The Chariot of the Self: Unpacking the Metaphor at the Heart of the Bhagavad Gita

This episode focuses on Chapter 2, Sankhya Yoga, of the Bhagavad Gita, starting with verse 14. Kamala Rose and Nischala Joy Devi introduce the verse, which discusses the impermanence of material sensations and dualities like pleasure and pain.

The hosts explore the metaphor of the chariot, which is a central image in the Gita and Upanishadic texts. They explain how this metaphor represents the relationship between the body, senses, mind, and the true self or Atman.

Key topics discussed include:

• The impact of sensory experiences on our psychology and behavior
• The importance of training and managing the senses through practices like Pratyahara
• The subjective nature of perception and the need for objectivity
• Practical advice for maintaining inner peace amidst changing sensations
• The role of sacred spaces in calming the senses and facilitating spiritual growth

The hosts provide insightful commentary, drawing from yoga philosophy and their own experiences, to help listeners understand the Gita's teachings on mastering the senses and achieving equanimity.

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 Davie 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

now. Namaste. Welcome to a woman's Gita, I'm Kamala, rose and I'm nishchila, Joy Devi. Welcome to all of our listeners. Thank you for making time to be with us today in this podcast, we're going to begin where we left off last time in chapter two, which is called Sankhya yoga. Today, we're beginning with verse 14, chapter 214, that is one of the first these are some of the introductory teachings in the Bhagavad Gita of Krishna. So verse 214 has a lot in it. I'm going to read it in the Sanskrit, and then nishchala Devi and I will go about discussing this. Matra sparsha, stukantea, shidosukadukada, Agama paino, nithyaas tan titiksha, SVA Bharata, this impactful verse talks about a couple of big ideas in the Gita. One is material sensations, the next is dualities and finally, the idea of the coming and going of sense impressions and the impermanence of those this verse really sums up some of the fundamental theory of the Bhagavad Gita. And let's say this is Krishna. Is big lead, this big reveal of why it is that Arjuna should not be so concerned about what he is experiencing, the pain that he's experiencing with his senses. He tells us that sensations of the senses come and go. They are by nature and permanent. And counsels Arjuna to bear them patiently, in a way, saying this too will pass.

Nischala Joy Devi: 2:52

Let's read it in English too. Maybe that will help people understand it a little bit differently when one is tossed about by the senses. The dualities of heat and cold, pain and pleasure are experienced, but they are impermanent. Bear them patiently. I think that's really significant. Bear them patiently. We're being told to be patient because of those dualities, really swing us from one side to the other, to the other, to the other. We feel like we're in a seesaw most days. Why is that?

Kamala Rose: 3:34

Well, why is that? Because when we are experiencing the world. We're in a constant relationship with the world around us, right? We sometimes swing into a seesaw pattern when we get outside of our tolerant zones, or the zones where it's just is and we can generally accept things as being cool, not we don't need to react to it, but sometimes, when our experience of the present moment gets outside of a tolerance zone, we say that it becomes too hot or too Cold, painful or over the line of pleasure and indulgence. This is a main idea in the Gita dualities,

Nischala Joy Devi: 4:28

and it's something that we deal with regularly. Even I just think about this morning, I woke up and it was a little cold, so I put on certain clothes to help me not feel that, and then the sun comes out, and you start changing into something lighter, or you take off a shirt or a sweater. And then the day goes on and it gets cool again. It's a constant, constant change, and swing behind between these dualities. You're very, very hungry. You eat. Wait, suddenly you're not hungry. What happened? You ate. And then a couple hours later, you think, Oh, I'll never be hungry again. I'm so full. And then a couple hours later, you're hungry again. So this is what, this is what they're talking about. And I love the word that they use, tossed in English, the tossed by the senses. It's, it's a, I feel like I'm a basketball sometimes being tossed back and forth between this nature and this changing nature.

