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We begin by mastering the senses. That is, not to let it push us into activity but 

to experience its impulses. Krishna never says they shouldn’t be there. He says 

experience them, but do not yield to them. He uses a beautiful image in the 

previous chapter: just like rivers that flow into the ocean but they don’t make the 

ocean overflow. 
Desires flow into our mind, but in the case of a wise person, but they do not 

overwhelm that person. She or he has the capacity still to decide. OK—do I still 

do this thing? Is it for the good of all? Is this going to make me more aware of the 

beings around me? Or is this only going to harden my selfish, self-enclosed frame of 

reference and separate me from others? Then we can act accordingly. 
Similarly with the mind and the intellect, these impulses are coming at us all the 

time but we can develop what the Gita calls vijnana or the capacity of discrimi-

native discernment which allows us to tell “Oh oh, this one is coming from the 

ego. That one is coming from my higher Self. I am going to say no to the first one 

and yes to the second one”. This discernment process goes on constantly as much 

as we want it to. 
Yogacharya O’Brian: 

I was thinking about the image of the chariot representing 

the various components of the body/mind—the chariot, horses, reins and the 

driver seated in it. The horses represent the senses. We don’t want to let the 

horses be in charge of where we are going! But without discrimination and the 

control of the purified intellect, the horses will just take off. 
Michael Nagler: 

The Upanishads describe the mind as the reins. We were given 

a mind to control the impulses of the senses—not to yield to them, not to make 

them seem delightful, not to fool us or to make us permanently happy. Once we 

get the mind free from spontaneous, random thoughts and associations, we can 

use it to control those impulses and keep our life on the right track. 
Yogacharya O’Brian: 

How do we keep our life on the right track? We began our 

conversation with Arjuna’s question: “By what influence is a person compelled to 

commit error as if by a force that is contrary to personal will?” 
It reminded me of a poem of Rumi’s translated by Coleman Barks. 
Who makes these changes?  

I shoot an arrow right 

It lands left… 

I dig pits to trap others and fall in…