The Social Construction of Psychological Resilience in the Light of the Bhagavad Gita
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of
Master of Philosophy in Psychology
by Amit Prakash (Reg. No. 1530065)
Under the Guidance of Satheesh Varma M Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
CHRIST UNIVERSITY BENGALURU, INDIA February 2017 Approval of Dissertation
Dissertation entitled ‘The Social Construction of Psychological Resilience in the Light of the
Bhagavad Gita’ by Amit Prakash, Reg. No. 1530065 is approved for the award of Master of
Philosophy in Psychology.
Examiners:
1. ______
2. ______
Supervisor:
______
Chairperson:
______
Place: Bengaluru
Date: ______
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DECLARATION
I, Amit Prakash, hereby declare that the dissertation, titled ‘The Social Construction of
Psychological Resilience in the Light of the Bhagavad Gita’ is a record of original research work
undertaken by me for the award of the degree of Master of Philosophy in Psychology. I have
completed this study under the supervision of Dr Satheesh Varma M, Assistant Professor,
Department of Psychology.
I also declare that this dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree, diploma,
associateship, fellowship or other title. It has not been sent for any publication or presentation
purpose. I hereby confirm the originality of the work and that there is no plagiarism in any part
of the dissertation.
Place: Bengaluru
Date: ______
Date:
Amit Prakash
Reg. No: 1530065
Department of Psychology
Christ University, Bengaluru
iii
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the dissertation submitted by Amit Prakash (Reg. No. 1530065) titled ‘The
Social Construction of Psychological Resilience in the Light of the Bhagavad Gita’ is a record of research work done by his during the academic year 2015-2016 under my supervision in partial fulfillment for the award of Master of Philosophy in Psychology.
This dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree, diploma, associateship, fellowship or other title. It has not been sent for any publication or presentation purpose. I hereby confirm the originality of the work and that there is no plagiarism in any part of the dissertation.
Place: Bengaluru
Date: ______
Dr Satheesh Varma M
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Christ University, Bengaluru
Signature of the Head of the Department
Department of Psychology
Christ University, Bengaluru
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would love to thank God who is the source of wisdom and knowledge for his grace, blessing and inspiration while working on my research.
I thank Christ University, its most honorable office bearers and patrons for providing the infrastructure and resources to facilitate my work.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor and guide, Dr Satheesh
Varma M, for his support and patience in completing this research. I am also thankful to Dr
Chetan Sinha, Department of psychology for his valuable sharing of knowledge and contribution towards the theoretical work in this research. Both have played a role of a great motivator and have helped me with their expert knowledge and valuable suggestions. Without their guidance and persistent help this dissertation would have not been possible.
I am grateful to Dr Vijayalaya Srinivas T, my examiner, for his support and encouragement to my research. I am thankful to Dr Tony Sam George, the HOD Psychology
Department, and Dr Tissy Mariam Thomas, the M.Phil coordinator, for their support and concern. I appreciate the faculties of Department of Psychology for their support too.
I would like to express my special gratitude to all the respondents of the various religious organizations including Ramakrishna Ashram (New Delhi), Sri Aurobindo Ashram (New Delhi),
World Buddhist Centre (New Delhi), and the students and teachers of Dev Sanskriti University
(Haridwar), who have participated in this research. I also thank Dr Santosh K Vishwakarma, Mr
Shubham K Suryawanshi for their co-operation and support.
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my family, friends and well wishers for their love, support, understanding and encouragement all the time.
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Abstract
Psychological resilience is a universal experience for people living across the world. However, the methods through which it is understood are all influenced by the cultural aspects through which the person sees the living. Cross-cultural studies strongly assert the meaning that standard for the self-management and regulation of composite of behaviors vary cross-culturally; hence it holds the statement that resilience as a psychological construct is socially created reality. This research focuses on conceptualization of psychological resilience in terms of Sthitaprajna of the
Bhagavad Gita. Our study, using qualitative methodology comprised with snowball sampling, focused interview and inductive content analysis of Hindu Sanyasis, Buddhist monks and those who studied this treatise and following its teachings, found the following processes to be associated with karma yoga of the Bhagavad Gita: absence of expectation, efficiency, egolessness, equanimity, duty or dharma, gunas or qualities, Middle Way, renunciation of limited desires, and total surrender. Careful analysis reveals a dynamic interchange of these processes into certain behavioral qualities in individual, such as emotional maturity, self-control, self- emptiness, tranquility, self-righteousness, self-awareness, situational stability, desirelessness, and oneness of self and environment respectively. Apparent process-result orientation of this phenomenon shows that psychological resilience is an inferential product of karma yoga, which manifests its experience through the expression of stress resilience, bouncing back and normalization. Furthermore, selfless action, social education, and knowledge based behavior are found significant in Gandhi, Tilak and Ambedkar’s view respectively to fulfill its utility in social behavior.
Keywords: psychological resilience, cross-culture, Bhagavad Gita, karma yoga
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Table of Contents
Page No.
Approval of Dissertation……………………………………………………… ii
Declaration……………………………………………………………………. iii
Certificate…………………………………………………………………….. iv
Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………… v
Abstract………………………………………………………………………. vi
Table of Contents…………………………………………………………….. vii
List of Tables…………………………………………………………………. xii
List of Figures………………………………………………………………... xiii
Chapter 1 Introduction……………………………………………………… 1
Cultural Diversity and Resilience……………………………………. 3
Individualism and Collectivism……………………………………… 4
Religion and Spirituality…………………………………………….. 5
Sthitaprajna in the Bhagavad Gita…………………………………... 6
Sthitaprajna: Social Constructionist Orientation……………………. 8
Significance of the Study…………………………………………… 10
Chapter 2 Review of Literature……………………………………………. 12
Defining of Psychological Resilience………………………………. 13
Resilience Research: History and Growth…………………………. 13
Analytic Approaches to Studying Resilience………………… 17
Religion, Spirituality and Psychological Resilience. 20
Positive Psychology in the Bhagavad Gita………… 29
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Following Drive for the Current Research……………………………. 34
Chapter 3 Method…………………………………………………………… 35
Objectives of the Study……………………………………………….. 36
Research Design……………………………………………………… 36
Operational Definition of Theories…………………………………... 37
Social Constructionism………………………………………… 37
Social Identity………………………………………………….. 38
Sample……………………………………………………………….. 39
Inclusion Criteria………………………………………………. 40
Exclusion Criteria……………………………………………… 40
Demographic Detail of Samples………………………………. 41
Data Collection……………………………………………………… 44
Focused Interview…………………………………………….. 45
Interview Schedule……………………………………………. 46
Selection of Participants………………………………………. 47
Process of Interview…………………………………………... 48
Ethical Considerations………………………………………………. 49
Data Analysis……………………………………………………….. 49
Inductive Content Analysis and Hermeneutics…………….… 50
Trustworthiness……………………………………………….. 52
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion…………………………………………. 53
Transferability………………………………………………………. 55
Credibility…………………………………………………………... 58
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Sthitaprajna: Light from Different Viewpoints……………………… 58
Sthitaprajna in Gandhi’s Opinion……………………………… 58
Sthitaprajna in Tilak’s Opinion………………………………... 59
Sthitaprajna in Ambedkar’s Opinion…………………………... 60
Question 1: Identification of Mental Attitude while Performing
Karma Yoga…………………………………………………………. 61
Mental Attitude towards Action…………………………………….. 63
Belief in Impermanence………………………………………. 64
Faith in the Law of Karma……………………………………. 65
Faith in the Sacred Teachings………………………………… 66
Karma as a Transformational Force………………………….. 67
Excellence in Work as Karma Yoga………………………….. 68
Playing a Universal Social Role……………………………… 69
Question 2: Identifying Subjective Approach towards Mental
Calmness…………………………………………………………… 71
Reason behind Mental Suffering…………………………………... 72
Dissatisfaction……………………………………………….. 73
Worldly Craving……………………………………………... 73
Attachment…………………………………………………… 74
The Obstacles of Mental Growth………………………………….. 74
Greed………………………………………………………... 75
Hate…………………………………………………………. 75
Delusion…………………………………………………….. 76
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Question 3: Identifying Process of Karma Yoga………………….. 77
Process of Karma Yoga……………………………………………. 80
Efficiency…………………………………………………… 81
Equanimity………………………………………………….. 81
Absence of Expectation…………………………………….. 82
Egolessness…………………………………………………. 83
Renunciation of Limited Desires…………………………… 84
Duty or Dharma…………………………………………….. 85
Gunas or Qualities………………………………………….. 86
Total Surrender……………………………………………... 87
Middle Way………………………………………………… 88
Question 4: Identifying Qualities of Karma Yoga……………….. 91
Qualities of Karma Yoga………………………………………… 94
Desirelessness……………………………………………… 95
Oneness of Self and Environment…………………………. 96
Self-emptiness……………………………………………… 97
Self-control………………………………………………… 98
Self-righteousness…………………………………………. 98
Situational Stability……………………………………….. 99
Emotional Maturity……………………………………….. 100
Self-awareness…………………………………………….. 101
Tranquility………………………………………………… 101
Insight Gained from the Study………………………………….. 103
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Chapter 5 Summary and Conclusion…………………………………... 108
Implications of the Study………………………………………... 110
Limitations of the Study………………………………………… 110
Directions for Future Research………………………………….. 111
References……………………………………………………………….. 112
Appendices………………………………………………………………. 131
Appendix A: Informed Consent………………………………… 131
Appendix B: Informed Consent Form………………………….. 132
Appendix C: Case Vignette…………………………………….... 133
Appendix D: Interview Schedule………………………………... 134
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List of Tables
Page No.
Table 1: Agreement Matrix between the Raters………………………………….. 57
Table 2: Identified Mental Attitudes towards Action…………………………….. 62
Table 3: Identified Subjective Approaches towards Mental Calmness…………. 72
Table 4: Identified Processes of Karma Yoga……………………………………. 78
Table 5: Identified Qualities of Karma Yoga…………………………………….. 92
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List of Figures
Page No.
Figure 1: Educational Background of the Participants…………………………….. 41
Figure 2: Gender Description of the Participants………………………………….. 41
Figure 3: Age Group of the Participants……………………………………………. 42
Figure 4: Religious Background of the Participants……………………………….. 43
Figure 5: Mode of Life of the Participants………………………………………… 43
Figure 6: Report of the Participant’s Place of Habitation…………………………. 44
Figure 7: Identified Mental Attitudes towards Action…………………………….. 70
Figure 8: Identified Subjective Approaches towards Mental Calmness…………. 77
Figure 9: Identified Processes of Karma Yoga……………………………………. 90
Figure 10: Identified Qualities of Karma Yoga……………………………………. 103
Figure 11: Flowchart of Construction of Psychological Resilience in the Light of the Bhagavad Gita…………………………………………………………………… 107
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Running Head: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA
Chapter 1
Introduction
The very need and application of psychological resilience in human life has been discussed vividly by modern psychologists, often with attention given to the meaning of the concept by those employing it, and the explanation of this by those experiencing it. In the various dimensions of psychological struggle and overcome in human life, this particular behavior has been analyzed in detail but there comes out a sense that the way in which psychological adversity and trauma are interpreted, as well as the effect of these on an individual, are all influenced by the cultural lens through which the person views the event.
Indeed, “the shared human experience of psychological trauma and overcoming behavior crosses cultural boundaries and noticeably made the distinction that there is a cultural discrepancy in terms of how psychological adversity and trauma are assimilated and how repercussions of traumatic events are mitigated” (Wilson, 2007).
In the area of positive psychology, one important way through which a person responds to stress and trauma is known as psychological resilience. According to Richardson (2002)
“psychological resilience is the process and experience of being disrupted by chance, opportunities, adversity, stressors, challenges, and after some introspection, ultimately accessing innate resilience (gifts and strengths) to grow stronger through the disruption”. The cross- cultural comparisons of the diverse ways in which psychological problems and resilience are understood reveal the fact that the subsequent resilient response to psychological adversity contrasts greatly among different cultural orientations (Buse, Burker & Bernacchio, 2013).
Moreover, research also shows that there is a culturally and contextually inclined difference in specific factors that works behind psychological resilience (Ungar, 2008). Although, the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 2 researchers have got admirable success in the resilience study through the exploration of certain characteristics associated with its functioning, but still this has not paved the concrete path for consideration of who would be resilient when faced with adversity and when resilience might be exhibited.
This has left the concept of psychological resilience in a precarious condition. Due to its degree of skepticism and despondency in the research area, Luthar, Cicchetti and Becker (2000) who are considered as critical of resilience have reached the point of questioning if resilience should be abandoned as a subject of little worth. Contrary to this supposition, psychological resilience has succeeded in preserving itself as a popular concept in the wider community of the world in that it remains highly desirable for improving the effectiveness of preventive human services. A more improved understanding of important methods to develop psychological resilience really holds a great promise in the promotion of psychological health and well-being
(Rutter, 1993). Therefore, the intractability of resilience research demands an addition of systematic and scrupulous outlook towards cultural possessions in the understanding and exercise of this concept more comprehensively.
In the observation of Triandis (2000), “Culture plays a significant role in deciding a person’s response to any given situation and it has been recognized in his research that the basic psychological processes depend on socio-cultural practices and meaning”. Dhairyam (1961) in his writing proposed that “Indian culture and philosophy has been unique in its fostering of spiritual independence and growth in the people”. Yet, the cultural significance of Indian philosophy in determining of psychology of Indian people still remains an unexplored area. The scientific examination of its impact on Indian culture can lead us to the major understandings of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 3 mental health behaviors of related people. Thus, it becomes imperative to study psychological resilience from Indian perspective and see how far it is considerable for application.
In Indian psychology, especially the Bhagavad Gita (BG) presents an elaborate analysis of human mind from the context of foundational philosophy of active living. The BG as a religious/philosophical text of Hindu people attempts a spiritual synthesis which could support life and conduct on the basis of the Upanishad truth, which it carries into the life-blood of the
Indian people (Radhakrishnan, 2010). Menon (2008) in her research observed that “the narrative of the BG is of significance as the figurative and metaphorical meanings of the physical war- field lead us to the mental war-field fuelled by conflicting emotions, unexpressed fears and the lack of a stable sense of identity”. The psychological vulnerability and overcome that humans generally face since ancient time is poignantly presented in this allegorical text with practical guidelines. Thus, the context in which the BG is written points out how its central purpose is to withstand against life problems without permanent deformation as well as to bounce back from or make adjustment easily to misfortune or difficult situation. Due to this reason, the researcher’s effort goes towards the exploration of phenomenon that how does the BG construct resilient behavior among the people who follows its teachings in their life.
Cultural Diversity and Resilience
Triandis (1989) emphasizes the role of cultural psychology as “Culture is to the society what memory is to the person”. Culture preserves in itself the specific designs for living, ways of dealing with social situations and modes of thinking about self and social behavior that have been effective in the past. A person socialized in a distinctive culture can use behavior as a substitute for thought, and go ahead. Ivey, Ivey and Zalaquett (2010) define culture in terms of
“…age, ethnicity/race, gender, geographical location or community, language, sexual PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 4 orientation, spiritual/religious beliefs, socioeconomic situation, physical ability, and experience with traumatic situations. The terms diversity, cross-cultural and multicultural refer to all of these dimensions and will be used interchangeably”.
Jobson and O’Kearney (2006) noted, “Because culture is critical to the nature and development of self, it also needs to become a critical issue in research in adjustment to trauma”
(p. 90). A better realization of psychological resilience within varied cultural contexts can be well interpreted through the understanding of cultural norms comprising community obligations, spiritual and religious beliefs, and perceptions of body and mind. These components individually establish the knowledge that what is considered to be an adaption for resilient response to psychological adversity and trauma.
Individualism and Collectivism
Individualistic versus collectivistic perspectives can provide a vista for understanding of the way through which resilience in the mankind is exercised in specific cultural settings.
Individualism whose focus generally lies on individual meaning and set of ideas contrasts widely to the collectivism in terms of its emphasis over norms or patterns related to the group behavior.
According to Laungani (2004), “Collectivistic (Eastern) worldview places preeminence on communal goals, which translates into an expression of attitudes, beliefs and ideals that prioritize the benefit of the community as a whole. The term individualism differs greatly on the ground of collectivism, to which Western cultures are associated. In the words of Green, Deschamps &
Paez (2005), “a cogent sense of personal choice and responsibility is instilled in the individualist, as well as qualities of self-reliance, uniqueness and autonomy”. This contrast makes it clear that a person with collectivistic viewpoint will understand trauma and perform resiliency differently than a person who follows individualistic viewpoint. Similar things are applicable in Indian PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 5 context also, where lie a necessity to explore the value systems placed among the people who categorize themselves as the adherent of collectivistic or individualistic way of life, to know about their resilient behavior.
Religion and Spirituality
Along with individualistic versus collectivistic mode of cultural outlook, it is essential to have an understanding of religious and spiritual beliefs that people follow and how they may construct their adversity and subsequent resilient response. We have now a substantial literature that affirms the role of religion and spirituality in the maintenance of positive mental health
(Worthington Jr. & Sandage, 2001; Hill & Pargament, 2003). According to Plante and Sherman,
(2001), “religion involves a social or institutional dimension, which includes the theological beliefs, practices, commitments, and congregational activities of an organized institution”.
Likewise this also, “spirituality has increasingly come to mean a more personal experience, a focus on the transcendent that may or may not be rooted in an organized church or a formal creed” (Burkhardt, 1989; King, Speck & Thomas, 1994). A meta-analysis of 49 studies done by
Ano and Vasconcelles (2005) evaluated the relationship between religious coping strategies and stressful life events, and found that “those who utilized positive religious coping strategies (e.g., seeking spiritual support, benevolent religious reappraisals) were more likely to demonstrate better outcomes, including stress-related growth, positive impact, and higher self-esteem”. This result propels us to think about this question that how does specific elements of an individual’s religiosity and spirituality contribute to his/her resilient response.
In India, philosophy of the BG lays down several general principles for the regulation of human conduct as well as wakefulness for religious and spiritual duties. According to
Radhakrishnan (2010) “the BG is the philosophical basis of popular Hinduism”. It is designed PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 6 for people to meet a situation complicated by troubles of conscience and confusion of mind, and so provide intellectual solution of the problem of life (Radhakrishnan, 2010). Laungani (2004) in his observation described that certain belief system in particular cultural setting reinforce the idea of behavioral ordination. People associated with popular Hinduism adhere to the law of karma (Laungani, 2004). According to the law of karma, as depicted in the BG, “bad outcomes are the direct result of an individual’s erroneous choices” (Laungani, 2005). In addition to this finding, Radhakrishnan (2010) pointed out that it is through work that we are brought into relation with miseries and it is also through work only that we could maintain our well-being.
This is the way of karma yoga which helps us to the management of resilient behavior and its successful execution in life. Thus, religious and spiritual belief contained in the BG can provide a design, which could be helpful in determining how people explain psychological resilience in
Indian society.
