Lessons from The Bhagawad Gita : Exhausting Vasanas

nirashir yata-cittatma, tyakta-sarva-parigrahah
shariram kevalam karma,kurvan napnoti kilbisham

 

1. Only when I don’t possess about emotions, thoughts and objects, I can exhaust my vasanas or the karmic imprints of previous actions and not add on more.
2. I have to train my mind my mind and intellect to be fixed on a higher goal and not be busy with ideas and schemes to manipulate the world around me. That is when I do not accumulate new vasanas. When my mind is not fixed on a higher goal, it is operating from the vasanas.
3. “Not possessing” is possible when I keep the intellect free of ideas, the mind free of expectations and the body free of any sensual demands. When I allow these to possess me, consume me, there is no respite from vasanas
4. It is possible to renunciate without having to give up pleasures of the body, mind and intellect by disallowing my possessiveness.
5. By exhausting my existing vasanas and not allowing the accumulation of new vasanas, my mind will then be able to focus on a higher goal.

Lessons from The Bhagawad Gita : Fruits of Action

tyaktva karma-phalasangam, nitya-trpto nirasrayah
karmany abhipravrtto ‘pi, naiva kincit karoti sah

If I am able to work without expectations or the need to fulfill my desires, then the actions I am involved in do not create more vasanas and therefore become selfless actions or ‘unactions’.

1. When I am preoccupied with the end result or the product of my actions, then I often make compromises in the action or process itself.
2. Today, I am influenced by how my actions affect me and the people who live with me. I am peripheral in my outlook of life. I always seek to make the people around me happy with the choices I make.  I am possessed about I, Me and Mine.
3. Today, I am bothered by the perceptions others in the society have about me instead of being concerned of the perception that I have of myself.
4. To walk the path of a seeker, I have to stop being influenced by people and situations in my life. To be spiritual, I have to learn to ‘negligibilize’ (tuchCham) the effect others have on me.
5. To be a true seeker, I have to change the way I have been performing actions and re-calibrate the reasons why I perform actions.
6. I will consider myself to be truly spiritually evolved only when my vasanas have stopped influencing my actions. I know that finally what matters is not how much or what I did but how I did it.