Kindly read my earlier posts on the Gita before reading this.
This is one of the articles in a book I have written on spirituality. The book is available on Amazon.com.
The Spirit Of Spirituality
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2, Verse 47:
karmany evadhikaras te ma phalesu kadacana
ma karma-phala-hetur bhur ma te sango 'stv akarmani
Translation :
You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.
Commentary:
We have seen that on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Arjuna who is totally grief stricken at the prospect of killing his own kith and kin has given up his arms and refuses to fight. Lord Krishna is telling him the greatest essence of spirituality and duties to Arjuna. Most of the so called intelligentsia without even knowing what is in the Gita make comments that this is not practical in today's world. I would like to challenge them to think of a situation which is more tense than a battlefield and in this greatest battlefield, Lord Krishna is imparting knowledge about action. So how can it not be practical? He is not telling Arjuna to give up arms and do penance in Himalayas. He is telling Arjuna to fight and take action. So if Arjuna could listen to those teachings and be motivated enough to fight his own kith and kin, I fail to understand how the teachings could not have been practical then and why they cannot be practical today. It is our own sheer lack of understanding and the unwillingness to even understand the Gita that makes us say it is not practical!
The Lord is telling Arjuna that he has to do action without worrying about the fruits of that action. But then why act if there are no fruits? Each of us have come into this world as human beings and the only purpose of a human life is to attain mukti or liberation from the cycles of birth and death. As discussed in an earlier post, the cycles of birth and death occur only when there are unfulfilled desires or actions with karmic bindings. So any action that we do should be that which takes us towards self realization and away from karmic bonding. We took birth based on our past vasanas(desires) and those have to be exhausted without adding any fresh desires. If that be so, how can we exhaust our desires for which we took this body without acquiring new desires?
The only way this can be accomplished is by doing each action as an action that ought to be done without getting emotionally involved in it. Is this possible at all, one may ask. Let us take an example of the "Trade" game where we are given paper money and we can buy and sell things and make a profit or loss at the end. If we were playing this game when we were young kids, we would be emotionally charged and for each activity we would probably worry whether the action would give a good result or not and at the end, if we won we would be happy and if we lost, we would probably cry. Now let us fast forward about 20 years and assume we are playing the same game with our kids. As we play, we are not really worried whether our act will result in a win/lose situation. This does not mean that we will play haphazardly. We will still try to win focusing on the game without worrying about the results and we will probably do better than the kids who are tensed up about the fruits and may not focus on right action. Similarly in life, most of us focus on the fruits of an action even before we do the act and in the process either don't act, thinking the fruit may not come or mess up the act worrying about the consequence. Imagine a situation where a farmer is planting seeds and every time he worries whether 6 months down the line, if there is a major snow storm, his crop will be destroyed or what if I plant seeds and insects destroy everything. If he keeps focusing on the results, he may end up not planting at all! On the other side, assuming he thinks of only rosy things and plants the seeds, if a disaster occurs his mental stability will be wrecked. So the best option for the farmer is to do what ought to be done. It is his duty to plant seeds and do what best he can. Whether the seeds give a good crop or not is not in his hands and he should not focus on that.
Let us look at the types of activities. An activity can be done solely to benefit oneself or as a selfish act. A selfish act creates karmic bondage because there is a desire of a fruit to benefit oneself. Many people are under the wrong impression that if they do activity for their family, it is not selfish. Sadly, even that is selfish, because in seeing near and dear ones happy, I am just seeking my own selfish mental happiness. How about a truly unselfish activity like building a hospital or donating for a charity. This definitely looks like an act we should do. But then, what is important to see here is what was the intention behind the act. If i am building a hospital with the desire to become popular and finally win elections, there is a desire behind the seemingly unselfish activity. Whereas this will earn me good brownie points in this world, from a spiritual perspective of karmic bondage, this act also has bound me because there was a lurking desire.
Suppose I am walking on the road and I see a young child walking in the middle of the road, most of us, I am sure would just run, pick up the child to safety. At the moment of doing that act, we did not have any selfish desire or even a lurking desire of popularity. We did it because it was the right thing to do. Such an act will not have any karmic bondage because it was selfless. It is also refered to as actionless action, because the action was done without an emotional involvement in the action. It was done because it ahd to be done.
This world is like a giant movie and in it we are playing several roles. Just as Amitabh, the actor becomes a beggar in one role and a don in another, he just has to do the role to the best of his ability without any attachment to the role or the potential fruits of acting that role. What I mean is, if Amitabh playing a Don's role does his action of killing a person with the real objective or desire to kill, that would be atrocious. He knows he is playing a role and he should focus just on the act. Similarly in our lives , as sons/daughters, spouses, workers, managers etc, we are playing a role. We have to enact that role in this vast drama of life created by God and do that act well. How to play each of these roles well is a separate topic which I will discuss later. Just as only the movie director knows what the end result of an act will be and he pieces together all the acts to make a good movie, the Lord knows what the results of this drama of life is and He is putting together all the pieces to make a grand movie. Just as even one actor in a movie not performing as per his role can wreck the whole movie, just one of us not doing the right action can wreck the universal drama. Hence we need to just focus on doing the right thing without worrying about the fruits of that action.
