No Favourites

Watch a seasoned emergency room doctor. Good news comes in — a patient is stable. Bad news follows — another case is critical. The doctor’s hands stay steady. Their voice stays even. They don’t celebrate one and panic at the other. They respond to both with the same focused presence.

That’s not coldness. That’s what Krishna is describing here.

The steady-minded person doesn’t play favourites with reality. They don’t cling to the good moments like a lifeline or push away the bad ones like poison. Both arrive, both are met, both pass.

This is wildly countercultural. We’re trained to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. Our entire economy runs on it. Buy this, feel good. Avoid that, feel safe. But the person who needs everything to go well in order to be well is the most fragile person in the room.

The Stoics had a word for this: equanimity. Marcus Aurelius wrote about it in a Roman military tent. Krishna taught it on a battlefield. The setting isn’t peaceful — the mind is.

Notice Krishna doesn’t say “don’t experience good and bad.” He says don’t let them become your operating system. Feel the rain. Don’t become the weather.

Reflect

Think of the last really good thing that happened to you and the last really bad thing. How long did each one control your mood? What would it look like to cut that time in half?