How Life Led Me to the Gita—and the Gita Led Me Through Life

During one of my visits to the United States, a devotee-doctor in Washington, D.C., suggested that I consult a polio specialist to evaluate the long-term effects I might experience as I age and to prepare for them. However, because polio had become rare and few specialists were available to treat its long-term effects, the booking didn’t work out at that time. Nonetheless, the doctor recommended that I read a book about living with polio in the second half of life. As I flipped through the book, reading the first-person testimonies of polio patients as well as doctors who treat them, I felt a strong yet strange sense of disidentification with what I read. As I tried to understand that feeling, it struck me that I didn’t think of myself as a polio patient. More importantly, I didn’t want to think of myself that way. Most importantly, I realized that I didn’t need to think of myself that way—and this was the result of finding shelter and light in the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita. To understand how the Gita had shaped my relationship with polio, I went down memory lane, revisiting some defining experiences in my life. Crippled Physically, Directed Intellectually I contracted polio in 1978 when I was about one year old. We were living in Chandrapur, a small town in Maharashtra, India. My mother had dutifully taken me to a nearby clinic to get the polio vaccine. Tragically, something went wrong, and what was meant to protect me from polio was followed by the very disease it was intended to prevent. I was just learning to take my first steps when, soon after receiving the vaccine, I suddenly collapsed. I could never walk normally thereafter. I don’t remember any of this, but my first memory is from when I was about two and a half or three. I was crawling around in the room where my mother was talking with a distant relative who had come to visit us. That aunt consoled my mother, saying, “It’s so sad your son got polio.” I remember my mother’s voice—calm, clear, and confident—as she replied, “Whatever he lacks physically, God will provide him intellectually.” I don’t know why she said that. Whether she had observed some intellectual precociousness in me, or whether it was just her hope, her prayer, or her blessing—I can’t say. Still, the steadiness in her voice calmed my restless mind. Her words stayed with me: not the God part, but the intellectual part. I never asked my mother about it because I forgot the incident consciously, though it impacted me subconsciously. And when I was 15, she passed away due to blood cancer. Nonetheless, as I grew up, I did notice that I could read rapidly, remember what I read easily, articulate it clearly, and analyze it deeply. Essentially, I did have intellectual ability that seemed special. My father also encouraged me to develop myself intellectually, bringing me many books from a library next to his office. The more I identified with my intellectual side, the less I felt constrained by my physical side, and the less reason I had to identify with my physical side at all. My mother respected the Bhagavad Gita and encouraged me to participate in Gita shloka recitation contests, though she never specifically said that the values she gave me were from the Gita. Almost two decades later, when I encountered the Bhagavad Gita, I found a framework for understanding what my mother’s words had done for me. The Gita describes how the mode of ignorance, tamas, can keep us trapped in lamentation and moroseness (18.35), while the mode of goodness, sattva, brings clarity and composure (14.11). My mother’s encouragement had helped me move away from tamas by not becoming preoccupied with my physical limitations, and move toward sattva by recognizing and developing my intellectual abilities. Another incident that shaped me significantly occurred during my childhood. There were some kids in our neighborhood who would tease me about my disability, calling me “cripple.” One boy, in particular, was the leader of this mockery. He was an athletic genius, embodying everything I lacked physically. His name-calling annoyed me more than it hurt me, primarily because I didn’t care much about my physical condition. I would have been far more angered if someone had called me “stupid.” One day, my mother told me that this boy’s mother had approached her with a request. Her son was struggling in school, especially with mathematics, and since I was good at the subject, she wanted me to help him. As my mother completed her sentence, my head started shaking vigorously. “I am not going to help him,” I declared. My mother persisted, “They are our neighbors, and he is your friend.” I shook my head even more firmly. “He is not my friend,” I retorted emphatically. But because my mother was insistent, I eventually gave in and agreed to help. When I tried helping him with basic math, I soon found that he simply couldn’t understand it. He tried, but he just didn’t have the intellectual ability. While he struggled with simple arithmetic, a part of me wanted to laugh at him, just as he had regularly laughed at me. But then something inside