GEMS FROM THE OCEAN OF HINDU THOUGHT
VISION AND PRACTICE
BEACH 11: LIVE HAPPILY, THE
Wave 9: DEXTERITY IN ACTION
[ OTHER WAVES ON THE SAME BEACH: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 ]
How to act is important for the proper pursuit of happiness. The Gita
teaches a theory of action that is unique in all of religious literature. The
methodology of performing actions and obligations efficiently gets a special
name, ‘Karma Yoga’ from the Teacher of the Gita. Every religion certainly
insists on the need for fulfilling one’s obligations. However, in the Gita,
there is a punchline added to this duty, namely, ‘non-attachment
to the fruits of actions’, as an irreplaceable addition, which has made
it the hallmark of Hindu spiritual attitude. The basic shloka from the Gita
that constitutes the ultimate authority for this is one of the most quoted
shlokas of the Gita, far beyond the boundaries of Hindu religion.
“karmaNy-eva adhikAras-te mA phaleshhu kadAcana /
mA karma-phala-hetur-bhUH
mA te sango’stv-akarmaNi //” (II –
47)
You have the right only to your action – not to the fruits thereof. Do
not become the cause for the fruits (by desiring the fruits); nor should you be
attached to the non-doing of action.
Several questions arise here. How can anybody
do any action without having a concern or attachment to the fruits thereof?
Without thinking of the consequences, positive or negative, how can any action be completed in
its fullness? Even if it be so done, is it fair to be unconcerned about the fruits of actions? If the doer of an action is himself indifferent to the
consequences of the action, how can the action be said
to have been performed well? If we don’t seek the consequences, why carry out the action at all? Any action can be
judged right or wrong only when the consequences are known. Then what does non-attachment to the fruits of actions mean?
Unless we can give satisfactory answers to all these questions, the
teachings of the Gita cannot apply to our active life. All the six questions
above would get a right answer if only we accept an attitudinal
change of mind. It is this change in the attitude of mind that the Lord
teaches in the Gita. What is this attitude? “Be an
actor in a play on the stage!” This is the recipe for that attitude. The
actor on the stage has to get angry when it is his role to do so. He should be
happy or funny when
the Director tells him to be so. He should laugh or giggle when he is so directed. When he is asked to hit another actor on the
stage, he should hit. All these are part of his role as an actor on the stage.
By being angry or funny or by hitting or laughing, there may be consequences
within the play. These consequences should not worry him or be of concern to
him. In other words he should have no attachment to these consequences either
positively or negatively. In fact, there should not be any worry, attachment,
concern, desire or dislike within the play other than what the Director of the
play has chalked out for your role.
Suppose for instance, you are playing the role
of Cordelia in Shakespeare’s King Lear. At a crucial scene King Lear asks
you ‘How much do you love me, dear?’. You, as
Cordelia, are supposed to answer “I love your majesty according to my bond, nor
more nor less”. You can’t go beyond that seemingly curt reply and start
explaining to King Lear, lest he should misunderstand you and feel desperate.
This is exactly what he did later, as we all know. If you start any further
explanation (to dad Lear!) beyond the words of the script, it means you are
being attached to the fruits of your actions within the play. This is the meaning
of non-attachment. Do your duty and be not attached to
what that action will bring – good or bad. Nor should you refrain from
acting, just because you do not like that sort of reply. Then the
actress-Cordelia is not playing her part and certainly the Director would not
like it. This is Karma Yoga.
Easier said, than done, in worldly life!
It becomes a tall order in actual practice in the outside world, because we are
all tossed by various desires and attachments. “I” and “Mine” are thoughts
which we find it very difficult, almost impossible, to
dispense with, in the drama of life. So
What is this yajna methodology? It is called ‘Dexterity in
Action’ (karmasu
kaushalaM – II -50). It is only by such efficient action one will
not be bound to (pegged to, imprisoned by) transient existence in this world. All
unhappiness in this world springs out of the non-recognition of the transience
of everything. To be beyond this unhappiness means not to
be bound by syndromes of the transient; and this, in turn, is not to
be bound to the results of any action
whatsoever. For, any action as well as its results are both transient This phenomenal independence from the
results of any action whatsoever is ‘Efficency in Action’.