Sthitaprajna in the Bhagavad Gita
In the BG, there is no separate talk we have which could define directly about the modern understanding of psychological resilience. The very resemblance of psychological resilience can be seen in the light of the concept of Sthitaprajna, which has been discussed in the second chapter of the BG. The analytic verse (BG, 2:54) suggests an idea that “a person who is calm and remains unperturbed by either pain or pleasure is the one who attains immortality”. The BG refers to the resilient person as Sthitaprajna in terms of a stable minded person. As in the textual context, Arjuna asks Krishna who a Sthitaprajna is; Krishna describes the nature, activities and various characteristics of this kind of person in more detailed form throughout the his teachings
(BG, 2:55-2:72). PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 7
In the fundamental definition of Sthitaprajna, two words are most significant which embodies the depth of all its meaning. First, the word ‘calm’ reflects not the same meaning as it has in common understanding of individual, it comprises lot of factors inside self, belonging to the state of egolessness, efficacy, desirelessness, oneness of self and environment, total surrender, etc., which provide the sense of subjective calmness in the individual’s mind during the time of risk and adversity. Second, the word “being unperturbed’ means to follow the state of equanimity in all even and odds of life situations, and to practice the Middle Way always to remain aware with the real self throughout the life course. Thus, the inculcation of the combination of this two intrinsic qualities in the self, mould the behavior of resiliency in individual enough to maintain stress resilience, bouncing back action, and the state of normalization in the face of any challenging and threatening circumstances.
According to Menon (2008), the term Sthitaprajna signifies their self meaning as a liberated person that is “one who has assured wisdom born of experience of supreme consciousness” (p. 179). This proposition suggests that the BG makes discussion about the concept of Sthitaprajna through two distinctive ways, one in the form of noun (Siddhavastha) and another in the form of adjective (Siddha Vyavahara). Herein, Siddha Vyavahara (the activities of self actualized) explicates in itself the central meaning and various attributes related to a resilient person.
When we see the significance of karma yoga and its mode of exercise as marked by
Siddha Vyavahara in the BG, there appears a closer resemblance with mindfulness practices of modern psychology. Mindfulness in psychological ground defined as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment” (Kabat-Zinn, 2003, p.144). According to PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 8
Meiklejohn et al. (2012) “it is a fundamental component of human consciousness and a mental capacity that can be strengthened through a variety of training methods”. Discussions around the behavior of a Sthitaprajna led to the conclusion that such a person is content within, having awareness of self and abandonment of desires are simultaneous actions attributed to him.
Individual who follows such kind of mindfulness while doing karma yoga will not be affected by psychological adversity and will have potential to remove fear or anger. As Sivananda (2000) pointed out that “this kind of person will take things as they come, and will not have any likes and dislikes, which in turn makes him calm and steady. In addition, this man will never get fascination to the world or hatred of it.
A watchful examination of this kind of mental state closely justifies number of popular definitions of psychological resilience prevalent in positive psychology. For example,
“resilience is a dynamic process encompassing positive adaption within the context of significant adversity” (Luthar et al., 2000, p. 543), “the personal qualities that enables one to thrive in the face of adversity” (Connor & Davidson, 2003, p. 76), “complex repertoire of behavioral tendencies” (Agaibi & Wilson, 2005, p. 197) and “an individual’s stability or quick recovery (or even growth) under significant adverse conditions” (Leipold & Greve, 2009, p. 41). Careful understanding of these definitions supports the argument that a person who follows Siddha
Vyavahara or strives incessantly for achievement of this kind of mental functioning while doing actions through karma yoga, can be able to manifest evident coping ability at the time of psychological stress and adversity.
Sthitaprajna: Social Constructionist Orientation
Social constructionist sees “knowledge and truth as created not discovered by mind and supports the idea that being a realist is not inconsistent with being a constructionist” (Schwandt, PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 9
2003). It proposes an inspiration that social concepts are constructed rather than discovered, yet it maintains the proposition that these concepts have a close similarity with reality. This is found consistent with the social ideas of Berger and Luckmann, pioneers of social construction theory, in that “reality is socially defined but this reality refers to the subjective experience of everyday life, how the world is understood rather than to the objective reality of the natural world”
(Andrews, 2012). The theory of Berger and Luckmann (1991) is concerned with the nature and construction of socially availed knowledge: how it emerges and how it comes to have the significance for society. In their viewpoint “knowledge as created by the interactions of individuals within society which is central to constructionist’s philosophy” (Schwandt, 2003).
Applied to the psychology of Sthitaprajna in the BG as earlier described is not a prominent literary creation of individual mental effort, but it is indeed a dependent outcome of the regular progression of social and historical life of Indian people. The experience of
Sthitaprajna as a subjective reality is legitimized in time by the force of Hindu religion, being given a special identity and a place in the society. The pattern of Siddha Vyavahara is brought about through the interaction of people with Hindu religious groups and individuals, with this social world in turn influencing people resulting in its habitualization. In time, the knowledge of
Sthitaprajna as propounded by the BG consolidated itself as a social reality, forming a general consideration for the society. This is institutionalized by society and the individual’s interaction with others reaffirmed continuously the objectivity of this reality.
Burr (2015) observed that “our identity originates not from inside the person but from the social realm”. In Indian culture, knowledge of Sthitaprajna and its related behavior took association with society through continuous absorption of socialization. In the words of Berger and Luckmann (1991), “Socialization takes place through significant others who mediate the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 10 objective reality of society, render it meaningful and in this way it is internalized by individuals.
This whole process governs through the medium of language. Burr (1955) in this regard comments that “within social constructionism language is not an unproblematic means of transmitting thoughts and feelings, but in fact makes thought possible by constructing concepts”.
Likewise, the concept of Sthitaprajna came into the social ground through the way of language, which is preserved in the BG in Sanskrit.
The understanding of Sthitaprajna can also be followed in the light of the social identity theory, which focuses on “the group in the individual” and strongly affirm the idea that “one part of the self concept is defined by our belonging to social groups” (Hogg & Abrams, 1988, p. 3).
This proposition becomes stronger in the light of observation handed by Turner, Brown and
Tajfel (1979), which says that “people categorize themselves and others as belonging to different social groups and evaluate these categorizations”. Their relationship, alongside value placed on it, is classified as social identity. Burger and Luckmann (1991) in this context assert that
“conversation is the most important means of maintaining, modifying and reconstructing subjective reality”. In this light, the meaning and understanding of Sthitaprajna is shared among individuals or groups, so much so that they are frequently used in social conversations and this make people come to believe it as a reality which is so far taken for granted as an identity in
Indian culture.
Significance of the Study
In the present research, the concept of psychological resilience is deduced from the activities of Sthitaprajna (Siddha Vyavahara), to know about the behavioral repertoire of coping ability of those people who are living under the influence of the teachings of the BG by practice of karma yoga. As a social constructionist emphasis of the research inquiry is principally PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 11 concerned with explicating the processes by which concept of Sthitaprajna comes to describe, explain, or otherwise account for the world in which psychological resilience exists. The study attempts to articulate common forms of understanding of resilience as it now exists, as it has resemblance with existed behavioral pattern found in Indian culture, and as it might should creative attention be so directed.
To accomplish this achievement, a critical examination is done among those people who practice karma yoga, and their phenomenological contribution is floated out and applied to the exploration of psychological resilience in themselves. The chief objectives of this research study mainly lies in the investigation of the qualities and the processes of these people that work for the regular inculcation of psychological resilience under the impact of karma yoga. Finally, these findings are put on the way of a flowchart which describes the concept of psychological resilience as a socially constructed phenomenon emerged out in the light of karma yoga of the
BG.
A complex multicultural milieu such as India requires specific training in multiculturalism with different perspectives – away from the west and more rooted in the Indian context. Social construction of psychological resilience in the Indian context may support in the enhancement of resilient competency and well-being among Indian people. The current study enables in the understanding of how psychological resilience is addressed by the people who follow karma yoga of the BG and shows direction on how effective resilience training can be implemented with the help of Indian cultural inheritance.
The next chapter presents details of review of literature pertaining to the current research study.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 12
Chapter 2
Review of Literature
The present study is used to identify, select and appraise those literatures that are relevant for the analysis of psychological resilience in the Bhagavad Gita under the light of social construction and social identity theory. This chapter includes a review of literature related to the concept of psychological resilience, its development and existence in different contexts and applications. Herein, the literature review has been initiated by a brief overview of definition, history and growth of psychological resilience. The purpose behind this work is to provide a sense as to how psychological resilience evolved as a concept in the field of positive psychology.
Following on from the development of this concept as a noticeable behavior in mankind, this chapter incorporates detailed analysis of psychological resilience as an outcome in relation to the religion and spirituality. The review process then presents various studies demonstrating positive psychology in the practitioners of the Bhagavad Gita and discusses how far it is justifiable for the present context that it comprises psychological resilience in self. Finally, a succinct discussion is provided which led the reviewer to go for the present research study.
According to Fink (2005), a literature review is “a systematic, explicit, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners”. In the current study, the researcher employed a narrative literature review as a methodology for reviewing of those selective literatures that broadly covers the topic related to the research. The use of narrative review helped in summarizing various noticeable studies from which a noteworthy conclusion could be deduced in making a holistic interpretation for the current research drive, contributed by existing theories, researches and models. Following this many different underpinnings related to PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 13 psychological resilience are selected and added into various themes, that includes history and growth of resilience research, religion, spirituality and psychological resilience, and positive psychology in the BG. The effective evaluation of these documents is presented in a manner that would provide an impulse in relation to the research being proposed here.
Defining of Psychological Resilience
Today the concept of psychological resilience is increasingly used in various branches of psychology, particularly in the fields of developmental psychology, severe mental illness, trauma studies, disaster response, social psychology, and positive psychology. Across all of these areas of psychological investigation, defining of the construct led to the conclusion that psychological resilience is “the process of, capacity for or outcome of successful adaption despite serious challenging or threatening circumstances” (Masten, Best & Garmezy, 1990, p. 426). The observation of Cutuli and Masten (2009) asserts that “in human development, resilience research has concentrated mainly on three distinctive situations: (a) functioning well during a time of significant adversity, (b) returning to a previous level of good functioning following a traumatic or severely disturbing experience, and (c) achieving new levels of positive or normal adaption when severely adverse conditions improve” (p. 837). In every one of these circumstances, psychological resilience stands for “pattern of doing well after exposure to a serious adversity or threat” (Cutuli & Masten, 2009).
Resilience Research: History and Growth
Psychological resilience emerged as a major theoretical and research construct in the later part of the twentieth century, based on studies lead by Norman Garmezy at the University of
Minnesota (Masten & Powell, 2003). The construct came out of research on vulnerable children for the understanding of etiologies of their mental health problems (Masten, 2007; Masten, Best PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 14
& Garmezy, 1990). In the 1980s, while studying children believed to be at risk for various psychological problems because of their parents experiencing schizophrenia, Garmezy pointed out that environmental discomforts or genetic vulnerabilities, or sometimes combination of the two, in this group was associated with children’s major psychological pathologies and poor mental development. He also found fascination with this group of children’s behavior who were showing positive adaption despite of their experience of adverse and challenging circumstances.
This insight motivated Garmezy to embark upon a longitudinal research program titled
‘Project Competence’. Over a time interval, a long range of successful studies yielding variety of results emerged from ‘Project Competence’ (Masten & Powell, 2003), solidifying it as one of the principal study in the field of psychological resilience. Major results of this research project revealed that (a) an individual’s present manifestation of resiliency level is directly an outcome of competency level availed in his or her past and future, (b) individual’s resilience has an association with specific adaptive resources such as greater IQ, better parenting, and socioeconomic satisfaction, and (c) multiple factors coming under risk and protective area can influence varied aspects of functioning by early problems in a single domain. Later, Richardson
(2002) in his study affirmed that “Garmezy identified a triad of resilient factors that included personality disposition, a supportive family environment and an external support system”.
The influence of Project Competence Longitudinal Study motivated numerous numbers of investigators to embark upon longitudinal, process-oriented research studies on resilience.
The main idea behind these process-oriented researches was basically laid in the examination of resiliency as a process of coping behavior in a manner that results in the form of protecting factor. These provided a platform where considerable cross-fertilization of ideas and methods took place among the resiliency scholars. Following these outcomes, Emmy Werner launched PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 15 the ‘Kauai Longitudinal Study’ to explore the impact of many different biological and psychological risk factors, negative life exposures and protective factors on the development of children born on the island of Kauai, Hawaii in the year of 1955 in the U.S.A. (Werner & Smith,
2001). Research studies for this project have been focused on the developing children from infancy to midlife, who were found under vulnerable condition for mal-adaptation, such as children living in poverty or those whose parents had been diagnosed with severe mental illness.
The major outcome from the Kauai study was that the resilient response by this group of children was an end product of buffering processes that did not put an end to risk and adversity but actually enabled them to cope up with these stressful life conditions effectively. Rather than following only the idea of relationships between risk factors and developmental consequences, this longitudinal study suggested the prime need to unearth the process-oriented role of risk and protection in the development of resilience. The similar result has been observed in the epidemiological study of Rutter (1991) on the Isle of Wight and inner city London, which was focused on the examination of cumulative risk for growth in psychological disorders and criminal behavior among children. The findings showed that risk variables did not always create psychological disorders if they happened in isolation.
This outcome motivated Rutter to stress upon the understanding of processes in the study of risk and vulnerable conditions and also acknowledged the importance of individual’s turning points throughout the research study. He suggested that the risk among the children was enhanced by the effect of two or more risk variables present at the same time, and that if there occurred a change in the children’s circumstances then did the risk. In his later observations,
Rutter (1993) identified some noticeable resilient qualities among the children that were being PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 16 female, good parent-child relationship, positive school environment, marital support, easy temperament, self esteem, self efficacy, planning skills, and warm relationship with an adult.
The large-scale investigations of Garmezy, Werner and Rutter gave valuable insight to the researchers to instigate many exploratory researches to find out the processes related with resilience in marked groups with high level of vulnerability. Following this approach, the ‘Notre
Dame Adolescent Parenting Project’ or NDAPP in the mid-1980s was started to assess the social and psychological effects of teen parenting, a well recognized risk element for the maladaptive behavior among mothers and children (Whitman, Borkowski, Keogh & Weed, 2001). The pregnant teens experienced a variety of socioemotional and behavioral dysfunction due to limited social support and their lack of parenting knowledge than adults. It has been found that their children came up with good health and average intelligence during early infancy, but also experienced feelings of insecurity and disorganized attachment in their early life.
Further observation of NDAPP showed that problems among children of adolescent mothers molded into more serious behavioral dysfunctions as they developed such as less IQ, school failure, depression, aggression, lack of self-regulation. Borkowski et al., (2007) found that “the major risk factors for psychological problems in children were maternal cognitive readiness for parenting, IQ, abuse and neglect potential, depression and aggression”. Although, these factors influenced the psychological development of these children, a group of protective factors were also found active, which helped them as buffers between risk and developmental outcomes. For example, religious involvement evolved as a key supportive factor in determining well-being for both mothers and children. Mothers having religious involvement had found with high level of self-esteem, low level of depression, higher occupational and educational achievement, and lower child abuse potential than nonreligious mothers. Borkowski et al., PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 17
(2007) in their conclusive remark on NDAPP addressed that “support from caring adults was associated with resilience among at-risk mothers and children”.
The understandings coming out from this study supports the findings of existing literatures on risk and protection demonstrating that “close relationships with supportive family members and associations with competent, pro-social adults in wider community promote resilience” (Luthar, Cicchetti & Becker, 2000). The process of support of caring adults not only provides buffer and bouncing back ability at the time of risk and adversity, but also inculcates positive adaptation in their behavioral functioning. Over time, the development of resilience science incorporating the study of finding resilient characteristics and the processes associated with it paved the way for the formation of various models of risk and protection, which provided multiple levels of analysis and function of these models throughout the life period. As a result, a wide range of detailed and integrated explanations of resilience came out that comprise “the interactions among genes, neurobiology, behavior, family and peer relationships, and the larger systems represented by neighborhood, schools, communities, and culture” (Lopez, 2009).
Analytic approaches to studying resilience. The development of resilience study came up with the understandings of “simultaneous and long-term reflection of the varied aspects of individual, family and environmental processes” (Masten & Powell, 2003). It also embodied the scrupulous scrutiny of transactional associations among these procedural considerations
(Sameroff, 1994). Later, the theoretical and methodological complexities of transactional study is replaced by the modern advancement of statistical science that in addition brought forward more sophisticated, process-oriented and scientific development in resilience research. These approaches in research not only broadened the field of resilience study, but it also marked the way for the development of prevention and intervention programs. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 18
The research of Richardson (2002) established the association between history and growth of resilience studies and concluded that “resilience research in the course of time evolved in the form of three waves”. In the first wave of resilience research, he propounded that researchers searched out the phenomenological description of characteristics in the people that help them to thrive in the time of risk and adversity. They made a list of qualities which are categorized as intrinsic and extrinsic behavior such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, support system, etc. that help people grow through difficult circumstances. In the second wave of resilience theory, the researchers looked at the processes for the attainment of these characteristics that make people resilient. During this period, the researchers started looking for the various processes of developing resiliency instead of simply focusing on the experiences that described presence of certain resilient characteristics in the people. He developed a model that explains
“the resiliency process as a dynamic way for resilient reintegration, reintegration back to the ease period, or reintegration with sudden failure”.
This attempt is a landmark in the development of resilience programs in the schools and other organizations and it also propounded the idea that resilience as an art could be learned or the innate resiliency as an energy domain could be nourished to develop resilience in mankind.
The third wave of resilience research began to explore the concept of resilience in the form of an innate quality or force within human. Now the researchers started to look at the motivational sources and the observations that provided resilience in the time of adversity. Richardson (2002) asserted that “there is a healing, driving, and motivational force within everyone” (p. 316). He called it resilience and informed about its controversial nature in research because of the diversity of opinions and perspectives. It has raised the basic question about the dissimilarity of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 19 resilience response in people who experience same trauma and the ability of transforming a painful occurrence into something that make people enjoyable.
Later researches on resilience came with recognized inconsistencies when it has been explored in the people under different cultural setups and their results are compared with the findings of earlier investigations. The varieties of observations from different sources reflect varying degrees of integration with earlier investigations of resilience and substantial numbers of displacement from their cultural lifestyle (Andersson, 2008). These differences provide a space where we can think over the fact that resilience does not have any unified perspective and so requires understanding of cultural meaning also. Reid, Stewart, Mangham and McGrath (1996) worked in Canada and elsewhere with a range of indigenous communities and found that “most indigenous views of resilience go beyond the individual and negative tone implicit in their resilient behavior”. They documented various cases of indigenous groups of people living in
Canada through semi-structured interviews to search out their cultural identity and cultural skills related to resilience. The research came up with the findings that these groups of people showed collective aspect of resilience through mixed experiences of family strength, involvement in ceremonial rituals, spirituality, elders, oral traditions, identity, and support networks.
Further insight demonstrating cultural orientation in resilience research is found in the investigation of Buse, Burker and Bernacchio (2013), which shows that the manner through which trauma or psychological adversity is understood, as well as the effects of it on individual, are all influences by the cultural lens through which the person views the event. They tried to explore the understanding of trauma and resiliency at the time of risk in the individuals from other cultures. They took semi-structured interviews from clients living in rehabilitation centre and discussed their resiliency and several factors associated with resilience within a cultural PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 20 context, such as locus of control, self-enhancement, somatization, emotional regulation, dissociation, family/community support, and ceremonial rituals. Finally, they made a proposition that “the diverse ways in which trauma is understood among different cultural orientations are contrasted, as well as subsequent resilient response to adversity” (Buse, Burker
& Bernacchio, 2013). Therefore, it is important for resilience researchers working with people from diverse backgrounds to adopt cultural view to understand how people perceive their adversities and how they respond in the face of risky situations within their cultural surroundings.
