When lifestyle gets in the way of living ! Diksha Mataji (Gita Daily)

Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 13, Text 12

“You are your watch!” So says a billboard. It implies that our watch makes a statement about who we are, what our status is and what our economic bracket is.

This infatuation with externals characterizes our culture, which almost compels us to equate lifestyle with living. By constantly bombarding us with ads, billboards and commercials, our culture sucks much of our mental energy into dreaming about improving our lifestyle. Indeed, lifestyle becomes the purpose and essence of our living. This obsession with lifestyle deprives us of the simple and real joys of living at even the material level, what to speak of the spiritual level. It doesn’t leave us the time, the peace or the patience to form meaningful relationships with the persons around us, leave alone the person within us, Krishna.

Gita wisdom frees our living from being so lifestyle-driven. The Bhagavad-gita (13.12) indicates that understanding the eternality of spiritual knowledge (adhyatma-jnana nityatvam) characterizes those in knowledge. With Gita wisdom, we understand that the difference between lifestyle and living largely parallels the difference between the material and the spiritual.