The Paradox of Violence and Yoga: Reconciling Ahimsa in the Bhagavad Gita

In this episode of A Woman's Gita, hosts Nischala Joy Devi and Kamala Rose explore the profound paradox within the Bhagavad Gita—the tension between the violent backdrop of war and the yogic principle of ahimsa, or non-violence.

Main topics include:

• The emotional and moral crisis of Arjuna during the Mahabharata war
• Arjuna's internal conflict as a Kshatriya warrior torn between duty and non-violence
• The relevance of Arjuna's struggle for spiritual seekers in the modern world
• The concept of the "dark night of the soul" and its transformative power
• Navigating violence, compassion, and personal responsibility through the teachings of the Gita
• Practical insights on balancing ahimsa with real-world complexities
• Using despair as a catalyst for spiritual growth and resilience

Transcript

Unknown: 0:02

Namaste. Welcome to a woman's Gita podcast, a modern discussion of the Bhagavad Gita by and for Western women. A women's Gita features discussions on the Bhagavad Gita, the timeless classic of Eastern wisdom, reinterpreted from the perspective of two female teachers, your hosts are nistula Joy Devi and Kamala Rose, who have dedicated their lives to the yoga tradition at a time when women's voices are finally emerging, a feminine perspective of the wartime treatise could not be more timely.

Kamala Rose: 0:42

Namaste, Welcome to a woman's Gita podcast discussing the Bhagavad Gita by and for Western women. I'm Kamala rose

Nischala Joy Devi: 0:53

and I'm nischala Joy Devi.

Kamala Rose: 0:56

Welcome. Great to have you all with us today. We are continuing our discussion of chapter one called Arjuna, vishadha, yoga, last time we left off on the cast of characters, and I'll start by reading some of the verses that we find here in chapter one. Conch shells have been blown, bells, drums and horns are sounded, announcing the beginning of the kurushetra War mountain in a great chariot, Krishna and Arjuna sound their horns, and each celebrated warrior in turn announced their participation in the war with the thunderous sound of intention, the resonating sound of conch shells across Earth and sky. Arjuna, in full glory, ready to begin, asks Krishna, his charioteer, to drive his chariot between both armies so he can see the faces of those who have come to fight. Arjuna saw fathers, grandfathers, gurus, uncles, brothers, sons and friends, and was overwhelmed by profound compassion upon seeing his kith and kin crest fallen with a heart heavy with despair. He spoke to Krishna. Here's some of our opening verses of chapter one, and today we're going to discuss the next part, which is where we learn about the term vishadha, the despair or the despondency of Arjuna.

Nischala Joy Devi: 2:48

One of the things that struck me when both of reading and trying to interpret this first chapter is how it goes from a very excited level of with the kettle drums, with the the conch shells, etc. It really shows that we're trying to pump this up. We're trying to make it exciting. It's, to me, it's almost like the beginning of an Olympics game where they have all the parades and everything to get everybody all excited and show who the cast of characters are, etc. Except those are games. This is war. That's the big difference. And so here we take it from a level of what needs to happen in this situation where the land has been taken and not given back, and the war is then staged. For this reason, whoever wins gets the land. However, that's on a very large scale. I think what we have to do is start taking it back, as the Gita is showing us, from this display of arms and display of strength, we then begin to come back to the humanness of this. And I think that's where sloka 128 through 130 comes in, we begin to now see that this, the reality of war, the reality of killing, has now affected our main character, Arjuna,

Kamala Rose: 4:40

and for our listeners, Arjuna in the Mahabharata is a very upstanding warrior character. I think he could best be described as someone much like Hercules a semi. Mythical character, known for bravery, known for showing up with the appropriate response when, when it was needed. So he's a, he's a very he's a very experienced, a very tough warrior, and he's been raised in his life to, you know, to be a warrior, that when it's time to show up and do the right thing, he's there, and that's what makes this crisis of conscience even more significant.

Nischala Joy Devi: 5:33

Didn't he even make a special kind of bow, an arrow that shot was like a ballistic missile that then divided the one divided into many, isn't wasn't that also part of that?

