What does it mean to act without attachment—and why is that the key to spiritual freedom?

Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita is so rich, I had to split it into two parts—and this second half is where the real philosophical firepower kicks in 🔥

We’re diving into:
🔹 The essence of Karma Yoga—selfless action without clinging to outcomes

🔹 How the Yogi transcends dualities like success/failure, praise/blame

🔹 The clash between societal values and spiritual truth

🔹 How this all ties into Advaita Vedanta and non-dual awareness

If you’ve ever struggled with “doing your Dharma” without burning out, this part of the Gita gives profound insight into how to act with devotion, not desperation.

📝 Download the Yoga For Self Mastery Syllabus => https://www.brettlarkin.com/yoga-for-self-mastery/

📖 Different translations mentioned:
Barbara Stoler Miller: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Krishnas-Counsel-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553213652

Godsong by Amit Majmudar: https://www.amazon.com/Godsong-Verse-Translation-Bhagavad-Gita-Commentary/dp/1524733474

Eknath Easwaran: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-2nd-Eknath-Easwaran/dp/1586380192

Bhagavad-Gita As It Is by Swami Prabhupada: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-As-Bhaktivedanta-Swami-Prabhupada/dp/0892131233

FREE Practice: YOGA FOR STRESS RELIEF | Twisty Morning Yoga Flow for Women

Relevant Blog: The Ultimate Guide to Karma Yoga

Relevant to Today’s Episode:
🐍 History of Yoga

🌀 Somatic Yoga Life Coaching

💫 Somatic Certification

🎧 Also Listen to:
#287 – Redefining “Sadhana” – 3 Key Tips

#297 – What is Samkhya Philosophy and How is it Different from Yoga?

#358 – Intro to The Bhagavad Gita: How Do You Navigate Moral Dilemmas?

Transcript:

Brett:
It’s time for you to walk through the world with the confidence and serenity of someone who’s deeply tethered to their inner wisdom. If you have this insatiable hunger to uplift your personal life and make a bigger impact in your wellness career, leveraging yoga’s ancient wisdom, welcome. I’ve certified thousands of yoga instructors online, I teach to over half a million subscribers on YouTube, but I still haven’t remotely quenched my thirst for more yogic knowledge.

I’m Brett Larkin, founder of Uplifted Yoga, and this is the Uplifted Yoga Podcast, where yoga enthusiasts and teachers transform their lives for the better. Let’s get started. What does it mean to act without attachment? And why is that the key to spiritual freedom? Today, we are diving into Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2 is so beautiful, so rich that I had to split it into two parts. And this is the second half, and you can just dive in. Now, of course, if you want, you can go back and listen to the intro, Chapter 1, the first part of Chapter 2. But I want you to know that is not necessary, nor do you have to be familiar with the Bhagavad Gita text or have read it.

You’ll get so much out of these podcast episodes, just jumping in wherever you want, listening and absorbing the key concepts that we go over for each section. And today, that is the essence of karma yoga, this idea of selfless action without clinging to outcomes. So we’re going to look at how a yogi transcends dualities like success or failure.

And we’re also going to look at the clash that often happens between societal values and what your spiritual truth might be. On this podcast, I love to take ancient yogic wisdom and make it approachable, practical. So I love today’s podcast because we’re really going to talk about the idea of how you might do your dharma and kind of unpack that, but without burning out and how the Gita actually gives us profound insight on how to do all this with devotion.

As always, the different translations that I reference or read from or quote in the show are available for you in the show notes. So I always look at about five or so different translations of the Gita or whatever text we’re reading or looking at together. So you can go check those out in the show notes if you want to read along potentially at a later point.

And if you’re someone who really wants to live your yoga or use your yoga to heal your marriage, partnership, relationship with your kids, your work-life balance, my Yoga for Self-Mastery course, where we really focus on three key principles from the Yoga Sutras. And I give you a framework of how to live those out in your life. I’ve had so many people tell me like, oh, I thought I was living my yoga.

And then I took Yoga for Self-Mastery and realized that, you know, I take a very unique approach to this and I ship you a workbook. And there’s also live calls happening this summer. So you get to connect and kind of nerd out with other yogis about all these fun concepts that we’ve been talking about on the show.

