Bhagavad Gita Chapter 12

• Chapter 12, Text 01
• Gita 12.01 explained
• Chapter 12, Text 02
• Infatuation with form is not the problem – infatuation with temporary form is
• Gita 12.02 explained
• Closeness unites more than oneness
• Chapter 12, Text 03-04
• Gita 12.03-04 explained
• Chapter 12, Text 04
• The enlightened vision and the benevolent disposition
• The impersonal stereotype of impersonalists militates against personlism
• Chapter 12, Text 05
• Impersonalism perpetuates the padlock on the heart
• Don’t just push the mind towards the spiritual – let the spiritual pull the mind too
• Gita 12.05 explained
• Chapter 12, Text 06
• When we do what we can do, Krishna helps us to do what we can’t do
• Chapter 12, Text 06-07
• Gita 12.06-07 explained
• Chapter 12, Text 07
• Change the stories you tell yourself about yourself
• Go beyond the beyond
• Are we holding on to a straw instead of a lifeline?
• Rise from defiance through reliance to transcendence
• If we hold on to Krishna long enough, nothing else will hold on to us long enough
• Don’t come up with the truth; come up to the truth
• Krishna is not a passive point of concentration – he is the proactive fount of compassion
• Seek not to grasp God – seek to be grasped by God
• Immigration to the spiritual world happens not by infiltration but by invitation
• Sensual hope deludes, spiritual hope delivers
• Chapter 12, Text 08
• The happiness of devotion is not a destination but an eternal progression
• Live for Krishna; live through Krishna; live in Krishna
• Gita 12.08 explained
• The kingdom of God is more than a kingdom
• When we become at home in Krishna, we go home to Krishna
• The appreciation we get for our service is not as consequential as the absorption we get in our service
• How humility is non-different from curiosity
• Chapter 12, Text 08-10
• Krishna’s ladder of love helps us rise from wherever we presently are
• Chapter 12, Text 08-12
• Navigating our way between the ideal and the real
• Chapter 12, Text 09
• Feeling is a springboard for chanting, but chanting is also a gateway to feeling
• Map changes – and change maps
• Aspire not for feelings but for relationship
• Anticipate spontaneous devotion, but cultivate conscientious devotion
• The fruit of meditation is taste for meditation
• There’s more to devotion than rules, not less
• We need a starter of desire more than a stopper of desire
• Catch the current of emotion – don’t be caught by it
• Gita 12.09 explained
• Contemplation is the natural result of attraction and contemplation naturally results in attraction
• For getting Krishna, forgetting Krishna is fatal
• Bhakti has to be a choice before it can become a calling
• Obsession isn’t just a distractor from absorption; it is also a demonstrator of absorption
• Bhakti-yoga takes our relationship with Krishna from familiarity to comfort to desire to need
• Bhakti practice leads to attraction to Krishna through repetition, purification and revelation
• To tune out the mind, tune in to Krishna
• Even if we can’t be transfixed, we can still be fixed
• Devotion is not just emotion – it is conscious continuous cultivation
• The test of success in bhakti is taste for bhakti
• Is our body fast becoming an ego feast?
• What happens to our desires when we become enlightened?
• How to see desire as a blessing, not as a burden?
• Two ways to gauge our devotion
• Chapter 12, Text 09-10
• Strive more for the gift of presence than the presence of gifts
• Chapter 12, Text 10
• Krishna wants our presence more than our presents
• If we can’t offer our heart to Krishna, then we can offer what’s in our heart to Krishna
• Gita 12.10 explained
• Dedicate your external to the eternal internal, not the ephemeral internal
• To have fixity in purpose, we need flexibility in pace
• Chapter 12, Text 11
• Krishna accommodates even those who can’t accommodate him
• Gita 12.11 explained
• Gita 12.12 explained
• How elevating and expanding of consciousness are dissimilar and similar
• Chapter 12, Text 12
• Renunciation is not deprivation but emancipation
• Chapter 12, Text 13
• Loving as much as our heart longs
• Are we praying for others or preying on others?
• Be grateful for everything we can live without
• Love that is too big to allow room for hatred in the heart
• Let’s love Krishna too much to be fanatical
• Devotional culture sets us free from our emotional cocoons
• Cherish compassion not just as a position or an emotion, but as a foundation
• Seek not scapegoats; seek not to become martyrs – seek to stay as servants
• Be not sentimental or judgmental – be transcendental
• Love first the creator to love best the creatures
• Be childlike, not childish
• Chapter 12, Text 13-14
• Gita 12.13-14 explained
• Chapter 12, Text 14
• Let dissatisfaction propel us vertically, not horizontally
• Connection comes best by a combination of commitment and contentment
• Chapter 12, Text 15
• Gita wisdom is explicitly descriptive and implicitly prescriptive
• Gita 12.15 explained
• When people pigeonhole us ...
• Chapter 12, Text 16
• Be adept to adopt and adapt
• Devotees left with nothing are right with Krishna
• Renunciation is not a function of frustration – it is a fruit of realization
• Gita 12.16 explained
• Chapter 12, Text 17
• Devotion is the emotion that takes us beyond all other emotions
• The Gita calls for not emotionless living, but purposeful living
• Gita 12.17 explained
• See love in the expression of emotions – and in the concealing of emotions too
• Krishna is the stabilizer of material emotions and the stimulator of spiritual emotions
• Chapter 12, Text 18-19
• Bad times test our faith – and so do good times
• Gita 12.18-19 explained
• Chapter 12, Text 19
• What is the Home of Our Thoughts?
• Devotion kindles an inner drive that is beyond jeers and cheers
• Spirituality provides us our own inner sanctuary
• Belonging that leads to blissful being
• The spiritual may be unfamiliar but it’s not unnatural
• Change the home page of your mind’s browser
• Make God the center and the circumference of your life
• Cultivate a tender heart, but cover it with a thick skin
• Don’t treat others as a waste-basket for your words
• Our satisfaction is determined more by the location of our consciousness than the location of our house
• Chapter 12, Text 20
• Devotion is the switch that activates our dormant virtues
• Even if we can’t be ideal people, we can still be people with ideals
• Gita 12.20 explained