- Chapter 05
- Chapter 05, Text 01
- Gita 05.01 – Explanation
- Gita 5.1 explained
- Arjuna’s repeated question (Exploring the Gita chapter 5 series - 1)
- When clarification causes confusion, the culprit is pre-conception
- Chapter 05, Text 02
- Gita 05.02 – Explanation
- Gita 5.2 explained
- Seeming scriptural contradictions are counterbalances, not counters
- Chapter 05, Text 04
- Let your compassion not become the cause of my confusion (5.04)
- Gita 5.4 explained
- How Krishna’s teachings reflect both unity and diversity (Exploring the Gita chapter 5 series - 4)
- The different yogas are essentially similar with minor dissimilarities, not essentially dissimilar with minor similarities
- Chapter 05, Text 05
- Gita 05.05 – Explanation
- Becoming attached to our plans makes us unproductive
- How NOT to plan for our future
- Seeing Krishna's Plan
- Gita 5.5 explained
- See beyond divergent ideas to convergent ideals
- Chapter 05, Text 06
- Gita 05.06 – Explanation
- Gita 5.6 explained
- When matter and spirit need to be differentiated — and when not
- The monkey may not be on our back, but it is inside our head
- Without devotion, renunciation comes painfully; with devotion, even liberation comes joyfully
- Chapter 05, Text 09
- Gita 05.09 – Explanation
- Gita 5.9 explained
- The body reacts mechanically - don’t take its reactions personally
- Chapter 05, Text 10
- Gita 05.10 – Explanation
- Help me, my Lord, to stay engaged without being entangled (5.10)
- Gita 5.10 explained
- How does detachment prevent entanglement?
- What we need to give up is not material life but the materialistic conception of life
- Those who can get on without matter can get on best with it
- Rise from touch-me-not to touched-me-not
- Chapter 05, Text 11
- Gita 05.11 – Explanation
- My senses can’t pollute me as much as you can purify me (5.11)
- Gita 5.11 explained
- Don’t work for or against the body - work with it for Krishna
- Desires go away not by gratification or repression but by purification
- Constancy of purpose often necessitates change of strategy
- The purpose of service is not productivity or popularity but purity
- Purity transforms the roads to misery into the roads to ecstasy
- The balance between “matter alone matters” and “matter doesn’t matter”
- Chapter 05, Text 12
- Gita 05.12 – Explanation
- Peace comes by inner absorption, not by outer domination (5.12)
- Gita 5.12 explained
- Learn to see material attachments as negative equity
- Chapter 05, Text 13
- Gita 05.13 – Explanation
- Help me see my body as my locality, not as my identity (5.13)
- Gita 5.13 explained
- We have to sit in the city of nine gates, but we don’t have to be stuck in it
- Chapter 05, Text 15
- Gita 05.15 – Explanation
- You are always my inner deliverer, never my inner destroyer (5.15)
- Gita 5.15 explained
- Don’t ascribe to God’s will that which happens due to free will or evil
- God is the cause of all causes, but not the cause of all effects
- Don’t blame ignorantly – blame ignorance
- Chapter 05, Text 16
- Gita 05.16 – Explanation
- Gita 5.16 explained
- Dealing with the fog of emotions
- We can’t drive out darkness, but we can turn on the light
- Externals provide survival value, but internals provide value to survival
- The inner light reveals the worst within – and the best within
- Chapter 05, Text 17
- Gita 05.17 – Explanation
- Let all the streams of my consciousness flow toward you (5.17)
- Gita 5.17 explained
- Don’t let etiology distract from therapy
- Chapter 05, Text 18
- Gita 05.18 – Explanation
- Help me see others as they are spiritually (5.18)
- Gita 5.18 explained
- What does equal vision mean for Arjuna on the battlefield
- How can Arjuna see everyone equally and still fight? (Exploring the Gita chapter 5 series - 2)
- Are we using our knowledge to build a path or a pedestal?
- Equality that is imposed leads inevitably to inequality
- Ritualists see hierarchy above equality spiritualists see equality above hierarchy
- Our longing for equality points to our spirituality
- Go beyond two equalities to true equality
- Those who judge a horse by its harness can’t harness its potential
- Gita wisdom frees humanity from speciesism
- Chapter 05, Text 19
- Gita 05.19 – Explanation
- Gita 5.19 explained
- The essence of liberation is not transportation but transformation
- Happiness comes from sameness - the balance between oneness and otherness
- Chapter 05, Text 20
- How to prevent life's daily ups and downs from becoming dramas and traumas
- Gita 05.20 – Explanation
- Help me be spiritually dedicated, not materially diverted (5.20)
- Overcoming distractions by aligning with our spiritual essence
- Does God know our pain?
- How to see failure positively
- Gita 5.20 - Explanation from Bhakti Shastri Class
- How can we situate ourselves in our spiritual identity?
- When life seems to say ‘no’ to us
- Becoming emotionally sober
- How can we redefine our relationship with failure
- How to stop struggling with our feelings?
