Detachment

Krishna is advocating a sort of unemotional type of life. By “detachment,” he means that one should not be too caught up in the bias of certain actions, but should live life objectively and free from temptations – the goal being perfect peace. If one doesn’t become too involved in worldly happenings, they are freed from wants, and therefore can maintain a certain level of joy. Since unhappiness stems from unfulfilled wishes, a detached state of life would leave you at ease with the world: “relinquishing the fruit of action, the disciplined man attains perfect peace” while the man who is attached to his actions is “attached to the fruit of his desire” (60). If one wants for nothing, he has nothing to blind his quest for peace, for the “man of discipline should always discipline himself, remain in seclusion, isolated, his thought and self well controlled, without possessions or hope” (66). Furthermore, the man who can be disciplined in his actions is able to see through common day-to-day problems and find self-actualization. By doing this, he is able to find wisdom because “when wisdom is destroyed by knowledge of the self, then, like the sun, knowledge illumines ultimate reality” (61). Krishna suggests doing this by finding a place of mediation, “neither too high nor too low” (66), and maintaining “an equal eye” (69) to meditate and keep your thoughts under control from human tendencies. Although the mind is naturally restless, as Arjuna points out, Krishna emphasizes that only those with the discipline enough to steady their mind will find contentment in detachment, and thus find a perfect peace in a generally chaotic world.