Gita 6.22

Dhyana Yoga

यं लब्ध्वा चापरं लाभं मन्यते नाधिकं ततः। यस्मिन्स्थितो न दुःखेन गुरुणापि विचाल्यते॥

yaṃ labdhvā cāparaṃ lābhaṃ manyate nādhikaṃ tataḥ yasmin sthito na duḥkhena guruṇāpi vicālyate

In essence: Gaining this, no other gain seems greater; established here, even the heaviest sorrow cannot shake you.

A conversation between a seeker and guide to help you feel this verse deeply

Sadhak-Guru Dialogue

Sadhak: "'No other gain is considered greater'—this sounds like a claim I should accept on faith. How would I know this is true without having the experience? And if I had the experience, I wouldn't need the teaching."

Guru: "A fair challenge. Consider though: have any of your gains so far delivered lasting satisfaction? Has anything you've acquired completely ended the sense of seeking?"

Sadhak: "No... each gain felt significant at first, then became normal, then I was seeking the next thing."

Guru: "So you already have evidence that worldly gains don't provide what you're ultimately seeking. The teaching invites you to investigate: what if there's a gain that doesn't become normal, doesn't fade, doesn't require the next thing? You don't need faith—you need curiosity and investigation. The verse doesn't ask you to believe; it describes what you'll find when you look."

Sadhak: "The second part troubles me more: 'not shaken even by heavy sorrow.' I lost my father last year. The grief was overwhelming. I can't imagine not being shaken by that."

Guru: "I'm sorry for your loss. Let me ask: were you shaken by the grief, or were you shaken by identity-confusion in the grief?"

Sadhak: "What do you mean by identity-confusion?"

Guru: "When grief came, did you feel 'I am grief—I am this overwhelming pain' or was there, somewhere, a witnessing presence that experienced the grief without being the grief?"

Sadhak: "...At moments, yes. There was something watching the grief even at its worst. Something that remained okay even while everything hurt."

Guru: "That something is what Krishna refers to. It's not asking you to not feel grief—your father deserved to be grieved. But there's a difference between grief that shakes awareness itself and grief that shakes within awareness. The established yogi feels grief fully but remains as the unshakeable awareness in which grief unfolds. The grief is allowed its full expression precisely because it's held in something stable."

Sadhak: "So the teaching isn't about not suffering but about where you are in relation to suffering?"

Guru: "Exactly. Suffering happens—the body feels pain, the heart feels loss. But you can suffer consciously, from the ground of awareness, rather than be lost in suffering. When you're lost in suffering, you are the suffering—there's only darkness. When you suffer consciously, you're the awareness holding the suffering—darkness arises within light. The suffering may be the same, but the experience is radically different. And from this ground, suffering often moves through more completely because you're not resisting it."

Sadhak: "This seems like what's needed in our world—so much suffering everywhere. If more people could suffer without being destroyed by it..."

Guru: "Yes. The teaching isn't escapism—it's how to be fully present to pain without being annihilated by it. This is what allows engagement with the world's suffering rather than avoidance. You can only help others with their pain if you can be present to pain without drowning. The established yogi doesn't turn away from the world's sorrow; they can turn toward it fully because they stand in unshakeable ground."

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🌅 Daily Practice

🌅 Morning

Begin with 'Greatest Gain' contemplation. Sit quietly and bring to mind all your significant life acquisitions—achievements, possessions, relationships, skills. Don't dismiss them; appreciate them genuinely. Then ask: 'Which of these has provided lasting, unchanging satisfaction? Which has completely ended seeking?' Notice honestly that none fully qualify. Now turn attention to awareness itself—the presence in which all these gains appear. This awareness is what you've been seeking through all the gains. It cannot be lost (it's more fundamental than anything that could take it), doesn't fade (it's present through all changes), doesn't leave you seeking (seeking happens within it). Contemplate: 'What if establishment in this awareness is the gain that ends seeking?' Rest in this awareness for the remainder of the meditation, tasting its fullness directly.