me stopped me with a pointed question. I am probably phrasing it more clearly now than I did at that age: If he mocks you for your physical limitation, and you mock him for his intellectual limitation, how are you any different from him? That thought freed me from any residual resentment I might have had about my polio. I realized that everyone struggles with limitations. Some limitations, like mine, are visible and obvious. Others are invisible, yet they can be equally restrictive. That realization opened me to a broader reflection on life’s fairness. I could have thought that life had been unfair to me. I could naturally ask, “I hadn’t done anything, as far as I knew, to deserve this disability. Why did I have to suffer this?” But then I realized I could turn the question around: “What had I done to deserve the intellectual ability I enjoyed?” Life is unfair, but in the big picture it is fairly unfair. Sometimes we get worse than we think we deserve, but at other times we receive better than we deserve. Maybe life is like the clouds overhead: sometimes, they block the sun; sometimes, they provide nourishing rains. Many years later, when I read about the concept of karma in the Bhagavad Gita and understood how we all carry mixed karmic baggage from our past into this life, I found a philosophical framework to make sense of what I had experienced. Discovering the Gita, Deepening My Identity In 1996, when I was in the third year of my study of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering at the College of Engineering, Pune, I was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita through devotees who conducted college programs. So inspired was I by its wisdom that I decided to become a monk and dedicate my life to studying and sharing its teachings. When I expressed my desire to join the monastery in Pune, the head asked me how I would cope with my physical handicap. I replied that it hadn’t stopped me from staying in a hostel without assistance, so it was unlikely to stop me from living in a monastery. I pointed to the caliper—a brace that supported my weakened leg. To me, it had become just a part of me, like the glasses I used to correct my vision. Every morning I would put on my glasses, and then I would put on the braces for my leg. The second task took more time and was less convenient, but it didn’t make too much of a difference. He accepted my reasoning, though I later came to know that what persuaded him was not the force of my argument, but the force of my conviction animating that argument. Whatever persuaded him, I am grateful he provided me the opportunity, which I was able to take when I became a monk on January 1, 1999, after finishing my graduation and briefly working in a multinational software company. Over the years, the Gita’s fundamental teaching—that we are spiritual beings beyond our physical shells (2.13)—had become a firm philosophical conviction for me. Even before formally learning this truth, I didn’t identify too much with my body; I identified far more with the thoughts in my head. The Gita’s wisdom then helped me shift my identity deeper still—beyond the subtle thoughts, to the spiritual soul who is the thinker of those thoughts. In 2011, after more than a decade in the monastery, I was visiting the temple at Juhu, Mumbai, to give classes. During the morning prayer session, I slipped on some spilled water. I fractured the hip joint of my left leg, the same leg affected by polio. The fall was minor, but the impact was major, because my leg was already weakened by osteoporosis, and the caliper twisted my body as I fell. Intense pain shot through me, racking my body with unbearable heat-like sensations. I had never experienced such agony. In desperation, I tried to chant the Hare Krishna mantra, but did not feel any relief. While others crowded around me to help, I shifted to reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita—and immediately, I found relief. I kept reciting as I was taken to a nearby clinic for an X-ray and then rushed to the Bhaktivedanta Hospital, a devotee-run hospital about an hour and a half away. Throughout the journey, I continued reciting the verses—most of the 700 Gita verses I had memorized. Physically, it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Yet at the level of consciousness, it was one of the most peaceful and even joyful experiences, as I felt the Gita’s wisdom lifting me above my body’s agony. When the emergency doctor at the hospital saw my X-ray, he remarked, “This cannot be your X-ray. A person with this kind of fracture would be screaming in pain.” I smiled gratefully, knowing that if I had any composure, it was not due to my self-control but because Krishna, through the Gita’s wisdom, had blessed me with absorption in Him. The fall might have triggered a fire that was burning my bones, but the Gita had bathed my mind in a cooling stream of nectar. From that time, Bhagavad Gita 18.58—where Krishna declares, “If you become conscious of Me, you will pass over all obstacles by My grace”—has become one of the verses I most often turn to for shelter. I had to undergo major surgery to deal with the fracture. Because