This summary is about two verses of the Gita (Gita 2.62–63), which tell how a person reaches ruin by dwelling on a thing.
The answer in one line
A thought that settles in the mind can start a chain: dwelling, then attachment, then desire, then anger, then confusion, then tangled memory, then loss of understanding, and at the end ruin. Each step has already broken a guard that could have stopped the next. So the cheapest place to break the chain is the beginning, not the anger.
What problem this answers
The mind catches on a small matter, and in a short time anger grows so much that the sense of right and wrong is gone. In the beginning everything was small, and the end so large. What happens in between?
In two verses the Lord gives the whole order: eight stages and seven steps.
In order, this is the first of the six stages on the road of Anger and Desire. After it come attachment and aversion, and then the enemy called desire.
Eight stages, seven steps
The first step is from dwelling to attachment (verse 2.62). What breaks is the openness of the mind. It begins to be bound to a single thing.
The second step is from attachment to desire (verse 2.62). What breaks is calm. Now something is wanted.
The third step is from desire to anger (verse 2.62). What breaks is patience. What was wanted has got stuck.
The fourth step is from anger to confusion, called sammoha (verse 2.63). What breaks is clear seeing.
The fifth step is from confusion to tangled memory, called smriti-bhrama (verse 2.63). What breaks is one's own resolve and what one has learned.
The sixth step is from tangled memory to the ruin of the intellect (verse 2.63). What breaks is the power to choose after thinking.
The seventh step is from the ruin of the intellect to downfall (verse 2.63). What breaks is the aim of life.
The first verse goes through four stages: dwelling, attachment, desire and anger. The second takes up from there and completes the other four.
The main points to remember
The first three stages
The first step is the easiest to miss. The verse does not say that the object is bad. It says that in one who dwells on objects, attachment is born. The coming of a thought is not dwelling. Dwelling is when the mind stops on it, turns it over and keeps coming back.
In attachment the thought is no longer neutral. The mind starts to like it or to fear it. Thought begins to take shape as "mine" and "against me".
The form of desire is not always "I want". "Let that not be" is also desire. In the fourteenth chapter this is the chain of rajas: born of thirst and attachment, it binds the embodied by attachment to actions (Gita 14.7).
And these first three stages are inward. Nothing shows outside, yet inside everything has become bound.
The stage of anger
Anger is desire striking a wall. Not every irritation is anger. The verse describes a particular state: when what was wanted is blocked, taken away, or seems about to be taken.
There are two points here. First, anger needs a target, so the object now becomes a person. Second, after this stage a person does something: he speaks, writes, walks away. That is why return begins to be hard from here.
Desire and anger are one force appearing on two occasions (Gita 3.37). If the wish moves towards being fulfilled it is desire, and if it is blocked it is anger.
Three guards after anger
After anger three guards go out one by one.
The first is discernment. The other person is not seen whole. Cut off from the rest of his life, he is only "the one who called me wrong". The decision is made on as much as is seen.
The second is memory. Facts are not forgotten. What gets tangled is what was most needed: one's own resolve, one's own learning, one's own values. Or it is remembered and has no effect.
The third is the intellect. Thinking does not stop, but it runs in the service of anger. Arguments keep coming for how wrong the other is and how right I am. The thinking part works, and the choosing part is stalled.
That is why "I will think about it later" does not work. The guards with whom the thinking was to be done have already gone out in the anger.
The last stage is that with the ruin of the intellect a person falls from the path of the good and is lost (Gita 2.63).
This map is for everyone
This map is not only for the weak or the foolish. Even the mind of a discerning person who strives is carried away by force by the strong senses (Gita 2.60). The Gita's comparison is that of the senses roaming among objects, the one the mind follows carries away understanding as wind carries a boat on water (Gita 2.67). There is no fault in the boat. The wind is stronger than the strength of the oar. So everyone needs to recognise each stage.
Where to break the chain
The earlier the cheaper.
At the stage of dwelling everything is still whole: discernment, memory and understanding. Here it is possible to change what the mind is resting on.
At the stage of attachment memory and understanding are complete. Here one can see why I am calling this "mine" or "against me".
At the stage of desire memory and understanding are there, but a little tired. Here one can ask what the real aim of this wish is.
At the stage of anger half the memory and half the understanding remain. Here one can stop, do nothing, and let the urge pass.
After this very little remains, and the work becomes one of saving what can be saved.
This is different from "control". Control is applied at the end, after the guards have fallen, that is, at the weakest place. Here the work begins earlier: what is the mind resting on, and what is the wish.
Bearing, not suppressing
The fifth chapter says that one who, before leaving the body, can bear the urge born of desire and anger is the one steadfast in yoga and happy (Gita 5.23). The urge rises, and the Gita does not stop it from rising. To stand with a rising urge and do nothing about it is the perfection of yoga. The chain begins when a person starts to walk at the urge's bidding.
The reverse picture
The next verses give the reverse picture (Gita 2.64–65). One whose inner self is under control, moving among objects free from attachment and aversion, reaches clearness of mind. In that gladness sorrows end, and the intellect quickly becomes steady. The answer is not to run away from objects but not to be bound among them. For one whose senses are controlled, understanding stays steady (Gita 2.61).
Where else the Gita says this
In the third chapter desire itself becomes anger, is born of rajas and is the great enemy (Gita 3.37). In the sixteenth chapter desire, anger and greed are called the three gates of hell (Gita 16.21). Desire that is fed fully is greed, and desire that is blocked is anger. And in the fifth chapter there is the matter of bearing the urge (Gita 5.23).
Common misunderstandings
The first misunderstanding is that the Gita says anger itself is a sin. That is not so. The verse describes a chain, not a verdict. Even the greatest demand is to bear the urge, not to deny it (Gita 5.23).
The second is that the cure is to stop thinking. The verse speaks of dwelling on objects, not of thought. The mind is not emptied. What changes is where it rests.
The third is that this order is fixed. The language of the verse is of tendency, "arises" and "is born", not of law. Every stage is a place to stop, and the next verses show another road (Gita 2.64). One who sees at the stage of attachment can stop there. Even after anger, stopping lessens the harm.
The fourth is that desire itself is the problem. That is not so. Desire in line with dharma is the Lord's own glory (Gita 7.11). This chain is of the desire born of dwelling and attachment.
And the fifth point: is anger ever right? The Gita gives anger no place as the driving force, not even in war (Gita 2.38, Gita 3.37). To act on seeing injustice is not wrong, but it is to be done with evenness in place of anger.
If you have to explain it in thirty seconds
Anger does not come suddenly. The Gita (Gita 2.62–63) tells its whole road. The mind stopping again and again on an object, then attachment to it, then wanting, and if the wanting is blocked, anger. Then in anger first clear seeing goes, then one's own memory, then the power to choose after thinking. At the end a person falls from his own road. Each step removes the barrier to the next. So the cheapest place to stop anger is long before anger, when the mind has only stopped on one thing. And the road is not shut. The mind that moves among objects without attachment and aversion finds peace, and its intellect becomes steady.
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