Kamala Rose: 5:35

That is a good description of of our experience in the world. And for for this part of the Gita, we've been looking at some of the main images that are a part of the Bhagavad Gita and examining those. Now, one of the main images that we have is the chariot, and this is the chariot that Krishna has been asked to drive into the middle of the two armies, the chariot that Arjuna has stepped down out of, put dropped his bow right? It's paused in time. So we have under the banyan tree, in the middle of two armies, a chariot that's not moving right. So we've looked at the banyan tree, we've looked at the setting of the war. I think one way we can look at these two armies is that we're always put between two polarities. Yeah, it's

Nischala Joy Devi: 6:34

a good this is a very classic metaphor, isn't it? This has been talked about many, many times, in so many different ways. I think it's a really good metaphor too. It really explains things well. But yes, here we are stuck between two worlds sometimes. Which way do you go

Kamala Rose: 6:54

having the understanding that is represented by the chariot, which is kind of a summary of yoga philosophy, using the image of the chariot to break down the basic ideas that form what is the Sankhya, or the theory of yoga, something that confused me and kept me out of reading the Gita for so Many years, I just didn't understand what is meant by tossed about by the senses I didn't understand, and

Nischala Joy Devi: 7:28

yet you were even though you didn't know it. Yeah, that's the but it's

Kamala Rose: 7:33

the exact way of describing feelings of overwhelm or confusion. When we're tossed about, we can't make sense of what's going on is very real and happens not you don't have to be somewhere else, somewhere unfamiliar, for this to happen. Sometimes the events of our own lives become unfamiliar, the way they have. For Arjuna, he now what was up is now down. For him, he's turned upside down. He's like the fool. He it's nothing is stable any longer, right? So when, when Krishna begins to teach this at the halted chariot in the middle of the battlefield, we can look to the the source of the chariot metaphor, which is the Upanishads now before, before I read from the Katha Upanishad I just like to introduce one of the verses that is often used as an honorific or a devotional verse Before beginning our studies in the Gita goes like this, sarvo, upanishado, gavo, dogda, gopalanandaha, Arto, vatsa, Sudhir, bhokta, dugdam, gitamratam, mahata, and it's a it's beautiful. It says that all of the Upanishads, which are mystical texts that were probably recorded somewhere between 300 before the Common Era and maybe 800 in our common era since the time changed, Right. So the the ideas that these mystical texts that refer to sitting and learning mystical insight from a teacher, it says that all of the Upanishads are like generous mother cows, right? Which is, which is really a symbol in Indian culture for Mother Earth and her generosity and her giving of milk and sustaining of milk, right? So these Upanishads are like a mother cow, and Krishna as the cow herd he's milking the wisdom of. Upanishad for who for Arjuna, and Arjuna is now on the battlefield drinking the insight. The the grand nectar of the Upanishads is what is in the Gita, and it says that one of good insight may enjoy its sweetness, and hopefully this is us those of good insight. I think this is something when we when we approach the Bhagavad Gita, we should remember that there's a lot going on here, and one of the main things that's going on is teaching us the s, the essence, the essential part of the Upanishads, the Katha Upanishad and really the main Upanishads throughout and I think in our podcast, we hope to try to bring in some of this as we're discussing the different chapters, because it does jump around. And for those who are studying the Gita with us. You might want to take a look at the chariot metaphor, which is found in the Katha Upanishad in chapter three. Right? So this is where it says, Know the self as the writer in a chariot, and the body as simply the chariot. Know the buddhi, or the intellect, as the charioteer and the mind, the Manas as simply the reins, the senses, the indriyas, they say, are the horses and the mantras, the sense objects are the paths around the horses, one who is linked in the body, the Atman, the senses and the mind. The wise proclaim this one as one who enjoys, right? That's, that's the simple, the simple beginning.

