Your manager says a warm word about your work in the morning, and the whole day feels lighter. After lunch a colleague makes a cold remark, and the day turns heavy. By evening you are still replaying it. Nothing about the work changed. Only a few words came and went, and your mood went with each of them.
The Gita has a plain answer. Feelings arrive and leave like weather. We cannot stop them, but we can bear each one until it passes, and not let it steer our work (Gita 2.14). The Gita calls this steadiness of mind evenness.
Feelings come through the senses and go again
आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत ॥ २.१४ ॥
O son of Kunti, the contacts of the senses with their objects give rise to cold and heat, pleasure and pain. They come and go and are impermanent. Endure them patiently, O Bharata.
Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that when the senses meet the world, we feel cold and heat, pleasure and pain. They come, they go, and none of them lasts. So he asks Arjuna to bear them. That ability to bear a feeling till it leaves is called endurance, and the opposites it deals with are the pairs of pleasure and pain, praise and blame.
Think of a cold morning. Nobody argues with the cold. We put on a shawl and carry on. A compliment and a harsh word are the same kind of visitor. They are real, they are felt, and they pass.
What the steady person gains
The steady person is one whom these visitors do not shake, and for whom pleasure and pain are alike. The Gita says such a person becomes fit for deathlessness, which means freedom (Gita 2.15). Closer to home, this person has a calm that others can lean on, because their mood does not change with every remark. The Gita's picture of the yogi is the same: steady in honour and dishonour, and fair toward friend and enemy alike (Gita 6.7–9).
Why the mind swings, and what steadies it
The swing has a cause. We like some things and dislike others, and praise and blame fall straight into those two boxes. The Gita says that liking and disliking sit waiting in everything the senses meet. It asks us not to fall under their control, and calls them enemies on the path (Gita 3.34). Liking is not the fault. The fault is letting it take the wheel.
Steadiness does not come in a day, and Lord Krishna does not pretend it does. The mind is restless and hard to hold, he agrees, and it is held by constant practice and by letting go of attachment (Gita 6.35). In practice this means a small, repeated act. Each time the mind runs off after a remark, bring it gently back to the work in front of you (Gita 6.26).
The body takes part too. A person who is tired, underfed or short of sleep shakes at small things. The Gita asks for a measure in food, rest, work, sleep and waking, and says that yoga then removes sorrow (Gita 6.17). A steady mind is helped by an ordinary, well-kept day.
Do the work the same, whatever the result
ततो युद्धाय युज्यस्व नैवं पापमवाप्स्यसि ॥ २.३८ ॥
Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat alike, then engage in battle. Thus you will not incur sin.
Lord Krishna asks Arjuna to hold pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat alike, and then to do his duty. The task does not wait for the mood to be right. If praise is the measure of the task, we will work only when praised. If blame is the measure, we will stop when blamed. The Gita asks for a different measure: the work itself.
This is close to the teaching of Action Without Claiming the Fruit, which asks us to release the claim on the result. Here we add the level mind that goes with it.
What evenness is not
It is not feeling nothing. The very verse that asks for evenness names pleasure and pain as real (Gita 2.14).
It is not coldness toward people. The Gita describes the devotee dear to the Lord as equal in praise and blame, and also friendly and full of devotion (Gita 12.17–19). The Lord counts as dear to him the one who is alike in praise and blame, content, steady-minded and full of devotion:
अनिकेतः स्थिरमतिर्भक्तिमान्मे प्रियो नरः ॥ १२.१९ ॥
One who is alike in censure and praise, who is restrained in speech and contemplative, who is content with whatever comes, who feels no attachment to any dwelling, who is steady in mind and full of devotion, is a person dear to Me. This completes the sentence of the previous verse, and the qualities shown here are open to any person, not to any particular class or station.
You can read more about that person in The Devotee Dear to the Lord.
It is not giving up on doing well. We still care about the work. What we release is the shaking over how it is received.
An example
Take Anita, who prepares a report at work. In the Monday meeting her manager praises it. On Tuesday a colleague says it was careless in places. Anita feels the sting, and her first thought is to defend herself or to go quiet for the day.
She says to herself, "This is a remark, and it came through my ears. It will pass." She does her next task as she would have done it anyway. Later she looks at the report again and finds one place where the colleague was right. She fixes it and answers him calmly. By evening the sting is gone, and her work did not suffer for it. On the Monday she had also not floated off on the praise.
Take one remark today, kind or unkind, and do three things.
- Name it: "This is praise," or "This is blame." It came through the ears.
- Wait one breath before you reply or react.
- Do the next task exactly as you would have done it anyway.
Questions readers ask
Does staying even mean I should not feel happy or sad?
No. The Gita itself says that contact with the world gives pleasure and pain (Gita 2.14). It asks us to bear them, not to deny them. Evenness means they do not drive our choices.
Is it wrong to enjoy praise?
No. The Gita describes the steady person as one who is not overjoyed on getting what is pleasant (Gita 5.20). Enjoy the kind word, and do not live on it, because it leaves as it came.
What if the criticism is right?
A level mind can take what is true and leave the rest. A shaken mind either hits back or collapses, and both stop it from listening. The Gita calls evenness itself yoga (Gita 2.48), the state in which good work is done.
Does this mean I should stop caring about results?
No. Lord Krishna asks us to do the work. What he asks us to release is the claim on the result (Gita 2.47). The work stays as important as ever, and the weight comes off.
Where to go from here
The verses can be taken one by one in the detailed reading. If your days are full of deadlines, Working Under Pressure applies the same teaching to a heavy workday.