- Go beyond both negative thinking and positive thinking
- How to cultivate equanimity?
- There is a purpose for everything we experience, even the things we don't want to experience
- Pleasure and pain are both life’s ringtones - don’t keep hearing the tone start picking up the phone
- Chemical highs can’t cure life’s lows we need to go spiritually high
- Comparing is unavoidable but comparing mentality is undesirable
- Don’t run from pain or rush towards pleasure – refocus on your purpose
- Failure is a bump on the road not the end of the road
- See failure as a practical problem, not as an existential problem
- Focus not on the pain of failing - focus on the pleasure of learning
- Animals choose how to fulfill their bodily drives; we humans can choose whether to fulfill our bodily drives
- Even if we can’t change the content of our experience, we can change its context
- Failure is not catastrophic – to see failure as catastrophic is catastrophic
- Our over-reactions reveal our sore spots
- Treat life like a movie that you don’t have to always watch
- Transcend duality by absorption in a reality higher than duality
- The biggest battle in life is to keep the biggest battle the biggest battle
- No problem is so dreadful and no pleasure is so wonderful that it is worth losing our inner connection with Krishna
- When life makes us emotionally seasick…
- Chapter 05, Text 21
- Gita 05.21 – Explanation
- Now is my chance to access spiritual happiness (5.21)
- What provides happiness - & what doesn’t
- Gita 5.21 - Explanation from Bhakti Shastri Class
- Beyond reductionist notions of spirituality
- How to feel grateful when we are not successful
- Why our determination falters when faced with temptation
- The more we consider others’ need the more we can free ourselves from our greed
- Happiness is found not in collecting and consuming, but in connecting and contributing
- Our loudest desires won’t lead us to happiness – our deepest desires will
- Turning away is not running away if we are turning toward something better
- Fulfilling our every desire won’t make us happy focusing on our most important desire will
- Happiness is not a product of gratification it is a by product of dedication
- Happiness is found not in sensation but in absorption
- Subtler joys aren’t smaller – they are just softer
- Crave not for what lies outside the fence - cultivate what lies inside it
- External success may be a zero-sum game, but internal success isn’t
- Seek not the mirage of sensual titillation – seek the ocean of spiritual satisfaction
- To overcome desires, outgrow them
- Why look at a mirage when heading to the oasis?
- See sense gratification as spiritual deprivation
- Those who give up pleasure for principle gain life's principal pleasure
- What comes fast doesn’t last; what does last doesn’t come fast
- Disdain the pain that is a pain to miss
- Are our desires locking us into a world of frustration or releasing us into the world of fulfillment?
- The road that turns into a roadblock
- We can’t reach new planets without leaving the earth
- Do others have to pay for our enjoyment?
- Happiness through a perpetual tickling machine?
- Don’t let your assumptions about happiness deprive you of happiness
- Renunciation is super-ambitious, not un-ambitious
- To give up the ocean for a drop is a rank bad bargain
- Self-denial opens the door to self-fulfillment
- Chapter 05, Text 22
- How to expose inner traitors
- Why we need to listen to our intelligence, not our mind
- Gita 05.22 – Explanation
- Help me see the huge price I pay for a tiny pleasure (5.22)
- What’s wrong with the worldview of desire?
- Gita 5.22 explained
- Obscenity is objectionable not because it shows too much of a person, but because it shows too little and obsesses people with the too little
- If conscience doesn’t create a barrier between impulse and indulgence, intelligence must
- Intelligence shows how indulgence is harmful and how harmful indulgence is
- Sensual pleasure is too fleeting to be fulfilling
- Sensual pleasure ends, but it doesn’t end with pleasure
- The mind issues checks that the body can’t cash
- Education is needed not just to fulfill our desires, but also to know which desires to fulfill
- Seek more than sense pleasure, not more sense pleasure
- The way of the body is the way of limitation and tribulation
- Be not eager for the meager
- Why long for a pleasure that never stays for long?
- Scripture ends the hush-hush around the failed project of sense enjoyment
- The search for happiness is often the source of the greatest unhappiness
- When conviction is weak, determination can’t be strong
- What is a source of trouble for the possessor can’t be the source of pleasure for the beholder
- Don’t pander; ponder
- See the pleasure that ends in trouble as trouble, not pleasure
- Those who check the urge to mate avoid checkmate
- What is natural is not always desirable; what is desirable is not always natural
- The body is a visa to pleasure, not a passport
- Are we mistaking the cause of torture to be the source of shelter?
- The false currency that keeps us trading in the stock exchange of illusion
- Are we mistaking the red signal to be the green signal?
