Gītā 2:48-2:72

03/24/2026 · Tue/Thu 10:30-11:45 AM · Brad Bannon · Boston College

📄 Synopsis

In this class session, Instructor Brad Bannon utilized a creative 'sculptorades' activity with Play-Doh to illustrate the metaphysical principles of Advaita Vedānta. The lecture emphasized the non-dual relationship between the creator and the creation, positing that Brahman acts as both the efficient and material cause of the universe, much like a potter who is also the clay. This framework was used to explore the concept of Svadharma, or one's unique purpose, suggesting that every individual is an unprecedented manifestation of the divine. The class then transitioned into a collaborative analysis of key verses from the second chapter of the Bhagavad-Gītā, specifically focusing on verse 2.47 as a 'hinge verse.' Students discussed the definition of yoga as equanimity in the face of success and failure (2.48), the necessity of acting without attachment to results (2.51), and the transition from following external 'maps' of sacred lore to internalizing spiritual truths (2.52).

⚡ Key Takeaways

Advaita Vedānta teaches a non-dual relationship where the creator (Brahman) is simultaneously the efficient cause and the material cause of all existence.
The metaphor of Play-Doh illustrates that while the material of existence is malleable, individuals have the agency to shape their own 'name and form' through their actions.
Svadharma refers to an individual's unique purpose or vocation, representing the specific reason Brahman has manifested as that particular person.
In the Bhagavad-Gītā, yoga is defined as equanimity, or maintaining a balanced mind regardless of success or failure in one's endeavors.
Verse 2.47 serves as a 'hinge verse,' emphasizing that while outcomes are uncertain, individuals have authority (adhikāra) over their own actions.
Acting without attachment to the 'fruits' or outcomes of action (2.51) is essential for spiritual discipline and avoiding the 'swamp of delusion.'
Once a student has fully internalized spiritual truths, the external 'maps' of sacred lore (2.52) become secondary to their lived experience.
The chariot allegory identifies the ego as Arjuna and the moral conscience as Kṛṣṇa, guiding the self toward justice and play.
The instructor highlights the importance of approaching these texts from a professional perspective, relating concepts like due diligence and ethics to future careers.

🎤 Transcript Tap any timestamp to jump the audio player

Opening Breath and Transition

Brad

All righty, y'all, let's take a moment to reset, transition. Let's take a breath together. Go ahead and breathe in and out. Word. Word? That's what I meant to say. All right. I have some Play-Doh. I brought some Play-Doh today and have a little game to play. I'm not going to do quiz today. But yeah, so what I want to do is— I actually wrote a lecture. It's not quite— I don't know. It's OK. Still in process, to be honest. But I want to play a game. I was thinking that we do something like, I mean, kind of like Pictionary but with clay. Like if you played Cranium, you know, where you like sculptorades, sculptorades or whatever. So I thought, I only created 8 little prompts and there's 7 teams. So I figure, you know, we'll just draw and you'll get your team will get something, and then your team can kind of like strategize or whatever and then create something and see if you can get one of the other teams to guess it. ⚠

2:27

Administrative Notes and Professionalism Discussion

Brad

Yeah, so then every team will have what, like 6 guesses, and we'll do points like if someone gets your, you know, guesses your word, then you get a point and they get a point. Yeah, so everybody wins. Yeah, but you have to do it like really super secret, right? Because like I don't want everybody to be talking about how we're going to do this and then other groups overhear the word, you know? That would be lame. So I also want to spend more time today in groups. I can't quite decide. Where I want to do the lecture. I was planning to do the lecture at the end. I might squeeze it in the middle somewhere. I might do that. So I think let's start in teams and just start with your team leaders, I mean, guiding conversation. I really want to try and hone in on a handful of verses from the Gita today, so really kind of zoom in. So what I'd like each group to do is choose somewhere between 1 and 3, maximum 4 verses. ⚠

Brad

There's some— there's a couple of little clumps in the text that make sense as a clump, you know, 3 or 4, but most of the verses just stand on their own. So somewhere between 1 and 4 verses that you want to discuss. And, you know, just discuss why you want to, you know, what do you want to discuss about them. Anything. It could be questions you have, things, insights that you had, ways to relate it to, you know, being in banking or investments, finance, that kind of stuff. Certainly plenty of ways to do that. There's plenty of ways to relate it to, I think, just about any career. Certainly psychology, certainly I mean, just pretty much everything, right? I think would relate in some way. I think one thing I always say, you know, from now until around this point in the semester until the end of the semester, I'll keep harping on this. But I really, I think that it's important for you as, you know, as college students, but especially for the juniors and seniors, to really begin to think of yourselves as professionals. ⚠