my leg was now substantially weakened and vulnerable, I was advised to stop using the caliper and shift to crutches instead. While this made my disability far more visible to others, it actually made me less conscious of it. I no longer had to spend time wearing the caliper, and with two crutches supporting me on both sides, I could walk much faster than before—almost keeping pace with those who walked at a normal speed. Learning the Gita Through Life’s Encounters Over the years, as I have traveled internationally to share the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, I have spent much of my time moving from one city to another, often visiting a different city almost every week, except during the pandemic. My audiences have ranged from Indians living in rural areas of India to Indians living in New York, as well as Americans, British, Australians, Canadians, Singaporeans, and people from many other backgrounds. When people ask me where I am based, I sometimes joke that I am a “baseless brahmachari.” I do have a room at the Govardhan Eco Village, a retreat center about three hours from Mumbai, but I rarely spend more than a fortnight there in any given year. These travels have substantially broadened my understanding of the Gita. That broadening has come not only from thinking deeply about how to communicate its teachings to people with different backgrounds and concerns, but also from listening attentively to what they have to say—both in the questions they ask after my talks and in our one-on-one conversations. Their questions have often prompted me to reconsider familiar teachings, look at them from perspectives I had not previously considered, and discover dimensions of their meaning that I might otherwise have overlooked. For the first two decades of my speaking engagements as a monk, I hardly ever referred to my polio in my classes. But as I became more familiar with people in different parts of the world—people coming from diverse cultural and conceptual backgrounds, very different from mine or the tradition I represent—I found that the spiritual message I wanted to share became easier for them to appreciate when I shared my human story. And my polio, undeniably, is a significant part of that story. The Bhagavad Gita does not require us to deny the material aspects of our identity. Rather, it calls upon us to recognize that there is more to us than our material side. While it takes time to fully realize our spiritual identity—and I am still on that journey—it is possible to emotionally distance ourselves from the limiting parts of our material identity and to resourcefully focus on its more positive parts. Krishna told Arjuna in Bhagavad Gita 2.13 that his essential identity is spiritual. Yet Krishna did not tell him to reject his identity as a warrior or as a member of an illustrious dynasty. Instead, He instructed him to use those roles constructively—for external service and for inner spiritual growth. Guided by Gita wisdom, I have found it helpful to differentiate between identity and identification. My identity includes being male, Indian, an engineer, a polio patient, an author, a speaker, a thinker, overweight, dark-complexioned, short in stature, and scarred on the right side of my face. Some of these aspects are empowering, while others feel disempowering. I do not have to reject or resent the less favorable aspects of my identity. But I can choose to focus on the empowering parts. My identity as an intellectual, speaker, and author has aided me in two of the most fulfilling features of my life: outer contribution and inner connection. Externally, I have been trying to provide others with resources to raise their consciousness; internally, I have been endeavoring to connect with my Lord Krishna, who is the center and purpose of my life. Looking back, I can see how life had begun teaching me lessons that prepared me to appreciate the Gita even before I consciously encountered it. And since discovering the Gita, its wisdom has helped me understand my experiences, face challenges, and find purpose in using whatever abilities I have in service to Krishna and others. Over the years, I have come to appreciate that my study of the Gita does not end when I close the book or conclude a class. I continue studying it not only by reading its verses, reciting them, and reflecting on their meanings, but also by listening to people’s questions, responding to life’s challenges by drawing on its wisdom, and returning to it again and again as my spiritual home. My travels may take me from one city to another, and my encounters with people may bring me face-to-face with questions I have never considered before. But wherever life takes me, the Gita remains both a source of guidance for my journey and a source of ever-new discoveries along the way. *** 18.58 If you become conscious of Me, you will pass over all the obstacles of conditioned life by My grace. If, however, you do not work in such consciousness but act through false ego, not hearing Me, you will be lost. The post How Life Led Me to the Gita—and the Gita Led Me Through Life first appeared on Chaitanya Charan Das, Bhagavad Gita ISKCON .