Nischala Joy Devi: 12:03

And if I remember correctly, weren't they white horses? Because they represented the satwa in in the in the ability. So we're trying to get the senses into the satwa, if those of you who remember the breakdown of the Gunas, which we will talk about much more in our times together, but we're talking about that balanced part of us where the mind and senses are in a very balanced state, not Going to one side of overactive or underactive. So we want these senses balanced in that, and that's the important addition. And we have to hold those reins. We have to control them. But lightly, I was just reading about training a horse, and how you have to be so careful not to pull too hard on their little delicate faces and their mouths with the bit, because you can hurt them. And I think that that goes into this metaphor. I think we have to be very careful with our senses. If we restrict them too much, they're going to go the other way. We're going to they're going to get out of control. But if we give them just enough to keep them happy and also direct them toward things that will enhance us and make us stronger and in our spiritual quest, then we've, we've won on both sides. That's

Kamala Rose: 13:44

really important. What you're saying, let's say a compassionate understanding of this metaphor, right? So the body itself is the chariot. It's our you know? It's what houses consciousness, right? And it is what locomotes. It's what moves around, right? We have the horses that are the vehicles that move us around, meaning we are propelled around the world by our sense engagement with the world, the world around us, true. And those senses are coordinated by the central nervous system, and that's the reins, right? Who's holding the reins should be the buddhi, the intelligence of the individual, the the the thinking mind, the discerning mind, and who, ultimately, yeah, the intuitive mind. Who's ultimately writing in this is the soul or the Atman. And you know you, I think you very rightly brought up the the part of the this metaphor, right? We can, we can understand the dynamics as yoga teachers and yoga students we've likely and. Encountered this before, the idea of our senses of perception and the sense objects around us, and how important it is and how key in Yoga it is to make those senses more refined, where we're no longer habitually drawn to the same things, the same addictions and the same entanglements, right? So it gives us a lot of practical information, but I think the way we perceive it is so important. Initially, you brought up the horse training, and I've trained many a dog, and I know training is an art. I'll tell you that working with an animal and some that kind of nature, that kind of raw nature, is really an art. And I something that I've learned in this is that the idea of suppressing or oppressing the animal is never going to work for and for many years, this is how horses and dogs were trained. But in the about the last 20 years, there's been a lot of developments seeing that actually positive reinforcement works a lot better. So

Nischala Joy Devi: 16:20

can you from this training of the dogs? Does that help training your mind?

Kamala Rose: 16:26

Absolutely? In fact, I walk with this metaphor all the time, and I know that as a good charioteer, as the booty, my job is to see ahead. I am. I'm the one who's got to look ahead and instead go a different direction than encounter the triggering things you know when you walk with an animal, you're sensing the world in a different way. One thing you can ever do is go into yourself, and there's no phones, there's no distractions, there's no thinking about me and my agenda. You can't space out in a way go somewhere else. You have to stay entirely present and pay attention not to yourself. But what are we doing? What are we smelling? And those dogs can smell 10,000 times greater than I can I am not in the same movie at all. Right? They smell subtle, tanmatras of all sorts of things, and you can just watch it and know it well enough and work with it avoid dangerous situations and reward the positive is what I've learned from it.

Nischala Joy Devi: 17:44

And you know, when you go the other the other way, I was laughing because you were talking about being in nature with animals. The other day, I was in an Apple store, and I had to wait, and they gave me their new little glasses to wear that you see things that are not real. However, the interesting part about this as as I was wearing them, and I knew I was rational enough to understand I was sitting in a store on a stool, very safe, but at one point they showed this woman walking on tightrope between two mountains, and literally, my entire body went into a sympathetic nervous system reaction. I had a hard time breathing. I could feel even now talking about it, I can feel my palm sweating, and at one point she lost her balance and she tripped and she fell, but she was on a rope that stopped her. Wow. My body reacted as if I was there with it. So we start to see how they senses really impact everything we do, everything we do. So if you're taking a sweet walk in the woods with your dogs, the impact is very different than sitting in a store looking at a virtual reality. And I see people doing this also with watching travel shows. I'll say, like, I come back from a trip and they say, Oh yeah, I saw a travel show like that. And I said, it's very different. When you're there, you smell it, you hear it, you feel it, you taste it, right. It's a very different experience than seeing it in one or two dimensions. So I think that we really have to understand how big these sensory experiences are. They just they're mostly what we have our inner life, for most people, is miniscule compared. The outer life. And I think one of the aspects of yoga is to begin to balance that more have as much inner as outer. When we talk about the senses, there's the inner senses as well as the outer senses. There's what I call the clairs, the clairaudience, the clairvoyance, the clairsentience. We have all that. So this is huge. When we talk about being tossed about by the senses, which senses right? The outer senses, the inner senses, all of the senses. So to be able to draw them in just a little bit in the Pratyahara, this is really one of the things that would help us tremendously in our lives and in our spiritual quest,