- The heaven that turns out to be hell
- Long in shadow, short in substance
- Be restrained to avoid being strained
- Go down the consequence lane of memory to go up the devotion lane of life
- Let’s keep our intelligence FIT
- Be not allured by the pleasure that is pregnant with suffering
- Chapter 05, Text 23
- Gita 05.23 – Explanation
- Help me tolerate the desires that are just my body’s reactions (5.23)
- Why we are NOT defined by our desires
- Gita 5.23 explained
- When we can’t give up an unhealthy habit …
- Why we may relapse into unhealthy behaviors
- What temptation can do — and what it can’t
- How to avoid unhealthy reactions to unwanted emotions
- Do bad thoughts comprise bad karma?
- Why we need to scan our consciousness regularly
- Even if we can't drive away inner impurities, we can still drive away from inner impurities
- Even if we can’t stop feeling sensual urges we can stop feeding sensual urges
- We don’t have to outweigh our urges; we just have to out-wait them
- When we resist our urges, they may become scarier, but they don’t become stronger
- If we think we have no vices we are novices
- We can’t always control how we feel, but we can control how we act
- Even if we can’t change our desires, we can change our attitude towards our desires
- Resist the temptation to expect immediate resistance to temptation
- In the spiritual race, if we strive to be finishers, we will be winners too
- The test of spirituality is not absence of temptation but persistence amidst temptation
- See temptation as an attack, not as a defeat
- Our greatest power is not the power we have over others, but the power we have over ourselves
- Sex is a bodily function – letting it become a mental obsession is illusion
- See anger as a sign of weakness, not strength
- Eventual defeat doesn’t justify immediate defeat
- Don’t expect illusion to get out — you get out
- We don’t have to defeat our lower desires – we can just let them lose
- Victory comes not just by courageously fighting our battles but also by cautiously choosing our battles
- Tolerance means withstanding the presence without succumbing to the influence
- Temptations will come, we don’t have to welcome
- As long as we mistake the irresistible to be essential, we deprive ourselves of the essential
- Pass the test, get the taste
- The way to transcendence is through tolerance not indulgence
- Don’t let inner burdens add to your outer burdens
- The war against lust is a war of attrition
- Surrender to Krishna is difficult, but surrender to the body is doomed
- Tolerance is the stopper between temptation and transgression
- Chapter 05, Text 24
- Gita 05.24 – Explanation
- Gita 5.24 explained
- The heart that delights in the ephemeral can’t delve into the eternal
- Don’t let the small picture blind you to the big picture
- Materialism centers on gaining; spirituality centers on regaining
- Chapter 05, Text 25
- Gita 05.25 – Explanation
- Gita 5.25 explained
- When helping others is compassion and when it isn’t ...
- Be not self-seeking be seekers of the self
- Social activism is the byproduct of spiritual activism, not its purpose
- The more we are responsible for others, the more we need to be responsible for ourselves
- Are we like doctors who give medicines to everyone except themselves?
- Chapter 05, Text 26
- Gita 05.26 – Explanation
- Gita 05.26 explained
- Don’t let self-control fuel the illusion of the self as the controller
- The greatest danger is the danger of forgetting the danger
- Chapter 05, Text 27
- Gita 05.27 – Explanation
- Gita 5.27 explained
- The concentration-point is not the point of concentration
- Chapter 05, Text 29
- Gita 05.29 – Explanation
- Let your position and disposition inspire my devotion (5.29)
- How we can know peace even in a world that knows no peace
- Are we treating God like a problem-solving machine?
- Accepting that some things are beyond our understanding
- When things are unsettled
- Peace for a bigger war or war for a bigger peace?
- How bhakti helps us balance destiny and responsibility
- Gita 5.29 explained
- The renunciation that is necessary for devotion
- From renouncing possession to renouncing illusion
- From what’s on loan to what’s our own
- Why a message of peace on a battlefield? (Exploring the Gita chapter 5 series - 3)
- What does remembering God mean practically?
- Begin each day by putting on our armor
- Are you trying to be peaceful or purposeful?
- Humility empowers when certainty doesn’t
- To free yourself from the burden of self-consciousness, become conscious of a purpose bigger than the self
- Don’t just work on our conditionings – work with our conditionings
- Our greatest weakness is our unwillingness to believe in Krishna’s love for us
- The best way to control our thoughts is to direct them towards the one who is always in control
- We may be unloved, but we are never unlovable
- Whenever things seem to fall apart, remember when things have fallen in place
- Happiness comes not by making money, but by making something worthwhile with money
- Refuel your love tank with bhakti
- Focus not on God’s rules – focus on his purpose
- Revelation is the foundation for the ultimate revolution
- Krishna’s love for us is based not on who we are, but on who he is
- Social media is no substitute for spiritual media
- Life may not be logical but it is teleological
- Krishna is the best enjoyer – and the best source of enjoyment
- Krishna may be beyond our reach, but we are not beyond his reach
- Don't romanticize or demonize; utilize and realize
- View the world as an object for reciprocation, not recreation or rejection
- Krishna’s ways may not always be pleasant, but they are always benevolent
- Chapter 05. Text 28
- Text 07
- Text 08
- Text 14
Bhagavad Gita Chapter 05Chaitanya Charan2025-10-16T16:27:53+05:30