This is one of the articles in a book I have written on spirituality. The book is available on Amazon.com.
The Spirit Of Spirituality
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2, Verse 47:
karmany evadhikaras te ma phalesu kadacana
ma karma-phala-hetur bhur ma te sango 'stv akarmani
Translation :
You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.
Commentary:
We have seen that on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Arjuna who is totally grief stricken at the prospect of killing his own kith and kin has given up his arms and refuses to fight. Lord Krishna is telling him the greatest essence of spirituality and duties to Arjuna. Most of the so called intelligentsia without even knowing what is in the Gita make comments that this is not practical in today's world. I would like to challenge them to think of a situation which is more tense than a battlefield and in this greatest battlefield, Lord Krishna is imparting knowledge about action. So how can it not be practical? He is not telling Arjuna to give up arms and do penance in Himalayas. He is telling Arjuna to fight and take action. So if Arjuna could listen to those teachings and be motivated enough to fight his own kith and kin, I fail to understand how the teachings could not have been practical then and why they cannot be practical today. It is our own sheer lack of understanding and the unwillingness to even understand the Gita that makes us say it is not practical!
The Lord is telling Arjuna that he has to do action without worrying about the fruits of that action. But then why act if there are no fruits? Each of us have come into this world as human beings and the only purpose of a human life is to attain mukti or liberation from the cycles of birth and death. As discussed in an earlier post, the cycles of birth and death occur only when there are unfulfilled desires or actions with karmic bindings. So any action that we do should be that which takes us towards self realization and away from karmic bonding. We took birth based on our past vasanas(desires) and those have to be exhausted without adding any fresh desires. If that be so, how can we exhaust our desires for which we took this body without acquiring new desires?
The only way this can be accomplished is by doing each action as an action that ought to be done without getting emotionally involved in it. Is this possible at all, one may ask. Let us take an example of the "Trade" game where we are given paper money and we can buy and sell things and make a profit or loss at the end. If we were playing this game when we were young kids, we would be emotionally charged and for each activity we would probably worry whether the action would give a good result or not and at the end, if we won we would be happy and if we lost, we would probably cry. Now let us fast forward about 20 years and assume we are playing the same game with our kids. As we play, we are not really worried whether our act will result in a win/lose situation. This does not mean that we will play haphazardly. We will still try to win focusing on the game without worrying about the results and we will probably do better than the kids who are tensed up about the fruits and may not focus on right action. Similarly in life, most of us focus on the fruits of an action even before we do the act and in the process either don't act, thinking the fruit may not come or mess up the act worrying about the consequence. Imagine a situation where a farmer is planting seeds and every time he worries whether 6 months down the line, if there is a major snow storm, his crop will be destroyed or what if I plant seeds and insects destroy everything. If he keeps focusing on the results, he may end up not planting at all! On the other side, assuming he thinks of only rosy things and plants the seeds, if a disaster occurs his mental stability will be wrecked. So the best option for the farmer is to do what ought to be done. It is his duty to plant seeds and do what best he can. Whether the seeds give a good crop or not is not in his hands and he should not focus on that.
Let us look at the types of activities. An activity can be done solely to benefit oneself or as a selfish act. A selfish act creates karmic bondage because there is a desire of a fruit to benefit oneself. Many people are under the wrong impression that if they do activity for their family, it is not selfish. Sadly, even that is selfish, because in seeing near and dear ones happy, I am just seeking my own selfish mental happiness. How about a truly unselfish activity like building a hospital or donating for a charity. This definitely looks like an act we should do. But then, what is important to see here is what was the intention behind the act. If i am building a hospital with the desire to become popular and finally win elections, there is a desire behind the seemingly unselfish activity. Whereas this will earn me good brownie points in this world, from a spiritual perspective of karmic bondage, this act also has bound me because there was a lurking desire.
Suppose I am walking on the road and I see a young child walking in the middle of the road, most of us, I am sure would just run, pick up the child to safety. At the moment of doing that act, we did not have any selfish desire or even a lurking desire of popularity. We did it because it was the right thing to do. Such an act will not have any karmic bondage because it was selfless. It is also refered to as actionless action, because the action was done without an emotional involvement in the action. It was done because it ahd to be done.
This world is like a giant movie and in it we are playing several roles. Just as Amitabh, the actor becomes a beggar in one role and a don in another, he just has to do the role to the best of his ability without any attachment to the role or the potential fruits of acting that role. What I mean is, if Amitabh playing a Don's role does his action of killing a person with the real objective or desire to kill, that would be atrocious. He knows he is playing a role and he should focus just on the act. Similarly in our lives , as sons/daughters, spouses, workers, managers etc, we are playing a role. We have to enact that role in this vast drama of life created by God and do that act well. How to play each of these roles well is a separate topic which I will discuss later. Just as only the movie director knows what the end result of an act will be and he pieces together all the acts to make a good movie, the Lord knows what the results of this drama of life is and He is putting together all the pieces to make a grand movie. Just as even one actor in a movie not performing as per his role can wreck the whole movie, just one of us not doing the right action can wreck the universal drama. Hence we need to just focus on doing the right thing without worrying about the fruits of that action.
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