But how
exactly is this ‘Efficent Action’ to be implemented? It is to be
done through
‘Dedication’. Any action that is dedicated to either a noble
cause or person or deity is a yajna. ‘Do every action of yours as a yajna’,
says
“yajnArthAt karmaNo’nyatra loko’yaM karma-bandhanaH
tadarthaM karma
kaunteya mukta-sangas-samAcara” (III
-9)
And the second line means: ‘And therefore do all your actions without
attachment’. And this, read with the words ‘mA phaleshhu’ in the trademark shloka II-47, says: ‘And
therefore do all your actions without attachment to the fruits thereof’. The
full meaning of this ‘maa phaleshhu’ shloka has therefore to be grasped
by reading it along with III-9 and the following six shlokas (and probably many more!) which occur
later:
yogasthaH kuru
karmANi sangam tyaktvA dhananjaya /
siddhy-asiddhyos-samo bhUtvA samatvaM yoga uchyate // II – 48
Established in
Yoga, perform actions, abandoning attachment, remaining
even-minded in success and failure; for,
even-mindedness is said to be
Yoga.
(Note that the Gita’s central teaching, sama-dRshhTi,
is already emphasized here as a sine
qua non of karma yoga).
niyataM kuru
karma tvaM karma jyAyo hy-akarmaNaH /
sharIra-yAtrApi cha te
na prasiddhyed-akarmaNaH // III – 8
You must perform
action that has been allotted. For, action is superior to
inaction. Even the maintenance of your body cannot proceed through inaction.
tasmAd-asaktas-satataM kAryaM karma samAchara /
asakto
hyAcharan-karma param-Apnoti pUrushhaH // III -19
Therefore, unattached always, you should gladly perform action that is
prescribed; for, the person, performing action without attachment, mounts to
highest bliss.
saktAH karmaNy-avidvAmsaH yathA kurvanti bhArata /
kuryAd-vidvAms-tathA-saktaH chikIrshhur-loka-sangrahaM //III-25
Even as the unknowing people toil, wedded to sense, so do the enlightened
ones toil, sense-freed, but set to bring the world deliverance.
yuktaH
karma-phalaM tyaktvA shAntim-Apnoti naishhTikIM /
ayuktaH-kAmakAreNa phale
sakto nibadhyate // V – 12
Having abandoned (the attachment for) the fruit of actions, the master of
Yoga attains endless Peace. But the person, who is unwedded to yoga, attached
to the fruit of action, is fastened down by his action born of desire.
chetasA
sarva-karmANi mayi sannyasya matparaH /
buddhiyogam-upAshritya mac-cittas-satataM bhava // XVIII – 57
Mentally surrendering all actions to Me, and
accepting Me as the Supreme, have your heart and mind and will fixed on Me by
resorting to buddhi-yoga.
With a global understanding of the Gita along the lines of the above
shlokas and similar ones, the following elaborate paraphrase of the ‘Maa phaleshhu’ shloka emerges. The key words are
therefore: ‘Dedication’ and ‘Non-attachment
to the fruits of actions’. We shall try to explain these in quite some detail .
It is attachment
that rouses desire and it is desire that brings in anger. The chain reaction goes on. The final result
is a further bondage to the cycle of works and thereon to the cycle of births
and deaths. Non-attachment on the other
hand will not bind you to the results of the action, just
as a child kicking the chest of the adult who is carrying it, does not have any
axe to grind and so does not get tarnished by the kicking act. This is the great secret of Karma Yoga. If
actions are done without desire or attachment they do not bind you by their
results. The effort therefore should be
to overcome the consequences of attachment and that is what one means 'not to
be attached'. If a person can go about one's duties for
the sake of duty and not claim authorship, ownership or doership for oneself
then one will not be subject to the experience of resultant pleasure or pain.
Neither the good results nor the bad results of his actions would bind him. So
long as any actions bind him he has to return to the cycle of transmigration. The ultimate purpose is to see that neither the good nor the
bad (‘ubhe sukRta dushhkRte’ II – 50)
keeps us in bondage. That is why we are advised to be detached. The
methodology for this
in actual practice is Yajna.
Any action done in total dedication to a cause or to a person or a
deity is a yajna.
The word ‘sacrifice’ inbuilt into the meaning of the word refers to the
attitude of ‘not mine’ which is a prerequisite for all yajnas. Whatever is done, is done unselfishly and is dedicated as not mine. This
is right action. The finite personality in us always craves for results, for
proprietorship and for enjoyment of the reward for the actions. This craving is
the Satan in us. Starve this Satanic
desire in us. Then the Eve in the form of the
results and rewards of actions will not tempt us. Action done for the
sake of fruits is what is being tabooed. Like a gramaphone needle which plays
any kind of music with the same regard for precision and perfection,
irrespective of whether it is to ‘its’ liking or not, we should do our actions
irrespective of whether we like it or not. (II – 48).
