What does it mean to take action without attachment—especially when your Dharma feels messy, uncomfortable, or misunderstood?
In this episode, I dive deep into Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna teaches Karma Yoga—the path of selfless action—to a conflicted Arjuna. We explore how to navigate the tension between duty and desire, and why authentic action is essential for both spiritual growth and collective harmony.
I break down:
🔹 Why desire and anger are the real inner enemies
🔹 How to pursue your Dharma without copying someone else’s
🔹 The Gita’s message for modern leaders, seekers, and spiritual doers
🔹 How to align your actions with truth—not ego
If you’ve ever struggled with taking action when the path isn’t clear or popular, this episode will bring you back to your inner compass.
🌀 Check out my Somatic Life Coaching Certification before doors close => https://www.brettlarkin.com/somatic-yoga-training-certification/
Loved this episode and want to know more about yoga’s origins? Grab my History of Yoga course => https://www.brettlarkin.com/history-of-yoga-course/
📖 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: Full Body Somatic Workout for Women | Yoga to Find Your Power & Release Guilt
Relevant Blog: How to Read the Bhagavad Gita: A Modern Yogi’s Guide
Relevant to Today’s Episode:
🔮 History of Yoga
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🎧 Also Listen to:
#297 – What is Samkhya Philosophy and How is it Different from Yoga?
#358 – Intro to The Bhagavad Gita: How Do You Navigate Moral Dilemmas?
#359 – Understanding Human Design as a Yogi with Emma Dunwoody
© 2025 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com
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. How do you navigate the tension between duty and desire? That is what we’re going to look at today in today’s episode about karma yoga, how we can act without attachment, even though the world is incredibly complicated and we have a lot of things we want.
This is the podcast episode on the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 3, but stay with me, because if you have not been following along, yes, the Bhagavad Gita is a story, but you do not need to be listening to these episodes in chronological order. Of course, if you want to, start with the overview episode and then move through. But while the Bhagavad Gita is a story, it doesn’t need you to have all the context all the time.
So many people read the Gita, really famous, incredible people like Oppenheimer, for example, would read like little verses from the Gita every day just to inspire him. So I don’t want you to feel like you can’t listen and join in, in this moment, in this episode, if you don’t have the whole context. I’ll be talking you through it as we go.
And of course, each chapter has key themes and teachings that you can really enjoy and apply even if you haven’t gone through the whole thing chronologically. If you’re interested in actually reading the Gita one day, again, no experience is required. You can find all the different translations that I have worked with to put together these episodes for you in the show notes.
And if you want even a broader context, I would really suggest my History of Yoga course. I’m going to link that up in the show notes, but it’s a very affordable timeline, a course with beautiful PDF and booklet and videos that takes you through yoga’s origins from the very beginning, from the first cave painting that looked like a yogi through to today. We look at all the major texts, all the major dates, all the big key players.
So if you’re a yoga nerd, I absolutely recommend the History of Yoga course. Today in Chapter 3 of the Gita, we’re going to be exploring why desire and anger are the real enemies we have on a spiritual path, how you can pursue your dharma without copying someone else’s. And if you’ve ever kind of struggled with taking action when the path ahead isn’t that clear or maybe not the popular choice that everyone else is doing, this episode is really going to resonate with you and bring you back to that inner compass.
Leap in and join us. And if you’ve been listening to all the Gita episodes, here is your next installment. Let’s get into this.
Hello, my friends. We are back to talk about Book 3 of the Gita. I don’t want to risk this being another two-part episode.
I really want to get through the whole Book 3, Chapter 3 today, and let’s dive right in. So I know one of the ways that we’ve been exploring the themes of each of these chapters is to look at what various authors or translators each chapter. So starting with Eknath Aswaran, he calls this Chapter 3, Selfless Service.
I like that because it relates very much to karma yoga, which we’re going to talk a lot about today. Barbara Stoller Miller calls this third chapter, Discipline of Action. Amit, in the Godsong translation, simply calls this Chapter, Karma.
And our final translation, the Bhagavad Gita as it is, they also call this Chapter, Karma Yoga. So we’re seeing a theme. So let’s start there.
Karma yoga. What is karma yoga? Well, it is the path of selfless action. It’s a path in which you do your duty, your dharma, remember dharma is really the key word of the Gita, without attachment to the outcome, without attachment to success or failure.
And you’re doing your dharma, your duty, but it’s not for yourself. It’s actually because you want to offer your actions to something higher, to the greater good or to God, if you believe in God. So you’re taking action, but without craving or being attached to a particular result.