Brad

You are in a professional school and you're going to graduate here and be professionals and you're gonna be regarded as professionals. So I think it is, you know, if you're a freshman, sophomore, you may not exactly know what your profession is gonna be or what kind of professional you wanna be, and that's cool, that's fine. But I think you really need to start thinking about approaching all the material in all of your classes, but certainly no less this one from the vantage of a perspective, from a professional perspective, right? So if you're going into finance, right? I mean, there's a lot in here about action and anxiety and consequences and due diligence and all those sort of things, right? There's a lot in, I mean, it's entirely about ethics. There's a lot of psychology in here. There's a lot of things that, I mean, it is pedagogy. So if you're going into applied psych or something something like that. There's just so much in here. I think whatever you're studying, you should be able to approach it, you know, through the lens of your professional expertise. ⚠

Brad

And, you know, I know that you're not professionals yet, but some of you are super close to it, right? Months away. So you really need to start thinking in that direction. And if you don't have any idea what you want to do for your profession, That's okay. You can— I mean, you should have some idea, right? Or at least think about it from some sort of possible way. Cool. I think that's not just for today, but that's, like I said, from now until the end of the semester. Cool. So let's get into small teams. You know, we could do more of like a circle-ish kind of thing, so we'll do some circle time. I think maybe we'll start in groups and I'll come around and kind of find out what verses you're gonna do. At some point I'll give you these little slips so you know what you're gonna shape, but in the meantime you can just play with Play-Doh. And then, yeah, probably top of the hour or so, then we'll— maybe I'll have the lecture in there. Cool. ⚠

Student

Go for it.

Student

Also kind of like 62 and 63, where it like walks through the whole like attachment, attachment to desire, desire attached to— ⚠

Brad

like this, like whole weeding into whatever is in your head. ⚠

Student

Yeah. Design creates like loss of control. It's like a loss of control of your skin. ⚠

Student

I, uh, I don't know how. I think there are some really, really good points. ⚠

Student

Well, Zach and Nate were talking about it.

13:53

Informal Student Check-in and Sports Discussion

Student

I said I would play volleyball. Oh, so this is an annual thing? It's like What's your total win-loss record? ⚠

Student

I think actually they've only won one game.

Student

Okay, so the bar is pretty low.

Student

That's good. I feel like you'd be good. You're like really tall.

Student

High school tournaments, like, just not on the team, but I was a basketball guy. It's like, that wasn't really— probably basketball. ⚠

Student

It's in the realm.

Student

Pretty good at badminton.

Brad

Shit.

Student

Um, there's a lot of games that I haven't played. So I play basketball. ⚠

Brad

I mean, it's also— ⚠

Student

it's like a team sport. Something like kickboxing that I had. Wait, why does he give better advice? I don't know. Only one. ⚠

Brad

But they're expensive.

Student

I'm pretty— they have like smaller stirrers. ⚠

Student

Maybe that's why.

Brad

It's getting way too far into it.

Student

We can do our podcast at the diner.

Brad

Yeah.

Student

All right.

Student

I feel like I could figure it out.

Student

Like, I don't know. Who's the star player? All right, so what's our first? We need the water. Water, turtle. Do you think you're more competitive than others at this league? ⚠

Student

Absolutely.

Student

Where you— we're like a V9, uh, 2 hours, 2 hours 15, from 6 to 8:30. Come over except Sunday. But they sleep a lot alongside the water. They all camp there. ⚠

Student

But do you have a reason to camp outside? ⚠

Student

Yeah, Saturday night. Just wait for those late starts Sunday. ⚠

Student

Oh, I see. What do you guys do?

Student

We don't drink that scary coffee beer. ⚠

Student

We love hot chocolate.

Student

That's how you should drink all of it. Be happy to be a friend. We're like average. We do okay. We got around. Um, we like— we're not last. I'd say we're in the bottom It's really pretty. It's like a nature documentary video. It's like where like a little fish comes out or like a little crane. ⚠

Student

Oh yeah, you're weird.

Student

First, second, and—

Brad

all right, besides that, I was the one who decided.

Student

Okay, whoa, this is identical.

Student

Yeah.

Student

Also, this smells—

Student

oh, this smells good. ⚠

Brad

Well, it's, it's, it's 11.

