THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER 4
JNANA KARMA SANYASA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF RENUNCIATION OF ACTION IN KNOWLEDGE OR THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE:
VERSE NUMBER 15
Text in Transliteration:
evam jaatvaa krrtam karma poorvair api mumukshubhih
kuru karmai ‘va tasmaat tvaam poorvaih poorvataram krtam
Text in English:
Having known thus even the ancient seekers after freedom performed action; therefore do you perform action, as did the ancients in the olden times.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:
The knowing aspirant abandons egoism and desire; he does not give up karma. The seekers of freedom walked this way through ages. This principle has not been enunciated newly for the sake of Arjuna. Why was he then confused on this issue? There was nothing strange in it.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
The ignorant perform action for self-purification and (atma suddhyartham) and the wise perform action for the maintenance of the world (Lokasmgrahartham)
As the ancients carried out the work ordained by tradition, Arjuna is called upon to do his duty as a warrior. Cp. “Lord of the Universe, Supreme Spirit, Beneficent God, at Thy command only, I shall carry on this pilgrimage of life, for the good of the creatures and for Thy glory.”
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
Knowing thus that the Self can have no desire for the fruits of actions and cannot be tainted by them, and knowing that no one can be tainted if he works without egoism, attachment and expectation of fruits, do thou perform your duty.
If your heart is impure, perform actions for its purification. If you have attained Atma-Jnana or the knowledge of the Self, work for the well-being of the world. The ancients such as Janaka and others performed actions in days of yore. So do thou also perform action.
Comments by the blogger:
The problem of the embodied or men and women is that we cannot escape, even for a single moment, action. Even the profoundly Tamasic person (the person whose discrimination is clouded by darkness and illusion and ignorance) is action oriented in his own way. Even when we sit and be idle we are action-oriented, for our mind can indulge in thinking and imagination of whose speed cannot be described. One moment it might think of the duty that has to be carried out tomorrow and the next contiguous moment it might think of the American Movie, only to come back to think that one is hungry! Three acts can be done in thought and imagination in the space of a contiguous moment without much of an exertion. And that is action indeed. And even when we sit idly our heart and lungs and other organs are in a non-stop action mode.
So the things is that nobody can escape action including the Lord when he creates Himself in to human form and come down here on some ineffable mission! If that being the case how can we escape action?
But there is one good and sure way to escape action.
Like the Upanishadic Sages, like the king Janaka, the father of Sita, one can ever indulge in action for giving velocity to the public wheel and the wheel set in motion by the Lord without any thought as for return as consideration. Quid pro quo will never do when we want to sunder the millennial chain of birth and death. We must follow the tradition of such great people in performing action for the upholding and uplifting of the collective humanity.
Here one question shall arise.
Can’t a good soul indulge in action for his and his family’s sake? Is it a Universal crime? How could my son indulge in crime by boning up for his entrance exams for becoming a doctor? Is it a crime on behalf of his parents in encouraging him in this matter? And if one’s son or daughter become a doctor he or she could enjoy all the good things of life, can’t he? And while it is definitely not a crime in law how could the same thing become a sin and selfishness for a man and his offspring? What the law of the country permits and facilitates is not a sin, Ok? For this must I come back here to the earth’s plane time and time again?
For those ladies and gentlemen may it be said that I am one of you, first of all!
Next thing is, it is one thing to do a thing and quite another to know the tradition of the spiritual seekers. What I want to say time and time again is that within law nothing is a sin if we are prepared for countless births and deaths. It is just that our dhrishti or seeing things in the proper way has been veiled by ignorance and selfishness. Hey! Take heart. We are not one of the chaps who raped and killed Nirbhaya, Ok? We are honest folks. But we are somewhat ignorant and selfish. Selfishness within the border is allowed in a democracy. Otherwise a nation would become filled with bead-saying monks and it would take not China but the puny little Pakistan to occupy our country even without the help of China! The history of the Great King Asoka is an objective lesson. After the life of Asoka, who had taken to ahimsa or non-violence as a national policy, his kingdom fell to pieces. When Pakistan or China indulge in border skirmishes we cannot be seen as telling the beads. So a state must have all sorts of people. Most of the folks would be working for their good and in that inheres the good and might of the nation. A nation that fails to produce wealth is proceeding toward a sure damnation, no?
Even God instils Arjuna in the Great War, no? It is his dharma, He says you see?
So while living our life abundantly let us read our Scriptures and at some part of our incarnations we shall have gradually shed ignorance and selfishness and become fit for full freedom. Until then let’s act for the good of ourselves and our families and our motherland, Ok? But at the same time we should faithfully read Scriptures like Bhagavat Gita. In that way, we would come to know that there is another plane of consciousness that involves doing work for the Lord alone. And, in the meanwhile let us gradually bon up for our exam at the next birth and earn as many good and meritorious acts!
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