Know that live calls for Yoga for Self-Mastery are opening really soon. And this course is so fun and magical. It’s all about like, how do you find that happy, what I call your goddess of fun and light energy and use your yoga, your practice and the philosophy to embody that? Because from that place, everything becomes a lot easier.

And a lot of the problems you think you have seamlessly melt away. And without further ado, let’s jump back in to today’s topic, Karma Yoga and the Bhagavad Gita. All right, my friends, we are here to talk about the second half of the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita.

I promised this is going to be the only chapter that we have to divide into two parts. But this one is just so juicy, so big. And I started feeling a little overwhelmed as I even reviewed it.

I want to remind you that some scholars really look at it as divided into three sections, each with six chapters. So the first six chapters are really about karma yoga, the path of selfless action. The second six chapters are about bhakti yoga, the path of devotion.

And those last six chapters about jnana yoga, the path of self transcending knowledge or the path of wisdom. However, in chapter two, he’s literally talking about all of this. He’s talking about all of this at once.

He’s also talking about extremely complex philosophical concepts by he, I mean, Krishna. If we back up to verse 217, Krishna introduces the idea of sat, the eternal, unchanging reality. Kundalini yogis, you are familiar with this word sat, sat nam, right? Like truth is my identity.

Unchanging reality is my identity is the meaning of that mantra in Kundalini yoga. And what Krishna says is that there’s this all pervading consciousness that permeates everything that is not destroyed when the body dies. This idea aligns with Advaita Vedanta.

And in Advaita Vedanta, the concept is that Brahman, which many of you are probably familiar with that term, is this formless, omnipresent reality. So Brahman in yoga teacher training, remember, I always point up. I’m always like, it’s up there, it’s out there.

And the idea is that Brahman is pervading everything in Advaita Vedanta model. This is very different than the Samkhya yoga philosophy, which is like two things splitting apart. Remember, we have Purusha and Prakriti.

So Purusha, the unchanging consciousness principle, that would be kind of like more similar to Brahman. That’s completely separate from Prakriti, true nature, everything that’s manifest on this plane of consciousness. So in Advaita Vedanta, sat is Brahman, consciousness, and everything else is an illusion.

In Samkhya, two fundamental realities exist, Purusha and Prakriti. So in Advaita Vedanta, everything is an illusion. There’s no individual self.

There’s only one universal being. And in Samkhya, Prakriti, like true nature, this desk, my microphone, my iPhone is real. It’s real, but it’s separate from Purusha, which would be the equivalent of Brahman.

So Samkhya is a dualistic philosophy. And of course, we could think the goal would be to merge Purusha and Prakriti, or to have those two things have like a love story and integrate together, which is what I teach about in the somatic training and the embodied yoga life coaching training. But in the Vedic model, Brahman is everywhere.

And it’s like my body is an illusion. The iPhone, the desk, all the things I was talking about before are an illusion. They exist only because I’m generating Maya, this illusion that they’re here.

It’s like a dream within a dream within a dream. So what’s confusing is that early in the Gita, it seems like Krishna is leaning towards Samkhya philosophy. He’s telling Arjuna and us, you should distinguish between the eternal self, which is going to last forever, and your temporary body, which is just like clothes, outfits that you’re changing into, like costume changes.

Which is a very dualistic thing to say. But later, as he keeps teaching, he’s moving more into Advaita Vedanta, emphasizing this oneness with the divine. So Krishna as a teacher is a little tricky, right? He’s kind of trying to have it both ways.

He’s analyzing the world using Samkhya philosophy. But ultimately, what he’s going to teach and teach us is this devotional non-dual path, the bhakti yoga path of devotion. So for example, in verse 17, Krishna says, consciousness pervades all beings like air pervading space.

That is a very Vedantic viewpoint. But then later, he’s also saying, like clothes being changed, the soul discards one body and takes up another, which implies a more dualistic viewpoint. The bottom line is that this chapter two is a beast.

It’s confusing. And I just wanted to go back and review a little bit before we move forward. I think we’ve actually gotten through some of the more challenging parts of this verse.

But just to continue to review for you, if you listen to the first half of the second chapter a while ago, is that he’s taking this meta approach with Arjuna. Krishna is telling him that he doesn’t need to be sad and he doesn’t need to be upset because everyone who’s involved in this battle is going to die according to their karma. And that he, Krishna, is actually the master of the cosmos and kills people according to his will.