Kamala Rose: 5:47

Yes. In fact, during the Pandavas time in exile in the forest that had happened previous to the Mahabharata War, Arjuna spent the 12 years of exile traveling around the Himalayas and in fact, meeting with several divine personages, including Shiva, who gifted him this incredible weapon that shoots in something that we would think of today as a cluster bomb. It goes in 1000 different directions and right? So, so as a Hercules like figure who was those in western mythology, we know Hercules as sort of the image of the hero, someone who's ready to undertake those difficult tasks and bring back that knowledge and insight to the you know, to his people. So yes, initially, he did earn several extraordinary what we are to understand our celestial weapons that he was going to use in this war.

Nischala Joy Devi: 7:00

So I think what it shows to me as we talk about all this, and I go back to the yogic point, because that's where I come from. I come from yoga, and the totality of yoga, and what it looks like to me is that he had a real clear delineation between his thoughts and his emotions. So his thoughts are going more with Krishna and thinking, oh yes, this is a righteous war. This is something that has to be done, and he's okay with that. That's how he's trained his whole life to be a kshatri, to be a warrior, and this is now his duty. That's how the thoughts think. That's the thought process. But what we see be sitting right beside that are his emotions. And his emotions are very different, and we can't see his emotions. We can't hear his emotions, but we can see the effect that his emotions are taking on him. And I think this is again, something that we all live with in our daily lives. Our thoughts tell us to do one thing, but yet our emotions another, and sometimes we describe it as a gut feeling this doesn't feel right in my gut. Or some people say it doesn't feel right in my heart. My heart doesn't want to do this. So we have this constant struggle. And I see that very, very clearly in this particular group of slokas. And the slokas say, Arjuna said, O Krishna, at the sight of these my kinsmen assembled here, eager to give battle. My limbs fail and my mouth is parched, my body is shaken and my hair stands on end. The bow slips from my hand, and my skin is on fire. I cannot hold myself steady. My not mine seems to whirl. I see omens of evil. Even reading it, you may find a little bit that your breath is taken away, because what he's describing here is how the emotions affect the body. So what we feel, we may not always feel the emotion, but we feel the experience of how it's being played out in the body. And for to move to a modern way of thinking, this is what we would consider, and it's almost textbook sympathetic nervous system reaction, or what many people call fight or flight. And for. Sure this particular area of the Gita, those words are perfect, because this is exactly what he's faced with. Now, does he fight, or does he flee? He, at this moment, wants to flee, because then we go on to see, I see many ill omens. I do not understand what good could come by killing my own people in battle. So you see that the emotions are now taking over, and the emotions are playing with the body, and the body is playing with the emotions. And he said, goes on, I do not desire victory or Kingdom or even pleasures. Of what avail are these Kingdom enjoyments or even life itself to us? So he's willing to give up everything, because we have this basic emotion in us that is both our Savior and our Slayer, and that's fear. And when we come up against this fear, what decision can we make? It takes over. We see here how it's talking to him and saying things to him. My body is shaking. My limbs fail. My mouth is parched. How many of us have had that you get dry mouth? Suppose you're a public speaker, and you're trying to get up and speak, or not a public speaker, I guess, and getting up to speak, that's what happens. Your mouth gets dry because you're nervous, you have this sympathetic reaction. My bot, my hair stands on that. This is typical. If you, any of you have a cat, you can see this in a cat, their back hairs stand up when they get upset or excited. This is with my dogs. This happens with the dogs too. Yeah, this, but we can't see it because we don't have that kind of hair. But if you look at the hair on your arms, it will do that.

Kamala Rose: 12:09

So here would you? Would you call this a, I would probably call it a meltdown, organic attack. Yeah, some of the terms that we use today to describe this kind of I always call it a crisis of conscience, also that, like you said, the emotions have now taken over, and even though your mind knows something else, you're unable to relegate the emotions to an inferior position in consciousness, right? The emotions have come up and taken over, and there's literally nothing you can do about it except look at it and accept the pain and the fear.

Nischala Joy Devi: 13:01

Yeah, that's accept it. Accept if you know some yoga practices, I think this is where the savior of yoga comes into this. Because the thing is, okay, so what we're looking at now as we're looking at this, the hair standing on and shaking, the sweating of the palms, he can't hold on to the bow anymore, so you say, okay, that passes, but this does not pass. This is something that has become ingrained in him and will continue throughout the battle, even if his mind is certain it's the right thing to do, he will still keep reacting with this emotional level. And what then begins to happen is we will get into what we call now as PTSD. They didn't really know it then and in this way, but this is a freezing of those emotions that then returns over and over and over, especially when we relax like at night, when we go to sleep, we see the service people coming back with this from the war, because they're also going through a lot of what Arjun is going through here.

