensure your life is filled with positivity, so that you can see every experience as an opportunity for your growth? Slokas 2-3 Krishna is absolutely adamant that Arjuna should not allow his emotions to take him over. Despondency is never a good option to take because it only ever weakens you. This is why Krishna responds so harshly to Arjuna s display of weakness. > Why do you think that strong words have a more powerful effect upon us than platitudes and pleasantries? > What will it take to get your emotional energy moving so that you are prepared to do something? 2-2 Dru UK, Dru Australia

3 CHAPTER 2 > Can you remember a time in your life when someone said something that shocked you into a state of activity which with hindsight, you were able to appreciate as very helpful? > Please read the practical exercise from TDBG for slokas 1-3 and choose the quality of transforming your resistance to change. Remember the greatest support often comes in the form of constructive criticism. Be a warrior, not a worrier! Slokas 4-6 Imagine watching one of your favourite heroes such as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars or Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, suddenly break down in tears when things get a bit rough. What would you feel? When a situation demands strategic action it really doesn t do to run away in tears! A warrior is expected to do the warrior thing. This is why Krishna has absolutely no sympathy with Arjuna s whimpering arguments. He does, however, see His chance to get Arjuna to a place where he will ask for help - a place of surrender. Like Arjuna, we defend our attachments to the hilt. Why should we give up our pleasures and little habits - addictions to sugar, coffee, alcohol, smoking, sleeping or whatever? Or attachment to our negativity? It gives us so much pleasure and comfort to indulge our senses even if it will kill us. Why should I disturb my mind by denying my self will? Doesn t it look like an invitation to a much greater pain? > Do you fool yourself in order to avoid any confrontation with your self will? > What do you know you should be doing that you continually put off until tomorrow? Answer: Often the problems that we think we are going to face in confrontation with the ego and desires are not as great as we think, if we would just act now. It is because we put things off and hesitate that we give the ego a chance to stop us. My foes desire, hatred and their kindred, are without hands and feet. They are neither cunning nor valiant. How did they enslave me? They dwell in my spirit, And there, at their ease, they smite me. I will never turn back from fighting them. I made war on them all. - Shantideva Dru UK, Dru Australia 2-3

4 BHAGAVAD GITA ONLINE COURSE Week 2 This week we will study slokas First quality for this week: The ability to smile I Key sloka: 10 t is quite interesting that even though Arjuna is in utter despair, Krishna smiles, seemingly unaffected by His friend s misery. Remember that Krishna represents our Higher Self, the inner witness that is never touched by anything. In other words, whatever the crisis, there is always a part of us that will remain unaffected. The trick is to lift our awareness, our perception of reality, into the stream of consciousness present within us. This witness is also our greatest teacher, if we would only listen to it. Don t worry! Whatever is supposed to come, always comes; it never fails. Face everything contentedly whilst absorbing your mind in the Lord. - Lalleshwari To understand Krishna s smile, which is very significant, represents one of the greatest silent teachings of all time. If you can smile when things are looking pretty bad, you have understood something very profound. That is, that nothing is ever as real as it seems to be, that you can always rise above the storm and sit in a place that is untouchable. Please refer to the commentary of The Dru Bhagavad Gita to further understand this teaching. > Chant this sloka to remind yourself that your smile can change everything. 2-6 Dru UK, Dru Australia

5 K Challenge of Delusion One day Wang the Third s wife wanted him to buy her a wooden comb. Knowing that her husband was a very stupid man and anxious that he should not forget her request she thought of a way to remind him. Pointing to the crescent moon in the sky she said, Please buy me a comb exactly like that moon. A few days later the moon was full. Wang was out shopping and, remembering that his wife had told him that his purchase should be like the moon in the sky, he bought a round mirror. His wife looked at the mirror and immediately went into a rage. She ran home to her mother with the mirror and exclaimed, My husband has taken a mistress! Her mother looked into the mirror and sighed, Why didn t he choose a young woman? Why such a hideous old bag? They took the whole case to court and when the district judge saw the mirror he said, How dare you dress up like me when you have a quarrel! This is totally unbelievable! CHAPTER 2 Key Sloka: 11 rishna tells Arjuna that all his problems arise simply because he is looking at everything from a certain point of view. Arjuna is grieving, and yet Krishna tells him he is not seeing a complete picture. He needs to enlarge the frame. His perception is distorted because he is not seeing the whole. Have you ever read a sentence or looked at a word and suddenly found that even though you should be able to recognise it, having read it thousands of times before, it suddenly seems quite unfamiliar? You find yourself looking at it in disbelief and wonder what is going on. If you can relax into this kind of moment, you will find a kind of peace in the emptiness of unknowing. Suddenly the relationship that you had with that word has gone and there is a freshness, a newness. It may have happened to you with a person. You relate to someone in a certain way and then something changes, and suddenly you can find yourself experiencing a moment of panic as everything they mean to you is stripped away in an instant leaving only this empty freshness. If you relax into the wonder of this kind of experience, an amazing peace spreads through your being. We each have to accept that in all of our doing with others, we barely manage to understand what is happening at our own end of the relationship, never mind theirs. Please read the commentary for sloka 11 in The Dru Bhagavad Gita (TDBG). The advice that is given is so powerful, yet so simple that you could easily overlook it. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, just bring yourself back into the moment. In fact it only takes a moment! But do not underestimate the power of this practice. > Read and practise the practical exercise for this sloka > Chant sloka 11 to help yourself to realise that all your problems are unreal because you are not this body, and to change perspective on a situation that may be Dru UK, Dru Australia 2-7

6 CHAPTER 2 Week 3 This week we will study slokas First quality for this week: Invincibility Slokas rjuna s main problem, which is one we all share, is that he believes he is his body. A Krishna is determined to persuade him that this is not so, and that the body is merely a covering for the real immortal Self. This is the distinction between what is real and what is not real, for anything that changes or passes away cannot be real. It says in the Upanishads that a wise man looks out at the world with his eyes fixed within and in this way is constantly aware of the Immortal Self and therefore reality, able to clearly perceive the impermanent fragility of the world. The body we have will die, but who we are can never die, which is why we should strive never to confuse ourselves with the body. > Please read the story for chapter two in The Dru Bhagavad Gita for clarity about this most profound teaching. I am ancient, beyond compassion or imagination. I am undifferentiated, one without beginning or end. I am free of attachment and sorrow. I transcend conflict and care. I am beyond Maya, the three qualities And all other obstacles. - Muktananda Key Slokas: In these beautiful slokas Krishna does away with Arjuna s excuses in one fell swoop by explaining the highest knowledge of the Self. The soul is eternal, it can never die. Krishna blows apart Arjuna s little world of me, my and mine, confined by time and space, by sharing this cosmic truth. He tells Arjuna that he is not the body, but the immortal soul, unbound by time and space. From another level, another reality, he is saying, The battle is not real anyway, so why worry? Sometimes, we can become so caught in our own problems that we look at reality through a contracted awareness. This can make us believe that the sun is revolving around our little world whereas, in fact, we revolve around the sun. Of course, the sun represents the Higher Self, the eternal, unchanging part of us around which our own inner solar system is constantly revolving. Dru UK, Dru Australia 2-9