Student

What's your coffee order, Scott? I don't drink coffee. What's your coffee? What is that? Uh, it's just black espresso. I drink coffee. I don't drink coffee. ⚠

28:14

Lecture: Brahman, Consciousness, and the Clay Metaphor

Brad

Okay, um, happy to supply you with this. With this text. I'll put it somewhere. Let's go ahead and I'm just going to read through it. Maybe make some changes along the way. So my hope today is to teach you more about the relationship between creation and creativity, and also the non-dual relationship between the creator and the creation from the perspective of Śaṅkara's Advaita Vedānta. While each of you is the creator of your creations, the Play-Doh also has a role to play as well. Play is kind of a keyword here too. Playing with Play-Doh is an act of recreation or play that is also an act of recreating creation. Play-Doh has a fixed color. Apparently purple doesn't get on your hands, right? And you didn't create the Play-Doh out of nothing, but you did, or are, creatively transforming the material into a new unprecedented form, into some new form. Moreover, you were only able to transform the Play-Doh because it is flexible, malleable, and shapeable. However, like the human mind, it becomes less malleable over time. ⚠

Brad

In fact, I had to buy a new box of Play-Doh this semester because by the end of last semester, it had gotten pretty, like, dry and crusty, you know, like not as malleable. More like a grad student, I guess. If a student's mind is rigid, closed, inattentive or even resistant to being transformed, then the teacher is bound to fail. I can give you all of the pieces, and I can show you how to assemble the pieces, how to harmonize the many different Hindu creation myths, and I can tell you repeatedly over and over again— because that's what repeatedly means— that myths are always about the present and never about the past, but I can't remove your preconceived ideas. I cannot remove your biases. I cannot remove your assumptions. This is why I opened the semester with my lecture on Husserlian phenomenology and the cognitive barriers, psychological barriers, of preconceived biases and intentionality. While I cannot displace your intention, I can attempt to direct your attention. I can give you the sacred texts and teach you how Shankara instructs us to read the texts. ⚠

Brad

I can put the Chāndogya teaching about clay before the Aitareya teaching about consciousness, and then I can assign you to read the Bṛhadāraṇyaka teaching about the One becoming the "I" (Ahaṃ brahmāsmi), followed by the Māṇḍūkya teaching about this embodied self and the four states of conscious awareness that it is possible for a human to experience, impossible for them not to experience. But the truth is that only a relatively small percentage of students will understand the ontological and epistemological non-duality of subject-object or I and not I. Based on Podcast 3, it's very clear that some students in this room and the other room have grasped Advaita while others have not, and still others seem right on the edge of understanding. And we're going to kind of wrap up with Advaita mostly this week, so I'm hoping Podcast 4 will bring it together for some folks. Today, I hope to boost my ROI and hopefully lead a few more students towards Anubhava, or the experience of non-duality. To do this, I want to help you understand the chariot allegory in a new way. My goodness. So much work for that capital. ⚠

Brad

Both the chariot allegory from the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, Bhagavad Gītā 3, which we read a few weeks ago, and of course the Bhagavad Gītā itself, which takes place in a chariot. For the student of Advaita Vedānta, Arjuna stands in for our conscious 'I,' for the ego, for our identity as a unique individual self. Kṛṣṇa represents that voice of moral consciousness, a voice of moral conscience. Sorry. For some students, this voice of moral conscience may be the voice of God, or for others, it may be the Spirit of Christ or the Holy Spirit. Regardless, suffice it to say that Kṛṣṇa represents that aspect within us that beckons us towards the good, the agathon, as Socrates would say, towards justice, towards equality, and perhaps even towards play, or Līlā. It's my daughter's name. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, as we learned a few weeks ago, the one self that called itself 'I' and still does call itself 'I' every time any one of us utters that word, which we all call ourselves, words, thanks, became the many because being everything is no different than being no thing. Therefore, the one became you and me. Ahaṃ brahmāsmi Tat tvam asi. ⚠

Brad

Or it would be maybe more accurate, well, definitely be more accurate to say that the one is becoming you and is becoming me because you and I are not dead yet and therefore are still malleable, still in process, still in formation. Hence, we must ask that question that I've been trying for weeks to get everyone to consider. Why? Why did the one become you? I'm fine, I promise. Why did the one become you? Why is the one becoming you? Why is the one shaping itself into me and Scott and Andrew and Colin and Castalia? Why are we all so unique? And why does Advaita Vedānta How does Advaita Vedānta account for the uniqueness of Brent and Kat and Claire? The short answer might be because the universe is better with veer in it than without. I exist right here and right now as an unprecedented, irreducibly unique manifestation of Brahman. Brahman is not just some thing that we all have in common. That's not how Kṛṣṇa explains it. I am Brahman. Everything about me is Brahman. Sorry if this isn't engaging enough. ⚠

Brad

Everything about me is Brahman, including and especially the things about me that make me utterly unique, like a potter shaping clay. Brahman is even right now in the process of becoming Brad.

