THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER THREE
KARMA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF ACTION
VERSE NUMBER 5
Text with Transliteration:
na hi kaschit ksanam api jaatu tisthaty akarmakrt
kaaryate hy avasah karma sarvah prakrtiuair gunaih
Text in English:
None can ever remain really actionless even for a moment;
for everyone is helplessly driven to action by the Gunas, born of Prakriti.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
Prakriti of Nature is constituted of the three
Gunas—‘Sattva’, ‘Rajas’ and ‘Tamas’. It is ever in a state of flux. In other
world karma is inherent in Prakriti. Beings involved in prakriti are therefore
helplessly bound by karma. Vain is their wish and attempt to rid themselves of
action; eating, sleeping, breathing, beating of the heart –all these are
nothing but karma. From the atom up to the universe all are engaged in
activities of innumerable types. It is impossible for beings to renounce karma
while being entangled in prakriti.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUATED BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANANDA:
Those who are enlisted as indoor patients in a hospital cannot
get out it until they are cured. After the cure is effected they have no need
to be in the hospital. Similarly beings that suffer from the ailment of
ignorance are hospitalized in prakriti. Thaye are being effectively treated
with karma for enlightenment. With the dawn of Brhma-jnanam they quit prakriti,
and get to actionlessness.
COMMENTARY BY
DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
So long as we lead embodied lives, we cannot escape from
action. Without work life cannot be sustained. Aandagiri points out that he who
knows the self is not moved by the gunas, but he who has not controlled the
body and the senses is driven to action by the gunas.
By implication the view that released soul ceases to work as
all work is a derogation from the supreme state, a return to ignorance, is reflected.
While life remains, action is unavoidable. Thinking is an act; living is an
act—and these acts cause many effects; to be free from desire, from the
illusion of personal interest, is the true non-action and not the physical
abstention from activity. When it is said that works cease for a man who is
liberated, all that is meant is that he has no further personal necessity for
works. It does not mean that he flees
from action and takes refuge from blissful inaction. He works as God works, without
any blinding necessity or compelling ignorance, and even performing work, he is
not involved. When his egoism is removed, action springs from the depths and is
governed by the supreme secretly seated in his heart. Free from desire and
attachment, one with all beings , he acts out of the profoundest depths of his
inner being, governed by his immortal, divine, highest self.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
The Gunas (qualities of Nature) are three, viz., Sattva;
Rajas and Tamas. Sattva is harmony or light or purity; Rajas is passion or
motion; Tamas is inertia or darkness. Sattvic actions help a man to attain to
Moksha. Rajasasic and Tamasic actions blind a man to Samsara.
These qualities cannot affect a man who has knowledge of the
self. He has crossed over these qualities. He has become a Gunatita (one who
has transcended the qualities of Nature). The ignorant man who has no knowledge
of the Self and who is swayed by Avidya or nescience is driven helplessly to
action by the Gunas. (CF. IV.16, XVIII. 11)
Comments by the blogger:
God’s essential condition is one of glorious inaction or
actionless masterliness. Human condition is one of pathetically continuous
action. This nature or prakriti with the three gunas, remains constantly in a
flex. There is no respite in it. The basic atom of the matter here is our
quintessential personality. And inside the atom there is lots of action taking
place, in the sense electron is constantly revolving round the neutron and the proton,
and this is made possible by the inactive space which preponderates in volume
in any atom.
Likewise, Lord Siva is pervasively extant and in this
respect there is no action in him, but the Sivadhandava ( the Dance of Siva)
constantly takes place even in a minute atom. Inside the atom the moving
electron can be seen both as a fixed point of light at the same time, from a
different angle, like a streak. Siva constantly dances even inside the atom,
and at the same time, like the unmoving space within and without the atom, is
unmoving, everlasting and extant.
The jivatma, having been tossed into the samsara constituting of illusion or
maya, desire or kama and action or karma is helplessly becomes action-oriented.
There is endless action in prakriti
or Nature with its three gunas or state of conditions, namely, sattva, or purity or light or harmony, Rajas or passion for action, good or
bad, and Tamas or inertia or darkness
sans understanding and in Man also all these three gunas or nature inhere in
varying degree and proportion, and as such, the average human being is given to
action unendingly. Even when we sit idly, there is much action taking place
inside our mind. And there are ceaseless bodily actions which are involuntary
by nature as the movement of the heart, lungs and kidneys. It is not possible
for us to remain actionless. And at the same time we have to spend twenty-four
hours every day and thus time also hangs heavily on our hands. And each action
has its own reaction, even each mental action has its own equal reaction. That is
why the Lord has taken the pain to teach in Gita to always indulge in action
having given up the fruits thereof to Him. that is the only way human being can
get the better of the prakriti or Nature. Prakriti is a task mistress and only
by indulging in unselfish action always can we get the better of her and in the
process get to know the roots of ours.
Every person is made to act according to the preponderating
guna or nature ceaselessly. Here comes the help of the Ishta Moorthy and the
chanting of His or Her NAME ceaselessly even as we go through life. Every Hindu
must choose a moorthy from the pantheon of Gods and Goddesses in the Hinduism
and sing His or Her name constantly. It will never lead us astray. We can
indulge in worldly action without fear!
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