Now, this morning, after very intense night, the results are in and the battles are over, for now at least. However, I find that there is still a great deal of intense feeling remaining, on both sides. Gloating, anger, bitterness. Even Big Bird wasn't being as nice as usual. So maybe it’s not too late to add to what I wrote on Monday after all!
If we practice yoga the way The Bhagavad Gita defines it, we’ll need to step back from these negative feelings. As I quoted on Monday:
He looks impartially on all:
those who love him or hate him,
his kinsmen, his enemies, his friends
the good, and also the wicked.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work for the political causes we believe in. As The Bhagavad Gita says:
He who performs his duty
with no concern for results
is the true man of yoga—not
he who refrains from action.
And, after all, it was Mohandas K. Gandhi, one of the great political activists of all time, who called The Bhagavad Gita his “mother” and believed in its message of “skill in action.”
The wise man lets go of all
results, whether good or bad,
and is focused on the action alone.
Yoga is skill in actions.
Now the challenge for all of us is to put this into practice. (See my original post Yoga Philosophy of the Day for information about what The Bhagavad Gita recommends as the way to achieve this.)
I was also thinking about how cultivating equanimity in the way The Bhagavad Gita recommends pertains to healthy aging. Of course, maintaining equanimity in the face of difficulty of all kinds helps make our lives better (and our bodies healthier). But also, as older people, most of us want to make a better world for those who come after us, whether that means for our own family members or for the next generation as a whole. And this will only be possible if we can all work together, friends and enemies alike.