Student

Why?

Brad

Well, because there is something about Brad that has never existed before and will never exist again. There's something about me without which the world would be incomplete, to borrow Rāmānuja's language there from our earlier reading. Moreover, from the perspective of Advaita Vedānta, that totally unique skill or gift or talent— fine— or whatever thing it is that makes me me and makes you you, once I am able to identify and recognize that beautifully unique thing about myself, I am able, hopefully, to understand my particular Dharma. In the Gita, Kṛṣṇa refers to this as Svadharma. Sva just means one's own, so literally one's own Dharma. It is your purpose. It is your final cause, the very reason that brahman has shaped itself into your name and form, right? Manuel and Grace and Aidan and even the people that are in the other section. Like a potter made of clay, Brahman is both the potter and the clay. Potter and clay are not two, Advaita. But here's the thing about Advaita that most students sleep on. You are the efficient cause. You are in charge of your chariot. ⚠

37:36

Lecture: Personal Dharma, Shreya, and Preyas

Brad

Your purpose is not to be a passive recipient, but an active recipient in giving shape or giving form to yourself, both as, as both potter and as clay. So the question really comes down to this: how are you going to shape the clay that is your very self? Will you shape yourself into a form that uses those unique particular skills and gifts that make you you? Towards ends that are Śreyas, or will you transform yourself into a form that uses your unique talents in ways that are only Preyas? Arjuna has talents and skill, talents and gifts, and mad skills, particularly on the battlefield. That's his Dharma. He has a duty to defend those innocent women and children and the elders that are being victimized by the powerful and the corrupt. As Kṛṣṇa emphasizes to him in verse 247, that hinge verse from last week to this one, the outcome is uncertain. Arjuna cannot predict the future. He only has adhikāra over his actions. He only has control or mandate or authority over his own karma. He was shaped and created for this moment. It is his Dharma. ⚠

Brad

The point is, "I am Ātman Brahma." This self is Brahman. You are the unique manifestation of Brahman, and as such, you have shaped yourself and continue to shape yourself like a potter that is made of clay. Both efficient cause and material cause. And we're getting, of course, to the final cause: transforming yourself for some purpose, some Dharma, some final cause, some vocation or calling purpose or raison d'être, because everything sounds better in French. But you have not shaped yourself entirely on your own. Your parents parents have shaped you, your siblings have shaped you, your teachers have shaped you, your coaches and mentors have shaped you, the world shapes you, and you in turn shape the world around you. I and not-I, two of those first principles, are not two, Advaita. The question for Advaita Vedānta, therefore, is not why are you unique, The question is not, "Why are you unique?" The question is, "Why are you transforming into the name and form that is uniquely and particularly you?" How are you shaping yourself? Or more simply, what is your Dharma, Svadharma, here and now? All right, any questions, comments, thoughts? Yeah, Aiden? ⚠

Student

When you said personal Dharma, you said it was like a goal. Is that also like talking about how it's your own personal, like, laws of righteousness that move you towards that goal, or is it simply just your personal So it's complicated to say what your laws of righteousness are, right?

Brad

So on the one hand, it's up to you to sort of determine what those laws of righteousness are, right? But that doesn't mean that you're going to be right, you know? So it's not just pure relativism where it's up to everybody to decide decide what the laws of righteousness are. For Advaita, the goal is first realization of the non-duality of the self. Then after that, you make your best attempt to kind of come up with the laws and rules that govern behavior, right? Ethical behavior. But it begins with the realization that Aidan is the self and Brad is the self. Therefore, anything that Brad does, if it harms Aidan, it is detrimental to the self. Right? Actually, if I do something that harms Brad, it's also detrimental to the self. Right? So then finding the laws of righteousness, as you put it, or just the ethical rules of right and wrong, it is always going to be up to you. Because no one stands where you stand, and no one has experienced what you experience. The question is, and the question for Arjuna, because the question is like, what is righteousness? ⚠