And basically, he’s already killed them. Like everyone’s going to die. And that it’s Arjuna’s dharma to fight and to not fight would be a sin.

And Krishna points out that the sukshma surira, right? The sukshma surira, the subtle body of each of the warriors in this battle, is going to travel on and be reincarnated and live again. So he’s telling us we don’t need to mourn or be sad because, you know, you can put stuff on the universe’s to-do list. Everything is temporary.

If you have a mission in life, like Arjuna is a warrior, that is his mission, that he can do it and know that it contributes to the greater good, even if he can’t exactly see how right now. Arjuna can know that he’s not his thoughts. He’s not his feelings.

He’s something bigger than that. He’s actually consciousness if he chooses to identify with that part of himself and that he’s also eternal. So anything he thinks he’s going to lose or anything you think you’re going to lose or might be missing, you’re going to have it again.

So verses 26 to 38 are very much about the warrior’s duty to take action and to be detached from the results. And this is setting up the foundation of karma yoga. Yes, the soul is eternal.

There is no real death. Good news. But because we are living on this plane of consciousness or in this illusion at this moment in time, we do still have a duty, a job to do, and it still demands action.

And the solution to kind of solving both of these things, because one is a very kind of nihilistic viewpoint, is that Krishna urges Arjuna to rise above his emotions and to take action without attachment to the results. And these next verses, verses 39 to 53, are setting up this idea of the yoga of wisdom, this idea of detachment. A key verse is verse 2.47, which says, You have a right to action, but never to its fruits, meaning never to its rewards.

Do not be attached to results, but also don’t be inactive. Because we could say, or Arjuna could say, Okay, everything’s just a dream. Everything’s maya, an illusion.

I’m just going to sit on this battlefield and put my feet up and eat a snack and do nothing. Why should I try? Why should I do anything? This is all an illusion, and we’re all going to die anyway. But what Krishna’s going to teach us next is that, No, actually we do need to take action, but we have to take action without attachment, which is karma yoga, and that is the path to freedom.

And then towards the end of the chapter, we’re going to talk about how someone who’s wise is kind of detached from the gunas, attached from this physical plane, and beyond worldly suffering. So really, in this section, this chapter, we’re laying the foundation for the whole rest of the book. And I think I mentioned that in the previous podcast about chapter two, is that chapter two literally is all the teachings.

It is all the teachings about the three different kinds of yoga, the yoga of karma, the yoga of devotion, bhakti, and the yoga of wisdom, all talked about here, wrapped into one. And then the whole rest of the book is like a Q&A, where Arjuna, a very good student, asks him to double click into all of these in a deeper way. What’s exciting is that as we shift into the second half here, we start to see the word yoga come up.

It’s where Krishna actually introduces the word yoga for the first time in the Bhagavad Gita and describes a yogi, someone who acts with detachment, wisdom, and even-mindedness. So again, all of this laying the foundation for karma yoga and the other types of yoga we’re going to learn about later. So let’s start breaking down each verse, because all of this is already so complicated, I’m not going to jump between a bunch of different translations today.

We’re just going to focus on the key teachings from each verse, and I’m just going to paraphrase. But let’s keep going with verse 2.38. Barbara Stoller Miller says, Impartial to joy and suffering, gain and loss, victory and defeat, arm yourself for the battle, lest you fall into evil. So basically, fight with an evenness of mind, but without attachment to pleasure or pain, gain or loss, victory or defeat.

This way you will not incur sin. So we’re supposed to act, but without attachment to the results. The bottom line here is that a yogi has an equanimity that allows us to be unshaken by the dualities of life.

The way I would say this in my own language is like, a yogi is someone who can hold two opposite truths as true at the same time and not let it bother us, because our nervous system capacity and our ability to kind of see from that third eye perspective, the breadth, the depth of various situations is so large. So I know that I’m going to die and everything is meaningless. But at the same time, I also know that I have a duty in this lifetime, a dharma to act, to be righteous, and that I need to take steps to fulfill my life mission, no matter how challenging or difficult it may be.

And I’m going to pursue this unattached to how it goes. I’m not doing it because I want to be famous or get a book deal or because I’m terrified or doing it because I’m scared. I’m doing it because it’s righteous.

It’s the right thing to do. I’m switching to the God Song book, which I know I said I wouldn’t switch between translations, but I just really didn’t like Barbara Stoller Miller’s translation of the next verse 39. Instead, I like here in God Song, Amit says, This, the Samkhya school described to you, hear it now, a yogic mindset.