That means you’re also not paralyzed by fear of failure. What Krishna is really going to teach Arjuna, who’s the stand in for us, the warrior in this chapter, is that karma yoga purifies the mind, leading to wisdom, making it a really important foundational practice, even if you think you might want to go meditate in a cave. If you listen to the intro episode about the Gita, I talked a little bit about how scholars have divided the Gita into thirds, with the first kind of third being about karma yoga, which is where we are now, then janana yoga, then bhakti yoga.
So just to paint that high level picture for you, karma yoga is the yoga of action, meaning you’re doing your dharma selflessly, without reward, without attachment to the result. Janana yoga is the yoga of knowledge. So that means more study, contemplation, discernment.
You’re seeking to transcend action eventually. And then we have bhakti yoga, which is the yoga of devotion, service, love, and the focus is really on that love for the divine. I almost think of it a little bit as like a flavor of karma yoga, because karma yoga is really like, let’s take action, but not be attached to the results.
While bhakti yoga is like, let’s take action, but make all our actions an offering to the divine. So the focus is very much like union with the beloved, and that beloved could be anything, a deity. I often think of, you know, Christianity and, you know, Jesus Christ, when people talk about like a bhakti, devotion, kind of love, surrender, prayer.
In Catholicism, even suffering is considered an offering to the divine. So we have really beautiful themes here, but where we are, let’s put us in the, put us where we are, is we’re very much in karma yoga. And so this chapter is going to kick off with Arjuna expressing his confusion.
So if you’re just joining us, Arjuna is a warrior who has been asked to fight in a civil war, basically against his first cousins, his beloved uncle, people he really loves. And Krishna, who is a god, but he doesn’t know that yet, is encouraging him to fight because this is a righteous war. And you want to think of his cousins and family members kind of like the equivalent of Nazis or the dark side in Star Wars, right? Like if they take over and win this war, the results are going to be catastrophic.
So even though killing your family members is bad, Arjuna is kind of stuck between this rock and a hard place. And this is what makes the book interesting and riveting is that he’s being put in a position where he’s asked to do something that we would think is bad and that he knows is bad and that he doesn’t want to do. But if he doesn’t do this, the results will be catastrophic and the dark side will take over the world.
So there’s a very high cost to his inaction. If you listen to chapter two, which I had to divide into two parts because chapter two, if you recall, actually outlines the entire teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. It’s all there.
It’s all chapter two. Now we’re in the FAQ section where Arjuna is asking questions as a stand in for us, the questions we might have based on all the incredible teachings we just got in chapter two. Arjuna kicks off this chapter with FAQ number one.
And he says to Krishna, if you think understanding is more powerful than action, why Krishna do you urge me to this horrific act? You confuse my understanding with a maze of words, speak one certain truth so I may achieve what is good. So he’s basically saying probably what we’re all thinking, like chapter two was great. It was really confusing.
You gave a ton of information. I just want you to tell me one thing to do so I can just go do that. And I don’t understand why you’re saying, which Krishna did in chapter two, if knowledge is higher than action, why, or like if wisdom is kind of like better, this higher form of yoga than action, like why are you encouraging me to fight and kill people? And what Krishna is going to do is he’s going to go on and explain that both the renunciate kind of wisdom path, jnana yoga, and selfless action, karma yoga, are a valid pathway forward for a yogi or for one who wants to achieve enlightenment, but that action is actually better for most people.
So Lord Krishna says, and all of this is Barbara Stoller Miller just for brevity, earlier, I taught the twofold basis of good in this world for philosophers, disciplined knowledge for men of discipline, action. So that’s those two paths, right? Jnana yoga and karma yoga. A man cannot escape the force of action by abstaining from actions.
He does not attain success by just renunciation. And I highlighted that because that is very, very important. So we have here Arjuna pointing out, yo Krishna, you have talked to me in chapter two about having an intellectual steady state, yet you’re basically goading me into violence right now.
Explain yourself. And Krishna is saying, you know, listen, everybody has to act in some way. Even if you do nothing, that’s still action.
Even inaction is a kind of action and therefore has karma attached to it. And then what Krishna is going to do is actually set up a pretty interesting analogy where he says, just like I, Krishna, have to sustain the universe, like I’m a God, but I still have to work and do that. You, Arjuna, have to sustain order in society.
You have to keep this dharma, this righteousness, this order in the world here. And to do that, you have to act, but those actions have to be carried out with detachment. And then there’s kind of a loophole where Krishna basically says, your Atman, your soul isn’t the one doing these horrific actions.