Religion, Spirituality and Psychological Resilience
Anecdotal reports and empirical studies have shown religion to be commonly involved in the development of resilience and resiliency process (Balk, 1983; Conway, 1985-86).
Researchers working in the field of religion have conceptualized and measured religion largely as a dispositional phenomenon necessitating a triad of generalized orientations, beliefs and practices. They made the proposition that “religion is a universal human pursuit, affecting many different cultural parameters, moral concepts, ideals and influencing human thinking and behavior by offering answers on the meaning of human existence” (Agorastos, Demiralay &
Huber, 2014). Study shows that “religion may have a persistent and significant effect on the development of general physical health, life satisfaction, and subjective well-being” (Koenig,
2012). Moreover, there is evidence that “different religious ways of coping under stressful circumstances and physical illness mediate the association between religious orientation and mental health” (Hathaway & Pargament, 1990; Schaefer & Gorsuch, 1991).
Pargament et al., (1990) conducted a series of foundational investigations to explore the association between various types of religious coping styles and the outcomes of the negative PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 21 events among a sample 586 members of Christian churches who turned to religion in coping with adverse negative life events. He selected the samples from 10 Midwestern churches gathered from rural, urban, suburban areas and different in age, size, and stability. Within each church, their membership was stratified into categories of high and low figure of practitioners of religious services. The participants were collected systematically and proportionately from each of these two categories. The selected participants completed a battery of measures to examine negative life events, religious coping activities, nonreligious coping activities, and outcomes anonymously in their respective church as part of an investigation of their religious and congregational life. They also described their significant negative life event faced in the last year and the specific process that provided help in coping from that particular event. The hierarchical multiple regression analysis was employed to compare the contributions of the religious coping measures to those of the religious dispositional measures.
The findings of the research showed that the religious variables were significant predictor of three measures of the outcome of the event. Belief in God, the experience of Godly benevolence as a supportive medium during the adverse time, performing religious rituals, and the quest for grace through religion were associated with more positive outcomes. These resources work through the religion in coping when translated into situation-specific activities.
The religious coping variables showed the outcomes greater than the effect of traditional nature of religious and nonreligious coping variables. Thus, this research came up with another dimension of coping in significant adversities for those who have faith in religion and practice it.
In the second series of investigation, Pargament et al., (1992) examined the association of internal, external, and quest religious orientations to religious and nonreligious ways of coping with a significant adverse life situation. The formation of the inquiry was arranged in a way that PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 22 each orientation was associated with a different coping style with specific life events. This time the study employed 538 samples who already had completed their survey in the first series of the research. These participants replied to measures of the religious orientation and the measures of religious and nonreligious ways of coping under a significant negative life situation. To perform the analysis a total of 12 hierarchical multiple regression analysis were employed to test the association between intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest religious orientations and each of the four sets of coping measures comprising religious purpose in coping, religious coping activities, the religious and nonreligious appraisals of the risk, and nonreligious coping activities.
Careful examination of the specific correlates of the intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest orientations revealed the fact that each orientation has relationship with a distinctive means and ends of coping with negative life occurrences. The intrinsic approach reflected positive association with spiritual end in coping and negative association to the religious purpose. Apart from the intrinsic orientation, the extrinsic approach showed relationship with the self developing religious purpose as well as to restraint. Likewise intrinsic and extrinsic orientation, the quest approach was associated with the meaning making in life for personal improvement through their experience of negative events. When all results of the series of studies combined, the final conclusion demonstrated that religious ways of coping might link the general religious approach of the individual to the outcomes of the significant negative life problems.
In the famous review article based on research on religion and spirituality, Koenig (2012) found its association with the mental health and physical health on the basis of systematic review of seminal articles and data-based quantitative researches published in peer-reviewed journals between 1872 and 2010. In order to maintain methodological quality of the systematic review, ratings of more than 3,300 studies were arranged on a scale ranging from 0 to 10 with the help of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 23 one examiner to establish consistency. The scores were fixed criteria wise involving research design (clinical trial, cross-sectional, prospective cohort, etc.), sampling (random, systematic), measures of religion and spirituality, quality of measures, quality of mental health outcome measures, etc. and the statistical method of Cooper (1984) was adopted for the maintenance of scientific rigor.
The findings of the review study suggest that religion and spirituality strongly influences mental health through many different mechanisms. First, religion provides numerous resources, such as powerful cognitions (strongly held beliefs), optimistic worldview, and subjective sense of control over events for coping in the adverse situations that may enhance the level of positive emotion and decrease the possibility of going through psychopathology. Second, most of the world religion imposes rules and regulations (doctrines) about the lifestyle and how to behave with others within a social organization. When the individuals follow these rules and regulations, the likelihood of stressful life situations get reduced and results in the form of increased positive emotions. Third, most religion encourages prosocial behavior (love of others, compassion, altruistic acts, meeting together on religious social occasions, etc.) that provides buffer during the time of stress and leads to human support when actual support is required.
Finally, the researcher proposed the conclusion that the practice and inculcation of these human virtues directly enhance the level of positive emotions and neutralize negative ones.
The research of Phillips and Henderson (2006) established the relationship between religion and depression among 13,133 U. S. College going students involving nonreligious group, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and others, and showed that group of religious students have lower rates of depression than nonreligious student group. This study employed data based on a representative sample of U. S. College students and the samples were asked PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 24 about their religious affiliation and self-reported religiousness. To measure the frequency of symptoms of depression, a nine-item scale is used to acknowledge the indicators of depression, including ennui, melancholy, nervousness, and fatigue for last one month. The scale was developed on the basis of Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) to measure the frequency of depressive symptoms in collective non-clinical samples.
In spite of difficulties of interpretation related to the association of religious denomination and depressive symptoms, the researchers suggest that there exist a bridge between self-reported religiousness and symptoms of depression among college students. They found three distinctive components that delineate the relationship between religion and mental health.
Firstly, religious social interaction with others who share same beliefs and values provides companionship and comfort during the time of stressful life situations. Secondly, religion helps people in making sense of negative life conditions, and supports them in coping with adverse situations like grief and health problems. Thirdly, religion suggests a detailed guideline about how to live a healthy life that promotes well-being of people. It is thus studies support the fact that religious people are less prone to the experience of depression than nonreligious people
(Schnittker, 2001).
In a theoretical research of similar kind, Lamoshi (2015) explored that Islamic beliefs acknowledge the intrinsic power that exists in young people, which can be practiced to have a positive thought, calm mind, and healthy consciousness. The adolescent age, in particular, contains an exposition towards independency, responsibility, personality establishment, requirement of skills, and craving for new intimate relationships, which make it so vulnerable for their mental health. Young people may face many hurdles, such as substance abuse, depression, obesity, violence, and anxiety for jobs and relationships that put extra pressure on adolescent PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 25 mind and make them more vulnerable for psychological risk. In this situation, the author pointed out that Muslim youth can adopt Islamic belief and value systems as a therapeutic tool to combat psychological problems by changing their insides.
The Islamic approach to face psychological problems put various strategies to improve the mental health, which may push its practitioners towards their well-being. First, Islamic belief of having a clear consciousness provides a strategy to change people’s perception of life towards righteousness, which in turn leads to positive thinking that results into positive attitudes.
Second, Islam advocates practice of optimism, prayers, charity, and good behavior to others, which endorse adolescents with positive emotions that in turn provide healthy feelings to themselves. Sedgeman (2005) also mentioned the similar sense which indicates that “healthy feelings develop good ways of thinking by eliminating deceptive thoughts that result in productive feelings and a peaceful mind”. Third, Islamic religion gives assurance not to remorse on failure and always encourages striving for victory that brings peace, comfort and release inner potentials in people to achieve their life goals. Moreover, the art of forgiveness, emotional balance, love, thankfulness, situational acceptability etc. are those important assets that can promote both intrinsic and extrinsic peace. His study finally made the proposition using these
Islamic teachings that practice of Islam can acknowledge inner force in adolescents, which can be exercised as a resilience tool to cope with stressful life events.
These theoretical underpinnings of Islam and its relationship with general health and resilience is justified in the investigation of Jomehri, Mojtabaei and Hadadian (2014), which demonstrated that practice of Islam promotes resilience by strengthening personal integrity and competence that reflects in the form of indicators of general health. The researcher employed descriptive method from type of correlation. The population of the study was 16,686 students of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 26
Islamic Azad University in West Mazandaran Province (Iran) and the final sample size was determined as 375 by using Morgan table. The sampling process was governed by stratified random medium and data collection was done with the help of Religious Beliefs Questionnaire of Golzari (2008), General Health Questionnaire of Goldberg and Hillier (1979), and
Psychological Resilience Questionnaire of Klahnen (1996).
They analyzed the obtained data by using canonical correlation test, multiple regression analysis (stepwise model) and Pearson correlation coefficient. The findings of the research showed that there exist a significant relationship of religious beliefs with student’s general health and their resiliency. Moreover, a significant association between religious beliefs and student’s general health is also found which in turn results in the form of a positive link of imamate and monotheistic variables with student’s resilience as the most effective predictors that are observed respectively by 35.1 and 16.1 of student’s resilience change. The authors on the basis of this quantitative measurement proposed the suggestion that religion and faith in compliance with rules and rituals inculcate the emotional and spiritual health and increase endurance and resilience against difficulties.
Various researches on the relationship between religiosity and psychological well-being clearly showed that there are certain aspects that need to be identify in religious and spiritual involvement of people that provides a beneficial effect on their mental health and those that do not (Pargament, Tarakeshwar, Ellison & Wulff, 2001; Tuck & Anderson, 2014). Fiorito and
Ryan (2007) tried to develop a mediator-moderator study to examine the religion-well being association within a motivational framework of spiritual-means ends with the help of two means dimensions and five ends dimensions. The study employed 572 samples (261males, 311 females) including 64.9% of Christian denomination, 6.1% of non-Christian religious affiliation PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 27
(Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, other), and 29% of agnostic, atheist, unsure, or none group. When they were asked about their religious/spiritual identification, 42.5% were grouped as both spiritual and religious, 34% as spiritual but not religious, 9.5% as religious but not spiritual and
14% as none.
The researchers employed firstly, a 42-item Spiritual Means and Ends Measure of Ryan and Fiorito (2003) to acknowledge that participant’s religious or spiritual goals and the medium to achieve their goals, secondly, an Index of Religious/ Spiritual Salience of Peterson and Roy
(1985) to know about the importance of religion and spirituality and the responses were grouped on a four-point scale, thirdly, Scales of Psychological Well-Being of Ryff and Keyes (1995) were utilized to measure the dimensions of environment mastery, autonomy, personal growth, positive relations with others, self-acceptance, and life purpose. The analyzed data by using regression analysis (six factor model) revealed the results that spiritual means and ends variables reflect ability to promote aspects of spiritual goals that may increase or decrease psychological well-being. The moderation and mediation inquiry showed that spiritual means creates a moderating effect in the association between spiritual goals and psychological well-being, and only devotional means mediates the relationship of spiritual goals and well-being. The overall examination of the study demonstrated the use of a means-ends framework for the identification of relevant spiritual variables that can help in our understanding of the association of religion and mental health.
Brewer-Smyth and Koenig (2014) in their research tried to explore the relationship between the neurobiology of resilience outcome and the practice of religion and spirituality in the victims of childhood trauma. They compiled a list of articles that comprised the key words like resilience, trauma or abuse, and cortisol or neuroendocrine. The collected list of articles was PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 28 then evaluated to observe whether religion and spirituality affected those key terms or not. The final assessment was made through this research application, and the results suggested that “faith based communities may able to promote forgiveness rather than retaliation, opportunities for cathartic emotional release, and social support, all of which have been related to neurobiology, behavior, and health outcomes” (pp. 255-256). While spirituality and religious beliefs and practices could be a powerful source of hope, comfort, meaning, peace and forgiveness for the self and others, they could also manifest a link to the various psychological problems like guilt, neurosis, and psychotic disorders (Koenig, 2009). Yet, the findings suggest that religion and spirituality could form a basis for a cost-effective mechanism of enhancing neuroendocrine functions related to traumatic stress and high-risk behavior associated with it.
In the famous book developing a roadmap to resilience for military, trauma victims and their families, Meichenbaum (2012) suggested spirituality as one of the major influencing factor in resilience building. His study emphasized “positive religious ways of coping” that include
“collaborating with God in solving life’s problems…and utilizing religious social network as a resource” and discussed spirituality as “a framework for meaning making and a sense of belongingness”. When people experience trauma, they often search for a new sense of meaning and purpose in their life. Although, religious and spiritual beliefs and practices are influential components within each culture, these also provide an insight of personal quest for understanding of ultimate questions about life, meaning, and relationship with the sacred or transcendent (Moreira-Almeida & Koenig, 2006). Religion and spirituality thus may contribute an important influence on how people interpret and cope from their traumatic life situations.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 29
Positive Psychology in the Bhagavad Gita
Positive psychology is a branch of psychology, which was summed up by Martin
Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 2000 describing the positive functioning of human mind. The chief goal of this branch of knowledge is to attain a scientific learning and an effective intervention to develop thriving abilities in individuals, families, societies and communities. The research coming under this subject trying to help people in utilizing their inherent capabilities of becoming happy and providing satisfaction within a range of resources that is available in an individual’s life and their respective culture. The specific motif of psychologists to understand how to inculcate the qualities that may help people and communities to build resilience in negative life situations directed Dillibeck (1991) to explore the wisdom inherited in the Vedic literature, and represented the Bhagavad Gita in the form of a model case study comprising psychological interpretation of ancient behavioral manifestations.
In his research work, the case study encompasses knowledge of the entire range of individual progress from the position of complete ignorance followed by errors and miseries to the position of complete enlightenment exemplified by unconfined achievement and contentment. He developed this case study in the form of a conversation between Lord Krishna and Arjuna who is resolving his doubts. He proposed that all sorts of problems and miseries exist due to lack of complete integration in human life, which manifests because of individual consciousness not being entirely grounded in the field of pure consciousness. He coined this phenomenon as the “unified field of natural law”, which came to his research study from the philosophy of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He explored in his article, brief understanding of Vedic psychology inherited in the Bhagavad-Gita in terms of four different themes: (a) the nature of suffering, (b) the experience of transcendental consciousness, (c) the progress of enlightenment, PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 30 and (d) the self-interacting dynamics of consciousness. The accretion of all these knowledge develops in human life as the source of all creative happenings in the mind as reflection that an individual experiences in the form of pleasure and pain.
The concept of wisdom nowadays has become a topic of increasing scientific interest and investigation in the area of positive psychology for the making up of individual’s mind, although it is probably an ancient expression (Brugman, 2006). Several influential researches have shown significant impact of wisdom in cross-cultural psychiatry as well as prevention and intervention in the field of successful aging (Blazer, 2006; Vaillant, 2002). Important evidence from neuroscience research also shows that wisdom plays an influential role in the development of plasticity in human brain, i.e., the truth that the development of brain structures is heavily influenced by experience (Thiele, 2006). Reflection of these insights originating from role of wisdom motivated Jeste and Vahia (2008) to investigate similarities and variations between the concepts of wisdom in Indian and modern western literature. They employed mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology with the help of Textalyser (2007) and NVivo software (Fraser,
2000) to find out the areas of wisdom specifically found in the Bhagavad Gita to determine its significance in Indian social psychology.
Their review of the concept of wisdom in modern scientific literature as well as in the
Bhagavad Gita revealed the fact that the Bhagavad Gita embodies in itself a cluster of components which are interlinked with the modern understanding of wisdom. These are enlisted as “control over desires, knowledge of life, emotional regulation, decisiveness, love of and faith in the God, duty and work, self-contentedness, compassion and sacrifice, insight/humility, and
Yoga or integration of personality” (p. 197). A comparative study of the wisdom available in the
Bhagavad Gita under the light of modern scientific literature reveals numerous similarities, such PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 31 as focus on common good (compassion), emotional regulation, insight and rich knowledge about life. Noticeable dissimilarities include a highlighting on control over desires and denial of materialistic enjoyment. In their final conclusion, they suggested that at least some constituent parts of wisdom found in the Bhagavad Gita can be incorporated in the education and learning of people for the development of their personal well-being, because of its more individualistic and holistic nature than those commonly practiced today.
Balodi and Raina (2014) in an empirical study attempted to understand the difference in the emotional maturity and values, between two groups of college going students, one from those who had been reading Bhagavad Gita and the second from those who are Non-Bhagavad Gita readers, aged between 19-21 years. They employed purposive random sampling technique to select the sample belonging to Dehradun district of Uttarakhand (India). They selected 200 samples of college going undergraduate students and divided it into two categories of readers of the Bhagavad Gita and its non-readers, each having the size of 100 students. They used
Emotional Maturity Scale by Sing and Bhargava and Study of Values by Dr. R. K. Ojha to fulfill the purpose of obtaining data from the samples of two categories.
Through the application of emotional maturity scale, they measured dimensions like emotional maturity, emotional progression, social adjustment, personality integration, independence, while the value scale evaluated dimensions like social values, aesthetic values and religious values of the population. The analysis of quantitative data using t-test revealed the fact that the Bhagavad Gita reading group showed better level of emotional maturity and values as compared to the Non-Bhagavad Gita reading group. The comparison of both group’s results marked the finding that there exist a difference in the thought pattern of Non-Bhagavad Gita PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 32 reading group, who were not found integrated with the values and so manifested low level of emotional maturity as compared to the previous group of the Bhagavad Gita readers.
Mulla and Krishnan (2006) in their research tried to understand the concept of karma yoga by a scale development to investigate it and later they validated the scale through the use of an existing construct. In their study they employed 75 executives ranging from the age of 21 years to 55 years that include 63 male and 12 female respondents. The studied samples were gone through completion of a scale to measure their dimensions of fundamental beliefs in Indian philosophy. The scale was prepared though content analysis based on Gandhi’s view about karma yoga and the original verses of the Bhagavad Gita, and identified two distinctive dimensions of karma yoga- duty orientation and absence of desires for rewards. The scale was embodied with five items to check the belief in law of karma, belief in presence of soul, belief in liberation, and belief in spiritual growth through work.
The findings of executive’s responses were then compared with two facets of the conscientiousness, a personality trait having embodiment of dutifulness and achievement striving, with the help of hierarchical regression and a test of moderation. The main result suggested that belief in Indian philosophy significantly contributing to the development of duty orientation, and subsequently absence of desire for rewards enhancing life satisfaction. The researcher found a moderate support for the fact that dutifulness was more strongly associated to the concept of karma yoga when achievement striving was low than when it was high.
In a similar kind of research, Mulla and Krishnan (2007) validated the construct of karma yoga by using value systems and emotional intelligence present in the Bhagavad Gita.
Assimilating two studies in one research, they employed 60 executives in the first study and applied hierarchical regression analysis and a moderation test on the date obtained from the scale PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 33 application on them, developed on the basics of karma yoga of Gandhi and the Bhagavad Gita.
They found that the essence of karma yoga is a sense of obligation or duty towards others, and the specific beliefs of samples in the law of karma, existence of soul, and salvation lead them to the process of karma yoga. Individuals who were found with high rate over karma yoga preferred other values such as a world at peace, being responsible, being obedient, and mature love significantly higher than low karma yoga individuals. The second study based on a group of 37 students showed the strong level of correlation between the karma yoga and emotional intelligence.
