Mind and feeling
The Bhagavad Gita
A right to the act, not the fruit
The Bhagavad Gita (India · c. 200 BC–200 AD) — A right to the act, not the fruit.
What actually happened?
Most English readers have already met this book once, at second hand. Watching the first atomic test in 1945, Robert Oppenheimer said a line from its eleventh chapter came into his mind: now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. He had learned Sanskrit in order to read it. What that famous moment hides is the situation the book is actually about, which is much smaller and much more common. One man, before anything has happened, who can see exactly what his own action will cost and cannot make himself begin.
The line falls between the act and the yield
Whether you do it, how, and how much today are on your side. Whether the market takes it, the committee approves it, the other person replies, are not. Not asking for the harvest is not the same as refusing to look at it: results are information for adjusting the next action, not a vote on whether to continue.
Two columns, mine and not mine. Work the left one, and read the right one only to see what changes tomorrow.
Being stuck is usually seeing the whole cost at once
Arjuna is the best archer alive; his ability is not the problem. He has loaded every consequence of the whole war into a single view, and under that load no individual step is bearable. Telling a man in that state that he can do it is useless, because confidence is not what jammed.
Price today's step on its own. Stop costing out the entire road every time you sit down.
The test is what happens if the reward is removed
Suppose the return is definitely gone. Do you still do it? If not, the payoff was the work all along and this was only the road to it. Opening the hand does not mean caring less; it means today's quantity is set by you rather than by the day's news.
Decide the amount in advance and hold it whether or not anything good arrives in the inbox.
How do I use it today?
Name the parts of your stalled project that are genuinely yours, set today's amount in advance, and then check the result for one purpose only: which part of tomorrow's action changes. If you cannot move at all, stop costing the whole road and price only the next step.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
The line falls on the side of the act, not the harvest.
Eighteen chapters of argument, and he still has to walk over there himself.
Take the reward away. Whether you still do it is the fact.