Kamala Rose: 20:50

having the understanding of the way our experience of the world works that we're at all times, unless we're in unless We're sleeping right all the time in the waking state, we're experiencing the world around us. We're smelling it, tasting it, seeing it, touching it, right, hearing it. Not sure which one I forgot, but right, those are our gyana indriyas, the way we perceive the world and take we're tasting it at 100% of our waking time. A lot of this our brains have relegated to not really that important. You know, as long as you're in your comfortable place, at home, it's tolerant, it's fine, it's comfortable. I don't really need to think about it. But when you get outside of that temperate zone and you're sensing something that is uncomfortable, right, your your system has a reaction to that right, a sympathetic nervous system response. In the case of seeing something very dangerous, whether it's in real life, or it's given to us by AI, which is a whole dialog as yogis, we need to have about right? There's regular sense information about the world around us that human beings have experienced for hundreds of 1000s, millions of years, millions of years. Sorry, but, you know, a sensory system like my dogs are a sensory system in a in a different way. I mean, I'm, I'm the driver of the system, and it's my job to not get us into any danger, because that happens too. I'm the charioteer, and it can get hairy. It definitely could get hairy if we go the wrong way. So and same with horses, they're you five refrigerator size animals. If they decide to do their own thing, you're in trouble. The chariots gonna knock over. You're gonna fall down, hurt yourself. Hurt yourself. I think there's a practicality to this. And one of my favorite images is that, is that if you take these, here's these five horses that are on reins. That is the Manas, if we took a, if we took a yoke, which is what yoga means, a piece of wood that would keep those leashes sorted out, not crossing over each other all the time to hold and make driving easier. This is a great metaphor for what yoga practice is. It is the yoke that makes those dangerous horses manageable.

Nischala Joy Devi: 23:38

That's great. Yes, that makes it really clear. I think that's really clear when you when we look at it that way, because if they're all go All five are going off in different directions, it's called disaster. We have to have them going together, and they have to be pacified. I don't like the word controlled as much as pacified. We have to pacify the senses. Give them something to look at, give them something to taste, give them something to feel. But not so out of the range. I want to go back to something that you were talking about, the awake part of it. There's also the sleep part of the senses. And these are one of the vrittis. One of the main vrittis is the idea that sleeping and dreaming. I don't know if we understand how the body and mind actually work physiologically. Let's start with that. We do all these things during the day, you walk, you sit, you eat, you eliminate all kinds of things during the day and at night is the time when the body cleanses. This is the time where the body purifies itself. It doesn't have any digestion. It. Digesting to do. Hopefully, it begins its elimination process. And then we get up in the morning, the natural experience is you go in and you eliminate, and you're getting rid of a lot of the toxicity, things that aren't necessary for the body, and it all goes out. This is, this is how we we naturally live. And the same thing happens with the mind. And I don't think people understand that as much, because it's not as dramatic. You don't get up and release it all, although it's very interesting, because some things we don't release, like people say, I get really stiff in the morning, for instance. And people, they don't realize that it's lactic acid building up. That's what it is. And look at what you've done the day before. Have you done a lot of exercise without drinking enough water, etc, etc. So all these things are physiological. We can see them, we can feel them. We can experience them. The mind is a little different. We go and we pick up things all day long with our senses, our eyes are 75% of our sensory input, and then the others. We hear things, we see things, maybe some things that are pleasant and some things that aren't here. We get back to the the sloka, pain and pleasure, unpleasant and pleasant, the dualities. And what do we do with them? Well, generally, we don't do anything with them. We don't talk about them. We don't release them in some way. Or we think that if you do exercise, you're releasing the mind. It's not necessarily so. One is the physical, one is the mental. So when we lay down at night to go to sleep, they all come back. They all come back to us. And some are insignificant. They just go, they just evaporate. Or some of them go back down under. If you've had a disagreement with a friend or something, it may go beyond below the surface to later come up. But there are also those that then activate dreams, so you've seen something on TV. You saw an incident on the street. This then comes back to you as you begin to go into a dream state. And your dreams can tell you, not analysis. I'm not talking about dream analysis right now. I'm just talking about your dreams can tell you what you may need to avoid, like, say, the news is coming back and there's a war, and they showed the war, and now you're replaying it in your mind, in your dream, perhaps staying away from that kind of news, because you can see how It affects you. So these senses are so prevalent, 24/7, literally. And sometimes we remember, and sometimes we just get up grumpy and we don't know why something has happened during the night.