☀️ Daytime

Practice 'Unshakeable Ground' check-in three times during the day, especially during challenges. When difficulty arises—stress, conflict, bad news—pause and locate the aware presence that registers the difficulty. This awareness is not the difficulty; it is what knows the difficulty. Ask: 'Is this awareness shaken?' You'll find the difficulty shakes, emotions shake, thoughts shake—but the awareness in which all this happens remains unshaken. This is not denial or suppression; it's finding ground beneath the earthquake. From this ground, you can respond to difficulties more effectively than from identification with the shaking. Each time you find this ground during difficulty, you strengthen access to it. Over time, it becomes available even in 'heavy sorrow'—not as escape from the sorrow but as ground from which sorrow can be fully felt without destruction.

🌙 Evening

Evening practice: 'Gain and Loss Inventory.' Review the day's gains and losses, however small. What did you gain today—accomplishments, pleasures, recognitions? What did you lose—time, energy, opportunities, possessions? Notice the mind's reaction to each—subtle pleasure at gains, subtle aversion at losses. Now ask: 'Who gained and lost these things?' Find the one to whom gain and loss happen. This one—awareness—neither gains nor loses from any experience. It's the same before gain and after, before loss and after. This recognition doesn't make gains irrelevant or losses painless; it provides context. From the perspective of awareness, all gains and losses are experiences within itself—none change its fundamental nature. Fall asleep resting as this awareness that welcomes both gain and loss without being enhanced or diminished by either.

Common Questions

'No other gain is greater'—but what about the gain of helping others, making the world better? Self-realization sounds selfish compared to working for collective welfare.

This reflects a misunderstanding of how effective service happens. The gain Krishna describes is not instead of service to others but is the foundation that makes service truly effective. Consider: what kind of help can you offer others if you're yourself agitated, needy, acting from your own unexamined wounds? So much 'helping' is actually projection of one's own issues, or subtle ego-gratification masked as service. The established yogi helps from abundance rather than neediness, from clarity rather than projection. Their help actually helps rather than creating new entanglements. Krishna will make clear in later chapters that the realized being often serves more effectively than the unrealized—because the service comes from wisdom rather than compulsion. 'Gaining the Self' and 'serving others' are not competing options; the first enables authentic versions of the second.

'Not shaken by heavy sorrow'—doesn't this describe a kind of dissociation or emotional numbing? Trauma survivors often describe not being shaken by things that should shake them, and we don't consider that healthy.

Critical distinction: trauma-based dissociation is disconnection from experience—you don't feel the grief because protective mechanisms block it. What Krishna describes is full presence to experience from a stable ground—you feel the grief completely, possibly more completely than someone who must defend against it. The traumatized person is shaken underneath but cut off from the shaking; the yogi isn't shaken at their depths but fully allows the shaking of emotional response. The test is: in trauma-dissociation, asking someone to feel more deeply is scary because defenses protect against overwhelming experience. In yogic establishment, one can feel as deeply as life offers because there's no fear of being overwhelmed—the ground is infinite. This is integration, not dissociation. Additionally, yogic establishment is cultivated through conscious practice, while trauma-dissociation is an unconscious protective mechanism. The practices Krishna recommends—meditation, discrimination, devotion—build capacity to feel fully, not capacity to not feel.

If obtaining Self-knowledge makes you immune to heavy sorrow, and Arjuna is about to receive this knowledge from Krishna, why does he still grieve and hesitate at the start of the Gita? Shouldn't the teaching have instantly removed his sorrow?

The teaching isn't a magic pill—it requires integration and establishment. Arjuna hears the teaching, has moments of clarity, but full establishment takes time and practice. This is precisely why Chapter 6 emphasizes practice methods, not just concepts. Krishna explains what the established state looks like, then provides means to achieve it—meditation, discipline, persistence. Arjuna's transformation throughout the Gita is gradual: he moves from despair to questioning to understanding to temporary clarity to final commitment. Even at the end, his declaration 'My delusion is destroyed' (18.73) marks a turning point, not instant perfection. The teaching awakens the possibility, but embodiment requires practice. This is encouraging, actually—even Arjuna, receiving direct instruction from Krishna, needed a process. Our need for a process doesn't mean we're failing.

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