22. Balance is Bliss
A t the very beginning of the Gita (2.14), Krishna says that the meeting of the indriyas (senses) with the sense-objects causes polarities of pleasure and pain. He tells Arjuna to learn to tolerate them, as they are transient. In the contemporary world this is expressed as, ‘This too shall pass’. If this is inculcated at an experiential level, we can transcend these polarities to find them equally acceptable. There are five indriyas (senses) viz. vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Sense perception happens through a combination of a physical part and a controller part. The physical parts of the senses are eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. The controller parts are those parts of the brain which process the sensory inputs of the respective physical parts. However, the physical parts of the senses have a lot of limitations. For example, the eyeball can process only a particular frequency of light which we call visible light. Secondly, it cannot process more than 1...