Facing One’s Difficulties

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna asked Sri Krishna to place him between the two armies ready to engage in a civil war, with massive numbers of troops on each side, so that he could view the scene before the actual fighting started. At that moment he was struck by the magnitude of what was about to take place and indicated that he would not participate, that it was morally unsupportable, and it would be better if he were killed than if he would engage in killing respected elders, teachers, and relatives. He was prepared to avoid the moral problem that he now saw rising before him in very graphic terms.

It is instructive to note that Sri Krishna did not accept the idea of Arjuna’s sudden qualms about the morality and correctness of the action, an action for which he had been preparing for many years, for which he had undergone extreme austerities and training, for which he had acquired special weaponry, and which was intended to obtain recompense from those who had tried to harm himself and his brothers and wife for many years, including a humiliating scene before the assembly where his wife Draupadi was brought in to embarrass them all. Rather, Sri Krishna pointed out that this was a reaction of the Guna of Tamas, not fitting for one of Arjuna’s position, training, experience and role, and that he should face the situation directly and not try to avoid it or run away.

The reactions that the spiritual seeker has when faced with what appear to be failures, moral lapses, uprising of desires, and fear that somehow the spiritual progress is lacking, are quite normal tamasic responses that want to avoid rather than face the difficulties. Just as Arjuna was educated about this process and encouraged to throw off the tamasic energy that had moved to the forefront, so spiritual seekers are encouraged to act with courage, fortitude, perseverance and trust in the Divine and the process.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “Difficulty cannot be overcome by your running away from it.”

“… It is not by tormenting yourself with remorse and harassing thoughts that you can overcome. It is by looking straight at yourself, very quietly, with a quiet and firm resolution and then going on cheerfully and bravely in full confidence and reliance, trusting in the Grace, serenely and vigilantly, anchoring yourself on your psychic being…. That is the true way — and there is no other.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pg..98