Kamala Rose: 14:24

This is a whole area in our yoga community of working with trauma informed practice and understanding that in the complicated world that we live in today, so many more human beings have seen situations like this, whether personally on a battlefield as a soldier or living in a situation that has been overtaken by war or by natural disaster. So many people in the world today are fleeing from their homes. Yes, and unable to stay in the place where they had set up roots. And the kind of trauma and discomfort on so many levels, it's, it's, um, it is. It is exactly like this, where your hands, your hair stands on end, and your mouth dries up, and so many are forced to continue to live this way.

Nischala Joy Devi: 15:26

I think it takes also a lot of the romance out of it. I think war can be shown as very romantic until you're actually there and seeing the unbelievable destruction that it can have also, I think one of the things that's causing this experience with Arjuna, and causes it with us also, but not on the same level, hopefully, is it's really not natural to kill another human being. It's not something that is inherent in us, and we really have to go against our natural order of protection, especially as women, we're engineered to protect, and in that protection, the killing is not something that we do now, if we're defending something or defending our children or our home in a very personal way, it may be a necessary evil in that respect, but we have to Bring in again, the pinnacle to me, of yoga wisdom, and that's ahimsa. Where does that fit here? Where? Where can we wrap our hearts around the idea that, on one hand, we're killing, but we're whole, upholding the Ahimsa at the same time, the ability to see that divine in everyone, that knowing that if you hurt another human being, you're hurting yourself, it's very hard to reconcile those two points.

Kamala Rose: 17:17

It is very hard to reconcile those two points. And I know this is one reason that so many have found difficulties in understanding and reading the Gita, understanding why, why it would be set in a wartime situation like this on a battlefield, and How Krishna could continue to encourage Arjuna to fight, even though he says it would be better if I were killed unresisting. It's it is the great paradox of the Bhagavad Gita and I, we've discussed this so much, and there's so many, there's so many layers to this that you know. We know that all of the Pandavas and the cowrivas, everyone there on that battlefield has been desensitized to killing, has been raised to see themselves as that last great hope in some way, to, you know, to restore peace to you know, to do the right thing, whether by the for themselves, in the case of the cowrivas, or for the greater whole, in the case of the Pandavas. So we are confronted with the idea of violence, which to us reading it as as modern yogis, is absolutely contrary to our first Yama of ahimsa. So reconciling This is one of our first projects in encountering the Bhagavad Gita, and I think that comes from understanding why are junas having this reaction?

Nischala Joy Devi: 19:06

Yeah, also, I'm I agree with that completely, and I also have a little part in me that's a little mischievous, and wondering if they actually put this in so the yoga portion is, so becomes the star in a way. So we're dealing with, let's think of what could be the worst thing we can think of? Okay, let's start a war, and let's kill all our relatives and friends, and then we'll teach them yoga. It reminded me almost, and I don't know how true it is, but this is what we're told about Pompeo Pompeii, that they were there, they were gambling, and they were doing all kinds of i. Things like like that were not in in Dharma. I'm going to use that term, although they don't use it. And then Mount Vesuvius erupted and killed them all. So we get these stories constantly. There must be a reason for it. They're trying to tell us something, that it doesn't have to be that dramatic. I don't think, but usually it is, that what we're doing can be improved on. We can, we can learn to live more in the way of dharma, in the way of spirituality, if there were certain things that we just followed. And I think a hymn says one of those to the be be able to not just not hurt another being. I think it's too simplified. It's it's really to have compassion and love for another human being, not just to withhold the violence. So here and I see Arjun exhibiting some of that when he's talking about it by destroying families. They're unroot, uprooted, and can no longer fill their fulfill their dharma. So we're we're seeing him say these things. So there's something in him that may have come through, if not in this lifetime, from another lifetime. I think even just being around this in India, I think this is what attracts people who are on the spiritual path to India, even though there's so much else in India that's not necessarily spiritual, but there's that underlying essence that just by being there, it transforms us.

