pashyaitaam paanduputraanaamaachaarya mahatim chamoom |
vyoodham drupadaputrena tava shishyena dheemata || 3 ||
 
Teacher, behold this mighty Pandava army, that your intelligent student Dhrishtadyumna, son of Drupada, has organized in a military formation for battle.
 
aachaarya: teacher
tava: your
dheemata: intelligent
shishyena: student
drupadaputrena: son of Drupada
vyoodham: organized in military formation
paanduputraanaam: of the Pandavas
etaam: this
mahatim: mighty
chamoom: army
pashya: see / behold
 
The Gita has many conversations-within-conversations, so it is useful to keep track. In the first two verses, Sanjaya and Dhritrashtra were talking, and in this verse, Duryodhana is addressing his teacher Drona.
 
Here we begin to explore another theme of the Gita which is that of mental equanimity, or as sometimes it is referred to, “even keelness”. We are at our best when our mind, the part of our brain that feels emotions, is calm and not agitated. When our mind is calm it enables our intellect, the part of our brain that evaluates options and makes rational decisions, to give us the most logical way out of a situation. In the TV show “Star Trek”, Mr. Spock was always consulted to provide the best decision because he would never take emotions into considerations when making a decision.
 
In the last verse we saw that Duryodhana wanted to ensure that Drona was sufficiently motivated to fight against his students the Pandavas, lest he become weak due to having a soft spot for them. So Duryodhana attempted to disturb Drona’s equanimity by reminding him that the leader of the military formation that is in front of them is the son of Drupada.
 
Drupada and Drona had a chequered past. They were the best of friends, but due to some misunderstandings, they turned into sworn enemies. By reminding Drona that Drupada’s son Dhrishtadyunma is leading the opposing army, Duryodhana wanted to stir up Drona’s emotions so that he think that his students purposely put Dhrushtadyumna in front, just to spite Drona.
 
Do we have such biases or filters in our lives through which we view people or situations? How were they formed? Did some Duryodhana plant them in us? Uncovering such biases makes our decision-making clearer and simpler.