Johnson (2007) studied the emotion in the Bhagavad Gita through the theoretical lens of social construction and suggested emotion as a multi-faceted and contextually dependent psychological variable, a kind of cognitive responses to the stimuli which is socially constructed.
According to her observation, emotion is a somatic feeling, induced by the awareness of some inner or outer condition, which is important for the self, and is susceptible to the cognitive assessment (whether conscious or pre-conscious, right or wrong). The physiology of emotions incorporates twofold judgment, soiled in the proposition of good or bad; determining whether specific emotional state is appropriate to the environment and deciding what behavior should be followed. Her statements strongly assert the conclusion that “standards for the self-management and regulation of the complex of emotions vary cross-culturally; hence it suggests at higher degree that emotions as a psychological construct is socially constructed” (p. 661). Finally, she propounded through her research findings that the Bhagavad Gita as a religious treatise and its cultural narratives has powerful influences on both emotional and moral reasoning of Hindu people and its followers.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 34
Following Drive for the Current Research
The review of literature, what we have done at present in a narrative form, shows that the concept of psychological resilience has its own culturally experienced meaning and discussed methodological consideration in Indian culture. Religious notes and historical narratives soiled in any culture play an instrumental role in determining and defining any composite of behavior and reasoning of related people. The BG as a text at religious and cultural background is able to provide a deep rooted understanding of psychological resilience at its own level, which is critical to explore through the modern scientific methods. Thus, this curiosity paved the way for the researcher to explore the inherent knowledge of psychological resilience in the BG through social constructionist mode of investigation.
The next chapter presents a detailed overview of methods employed in the current research study.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 35
Chapter 3
Method
This chapter outlines the respective methods used by the researcher, which had been incorporated to conduct the current study. The present study employed research methods on the basis of the objectives of the study, its main research questions, and developed review of literature accompanying to the current research topic. The researcher employed an exploratory research design, qualitative in nature to make apparent inherent knowledge of psychological resilience in the BG in terms of karma yoga. The overall operation throughout the study involves social constructionism as well as social identity to understand the behavioral pattern of the selected participants, who follows the principles of karma yoga in their actions.
The respective samples of the study include two different categories: (a) the original text of the BG along with the commentaries of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bhim Rao Ambedkar, and
Mahatma Gandhi, and (b) participants who were either studied the BG or practicing its teaching in life. The selection of research participants were accomplished with the help of snowball sampling, a sub-category of purposive sampling, which includes the total sample size of 10 individuals involving five person from Dev Sanskriti University (Haridwar, Uttarakhand), two monks from Buddhist Monastery, two Sanyasis belonging to Ramakrishna Ashram and one
Sanyasi of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, all residing in New Delhi.
The process of data collection was made through focused interviews based on a case vignette that was prepared after going across the literature review and the study objectives. The interviews of the participants and the contents of the texts were collected, transcribed and prepared for the data analysis that was governed through inductive content analysis. The researcher followed the qualitative content analysis propounded by Elo and Kyngas (2008) as the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 36 method of data analysis, and so went through the procedures of open coding, categories formation, abstraction, comparison and lastly development of themes. Along with this, a hermeneutic approach was also carried over the BG and its related commentaries, and floated throughout the data analysis procedure. Finally, the developed themes were interpreted and interlinked with the process of psychological resilience and karma yoga of the BG. The detailed description of research methods are presented below under various headings and sub-headings.
Objectives of the Study
The main objectives of the study were as follows:
1. To understand the concept of psychological resilience in the BG and its followers.
2. To explore what processes are associated with coping behavior or resilience through
karma yoga of the BG.
3. To determine what qualities took place in a karma yogi that provide them resiliency
during the time of significant adversity.
4. To assess the usefulness of Sthitaprajna or Siddha Vyavahara in terms of the varied
viewpoints of Gandhi, Tilak and Ambedkar for social behavior.
Research Design
“Qualitative researchers tend to lay considerable emphasis on situational and often structural contexts that put themselves in contrast to many quantitative researchers, whose work is multivariate but often weak on context” (Strauss, 1987, p. 2). According to Baum, Deery,
Hanlon, Lockstone and Smith (2009), “qualitative research allows the subjects being studied to give much ‘richer’ answers to questions put to them by the researcher and may give valuable insights that might have been missed by any other method” (p. 211). Along with the production of valuable information to certain research questions, qualitative research also serves PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 37 complement to quantitative research methods. For example, if a particular topic has not been previously explored in specific context, such as this one on psychological resilience in the BG, then qualitative research may become an imperative prototype to conducting any quantitative research.
In this study, whose aim was to investigate the construct of psychological resilience in the BG in terms of social construction theory, the researcher used an exploratory research design that was qualitative in nature. According to Snape and Spencer (2003), “a qualitative design is one that provides an in-depth understanding and interpretation of phenomena by learning about the social and material circumstances and histories”. Herein, the term exploratory research or exploration refers to “broad ranging, intentional, systematic data collection designed to maximize discovery of generalizations based on description and direct understanding of an area of social or psychological life” (Given, 2008). Neuman (2007) suggested that “an exploratory research may be the first stage in a sequence of studies; a researcher may need to conduct an exploratory study in order to know enough to design and execute a second, more systematic and extensive study”. In this study, the researcher examined the BG and the varied views of its followers to formulate certain questions that he could address as the outcome of successful adaption or resiliency in them.
Operational Definition of Theories
Social constructionism. The term social constructionism or the social construction of reality refers to “a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about the reality” (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2009). In contrast to individual constructions in psychology through the way of rationalism and phenomenology, social constructionism throws PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 38 light on the social, historical, and collective aspects of human consciousness. Due to this reason, social constructionism may best be described in terms of “its resistance to the institutionalized dominance of empiricism as the guiding philosophy of the human sciences” (Durrheim, 1997).
The orientation of social constructionists generally focused on answering the questions, how the psychological models of social world come into existence through the way of rationalization of human experience and the governing processes that share and consider these models through language.
A social construct embodies in itself the notion, meaning, and connotation associated with an object or event by a particular society, and exercised by the residents of that society with respect to their unique mode of viewing or dealing the object or event. In this way, a social construct is an idea generally found as ‘a creation or artifice within a society’, which may or may not be real for those who are outside that society. The present study used the above definitions to encompass the term social construction while developing the concept of psychological resilience in the BG.
Social identity. A social identity is defined as “the portion of an individual’s self- concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group” (Turner & Oakes, 1986).
As originally developed by Tajfel and Turner in 1979, social identity theory presented the understanding of social identity as the psychological basis of intergroup discrimination. Tajfel and Turner (1986) proposed that “group membership creates in-group/self-categorization and enhancement in ways that favor the in-group at the expense of the out-group”. Individuals within a group membership try to achieve their enhanced self-image by positive distinction, which materialize itself through the comparison of their in-group with out-group on some valued dimension. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 39
Tajfel and Turner (1979) demonstrated that there are three enjoined mental processes involved in evaluating others as in-group members or out-group members: (a) social categorization, (b) social identification, and (c) social comparison. Since the social identity theory studies the behavioral pattern of an individual in a group relationship, this perception helped the researcher in the analysis of resiliency of subjects resulting through their certain categorizations in Indian society.
Sample
The process of sampling of this study bore two distinctive types of samples to fulfill its nature as an exploratory research. The sample at the first level was the Bhagavad Gita, which is written in Sanskrit language, one of the oldest languages of the world. This treatise is originally a part of the Mahabharata, and included in the Prasthanatreya, the three foundations of classical
Indian thought. Along with the original text, the commentaries of Mahatma Gandhi, Bal
Gangadhar Tilak and Bhim Rao Ambedkar on the BG also served the basis for the sampling.
Hermeneutical approach for the selection of these writings as samples enabled the researcher to make interpretation and gain an in-depth understanding of the research phenomenon. In the words of Ferraris (1996), hermeneutics serves as “the art of interpretation as transformation and contrasts it with a view of theory as contemplation of eternal essences unalterable by their observer” (p. 1). Application of hermeneutics in this study established a synthesis of the Indian traditional thinking and put forward the ancient style of psychological resilience specific in
Indian culture. Herein, due to this reason these literary works served as primary samples for the first level of sampling procedure.
The samples at the second level comprised the participants from two different sections.
As for the selection of first group participants, the researcher took account of two Sanyasis of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 40
Ramakrishna Ashram, one of Sri Aurobindo Ashram and two monks of Buddhist monastery, a total of five all residing in New Delhi, and in the second group participants five students were collected from the group of postgraduate and research students of Dev Sanskriti University,
Haridwar (Uttarakhand). During both kinds of scenario, the participants were selected using snowball sampling, a sub-category of purposive sampling. Snowball sampling is found to be reportedly useful when one tries to access populations that are inaccessible or hard to find
(Trochim, 2006). This type of sampling employs “a small pool of initial informants to nominate, through their social networks, other participants who meet the eligibility criteria and could potentially contribute to a specific study” (Hassan, Abidin, Legino, Anwar & Kamaruzaman,
2015). Thus, the sample size of the research study was 10 including 5 in the first and 5 in the other group respectively. The reason behind the selection of subjects from this specific population is that these institutions at their own level incorporate at their own level the ideals of the BG in their education system as well as in the life style.
Inclusion criteria.
Persons with a background of Indian psychology, having an appropriate understanding of
the BG.
Persons living in any Ashram as disciple such as Ramakrishna Ashram, Sivananda
Ashram, Sri Aurobindo Ashram etc., having an influence of the BG in their thinking and
life style.
Fluency in English and Hindi.
Exclusion criteria.
Persons with no formal understanding of the Bhagavad-Gita. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 41
Demographic detail of samples. The demographic data of the 10 participants selected for the present study are presented below. The graphical representation of the educational background of the participants can be seen in Figure 1. All the participants had a minimum graduation level of education and 30% had doctoral degrees.
Figure 1. Educational Background of the Participants
Figure 2. Gender Description of the Participants PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 42
The Figure 2 is a graphical representation of the participant’s gender. The sample had a majority of 80% males and 20% females. The gender ratio of the female to male among the total number of participants was 1:4. More strength of male members in the sample seems because of the inclusion of 50% population who were living an ascetic life in ashram or monastery, showing a typical picture of what is usually seen in the religious scenario. Herein, this 20% strength of female gender came from the inclusion of 50% population who were following household life while studying in the university with formal understanding of the teachings of the BG.
Figure 3. Age Group of the Participants
Figure 3 presents the age range of the involved samples. The sample group had a mean age of 36 years and most of them were in the age group 31-40 years followed by 41 years and above. The chart shows that the major age group 31-40 years employed in the study reflects
50% population, whereas 20-30 years age group contains 20% and 41and above 30% respectively. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 43
Figure 4 gives the religious background of the participants. One religious group had more representation in the study but they were all from various sects within the community. The pie chart shows that majority of the participants were from Hindu religion having 80% strength in population, whereas the 20% participants had associatin with Buddhist religion.
Figure 4. Religious Background of the Participants
Figure 5. Mode of Life of the Participants PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 44
In the demographical picture of participant’s mode of life, there was a distribution of
50% samples from household life and the remaining 50% from ascetic class of people as seen in
Figure 5. However, many differential recognition of these ascetic kind of people did not outline in Figure 5 (such as Sanyasis of Ramakrishna Ashram, Aurobindo Ashram, and the buddhist monks ). Therefore, a separate chart containing the details of these participants were shown in
Figure 6, which describes the destribution as 20% living in Ramakrishna Ashram, 10% living in
Aurobindo Ashram and 20% living in Buddhist Monastery among the total sample size.
Figure 6. Report of the Participant’s Place of Habitation
Data Collection
The researcher employed focused interviews to collect data keeping in mind the qualitative nature of the study. In the present study, the focused interview is designed to find out the responses of participants exposed to a vulnerable condition previously supposed by the researcher. Merton and Kendall (1946) suggested chief objectives of focused interviews “to discover: (a) the significant aspects of the total situation to which response has occurred, (b) discrepancies between anticipated and actual effects, (c) responses of deviant subgroups in the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 45 population, and (d) the processes involved in experimentally induced effects”. The interview schedule comprised a case vignette and relevant questions based on the study objectives (see
Appendix for Interview Schedule).
Focused interview. An individual interview in the form of a focused interview was the method of data collection employed by the researcher in the study. The collection of data occurred on the basis of a case vignette. A focused interview used in data collection is similar to the semi-structured interview, except that it is more open and provides more freedom to the interviewer. In the words of Ahuja (2001), this type of interviewing process provides many benefits during the data collection through various ways: (a) the participant gets relatively more freedom in responding to questions, (b) the interviewer’s role is mild, (c) information is more specific, and (d) the opportunities for increased information are greater. According to Young and Schmid (2004), “it may also obviate some of the limitations of both the highly directive interview, with its structural battery of questions, and the non-directive, free-flowing clinical type of interview, which is time consuming and non-standardized”.
Merton and Kendall (1946) also found that one of core advantage of focused interview is that “the whole situation is carefully structured and that major areas of inquiry are mapped out, although the interviewee is given considerable freedom to express his or her definition”. Its significance stems from the fact that, it is based on the assumption that through this procedure, it is possible to secure details of personal reaction and participants are less likely to be distorted during the interview process. In the words of Young and Schmid (2004), “focused interview provides possibility to analyze spheres of tensions and their implications through its specific, selective, consistent and pertinent details of the total response of the interviewees”. These were the reason which persuaded the researcher to adopt this method to collect the data in this study. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 46
Interview schedule. Interview schedule was arrived at after an extensive review of literature reflecting the debates on cultural variations in interpretation of trauma and resilience responses following the influence of religion and spirituality on human behavior. In the similar line of inquiry, literature showed various positive features of the BG to lay the investigation of resilient behavior in the persons, who were related to this philosophy in their active living. The outcomes from these understanding were the basis used for the preparation of specific questions pertaining to the case vignette, keeping in mind the study objectives, and finally formed the interview schedule (see Appendix for Interview Schedule).
Case vignette. The case vignette was prepared from critical understanding of researches on the Bhagavad-Gita reflecting various positive psychological aspects in the behavior of its followers and documentation of varied resilience response in different cultural setups, incorporating religion and spirituality in them. During the preparation of case vignette, the chief objectives of the research study were also kept in mind. It was woven in categories that were pulled out from the BG (or pre coded) demonstrating the activities and qualities of Sthitaprajna such as efficiency, equanimity, egolessness, emotional stability, or self control along with the sub-complex combinations of caste, community, gender and personal values (religious, spiritual, and social values).
Validation process. The prepared case vignette and the relevant questions for the study were sent for face or content validation to the supervisor and experts of Indian psychology.
Content validity or face validity has to do with items or questions to measure what they claim to and whether the items measure the full domain implied by their label. According to Garson
(1998), “uses of survey of the panel of content experts or focus groups of representative subjects are a way in which content validity may be established, albeit it follows subjective judgments”. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 47
The external examiners were selected for the study based on their specific expertise and background. They comprised of two experts in supervisory roles in mental health training and one student functioning as research scholar, all had formal knowledge of psychology and related skills. The professionals had doctoral training in psychology as well as many years of teaching experience. It was a one on one discussion with each of the experts including electronic mail exchanges. They were briefed about the study aims and objectives and were given the interview schedule in order to see whether the categories that were coded claimed to the research objectives and were adequate. The comments and suggestions made by them were incorporated following a pilot study with three participants as a pre-test. The interview schedule was reviewed along with the guide and finalized for the main study.
Selection of participants. The researcher commenced the process of data collection with postgraduate and research students of dev Sanskriti University, Haridwar (Uttarakhand) and the Sanyasis who were living in Ashrams with monastic guidelines. They were briefed about the aim of the research study and informed consent was taken from willing participants after the screening process (based on inclusion criteria). The researcher gave the informed consent form and information sheet containing description about the research study to the participants who satisfied the inclusion criteria (see Appendix for Consent Form). The information sheet also assured that all disclosed information by the participants would be kept as confidential. The interview schedule and the informed consent sheet that had all the identifying information were formed into a code and stored separately by the researcher, moreover this also kept the confidentiality of the identifying information from the external coders.
All participants took part in the research study voluntarily having no coercion of any sort, regardless of the fact that the interviewees were referred by their friends and colleagues, also PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 48 they had the freedom to participate or walk out from the study. Some of the participants were not able to take part in the interview and declined, whilst others gave interviewees as referrals.
The anonymity of the participants was maintained while writing of the thesis.
Process of interview. The process of interview took place at locations convenient to the participants. As some of the participants were students of university, some of the interviewees were Sanyasis living in ashrams and monasteries while others who worked in the yoga centers had interviews in their respective residence. The time slot for interviews, on which they agreed upon, was based on the convenience of the participants. Each interview lasted for approximately an hour. Permission to record and document the interview was obtained in the beginning by the researcher and these all deeds performed during the interview process with the help of relevant materials.
The participants read the case vignette following which the questions from the interview schedule were asked. The interview schedule of the research study contains the following questions:
1. What kind of mental attitude you generally follow to perform karma yoga?
2. What is your personal view about mental calm and how does it help you to withstand
with psychological adversity?
3. How do you see the importance of Siddha Vyavahara identified in the Bhagavad Gita for
positive living?
4. How do you perform karma yoga to get done your actions?
5. Which are the qualities you realize in your behavior that make you resilient?
6. Any other comments? PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 49
The researcher after the interview facilitated a small discussion on psychological resilience as an offshoot of Siddha Vyavahara or Sthitaprajna and some of the potential areas that were not recognized by the interviewee (based on the categories pre-coded). The useful suggestions of participants were also taken into account to minimize any of the drawbacks of the research study on them. The participants, being a part of the research study, expressed satisfaction and some interviewee reflected that the interview process was quite introspective for them, and that they were looking forward to the result of the study.
Ethical Considerations
To maintain the ethical principles while doing research work, the researcher adhered to the American Psychological Association’s code of ethics to preserve transparency in the study
(American Psychological Association, 2010). The participants were informed about the purpose of the research, its duration and procedures at the beginning of the interaction. They were also informed about their right to decline or withdraw at any given point after the research study had begun. The researcher provided all the necessary information about the nature of research study to the participants. The confidentiality and anonymity of the subjects were consciously discussed and a sense of assurance was also provided to them. The interview schedule kept only a code that connected the consent form with identifying information, which was stored separately in a secured area. At last, a signed consent form of their participation was also taken into account for further reference.
Data Analysis
The very nature of knowledge we would get from the inquiry of different commentaries on the BG and the varied perception of participants really tilts towards collective reconstructions of social experiences coalescing around the consensus for becoming a creative identity in the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 50 form of dominant construct. The obvious outcome of this situation is relative, which reflects multiple, apprehend able and sometimes conflicting social realities that are products of human intellect and that more or less try to construct a common meaning. Its epistemology tends to somewhat a similar but broader transactional and subjective understanding that manifests resilience in the data through the process of social interchange. Therefore, the researcher preferred qualitative content analysis as the prime method of data analysis for participant’s interviews, and hermeneutics as for the analysis of text’s data in this research study. In this research, the chief goal for application of qualitative content analysis was “to provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study” (Downe-Wamboldt, 1992). According to
Hsieh and Shannon (2005), “qualitative content analysis is a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns”.
