The Gita and the mind

The steady mind: the Bhagavad Gita’s sthitaprajna, verse by verse

At the end of Chapter 2, Arjuna asks Krishna a simple question: what does a person of steady wisdom look like? In Sanskrit that person is the sthita prajna. Doctor explains why the word steady matters. All of us can be wise some of the time, “but given enough stress that wisdom drops off”. The sthita prajna stays wise throughout. Here is his walk through verses 54 to 72.

Four questions (2.54)

Arjuna asks how such a person sits, walks and speaks. He points out that these are symbolic. The verses were sung and passed down, so they had to be concise. How he sits means his inner personality when he is by himself. How he walks means how he meets the outside world. How he speaks means how he acts.

Happy in the self (2.55)

Krishna’s answer: “when one completely casts off desires and when one is completely satisfied in the self by the self then one is said to be of steady wisdom.” The important word, he says, is completely.

His example is childhood toys. As children we were sure we would love our marbles or comic books until the day we died. Then we grew up and dropped them for bicycles, and later for money, fame, power and family. Nobody could have talked us out of the marbles. We let go of them only when we took up something we cared about more. “You can never give up anything you can only take up something higher.”

Not shaken by sorrow or joy (2.56)

Verse 56 describes his inner life: “he whose mind is not agitated by sorrow nor excited by joy he who is free from desire fear and anger he is called a sage of steady wisdom.” He stresses that this person still feels sorrow and joy. The emotions are there, but they do not agitate him. More on this verse in The Bhagavad Gita on anxiety and fear.

In the world, without attachment (2.57)

“He who is everywhere without attachment he who having met good or evil neither rejoices nor hates his wisdom is established.” The key word is everywhere. Anyone can be calm alone in the mountains. The sthita prajna lives among people and things, and is not caught by them.

He borrows his teacher Gautam Jain’s example of a rental car. If your own new car hits a ditch, your heart jumps. If a rental car hits the same ditch, you say what great shock absorbers it has and keep driving. A hotel room is the same: the same bed and the same TV, but more pleasant, because there is no attachment to it.

The tortoise (2.58 and 2.59)

Verse 58 is one of his favourites: like a tortoise drawing in its limbs on all sides, the wise person draws the senses back from their objects. He explains it with three Rs. You receive a stimulus, you react, you respond. He comes downstairs on a diet day, smells his favourite dish from the kitchen, walks towards it, and the diet goes out of the window. The mind has to be drawn in too, not just the nose and the feet.

Verse 59 adds a subtle point: “the sense objects turn away from an abstinent man but not the relish even his relish turns away on seeing the supreme.” Where there is a wish, he says, the object finds its way to you, because where there is demand there is supply. Staying away removes the object, but the taste for it remains until something higher takes its place.

When the senses carry the mind (2.60 to 2.66)

Verses 60 to 66 explain how the senses can carry away even a wise person’s mind, the ladder of fall from a single thought to anger and ruin, and the peace of the self-controlled. He covers these in The Bhagavad Gita on anger. His summary of verse 65: “stress is nothing but an uncontrolled mind.”

When the mind carries the intellect (2.67 and 2.68)

Verse 67: “for the mind which follows the roving senses carries away his intellect as the wind carries away a boat on water.” The ocean is the world, the boat is us, the captain is the intellect, the wind is the mind’s desires, and the compass is the scriptures. Once the mind takes the intellect with it, the intellect starts to justify what the mind wants. That is when, he says, well known people throw away their reputations.

Verse 68 repeats the tortoise teaching in new words, because the Gita often hammers a point home. He notes that most of us control our hands and feet well enough. It is the voice that gets us into trouble, saying things we should not say.

More on this: The Bhagavad Gita on desire.

Night and day (2.69)

“That which is night to all beings the self-controlled one keeps awake that in which beings are awake is night to the sage who sees.” In plain words, he says, what gives us pleasure does not give the enlightened person pleasure. Our experiences and theirs are as different as night and day.

Like the ocean (2.70)

Rivers pour into the ocean from every side, yet the ocean stays undisturbed. In the same way, the person of steady mind stays at peace whatever enters, while the one who keeps desiring objects does not.

No yearning, no I and mine (2.71)

“That man who abandons all desires and moves about without yearning without the sense of I and mine attains peace.” He calls yearning the part we can control. Walking past a beautiful house, the person close to self-realisation says beautiful house and looks away. The rest of us study the roof and the windows until the mind says, I want it.

Then there is I and mine. Who taught me to hold a pencil, to read, to walk? Count everyone behind what I did and “the accomplishments of me” come to almost nothing. Even this pen I call mine will be around after I am gone. He suggests living like an actor playing a king: he plays the part fully, and knows he is not really the king.

The state of Brahman (2.72)

The chapter ends: “this is the state of brahman attaining which none is deluded.” His image is the space inside a pot. First I think I am the pot. Then I see I am the space in it, and the same space is in every other pot. In the end it is all one space.

He is honest that most of us will not reach the summit in one lifetime. But from personal experience, he says, each step makes life sweeter and more peaceful, and you wish you had started earlier.