Brad

What is right in this case, right? And Kṛṣṇa never gives him, I mean, Kṛṣṇa comes pretty close to telling him what the right thing is, but he never, he always emphasizes it is up to you, right? This is your, your Dharma can only be fulfilled by you, period. And how to go about that can only be done by you. Period. There's no alleviation of that responsibility. But that doesn't mean that anything goes, right? So it all begins with the principle of the non-duality of the self, and then from there you can derive rules, which, I mean, the reason— it's also important to understand why you can't definitively know the, as you put it, the laws of righteousness. Or just, you know, ethically right and wrong rules, deontology, that sort of thing. The reason you can't is because each one of us only sees the world from our fixed limited perspective, right? That was largely the goal of lecture 1, was that we only see, you know, we only see the playing die, for example, from a particular vantage. ⚠

Brad

And then so Aidan is going to see something different than Georgia sees, which is something different than Luke sees. And so if we understand that we all have some sort of similar goal or similar aspiration to realize, then how Aidan gets there is going to be different than how Georgia gets there because you're starting in different places. You see the world from different places, right? How's that? That's a pretty complex answer, but it's a pretty complex question. Good, really good. Others? Yeah. ⚠

Student

I guess this is more a question directed at you, but like, how would you recommend going out and seeking your own Dharma, especially in the world, especially Western culture, which we talked about, which kind of focuses on sense of its objects and kind of attachment to those material objects, how do we personally go into a society and try to really find what, you know, what we can do to make ourselves righteous and guide ourselves in those kind of ethical beliefs? ⚠

Brad

Yeah, tough question. I guess kind of riffing off the theme of this lecture, to be malleable, to be open, open-minded, open-hearted, open to receive. So part of the point is that, right, if Colin is clay, you're shaping yourself, but the world around you is also shaping you, right? And so Dharma is somewhere in between those, right? So determining what your Dharma is isn't just what does Colin want to do or what does Colin want to get out of the world, right? But what is both shreya and Preyas, right? So finding the right balance between those, which requires both being a certain amount of rigidity, forming yourself, right? Saying these are my values, these are my principles, but also engaging with the world in a way that enables you to be open, to be formed and shaped by the world around us, right? Sort of like the meditative quiet, the silence between the Om, that sort of thing, right? That's— I think I could come up with other answers, but I like that one at the moment. Other questions? All right, yeah, fear. ⚠

Student

I guess like it's along those lines, they were like obviously like Shreya and Praya, like they're intertwined in our lives, like trying to be like do as much good as possible. But I guess in your opinion, how do we go about doing that? For example, our parents are dropping like $90,000, $100,000 to go here a year. How do we separate from trying to find that material prosperity to an extent versus, again, more goodness in life? ⚠

Student

Because I know that you still have to make the best of both worlds, kind of following off the answer you just brought up. ⚠

Brad

I mean, shreya and Preyas are not opposed to one another, right? And, you know, one of the first things I taught you about Hindu theology is you have four purusharthas, and artha is one of them, right? So the pursuit of wealth and material goodness, material goods. Notice that doesn't necessarily mean that it's like veer's pursuit of material prosperity, right? It could be trying to lift all boats, right, or create an atmosphere, right, teaching all teenagers in Kazakhstan about economics, for example, right? So ways to engage in the pursuit of artha that don't contradict Dharma or that elevate the material well-being of more than just one's individual self might be a One way of, I think if I understood the question. Let's dive in. Let's dive into the text. So you've got these prompts, right? You've got the little thing that you're supposed to form. So let's see, class ends at quarter till and we gotta, I guess everybody will need a piece of paper, right? And let's say at, Yeah, at, I don't know, like 7 till or something. ⚠

Brad

Then you can go around and you can write down your guesses, yeah, for the other 6 groups. And so you gotta have your, whatever you're doing with your Play-Doh, however you're doing it, you got one chance at this, right? And you're just gonna put it out there like a science project or whatever, right? Yeah, makes sense. ⚠

Student

Yeah.

Brad

One of the objects.

Student

Like we didn't get which one we were supposed to do.

Brad

I didn't give you a slip of paper. Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. Yes, of course. I thought I had an extra, so I'm confused. Okay, let's hear from some of our leaders. We've got— I see 248 first, yeah? Plato's Clay. Yeah. Yeah. Y'all want to hop on that? Can you— yeah. Yeah. ⚠

50:22

Class Discussion: Bhagavad-Gītā Verse Analysis and Translations

Student

So we were kind of looking at, I guess, that first passage. It talks a lot about acting without attachment to results. And when you kind of talk to the A class, how can we portray this to our future professional Personal goals, it kind of, for me, thought about like what sort of like, you know, like what the end goal is. Like say like you're working a job after college, like obviously you're working a job like to make money, but like what is that money towards? Like separating that from like, oh, I just want to have money to have more money. It's like what's that future goal? Whether it's like to provide for your family or something like that. So like I kind of thought about, we thought about, is like in terms of like say you're working your day-to-day job, you might not like, you know, what specifically is going on there. ⚠