Kamala Rose: 21:58

Well, when you when you bring up that idea of of India and all of the complexity of India with this deep spiritual foundation, yet this incredible multi faceted world of both high spirituality and extreme suffering coexisting, I think that gives us sort of a taste of what we're looking at here. It's a very complicated emotion that Arjuna is experiencing. He is looking at those whom are he's known his whole life. He's looking at his grandfather, Bhishma, the great patriarch of the both the Pandavas on the cowrivas, and he's looking at his martial arts instructor, Dronacharya, again, who trained both part both sides of the cousins equally. And Arjuna loves these teachers. He is of the same blood as as bishma. And I think upon seeing that the war will not be over until bishma is dead, is a fact that overwhelms him and overcomes him when I look at the situation of Arjuna here, I think, I think it is absolutely this complicated, that there is a deeply spiritual dimension, and there are also so many layers that Look at the, you know, the suffering of the kingdom and looking at all that they've been through, looking at the inevitability of this war, looking at the inevitability of the violence that he and others will have to beget, looking at the outcome of what will happen. We talked before that all of the Lords and high ranking Kshatriyas are present in India at that time, are present on that battlefield, considering what will happen to the families of these men, to the villages that each of them support is, is an overwhelmingly complicated group of feelings. And, you know, in this way, I think that arjunas Fear is is so far beyond anything personal, while he's having a personal response to it, I think he's able to see to have a fear for the future and to to look in and extrapolate what will happen if this action continues. What will happen if he is a willing participant in breaking what we would all, I think, in all belief systems killing family. Is a more of a cardinal sin, something, something way outside of the rules of warfare. So I think when he sees these elders that he respects to an enormous degree, I think it puts, I think it casts a huge shadow on everyone's action on that battlefield, that they might just be breaking something, a deeply spiritual covenant that they could break by killing family. And it's in this way that I, you know, I feel that his despair is both incredibly intimate and personal, but at the same time, he fears for the welfare of the world and what what further actions might be spawned or generated from this action,

Nischala Joy Devi: 26:04

there's a couple of points that I just wanted to go back to that you, that you made, that I thought were very interesting. You brought up the whole martial arts that he was being trained in martial arts, and it's interesting, and I don't know how much it's changed over the years, but I do know that most of the really what we call reputable martial arts centers there, they always teach that this is Not to be done for the is not to be done in action. It's to be done in reaction. And I think that that's something that's happening also here, that there's when in martial arts, they come in, they shake each other hand first, and then they understand that there are rules. So it's a lot of it that's being projected here, but I don't see much of the other side of it that we will stop if it gets to a certain point without full destruction. And you know, it reminded me something happened some years ago. There was a really horrific civil war in one of the African countries. I'm sorry the name slips me at this moment, but what happened is exactly what they're predicting here, that most of the men were killed and the society was just almost destroyed because of it. The women were left with the children with no means of really being able to make money and support themselves, and now they had a country filled with orphans, and they didn't know what to do. So the UN came in and suggested that countries start to adopt these children and give them homes. And a group of women, again, the women got together, and they talked about this, and they said, you know, the young are our main commodity for the future. They're the ones that will bring this country into the next century this these are the ones that will support it. If we send them away, our country is doomed. So they thought, what could we do? And they came up with this extraordinary solution, and that was that each woman would take one or two of these orphans into her home. She already probably had three, four or five children of her own. So she said, What's one more or two more? And that's how they solved the orphan problem. The children remained in the country with women who became their mothers, and the country is now prospering. This is what I wonder, why can't we come up with solutions like this? Why do we have to have destruction? Why does that have to happen? But it seems to be the way things go.

Kamala Rose: 29:16

It does seem to be the way things go. And I think that role of of men in military around the world and the those being the people who are holding the power to make decisions, it was a such a clear example in the story that you told. It could have been Rwanda. I've heard so many extraordinary stories about I didn't

Nischala Joy Devi: 29:45

want to say because if someone was listening, they said, no, no, no, that's not the one correct. Could have been. It could have been Rwanda. But it just touched me that they understood that they were giving away the. Most precious part of their country, and they didn't want to do that. So there's always other solutions. I think, if we go back to this split mind with these thoughts on one side and the emotions on the other, when the emotions get strong like that, they cloud any clear thinking that we might have. They don't allow the heart to express another way. And I think this is, this is part of what happens. So bringing in the yoga, the non violence, the non harming, the loving, if we put it in positive terms is really what has to happen here, and as we see as we go along, it will happen eventually, but the war also still happens.