The actions are actually performed by the gunas, which belong to the world, belong to nature. So it’s like Arjuna’s physical body is doing these things, but not his soul. So we’re on verse five, still with Barabas Dola Miller here.
Krishna says, however unwilling, every being is forced to act by the qualities of nature, aka the gunas, which I just mentioned. When his senses are controlled, but he keeps recalling sense objects with his mind, he is a self-deluded hypocrite. That makes no sense to me.
So let’s look at another translation of verse six. This is the Gita as it is. Okay.
So the commentary here says that there’s people who make a show of meditating, right? Or, you know, doing fancy yoga, fancy meditation. But actually in their mind, they’re distracted, right? They have like a pretty cushion and maybe some mala beads, but their mind is actually not focused and that these pretenders are the greatest cheaters. And that if we want to enjoy ourselves in the world, which is okay, we should actually, instead of like faking that we’re meditating, we should actually find that sense of enjoyment in the social order as part of our dharma, following the rules and regulations of society and gradually making progress in purifying our mind.
So rather than making a show of being like a good yogi while actually, you know, being distracted or a terrible person like outside of class, we should actually do the yoga in our daily life as part of our dharma. Let’s keep going with verse seven. On the other hand, if a sincere person tries to control the active senses by the mind and begins karma yoga without attachment, he is far superior.
So instead of becoming a good looking yoga yogi or a pseudo transcendentalist, it says here in the Bhagavad Gita as it is, it’s far better to just stay on your own path, stay in your own business. Maybe that’s like being a mom or running a laundromat or doing whatever you do, running an online yoga company and to live life and carry about your business, but to do so without attachment and this process of living in the world without grasping to everything and trying to control the outcome of everything is a very valid way to make progress on a spiritual path. And that a sincere person who’s following this karma yoga is much better situated than a false pretender who kind of like has the showmanship of spirituality.
So verse eight, perform your prescribed duty for doing so is better than not working. One cannot even maintain one’s physical body without work. And so he’s kind of saying to Arjuna, like for you to run away from this war and to go hide in a cave and practice janana yoga and recluse yourself is like cop out.
That’s a cop out because you, Arjuna, you’re a householder, you’re a military general, and therefore it’s better for you to remain in those roles and perform the duties of a householder and a general. And I think he’s also making the point that people who try to skip this step of purifying the mind or being able to live in our very chaotic world or in your path of dharma as a parent or a caretaker of others or a business owner or an employee or however you’re doing it in a very complex changing world, like if your mind can’t handle that, and then you run away to a retreat center or a vipassana, you know, and you try to meditate for eight hours a day in silence, it’s not going to work. And I heard a really interesting story from a swami who in India would say that he always knew and all of his peers at the ashram knew when those types of people would come to the ashram to try to meditate.
They hadn’t gone through this process of karma yoga, being able to exist in the world, purifying the mind, purifying their actions, and being able to essentially stay centered in daily life. They just wanted to skip to the janana yoga step of reclusivity and life in the ashram. And he said that, A, watch those people really struggle because they couldn’t do it.
They couldn’t meditate eight hours a day. And that he and all the fellow brothers at the ashram would like avoid those people like the plague, like try not to sit near them because they haven’t worked through their stuff. They haven’t worked through their stuff.
They’re just trying to like go on a quick spiritual retreat. And it’s a form of escapism. And it’s the same escapism that Arjuna is kind of trying to do in this moment where he’s like, I really don’t want to do my dharma.
Can I just opt out? And Krishna’s outlining here very clearly, like, no, you can’t. So an interesting prompt for you here to think about is like, is there a place in your life where you’re avoiding taking action because you’re afraid of doing it imperfectly and you’d rather run and hide? And what would it look like to show up anyway? Another prompt I have for you or something you might want to think about is like, do you spend more time thinking about life or engaging with life? And how might taking action, especially if you’re unattached to the outcome, actually move you closer to the wisdom or the information that you crave? So the next couple of verses go into an analogy, and I’m actually going to skip them, although you’re welcome to read them. But what they’re basically outlining is this sacred ecological cycle where in verse 314, Krishna’s saying, from food comes beings, from rain comes flood, from sacrifice comes rain and from action comes sacrifice.
And it’s honestly a little confusing. But the gold nugget here is that everything is interdependent and held together in the world through selfless offerings. And basically when you act selfishly, you break the chain.
You want to live in harmony with this cycle that supports the whole world, that supports righteousness, that supports karmic order. And your selfless action is actually a huge part of the universe’s natural rhythm. So karma yoga is not just spiritual.
