70. Give Time a Chance


A fruit absorbs nutrients from its parent tree to grow and ripen. It then gets detached from the tree to start its own journey. The journey from falling away from the parent tree to growing into a tree of one’s own is marked by many actions. An immature fruit, on the other hand, must remain attached to the parent tree till it ripens.  

A ripe fruit shouldn’t lure an immature fruit to leave the tree, as the unripe fruit is not yet ready to start an independent journey. It would perish if it didn’t spend time getting the required nourishment from the parent tree. In a similar vein, Krishna advises the wise not to unsettle the ignorant, who are attached to action (3.26). The ignorant would also attain wisdom through experience offered by the existence.

This is an extension of what Krishna said about individuals who forcefully control the organs of action, but whose mind still revolves around thoughts of sense-objects (3.6). He calls them hypocrites who are deluding themselves. The same would be the state of an ignorant whose actions were forcibly stopped by a wise man.

In a class of a hundred students, each one understands the same lesson differently depending on their character and state of mind. That’s why, a sannyasi (renunciant) who realises the futility of motivated actions in life shouldn’t encourage a brahmachari (bachelor) to desist from family life as the brahmachari can better learn the same futility by his own experiences.

Krishna waited for the ‘hunger to learn’ in Arjuna to impart the Gita. Krishna allowed him to continue with his worldly actions, go through life’s pleasures and pains, and intervened at the opportune moment. Thus, learning happens when there is an inner hunger for it, where each entity that we see and each life situation that we face can become a teacher.

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