Kamala Rose: 30:52

Well. Another way of looking at Arjuna state of mind is that the the vashata, or the despair, despondency vishadha comes from the root V which is to take apart and shot, which is to sit. So I think that that split between the mind and the emotions here that we have, you know, we have a state of being that all of us can relate to in one way or another, of feeling, feeling overwhelmed and exceptionally complicated in ourselves, unable To, unable to handle the scope of the emotions. And I think there's an argument that says that when this happens, we really can't avoid it. We have to look at what this vashata, despair, depression is telling us. And in the I think the case of Arjuna is so is so instructive in the way that we have someone who is having a completely unexpected reaction to a situation that he's been in many times. I'm sure he himself was very surprised that this meltdown or this panic attack happens at this 11th hour once the war has actually already started. He He's shocked almost by his own reaction. And I think these are times that we have to learn to look at what's causing these feelings. Look at why we're having this and in many spiritual traditions, Despair is considered to be a profound teacher. States of overwhelm and depression can teach us something important about our conscience. They they help us to almost tear off a fresh sheet that anything that was going on prior to that is not working any longer right. Arjuna entered the war. Everyone blew their conch shells, including Arjuna and Krishna, ready to begin. Psyched, ready to begin. Arjun is in a state we could even call it a holy despair, because it does change his heart from going along as a soldier as everyone else on the battlefield is, and he realizes that whatever is happening here is not the way it ever happened before, and it changes him. And I think the I think the sense of holy despair or despondency transforms us. It gives us a chance to say, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What? What is my heart responding to, what is my emotions responding to? Why is this happening? And it gives us depth that helps us not only to understand ourselves, but to understand other people and the common human experience of this kind of despair and despondency, and it clears a way for us to reframe things. I think that this vashata is a it's an in between state, right? He goes from being mentally prepared to mentally unprepared, and then at the end of the Gita, he is mentally prepared again. So in this, especially in this opening dialog, we find, we find this wonderful symbolism of the Bhagavad Gita between two armies poised for battle in the space in between the. In the you know, in the central space. Sometimes the central space is called liminal. It means he was not who he was before, and he is not yet transformed into someone else. Liminal spaces are the between and the betwixt, and it's like everything goes up in the air. Everything that you knew before is up in the air, and it gives us time to reconsider going forward. Mystics praise this type of space as a place where genuine insight can happen, where we're very receptive to learning. So I think what you're saying nishchala, is so important that I think that this state of vashata really opens Arjuna to the teachings of yoga. We've talked about this many times that sometimes people overlook or say that the first chapter of the Gita is just transitional from the Mahabharata, and not much attention is placed on it. But I think, I think there's something very profound to be said about the this state of being that opens one up to learning something new, something that they didn't know before. I

Nischala Joy Devi: 36:17

want to get back to something that you said, that you in passing, but what you were describing when a spiritual seeker goes through this, I think this is often called Dark Night of the Soul, and that came from Saint John of the Cross, who was a great mystic. And I, I think that there's a place for that, and it happens naturally a lot of times when you're moving, like you said, from one stage to another, what's missing here that's that that monks and spiritual seekers have are tools. We have ways. So usually a person doesn't go through this real dark night of the soul until many years into practice, and then all of a sudden you say, Well, I can't meditate anymore. I can't pray anymore. I don't know what's going on. The outside world is coming in. I can't think my just what he's talking about. My mind is confused, etc, etc, but what we have, and I remember st Therese of Avila writing about this. She was also a mystic, that she would sit there, day in and day out, with her hands folded, looking like she was in prayer, and wanting to just run out and scream, but knowing that it would pass. And I think this is something that we can't let ourselves go into the depth of despair, because often you don't come out of that, or if you come out you leave, whereas if you have the tools to remain just with your nose above the water level, you're still breathing, but you're not ready to go back to it yet. That's, that's the the middle part, I think that you're describing, and that's something that I think many, many spiritual seekers have gone through. Matter of fact at our ashram, we always knew how people felt, because they'd walk around with dark night of the soul by saying, st John, we go, okay. We know where you are and but we also knew that it would pass. I don't think Arjuna knows that here. I think his despondency is so deep because he doesn't know what's going to happen in that war. He doesn't know if he's going to get killed, he doesn't know if he's going to kill people, and then what, what do you do with that afterwards. Okay, you see all these bodies. You won the war. Yay, you won. But it stays with you for the rest of your life that you killed these people. You killed your kith and kin. You look across the table at a holiday, they're not there anymore. You walk down the street and you see where their house used to be. They're not there anymore. So you start to re play it in your mind, was this the right thing to do, and was it right then? But was Will it be right again? I think that's the question. Will this ever happen again? And maybe not to Arjuna in this situation, but to us, it does. Life keeps repeating itself until we get it right.

