Class Four: Starbucks **1) Arjuna (in verses XI.41-42) backpedals furiously when he finally figures out who his chariot driver “really” is. Why did we put quotation marks around the “really” in that last sentence, and how does it relate to the idea of “ground zero” in Step Three of creating a full path of karma?** As we have already learned, everything and everybody that we ever experience in our life is coming from us—as much as a pen is coming from the human, and a chew toy from the dog. It’s a very radical, but completely true, idea to comprehend that Lord Krishna really was just a regular guy driving Arjuna’s chariot until Arjuna had come to the holiest ideas on the planet. And then the incredible karma of having these ideas suddenly causes him to see Lord Krishna as a divine being, and he has to apologize for ever treating him as normal when they were young buddies together. We need to recognize the natural evolution which flows forth when a certain threshold number of people on the planet begin to understand how to fulfill all the wishes they ever had. Instead of scouring clubs and websites for the boyfriend I haven’t been able to find for the last 3 years, I begin to use this new idea, of a path of karma. And so I take myself to a nursing home, and visit a lonely older person say once every two weeks, just for a few hours. This plants seeds in me not to be lonely: it plants, *without fail,* the seeds for a nice new boyfriend to show up in my own life. The two of us go out with my friends, and they are flabbergasted to see this beautiful man by my side. “How did you get him? Which club? Which website?” they ask. “Neither one—it was at the nursing home,” you reply; and of course that takes some explaining. Then they get inspired to try the same thing; and so they get their own beautiful boys; and then their friends start asking *them* how they did it. You are setting off a chain-reaction: Step Three (which is actually *doing* something to help the person you’ve been plotting to help) can be a visit with a lonely person at a nursing home or at Starbucks, but it works infinitely better if during the actual helping you hold your mind on being the start of a revolution that could sweep the whole world. I am not just helping one lonely old lady. If this whole path of karma thing works, and I finally discover the *true way* to get a nice boyfriend, then my one example could cause a huge wave of happiness to spread across the entire globe, as everyone else begins making visits to old ladies. Not to mention how excited the old ladies will be—the nursing homes will probably be handing out tickets with numbers on them, to book an appointment with one of these grand dames—like they do for ice cream at 31 Flavors. **2) Why is it true that, as we shall see at Starbucks, we were quite literally “born to fulfillment in the divine (XVI.5)”?** Suppose we come to this Bhagavad Gita course; and it makes sense to us; and we decide to give it a try, in order to get some dream we have for our life right now to come true. By walking into Starbucks (at Step Three) with the person we’ve selected to help (at Step Two), we are already making a statement that we are ready to try a new way of getting the things we want, or stopping something that we don’t want, in our life. And this statement is probably in itself the most powerful way of planting the new seeds that we want. Realize that—by giving the Starbucks method a try—you are already starting (for the first time) to act in harmony with the forces that run the universe, rather than against them. You can call it “flowing with the Tao,” or the way that things really work. For the first time we are choosing consciously to plant seeds by helping another person to get the same thing that we want, rather than sweating over many other options that don’t work every time. In the Tibetan monastic tradition of the Dalai Lamas, a person studies for 20 or 25 years and—if they are found to be qualified—are allowed to stand for the Geshe examination. This is a grueling test which goes on in public for several weeks, and culminates in one final debate. In this last debate, the questioner asks the candidate: “Is there an end to the pain of the entire world?” And the candidate answers, by tradition: “Yes\! There is an end\!” “Why so?” roars the examiner. “Because truth is stronger than a lie\!” With these words, all the years of work are finished. And then everyone grabs a geshe hat and throws it up in the air, and screams at the top of their lungs in celebration. The point is that—when we step into Starbucks—we are for the first time acting in accordance with the truth that directs the events of this entire universe. We are setting in motion an act of truth, which will come into mortal conflict with the way we have always tried to make things happen before—a way which is a lie, because it doesn’t work. And the truth always prevails in a direct confrontation; you know that from the first time your Mom asked you whether you really didn’t take any of the cookies. By walking into Starbucks we are precipitating the final conflict, which will indeed free the entire world. This is our divine role, the reason why we were born, and it is inevitable thus that it should be fulfilled. **3) Why is it inevitable that our understanding how our life works leads us to the love and compassion mentioned by Lord Krishna in the verses at XII.13 and XVI.22?