Inductive content analysis and hermeneutics. Inductive content analysis was used in this study keeping in the mind “a purpose of a creative approach to categorize the content of the data to provide a means of detailing the phenomenon, to develop the understanding and to generate knowledge” (Burnard, 1996; Cavanagh, 1997). The researcher followed the process of open coding, creating categories and making of abstraction that comprises the strength of a significant use of inductive content analysis. During the activity of open coding, the evident notes and headings were taken into account while reading of the data. The collected material was again revised, and many influential headings were written down in a separate area or margin to maintain the detailing of all aspects of the content (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). The headings were then gathered from the margins on to the coding sheets (Cole, 1988; Dey, 1993; Downe- PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 51
Wamboldt, 1992) and following this procedure various categories were independently developed at this stage (Burnard, 1991).
After the process of open coding, the collected lists of categories were classified under the headings of higher order (Burnard, 1991; McCain, 1988). The main purpose of classifying data was to minimize the number of developed categories on the basis of assembling those that were similar or dissimilar to the context of broader categories of higher order (Burnard, 1991;
Dey, 1993; Downe-Wamboldt, 1992). While performing this entire task, the researcher followed the suggestions of Dey (1993), which pointed out that data classified as belonging to a particular group should incorporate a comparison between the data one group and the other observations that do not belong to the same category. While developing of various categories through inductive content analysis, the researcher came to the point, by interpretation, as to which matters to place in the similar category.
The process of abstraction in a qualitative content analysis follows the art of formulating a general description of the research topic through developing categories (Burnard, 1996; Polite
& Beck, 2004; Robson, 1993). The researcher named each category by employing content- quality words which were selected through the application of hermeneutics over the BG, and following these guidelines sub-categories having the same properties were grouped as category, and similarly categories were formed as main theme (Kyngas & Vanhanen, 1999). The overall inductive content analysis of the interviews was carried out in such a way that it could nearly approach the main findings of the hermeneutics as what the text suggests. The process of making abstraction remained continue till the reasonable and possible events of the research study.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 52
Trustworthiness. To maintain the trustworthiness in the research study, the researcher described the analysis process and results in a detailed manner, so that it become apparent that how the analysis was governed. The results were described contents of the categories; contents of categories were detailed through various sub-categories (Marshall & Rossman, 1995). The increase the validity of the final results, an external coder was also employed to analyze the data throughout the process, and the results were compared for the determination of final output. This procedure adheres to the findings of Miles and Huberman (1994), which states “getting the same data analyzed by more than one would to a large extent rule out any of the personally biased conclusions of the researcher”. These analytical processes were adopted in the current study, practiced in the various phases of data analysis comprising open coding, creating categories, and making of abstraction.
The developed themes or main categories that emerged from 10 interviews were sent to an expert for external validation (an experienced teacher with a research background working as an associate professor in Indian psychology for ten years). The results in the form of comments of external coder were discussed and reviewed by the researcher. Authentic citations were also incorporated throughout the study to increase the trustworthiness of the research, and to point out the real sources through which the categories were formulated (Patton, 1990; Sandelowski,
1993). The results were tabulated and discussed using percentages, tables, bar graphs, pie charts etc. in the current study.
The next chapter presents results and discussion of the current research study.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 53
Chapter 4
Results and Discussion
This chapter outlines in the beginning, results and discussion about Sthitaprajna of the
Bhagavad Gita (BG) in the light of the varied observations of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar,
Mahatma Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, to maintain its applicability in the behavior of a social class who practice karma yoga. The second phase of this chapter details the responses of the research participants pertaining to their viewpoint over the various questions comprised in the case vignette (see Appendix for case vignette and interview schedule), and finally a comparative analysis between both was developed by the researcher to justify the outcome of psychological resilience in the individual, who follows karma yoga of the BG under the light of social construction and social identity theory.
The varied outlook of above described social agents over the Sthitaprajna reveals various aspects of the utility of this concept in the society, such as employment of knowledge based action, selfless action, and social education. These findings were flowed throughout the study for making the construction of psychological resilience socially. The study of the responses of the research participants disclosed some important themes including their mental attitudes towards action, subjective approaches towards mental calmness, process of karma yoga, and qualities of karma yoga involving various categories in each. The interconnectedness of these themes shows a process-result orientation towards the accomplishment of resilient behavior in terms of stress resilience, bouncing back and normalization in the research participants.
The result reflects a dynamic work culture, where certain skills related to karma yoga including absence of expectation, efficiency, egolessness, equanimity, duty or dharma, gunas or qualities, Middle Way, renunciation of limited desires, and total surrender that transforms into PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 54 the qualities of emotional maturity, self-control, self-emptiness, tranquility, self-righteousness, self-awareness, situational stability, desirelessness and oneness of self and environment respectively. This process-result orientation in individual involves various mental attitudes towards action like belief in impermanence, faith in the law of karma, faith in the sacred teachings, karma as a transformational force, excellence in work as karma yoga, and playing a universal social role. They also reflected their subjective approach towards mental calmness through assessing the reason behind mental suffering in terms of dissatisfaction, worldly craving and attachment, and the obstacles of mental growth in terms of greed, hate and delusion. The understanding of the whole phenomenon reveals the fact that certain attitudes and approaches developed through the knowledge of Sthitaprajna mould the participants to follow karma yoga, which in turn inculcates resilience in them through its process-result orientation.
The employed research design in the study was qualitative in nature and the data was collected through focused interview. The objectives of the study were centered to explore the various processes and qualities associated with the practice of karma yoga, which causes psychological resilience to the people, who follows the understanding of Sthitaprajna of the BG.
The study sample comprised a total of 10 participants from two different sections. As for the first group, the researcher took the account of two Sanyasis of Ramakrishna Ashram, one of
Aurobindo Ashram and two from Buddhist monks, all residing in New Delhi, and in the second group, five participants were collected from Dev Sanskriti University, Haridwar (Uttarakhand).
The selection of participants was done through snowball sampling technique, which is a sub- category of purposive sampling.
The participants were given a case vignette and were interviewed based on specific questions pertaining to resiliency, keeping in mind the study objectives (refer to Appendix for PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 55 case vignette and interview schedule). As the research was an exploration of psychological resilience in the light of Bhagavad Gita as a socially constructed phenomenon, the aspects of what karma yoga comprised was not defined by the researcher until completion of the interview.
Hence, the participants were instructed to identify the various subjective approaches, attitudes, processes and characteristics (if any) associated during their practice of karma yoga from the understanding of the given case vignette, which provide them an insight of lived experience of resiliency throughout their life. Their view of what current and future conceptual underpinnings should be used to address the psychological resilience in the case vignette was also enquired.
The researcher used an inductive content analysis to analyze the gathered data, which was based on the methodology as proposed in the research article of Elo and Kyngas (2008). This process was employed for analysis in both kinds of data, either coming from the hermeneutics or from the responses of the participants.
Transferability
Weber (1990) pointed out that “in making of valid inferences from the obtained data, it is necessary for the researcher that the classification process be reliable in the sense of being consistent, i.e. different people should classify the code for a relevant text in the same way” (p.
12). In order to support this statement, the researcher accomplished the task of coding with the help of one another coder, to the extent where both coders came to the point of getting same results try after try, which in turn provided the stability or intra-rater reliability in the analysis process. The person who did the coding along with the researcher was also a research scholar in the same discipline working in IIT, Roorkee.
To check the reproducibility or inter-rater reliability, the researcher deduced the amount of measurement in which the coding schemes lead to the same text being coded in the same PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 56 category by the two coders. In order to check the inter-rate reliability of coding procedure, the researcher used Cohen’s Kappa method of calculation, according to which approaching the degree 1 represents perfectly reliable coding, and following to degree 0 represents no agreement between the coders other than what would be expected by chance (Haney, Russell, Gulek &
Fierros, 1998). The matrix table (see Table 1) represented below shows the agreement measurement, according to that Cohen’s kappa is measured through application of its equation that reveals 0.61value as the proportion of agreement between the coders after accounting the chance. When, we follow the suggested benchmark of Landis and Koch (1977, p. 165) for the interpretation of kappa, we come to the conclusion that kappa coefficient k=0.61 represents substantial or reasonably good overall agreement between the two coders during the coding procedure.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 57
Table 1
Agreement Matrix between the Raters
Rater 1
Mental Subjective Process Row attitude approaches Qualities of of karma totals towards towards mental karma yoga yoga action calmness
Mental attitude 28* (11.00) 6 4 9 47 towards action
Subjective
approaches 7 34 (11.47)** 5 3 49
towards mental
calmness Rater Rater 2 Process of karma 5 4 47(16.60) 2 58 yoga
Qualities of karma 8 4 3 36 (12.44) 51 yoga
205
Column totals 48 48 59 50 (Overall
total)
*Values represent the number of agreements by sum.
**Values in parentheses represent number of expected frequencies of agreement by chance. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 58
Credibility
The researcher employed the methodology in the research in such a way that it works for the service of the research questions used in the study. The validation of the findings made on the basis of the teachings of the BG along with the use of multiple sources of information, such as writings of Mahatma Gandhi, B. R. Ambedkar and B. G. Tilak, and responses of individuals living ashram, monastery and household. Since in qualitative research, validation governs through the process of forming triangulation, which requires “credibility of findings including multiple sources of methods, data, investigators, and theories” (Erlandson, Harris, Skipper &
Allen, 1993). Keeping this suggestion in mind to make the research meaningful, the researcher incorporated the results related to the other measures additionally in the present study.
Sthitaprajna: Light from Different Viewpoints
Now the researcher tries to point out the specific ideas about Sthitaprajna, as propounded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, and Bhimrao Ambedkar in relation to its utilities on the social context, for the evolution of consciousness of personal as well as its collective form.
In the form of the intellectual founders of Indian nationalism, B. G. Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and
B. R. Ambedkar have emerged as the most prominent political thinker of the Indian freedom movement, gaining popularity for their contribution in making of modern India. These writings try to examine the significance of the thinking of these great personalities over Sthitaprajna, in relation to their interpretation of religion, nationalism, and ideas of the BG. The brief discussions of these viewpoints are presented below.
Sthitaprajna in Gandhi’s opinion. Gandhi’s perception about Sthitaprajna of the BG depicts clearly that he advocated the concept in terms of Anasakti or ‘selfless action’ that could be understood as the achievement of state of Yoga (BG, 2:48). According to him, it includes PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 59 possession of developed adaptations over coping resources to face stressful life situations. This kind of person works diligently without any wanting and does not identify their ego with the people and events that he encounters in life. Because of this virtue of stable mindedness, the person views all events and people around their self through impartial and dispassionate lens resulting into emotional stability. Hence, in any paradox of life situation, as Singh and Raina
(2015) pointed out, “the person maintains emotional equipoise and unbiased approach towards situations helps him deal with life situations effectively” (p. 2).
According to Gandhi (1959), Anasakti transcends non-violence that means one who is selfless has essentially to perform non-violence in order to achieve the state of selflessness. He proposed his suggestion for this kind of people to come in the society to work selflessly for the benevolence of human being. By their virtue of association with self, they can deal with the social problems effectively and put forward a vista for harmonization and peace for the beneficiation of humanity. Truth and non-violence are the perpetual need of any time; hence it is a moral duty for Sthitaprajna to establish the knowledge on social ground to evolve the common consciousness to the state of higher one. As for service, he must respond with empathy and deep care through his selfless action with the people around him.
Sthitaprajna in Tilak’s opinion. Tilak in his lifelong attempt in public domain tried to mobilize the people for mass political action in Indian freedom movement. According to Harvey
(2008), the convergence of divergent sects of India was essential to form a mighty Hindu nation in Tilak’s ideology; hence the interpretation of Hindu text especially the BG by him provided justification for the rationalization for his political work of Indian freedom movement in religious guise. In his commentary, Tilak represented the ideals of the BG into the philosophy of activism or karma yoga. In this context, Tilak criticized all the previous supposition about the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 60
BG and commented about Sthitaprajna as “the true Sanyasi, then, renounce not action but the desire of its karmic effects by dedicating all actions to the almighty” (Dutta, 2014, p.335).
According to Tilak (1936), Sthitaprajna beholds the purpose of ‘social education’ for the development of collective consciousness in human being. He supposed the condition in which, without the presence of knowledgeable like Sthitaprajna in the society would result into the form of blindness and destruction; hence this person must perform all duties of worldly life with non- attachment, and so present a model of a good and pure life for the living of ordinary people.
When we see this conjecture in the light of Immanuel Kant’s ‘duty for duty sake’ philosophy in reference to social psychology, we are provided by the result that whatever reality exists in a society must need to manifest for its juvenility. Therefore, he added the term Siddha-Vyavahara
(behavior of Sthitaprajna) for personal manifestation of the behavior of these people that could serve as a beckon of light for the moral, religious, and spiritual enhancement of all human being.
Sthitaprajna in Ambedkar’s opinion. One of the severe critiques to both Tilak and
Gandhi’s interpretations of the BG had been charged by Ambedkar through his writings. Being a leader of untouchables in the society, he inclined to interpret this text on an entirely different plane. According to Ambedkar, the BG is neither a religious book nor a philosophical treatise, but indeed a politically motivated ‘counter revolution’ emerged from the hegemony of
Brahmanism for the purpose of defending Chaturvarna, and securing of its observance in practice (Rodrigues, 2002). In his perspective, karma yoga of the BG proposes the political thought of performance of the observances, such as Yajnas or the karma kanda as a medium for salvation.
In such a condition, talks of Sthitaprajna in the BG, saying there is nothing wrong in doing karma kanda when one ‘befitted with Buddhi’, stands only for the purpose of removing PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 61 excrescences of the Brahmanism. Hence, it is important to follow right action, which comes to the mind under the light of realization of reality that only serves the meaning for the term for the common understanding. Since, Ambedkar denied the concept of Sthitaprajna and advocated about the Buddhist philosophy of Middle Way. We can follow his opinion in the form of
‘employment of knowledge based action’ in place of Sthitaprajna for the purpose of work deliverance in life. Herein, the term knowledge applies to that condition where one could follow the nature of the all life situations as it is without any impact of politically motivated ideology.
The next section presents results and discussion in accordance with the questions asked during the time of focused interview based on the objectives of research study (refer to Appendix for case vignette and interview schedule).
Question 1: Identification of Mental Attitude while Performing Karma Yoga
The first question in the interview schedule pertained to the identification of mental frame or attitude generally followed by the participants while performing the karma yoga. The various categories or themes under the title ‘mental attitude while performing karma yoga’ were identified by the participants are presented in Table 2. These category and sub-category were developed by the way of careful analysis of the participant’s interviews based on the case vignette and its practical application in their own life during work. The existing themes extracted out are discussed below and also pictorially represented (Table 2 and Figure 1). The values presented in the table give detail of themes and their percentage identified by the participants as their work attitudes.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 62
Table 2
Identified Mental Attitudes towards Action
No. of
Category Sub- category Participants Percentage
(N=10)
Changeability of all things Belief in impermanence 6 60 Impermanence of all life situations
Life as a mixture of both pleasure
and pain
Adherence to the law of karma Faith in the law of karma 7 70 Karma as bondage and liberator
Karma as a way for fulfillment of
desires
Assimilation of sayings of wise in
behavior
Faith in the sacred Follow and live according to 6 60 teachings sacred teachings
Withstanding with dignity of great
ideals
Karma as an inspirational force for
Karma as a next karma 4 40 transformational force Experiencing competency through
living in flow PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 63
Table 2 (Continued)
No. of
Category Sub- category Participants Percentage
(N=10)
Excellence of karma
Selflessness in all actions Excellence in work as Yoga as Excellency in mankind 5 50 karma yoga Ability to learn from life of great
personalities
Having an outlook of a passenger
Universal brotherhood
Master servant relationship Playing a universal social Mother and child association 4 40 role Letting life of a guru for self and
others
Living a life of a viewer
Mental Attitude towards Action
Niranjanananda (2002) pointed out that “it is not the actions themselves which are considered to be important in karma yoga, but the specific frame of mind with which the actions are performed”. Action could take place without our attentiveness anyway, and they will continuously guide our activity in life course whether we desire them to act or not. It is a continuous procedure which keeps on occurring, and over which one could not easily practice PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 64 voluntary or rational control. It is indeed the attitude towards action or some extent awareness of work that is more important that ultimately creates the change within the mind of the doer. With regard to this aspect, Kumar and Kumar (2013) also proposed that “it is doing work with cleverness and as a science; by knowing how to work, one can obtain the greatest results”. It could be understood analogically through the example of a knife, which can be used by a killer to take away someone’s life or can be used by a doctor to perform surgery. The same knife could be used to take a life or save a life, depending on the attitude towards action of the person holding it.
The right mental frame provides positive attitude towards actions involved in life, which helps the people to combat and meaning making during the time of adversity. Therefore, the researcher inquired at first the correlates of the attitude towards action in the karma yoga of employed participants and how far it was applicable in them to get done their actions in life. The various categories or themes associated with it were analyzed and the emerged outcome reflects that belief in impermanence, faith in the law of karma, faith in the sacred teachings, karma as a transformational force, excellence in work as karma yoga, and playing specific social role played an influential role in their course of action or work. The detailed discussions of these themes are presented below.
Belief in impermanence. Belief in impermanence, a major element constituting mental frame while performing actions in Indian context was identified by 60% of the participants of the research study. In the group of participants who follow this mindset includes 100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and only 20% of household person studying in university who supported this mental attitude in their living. The concept of impermanence implies that “there can be no such things as a final authority or permanent truth” (Fadiman & Frager, 2005). PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 65
Everything in the nature is constantly changing and impermanence characterizes all existing things. It implies to all physical and abstract elements such as trees, buildings, moon, stars, behaviors, emotions, thoughts, ideas, etc., and put emphasis on the fact that nothing lasts forever, all occurs in the form of flux at any given moment.
The Buddhists point out that “human beings have a strong tendency to conceive of the world as static, to see things instead of fluid and constantly changing processes” (Fadiman &
Frager, 2005). According to Gethin (1998), “as long as there is an attachment to things that are unstable, unreliable, changing and impermanent, there will be suffering – when they change, when they cease to be what we want them to be” (p. 74). More than half strength of population of the research study pointed out that they consider their different facets of life as a flux interdependent with self while performing their actions.
Faith in the law of karma. Having faith in the law of karma played a major role as an overwhelming 70% of the participants identified this as an important attitude actively controlling their actions throughout life. In the group of participants who follow this principle involves
100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and only 40% of household person studying in university who supported this mental attitude in their viewpoint. They reported that assimilation of faith of the doctrine of karma, as ancient Indian religion has imposed, had a bigger implication in the participant’s life while considering their actions. According to Reichenbach (1990), in simple formulation, “the law of karma states that all actions have consequences which will affect the doer of the action at some future time”. So stated, it works similarly like the law of universal causation, which establishes that “every construct pleasure and pain either lies outside of the individual person, in the environment, or extends through and is effect of asset of causal conditions”(p. 1). Karnik and Suri (1995) examined the role of law of karma in the determining PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 66 of social work considerations and suggested that “the law of karma in India provides a value- oriented explanation for an individual’s life conditions (physical, economic, social, and spiritual) where that individual assumes moral responsibility his/her own deeds”.