It’s ethical. It’s ecological. So if you find yourself stumbling, as you read this on your own, the next 10 verses, which are about like sacrifices and cows and the source of Aum and all of that, you know, that’s in a nutshell, the key message.
And now we’re on verse 17. That’s a really important line. So let’s just look at some other translations of that verse.
The Gita as it is says, therefore, without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a manner of duty for by working without attachment, one attains the supreme. I don’t love that. The God song translation says, so unattached forever, do the work that must be done.
A man who does his work while unattached attains the highest. So this is the essence of karma yoga. Now verse 20, we go into another kind of analogy and story.
So I’m not going to read it verse by verse. I’ll let you do that. But I’m more want to just tell you about the story and what it means.
And the key verse in this section is 3.21, which is basically saying, whatever a great person does, others follow. The world imitates the example they set, meaning people imitate leaders. And so the analogy that Krishna gives here is that especially a king or a leader or a general must perform their duty, especially they must, because other people are going to imitate them.
They’re a role model. And because Arjuna is a warrior prince, especially his behavior is going to shape the moral compass of his army, of everyone who’s fighting for him. So by fighting with dharma, fighting in this righteous war, Arjuna upholds the righteousness for everyone.
And basically the TLDR here is like inaction for those in a leadership role is a big problem. It causes confusion. And the key thing that’s happening here is that Krishna’s linking duty or dharma also to social harmony.
And he makes this point by talking about Janaka and other ancient kings as an example of people who took action in the world. So if you’re like, why is he mentioning this random other king? That’s why, because that was a king who did do this. And then in verse 24, Krishna talks about, I mentioned this already, that Krishna says, Barbara Stolar Miller, these worlds would collapse if I did not perform action.
So he’s like, hey, yo, like, I’m a god down here doing stuff. I’m coaching you. I’m trying to, like, I’m keeping the world from collapsing by being like your therapist right now.
I would create disorder in society. Living beings would be destroyed, a.k.a. if Krishna did not take action. Verse 25, as the ignorant act with attachment to actions, Arjuna, so wise men should act with detachment to preserve the world.
No wise man disturbs the understanding of ignorant men attached to action. He should inspire them, performing all actions with discipline. Actions are all affected by the qualities of nature, but diluted by individuality.
The self thinks, I am the actor. When he can discriminate the actions of nature’s qualities and think the qualities depend on other qualities, he is detached. So that’s verse 27 and 28.
I also mentioned this at the top of the episode, but I’m pretty sure we’re talking about the gunas here. And yes, we are confirmed. It’s more evident in Amit’s translation because he actually uses the word gunas.
He says these are the same verses 27 and 28. Actions everywhere are done by nature’s gunas, yet the self, diluted egoist, imagines I’m the one who does them. So again, we’re talking about here the confusion between like the soul and the body for better or less.
But no one knows the truth that gunas and actions both partake of and thinks the gunas act on gunas. Arjuna, he doesn’t get attached. So the one who thinks, oh yeah, I’m acting in an imperfect way because I’m in an imperfect world and it’s all subject to nature, but I’m not attached to the outcome.
That’s kind of how you take action in the world while your Atman soul doesn’t accrue that karma. Fools, the gunas have diluted, get attached to what the gunas do. They do not know the whole, but knowers of the whole should not unsettle them.
That was verse 29. Renouncing all your works in me, your meta-self in mind, I think meaning your soul, freed of fantasies, no sense of mine, in quotes, your fever broken, fight. That’s verse 30.
Human beings who practice my doctrine constantly, full of faith and never sneering, they too are freed from karma. That was verse 31. But those who sneer at this, not practicing my doctrine, meaning like my teachings as Krishna, all their knowledge is muddled.
I know them to be lost and mindless. That was verse 32. Each one strives according to his nature, even men of knowledge, meaning those practicing jnana yoga.
Beings follow nature. What use repressing it? We’re leading up to a really important verse here, so let’s just keep going. Verse 34.
In everything the senses sense, passion and hatred reside. Okay? That’s the imperfect world that we’ve been talking about. Both of them, waylayers, you mustn’t go into their territory.
Verse 35. Better your own dharma, botched, than someone else’s practiced well. Better death in your own dharma.
Another’s dharma carries danger. So this verse 3.35 is really important. It’s saying something that I think we all understand and feel.
Here it is by Barbara Stolemiller, just so you can hear a different translation. Your own duty done imperfectly is better than another man’s done well. It is better to die in one’s own duty.