Kamala Rose: 39:54

I think it's worth noting that the all of the Pandavas, all five of the Pandavas. Survive the war, and they have heavy hearts for the rest of their lives. They live conflicted with this yes situation. It was not just as simple as getting over it and getting getting with the war, as as it may appear, it weighed heavily on their hearts, and even though Arjuna, Yudhishthira, the other Pandava brothers, do find their peace and participating in the war, eventually, they their hearts are heavy, and they do live with that residual sense of guilt and it this. This really shows me that a very a profound motivator in this fear is, I think that this fear is born out of a sense of compassion for the family, and, I think a sense of compassion for the world that is starting to stir in Arjuna again, this, I think it's not a personal fear. I think he's beyond the personal fear of battle, but I think he can see the the future of what's going to come. And in arjunas worldview, the way he sees the world on a you know, on a functional level, on a philosophical level, on a spiritual level, on a duty level, you know, all of this, all of his worldview, is really wrapped up in his identity as a soldier and being The one to show up to set things right. And when this collapses, when this begins to break apart, when he sees his grandfather and teacher, he's it's like his his entire way of seeing the world begins to falter. He feels it breaking. He tells us that would this not cause the world as we know it to end if soldiers didn't do their duty, because in the world view of Arjuna, this and all of the soldiers on that battlefield, the Kshatriya class, and all of the classes of human beings are part of a larger cosmic order. And everybody doing their parts, the priests doing their parts, the soldiers doing their parts, the merchants and the servants, everyone doing their parts maintains a certain order, a certain Dharma to the world. And so I think he's confronted with the idea of not doing his duty, and then the ramifications of doing his duty that are also outside of his duty because he's killing family. So I can see his world view cracking, and I can see him barely able to he that's why he keeps asking. Tell me what is the right thing to do if I act, this happens. If I don't act, this happens either way. His worldview is collapsing. He feels he's destroying the legacy of his ancestors. They're destroying the world, and if they destroy the world, and they break this kind of a cosmic covenant that is the foundation of their society, what will happen to the future? We see them saying, Who would want to survive a battle like this? I see only inauspicious results.

Nischala Joy Devi: 43:42

Yet. What would happen if that, if that world did collapse, a new one would come, and it might be a better one. So I think sometimes the fear of the unknown, or the fear of what could come stops us or makes us do something like this. To me, when I look at this, this world, world that they created, is not a world that I would want to be in necessarily. Why not create another world? Why not create a world that they don't have that in? So perhaps, like you were talking about with the dark night of the soul. Perhaps, if that world did go away, if he did hit rock bottom with that, and a new world was created, they're always talking about a new world order things like that, where people actually love each other and are more kind to each other. So I just wonder about that also, there has to be some kind of personal fear in him. This, what we're talking about is not a reaction to others. This is a personal fear that you feel your your being, is being destroyed or could be destroyed, and your. Or ego, if I can use that word, we really haven't talked about it. It's a very complicated word because most people don't really understand what it means, and I'm not sure I understand what it means, but I'll use it anyway. In this case, the ego is trying to protect itself from dying. So yes, there is the bigger picture, but there's also something personal going on here, because, and I think this is part of the despondency he was trained not to feel this as a warrior, yet he is feeling it, and his mind is not betraying Him as maybe as much, but his emotions are and his emotions are saying, I'm scared this is real. I could really get killed in this. And then what happened to my wife, or wives in his case, and children, right? So it's there's so much in this chapter that I'm not sure why people pass over it, because I think it really sets the tone and allows us to understand who this very complicated character is not simplistic at all, as you're pointing out, he's very complicated, And in it, we can see all these parts of him, but this is this reaction that he's he's saying, and then we have to look at the last line in this, because Arjuna, having spoke thus on the battlefield, cast his side of his bow and Arrow and sank down on his chariot seat. I think this is where the seat comes in. You were, you were using the translating the word seat. It's right here again. He chariots seat, his mind overcome with grief. And can't you just feel that? I mean, I can, I can feel. And here you are struggling. What's right, what's wrong, which is the best, which is not the best. Help me. That's why he asked Krishna to be there in the first place as an advisor.