Most of the participants in study agreed with the fact that right actions have positive kind of effect and wrong actions have negative kind of effect, metaphorically “as you sow so shall you reap”. Some of the issues they identified as being part of the law of karma were karma as bondage and liberator, karma as way for desire fulfillment, karma as life, and rebirth. In
Reichenbach (1990) words, these vindications agrees with the fact that the law of karma presupposes an objective ethic, which provides a sense of acceptability, meaning making, and positive work intention among the people who follows this principle in life. Researches also in this regard support the idea that “aspects of faith enable tangible reductions in, and protection from stress and it generates optimism, enriches interpersonal relationships, creates support systems, and enhances quality of life” (Smith, McCullough & Poll, 2003; Blazer, 2012).
Faith in the sacred teachings. Faith in the sacred teachings includes sayings of those literatures which are religiously considered as sacred in Hindu and Buddhist religion as well as the life history of ideal person who lived in the past. Since, the research accompanied half of the participants who were living in ashrams and monasteries under ascetic discipline; they reported overwhelming support of 100% over the teachings of religious texts to determine their behavior and to move towards the way of self-actualization. Among the whole population of the study,
60% of the participants identified with having faith in the sacred teachings, which worked in them as an inspirational factor during work. In the household group of participants only 20% of the person studying in university reflected their faith over sacred teachings. Lunn (2009) proposed that “religion, spirituality and faith system in a society ensures that specific work as PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 67 appropriate and sustainable for development of future following a medium of knowledge grounding in history, critique through dialectical process, and identification of future potentialities for emancipation and self-determination”.
People having faith in the sacred teachings inculcate wise sayings in their behavior and showed some of the trait such as humility, honesty, respect, courage, wisdom, truth and love, which strongly influenced their mental frame towards work. The participants living in Ashrams and monasteries showed great assimilation of the principles and conducts of their guru (teacher) in their life and the other participants followed the thoughts what is deemed as ideal by great people in the society. Yogananda (1995) expressed that “the blind cannot lead the blind, only a master, one who knows the truth, may rightly teach others about the truth”. In this regard, the sacred texts and ideals of the society come forward to themselves as an enlightened that can help to pave their path towards positivity.
Karma as a transformational force. Some 40% of the participants reported that they use karma as a medium to transform their situations into desired form of experience. In the group of participants who follow this mindset comprises 33.3% of the person belonging to the
Hindu Sanyasis, 50% from Buddhist monks and 40% of household person who were studying supported this mental attitude in their life. When they perform action having awareness of certain kind of change, the nature of bad learning could be transformed into good one and so the good into more better form. The noticeable point is that these participants consider karma as a force, when it works results in another form of more powerful force to sustain continuity during the work hour. Niranjanananda (2002) pointed out that “karma yoga can be classified as the true psychological aspect of yoga because in this process of dynamic meditation we have to become PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 68 aware of the subtle areas of our personality, and this aspect involves the awakening of latent mental faculties as well as new dimensions of awareness” (pp. 60-61).
The role of karma as a transformative agent can be understood with the help of the analogy of a caterpillar and a butterfly. The body of a caterpillar represents the individual identity living in bondage and limitation. Practice of karma yoga brings the situation to undergo a transformational process, where it harmonizes the actions of individual self and attains union with the higher self as a caterpillar builds a cocoon around itself and through the way of trauma and transformation changes into a butterfly. The practical application of karma for change in life is also justified by Vivekananda (2003) where he states “we are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves” (p. 30). Following the importance of the law of karma he also stated that “If what we are now has been the results of our past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act” (Vivekananda, 2003).
Excellence in work as karma yoga. While talking about the yoga to Arjuna, Lord
Krishna proposed that “yoga is one where work is done with dexterity” (BG, 2:50), which means that whatever one do, do it excellent with proper sense of organization and love. In the present research study, a half percentage of participants, being 50% stated that showing excellence while doing work is important for the consideration of their endeavor as karma yoga. Interestingly,
100% from the Hindu sanyasis group, 40% from the household group and none from the
Buddhist group reported their belief over this mental attitude. According to them, the sense of dexterity provides an extra impulse in motivation, which in turn reflects in efficacy for the accomplishment of their task. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 69
Sheela and Ganpat (2013) found similar results in their neuropsychological research, which affirms that “a systematic practice of yoga enhances sustained attention in human brain system that leads to academic excellence in university students”. In a similar kind of study it has been found that “efficacy developing through the practice of yoga increases mental performance in the university student, which in turn provides excellence in their academic work” (Ganpat,
Nagendra & Selvi, 2013). Many other variables associated with excellence in work performance such as self-esteem, emotional sensitivity, emotional intelligence, well-being, etc. are also found significantly related with the practice of yoga in modern studies (Ganpat, Das & Ramarao, 2014;
Sethi, Nagendra & Ganpat, 2013).
Playing a universal social role. About 40% of the participants of the study suggested that the perspective of playing a specific social role with universal sense in life had a great implication in their attitude towards work. In the group of participants who follows this mindset includes 66.6% of the person belonging to the Hindu ascetic class, 50% from Buddhist monks and only 20% of household person who supported this mental attitude in their interview. They found consistent with Shakespearean thought that “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” (Shakespeare & Furness, 1963), and so stated a number of different social role involving role-play of a passenger, guru, brother, mother, son and viewer in their life that provided a direction for their actions. The very reason behind these role-plays was to develop a state of egolessness, a change in their mental frame to and vision of life that will help them in determining selfless work.
According to them, selfless action is something that has to be performed incessantly without any knowing or attainment in an instant. The BG says that “it is not the body or the mind but the self which is sitting inside and performing the action” (BG, 3:7). Hodge (2004) PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 70 while working with Hindu clients in a spiritually sensitive manner observed that “selfless action results in the accumulation of karma and emphasizes separateness, which in turn inhibits union with the higher self”. Thus, playing of a specific social role with universal sense provides the individual an opportunity to serve the society selflessly that is intimately tied with the process of karma yoga.
Figure 1. Identified Mental Attitudes towards Action
The above discussed themes or identified attitude towards action indicated by the participants seem to be concurrence with the ‘theory of reasoned action’ developed by Ajzen and
Fishbein in 1967, which aims to explain the relationship between attitudes and actions within human behavior. This theory explains “prediction and understanding of motivational influences on behavior that is not under the individual’s volitional control to identify how and where to target strategies for changing behavior that describes virtually any human behavior” (Ajzen &
Fishbein, 1980). The ‘theory of reasoned action’ is applied in this study as a framework to examine the work culture of the participant’s behavior based on their pre-existing attitudes towards the actions in relation with the idea of karma yoga. Being a pluralistic society, it PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 71 became clear that still Indian values were over-lapping over identified themes as revealed in the current study.
The next part discusses the question that pertained to addressing or dealing with the subjective approaches undertaken by the participants for the maintenance of their mental calmness.
Question 2: Identifying Subjective Approach towards Mental Calmness
This part of the research study threw up some interesting findings. The main categories of reason behind mental sufferings, and separateness from obstacles of mental growth were not discussed directly by the participants. The above categorization used in this study was based on the knowledge of the participant’s assimilation to their mental health that was played a major role in the determination of approaches towards mental calmness. On organizing data into various categories and sub-categories, interesting results emerged as shown in the Table 3 and
Figure 2.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 72
Table 3
Identified Subjective Approaches towards Mental Calmness
No. of
Category Sub- category Participants Percentage
(N=10)
Dissatisfaction 10 100
Reason behind mental suffering Worldly craving 10 100
Attachment 10 100
Greed 9 90
The obstacles of mental growth Hate 6 60
Delusion 5 50
Reason behind Mental Suffering
Although the exact cause of mental suffering is not known and still it is a subject matter of philosophical and scientific inquiry, several seminal studies in social psychiatry have proposed the finding that “cultural beliefs play a significant role in shaping societal responses to people with mental sufferings” (Link, Phelan, Bresnahan, Stueve & Pescosolido, 1999). The role of cultural perceptions in the consideration of mental problem and suffering is still evident. All of research participants reflected many culturally determined reasons behind their mental sufferings and reported differently about their correlates. Intrinsically, all the sub-categories associated with reason of mental sufferings scored 100% (see Table 2) and made all of these an important approach that were used by the participants to cure themselves while moving towards the mental calmness. The existence of dissatisfaction, worldly cravings, and attachment were PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 73 identified as the main reason behind all kinds of mental sufferings in the life of the participants.
The brief discussions of all related factors are summarized and presented below under these categories.
Dissatisfaction. All of the participants contributing 100% of strength keep accordance with the fact that dissatisfaction is the major cause of their mental sufferings. According to
Buddhist philosophy, the first truth among the four noble truths is the existence of dissatisfaction and given also that dissatisfaction as an inner state of the individual is inevitable. In the words of
Shonin, Van Gordon and Griffiths (2015), “the natural human tendency to be dissatisfied involves our inability to achieve lasting joy from success and this propensity drives human success by compelling us to always strive for new accomplishments and successes”(p. 144).
Frager and Fadiman (1998) further added that “dissatisfaction embraces birth, death, decay, sorrow, pain, grief, despair, and existence itself, which lies in the limited ego or the relative consciousness of each individual” (p. 517). They also optimistically interpreted the principle of dissatisfaction to mean that through practice of self-transformational processes one can experience satisfaction with us and with the world.
Worldly craving. Secondly, worldly craving or desire is also considered as an important aspect resulting in the form of mental suffering in the participant’s viewpoint. According to them, they generally get attached with the positive and pleasurable conditions and feel disliked toward the negative and painful situations. This is craving which creates an unstable mental frame in that they never live in the present satisfactorily. Within the teachings of Buddhist religion, craving for world is regarded as the second truth among the four noble truths of the existence. According to Hagen (2011), “craving or sense of longing is the main cause of woe for mankind, because it causes humans to become obsessed and embittered”. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 74
The way through which worldly craving affected the participants reflect the fact that unsatisfied desires drive them by a need to change the present and if satisfied, they come to face fear of change, which carries about a renewal of mental sufferings. The stronger craving manifests into more intense form of dissatisfaction, because of the transitory nature of fulfillment. Because of this characteristic, Plato in The Republic propounded that “individual desires must be postpones in the name of the higher ideal” (Plato & Plochmann, 1974).
Attachment. Apart from the dissatisfaction and worldly craving, the all participants also reported that they often felt in various contexts that attachment also serve a major source for mental problems and sufferings. The defining of the term states that “attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space” (Ainsworth,
1973; Bowlby, 1969). A wide range of modern researches also affirms the existing relationships of attachment behavioral strategies with psychopathology in the various stages of human life
(DeKlyen & Greenberg, 2008; Dozier, Stovall-McClough & Albus, 2008).
Starting from Bowlby’s work in modern psychology, unsafe attachment type is acknowledged as the characterizing reason of mental problems, while safe attachment type is considered as the determining factor of healthy outcomes. According to Kesebir, Kavzoglu &
Ustundag (2011), “the nature’s original model of attachment type is safe attachment”. In participant’s viewpoint, this is attachment that creates ignorance of self, which ultimately results in the form of suffering of various mental problems.
The Obstacles of Mental Growth
In the participant’s viewpoint, the primary obstacles to mental growth were basically greed, hate, delusion, and pride, which functioned in them as major roadblocks in their psychological development. Virtually each of them reflected a mixture of all these four qualities PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 75 with various measures of its presence in their behavior. They also confirmed that stimulation of these qualities into more or less form is dependent on the effect of time and space. While talking about the problems of mental growth, almost all participants were found convinced with the fact that elimination of these qualities with the help of knowledge and practice could be used as an important approach in therapeutic purpose while dealing with mental problems and sufferings.
The brief discussions of all these hindrances of psychological progress are summarized and presented below.
Greed. Firstly, largest amount of the study participants contributing 90% of strength keep accordance with the fact that greed is the major problem of mental development. Among all of the research participants, 100% from both of ascetic group involving Hindu and Buddhist person, and 80% from the university students identified it as a major obstacle to mental growth.
Greed is a tendency of wanting more than we have or need, especially for money, wealth, food, pleasure or other possessions. It is driven by a fundamental sense of deprivation in human being in the form of a need for something that is unavailable or lacking. Fromm (1994) described that
“greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction”. It was his severe comment over those people who are running after excessive material wealth, although the sense was to make to feel themselves more social, moral and better than others. In this regard, Buddhist literature also proposed that “those who are dominated by greed as given to vanity, discontent, craftiness, and love of rich, sweet food and fine clothes” (Conze, 1959).
Hate. Secondly, about 60% of the participants of the research study reported that hate is also a hindrance in the development of positivity in their mind. In the group of participants who identified this concept involves 100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and only 20% PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 76 of household person studying in university who supported this as an obstacle to mental growth.
Hate is an emotional aspect in human which creates extreme or deep dislike against individuals, groups, objects, behaviors or ideas. Those dominated by this reflects an association with sharp tempers, feelings of anger, disgust and nature towards hostility. In psychoanalytical perspective,
“it is an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its happiness” (Freud, 1915). For those people who experience hate, the life is a perpetual round of fighting, getting back at enemies for real and imagined destructions, and defending their self against probable harm. According to
Conze (1959), “those in whom hate predominates tend to hold grudges, belittle others, and suffer from arrogance, envy, and stinginess”.
Delusion. Thirdly, half of the population (50%) considered delusion as a significant quality that blocks the path of mental growth that results into chaotic situations. In the group of participants who identified this concept includes 100% of the person belonging to Buddhist monks, 66.6% from Hindu Sanyasis and only 20% of university students who supported this as an obstacle to mental growth. Frager and Fadiman (1998) defined delusion as “a general state of confusion, lack of awareness, and vacillation” (p. 529). The presence of delusion in the participants created difficulties in making of their mind or in the deliverance of any action. The reason they reported for this mental state was due to their linkage with borrowed reactions and opinions not of own. Those in whom delusion was strongly active find inattentiveness and sloppiness in their work performance. According to Conze (1959), “people having no clear sense of perception marked with the behavior characterized by laziness, obstinacy, confusion, worry, and excitability, which at their worst can develop into neurosis or psychosis”.
The participants of research study also suggested that by performing karma yoga with a sense of awareness, one can transcend all of these hurdles of mental development into positive PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 77 strength. Greed can be transformed into compassion, delusion into knowledge, and hate into love. The BG through the teachings of karma yoga offers the opportunity for them to confront and control these obstacles for the enhancement of their mental ability.
Figure 2. Identified Subjective Approaches towards Mental Calmness
Question 3: Identifying Process of Karma Yoga
The third question in the interview schedule pertained to identifying the specific processes of karma yoga based on the participant’s own way of operation. They considered karma yoga as a useful medium for their mental peace while performing worldly struggle for emancipation of mind from existential suffering so that it can access consciousness by itself for the maxim of self deliverance. The various categories or themes identified by the participants are discussed below and also pictorially represented (Table 4 and Figure 3). The values presented in the table give detail of themes and their percentage recognized by the participants as their process of karma yoga.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 78
Table 4
Identified Processes of Karma Yoga
No. of
Category Sub-category participants Percentage
(N=10)
Egoless mightiness
Self-competency
Mental strengthening through Efficiency 6 60 mindfulness
Maintaining unceasing love and faith
for humanity
Practice of steadiness of mind under
stress
Equanimity Developing the view of impartiality 6 60
Being neutral in both pleasure and pain
Growth of patience through devotion
Practice of non-attachment
Leaving expectations while performing
action Absence of Working incessantly without getting 9 90 expectation attached
Detachment from inaction
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 79
Table 4 (Continued)
No. of
Category Sub-category participants Percentage
(N=10)
Try to remain in non-doer state
Protecting self from proudness
Devotion and knowledge as a medium Egolessness 7 70 for ego control
Being always a learner
Practice of selflessness
Control over personal wishes Renunciation of Having self-restraint 5 50 limited desires Living a life of simplicity
Performing work as duty
Being committed to the responsibilities
Inculcating positive self through Duty or dharma 10 100 regular action
Work for social well-being
Practice of love and ascetism
Developing quality of karma through
regular action 4 40 Gunas or qualities Managing karma according to gunas or
qualities PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 80
TTTTable 4 (Continued)
No. of
Category Sub-category participants Percentage
(N=10)
Work as offering to God
Devoting self to God's will Total surrender 5 50 Work as worship
Practice of love and dedication
Following right action according to
Eightfold Path
Middle Way Practice of mindfulness 3 30
Developing self-Excellency through
Eightfold Path
Process of Karma Yoga
Karma yoga refers to all human actions performed with skill, attention and fineness. The
BG says to do our work most genuinely and with skill and expertise we have mastered, and without any expectation of rewards or attachment (BG, 2:47). All participants of the research study convinced with the fact that “the practice of karma yoga served as an active medium to reduce morbidity associated with their psychological illnesses and improved the work quality to reach higher level” (Kumar & Kumar, 2013). The way they assimilated the process of karma yoga in daily life showed that their belief in Indian philosophy and practice of work with its binding coexisted with the facets of conscientiousness. The most interesting finding from the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 81 various processes used by the participants reflects a specific process of achieving perfection in selfless action itself.
The various categories or themes associated with the process of karma yoga were analyzed and the emerged outcome reflects that absence in expectation, duty or dharma, efficiency, egolessness, equanimity, gunas or qualities, renunciation of limited desires, total surrender, and practice of Middle Way played an influential role in their course of action or work. The detailed discussions of these themes are presented below.
Efficiency. The first process of karma yoga as suggested by the participants was efficiency. The participants showing strength of 60% laid an emphasis over the simultaneous nature of working of mind and body together during the performance of any action and argued that the action should be done with total efficiency. In the group of participants who follow this process includes 100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and only 20% of household person studying in university who supported this work procedure in their living. Efficiency signifies a level of performance that elucidates a specific process that utilizes all inputs in developing a significant output, including personal energy and time. It involves in itself full concentration, awareness, aptitude, and skill of the mind. Their consideration of self as an efficient person towards performing of karma yoga involves not an extraordinary skills in themselves, but it is necessary to be keen, to have awareness and concentration, to be directed towards chosen work and not distracted due to worldly enticements.
Equanimity. The second process of karma yoga as per the participant’s viewpoint was equanimity, which means that there is a balance of mind in both pleasure and pain. About 60% of the population of the study found with the mental suffering because of their swing of mind from positive and optimistic approach during pleasurable time, to a negative and pessimistic PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 82 approach during painful time, so desired a change over which there lies a control and that balance or control only came to them when they practiced equanimity. In the group of participants who identified this process involves 100% of the person belonging to Hindu
Sanyasis group, 50% from Buddhist monks and only 40% of household person studying in university who supported this as their process of performing karma yoga. In order to maintain equanimity, Niranjanananda (2002) suggest that “one has to practice other yogas along with karma yoga as well, and abandon any self-fulfilling expectations and attachments which enrich the ego, or which create a loss of self-image” (p. 72).
For achieving equanimity of mind, Pradhan (2013) stressed over the process of self- inspection and self-introspection to achieve self mastery and perfection, and propounded that
“wisdom is acquired by introspection, reflection and experimentation with one’s own self in the light of spiritual knowledge or self knowledge” (p. 61). In the words of Pradhan and Shukla
(2010), “it has redefined the goal of life from the pursuit of happiness to freedom or a state of equanimity revealing the eastern understanding of the order of the inner world”. According to
Paranjpe (2000) declaration also, “the determinism of nature on human mind is overcome only by the power of control nature that is nothing but equanimity itself”.
