Nine Ways to Bring Devotional Service to Your Life (as told by the Bhagavad Gita)

And so, um, I have been rereading the Bhagavad Gita lately, and there was a really good visualization of what it is to be a human essentially.

And what the visualization is or what this image is, is a chariot being pulled by five horses.

And you have the charioteer who's the, the driver, and then you have the passenger, and then the horses and the chariot, you know.

And so if we look at this whole thing, [sniffs] um, the driver of the chariot is representing the mind.

The five horses are representing the five senses that we have.

And so the mind is both ruling and being pulled by these five senses.

And so it is the mind's job to be kind of keeping these horses under control and keeping them in the ... moving in the direction that they wish to move in.

[sniffs] The passenger of the chariot is our capital S Self.

It's our soul.

It's the little piece of Brahma or God or whatever it is you call it that seats within you.

And so this passenger is, is really just along for the ride, you know, and they are hoping that the driver is, um, aware enough that they understand that, one, they're in the driver's seat, two, a lot of these things are outside of their control, and three, we still have the control of how we react to things and how we, um, then move based off of the senses, based off of what sort of sensory input we're getting in through our body.

And so the soul is really just the rider there, um, enjoying the ride, you know, just looking around going, "Oh my gosh, isn't this beautiful? Oh my gosh, isn't this amazing? Oh my gosh, isn't this such a cool experience?" You know? And so that's really, I, to, to me, I feel like that's a great image of, yeah, the five horses, our mind, and our soul, and that's really what we're all doing here.

And some people don't realize that there's a passenger.

Some people don't understand that there's a passenger there outside of the mind, outside of the five senses.

[sniffs] And so when that happens, you know, you can be very, um, uh, lost, I guess.

You know? Without a passenger, the driver doesn't really know where to go.

He's just driving anywhere and everywhere.

[chuckles] You know? There's no one telling him, "Hey, this is where we're going.

I need you to take me here." And so the ...

Our job as humans is this path of self-realization, this liberation of Um, senses and the, the liberation of, um, the karmic loop of life and death, pain and suffering, and love and joy, you know, it's, it's understanding our part in this whole thing that we call life.

So when people talk about doing yoga, especially in the United States, 98% of the time they are not talking about what I just talked about.

[laughs] 98% of the time they are, you know, telling you how to do the best warrior two you can, but don't talk about anything else beyond that, you know? And that's where this podcast, um, really comes into play.

This is where I'm taking my stance here.

I'm taking my stand into that is not what yoga is.

That is a glorified [laughs] exercise program, and we need to really get into this, uh, deeper parts of it.