Yoke to such a mindset, you will throw off karmic bondage. Here, no effort goes to waste. You will never find yourself backsliding.

Even a little of this dharma guards against great danger. So it literally says, so what I’ve taught you so far has been kind of the Samkhya model of philosophy. But now I want you to hear about yoga, which is union.

If you act with this wisdom, you will break free from karma’s bondage. So he’s basically saying Samkhya teaches the philosophy, but yoga is the practical application of that wisdom. And then verse 240, even a little bit of this yoga saves one from great fear.

So any effort towards selfless action, like doing what’s right, brings spiritual progress and protects us from great fear. And I think the great fear they’re talking about here is the fear of suffering and rebirth, right? Because that was their belief system, that you were going to be reincarnated. And the goal would be to not be reincarnated because you were so perfect that you were just going to merge with universal consciousness and not come back to this worldly existence.

Okay, I’m switching translations again to the Bhagavad Gita as it is because I did not like Amit’s translation of the next two verses. Never say you’re not going to switch translations on a podcast because clearly you will. So I like this for verse 41.

Those who are on this path are resolute in purpose, meaning the yogic path, and their aim is one. Beloved child of the Kurus, which is a fancy way of saying Arjuna. The intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched.

Men of small knowledge are very much attached to the flowery words of the Vedas, which recommend various fruitive activities. Ooh, fun new word, fruitive. Let’s use that this week in a sentence.

For elevation to heavenly planets, result in good birth, power, and so forth. Being desirous of sense gratification and opulent life. They say that there is nothing more than this.

So he’s giving a little bit of a modern commentary. So he’s saying those who are resolute in yoga have a one-pointed focus, and those who are not, a.k.a. those who are ignorant, are scattered and distracted by endless desires. And then he gives examples saying that even people who are religious, right, maybe quoting the Vedas, and loving the flowery words of the Vedas, and doing all the rituals in the Vedas for pleasure and power, even those who kind of seem religious, they also remain trapped in desire and never reach true wisdom.

So he’s basically saying yoga isn’t about doing rituals in order to get rewards, in order to try to go to heaven or get the best next life or get power. No. A true yogi seeks liberation, not like temporary gains here in the real world.

Verse 244. In the minds of those who are too attached to sense enjoyment and material opulence, who are bewildered by such things, the resolute determination for devotional service to the Supreme Lord does not take place. He’s kind of insulting all of those who appear to be so religious, but actually are not.

Verse 45. The Vedas deal mainly with the subject of three modes of material nature. Arjuna, become transcendental to these three modes.

Be free from all dualities and from all anxieties for gain and safety and be established in the self. So a different way you could translate this is basically be beyond the three gunas. Arjuna, free yourself from opposites.

Be established in the self, the Atman, and don’t crave material stuff. So remember, yoga in this particular example is defined as rising above the gunas, the qualities of nature. Remember, we have tamas, inertia, rajas, which would be desire or passion, sattva, which would be goodness, clarity.

So the yogi goes beyond these into pure spiritual consciousness. I’m going back to Barbara Stoller Miller. Be intent on action, not on the fruits of the actions, and avoid attraction to the fruits and avoid attachment to inaction.

So again, we can’t just sit around and say, oh, it’s all a dream within a dream and do nothing. He says, no. Perform actions, firm and discipline, relinquish attachment, be impartial to failure and success.

This equanimity is called discipline. Arjuna, action is far inferior to the discipline of understanding. So seek refuge in understanding.

Pitiful men are drawn by fruits of action, disciplined by understanding. One abandons both good and evil deeds. So arm yourself for discipline.

Discipline is skill in actions. So what’s being described here is the core of karma yoga, work but without attachment to success or failure. So Krishna’s defining yoga as an evenness of mind.

It reminds me of the beginning of the Yoga Sutras, right? Yoga is a quieting of the mind chatter, right? He’s saying the same thing here. Yoga is an evenness of mind. It’s when we’ve quieted the mind chatter.

And then the next few verses, he’s saying action, like selfish action is not good. Instead, you should really perform your actions wisely, with clarity, with efficiency, without ego. I would add to this with a concept of what your Dharma is, why you’re here, why you’re manifested at this point in time in consciousness.

