Important Virtues of Human Life-Fearlessness (Part 1)

“Fearlessness, purification of one's existence, cultivation of spiritual knowledge, charity, self-control, performance of sacrifice, study, austerity and simplicity; nonviolence, truthfulness, freedom from anger; renunciation, tranquillity, aversion to fault finding, compassion and freedom from covetousness; gentleness, modesty and steady determination; vigor, forgiveness, fortitude, cleanliness, freedom from envy and the passion for honor-these transcendental qualities, son of Bharata, belong to godly men endowed with divine nature”
Above are the verses from 16th Chapter (Adhyaya) of “Shimad-Bhagwadgeeta” which illustrate important values of human life. Lord Krishna differentiates the transcendental qualities from the demonic one in this chapter.
Fearlessness is important value of human life. Fear demonstrate lack of knowledge and self-confidence. Fear destroys capabilities of human. Continuous cultivation of knowledge and practice helps to overcome fear. There are many examples of people who have capabilities but could not convert it in to results only because of fear of failure. Person who is always in fear will not have courage to practice other important values and principles in life. We need to take stand on acceptance and non-acceptance of others behaviour in many situations of our life and fear of disappointing others restricts us. In this case, people keep on disappointing themselves more than others. Fearlessness gets converted in to carelessness sometimes due to absence of other values stated in the verse and that is truthfulness, modesty, self-study about karma and responsibilities with respect to key performance areas in management words.
Is fear always bad?? Think of this example, you are crossing a highway and you think that you don’t have to be careful because you are fearless. Is this right?
There is a difference between fearlessness and fool-hardiness. You need to be cautious in the above situation. “Abhayam” means fearlessness with caution. There is a need to identify the source and consequences of fear. This is the meaning of “Swadhaya” from above verse. Hence there is need to understand the consolidated effect and interdependent meaning of values stated above.
Let’s take another example you come across a lion locked in steel cage, one should not fear it. However, if you find a lion at a very short distance and roaming freely then one should fear it. Not only fear it but protect oneself from the danger. Hence action saves/protects you from the danger. Fearlessness is not to become actionless. You need to channelize the fear to protect you through action and the same is called self-mastery in the above case.
We have fear of being rejected, we have fear of failures, we have fear of what people think about us, we have fear of loosing what we have (Prestige, Position, Money, Materials, People etc.). Fear is battel of mind. Each of the above fear needs to be tackled in unique way. Are you interested in reading further then please do wait for my another interesting article on the same.