Rooted Sangha: The Bhagavad Gita | Chapter 2 | Verse 57
- sjholisticyoga
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 30 minutes ago
This week in sangha, we continue our discussion of The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living by Eknath Easwaran. Each week, I will do my best to summarise the parts of the book we discuss. Please refer to https://www.sjholisticyoga.co.uk/post/what-is-the-bhagavad-gita if you need a grounding in what The Bhagavad Gita itself is.
I cross-reference with other versions of the Bhagavad Gita, so sometimes the translations differ from Easwaran's.
Sthita prajña - Steady Wisdom
We continue exploring how Krishna describes those who move through life with steadiness and wisdom.
SRI KRISHNA
Fettered no more by selfish attachments, they are not elated by good fortune or depressed by bad. Such are the seers.
Another translation offers:
In the material world, one who is unaffected by whatever good or evil he may obtain, neither praising it nor despising it, is firmly fixed in perfect knowledge.
It’s easy to hear a verse like this and assume we are being asked to detach from everything, but that isn’t what Krishna is pointing to. So it’s worth pausing to ask: what is a selfish attachment? Because not all attachment is a problem.
There is a kind of attachment that is rooted in love, care, and connection. The quiet thread that ties us to people, places, and the rhythms of our lives. This kind of attachment doesn’t bind us; it nourishes us. It allows us to show up, to participate, to belong.
But selfish attachment is different. It is attachment with a grip. It’s when we cling to outcomes. When we need things to go a certain way in order to feel okay. When our sense of self rises and falls depending on what happens outside of us. Praise lifts us. Criticism unsettles us. Success expands us. Loss contracts us.
This is the kind of attachment Krishna is gently loosening. Not the love or the care, not the engagement with life. But the tightness around it. The belief that our peace depends on how things unfold.
The 'person with wisdom' still lives fully. They still care, still act, still participate in the world. They feel their emotions and process them. But there is a quiet steadiness underneath it all. A place that is not thrown around by each turn of events.
Good fortune comes, and they receive it. Difficulty comes, and they meet it. And neither defines them.
A More Contemporary Verse
Rudyard Kipling encapsulated the essence of this verse on Sthita prajña (steady wisdom) in his poem "If-".
If-.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling, 1943
The enduring popularity of this poem says something quite deep about us. It speaks to a quality most of us recognise, even if we’ve never named it. A quiet longing to be steady in ourselves. To not be carried away by every rise and fall of life, but to meet it with a kind of groundedness that doesn’t depend on things going well or badly.
It’s the very same state that Krishna is describing to Arjuna. And it’s striking that a poet writing in a completely different time and culture could give voice to something so closely aligned with that teaching. But perhaps it isn’t so surprising. This isn’t an idea that belongs to one tradition or another. It seems to arise naturally, again and again, wherever people begin to reflect on what it means to live well.
There is something in us that already leans towards it. A sense, however faint, that there is another way of being that is less reactive, less entangled, and more at ease.
Whether it finds expression in the Bhagavad Gita or in a poem like "If-", the thread is the same. Krishna is simply articulating it here, in response to Arjuna’s question, giving shape to something many of us, in our own way, are already reaching towards.
A reflection for practice and daily life
This is something you can just carry with you into the day, nothing formal, nothing you need to set aside time for. At some point, you’ll probably notice a moment where something in you shifts. It might be small. A message, a comment, something not going quite how you expected, or something going really well. And you feel it in the body before anything else, that slight lift, or that drop.
If you can, just stay with that for a moment rather than moving straight past it.
You might quietly ask yourself, 'What is it I’m holding onto here?' or 'What did I need this moment to be?' Not as a way of pulling it apart, just as a way of bringing it a little more into the light.
And then see if there’s any room, even the smallest amount, to soften around it.
Not getting rid of the feeling, not pushing it away or trying to override it with something more positive, but just easing its edges. Letting the shoulders drop a fraction, feeling your feet a bit more firmly on the ground, or allowing the breath to return to a steadier rhythm.
Very often, the grip is subtle, but it’s there. A kind of leaning into how things should be, rather than how they are. And as you notice that, you might begin to feel that the moment itself is already changing. It doesn’t stay fixed in the way it first arrived.
So there can be a quiet recognition alongside it all that this is moving, this is not permanent, this doesn’t need to define anything. Over time, these small moments of noticing and softening start to add up. Not in a dramatic way, but in a steady, almost unremarkable way. You begin to find that you’re a little less pulled around by each rise and fall, a little less caught in the need for things to go one way or another.
There’s still feeling, still care, still full participation in life, but underneath it, there’s a bit more space. And from that space, a kind of steadiness begins to grow.
This is the gift of yoga.
Giving Back
After covering room and fuel costs, all proceeds from Rooted are being saved to support a local cause, to be chosen together later this year - as a small act of Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion in action.
On 21st September, we made our first donation (£110) to Kettering Samaritans.
On 23rd December, we donated £100 to Johnny's Happy Place, a wonderful mental health support cafe in Kettering.
On 9th April, we donated £100 to The Green Patch in Kettering.
Our next beneficiary is Home-Start Wellingborough & District. We have £55 in the pot!
Going Forward
Next week, we will continue Chapter 2. If you would like to join us in person, do get in touch or book online. It is never too late to join in, even if this is completely brand new to you.
If you would like to buy the book, click the image below for options.
Please Note:
My thoughts draw on teachings from the Bhagavad Gita, and other sacred texts within Hindu philosophy. I share my reflections as a yoga practitioner and teacher, and as a student of Vedanta - not as a scholar or religious authority. My intention is to gently explore how these teachings can be lived and contemplated within contemporary practice, and always with the utmost respect for their cultural and spiritual roots.
Om Shanti.
Vicki x
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