The strategy for this is dedication.
Dedication means: voluntary acceptance of suffering for the sake of somebody
else. The deity of the dedication – maybe a father, a mother, a guru, a
boss, a cause,
or a God – is the only thing that should matter. You do
a certain thing because it is to the liking of the deity of your
dedication not because, you will get something out of
it. You avoid
doing a certain thing because it is not to the taste or the orders or
the wishes of the deity of your dedication. Once we start doing actions with
this attitude of dedication we are sure to find an alchemy taking place in the
interior core of our minds. Thereafter without our knowing it our whole
internal psychology will start restructuring itself to this methodology of
doing actions.
Whether it is academic study or a competitive project
or a financial deal or a religious worship or a social service –
whatever it be, the work done with the attitude of dedication will not bind one
in terms of its consequences. That is what a judge
does when he sentences a criminal. That is what a surgeon
does, at the operation table. He is dedicated to the cause,
he is not attached to the person on the operation table. Thus Karma Yoga is
self-less desireless dedicated action – action, for all purposes, done exactly as would be done by a person who is totally
attached and involved. (Shloka III -25). The
difference is only in the mental attitude of the doer. (Shloka
XVIII-57). Desireless and
unselfish action performed and dedicated in this way leads to purification of
the mind. VAsanAs
that are bound to be imprinted in the mind can be avoided only by such actions.
Such nishhkAma-karma
is the summum bonum of Karma Yoga.
Even when
being in the world, if you go about its affairs with a feeling
of detachment, that is exactly what is wanted of a seeker who is a
householder. Karma yoga recognizes that the real evil
is not in the physical possessions themselves but in the attachment to them.
It is not the ordinary duties involved in the process of earning a livelihood
that should be abhorred, but selfishness - which is a consequence of attachment to the non-Self. It is this that should be
suppressed and ultimately conquered. It is in this
sense that
mayi sarvANi karmANi sanyasy-AdhyAtma-cetasA /
nirASir-nirmamo bhUtvA yudhyasva vigata-jvaraH //
Renouncing all actions in Me, with mind inward on the Self, you
should fight, devoid of the fever of
excitement, heedless of expectations and of any sense of proprietorship.
It is significant to note that one has to 'fight' without desire, without ego and without excitement! When
interpreted for the common man this means: Do carry
on your life's journey doing all your duties without
selfishness, and without the fever and excitement that you normally show in
chasing happiness and satisfaction. How is this possible? It
should be made possible. That is karma yoga.
For this it may not be necessary (though advantageous) to go along the path of
religious belief, involving an acceptance of the divinity of man, the
conviction that there is a supreme power, that the authority of the scriptures
is unquestionable, and so on. All that is required is the belief in the dignity
of man. Thus one may encounter a staunch karma yogi who
does not believe in God and religion. Such a karma yogi will do
his duties devotedly, not because he will otherwise incur demerit but because
he knows no other way to be of use to himself and to society. Social
responsibilities will be meticulously discharged by him because he is convinced
that he owes service to society for his very sustenance as a member of that
society. He believes that each one of us must do his or her job sincerely
and to the best of one's ability. If the returns of work do not properly match
the amount of effort expended and the efficiency and dedication with which it
is executed, he knows that these ills of society can never be corrected by
rebellion. But he is not a conformist. He might well be an unusual person who
has struck out a new path for service to society, and in following it exhibits
zeal and steadfastness. Such a karma yogi has no ambitions for himself
except some residual attachment for the work he is doing
and he would, therefore not yield to anybody in estimating the importance
of his work. This kind of social action, without any
self-interest is a simple way of training oneself in karma yoga . It
is in fact the first thing that young people must learn. Identifying oneself
with a cause, with a social purpose, one gets attracted by the charms and
thrills of social service and the innate satisfaction it provides. Such
social service done as a dedication to society without the least self-interest,
and in a totally detached attitude of self-effacement, such action is also yajna.
From vAsanAs to thoughts and from thoughts to actions is a very
familiar chain. To break it, one has to substitute the evil vAsanAs
by divine vAsanAs
which arise out of puNya-karma, the karma which arises out of
compassion and dedicated devotion to the divine and
the universal brotherhood of man. This substitution is not a simple process.