Student

Like it might be, you know, you might get some sort of assignment that you really don't want to do, and you kind of have to be, like, what defines discipline is like, you know, maintaining that equanimity between success and failure, being able to separate, you know, some of those good, like those good actions, bad actions you do in your work towards like kind of fulfilling that final goal of being like, say, like, say it was like fulfilling, you know, like familial success, for example. ⚠

Brad

Okay. So, yeah, so let's read the verse. So, stationed in discipline, or yoga, perform actions, karma, having abandoned attachment, a winner of wealth, having become equal in success and failure. Equanimity is called discipline, or yoga. Good. So, perform actions firm in discipline, relinquishing attachment, be impartial to failure and success. This equanimity is called discipline. Now, what do you think about translating yoga as discipline? I know I prefer just yoga being yoga. Stand fast in yoga, surrendering attachment in success and failure. Be the same and get busy with your works. Yoga means sameness and indifference. The soul's practice of contemplation. Actually, this is not supposed to be there. Okay, good. Yeah, Georgia. ⚠

Student

I like this first because I kind of like, I feel like it was easy to apply to my own life with like showing up with the same actions and like the same level of commitment, like no matter whether you experience success in failure. And also, like, with the idea of yoga being like— or discipline being translated from yoga, like how discipline is kind of like, um, like a direct result of, or correlation of, like, having that inner balance of yoga. ⚠

Brad

Yeah.

Student

Um, so yeah, this verse specifically, I know it's like the first one in the section, but it like spoke out to me.

Brad

Yeah, I like that. I mean, thinking of yoga as kind of some balance, right? Yes, you've got— you got to have two things for yoga, right? Two things joined or yoked. But really it's about bringing those things into balance, which could be the— yeah, great. Good. Thanks, Georgia. Anything else to add on this verse? Where should we go next? 251, the fish, fishes. ⚠

Student

Yeah, I wanted to bring this one up because it's messed up.

Brad

Let's start by reading it. I can read it or you can read it. Do you have a verse that you prefer to hear? I mean, a translation you prefer to hear?

Student

I'll exclude the Jonah AI one.

Brad

It's a cold gut, isn't it? I kind of, yeah, I don't know. For the wise endowed with understanding, having abandoned the fruit born of action, freed from the bondage of birth, go to that place that is free from illness. Yeah, good, go for it. ⚠

Student

I feel like that kind of like they're not talking about physical illness.

Student

I think they're talking about like things that stray you away from becoming like understanding It brings up the idea of understanding a lot, and I think that is a synonym for enlightenment almost. And it also says that free from bondage of birth, it brings up that idea that you don't actually die again, and your physical body isn't dead. ⚠

Brad

So it compels us to think differently about birth and death. So in the same way that transforming the clay is giving birth to some new form, right? That form, the clay wasn't born, right? But the form is born. So then, so yeah, so every moment that we're sort of transforming ourselves, Yeah, is a new kind of birth and a new kind of death too. Yeah. Good. Other things to see here or the next verse? Yeah, Castalia. ⚠

Student

Yeah, I kind of looked at the next verse. Would you want me to read that?

Brad

Yeah, please. That'd be great.

Student

I used like the middle definition.

Brad

Great. Sure.

Student

Or translation of this. When your understanding passes beyond the swamp of delusion, you be indifferent to all those who are in the sacred war. And like, when I read this at first, I was pretty confused because I was, I was surprised that it says like, you'll be indifferent to the sacred war. And I thought that was like really moving away from the text. But I also knew that like, that's probably not what it was saying at like the surface. So like, I used like the tool and like asked it questions about what it was saying. And I really liked some of like the analogies and perspectives that it gave. It talked about how It gave like the analogy that the sacred lore is like a map and that as you're getting closer to where you're trying to go, like you don't actually need the map anymore. And I just thought that was like, as someone said before, like really applicable to your own life. Like I've been thinking about like literally today I'm going to the advising center to make a map of like my next 3 years here. ⚠

Student

So it's like, that's so like applicable to what you're doing. Once I'm in senior year, like I'm not gonna need that map anymore you're only gonna have whatever, 2 semesters left.

Brad

Yeah.

