“A desire arises in the heart today, and if it goes unfulfilled, the heart begins to make plans for the future, imagining always that in some time to come the desire will be fulfilled.”
The other name of the future is struggle. A desire arises in the heart today, and if it goes unfulfilled, the heart begins to make plans for the future, imagining always that in some time to come the desire will be fulfilled. But life — life lies neither in the future nor in the past.
If we could take a single truth into our heart — that we can neither see the future nor fashion it, that we can only embrace the future with patience and courage and welcome it as it comes — then would not every moment of life be filled with life itself?
Chapter 3 of 35 — 4 parts, 6 min in total.
Every faction in the Mahabharat plans meticulously. Shakuni plans for decades. Duryodhana plans the house of lac. The Pandavas plan their exile, their return, their alliances. Almost none of it survives contact with events.
Krishna's position is not fatalism. He plans constantly himself — the embassy to Hastinapur, the strategy at Kurukshetra. The distinction he draws is between acting with full care and then holding the result loosely, versus needing the plan to succeed in order to be at peace.