Reflections on Self-Awareness & Action

Arjuna is struggling with the same inner conflicts that almost everyone is faced with – to find himself and to do it in the right way. He is struggling to find internal balance and peace, which is being challenged by the conflicts that divide his family. He is being faced with the reality that he must fight his own family in order to uphold his name as a warrior, but as a man of wisdom and virtue. Krishna is his guide throughout this process and Arjuna, while using Krishna’s direction, will have to fight the external enemy in the name of justice, while also reaching the ultimate end of finding inner peace.

To me, the most revealing themes throughout the first six sections of the Bhagavad Gita are the virtues of duty and awareness of the self that will ultimately be reflected in one’s physical work and apparent to the rest of the world. This observation is important in my eyes because I have never really been faced with the type of immediately obvious struggle with family with which Arjuna is faced. On a deeper level, I have been trying to examine my own ability to cultivate the virtues explained in each chapter – and taking a yoga class and reading the sutras have been great supplements to my ability to really focus on how to search within myself.