114. Avoiding Extremes.
K rishna spoke about treating gold, stone and a handful of soil as equal (6.8). He further said that he who has equal regard for the patrons, strangers, relatives, friends, enemies, meditators, hateful beings, righteous and ungodly, is the best (6.9). Krishna started with things and suggested treating them as equals. Then He moved on to people in our lives and told us to regard friends and enemies; righteous and ungodly; strangers and relatives as equals. A closer look would indicate that these are all labels we assign to the people around us and our behaviour towards them would be based on this labelling. Interestingly, a friend to us can be an enemy to another person and a friend today can become our enemy tomorrow which indicates that all these labels are situational or biased. Hence, Krishna suggests treating them as equals by dropping these labels. The subtle message regarding things, people and relationships is not to treat people and relationships as consumables....