Summary:

After a 3 week break, we're revising last 3 verses…

Revision:

Chapter 3, Verse 18: Handling Conflicts in Roles We Play

1. What Determines Maturity of Your Response to Anything?
   • Jiva-srsti-bubble (what's comfortable, familiar, safe) vs. Ishvara-srsti-called-for-response (protecting your self-interest, while considering other’s well-being — and your decisions are guided by ethics).
2. Dealing with Challenges in Every Role:
   • Recognize where your responsibility ends, and other’s free will begins. When cross line, conflict comes, and they don’t listen to you. 
   • Rigidity of script within the role. EG: Your son/daughter role has to relinquish script of correcting your parents. As people after certain age, won’t change.
3. Duty vs. Obligation:
   • Though same word as “duty”, obligation has connotation of “I must do this”, OR “imposed from outside”. Redefine “obligation” to mean “Considering my self-interests, but also the others”.
4. Managing Spillovers:
   • When teacher role spills into lunch break. Or employee role spills into home time.
5. Dealing with Conflicts in Roles:
   • EG: Both people need you. Must assess each time which is higher priority. It's common to default to a more comfortable choice; which has cost of neglecting your health or connection to what's equally important.
   • Sometimes higher priority is attending to neither option. As in case of Krishna retreating from Mathura, which wasn't weakness but “thinking outside the box”.

Chapter 3, Verse 19: Even if done perfectly, you won’t get expected results

1. Krishna says, people often don’t see your carefulness, hard work and ethics. They’ll see you like anyone else. Thus you’ll be treated like anyone else. For this reason…
2. While doing your roles, it’s normal to have general expectation of future results. It only becomes abnormal when you’re obsessed with future results; and Krishna’s antidote to future-obsession is “do without attachment to results”.

Chapter 3, Verse 20: Example of person whose got it right…

1. Unwise Janaka. 
   • “I” was doing actions to…
     • Survive (eat, sleep).
     • Do my assigned duties.
     • Remove sense of smallness “I” feel about Self. Do to complete myself.
2. Wise Janaka:
   1. Jnani's unceasingly understands four essential principles:
      1. I (awareness) don’t do any actions. Actions are done by hardware-software-called-Janaka (body-mind) according to varna (brahmana / kshatriya / vaishya) and ashrama (grhasta / sannyasa). 
      2. Understanding of my truth as awareness takes place in the buddhi.
      3. That awareness isn't confined to just my buddhi, but it's the universal “light” that reveals the contents inside each persons, devas, animals and insects buddhi.
      4. The relationship between the buddhi (which produces a confined sense-of-I) and awareness is a satya-mithya relationship. Like that of gold and ring. The ring is a modification of the gold. The ring is nothing but the gold assuming a form. Whatever form, it's gold only. The ring (mithya) can enjoy its form without losing knowledge of its nature as the gold (satya). The ornament (compared to thoughts) are changing, such as “I am a ring, I am a tiny ring. I am an ugly ring. I am a necklace, I am a bangle”. But the gold is always known to the changing ornament as self-evident “I” or self-evident existence in every statement or change.
   2. Even after moksha, there is deha-vasana, which still motivates Me to work on Self (even though there is full recognition that Self is free of the person). Deha-vasana is reduced via nididhyasana. Reduction manifests as less need to work on the Self (which is already pure and infinite) and more on being a contributor (doing what is called for according to your varna/ashrama).
   3. Motivation to act for sake of completing self may arise initially due to deha-vasana as explained above. But generally, the relationship to actions has changed for the jivanmukta. Actions are a means to contribute where called for according to one's varna/ashrama, rather then to feel complete and whole.
3. Types of jnanis – it's not all black or white:
   1. There’s also people who gained moksha — live with impurities, and aren’t addressing them.
   2. There’s also jnanis who publicly put a show of a purity and discipline… while inside entertain harsh world. Krishna calls them hypocrites.
   3. There are jnanis living in protected places like ashrams — thus all appears well on the surface. He or she is used to spiritual seekers honoring or worshipping him. Which further reinforces his purity through confirmation bias. The environment summons their compassion and kindness. Thus the followers are convinced the jnani is pure, always compassionate and kind. But neglect the jnani has latent anger and impurities which would start to surface outside that protected spiritual environment. When the spiritual seekers leave the environment into the “real world”, they're unable to find anyone equally compassionate and kind, thus assume noone except their guru is enlightened. This is a sampler or how false narratives are born who's a jivanmukta.
4. Krishna then defines a sensible-jnani: Engages in actions for societal benefit according to one’s strengths and talents, without attachment. IE: Ishvara-arpana-buddhi (My body-mind is a participant within Ishvara’s order). Thinking about impact of actions, setting an example, but also not pretending to be a spiritual goodie.

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Course was based on Swami Dayananda (Arsha Vidya) home study course.

Recorded 27 July, 2025