Bhagavad Gita – two-step method to solve problems

In the beginning of Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna gets anxiety attack and then Krishna reacts to his anxiety. Interestingly, Krishna never gives a direct answer to Arjuna’s anxiety attack in terms of problems of war and the people involved in it, which was the basis for Arjuna’s argument. Instead Krishna gave His opinion based on a higher principle.

Similarly, when we face problems in our own lives, we should wear the hat of Krishna in the sense that we should step back from our problem and try to reevaluate from a higher principle. One may ask what is that higher principle that Krishna focused on – the answer to that is upon Himself. In other words, Arjuna was confused thinking of the impending death as a result of war, in that confusion, He forgot Govinda who was standing right next to Him. To remind His intimate friend to be fearless, Vasudeva Krishna had to remind Arjuna about His Own Supreme dominion and that nothing happens without the sanction of Him (Vasudeva). This is the highest principle – that if we step back from our daily anxieties and simply go deeper into this principle that nothing happens without the sanction of the Lord, then as Arjuna, we can also get inspired to fight our daily battles.

So Bhagavad Gita is a two-step process to deal with problems of life whenever it hits us;

1. First step - to always be reminded (with faith) that Krishna controls everything and henceforth, we should seek His shelter always. In that mood, surrender our intelligence to Him. 
2. Second step - in this mood of shelter we use our intelligence to solve problems. Now the problem may go away or become worse, regardless if we approach the problem in that mood of shelter, it is always a success because the problem enforces us to get closer to Govinda. 

Materialistic people who have no knowledge of Govinda try to directly solve their problems, sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. But because they do not get closer to Govinda, they ultimately only fail. So success and failure in life, per the Gita, is how much we realize Govinda. The rest of our problems are mere details for it is like summer and winter seasons, comes and goes!

Hare Krishna