Another man’s duty is perilous, a.k.a. like be true to yourself, right? It’s better to fail in your own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. This is saying live your truth. Live your truth, even if it’s messy.
It’s a really powerful call to authenticity, which is why I really love this line. And it’s funny because I used to be quite skeptical of human design, but if you listen to the podcast, you know we had a great guest come on and talk about it who really changed the way I looked at it. And I did some human design consults myself, and it was so liberating to just know more about me and my makeup.
And since that consult, it really gave me permission to be more me. And it really made me think of this line, this verse 3.35 of the Gita, where it says this same thing. You need to be true to yourself.
You need to know your makeup. I want to read Eknath’s translation of this verse as well, just so you have a different flavor of it. And he reminds us in his notes that dharma is what supports us, that root, dhri.
It’s this idea dharma is what keeps us together, prevents the universe from just flying apart into pieces in chaos. It’s what keeps us going in the face of stress. When we’re being true to ourselves and on mission, stress doesn’t affect us in the same way.
And something that’s really cool that happens in the actual Sanskrit of this verse is that sva is added to the word dharma, and we get this word sva-dharma, which is like your personal dharma, right? We know sva, self, from svadhyaya, self-study, combined here with the word dharma, so we get sva-dharma. And in using this word, Krishna’s really saying, you know, you don’t want to just become a doctor because someone else has become a doctor, or your mom told you to, or become a lawyer. It’s much more important for you to learn to know yourself, to know your assets, to know your liabilities, to know your strengths and weaknesses, and to really exercise your own judgment.
Instead of Googling the answer or phoning a friend, going with in, and get a human design consult if it’ll help you, because the one that I did was so powerful, and it felt like it gave me permission to run my business the way I want to run it, not the way I think a business like mine should be run or the way a good owner would do it. So big fan of verse 3.35. Okay, Arjuna pops in again now, and he says, Krishna, what makes a person commit evil against his own will as if compelled by force? Great question. Why do we do bad things? And Lord Krishna says, it is desire and anger arising from nature’s quality of passion.
And I love that. I actually really like Barbara’s translation here, because he’s like, why are people doing evil things? And he’s like, well, desire and anger arising from like nature’s quality, the gunas, which is passionate. You know, nature is this beautiful, passionate experience of things blooming and growing and dying and killing and circling.
Lord Krishna’s like, yeah, it’s there. But then he says, know it here as the enemy. It’s very evil.
He says, let’s look at a different translation as well of this verse 3.37. The God Song translation, Amit says, this desire, this anger, their source, the power guna, great its appetite and great its evil. Know this for the enemy that it is. And then we go into some very pretty analogies for the next couple lines.
As smoke envelops fire, as dust envelops a mirror, as amnion envelops an embryo, so this envelops that. So the bottom line here is that lust, enrage, anger, these are destructive forces. But awareness is the first step to mastery, because he says, know them to be your enemies.
Be aware of these, right? This is a pitfall of living in the imperfect world. And these pretty analogies about the obstruction of truth are subtle, but it’s like smoke hides fire just like desire clouds our clear perception. Dust on a mirror is basically saying like our self-knowledge becomes obscured.
The womb around the embryo or the amniotic fluid around the embryo is like the inner truth is always there. It’s always available to us, but it might not be visible yet. So to awaken our truth, we need to burn off desire through discipline, selfless action, a.k.a. taking action, but not because of our desires, doing it without attachment to the outcome.
And I don’t want to say like without your desire, because your dharma should align with your true desires. It’s like the difference between a true desire, like becoming a lawyer because I know that’s my life path and it’s meaningful for me, as opposed to like becoming a lawyer because my dad told me I have to and I want to make good money. Let’s go to verse 40.
The senses, mind, and understanding are said to harbor desire, says Barbara Stola Miller. With these, desire obscures knowledge and confounds the embodied self. The Gita as it is for verse 40 says, the senses, the mind, and the intelligence are the sitting places of this lust.
Through them, lust covers the real knowledge of the living entity and bewilders them. So Lord Krishna is basically saying, if you want to know how to conquer the enemy, you need to know where the enemy lives. And the enemy lives in the senses and the mind, right? And if our spirit, our Atman becomes addicted to enjoying all these material things, these material senses and starts mistaking them like the cookie and the ice cream and the promotion as true happiness, then we have a false identification issue.
Verse 41, therefore, oh Arjuna, in the very beginning curb this great symbol of sin, lust by regulating the senses and slay this destroyer of knowledge and self-actualization. So a suggestion to regulate the senses from the get-go, this kind of harkens back to like know what’s real and unreal. Know who the real you is and you know, the real you compared to like the high powered corporate attorney persona that wants and needs all these things to feed its ego.
Verse 42, the working senses are superior to dull matter. Mind is higher than the senses. Intelligence is still higher than the mind and he, the soul, is even higher than the intelligence.
This same verse in God’s song says, they say the senses are the height, but higher than the senses is the mind and even higher than the mind is the intellect. What’s higher than this intellect is this, this meaning the soul. So he’s like, don’t get it twisted.
This is the hierarchy. And Eknath’s translation is similar. The senses are said to be higher than the body.
The mind is higher than the senses. Above the mind is the intellect and above the intellect is the Atman. So this is the hierarchy we want when composing a human.
And then verse 43, which is the final one in this chapter, we did it. Thus, knowing that which is supreme, let the Atman rule the ego. Use your mighty arms to slay the fierce enemy that is selfish desire.
So rather than the senses controlling the soul, we need our soul and our dharma and our purpose to control the senses. Otherwise, we’re always going to be in conflict and there will never be joy. And meditation is a practical discipline for bringing the senses under control.
Barbara Stoller Miller says, knowing the self beyond understanding, sustain the self with the self. Great warrior, kill the enemy, menacing you in the form of desire. So Krishna finishes the chapter here with this metaphor, kind of like this martial arts metaphor.
And he’s saying, Arjuna, fight combat and kill desire. And desire here is like desire for sense gratification, which this chapter is saying is the greatest enemy of the soul. But what Krishna is saying is through the strength of karma yoga, one can control the material senses, the mind, and the intelligence.
Or the goal is to kind of be set up in that position where the senses don’t overwhelm you and you’re not being influenced by the material senses and the mind so much that you forget the steady, sacred intelligence of your pure identity, of your real self, of who you really are and your real duty to uphold cosmic order, to be part of the circle, to be part of the circle of life that’s interconnected and inter-supported.
as opposed to abdicating who you really are and becoming part of the problem or causing disorder, chaos, disarray. And if we think back to the beginning of the chapter, you know, it was saying that,
Attempting to control the senses by just like looking like a yogi or looking really good meditating or doing some fancy postures like the so-called Yoga postures is not going to help us. We must do this this deeper training to honor our true self
And that means we need to know. We need to know our mission, our purpose. But for Arjuna, it’s very clear.
His Dharma, his duty is to fight.
So to review, we started with Arjuna being confused. We learned two paths, the path of knowledge compared to the path of action. Janana Yoga, which would be that more reclusive, meditating in a cave, reading scripture, living the ashram life, and Karma Yoga, which is the yoga of action. Karma Yoga was defined then in verses nine through 16, which is basically taking action without attachment to the outcome in our daily life.
And then in verses 17 through 26, we get some examples of that, right? Krishna says like, hey, I’m still acting and kings throughout history who’ve made a difference are inspiring and leading others.
Then in verses 27 through 35, we got this really beautiful idea of how we want action to arise from our pākṛti, our true nature, not from our ego. And that we need to do our own dharma, not someone else’s.
And then the chapter ends really pointing out the enemy here, the enemy within, which is desire and anger, verses 36 through 43.
The real enemy isn’t out there, the people that you think you need to fight right now. The real enemy is inside yourself. It’s this desire, this anger born of passion that can cloud your judgment. And the way to destroy this enemy is with discipline meditative practices in our clarity.
And I think an interesting prompt for you to think about as we close out here is tying to that, those examples that Krishna gives as leaders. It’s like, who would you look like as a role model? How would your actions change if you really saw yourself in a leadership position as someone who’s shaping the world around you as part of this interconnected whole? And I’d also invite you to think about, know, are you trying to live someone else’s version of success?
What would it look like to really honor yourself and your path, even if it’s not popular, even if it’s not easy?
So I hope that gives you some things to think about. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it valuable. Please know that the number one way to support the show and get it in the ears of other yogis is to leave a review. So if you haven’t taken the time to do that wherever you’re listening to the show, please take a moment, leave a quick review, just a couple of sentences. It makes a huge difference to the algorithms.
You can always find me on Instagram at Larkin. Yoga TV are on my website, brettlarkin.com. So many links in the show notes. I’m always hooking you up with videos, podcasts, the translations that I’m using, anything that can supplement your knowledge and make this more impactful for you is usually down in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here, for listening all the way to the very end and let’s reconnect next week.