One may think of the mind-complex as a large reservoir of vAsanAs, the contents of which
cannot be poured out. So in order to 'substitute' good vAsanAs for bad ones, all one can do
is really to 'pour' more and more good vAsanAs
into the reservoir and dilute its badness.
Punya karmas
will create vAsanAs
which will gradually overwhelm the pattern of sin that
exists in the mind. The gItA gives us a clear recipe
for exactly this breaking of the vAsanA-thought-action
chain which takes us down the scale of samsAra.
The gItA says: 'Do your assigned duty and do it in the spirit of yajna'.
That is, do your duty because you have to do it. ‘It is not as important to do what you like to
do as to begin to like what you have to do’ (This is a quote from Sathya Sai
Baba). Do it without desire. Do it as
if it were a part you have to play and you have no stake in your part. The real
stakes are beyond the play. Within the play one should have no desire or
attachment. This is the spirit of yajna.
The quality of a 'doer' of actions has been
classified by the gItA in the standard three-fold way. The lowest type of 'doer' has no control (ayuktaH)
over himself. He is unsteady in his application. His low instincts and impulses
prod him on to behave in a mediocre (prAkRta) way. He is so mediocre that his
mediocrity increases by every action of his – just as garbage heaps up by more
garbage. And he becomes fraudulent (ShaTaH)
and so unbending (stabdhaH) that he is stubborn in his errors and obstinate in
his stupidity. He is bent upon creating quarrels and disputes and so the
world knows him to be malicious (naishkRtikaH). In this way he sets up a pattern
for himself that the good things that others may do for him rebound from him as
a virus that hurts and destroys. Avoiding all creative endeavours, productive
or purposeful, he is a model of sluggishness and indolence (alasaH).
Consequently he becomes unable to meet life's challenges and so is despondent (vishAdI). Naturally he postpones
(dIrgha-sUtrI)
everything until it is too late. Such a person is called a tAmasa-kartA:
(gItA, 18 -28):
ayuktaH prAkRtaH stabdhaH shaTo naishkRtiko'lasaH /
vishAdI dIrgha-sUtrI ca kartA tAmasa ucyate //
No one would like to belong to this category either in his early student-life
or afterwards. The better 'doer' ( that is,
better than the one classified as tAmasa-kartA) is called a rAjasic (=dynamic, passionate) doer.
(XVIII – 27):
rAgI
karma-phala-prepsuH lubdho himsAtmako'shuciH /
harshha-shokAnvitaH kartA rAjasaH parikIrtatah //
Impulsive, desiring to gain the fruits-of-actions,
greedy, rude and bold to overcome, unchastened, slave by turns of sorrow and
joy, such a doer is a rAjasic (impassioned) doer. He is a passionate go-getter irrespective of
the means he adopts.
Even though some of these like a little aggressiveness and working for a goal are expected out of a ‘good’ student in worldly understanding, in the understanding of the Gita, the dedication in the form of a yajna expected from him is however not there. The student may ask: 'What is then the meaning of dedication in the context of my daily chore of studies? To whom do I dedicate myself? Why? What is the outcome of such dedication? How does it alter the picture?' It does; for I tell him:
“Think of your mother at home, far away; she is looking forward to your returning from college
with a feather in your academic cap. She expects you to follow certain norms in
your daily activities and she has great hopes about your returning to be more
balanced, more mature, more knowledgeable, than when
she sent you to college. You certainly do not want to disappoint her. Now comes the crucial technique of yajna.
It says, for example, 'Dedicate all your actions to your mother, do everything
because your mother would like you to do it that way. Avoid certain things
because your mother would want you to do so'. In short, you live and act as
your mother would want you to. In other words you have dedicated your every
step to your mother”.
This is the karma yoga of the student
who has dedicated all his actions to his beloved mother. The consequences of
such a dedication must be seen to be believed. At almost every step one
experiences an alchemy taking place in one's
mind; a constant war will be waged in the inner recesses of the mind between
the good vAsanAs
and the not-so-good vAsanAs and each time the conviction that one is
doing things for the sake of one's mother at home will gradually resolve issues
and tilt them towards the side of the better vAsanAs. Such a student may be said
to be doing svAdhyAya-yajna,
the yajna
of study.