Student

So I thought it was like really easy to like relate to yourself. And, um, I also asked to like see like how this like involved in like Arjuna's journey as well. And, um, I was kind of talking about how like this is saying to like cut through the noise and that the indifference is like kind of a sign of maturity, of understanding, um, and like understanding the true essence of the Lord, that you don't need to rely on it fully. And for Arjuna's kind of moving away from like the social like pressures that he was facing and to be able to like see things more clearly and have like this mental sovereignty like over himself. And so I thought that was really interesting and I think it's really important like as you're talking about going into your career like having an understanding of what you want to do and not to be so influenced by all these outside pressures and like be able to really understand like yourself. ⚠

Student

And I think back to like the beginning of the class and I remember talking about a verse where it was like saying that like every life is sacred. And I said like, oh, like that's why like I want to do medicine because I like really believe that. But now like with your lecture just now and this, like now I'm like actually putting myself into it. It was kind of like 10th person, like, where it's kind of thing where like now I'm putting myself into it. Like how do I like impact that belief? And like how do I actually make good on like why I think that that's important? So I think this is kind of like a, like a simple text. Like I feel like it brought everything together. Together. ⚠

Brad

Right on, awesome. Yeah, excellent, excellent. I also remember in podcast 1 or 2 you were talking about the— you're talking about Abhava pramana and the ontological change that you went through when you received the letter from Boston College, right? That you're now not— no longer, you know, high school student but now a Boston College student, right? And that, that's, um, I think especially poignant, right? This ontological change I mean, you're still Castalia, right? Still the son of your— I mean, the daughter of your parents and all that kind of stuff. But, but now you're significantly different, right? And also then once you graduate from Boston College, then it's another ontological change, right? So another birth of kind. And great. Also just want to point out this, to be heard and what has been heard. There's a little play on the— there's a little wordplay going on there, right? So shruti is that which is heard. So shruti is the most sacred text, right, that we've learned. ⚠

Brad

And part of why shruti, you know, I mean, I've emphasized this I think quite a few times throughout the text, you know, about the importance of a teacher who needs to utter the words, right? You are that. This self is brahman. And so you need that teacher in order to utter those words so that you can so that they can be heard, right? But another aspect of it from a dvaita's perspective is that one, and this is coming through in this verse and this little clump of verses too, that once you've understood the teaching, once you've heard the truth, then you don't need the text anymore, right? Because you've heard it and you know how to hear it then. And then, so it's not just something that you do on Sunday morning or something that you do, you know, at night when you're saying your, you know, prayers before bed or whatever, but it's something that becomes part of your constant existence, right? You're hearing the voice of God or the— you're hearing brahman, you're hearing the truth along with you all the way. ⚠

Brad

So kind of like Castile is saying, Once you follow the map, you don't need the map anymore. So the world becomes your map, you could say. Right on. Cool. Good. This is good. Let's push forward. Who wants to go next? 258, maybe? 258? Fighting pickles? ⚠

Student

Um, we chose the translation in the middle kind of to talk about, which is, "When like a tortoise retracting its limbs, he withdraws his senses completely from senseless objects, he's inside a ship." Um, so This, we kind of chose also like the 3 verses after as something that stuck out to us the most because of the word control. And when I read this, it reminded me of the controlling your senses with the horses, um, how in this verse it's not suppression of your senses but rather a replacement with like a higher awareness of your emotions and your senses. And that's also how I interpreted senses, is like it including your emotions and like your heart, and also like a little bit of your logic, not just like the 5 ways, because I think that's also how you perceive the world. Um, and so the tortoise one, like, example in specific was kind of like it pulls its legs when it's threatened. So a A person can control their senses kind of at will when they've reached that state. ⚠

Brad

Good, great connections, great connections to the chariot allegory, right? And understand that using your mind to control your senses and also connecting back with Aiden's earlier question. I think, right, once one has realized, so one could, guide your horses, guide your senses towards the things that are Preyas, right? Towards the things that are individually satisfying, individually gratifying, right? And that's one of the purushartha, so there's nothing inherently wrong with that. If it's not, you know, if you're not violating someone's— if you're not hurting someone, right? Nothing wrong with that. But maybe if one has, you know, retracted, those sort of things, then one begins to see everything, right, as an extension of one's very self. Then not just treating your neighbor or loving your neighbor as one loves yourself, but loving your neighbor because your neighbor is your very self, right? And then so that will affect how you view the world. Then you won't maybe see so much, oh, I want this new, you know, iPhone, I want this new smartwatch, I want this new thing, I want this or that, right? ⚠

Brad

But instead, one maybe begins to see suffering or begins to see injustice, right? And then your mind is drawn towards those sort of the suffering you can alleviate or the injustices that you can, you know, approach, right? And then that becomes dharmic. So it's not about retreating from the world like a tortoise pulls in its shell But instead, maybe that's a part of the process and understanding the self much more broadly. Right on. Thanks, Danny. Should we keep going? Couple more minutes left before we get to— let's try and hear from the— yeah, Luke. ⚠

Student

I did 2.61.