Kamala Rose: 28:16

Our interaction with the world is really part that part of what shapes us? I think we have the idea that here in the chariot metaphor, there is the indwelling, the innermost self, the Atman, right, the the original self that is beyond the Gunas the innermost Yes, right? We can, we can think many are familiar with even the Kosha model of describing the subtle layers around us, right? So all of these models are meant to help us understand the workings of our mind and how it is that we are an eternal being having a temporary experience and that it's not that it doesn't affect you or it doesn't, you know, you don't interact with the world. It's learning what your limits are, learning what the tolerance zones are. And just like with my beloved dogs, it takes years. Really does take years to get a good training model where everybody understands what's going on and what's tolerated and what's not right. It takes time you have to develop a relationship. And I think this is something that is important to bring into the dialog on this chariot metaphor, which is, you know, it's kind of a it's a war like image, right? And it does sort of speak about oppressing the horses and subduing the senses. We hear this over and over and again in yoga, that we have to subdue the senses. We have to get them under control. My experience is that we have to make friends. We have to. Something that is agreeable to the peace loving person that's me and the ultimately easily distracted childish and primal animals that are taking the locomotion forward. And I think understanding this as as yogis, as the process of refining one's experience in the world, we learn to recognize the things, as you said, that haunt us at night, and that's those are things to turn the other way, like the barking dog on the corner. Just go a different way. It doesn't mean we don't interact with the world any longer, or we make some sort of rule that is becomes difficult to enforce. I think it speaks about a relationship between the outer world and the inner goal of Self Realization, or realizing that atman as the driver as the real identity,

Nischala Joy Devi: 31:07

I think one question I still ask myself, especially as a as I was beginning on this glorious path, I would every time something would happen, I would always ask myself, Is this bringing me closer to my peace, or is it taking me further away? And whether it was food, whether it was the barking dog on the corner, as you just mentioned, watching a show, watching the news, whatever it was, being with somebody who afterwards, I was upset. Discrimination has to be used, because this is what happens. Typically, you have a student that comes to you and wants to learn meditation, and you begin the process of teaching, and they come to you one day and they said, you know, every time I sit down, my mind just goes absolutely crazy. There's just no calmness with it at all. And I always sort of smile and ask them, What did you expect? You let it run, whatever, wherever it wants to go all day, and then you decide you want to sit for a time for meditation, and it won't be still. How could it be still? It's not trained that way. The training doesn't begin when you sit on a pillow or a chair or however you get into a meditative pose. The training starts when you wake up in the morning, and it goes on from there. Everything has to be geared to that. And find a question that you can ask yourself, Is this bringing me further from my peace or closer to my peace? What do I want? What do you want? I think that's something that we have to ask. And I think that's something Krishna is asking Arjuna here, what do you want to do? Make a decision. This is your dharma. But if you don't want to do that, make some kind of decision. So I think we're all in this and that's probably why they talk about it as an allegory so much, because it does relate to us in our everyday life when we really look at it. So keeping the mind calm calmer, you don't want it the same state as in meditation, but there's a certain calmness and an ease that it has. It doesn't mean you can't have fun or get excited, but always come back to the neutral point. That's the thing. Come back to that sattva you can move through rajas, have a great time, go out dancing, do whatever you want, and then move it back. Move it back, but notice how it affects you. That's the important thing.