Absence of expectation. The third process of karma yoga suggests not to giving up all action entirely under any circumstances, but to perform necessary action with a sense of absence of expectation. In this regard, the BG proposed a beautiful sentiment that “it is not possible for embodied beings to renounce action, but it is possible to renounce the results of the action” (BG,
2:47). Herein, the use of the word ‘embodied’ reflects a very deep sense of the whole concept of karma yoga. It includes everything coming under the area of body, mind, intellect, and ego and its presentations. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 83
A greater percentage of the participants, being 90% (Table 3) stated that awareness of not having expectation while performing action was needed for the accomplishment of karma yoga.
In the group of participants who follow this process comprises 100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and about 80% of university students who supported this concept as a major process related to karma yoga. According to them, it kept the participants in a state of neutrality during the time of interaction and also helped them to be emotionally detached and work objectively in the life course. A Buddhist scholar named Wuling (2006) through his inquiry observed that “the absence of expectation while performing work results in the reduction of disappointments in life”. This view also supports the statement of Vivekananda (2015), which asserts the point that “karma not means only about the actions but also about its effect, and when one performs karma yoga with an awareness of non- expectation, it lefts no causal effect in the mind of doer”.
Egolessness. A large number of the participants contributing 70% of strength determined egolessness as the fourth process of karma yoga. Among the whole participants, 100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and only 40% of household person studying in university supported this concept as a major process to determine karma yoga in their living. The concept of egolessness or selflessness recommends that there is no such immortal soul or eternal self that subsists in each individual. According to Buddhist philosophy, “the individual is seen as a collection of elements, all of which are impermanent and constantly changing”. The term ‘ego’ or ‘I’ thus applies to an ever-changing collection of traits that constitute the individual.
Niranjanananda (2002) defines egolessness as “one who is free from the feeling of ego, and who is not swayed by the feeling of good and bad, walks the path of righteousness and righteous PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 84 action” (p. 72). According to Trungpa (2010), “the entire Buddhist path is based on the discovery of egolessness and the maturing of insight or knowledge that comes from egoless”.
The participants reflected the thought from their own experiences that the practice of egolessness while performing work brings them on the path of righteousness, which is the right or sinless path. In yogic philosophy, working under disharmonious state is wrong path, which takes away the person from their true nature and direction, and distracts the attention and awareness away from righteousness. In this regard, the BG also states that “by being egoless, one can follow the righteous path and avoid the sinful path of disharmony” (BG, 5:10).
Interestingly in the participant’s outlook, egolessness reflects a combination of traits such as simplicity, sincerity and desirelessness, and cultivation of it within requires sincerity in commitment, goal and direction, and simplicity in action and thought.
Renunciation of limited desires. As per the participant’s viewpoint, renunciation of limited desires is regarded as the fifth process of karma yoga. The half number of the study participants contributing 50% strength reported with this specific behavioral procedure. In the group of participants who follow this mindset involves 66.6% of Hindu Sanyasis, 50% from
Buddhist monks and only 40% of household person who supported this concept in their living.
They reflected that being in control of the self and being devoid of limited desire were the crucial aspect, which are indeed an abstract terms dealing with the assimilation of renunciation, the last aspect of karma yoga. They also reported that renunciation of limited desires from their life kept themselves always in a state of psychological comfort, which in turn experienced in the form of efficiency and calmness while performing of any action.
In the life of the participants, it is understood that when they begin any work, the motivating factor is a desire and it is not removal of this desire but the elimination of those PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 85 desires that is essential. Each one suggested different forms of limiting desires related to the outer or inner world that hold them back and which were propelling desires that pushing them towards forward actions. They laid emphasis on the use of raja yoga with karma yoga to accomplish this task, by following the various yogic procedures like pratyahara, dharana and dhyana. According to Niranjanananda (2002), “the whole structure of karma yoga tries to convert the negative attitude into the positive one”. Once the whole things transform into positive, then the person will have potential to come out beyond the duality of nature and into the state of transcendence.
Duty or dharma. The sixth process of karma yoga as described by the participants was their consideration of every action in the form of a duty. Interestingly, about 100% of the research participants demonstrated the thought in one voice that practice of karma yoga with an idea of duty produces a very deep experience of emotion, thought, faith, and behavior in a higher nature, and a belief of the presence of higher reality guiding them. They also considered their duty in relation to one’s individual, social, global and universal dharma. According to
Niranjanananda (2002), “when one develops the awareness of dharma as an inherent commitment, duty or obligation towards other beings, then one develops a giving or helping nature” (p. 74). Dharma itself is a synonym of humane or helpful actions and in it one should not be confined by the mean of some kind of personal benefit.
In this context, the BG describes the idea that “a wise man as one who is committed to his or her duty in the society” (BG, 3:3). The commitment towards work and sustaining disciplined outlook with respect to work represents an important part of wisdom. The integral philosophy of karma lies in doing work for the sake of work. In this regard, Jeste and Vahia
(2008) stressed that “no work done in order to keep a person appropriately productive should be PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 86 considered as wrong in terms of karma yoga’” (p. 203). Action performed with an expanded awareness of consciousness results ultimately in the form of an expanded vision of life, which is the zest of karma yoga.
Gunas or qualities. Among all the participants of the research study, 40% of them reported that awareness of the gunas or qualities were an important aspect while processing of karma yoga. In the group of participants who follow this procedural awareness includes 100% from Hindu Sanyasis group, 20% from university students and none from Buddhist monks who supported this mental attitude in their living. Famous indologist Bronkhorst (1994) divided these aspects into three categories as “tamasic, meaning a state of inertia or ignorance; rajasic, meaning a state of dynamism and activity combined with full ego involvement; and sattwic, meaning simplicity and equanimity in action”. According to Wilberg (2007), “these gunas or qualities…successively dominate, support, activate, and interact with each other and each can be passively suffered in many ways, not least as mental, emotional and somatic states of experience”. Therefore, the participant affirmed all gunas or qualities as a natural state of their being and suggested to be more aware of these to embrace and transcend them through the very nirguna stage or a state of liberated self.
The final statement that the participants recommended was to live the life karmically, an
Indian approach of living under flow of the works that come in life, flow with the gunas or qualities of life with total awareness and detachment. Generally, what happens if one not flows with life is an interaction with struggle, and if there is a struggle, then mental suffering is assured because of the superimposition of ego upon ideas and beliefs and therefore upon our actions.
Although, the mind is one and it passes into different kinds of states or conditions because of the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 87 affect of three qualities or gunas, but the succession of consciousness always continues by detached regular work.
Total surrender. The art of total surrender as the eighth process of karma yoga mentioned by 50% of the participants as seen in Table 4, reportedly helped them in the elimination of ego while performing action, and to be able to accept themselves for the concept or idea that “they were not the doer, God is the real doer”. Among the total participants who follow this mindset while doing work showed that 100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and none from the university students supported this as an influential process of karma yoga in their life. There is no sense of ego identity present here, when one surrenders their self entirely to the supreme consciousness and considers the statement, “my father and I are one, but my father is greater than me”. Niranjanananda (2002) observed that “when this kind of total surrender happens on the level of karma or action without any ego identification, self identification, and sense of gain, then purity of mind, action, speech and thought is experienced”
(p. 77). It is this state of mind which finally moulds the doer to a perfect practitioner of karma yoga.
This is the whole of the participant’s view about the process, because here the actions for them reflected as a source of pleasure. They were processing karma yoga in life to overcome the difficulties in attitudes, thoughts and actions, and according to them, one should not escape from life but escape into life. Due to this significance of total surrender, Mother Teresa (1999) admonished that “total surrender to God must come in small details as it comes in big details, it is nothing but the simple word, yes, I accept whatever you give, and I give whatever you take, and this is just a simple way for us to be holy”. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 88
Middle Way. The most unique and important aspect of Buddhist approach towards the living of life with continuous sense of self purification is the insight that dynamics of subjective experience unfolds the mysteries of human conditions in the present moment. The Eightfold
Path or the Middle Way as a process of work was overwhelmingly (100%) suggested by all
Buddhist participants, and collectively in all of the research participants about 30% strength of the population identified this as an important issue that played a major role in determining of action procedure. Bodhi (2010) considered the Middle Way as the proposed discipline of
Buddha’s teaching, which in broadest sense calls for practice rather than intellectual knowledge to lead the life from suffering of craving and dissatisfaction to the state of Buddha. According to
Buddhist philosophy, most people want the highest possible amount of physical pleasure and the others, who acknowledged the vanity of this approach, tend towards self-mortification. The
Buddhist way of life is moderation (The Dhammapada, Lal, 1967, p. 22).
The eightfold Path or the Middle Way embodies right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, right thought, and right understanding. According to Buddhist philosophy, there are three essentials also present in the
Buddhist discipline and practice: (a) ethical conduct, (b) mental discipline, and (c) wisdom. The categorization of Eightfold Path is made according to these essentials of Buddhist discipline.
First, ethical conduct is based on the fundamental admonitions of Buddhist philosophy involving universal love and compassion for all natural beings. It includes right speech, right action, and right livelihood.
Right speech. Right speech involves removal of such kind of talk that might brings disharmony or disunity from what is so called ethical for the others human beings. It includes abstention from lies, slander, and harsh sense in language. Instead of this, one should speak the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 89 truth, use words that are pleasant, friendly and useful for others, and what is suitable in the context of time and place. Idea also lays emphasis on the practice of silence, if one cannot say something.
Right action. Right action involves moral, peaceful, and honorable conduct in the behavior. It suggests removal of destructive action, stealing, illegitimate sexual relations, dishonest behavior, and the use of intoxication which cloud the human mind. It teaches about the helpful behavior to lead a life of peace and honor.
Right livelihood. The ideal of right livelihood is based on the teaching to earn an honorable, blameless, and harmless life, and for accomplishment of this one should manage abstention from any kind of violence. It includes removal from killing animals, cheating, dealing in weapons, and intoxication.
Second, mental discipline of the Middle Way develops from the realm of moral restraints to the training and control of mind. It includes right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
Right effort. Right effort suggests the exercise of active will that can be used for prevent arising of a unwholesome state of mind, removal of those states that make arousal, facilitation and inculcation of wholesome states of mind, and regular development of this states of mind into the state of perfection.
Right mindfulness. Right mindfulness means to be aware or attentive of inner or outer happenings that involve the functions of body, feelings and sensations, the mental activities, and arising of ideas, thoughts, and conceptions. Through the practice of right mindfulness, one learns how the things appear and disappear, how they develop, how they suppress, and so on. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 90
Right concentration. Right concentration teaches about the development of mental muscles through practice to accomplish the other task of the Eightfold Path.
Third, wisdom is presented as the culmination of the Eightfold Path that makes one understood why this path should be followed to eliminate cravings and dissatisfaction and to attain the enlightenment. It is made up of right thought and right understanding.
Right thought. Right thought means to be aware of selfless detachment, nonviolence, and universal love all natural beings.
Right understanding. Right understanding focuses on the knowledge of the things as they appear which can be conquered by working deeply with the Four Noble Truths. According to Buddhist philosophy, right understanding contains two different levels of understanding: (a) the first includes knowledge, accumulated memory, and an intellectual store of subject, and (b) the second is thorough understanding of things in its natural form without any subjective contamination.
Middle Way
Total surrender
Gunas or qualities
Duty or dharma
Renunciation of limited desires Percentage N=10 Egolessness
Absence of expectation
Equanimity
Efficiency
0 20 40 60 80 100
Figure 3. Identified Processes of Karma Yoga PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 91
Question 4: Identifying Qualities of Karma Yoga
Karma is an essential part of human life and knowing its important and peculiar aspects help in changing of one’s attitude towards work. Indeed, the practice of karma yoga inculcates certain qualities in behavior that play a major role in the attainment of mental calm and stability, and thus individual gets exposed to a new dimension of life and performance in it. These qualities helps us in self-transformation, covering the gap between individual and the world, conscious evolution, the art of occult giving, self integration, inner fulfillment, and developing a sense of universality.
The fourth question in the interview schedule pertained to the identification of qualities or characteristics in behavior generally reflected by the participants while performing the karma yoga. The various categories or themes under the title ‘qualities of karma yoga’ were identified by the participants are presented in Table 5. These category and sub-category were developed by the way of careful analysis of the participant’s interviews based on the case vignette and its practical reflection in their own life during work. The existing themes extracted out are discussed below and also pictorially represented (Table 5 and Figure 4). The values presented in the table give detail of themes and their percentage identified by the participants as their work attitudes.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 92
Table 5
Identified Qualities of Karma Yoga
No. of
Category Sub-category participants Percentage
(N=10)
Having elimination of cravings
Leaving others free on their own Desirelessness 5 50 will
Serving people without wanting
Having self-centeredness
Developing self through
Oneness of self proximity of God 4 40 and environment Working in integration of inner
and outer self
Impartiality in perception
Having belief over self-
competency
Putting divinity into action
Self-emptiness Maintaining self-confidence 6 60
during struggling time
Developing self-esteem through
dissolution into work PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 93
Table 5 (Continued)
No. of
Category Sub-category participants Percentage
(N=10)
Mental strengthening through
karma yoga
Having orientation towards
Self-control positivity 8 80
Control over sensual demands
Developing balance through
patience
Feeling rightness through
belonging of Eightfold Path
Performing non-violence in living
Self-righteousness Ability to entreat forgiveness in 9 90
misdeed
Acceptability of all kinds of
results
Developing mental maturity
Situational through work experience 6 60 stability Ability to be patient in all
situations PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 94
Table 5 (Continued)
No. of
Category Sub-category participants Percentage
(N=10)
Individualization in wisdom Emotional Control over emotional agitation 7 70 maturity Practice of remaining calm
Self-introspection while doing
Self-awareness work 10 100
Regular contemplation over self
Maintenance of harmony and
compatibility
Being humble and serene
Tranquility Self-contentment through flow 3 30
experience
Developing self-connectedness
Living life with love
Qualities of Karma Yoga
This part of the research study threw some noticeable attributes in the behavior of the participants that directly came to them through the regular practice of karma yoga. These qualities were not mentioned directly, but the careful analysis of the interview of participants paved the way for the researcher to constitute a series of qualities, which were providing support PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 95 during the time of work in every conditions of their life. The various qualities or characteristics as emerged out in the participant’s behavior were desirelessness, oneness with self, self- emptiness, self-control, self-righteousness, situational stability, self-awareness, emotional maturity, and tranquility, which served as a medium for their steadiness and growth of work performance throughout their life course. These qualities of karma yoga help the individual to work for the sake of work, and out of them develop the power that transforms the negative into positive one (Vivekananda, 2015). The detailed discussion of these qualities is presented below.
Desirelessness. The thought of desireless action or desirelessness as an influential characteristic was observed in almost half of the participants of the research study, contributing
50% of strength for its recognition that was majorly reflected by those who were ascetic (100%) by their living and none from the people who were students in the university living in household.
Contradictory to all intentional actions having desire, desirelessness was more obviously found in Sanyasi or monk class of people for their consideration of moral action or for the purpose of liberation. Framarin (2003) interpreted the term desirelessness on the first hand, “elimination of those desires that are somehow connected to one’s own satisfaction and sensual pleasure”, and on the second hand, “no desires are acceptable and it requires elimination of all desires”. In relation of its interpretation the BG states that “when a man completely casts off, O Arjuna, all the desires of the mind and is satisfied in the self by the self, then is he said to be one of steady wisdom” (BG, 2:55).
According to the participants, desirelessness does not mean the absence of desire in such a form that are available in any mental hospital, living in a corner without any wanting, dissolved in their own selves all the time. So they clearly added the second line about desirelessness that it means being in the state of delightedness in the self by the self, and so stated about the quality of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 96 not wanting anything. The actual idea lies in the statement that “I am the possessor of infinite within me, what can these petty things mean for me”. Kriyananda and Yogananda (2007) expressed the view that “what is done return to the natural state of the doer, because one’s natural state is to be happy, but it is desire that always place a condition upon that happiness”.
They further added that to be desireless does not mean to be a zombie, but it means to be happy right now, do what we need to do, get what we need to get, but always have the sense that we are complete in ourselves.
Oneness of self and environment. The sense of oneness of self and environment as a second quality was observed in a smaller number of the participants, adding 40% of strength for the cognition of this characteristic in themselves. In the group of participants who reflected this quality includes 100% of the person from Buddhist monks, 33.3% from Hindu Sanyasis and only
20% of household person who agreed to this quality for the consideration of this trait in their living. The Buddhist principle of self and environment suggests that human life and its environment are indivisible. It seems to be dual in nature but actually it is one. Although we perceive the nature or things around us as separate from our self, there lies a dimension of life that is one with the entire inner and outer world. In participant’s view also there is no division between their selves and the perceived environment. They unhesitatingly reported that for a long time in life, they were reacting so much to the environment, but when they realized about this reflection as of their own inner being, they felt some sort of empowerment within that made them efficient to bring change in that environment.
Famous Buddhist priest Nichiren wrote that “life means the subjective self that experiences the effects of past actions and is capable of creating a new cause for the future”
(Yampolsky, 1990). Thus the environment becomes the objective realm where the effects of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 97 one’s actions take place, because of this reason everyone in the world experiences unique environment. There was a tendency found in the participant’s life that they perceived the environment through the self and alters according to the change in their own inner state of life.
Self-emptiness. Contradictory to the concept of ego, about 60% of the participants of the research study reflected the quality of self-emptiness through the practice of karma yoga.
Among all the participants, 100% of the ascetic group of participants and 20% of household person reflected this quality in their behavior. According to Buddhist philosophy, being in the state of emptiness is fullness and this attitude mould one to reflect its comprehensiveness in nature. The participants showed association with the idea of emptiness in them and so practiced regularly egolessness in behavior in their daily life. This particular attribute made them eligible to establish their ego in its complete form. In regards to the people who bear this sense of emptiness within, the BG says “He attains peace into which all desires enter as water enters the ocean, which, filled from all sides, remains unmoved; but not the man who is full of desires”
(BG, 2:70).
The participants desired to perform specific action, but such desire does not affect themselves because of their establishment in fullness of ego or bearing sense of the universal ego. They perform the actions with the knowledge that “they are not the performer but only a medium of manifestation of God’s will”. The same illustration is made by Hopkins (2014) who proposed the idea that “phenomena are the things which are empty of inherent existence, and inherent existence is that of which phenomena are empty”. The participants who reported this kind of behavioral characteristic utilized reasoning as a premier method to establish sense of self- emptiness while encountering their life situations. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 98
Self-control. A large number of the participants contributing 80% strength reported the fact that self-control was the quality, which is experienced by them in adverse life situation that came to them in behavior through the regular practice of karma yoga and other yogas. In the group of participants who showed this behavioral quality includes 100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and 60% of household person studying in university who associated this attribute in their living. Self-control is a kind of inhibitory control, which develops an ability to control one’s emotions and behavior during the time of risk or adversities (DeLisi, 2014). Since it is used in executive function, so self-control also plays an important role as a cognitive process that is essential for the regulation of one’s behavior in order to finish the specific goal (Diamond,
2013). In the participant’s viewpoint, self-control was experienced by them as a central function and an important key to get success in life. The exertion of this behavioral trait appears to depend upon efficiency level of self, and hence they suggested the practice of work as a great medium for development of self-efficiency. Research on determining the importance of self- control showed its role in life for the prediction of good adjustment, less pathology, better grades and interpersonal success (Tangney, Baumeister & Boone, 2004).
