Gita Acharan

K rishna says, “Those who are free of desire and anger, mind controlled, and self-realised, are completely liberated both in this world and in the beyond” (5.26). The question is how to be free from the malady of desire and madness of anger. Every cyclone has a calm eye at its centre. Similarly, our cyclone of desire and anger too has a desireless and peaceful core within us and it’s about reaching the same. This requires courage to drop ‘I’ which is the basic ingredient of desire.   One effective technique is to re-live and witness a situation from the past in which we were gripped by desire or anger. We should re-live the same with the improved awareness that, ‘the self is the self in all beings and different people perceive one reality in different ways.’ Indian traditions refer to life as ‘ Leela ’ - just a play where there is nothing worth taking seriously. The second technique is to live for a couple days as if we are in a drama taking nothing seriously and ...

I n the Gita, terms such as anaasakti and veet-raag express the very essence of its teachings. While aasakti (attachment) and virakti (detachment) are two polarities, anaasakti transcends these polarities. Similarly, veet-raag is neither raag (fondness) nor viraag (aversion) but transcends both. These polarities are nothing but the manifestations of ahankaar (I am a doer) and once ahankaar is dropped, we transcend all polarities and attain moksha - the ultimate freedom. In this context, Krishna says, “One who is liberated, devoid of attachment, with mind established in wisdom and acting for yajna ; his whole action is dissolved” (4.23). ‘I’ is identification with our possessions; friends and enemies; likes and dislikes; and thoughts and feelings. Dropping them brings temporary emptiness leading to pain, fear, anger and resentment, therefore, dropping the ‘I’ is no easy task. In reality, what we need to drop is the sense of ownership, identification, and doership,...