Kamala Rose: 47:14

Which is we are, which is So, which is a again, I think this is such a beautiful, complicated moment, because it does open up Arjuna to ask that question, please. I do. I don't know the right thing to do. I cannot tell what the right thing to do is anymore, where I used to be firm in my duty. Now I am not sure. I really cannot tell what the right thing to do is, I think you're so right to emphasize that it is both a personal, deeply personal, yet at the same time, existential state of being that he's in, and who of us cannot understand this or identify it with this in some way in the world that we live in today. One might argue that we're in a very similar state of being where everything is, you know, the it's a bit upside down. Everything is kind of up in the air. We're dealing with the climate catastrophe. We're dealing with wars all over the world, unprecedented suffering in the world, and the technology to watch it on television or on the internet every day, and to live in a world where such suffering exists, I think we would, we would not be the The feeling sentient seekers that we are if we didn't respond in some way to the the feelings of overwhelm from our our world situation and that it is, at the same time, very personal. I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure what to do, how to fix this, yeah, and this is how I can I relate to Arjuna that it's just too big for one person to to fix it or do the right thing. He cannot resolve what the right thing to do is. And it's in that spirit that he's he sits down. He cannot. He puts the bow down, yeah,

Nischala Joy Devi: 49:25

and give up. I give up. Yeah. Maybe

Kamala Rose: 49:28

it would be better to just be killed unresisting rather than take an action that is contrary to what duty dictates.

Nischala Joy Devi: 49:39

What you're saying is very interesting. As you were talking, I had this vision of what happens when we are being reported to these terrible wars. So what happens you you hear these astronomical numbers, these how many people troops got killed, right? We don't you even say here. Humans. We call them troops, because if you call them humans, it brings it a little bit closer. They're they're human, they're they could be our sons and daughters and mothers and fathers. So that that's the overview that they first give us. And then after a while, people are not reacting to it anymore. They're not feeling it anymore. So what they do is exactly what the Gita did, which is, I think, is fascinating. It hones in on one particular person, and you hear their story of what happened when the bomb dropped. You hear their story of their child being hurt or having to hide somewhere. And for that one to one allows us to have that compassion. It brings it back, because this is just one person that we can see in front of us. And I think this is what the Gita did. It gave us Arjuna to be able to see what this battle is all about, whether we see it, as you said, esoterically, or in reality on the battlefield or within us, something is happening, and we can't get it from looking at the kettle drums and the massive armies on either side. We have to get it from that one single person that is perspiring, that is shaking, that's hair standing on end. That's how we have to get this dialog. And

Kamala Rose: 51:32

if we can remember that as sentient beings in the alive in the world today, that the feelings, the complicated feelings of despair and despondency that we often carry as individuals could very much in the same way, probably we can assume very much in the same way, are arising out of a sense of compassion for the world, a sense of experiencing an unprecedented moment in history and dealing with that so to follow your advice, to not go so deep that we're we lose ourselves to the despair, but to see the transformational state. And we thank Arjuna for teaching us that.

Nischala Joy Devi: 52:25

We don't want to really leave you at this point, but we have to end but let's do something a little bit positive. So since we've been talking about all this despondency, et cetera, before the next podcast, go out and do something nice for somebody and make that also somebody yourself. So do two nice things. Do one nice thing for someone else, one nice thing for yourself at least, and then we won't have the despondency in that way. So we thank you for joining us again today, and hope to know that you're joining us next time, and we say Namaste,

Kamala Rose: 53:08

Namaste, friends, if you'll help us, and any questions that you'd like us to answer or focus on in our podcast, if you could leave that in our comments. And we hope that you'll you'll subscribe to a woman's Gita by and for Western women and men on your favorite podcast platform. Namaste.

Unknown: 53:34

Thank you for joining us for a women's Gita with nistula Joy, Davie and Kamala rose. We would like to express our gratitude for the ongoing support for a women's Gita podcast and book from yoga gives back a non profit organization dedicated to the underserved women and children of India. Please join us again for our next episode coming soon. Namaste. You.