Like, why are you here? Sutra 2.51, the wise abandon attachment and act with wisdom. They purify their mind and reach liberation, moksha. When your mind moves beyond illusion and rests in wisdom, you reach true yoga and become indifferent to all external teachings.

So when you have this inner realization, you go beyond all of these doctrines and teachings and you actually live in direct experience of the truth. So we’ve learned in these verses that yoga is equanimity. Yoga is also skill in action, right? So yogis take action, but they don’t cling to the outcomes.

We’ve also heard that yoga is liberation from desire, like we’re not distracted by rituals or money or ego-driven goals. We’ve also learned that yoga transcends the gunas, so a yogi rests in the self, that atman, that is very much a part of brahman, made up of the same stuff as brahman, and in that place you are beyond nature’s fluctuations. And if this is feeling very abstract, there’s a meditation I lead, I think it’s in the somatic training, but where I have you tap in or kind of clue in in the meditation to different parts of what’s happening within you.

So I cue you to think about all the things in your body that are moving, right? Your heart that’s pumping, the blood that’s moving, your lungs that are going up and down, right? So much, if you close your eyes, I mean, don’t do it if you’re driving, but like you can sense so much aliveness and movement in your body. However, at the same time, and what I would ask you to do now is tune in to the part of you that’s still, that’s not moving. Maybe you think of that as the very center of your spine or the very center of your heart.

And so we have this ability to be tuned in to what’s moving, which I would associate that with the three gunas, right? That’s what’s here, manifest alive, but you know there’s also a part of you that’s more than that, that’s not moving, that’s going to be here after you die, that was here before you were born, that’s constant, that’s unchanging, that’s related to this idea of brahman or universal consciousness. So I personally think a yogi should be able to be really fluid in our ability to navigate the gunas, but not forget that there’s also something beyond the gunas, that we have this pure consciousness, that this universal wisdom that we can tap into. And Arjuna then pipes in, because he hasn’t talked for a while, and he asks a follow-up question.

He does what I do a lot when I’m learning from a great teacher. It’s basically, can you give me a practical example? So Arjuna says, Krishna, what defines a man deep in contemplation whose insight and thought are sure? How would he speak? How would he sit? How would he move? So good little student, Arjuna’s okay, like this yogi of which you speak, that’s cool. I’d like to be like him.

Can you tell me a little bit about how he would move and what he’s dressed like and how he’s sitting? And then in the following verses, Krishna goes on to describe this yogi. I’m not going to read all of them, but he says, suffering does not disturb his mind. His craving for pleasure has vanished.

He says in this person, attraction, fear, and anger have all vanished, poof, and he is called a sage. He shows no preference in fortune or misfortune. He neither exalts nor hates.

His insight is sure. When, like a tortoise retracting its limbs, he withdraws his senses completely from sensuous objects. His insight is sure.

Sounds like Pratyahara, right? For those of you who know the eight limbs of the Yoga Sutras, that withdrawal of the senses. And I love this line. This is verse 60.

Even when a man of wisdom tries to control the senses, Arjuna, the bewildering senses attack his mind with violence. Thank you, Barbara Stoller Miller. I really like that line.

Have you ever sat to meditate and feel like you’re being attacked violently by your thoughts? Well, Krishna says that’s like a normal process of the yogi. But then controlling them all, and that’s the book that would really use the Yoga Sutras for, right? The Yoga Sutras is really the book about how to control, you know, double-clicking to specifically how to control all the thoughts. But controlling them all with discipline, he should focus on me.

When his senses are under control, his insight is sure. So I spoke too soon. The Yoga Sutras helps you kind of corral and gives you some tips about how to work with the senses and the pesky body that has so many urges.

But the Yoga Sutras gives you sort of this methodical approach of how to get to samadhi, bliss. Here, Krishna is saying, which is a more bhakti yoga approach, that yes, you should draw your senses inward and, you know, tame the mind and all of those things. But then you should focus on me, God, Krishna.

So very much, and you could equate that to the idea of Ishvara in the Yoga Sutras. Verse 62, brooding about sensuous objects makes attachment to them grow. From attachment, desire arises.

From desire, anger is born. From anger comes confusion. From confusion, memory lapses.

From broken memory, understanding is lost. From a loss of understanding, he is ruined. So Krishna really warning us here that basically the more we think about something, the more an attachment to it takes hold in our mind.