This is exactly what the gItA describes in its classification of 'doer' as 'satvic' (the ideally noble, rightful) in XVIII - 26:
mukta-sango’-naham-vAdI dhRty-utsAha-samanvitaH /
siddhy-asiddhyor-nirvikAraH kartA sAtvika ucyate //
Free from attachment, free from egoism, full of a fixed impersonal resolution
and a calm rectitude of zeal, unelated by success and undepressed by failure,
such a one is called the sAtvika-kartA.
This verse being the punchline in our
elaboration of the yajna attitude, we treat
the concepts one by one in detail.
Mukta-sangaH -- Free from attachment: This is easier said
than done. The scriptures with one voice give the recipe how to be free from
attachment. The human mind by nature cannot obey
the commandment of non-attachment. Therefore they say, attach yourself to God. The Tamil tirukuRaL puts this most succintly
and beautifully:
paRRuga paRRaRRAn paRRinai appaRRaip-
parruga parru viDaRku /
Acquire only the attachment to God who has no attachment Himself. In order to get rid of all attachments that attachment has to be
acquired.
This is the religious facet of karma yoga.
In the modern terminology of psychology this is
called 'releasing from worldly ties by retying to Spirit'. But this
attitude would require a belief in God and things of the 'beyond'. Youth may perhaps want a prop without the intervention of
the idea of God. The mother as a deity of dedication is
only one example of how karma yoga can be implemented even at the level
of a teen-age student and even for the purpose of what appears to be a most
self-centred action in which the good of the society does not enter the picture
and wherein only the good of one's own self is the prime mover. The mystery of the yajna attitude is its potential to convert
even an act of selfishness into an act of dedication and detachment! So
the student, in tune with his attitude of
dedication to his mother, should see to it that attachment to his mother
replaces his perennial attachment to the results of his work.
For a man in (incidentally, not 'of ')
the world, this means he is either attached to his God whom He serves or to his
abstract God of Service -- which may be either the society, the cause, or
the organization he serves. In all cases there is attachment no doubt but
the attachment is never for an end which is
self-centred. This is the yajna attitude. In the secular world this
means one is stepping clear of bonds and physically moving away from problems
so that even difficult problems of management or tricky
personal problems get solved from a distance.
Free from egoism. (anahamvAdI) Again
the dedication takes care of this. Whether it is the Marketing Executive, the
Administrative Manager, the student on the climb, or the man in the world, the dedication to either the cause, or the organization, or
the mother, or God, is the proper antidote for curtailing the ego and in
due time making it totally subservient to everything else. Once the ego is put
in its place, the yajna attitude is on.
dhRti-utsAha-samanvitaH (accompanied
by firm resolve and deep fervour): Firm resolve and deep fervour
are two fundamental qualities which not only the student but every
other type of person we are talking about would need. The very fact they
are put in here as the necessary associates of an ideal doer, show that a work done with healthy detachment is not a work which is
indifferently done or something which is executed as an unwanted evil
necessity. One enjoys doing the work. And one does it efficiently. It is
the spirit with which one does the work rather than the mundane carrots that
bring the joy.
siddhy-asiddhyor-nirvikAraH --Unelated
by success and undepressed by failure: Here it is that the student will
know what it is to dedicate his work to his mother. It is common knowledge that
when a child does not perform in school it is the father, (generally), more than the mother, who will be uncompromising. The
mother usually takes the stand that the child did its best and she hopes for a
better performance in the future. The dedication to the mother by the teen-age
student of all his work, both its success and
its failure, achieves two things. First, it takes
off the sting of the performance
(positive or negative) from the student . Secondly the
mother is prepared to take the disappointment of the failure better.
In the general case of the man in the world, the success and failure would not
be taken personally as to cause excitement either way, because one knows by his
dedication to the Cause or the God, that one has done the best under the
circumstances. The ideal example is a good nurse in a
hospital who brings her entire personality in the picture and works with
dedication irrespective of ‘success’ or ‘failure’.
The alchemy of the yajna attitude by dedication of even ordinary acts to a larger cause, be it as concrete as one's mother at home, or as unsubstantial as God in heaven, or as abstract as any impersonal noble cause, has to be experienced to be believed. It confirms the recurring emphasis in the scriptures on the importance of correct
attitudes. Therefore it is the attitude with which you approach your
karma that is important, rather than the karma itself.
Action with detachment leads to actionlessness, as we shall see in
Ch.11. Even in an action with detachment, somebody must be responsible for that
action. Who is it? This is taken up in the next chapter.
Go to Chapter
10
Copyright © V. Krishnamurthy Feb.9, 2004