Brad

OK, yeah. Let's go there.

Student

I think the middle one's probably best.

Brad

Yeah, you want to read it?

Student

Or the left one. Yeah. Controlling them all with discipline, he should focus on me. When his senses are under control, his insight is sure. Uh, we just felt that this one really connected like most directly with, uh, the chariot analogy. I feel like all of them kind of touched on it, you know. Um, but this one is like very direct. Uh, when his senses are under control, his insight is sure. I feel like that kind of speaks to the more broad theme here of like just controlling your reactions to things. Like yoga is also very much related to like being at peace with the different things like flowing in and out of your body. And I also thought it was, we also thought it was interesting that like "Me" is like kind of ambiguous but also is capitalized. In the Gemini and the Zayner translation, but not in the Stoller-Miller one. We were wondering if that had any significance or what that might mean. ⚠

Brad

I mean, it definitely has significance, and it definitely signals, you know, how they're reading the text differently. I think, so, me, I mean, it's clear it's Kṛṣṇa talking, right? So Kṛṣṇa's saying me, and Barbara Stoller-Miller is maybe giving us some more of a non- theistic reading, right, of saying me so that me could maybe be, you know, moral conscience, that sort of thing. So listening to your moral conscience. Whereas for the Gemini and Zehner, I mean, Zehner's a Jesuit priest, right, so he tends to read it very theistically. And then so that me is, right, God. So then having his focus on God, then that's that, right? So kind of loving one's neighbor because they're a creature of God, right? And we will— I know I said we were going to this unit, this half of the semester, try to do both a theistic and a non-theistic reading of these texts. But I feel like that might be a little bit too ambitious, so we'll focus more on the Advaita side for now. Feel free to do that, that's no problem. But we haven't really talked so much about the theistic side. ⚠

Brad

We will do that much more intentionally. That'll be the main focus of our next unit starting next week. But feel free to do that. I'm not, not, you know, but that would be an excellent verse. Right, where it's a little bit harder to read that one as a non-theistic text, right? Which I think is why those capitals are coming in there. Word, cool. Can we hear super fast from— who haven't we heard from yet? Ballers? Yeah, all right. Yeah, I know you guys don't have a— ⚠

Student

like 2.71?

Brad

Yeah.

Student

And I read the story.

Brad

Yeah.

Student

When he renounces all desires and asks about craving, possessiveness, or individuality, he finds peace. And I just feel like this verse was a really good wrap-up of the entire chapter. And it kind of goes into depth earlier about how you have to renounce different things and control your senses and stay disciplined. And so I thought that To wrap up the reading, when he renounces all desires and finds peace, it really talks about the end goal of what you say disciplines to do.

Brad

Good. Yeah, great. Right on. And that end goal is peace. Yeah. Yeah. ⚠

Student

I'd say the end goal is liberation and moksha.

Brad

Yeah.

Student

Finding your ultimate state of inner peace and freedom from illusion allows you to find that.

Brad

Yeah, word. And I also want to point out, we do need to stop because I want to do a little contest. But, you know, maybe we can come back to this next week. But just want to draw attention to the word nirvana. Zayner really captures that there. But so brahmanirvana, so taking brahman right, which is traditionally associated with the vedas, and nirvana, which is more, you know, typically associated with Buddha. So, yeah, the Gita very intentionally bringing these together. We will see that phrase brahmanirvana one other time in the text. Yeah, cool. All right, let's— you got a piece of paper? Something you can write down your answers on. Can we line them up here? What if we line them up? Huh? ⚠

1:09:01

Closing Word Guessing Contest and Activity

Student

Huh?

Brad

Part is immobile. Immobile. That's fine. That's fine. All right. We got— we can do this in 4 minutes, right? ⚠

Student

Yeah.

Brad

Everybody got a piece of paper?

Student

Woo!

Brad

All right. Yeah, so one paper, write down all your words. I think with one exception, they're all one singular word.

Student

What are we thinking here?

Brad

So, see a brain with some Oh yeah, yeah, right. ⚠

Student

You're welcome, guys.

Student

What you guys think? Logic.

Student

Logic.

Student

Really close.

Student

Oh my God, this is intense.

Brad

What is this?

Student

Dude, it looks like—

Student

so it is a mushroom.

Student

There's a mushroom inside of it.