And then that gives birth to desire, and then to anger, and then to confusion, and then to, you know, basically how we’re all living right now. But a man of inner strength, remember we’re describing the yogi, so that would be that man whose senses experience objects without attraction and hatred and self-control finds serenity. In serenity, all of his sorrows dissolve.

His reason becomes serene. His understanding, sure. Without discipline, he has no understanding or inner power.

Without inner power, he has no peace. And without peace, where is joy? If his mind submits to the play of the senses, they drive away insight, just as a wind drives a ship on water. So great warrior, meaning Arjuna, when withdrawal of the senses from the sense objects is complete, discernment is firm.

I’m on verse 70 now and switching to the Gita as it is. A proprietorship and is devoid of false ego, he alone can attain real peace. That is the way of spiritual and godly life.

After attaining which a man is not bewildered, if one is thus situated, even at the hour of death, one can enter in to the kingdom of God. An alternate translation back to Barbara Stoler Miller for those last two lines. When he renounces all desires and acts without craving, possessiveness or individuality, he finds peace.

I would equate that to like the samadhi, the absorption, right? The bliss. This is the place of the infinite spirit. Achieving it, one is free from delusion.

Abiding in it, even at the time of death, one finds the pure calm of infinity. And it’s interesting that she used that word, infinity, because that implies, I think, you know, freedom from karma, which they were talking about earlier, freedom from these cycles of death and rebirth. So this chapter ends with Krishna presenting the ultimate goal of yoga, self-mastery, detachment and liberation.

And it’s interesting because remember this chapter started with Arjuna’s despair and confusion, but Krishna is now lifting him towards these bigger spiritual messages. He’s saying, you should control the senses rather than be controlled by them. Remember, because Arjuna was kind of having a panic attack.

He’s saying what society values, right? Pleasure, wealth, power is meaningless for someone who is a fully realized being to someone who is awake. This reminds me so much of what Jesus taught as well, right? What society values. I mean, Jesus turned everything on its head, right? He said, blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, blessed are the sick, right? As opposed to previously, before Jesus came along, people thought, well, the people who were blessed are the wealthy ones, the ones who have power.

So we see that kind of turning around here as well. Krishna saying what society values, even like what seemingly religious people value, if it’s pleasure, wealth, power, that is meaningless. He says, desires are always going to come, but the yogi remains steady.

As steady as the ocean is the analogy he uses in verse 2.70. He says the true peace comes from letting go of attachment, letting go of your ego, letting go of your cravings, and that if you do all this, you’re going to achieve this liberation where you are free from suffering. So to tie this all together, remember, Krishna is really torn up because he knows that killing his family members is a sin. That’s not a good thing to do.

And by sin in this context, I mean, like it would accrue karma for him. He’ll probably be reincarnated and it’s something not very good if he kills his own cousins. But what Krishna is doing through this spiritual discourse throughout chapter two is he’s basically saying, well, how you’re going to avoid killing your family, being a sin and accruing karma is by being unattached to the result.

He’s saying, if you’re a yogi, if you’re in a state of union, even as you do this terrible thing, you’re not going to accrue karma. Even if you have to take action and do these hard things, it’s part of your dharma. You’re doing this from a righteous place.

Remember, this is a righteous war. And Krishna definitely hates a little bit on inaction in these chapters, right? He’s saying it’s hard to be in the world and have to do hard things. Like being a monk would be way easier.

Monks have it easier or people living a reckless lifestyle have it easier. In a lot of ways, they are not confronted with these extremely difficult choices. They don’t need to balance dharma, their righteous action with hopefully trying to achieve samadhi and reincarnate as something better or not reincarnate at all.

So Krishna is saying, don’t listen to the outside world. Don’t be a victim of your culture, right? Striving, achieving, consuming, maybe even doing all these rituals. Instead, go deeply within and act from that place of non-attachment to the outcome.

That’s how you’re going to transcend your karma. It’s almost like Arjuna saying, well, society says this is a sin. Killing my cousins is a sin.

So I can’t do that. And remember, we talked about this theme, how the Gita is about what to do when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. And this is the answer Krishna is giving.

He’s saying, don’t look to the outside world and their definition of what’s a sin and not a sin. Listen to your dharma instead. Go inward and then act from that place of non-attachment.

