The eighteen chapters of the Gītā can be grouped into three sets of six chapters each. The first set focuses predominantly on karma-yoga, the second set on bhakti-yoga, and the third on jñāna-yoga. But to some extent all three topics can be found throughout all the chapters. The first chapter is introductory and doesn’t outline any specific yoga. It is titled “The Path through Despondency” (Viṣāda-yoga) because it describes Arjuna’s dejected mental-emotional state after he surveys the armies on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra. It can be considered as a yoga, or transformational means, only in the sense that dejection itself, when it leads to self-inquiry, becomes the basis of authentic practice. In the state of dejection, one’s ordinary absorption in materialistic pursuits is slackened, and thus deliberation on God becomes a distinct possibility.
If you want to change samskaras, you have to do the opposite of it repeatedly, regularly, consciously…right now your mind is wild and your chitta keeps on throwing up thoughts and desires and you act on it. You have to use your buddhi to be aware of every thought you are having and ask yourself, where is this thought, feeling, behavior taking me? …If your understanding is improper, then your actions will be improper.
