NOTES FROM GEETA: CHAPTER 1

1. Well begun is half done, said Shakespeare. How Geeta begins? By a curiosity, but a fickle minded curiosity. What questions you ask tells a lot about you as a person. Most people ask, how can I live a happy life, how can I be satisfied? How will I achieve what I want to achieve? 

Why do you think God never shows his face? He is scared of the thirst in humans he has created. Even in reading Geeta, nobody wants to read Geeta to understand what God wants to say. They want to read Geeta today, so that they excel in their fields, they console their minds when their lifestyle is highly competitive and therefore violent. 

Everyone wants to make the God stand with him, but who wants to stand with God in what he says? 

Dhritrashtra definitely does not want that. A selfish, egoistic person always has complaints with God. He has a list of injustices and misfortunes, and he blames God for all of them. Contrast it with a man who is Dharmic, is a man, who is most of the time just curious why something happened to him. He genuinely wants to know, Why and what happened to him. 

I rename myself as "Why-What Kumar", signifying that one must always be value neutral towards events, do not judge them as bad or good, rather ask, why, and what? And you will find, a specific ignorance of yours, a specific bondage of yours. 

2. Humans feel a constant need to justify their actions and when they cannot, they start feeling what Arjun felt. Why do humans need to justify? Who are they justifying. It seems that there is always a photograph in the hands of a human, and every time he does something, he reminds himself, that he is the same person as the photograph. But why? Why do we need a reference definition of yourselves? Why do we need a photograph at the first place? 

It makes us feel homely. Otherwise, what explanation will one give of why I am here doing what. Right now, I am an advanced species of monkeys sitting on a wooden bed, trying to hit keys of plastic and looking at a screen which throws light? 

Our mind constantly justifies our behavior, as "Yes! this is what Vibhat would do!" because Vibhat is a moral person. But, why? No answers.

The need to justify good work as a personality trait and bad work as personality trait comes from a need to keep building our self (ego). So, good or bad works, just contribute to ego and hence are all bad. 

3. Why do humans find it easy to follow cultures and why society dictates? It is because it is energy consuming to think at every step. To sleep and act according to habit is so easy, to think and act according to conscience is so stressful. 

4. The first chapter is a story about a weak, loser called Arjun, who used to take pride in he, being the best archerer in the world. See, how destiny works, it tested the so called best archerer by putting his own relatives in front of him and telling him, "OH! SO YOU ARE BEST ARCHERER? NOW, LETS SEE IF YOU CAN KILL YOUR OWN PEOPLE?" 

5. All humans of pride, which includes almost everyone in this universe, take pride in their ego, get challenged by Destiny, where they have to choose between two identities, "Archerer" and "Arjun: A Pandava". 
The truth is, for a person who has decided that he is an archerer, the whole world is just a target. No mothers, no fathers, no friends, only targets. Hit your own mother, hit your own father, only then you are the best archerer. Otherwise, you are just a loser. Loser Arjun. 

6. Arjun is confused in what to protect and what to let go. He thought he will become the best archerer and best son at the same time. Poor, pathetic Arjun. 

7. I pity this man. He is weak, sad and a complete sucker. 

8. Krishna, on the other hand, smiles. Why does he smile? Let's look at who is Krishna? A man, who lost his love in Vrindavan. Who never saw his natural mother till late. One who was fostered by another mother. This man has seen life to the darkest. And yet this man smiles. 

People, who have seen the life's darkest twists and turns, keep smiling like Krishna. They know, they always know, however hard life may seem, it can go even worse, and you cannot do anything about it. 

9. To ask for meaning is blasphemy. To ask for mercy is merciless. To ask for death is cowardice, to ask for life is stupid. Not asking and smiling is the answer. Jesus never asked God why he had to suffer. Even if he would have, God would have remained silent. Also, there is no God. 

10. Bhagwat Geeta is the song of God. What does God say? He does not say anything. Silence is the song of God. We interpret the silence in different ways. Krishna Geeta, Ashtavakra Geeta, Ribhu Geeta are all interpretations of the silence. All interpretations are coping mechanisms in this world. 

No meaning at all is the right meaning of silence. God says nothing since God is nothing. Suffer in silence. Smile in Silence. That is what the message of God is. 

11. Do not make God your coping mechanism. Do not try to make God your defense. Suffer boldly. You are son of God. Face it. Kill your mother if you have to, kill your father if you have to. There are no moral compasses other that in your mind. Freedom from mind would mean freedom from all these moral compasses. 

12. Jesus died to show that God suffers like you do. Nobody is free from this world's natural processes. Krishna died in a jungle. No meaning. Just, he had to. So, you have to. Embrace death of yours and your loved ones as inevitable. 

13. Arjuna is dispassionate. Actually, no work in the world has been done within the binary of passion and dispassion. All work has been done through a dutiful human, who has lost passion in the way of his struggles and is not willing to give up and hence is not dispassionate of actions. But the swing has to move. Once, a passionate archerer, is now a depressed loser lying there in his mediocrity. From there will rise the synthesis, a mature man, who does not attach his self-worth with that he does and how he does. He is the mature man; He is the superman. 

14. Krishna smiles, Arjuna weeps, and the first chapter is over. The depression is severe, and it means, the rise will be even greater, just this time, Arjuna, will not feel a thirst to become the best. He will be out of the rat race of archery.