If you yoke your mind to yoga, you can avoid the karmic association of what’s happening. So you can do something like kill your cousins, but from this righteous, centered, grounded place, because we know if he doesn’t kill his cousins, it’s going to be way worse. More people are going to die.

It’s like the equivalent of letting Hitler live and doing nothing and standing by and doing nothing. That’s the equivalent of if he doesn’t fight his cousins. But Krishna is saying, Arjuna, you need to do this from knowing that this is your dharma and this is a righteous war.

So he’s not fighting his cousins because he’s angry or he’s like, screw them. I want to get my land back. That’s not his motivation.

And he’s not cowering, which is actually what he is doing at the start of this chapter, being like, I can’t do it. I’m just going to have a panic attack or cry. I just want to go be a monk.

I’m just not going to fight them. That’s letting fear rule him. So it’s like, what is that place where you can actually take action and fight these people, not because you’re angry and pissed, not because you’re scared and being a baby about it, but because you’ve gone deeply inward and you’re not attached to the war going one way or the other, to getting something or being afraid of something, but you’re doing it because you know it is your duty, your dharma, and it is the right thing to do.

If he doesn’t kill these guys, it is going to equal catastrophe. It is going to equal, like again, equivalent of Hitler, hundreds and thousands of people dying. So he needs to get over himself.

He needs to yoke his mind to yoga because right now his mind is scared. He needs to be deliberate. He needs to take action, even though he might rather not.

He needs to do his duty. He needs to be unattached to the outcome and take action from this righteous place. He doesn’t need to worry about the karmic association of what he’s doing because if you take a look at the bigger picture, we’re not being judged or he’s not going to be judged by the rules or society’s expectations of what you can or cannot do because that would probably be like, don’t kill your cousins.

It’s going to be based on this broader context. So a lot of what Krishna is doing towards the end of this chapter is also really quelling or soothing Arjuna’s concerns about the fact that what he’s doing is wrong or something that’s going to affect his karma negatively. He basically says, listen, if you act righteously with non-attachment, you’re golden.

So my invitation to you between now and the next episode, because it all gets easier from here, like chapter two is so intense. My invitation to you to make this practical is to think about a decision you are facing right now that feels like a rock in a hard place or a little bit of a pickle. It doesn’t need to be something big.

Maybe it’s just, do I drive my friend’s kids in this carpool to this place or not? And then think about all your different motivations, like your motivation to do it because you want her to like you, your motivation to do it because you’re afraid that if you don’t, she will think you’re a bad mom or not return the favor either. Think about what society’s expectations are of what you should do or not do. Maybe society’s like, you don’t have enough car seats, so you definitely shouldn’t do this.

Like look at all the different pieces and then do what Krishna is suggesting Arjuna does, which is go deeply inward. Maybe you want to meditate. Maybe you want to do some breath work.

Think about your purpose. Is your purpose that you’re a warrior? Is your purpose that you are a teacher? Is your purpose that you are a mother? Often we have multiple of these purposes, right? Like Arjuna is a cousin, but he is also a warrior. And think about what righteous action, unattached to all the exterior societal norms, or what someone may or may not want for you, or how you might be perceived, you know, letting all of that go, which is a very challenging mind state to achieve.

But if you can, you know, thinking about that, what would be the right thing to do? And sometimes after a really great meditation session, like I can get there, right? It just becomes very obvious. It’s almost like this quiet inner knowing of like, yeah, you know, my core values are to be kind to people. She needs my help as a favor.

I want to be kind. I want to do this. And now I’m able to take that action with integrity.

Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe the answer is no. I don’t feel safe driving all these kids.

I don’t think this is for the greater good of all. I think it would be irresponsible of me to do it. But I invite you to just play with this concept and see if you can have just a mini experience of what the key teachings are here in your own body, in your own life.

And then when we come back, we will talk about the subsequent chapters, which are all shorter and easier. You know, this was a ton of teaching in this chapter. We had Vedanta.

We had Samkhya. We had, you know, differing philosophical views. We had three different styles of yoga, like the groundwork being set for all of those, which now we’ll have six chapters on each one.

It’ll be so much easier. So thank you for sticking with it and being here all the way to the very end. I’m sending you so much love from my heart to yours.

Namaste. Thank you so much for being here and listening all the way to the very end. I want us to get to 1000 reviews on this podcast.

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