Self-righteousness. The greatest number of the participants assimilating 90% of support suggested the cognition of self-righteousness in selves as an influential quality which came to them because of the practice of karma yoga and having belief in philosophically proven moral conducts of India. In the group of participants who showed this characteristic in their selves includes 100% of the person belonging to the ascetic class and 80% of household person who supported this attribute due to their practice of duty or dharma. Contradictory to the modern definitions of self-righteousness, which defines it as a feeling or display of moral superiority derived from a sense that one’s virtue are greater than others (Teitelbaum, 2000), it is basically PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 99 an origination of spirit resulting within individual in the form of God honoring righteousness.
According to the participants, they were involved in both kind of work originating from flesh as well as from scriptures; however, the determining factor as to whether the sense of self- righteousness is congruent to God or not. In this context, the teachings of karma yoga in the BG by Lord Krishna himself put an impression of self-righteousness in the mind of the performer, and provide a sense of surety or acceptability to the God’s will.
In the participant’s viewpoint, the scriptures like the BG and the others necessities that one should must develop a distinction between the term self-righteousness and the principles of being right imparted by the religious teachings. Negative sense of self-righteousness characterized by the reflection of pride in the individual, whereas a true or positive sense of self- righteousness characterized by manifestation of humility in behavior. Henry (1996) pointed out that “self-righteous person understand that these various attributes in the self are simply the consequences of abiding in true self, which is the real source and apart from that they can do nothing (John, 15:5).
Situational stability. Among whole of the participants, about 60% of them reflected the characteristic of situational stability in their behavior in cross-situational context. Among them,
66.6% from Hindu Sanyasis group, 50% from Buddhist monks and 60% from the university students considered this characteristic in their practical living. It is a kind of mental strength through which specific trait of stability maintenance is expressed in the exact same, or in a functionally equal way in varying situational settings. Situational stability characterized into the form of a mood state as well as a relative stable trait (e.g., life satisfaction). These were interestingly noticed and important to discuss because it is normal for a human being to change their behavior from one situation to the next. The participants demonstrated the thought of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 100 remaining neutral or being in the state of equanimity while encountering all even and odds of life situations, because of their belief in impermanence and the existence of selflessness. The BG also affirms this view by saying that “one whose mind is not shaken by adversity, who does not hanker after happiness, who has become free from blind attachment, fear and anger, is indeed the man of steady wisdom” (BG, 2:57).
Emotional maturity. A significant number of the participants contributing 70% support revealed the quality of emotional maturity in selves, which includes 66.6% from Hindu Sanyasis,
100% of Buddhist monks and 60% of household people. This particular behavioral characteristic came to them through the awareness of karma yoga and its processing in life. The participants reflected the view that they unlike animals, which react to the stimulus quickly, bore the quality of remaining mature emotionally during interaction with any stimulating phenomena and reflected a sense of stability over that circumstances. According to Menninger (1999),
“emotional maturity involves a constructive ability of dealing with reality”, in other words, it refers to “the ability of facilitating and guiding emotional tendencies to reach intended goals”
(Yusoff, Rahim, Pa & Mey, 2011, p. 294).
Unless the individual becomes strong in emotional processing, acquires an adequate skills to deal with emotional situations affecting in or on life, the development of individual’s personality is not fulfilled. This idea is justified in the research, which showed the relationship between emotional maturation and coping among athletes, and asserted the finding that coping among the individual constrained significantly by the sense of emotional maturation (Nicholls,
Polman, Morley, & Taylor, 2009). So far as the reading of the BG is concerned, Balodi and
Raina (2014) through their research explored that the person who read and followed the teachings of the BG in their daily life was better in emotional maturity and values as compared to PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 101 the person who did not. Thus, the practice of karma yoga and its implication in the form of emotional maturity played a significant role in the life of the participants in encountering with emotionally sensitive matters as well as to accomplish the task of personality development.
Self-awareness. Greatest of all the qualities, a total number of the participants (100%) showed the characteristic of self-awareness in theirs selves, and reflected the view that having faith in Indian scriptures and the understanding of nature of self-reflection made them eligible to practice the sense of self-awareness in life. According to Warmerdam (2014), self-awareness refers to having a clear perception of one’s own personality, including strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, thoughts, motivation, and emotions. Among the participants, self-awareness was described trough systematic mental training that creates meta-awareness, efficiency for self- regulation, and a positive association between self and environment that transcends self-centered requirements and develops self-transcendence that finally results into pro-social activities in their behavior (Vago & David, 2012).
Development of self-awareness in the individual made them able to change thoughts, interpretations, and conversations running in the mind. Further, changing the interpretations allowed them to change their emotions to any subject. It was found as an influential attribute in accomplishing achievements that majorly came to them through the practice of the teachings as described in Indian scriptures regarding the personality and behavior of human being.
Tranquility. A smaller number of participants, being 30% stated about the feeling of tranquility in their self during all sorts of personal and worldly happenings. Among the total population 66.6% of Hindu Sanyasis, 50% of Buddhist monks and none from the university students reflected this quality in their life experience. These were the participants basically coming from the ashram or monastery life reflected the feeling of perpetual peace or tranquility PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 102 because of their attention towards the God and ignorance towards the world affairs. They were the practitioners of severe disciplined life for their self-perfection and thus not suggested any longing for worldly pleasure or pain. According to Ng, Yau, Chan, Chan and Ho (2005),
“tranquility involves an absence of motion or disturbance in the midst of all internal or external turmoil, retains a sense of direction in the midst of confusion, and reflects resilience in the face of all hardships and sufferings” (p. 46).
These participants found with the embodiments of core values rooted in the religious and philosophical traditions of Indian soil. The word tranquility appears in various books ranging from Indian religious treatises from Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., to the modern policy and planning guidance documents. In Buddhist literature, it is termed as passaddhi refers to the tranquil state of body, mind and consciousness on the way to Buddhahood. About the quality of tranquility, the BG also proposes that “but the self-controlled man, moving amongst objects with the senses under restraint, and free from attraction and repulsion, attains to peace, and in that peace all pains are destroyed, for the intellect of the tranquil-minded soon becomes steady” (BG,
2:64-65).
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 103
Figure 4. Identified Qualities of Karma Yoga
Insight Gained from the Study
At the outset, it needs to mention that the understanding related to Sthitaprajna or Siddha
Vyavahara of the BG as part of the social education was widely accepted by the research participants. This was in concurrence with the view of cross-cultural psychologists that discussions about the need to explore the cultural inheritance for self learning and regulation are crucial for the modern researchers to implement within social sphere (Shapiro Jr. & Shapiro,
1979; Triandis, 2000). The awareness on the need to understand the culturally built experience of psychological resilience in terms of Siddha Vyavahara was commendable and was also viewed as an absolute requirement by all the study participants.
The present study reveals that the concept of Sthitaprajna exist in the mind of the research participants either they were living a life of ascetic or household, as such it is described in the BG, and they also confirmed that it is not in their range of understanding because of their PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 104 low level of spiritual awareness. Therefore, for the reason of its practicality to them, only the behavioral set left by these kind of person in the form of Siddha Vyavahara is applied to manifest the behavior like psychological resilience in life. Careful scrutiny of their responses unearth the condition that those who follows the teachings of this particular mode of conduct in their daily work reveals certain kinds of attitudes and approaches for their sustenance of mental calmness, which in turn paves the way for the adaptation of various processes of karma yoga that closely interlink with resilience experience in them through its developed qualities.
The various attitudes towards action includes belief in impermanence, faith in the law of karma, faith in the sacred teachings, karma as a transformational force, excellence in work as karma yoga, and playing a universal social role, which let the participants towards a condition to adopt their work as responsibility without getting affected by its good and bad. These attitudes towards action are carried out by varied aspects of subjective approach through which they try to maintain their mental calmness. First, they assimilated in their knowledge that dissatisfaction, worldly cravings and attachment are the main reason behind any mental sufferings in life, and second, they considered greed, hate and delusion as the chief obstacles for the growth of mind.
These subjective approaches along with the previously described attitudes towards work were found as the building blocks for the performance of karma yoga by the participants resulting from the knowledge of Sthitaprajna. To accomplish the work related to daily life, the participants reflected their access of karma yoga through various procedures that includes efficiency, equanimity, absence of expectation, egolessness, renunciation of limited desires, duty or dharma, gunas or qualities, total surrender, and Middle Way. The awareness of these processes during work as a scientific procedure provided the better level of psychological stability in the life of the research participants. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 105
Careful examination of the processing of karma yoga reveals the fact that it causes to happen the inculcation of several behavioral qualities in the individual through the medium of dynamic interchange, i.e. efficiency changes into self-control and vice versa, similarly equanimity into tranquility, absence of expectation into emotional maturity, egolessness into self-emptiness, renunciation of limited desires into desirelessness, duty or dharma into self- righteousness, gunas or qualities into self-awareness, total surrender into oneness of self and environment , and Middle Way into situational stability. The process-result phenomenon of this kind perceptibly demonstrated in the individual that the experience of psychological resilience was manifesting itself through the expression of stress resilience, bouncing back and normalization in behavior, which is indeed an inferential product of dynamic orientation of karma yoga of the BG.
The results originating from the research participants, when compared with the varied viewpoints of Mahatma Gandhi, B. G. Tilak and B. R. Ambedkar over the concept of
Sthitaprajna of the BG, showed that most of the responses of them were tilt towards the ‘selfless action’, i.e. a supposition of Mahatma Gandhi for its social utility. This inclination was 80% in strength in total population including 100% from the group of Hindu Sanyasis, 50% from
Buddhist monks, and 80% from the person who were university students living in household. A total of 70% of participant’s responses were found resembling with the proposition of B. R.
Ambedkar showing application of Sthitaprajna in the form of ‘knowledge based behavior’ for the beneficiary of the social environment. These involved largest number from Buddhist monks contributing 100% strength, 66.6% from Hindu Sanyasis, and 60% from the household group, who supported this observation for employment in social behavior. At last, only 30% of the total population showed their agreeableness with the proposition of B. R. Tilak that shows utility of PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 106
Sthitaprajna through the way of ‘social education’, which includes 66.6% from Hindu Sanyasis group, 20% from the household group, and none from the group of Buddhist monks.
A flowchart representing dynamic orientation of karma yoga into the manifestation of psychological resilience is shown in Figure 5 below.
The next chapter presents summary and conclusion of the current research study.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 107
Flowchart of Construction of Psychological Resilience in the Gita the Light Resilience of Bhagavad Flowchart Psychological of Construction of
Figure Figure 5.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 108
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 108
Chapter 5
Summary and Conclusion
Religion and historical narratives are always an influential source of information in defining of appropriate emotions of people and their behavioral appearance in a culture. The BG as a religious text of Hindu people and its narrative emerging through the dialogue of Lord
Krishna and Arjuna is instrumental in learning the composite of psychological resilience of
Indian people who acknowledges various cultural nuances in their living. There is a need to study what they express with regard to their personal meaning about their experience of resiliency, and so what were the processes and qualities and how were they addressed. This research study was focused on the exploration of the recognition of psychological resilience in the people who have had studied the BG and for some extent follows its teachings in their life.
The current effort would help to develop more sensitivity and understanding about the
Sthitaprajna or Siddha Vyavahara and its practice through karma yoga that would provide competency in tackling adverse situations among its followers, and help to bridge the gap by involving religious and spiritual values in the social education of Indian people.
The findings of the present study reveal that those who follow karma yoga in terms of
Siddha Vyavahara reflect specific kinds of mental attitudes towards action, such as belief in impermanence, faith in the law of karma, faith in the sacred teachings, karma as a transformational force, excellence in work as karma yoga, and playing a universal social role.
These attitudes towards action are carried out by them varied aspects of subjective approach through which they try to maintain their level of mental calmness. Firstly, they represented dissatisfaction, worldly cravings and attachment as the main reason behind their mental PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 109 sufferings, and secondly, they described greed, hate and delusion as the chief obstacles of mental growth.
These subjective approaches and the mental attitudes paved the way for the development of certain procedural appearance in the form of process of karma yoga in the research participants, which includes efficiency, equanimity, absence of expectation, egolessness, renunciation of limited desires, duty or dharma, gunas or qualities, total surrender, and Middle
Way. These processes emerging from the knowledge of Sthitaprajna and its related behavior shows that along with solidifying of psychological stability during work also inculcated several behavioral characteristics in individual. These qualities were self-control, tranquility, emotional maturity, self-emptiness, desirelessness, self-righteousness, oneness of self and environment, self-awareness, and situational stability.
Careful examination of this process-quality orientation of karma yoga reveals the fact that it causes to happen a dynamic interchange from both sides, where efficiency changes into self- control and vice versa, similarly equanimity into tranquility, absence of expectation into emotional maturity, egolessness into self-emptiness, renunciation of limited desires into desirelessness, duty or dharma into self-righteousness, gunas or qualities into self-awareness, total surrender into oneness of self and environment , and Middle Way into situational stability.
The happening of this kind of phenomenon perceptibly demonstrates that the experience of psychological resilience was a direct behavioral manifestation through the expression of stress resilience, bouncing back and normalization in individual, which is indeed an inferential product of dynamism of karma yoga of the BG.
The understanding of Sthitaprajna in the light of varied outlooks of Mahatma Gandhi, B.
R. Ambedkar, and B. G. Tilak were analyzed, and the outcome suggested its utility through the PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 110 application of ‘selfless action’, ‘knowledge based behavior’, and ‘social education’ in personal as well as social behavior. The cross-comparison of this revelation with the research participants demonstrated that they were mostly inclined to the perspective of Mahatma Gandhi and B. R.
Ambedkar, and very few showed their agreeableness with the thinking of B. G. Tilak.
Implications of the Study
In the present world, the understanding of psychological resilience is demanding for to overcome the adverse situations and negative life events, and also effective for treatment intervention in clinical set ups. In country like India where people experiences various cultural nuances in their living, the understanding of the present study can add up some religious and spiritual insights of the BG, which is itself a Hindu religious text and most ancient record of lifestyle of Indian people. The unique strategy of work-processing in the form of karma yoga can provide a way for the people to encounter the daily life problems through work activation without getting affected by its good and bad and with regular self development. Under the theme of ‘social psychology of education’, the findings of current research study can be associated with the religious teaching programs of Hindu people governing in India or abroad.
Limitations of the Study
The present research study was an effort to understand the psychological resilience in the
BG through the lens of social construction and social identity theory, which included only few numbers of the participants belonging from Hindu Sanyasis, Buddhist monks, and the university students who were living in household. Since, the sample size was very few, it could not faithfully fulfill the consideration of the present concept as a socially constructed reality, but it helped the researcher to learn the methodological challenges related to the perception and exposition of any behavior as socially constructed reality. In India where a large number of sects PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 111 and orders of Hindu religion exist, it is essential to incorporate those for the better understanding of psychological resilience that would provide inclusion of various cultural practices and norms, and so yield this concept for better utilization for social benevolence.
Directions for Future Research
This research was an initial approach to understand psychological resilience in the BG as a socially constructed behavioral reality. As this study includes participants only from
Ramakrishna Mission Ashram, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Buddhist monastery and university going students, a better kind of research having same orientation could be develop by others with the inclusion of other orders of Hindu religious people as well as person from various class and sects within Indian society. Development of a scale could help to measure the processes of karma yoga and its characteristic, and further a factor analysis and structural equation modeling could be done to assure how far a process is associated with a particular behavioral quality. In this regard, use of correlation statistics can state clearly that whether karma yoga influences the psychological resilience in individual or not.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 112
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Appendix A
Informed Consent
I, Amit Prakash, am an M. Phil student at Christ University, Bangalore. I am conducting a research study titled “The social construction of psychological resilience in the light of the
Bhagavad-Gita”. For the purpose of the study I wish to do a focused interview of persons having knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita and implication of its ideals in their life. This interview basically would try to collect information about karma yoga of the Bhagavad Gita and its relation to the coping behavior during the time of significant stress and adversity.
All the information you disclose will be kept confidential and its anonymity will be maintained. Therefore you can feel safe that you will by no means be harmed through participation in the research study. Participation is voluntary and you have the right to withdraw at any time with no liability of any kind. You may also be informed about the results of the study if you so wish.
If other researchers ask for the data to verify the findings, it will exclude all personal identifying information of the research participants.
For any other information please feel free to contact me – Mobile: 7052969472 or [email protected]
If you are willing to take part in this research study, kindly fill in the attached ‘Informed
Consent Form’ and hand it over to me. Thank you!
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 132
Appendix B
Informed Consent Form
Code:
Title of the study: The social construction of psychological resilience in the light of the
Bhagavad Gita
I ______have fully understood the nature and purpose of the study in which I have been requested to participate. I understand that what I will say in the interview will be used as data for the research study, and not otherwise. I also understand that confidentiality will be maintained and my identity will not be disclosed anywhere in the study. I know that participation in the study is voluntary and I am free to leave from the study at any time, without having to give any reason. Any question that have occurred to me, have been answered satisfactorily.
I voluntarily give my consent to take part in the study.
Name: ______
Age: ______Gender: ______
Type of Education: Ph. D / M Phil. / MA / M Sc. / Other: ______
Mode of Life: Sanyas / Household Studied Bhagavad Gita: Yes / No
Language: ______Religion: ______
Varna: Brahman / Kshatriya / Vaishya / Shudra Social Class: UC / UMC / LMC / LC
State: ______Phone: ______
Contact Address: ______
______
Date: Signature: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 133
Appendix C
Case Vignette
In the heroic poetry of the Bhagavad-Gita, the fact of interest lies embedded in three different experiential exposition of Arjuna, where at first he declares not to fight the war and sank down in sorrow and silence (BG, 1:47), after that he introspects and surrenders himself as a disciple in front of Lord Krishna for guide and help (BG, 2:7), and at last he recovers himself to fight in the war and says that “clouds have cleared; my senses are back, all your gift with my doubts vanished and now I am ready to act as you direct” (BG, 18:73). This sequence of events in the
Bhagavad Gita collectively provides an epitome of a positive behavior, which we know today in the form of psychological resilience. When we explore the reason behind this behavioral manifestation, we come to acknowledge the knowledge of yoga that is admonished by Lord
Krishna to Arjuna to fulfill his duties. In between whole scenario of the Bhagavad Gita, there is a prolific discussion on various kinds of yoga, forming three core modes of yoga as karma yoga, jnana yoga and bhakti yoga. There is a sense that Arjuna actualized yoga and became
Sthitaprajna, and finally performed his all actions following the pattern of Siddha Vyavahara.
This heroic event creates an analogy of human life, where we find ourselves like Arjuna battling for psychological existence to maintain our well-being. You can typify yourself as
‘struggling human self’ like Arjuna and can produce an experiential description of your coping behavior or psychological resilience from your course of life, following the system of karma yoga of the Bhagavad Gita.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA 134
Appendix D
Interview Schedule
1. What kind of mental attitude you generally follow to perform karma yoga?
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2. What is your personal view about mental calm and how does it help you to withstand
with psychological adversity?
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3. How do you see the importance of Siddha Vyavahara identified in the Bhagavad Gita for
positive living?
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4. How do you perform karma yoga to get done your actions?
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5. Which are the qualities you realize in your behavior that make you resilient?
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6. Any other comments?
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