The Gita and the mind

The Bhagavad Gita on anxiety and fear

In his years as a psychiatrist, Dr. Sharad Wagle saw that a great deal of anxiety is a fear of not being in control. His patients chose the seat by the door and avoided queues they could not leave. The Gita speaks to that same fear, and in this podcast he reads it with a psychiatrist’s eye.

Gita verses for anxiety

2.47: your right is to the action, never to its fruits. Most worry is about results.
2.48: be the same in success and failure.
2.56: the wise are not shaken by sorrow or joy, and are free from desire, fear and anger.
2.58: like a tortoise, draw the senses back from what pulls at them.
2.65: in peace, all sorrows are destroyed. In his words, “stress is nothing but an uncontrolled mind”.
6.5: lift yourself by yourself. Your own self is your friend and your enemy.
6.35: the restless mind can be controlled with practice and letting go. More on both in How to control the mind.

Anxiety as a fear of losing control

In Session 8 he explains agoraphobia, often misunderstood as a fear of open spaces. In his experience “it’s a fear of not being in control”. His patients finished their Christmas shopping by September to avoid crowded malls, and avoided long queues, tunnels and bridges, all for the same reason: what if I need to leave right now and cannot?

He describes a panic attack plainly: you break into a sweat, your heart beats fast, you think you are having a heart attack or going crazy, and your knees turn to jelly. Many people end up in the emergency room.

He pictures it as a cup. When the cup overflows, a panic attack follows. Three things fill it: genes that run in the family, stress, and what we put into our bodies, such as caffeine. Someone with no family history and a peaceful life starts with an almost empty cup. Someone with both starts nearly full.

Then the mind makes a mistake. Say a man has a panic attack at a baseball game. His mind does not blame what really set it off. It blames the stadium, so he stops going to stadiums. Next time it happens at the laundromat, then the supermarket, until he feels comfortable only at home.

Most worry is about results

He describes ordinary anxiety in plain words: what if I do this and I don’t get the result, what if people don’t like it, what if I don’t get the money I expected. Selfish action breeds more of these fears. The Gita’s answer is karma yoga, acting without being driven by the reward. In his reading, even a little karma yoga frees a person from many fears.

Your right is to the action, not the result (2.47)

Verse 47 of Chapter 2, as he reads it: “Your right is in the action only, never to the fruits of the action. Let not the fruit of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.”

He gives the example of a farmer. The farmer works for months to plough the land and sow the seed, and then he has to wait for the rain, which is completely out of his control. So much of what happens depends on forces beyond us. The verse also says do not give up acting. Nobody can stay without acting, so the work is still ours to do well.

The same in success and failure (2.48)

The next verse asks us to be the same in success and failure. He links this to raga and dvesha, likes and dislikes. From childhood we teach children to want more of what they like and push away what they dislike, and those likes and dislikes go on to drive our actions and our worry.

Fear of losing what we have

He explains three gates that lead us down: desire, anger and fear. First we want something. If the desire is blocked, we get angry. If we get it, we become afraid of losing it. Wealth is his example: once you have it, the fear of losing it begins.

A steady mind (2.56 and 2.58)

Verse 56 describes the person of steady wisdom: “He whose mind is not agitated by sorrow nor excited by joy, he who is free from desire, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady wisdom.” He points out that this person still feels sorrow and joy. The emotions are there, but they do not shake him.

His example is Ram. Told he would be crowned king the next day, Ram did not jump up and down with joy. Told instead that he was banished to the forest for fourteen years, he did not throw himself on the ground in sorrow.

Verse 58 is one of his personal favourites: like a tortoise drawing in its limbs on all sides, the wise person draws the senses back from the things that pull at them.

More on this: The steady mind: the sthitaprajna verses.

When stress takes away wisdom

In Episode 27 he notes that all of us can be wise some of the time, but “given enough stress that wisdom drops off”. He can stay wise if he loses a Mont Blanc pen, a watch or even a car. When the loss is greater, like his family, the wisdom disappears and he starts to get frustrated, angry, upset, anxious or depressed. The Gita’s person of steady wisdom, sthita prajna, stays wise throughout.

He also borrows an example from Swamiji. Ask someone to walk along a plank nine inches wide on the ground and he crosses it easily. Put the same plank between two skyscrapers and he cannot, “because your mind is fearful”.

Verse 65 points the way: “In peace all his sorrows are destroyed.” As he puts it, “stress is nothing but an uncontrolled mind”, and when the mind is controlled by the intellect, you are at peace.

These pages share teachings from the Gita, not medical advice. If anxiety is stopping you from living your life, please speak to a doctor.