Kamala Rose: 34:05

Great advice, because this is really the the issue is that we are experiencing Matra sparshaus material conditions at all times we're we're having an experience of that. We're referencing it to previous experiences of this, right? There's now psychology going on, some scaras, habits, deeper levels of conditioning, vasanas, all of this is entering with the mind stream, our material sensations, and it's this is what we're using to make choices about the way we act in the world, the things that we do respond to and the things that we don't respond to. I think this is such an important part of it that sometimes we we perceive that if something is painful. It must be ended. I have to do something to stop that. Right? If something is pleasurable, I have to do something to keep it going, to get more of it. And it's this very premise that is what creates our suffering, that we are always chasing something that can't really ever be again. So the practicality of understanding how we're experiencing the world, what we keep with us, what we hold with us, what we identify with in the world around us, and as Nisha has been giving us such great practical advice for managing that as from the time you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night. It's really about how we are handling ourselves in our environment and understanding why we make the choices we make, which is the fundamental issue here in the Bhagavad Gita is, what are you going to do? What? How are you going to behave from this information? And this is where we get into this, this idea that these, these things that we're experiencing through our senses, they are, they are coming and going, as Krishna says, Agama apaina and anityas, they are coming, they are going, and they are, by nature, impermanent, yes. And you know, we seldom, seldom look at our own minds with this kind of objectivity. Right the what I'm experiencing right now, whether I'm cold or I'm hot, or whether I like it or I don't like it, by nature, like the clouds, it's going to move along. It will change. It will transform into something else. But, you know, I think that the idea that when it's inside of us, we we come to cherish our opinions and our the ways we see the world, and we even argue with each other and say, I'm perceiving this correctly, and you're perceiving this incorrectly, when by nature. And I think what the chariot metaphor is trying to show us is that by nature, everyone is perceiving subjectively, yes, through your own lens, through your own previous experience, from your own location, where you are, who you've been, how you were brought up. You know, we were talking about the difference in the ways we were brought up, from growing up in a woodsy suburb to growing up in the city. And you know how the experience of our material sensations as it were shapes us, right, the indwelling consciousness, but the layers of material and substance that we are that develop the psychology of each individual right? Now we add on from verse 13, our previous verse, A reincarnating spirit and subtle material brought from other times that precondition the individual to experience that situation in their own way. We can read this in the Gita in chapter one that Arjun is telling us exactly his way of seeing it. He sees all the important men all ranked here on the battlefield, from the most important to the to me, right? We're all in conflict. It's not working. We're supposed to work together. We're on the same side. I don't get it. He's laying out his subjective worldview. And I think if we understand that, that's more where the Gita is coming from, of trying to help us to get a little more objective about the subjectivity about our individual worldview.

Nischala Joy Devi: 39:00

Yeah. Yeah, that's it's making it so crystal clear, at least in my mind. And the other thing is, I often think of the senses, or the experience of the senses, because we have the senses are very complicated in a lot of ways, because we think of the senses as we identify them as a sense organs, and that's really not the senses. The senses are more in the mind, and then they come in, and then there's the object of sense that's on the outside. So there's the object of sense, and there's the the receptacle that tells us that it identifies. So for instance, we see something, and the eye says, Oh, that's a piece of paper. Okay, how did the eye? The eye didn't do that. It was the booty within the mind. That identified it. So we're constantly looking and identifying, and our identification, a lot of it is based on our experience. So that's why, when we see something, we see it in a particular way. I went out for dinner the other night with some friends, and I don't eat onions, and they love onions, so I watched them pick out and eat the onions separately, and I picked out the onions and put it on the side of my plate. Two the same dish, two different experiences of it. One loves it. One doesn't love it. Does that make onions great or not great? Neither. Onions are just onions, if you like them, it's one thing. So I see the senses as a ball and then almost like a comet with a long tail on it. And that tail, to me, is a samskara. So what happens is you have a sense experience, whether good or bad. And then it doesn't just go, it stays. And depending on how strong it is, that's how strong that tale remains. And that tale then comes back at another time. It comes back at another place where maybe it's less appropriate or more appropriate, but that this is what happens. We start to experience things based on our experience of other things, and it keeps going like that and breaking that cycle, which is what we're trying to do in spiritual practice, is very difficult, very difficult. First you have to identify it, and then you have to try to change it. But depending on how thick that tail is and how strong that comet is, which is the sense that's how difficult it might be to change it. So when we sit down for meditation and we start to go within, if that has not been cleared, we can't get to that Dhyana state. We can't get to that deep state of meditation. There's too much in the way. It has to be cleared, and that's what the other practices do, the pranayama, the Pratyahara, etc, to lead us to the meditation

