The Yoga of Dejection is a discourse on the first chapter of Bhagavad Gita. This work analyzes the root cause of dejection. Unless the cause is ascertained, no remedy can be sought. Everyone faces an identity crisis at some point in his or her life as a result of which one’s priorities become misplaced. Thus all our endeavors meet with dejection sooner or later. Dejection can become a stepping stone to ultimate success by awarding us the opportunity to seek our real identities and to relinquish our misconceived identities. The Bhagavad Gita shows how this may come about by treating dejection as a form of yoga. Yoga here means discovery of the true self and its communion with the Absolute.
Author: Satyanarayana Dasa Satyanarayana Dasa, born in 1954, was drawn to the spiritual traditions of his home country India since his childhood. After receiving a postgraduate degree in 1978 from IIT Delhi and working in the United States for four years, he returned to India. There he studied the formal systems of Indian philosophy known as Ṣaḍ-darśana under the direct guidance of his guru Śrī Haridāsa Śāstrī Mahārāja and Swami Syama Saraṇa Maharaja.
This education was taken up in the traditional manner for more than 25 years, while he dedicated himself as a practitioner of bhakti yoga. In 1991 he accepted the traditional Vaiṣṇava order of renounced life, bābājī-veṣa. His main focus has been with the works of Jiva Gosvami, particularly on translating the Ṣaṭ Sandarbhas, into English and commenting on them. He also earned four śāstric degrees, and received both a law degree and a PhD in Sanskrit from Agra University.
Satyanarayana Dasa is the director of the Jiva Institute of Vaishnava Studies in Vrindavan, India. He is a visiting professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. In 2013 he was honored by the president of India, Pranab Mukherjee, for his extraordinary contribution in presenting Vedic culture and philosophy, both nationally and internationally.
If you don’t react then you don’t create new karma and the old karma will exhaust itself. It is not easy. You need practice for this because you are accustomed to react. But ultimately what matters is how peaceful you are, and if you can remain balanced within your own self. Just let the karma exhaust itself by not reacting or responding. People may think you are a loser because they will not understand you. But you are a winner because you feel happy inside.
