Indian Monk Explains Bhagawad Gita In 7 Minutes | Gaur Gopal Das on TRS

[0:00]Have you read the Bhagavad Gita? Yes. Okay. Like, what's in that book? Why do people say that you open any page of it and you'll get your answer? Why do people say things like that? Sure, sure. I think the first thing to know is, let's, let's remove the religion aspect from the Bhagavad Gita totally. Bhagavad Gita is not a religious book. It is a book which gives you the way to live. And the setting for the Bhagavad Gita is the battlefield of Kurukshetra, the Mahabharat, where Arjun's confused and Krishna becomes his mentor, and gives him guidance in a way that he can now start doing what he is meant to do right. So every young man or lady is going to have confusions. Every young person is going to have those dilemmas to do or not to do, to be or not to be. That's exactly how the Gita begins. It begins with confusion, it begins with dilemmas, it begins with a lack of meaning. And then Krishna kind of guides Arjuna through and empowers Arjuna to make his own choices. Krishna only acts like a facilitator and empowers Arjuna to understand that he is way too more powerful than the people he is going to face in the battle. Every young man and lady needs to understand that they are way more powerful than what they're going through at the moment. Their confusions are smaller than them. Their challenges are smaller than them, their problems are smaller than them, their heartbreaks, as painful as they are, but are still smaller than them. And they have that capacity to overcome them, those pains that they're going through. So, I think that's precisely where books like the Gita help a lot because they build in you that sense of confidence. And strength. And strength, fortitude, that I have the power as a spiritual being to overcome everything that's going around, going on in my life, and I have the power to be able to make that difference and that impact because I'm a spiritual being. Can you, can you reference like three big lessons from the Bhagavad Gita that stayed with you specifically? Yes, one of the lessons that stayed with me from the Gita is a particular text from the second chapter of the Gita, which talks about the summer and the winter season. And this particular text says that the summer and the winter season keeps coming and going every year, seasons change. And just because seasons change, we never stop performing our duties. Let's say for example, it's Chicago and the temperatures are -27° Celsius. People don't stop their work still. Let's say it's Delhi, it's 43° Celsius. People are still on and going on with their regular life, with a few adjustments here and there obviously. So this text of the Gita chapter two tells us that we have to learn to tolerate the ups and downs and not be distracted from what our main purpose is. Like when we talk about tolerating failures and pains, we can understand, but we also have to learn to tolerate our success and the good times because both distract us. You know? Usually we only look at negatives as distractions, but even the positives distract us from what we are meant to be doing. That's something that really kind of stayed with me. The second thing that I really kind of resonate with in the Gita is a verse from the sixth chapter, which talks about the mind being a friend or an enemy to you. It depends on how you deal with the mind. If you befriend your mind, the mind will become you, become your friend and will empower you to do what you want to do. But if you don't deal with it rightly, then your mind will become your enemy and will lead to your downfall. I'll give you an example. You want to get up early in the morning to go for a jog or for a workout because you know you want to be fit. You know your days are busy and you decide this is going to be my plan for the year 2020. Correct? You set up the alarm clock to wake up early in the morning, like five, six, whatever. And when the alarm goes, what's the mind saying? The first thing that you slept late last night. Take it easy. Or maybe this is not the right thing for you to do. Your mind's constantly playing games, right? Now, if you have a mind which is constantly giving these kind of reasons, you're not going to wake up. On the other hand, if you learn to train your mind using the proper intellectual process, right? Proper spiritual process, your mind can be your greatest asset and your friend. Which is meditation, good books. Correct friends. The right kind of company, all of these are inputs so that your mind becomes your friend. And the third thing of Gita that connects to me a lot is, how do we start looking at the presence of divinity everywhere and in every aspect. We don't have to necessarily go to a place of worship to look at the presence of divinity. You can look at the presence of divinity in nature, you can look at the presence of divinity in other people. You can start looking at the splendor of the creator, or the creation, or you can start looking at the splendor of the creator in the creation. You know, which is precisely why, this is something that I usually tell people is, when you look at somebody who is better than you, you know, and specially if they're in the same field, usually there is insecurity. There's insecurity that this guy is doing better than me in what I'm doing. Or there is envy, jealousy, or sometimes it goes to the extent of sabotaging that other person's work. You know, and it has happened in the world, happens all the time. So when you start looking at divinity in creation, you start looking at how divinity has empowered somebody to do something in a special way, that person has been gifted by higher powers, right? And to sabotage that person's work or to be envious about that person, or feeling insecure means actually insulting somebody who is given that gift to them. You know, But if I look at that person and derive inspiration from that person, I can seek that inspiration to follow my aspiration. You know, So that aspect of the Gita also kind of really resonates with me that you start looking at divinity everywhere and in every place around you, including people who're doing better because it's not them, you can see straight away. Very often I see people who do remarkable stuff, and they usually when they speak, they say it's they're doing it. And of course they're doing it. No doubt that there's a part of part that they're doing. But you can tell that there's something beyond them that's kind of making them do it, whether that's acting, speaking, singing, something. An element which is not necessarily effort. Not their effort. X factor. X factor. And when you start appreciating that X factor as divinity, oh, that's something that really kind of connects to me as well.