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VerseThe Delight of Krishna

Verse 4·17

Understanding divine action beyond morality

Verse

कर्मणो ह्यपि बोद्धव्यं बोद्धव्यं च विकर्मणः ।अकर्मणश्च बोद्धव्यं गहना कर्मणो गतिः ॥

karmaṇo hyapi boddhavyaṃ boddhavyaṃ ca vikarmaṇaḥakarmaṇaśca boddhavyaṃ gahanā karmaṇo gatiḥ

One has to understand about action as well as to understand about wrong action and about inaction one has to understand; thick and tangled is the way of works.

Gītā 4·17

Action in the world is like a deep forest, gahana, through which man goes stumbling as best he can, by the light of the ideas of his time, the standards of his personality, his environment, or rather of many times, many personalities, layers of thought and ethics from many social stages all inextricably confused together,… And finally the sage seeking in the midst of it all a highest foundation of fixed law and an original truth finds himself obliged to raise the last supreme question, whether all action and life itself are not a delusion and a snare and whether cessation from action, akarma, is not the last resort of the tired and disillusioned human soul…
What then is the solution? what is that type of works by which we shall be released from the ills of life, from this doubt, this error, this grief, from this mixed, impure and baffling result even of our purest and best-intentioned acts, from these million forms of evil and suffering?

CWSA 19 · Essays on the Gita · pp. 177–78

From The Delight of Krishna · Bhagavad Gītā · in the light of Sri Aurobindo · incarnateword.in