Gita Group GD - 21 Mar 2021: Q&A with a new seeker - what is my duty and how should I balance life with religion?

Arjuna opens up a floodgate of emotions. He is anxious for victory in battle and he got into a neurosis - fear of death of his clan & fear of losing. Arjuna tries hard to get Krishna to acknowledge and we discuss why Krishna ignores him - LISTEN & SILENT are anagrams and Krishna is SILENT and LISTENing. He does not teach as yet. Arjuna gives many arguments - wants the kingdom, does not want it if his relatives are dead, death of menfolk means womenfolk going astray, causing admixture of classes, letting Dharma - or rightful living go down. Like Arjuna, as we verbalize our feelings, we will also notice that we will contradict ourselves. This is a big learning for us. Because we are always operating in 'misplaced detachment' or 'wrong vairagyam' - for the wrong reasons. There is a symbolism of Krishna and Arjuna. Krishna is the Supreme Soul in ourselves and Arjuna is our Ego (Individual Self). When our Ego listens to the Supreme Soul, our actions become aligned with the universe. We also discuss 'subjective self' and 'objective self': Subjective self is the true self which we are trying to discover but the sad fact is that we are always in the 'objective self' mode where our mind is attached to objects, people, situations, events. This attachment is the one that causes us grief. Are we insignificant in the entire universe? There are two views - and listen to the contrarian view that the 'universe' is 'contained' in us - so, we are not insignificant. A lot of discussions got triggered by a new seeker's two questions: 1. 'WHAT IS YOUR DUTY?' 2. HOW DOES ONE BALANCE OUR DAILY LIFE WITH SCRIPTURAL INSIGHTS? Arjuna duty was to fight for dharma; in our life we need to evaluate our roles to find out what our duties are; our duty is to be human - and to truly understand what being human means. Our dharma, according to Swami Vivekananda is to manifest our own divinity and help others manifest their divinity. Divinity means - the essential intrinsic nature of humans, like heat being intrinsic to fire. How do we balance doing right by oneself and doing right for the job, parents etc? Are we true to ourself? How do we reconcile? What is religion? Is that even relevant? The group shares to the new seeker their insights on how these scriptural learnings helped them: - To know 'who am I?' was a big aha moment for one - We are able to connect the religion, manifesting divinity and our duty becomes to get rid of who we are not! - There was a sense of true freedom - We have experienced fearlessness in our life by understanding this knowledge - We got rid of our anxiety - Clarity in the roles & the corresponding right actions, right intentions behind those actions that are required for those roles. - Learning of the scriptures is experiential and the context becomes clearer - for example, why balance, who balances, what are we balancing - these Q's get answered. - Freedom from guilt - The study and seeking is a journey to understand our roles, duties and how might one best perform them. The Gita gives a nice framework - tools to help us figure out how can we go through this life in the right way.