Kamala Rose: 42:31

so that the buddhi can drive. The buddhi can be the driver of the chariot and we can move forward in harmony with the senses. We can be in the world, as they say, but not of the world, not always taking it on and identifying it with it to the degree that our world teaches us to. I mean, we're talking to about the Western culture, which tells us to identify ourselves as with our favorite brands, you know, teaches us about, you know, all of the things that we can do to indulge our senses, and gives us 1000 things, millions of things to choose from. The path of yoga, we are really intentionally taking up a practice of looking for balance in that looking for a sense of purity. And we should never be, as you said, we just shouldn't be naive about the amount of work it really does take to, you know, to train the senses to be more subtle, to be interested in things that are quieter, that might not scream out as awesome, right? I love things like chocolate ice cream, you know, I love things like that. I love, we all love stimulants in some way. But we know, as yogis, it's not good to have so much. We have to find a moderation in our relationship with the outer world. This is that yoke that organizes the reins that are attached to the horses, so that we are not, you know, so so much with what I what I see and what I want. It's got to be tamed. It's got to be brought in. Like I said, What I know this from working with it's taught me a lot, working with my dogs, working with myself, that you can't just say, No, never, and you have to work with it. Do you have to recognize if that is a tendency, you have to approach it with some compassion and some training. And I often say that I run my house on peanut butter because I believe in I believe in positive. Of reinforcement, and that means I reward what I want. If I see calm states, I give peanut butter. If I see listening to me and coming when I call and learning to say no to whatever I am talking about, I give peanut butter. I reward the good behavior, and I ultimately most of the bad behavior, I ignore and find that neutrality. You said you talked about neutral a little bit in the beginning, and I think we should come back to that important idea that, you know, we can't always we're not going to balance out too much with nothing. We have to find something in between, where's a sense of neutrality,

Nischala Joy Devi: 45:49

you know. And I think that this is where the religions have a little bit of a step up, some of them, if you go into, especially if you go into some of the ancient cathedrals in Europe, or if you go into the temples in India, some of the mosques I've been in are just jaw dropping. What to me, what it what it does, is very interesting. You're walking from the material senses being stimulated to more of an uplifting stimulation. So it's not you don't feel deprived when you walk in because you see the beautiful stained glass, you see the beautiful you hear the beautiful singing of the choir, or of chanting, or the bells ringing, or something is happening that brings your senses to that instead of what it was outside. So it's almost like we're taking steps, the first step when we step into a place of solemn place of worship. It could be anything. It could be a cathedral of trees in the in the forest. It doesn't have to be a building, but something that that actually, the early temples in India were caves. They weren't physical buildings. So when we walk into something like that, depending on our level of need, the beauty just takes us and we become literally breathless with it, and we sit. I used to be this was before the horrible fire happened at Our Lady of Notre Dame in Paris. One of the things I used to do is love to go sit there and watch when people came in and looked at these magnificent windows, and perhaps even had some chanting on or some prayers, and they would just look at them, and in spite of themselves, would sit down on a pew and be quiet for a few minutes, even if that was not their intention, just the beauty, just the solemnity of it, just the the the depth of the vibration that's held in these ancient places, was enough to stop and sit down, and then the senses become calm. So this is, I would really suggest this for people in their own homes. Make a beautiful spot for meditation. Put something beautiful there. Draw your senses to that instead of thinking about lunch or urines or how you're going to start your day, and then from there, it's much easier to let it go.

Kamala Rose: 48:48

That's wonderful advice, and I think that's a great place to conclude our podcast for today. Thank you all so much for joining us. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast so you can be notified each time we have one comes out every two weeks a woman's Gita, by and for Western women, a contemporary version, Namaste. Namaste.

Unknown: 49:14

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.