Being Equiposed
Hello there, dear readers, hope you are all doing good. It’s beautiful weather out here, and I can feel the cool monsoon breeze on my skin as I write this blog. Today, I am going to be talking about being equipoised, as you could already guess from the headline. But being equipoised where, and most importantly how?
Sure, we’ll get to that. To begin with, let’s understand that in order to achieve some sort of balance in our lives, we would need to check on our anger and other vices, and try to tame our minds to calm down. Yes, I am well aware that this is easier said than done, but that doesn’t mean we must stop working, and remember we are humans — we are being constructed to carry out difficult things, and when you get the hang of it, you would find that nothing is as difficult as it sounds.
When you were young and had to get up early in the morning to prepare for your lessons. your mind and body would often not listen to you, but you did get up, didn’t you? Why? Because you were aware of the benefits of studying early in the morning. And, you were so young then, and now with a matured heart, you can reap even better results. But, how do we go about it? How to cease operating from an area of anger?
Swami Vivekananda mentions that whenever we can identify ourselves as getting angry, irritated or get a feel of hatred toward anything or anyone, we must strive to make an effort to replace those evil thoughts with thoughts of love, care and compassion. Our problem now is that everything in this world has become about us, and we have no idea about how others are faring.
If we can try and deviate our energy toward others, without expecting anything in return, we will see that life is suddenly valuable. When you reach out toward helping others, you would discover this increasing amount of happiness and peace within you, say the profound religious teachers. Now, getting back to being equipoised, in the Bhagavad Gita, Shree Krishna advises Arjuna the following:
“sukha-duḥkhe same kṛitvā lābhālābhau jayājayau
tato yuddhāya yujyasva naivaṁ pāpam avāpsyasi.” (Chap 2, Verse 38)
This means that Bhagwan asked Arjuna to just fight for the sake of duty, and when he is fighting he must give equal treatment to happiness, distress, loss, gain, victory and defeat. Bhagwan further says that if one performs and fulfils his responsibility in this way, then he can never sin. Now, as per Bhagwan, this is the only way to remain equipoised no matter what the situation is.
Here, you would see that Bhagwan lays a lot of emphasis on performing duties, and as we know that duty is seldom sweet, yet we must go on performing our duties for the sake of performing them. You see, this way we will be able to operate from an area of power and will not get shattered when anything doesn’t go our way.
We will truly know the meaning of being and acting in an equipoised manner, without anything getting to us or affecting our inner peace. And, when you do achieve that state (for me it’s still a work in progress, but you achieve it much faster for sure), try to educate and train others in this conviction, without hurting their belief structures. We have to remember that we have no right to criticise others’ work or belief system, what we can do instead is ask them humbly and tell them that by working in this manner they can save themselves from the grasp of great danger.
We must go on working selflessly for others, as they say, “Life is not worth living until it’s lived for others.” And, we can do that too, by walking in the guided directions of Krishna, by being equipoised.
Image courtesy: Sandip Karangiya on Unsplash
