The Spirit Of Spirituality: Kayena Vacha Mana-Sendriyair Va

Friday, July 10, 2015

Kayena Vacha Mana-Sendriyair Va

Everyone of us who has ever participated in a typical Indian worship would have heard the following prayer:

Kayena Vacha Mana-Sendriyair Va
Budhyaatmana Va Prakruteh Swabhavath
Karoami Yadyad Sakalam Parasmai
Narayana Yeti Samarpayami

Meaning:

Whatever I do with the body, speech, mind or by the intellect, or by the existing tendencies of the mind, I surrender them to the Supreme.

This is one of the most powerful messages to ensure that the action happens with a right attitude. To answer a basic question, why should there be a right attitude to action? As covered in my earlier blogs, every action has an equal reaction. That is the Universal physical law and more than that it is the universal law of Karma. If I do harm to someone, I am sure to be repaid with a similar harm at some point, whether in this life or next. Similar with any good deed. But then the question is to whom does the fruit of any action impact? If I plant a mango seed in my house, a mango tree will not grow in my neighbor's backyard. So whatever action I do has to impact me. But which "me"? Will it impact my body, my mind, my intellect?

Let us take a step backwards. In reality we are nothing but pure consciousness or Brahman or Truth. By a strange play of illusion or ignorance, we associate ourselves with the body, mind and intellect and curse ourselves to lead a sorrow filled painful life always worrying about our mortality or similar fears. We will continue to experience this world of illusions so long as we associate with the body/mind/intellect complex. An association with these makes us feel incomplete and we do actions to get objects of desire hoping that they will make us complete. However, as we have seen, objects of desire temporarily fill a gap, but soon, they also seem incapable of satisfying us and we do action to acquire the next object. So this cycle of performing action to acquire the next object of desire continues across several life cycles till one realizes that one is not the puny individual, but the mighty Supreme.

To avoid fulfilling desires, can we just stop doing any action? This is not possible. Each one of us has to act. The trick is in taking the right attitude to action. A feeling of ownership of the action ensures that we get the experience of its results or reaction. What if there was some way we could act without taking ownership? I am not talking of our day to day activities like our office work, for example. I cannot go and tell my boss, I will do an activity without taking ownership. The idea is to do an act with a sense of doing an action as an agent of the Supreme. An activity has to be done because it is my duty. That's all. There is no attachment to fruits nor any fear of failure. I do the work as an agent and offer the fruits. But I am an agent of whom and to whom do I offer the fruits?

What are the ways we do action? Obviously we do action through our five action organs, which is represented in the hymn above as action done by the body and speech. We also emote. We feel angry, happy etc and based on that do actions through the sense organs. We also do action based on our intellectual conceptualization like country, religion etc. Finally, we are also creatures of habit and without even realizing we do some action. The hymn says, perform activity as an agent of the Supreme and do it because it ought to be done.

Note:

As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.

1. My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality