Personal attachments cloud our objectivity and our sense of dharma. Wrong actions and much heartache are the results. .
By thinking in terms of ‘our relatives’ and ‘our own people’, Arjuna comes to the dangerous conclusion that he should not face the aggressors’ heartless challenge, showing how his attachments have made him agitated.
The mind, wandering into the future through its hopes and into the past through its egoistic memories, saps an individual’s freshness. This denies him peace.
Renunciation of action does not mean an insipid life of inactivity. The Lord advises Arjuna to act on, renouncing all actions unto Him, with a mind soaked with devoted remembrance of the Self, renouncing the egocentric and selfish stink from actions. If hope is the stillborn child of the unborn future, ego is the lingering memory of a dead past.
To revel in ego and hope, is an attempt on our part to live either with the dead moments of the past or with the unborn moments of the future. All the while, the tragedy is that we miss the present, the active dynamic present, which is the only noble chance that is being given to us to create, to advance, to achieve, and to enjoy.
Krsna advises Arjuna to act renouncing both hope and ego; and this is indeed a primary instruction on how to pour the best that is in us into the present, blocking all unintellligent and thoughtless dissipation of our inner personality energies.