I have repeatedly said that we live in an age of stress and tension. But I must add here, that what compounds the problem today is the way we react to stressful situations.
Down the ages, and in the deep distant past of history, annoying, perplexing, frustrating situations have always confronted the best of men. It is not as if we of the modern age have the monopoly over stress and tension!
So much so, even the Bhagavad Gita, that Universal Scripture, the Bible of Humanity, tells us about the ideal man – the Stitha Prajna – the man who is calm in wisdom, the man of utter peace of spirit, who lives and moves in peace and has his being rooted in God.
“What are the marks of such a man who is steadfast, concentrated, and of illumined consciousness?” Arjuna asks of the Lord.
In his wonderful commentary on the Gita, Sadhu Vaswani tells us that the Stitha Prajna is a man of wisdom – one whose centre is the atman, whose circumference is the wide world.
So let us take note, we are not talking about renunciates who have given up on worldly life, when we are talking about the Stitha Prajna: he lives in the world, he deals with his fellow men – but he is atmavaan, spirit-centred.
He is a man of detachment. He has renounced desires; he is without raga (attraction) and dvesha (hatred). He is thus free from the dominion of the passions. He is a stranger to fear and anger.
How different is such a man from the unstable individual, who is feeble-minded, prone to violent likes and dislikes! The latter is easily perturbed, constantly in a state of fear, worry, excitement or anger. He is prone to irritation and vexation; he is perpetually restless.
Let us see how Lord Krishna describes the Stitha Prajna, the man of wisdom who is unruffled at all times and in all situations:
He casts away desires which perturb the mind. He is nirmohi.
He is a man of equanimity. He is free from anxiety amid pains; he is indifferent amid pleasures.
His understanding is established in wisdom. He has conquered likes and dislikes.
He is not a man of repression but a man of will power, pure and strong.
He has an established mind, firm-set in wisdom.