The Bhagavad Gita 2:38

Gita  2:38

In the battle (some people also consider this to be the battle of life) consider pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat to be the same, in this way you will not incur sinful reaction.

This is the beginning of one of the most repeated themes in the Bhagavad-gita. Krishna begins to explain that the sin that Arjuna was afraid to incur by killing people in his own family in war would not and will not be incurred if Arjuna does his duty with out expectation or reaction to the outcome. As he said in the previous verse everything will be fine, with what ever out come should occur. This is one of the lessons that can change your life for the better if taken to heart. The thing is to have faith that everything will turn out right in the end. This faith will come from many directions. But the first and easiest to grasp is, it begins with dharma. There are many reasons things happen like they do and many of these reason will be understood better as Krishna teaches Arjuna about Karma. But to begin with if we try to understand the concept of dharma we will begin to let go, because we will know that we are doing everything we can to do things correctly. Once you know you are doing your best for the good of all in all things you just naturally let go of the outcome. Just for a mundane example: Let’s say you get a letter from the bank saying you have made an error and you owe the bank $1,000.00. If you have been keeping good records and you are organized, you will think that is not true and I will pull my records and bring them to the bank and the whole matter will be resolved. But on the other hand if you have not been keeping good records, but yet do not believe it is true, you will panic, and probably spend much energy fretting until it is resolved. In this case your dharma would have been to be organized and keep records. Well this is an easy example of being able to let go because of doing your dharma nicely. Now of course it can all get more complicated than this, but this is a beginning of understanding and a beginning of what Krishna is trying to teach Arjuna. The first step in accepting whatever happens is preforming your dharma. And many steps in understanding and acceptance will follow.

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