** In the first of the two verses mentioned, we see Lord Krishna connect a yogi’s love and compassion for others with their being free of “me” and “mine.” In the second verse mentioned, the Lord says that escaping ignorant liking and disliking is the very best thing we can do for ourselves, and is at the same time a service to the entire world. Let’s examine how this works. We tend to draw a division between what is best for us, and what is best for others. Let’s say again that we are looking for a girlfriend. The best thing we can imagine for ourselves would be to get a great one. In this system, we need to take a lonely person out to Starbucks in order to plant the necessary seeds. What is best for us in this case (finding a girlfriend) is *already* what is best for the elderly woman that we took out (not feeling lonely). And it has come because we have “shut the doors of darkness (XVI.22)”—we no longer deal with the things we “like” (want) or “dislike” (want to avoid) by any other method than planting seeds with a person in the same need. And this is because we have freed ourselves from “me” or “mine”: we no longer believe that our own health and happiness (me) or our partner or our boss (mine) is coming from anything other than our own seeds. But it doesn’t stop there. By acting in a way that follows our new understanding of things, and by *succeeding* in our life, we are automatically spreading this view of the world throughout the world. Again, people will watch our success and they will imitate our success. And so it turns out, surprisingly, that the thing which makes us the most happy automatically makes everyone else in the world happy too. And that feels right—it feels like the way that things were always supposed to be. **4) We often hear it explained that the Sanskrit word tapas refers to spiritual austerity: to being willing to undergo spiritual pain for spiritual gain. But how does Lord Krishna describe inner tapas, and how does it flow naturally from a correct understanding of how everything in our life works?** Surprisingly, Lord Krishna equates mental tapas to simple, old-fashioned happiness. In some of the most beautiful lines within the entire Gita, he says about tapas: It is a clear heart, It is a breeze within, It is sitting in silence, It is to lose the self, It is a person’s purity. Our transformation to this lovely and loving happiness flows naturally from our new understanding of how things really work. Remember that in Step Two we are actively looking around in our life to try to find people who want the same thing that we want. Now people are very sensitive to the eyes and to the body language of others. You’re going to be sitting on buses and in friends’ kitchens, and you’re going to forget yourself and start staring at people and wondering if they might need the same things that you need, and whether you can take them out to Starbucks to help them get those things. Your friends and the people around you will start to sense that something is going on: they will feel, without knowing exactly, that you want to help them. You are broadcasting happy thoughts to everybody around you, and the people you’re thinking about helping—as well as the people you’ve already helped—will begin broadcasting happy thoughts back to you. You can feel these people as surely as they can feel you, and very slowly—almost imperceptibly—you become more and more happy in your own life, more and more like a pleasant breeze moving through the room. **5) What does Lord Krishna really mean, from the Starbucks point of view, when he says that we can “go ahead and do whatever we want to do (XVIII.63)”?** Obviously Lord Krishna doesn’t mean that we can go ahead and rob a bank, or commit adultery with our neighbor’s husband—even though we might want some money, or some attention. But he is giving us complete license to dream whatever we want to dream. Most of us don’t dream enough. We come to the class and the teacher asks us to write down whatever it is we want most in our life, and we don’t really take the exercise seriously. Strangely, the students in the class who have heard for the longest time about this new view of the world seem to have the most anemic hopes—they don’t honestly sit down and really consider seriously some grand and glorious dream that has always bubbled just below the surface. There is nothing that we can’t make happen if we learn how to create a complete path of karma with the Four Steps. You are empowered, you are allowed. “Go ahead and do whatever you want to do.” *Coffeeshop assignment:* Please meet with at least one other member of the class (preferably someone that you didn’t know before the course started) to talk a bit about this class, before the next one. *Meditation assignment:* 15 minutes per day before the next class, actually visualize taking to Starbucks the person you’ve selected—the one who has the same dream that you have, the one you are going to help accomplish their fondest dream. Picture every detail of the place, and the conversation. Each detail that you add to the visualization plants hundreds or thousands of more seeds. *Meditation times and dates* (homework without this section completed will not be accepted):