कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर् मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥
karmaṇyevādhikāraste mā phaleṣu kadācanamā karmaphalaheturbhūr mā te saṅgo’stvakarmaṇi
Thou hast a right to action, but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
Essays on the Gita
Thou hast a right to action, but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity.
His translation
Thus hath been declared to thee the mind that dwells in the way of Sankhya, hearken now to that which dwells in Yoga, to which being wedded thou shalt cast from thee, O Partha, action’s binding chain. In this path no step once taken is lost, in this path thou shalt meet with no stumblingblock; even a little of this Law saveth the heart from its great fear. One is the mind of a man that holds fast to its aim, but infinite are their minds and manybranching who have no resolved goal. ‘Tis a flowery word they babble, men of little understanding who take delight in the creed of Veda, disputing, saying “There is nought else”, their souls full of desires, their hopes bent upon Heaven; but he who hearkeneth to their word that giveth but the fruit of life’s actions and is crowded with multifold ritual, aiming only at splendour & enjoyment & lordship, lo it hurrieth away his heart and causeth it to cling to lordship and pleasure and his mind is unfixed to God and cannot set itself on the rock of concentration. The three nature-moods are the stuff of the Vedas, but thou, O Urjoona, rise above the three, high beyond the dualities, steadfast on the plane of the Light; be careless of getting and having, be a man with a soul. As much use as there is in a well, when all the regions are flowing with water, so much is there in all the Vedas to the Brahman who hath the Knowledge. Thou hast a right to action only, to the fruit of action thou hast no manner of right at all; be not motived by the fruits of action, neither to inaction sell thy soul; but put attachment far from thee, O Dhanunjoy, and do thy deeds with a mind in Yoga, awaiting success and failure with an equal heart; for ‘tis such equipoise of the soul that is Yoga indeed. For far lower is action than Yoga of the Super-Mind; in the Super-Mind desire thy refuge; for this is a mean and pitiful thing that a man should work for success and rewards. The man whose Super-Mind is in Yoga casteth from him even in this world both righteousness and sin; therefore to Yoga gird thy soul; when thou doest works, Yoga is the one auspicious way. For the wise whose understandings have reached God, cast from them the fruit that is born of their deeds, they are delivered from the fetters of birth, they pass into the sphere where suffering is not, neither any disease. When thy soul shall have voyaged to the other shore over the Chaos of the Great Bewilderment, then shalt thou become careless of the Scripture that is and the Scripture that shalt be, and when the mind that is perplexed and beaten about by the Scripture shall stand fast and motionless in Samadhi, then shalt thou attain Yoga.
Essays on the Gita
The Gita can only be understood, like any other great work of the kind, by studying it in its entirety and as a developing argument. But the modern interpreters, starting from the great writer Bankim Chandra Chatterji who first gave to the Gita this new sense of a Gospel of Duty, have laid an almost exclusive stress on the first three or four chapters and in those on the idea of equality, on the expression kartavyaṁ karma, the work that is to be done,2·47 which they render by duty, and on the phrase “Thou hast a right to action, but none to the fruits of action” which is now popularly quoted as the great word, mahāvākya, of the Gita. The rest of the eighteen chapters with their high philosophy are given a secondary importance, except indeed the great vision in the eleventh. This is natural enough for the modern mind which is, or has been till yesterday, inclined to be impatient of metaphysical subtleties and far-off spiritual seekings, eager to get to work and, like Arjuna himself, mainly concerned for a workable law of works, a dharma. But it is the wrong way to handle this Scripture.
The equality which the Gita preaches is not disinterestedness, — the great command to Arjuna given after the foundation and main structure of the teaching have been laid and built,11·33 “Arise, slay thy enemies, enjoy a prosperous kingdom,” has not the ring of an uncompromising altruism or of a white, dispassionate abnegation; it is a state of inner poise and wideness which4·42 is the foundation of spiritual freedom. With that poise, in that freedom we have to do the “work that is to be done,” a phrase8·7 which the Gita uses with the greatest wideness including in it all11·33 works, sarvakarmāṇi, and which far exceeds, though it may include, social duties or ethical obligations. What is the work to be done is not to be determined by the individual choice; nor is the right to the action and the rejection of claim to the fruit the great word of the Gita, but only a preliminary word governing the first state of the disciple when he begins ascending the hill of Yoga. It is practically superseded at a subsequent stage. For the Gita goes on to affirm emphatically that the man is not the doer of the action; it is Prakriti, it is Nature, it is the great Force with its three modes of action that works through him, and he must learn to see that it is not he who does the work. Therefore the “right to action” is an idea which is only valid so long as we are still under2·47 the illusion of being the doer; it must necessarily disappear from the mind like the claim to the fruit, as soon as we cease to be to our own consciousness the doer of our works. All pragmatic egoism, whether of the claim to fruits or of the right to action, is then at an end.
And yet he does not cease from work and action. There is the originality and power of the Gita, that having affirmed this static condition, this superiority to nature, this emptiness even of all that constitutes ordinarily the action of Nature for the liberated soul, it is still able to vindicate for it, to enjoin on it even the continuance of works and thus avoid the great defect of the merely quietistic and ascetic philosophies,—the defect from which we find them today attempting to escape.2·47 “Thou hast a right to action, but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity.” Therefore it is not the works practised with desire by the Vedavadins, it is not the claim for the satisfaction of the restless and energetic mind by a constant activity, the claim made by the practical or the kinetic man, which is here2·48 enjoined. “Fixed in Yoga do thy actions, having abandoned attachment, having become equal in failure and success; for it is equality that is meant by Yoga.” Action is distressed by the choice between a relative good and evil, the fear of sin and the difficult endeavour towards virtue? But the liberated who has united his reason and will with the Divine, casts away from him even here in this world of dualities both good doing and evil doing; for he rises to a higher law beyond good and evil, founded in the liberty of self-knowledge. Such desireless action can have no decisiveness, no effectiveness, no efficient motive, no large or vigorous creative power? Not so; action done in Yoga is not only the highest but the wisest, the most potent and efficient even for the affairs of the world; for it is informed by the knowledge2·50–51 and will of the Master of works: “Yoga is skill in works.” But all action directed towards life leads away from the universal aim of the Yogin which is by common consent to escape from bondage to this distressed and sorrowful human birth? Not so, either; the sages who do works without desire for fruits and in Yoga with the Divine are liberated from the bondage of birth and reach that other perfect status in which there are none of the maladies which afflict the mind and life of a suffering humanity.
The question still arises, what works are to be done? Those even who stand for a final physical renunciation are not at one in this difficult matter. Some would have it that all works must18·11 be excised from our life, as if that were possible. But it is not possible so long as we are in the body and alive; nor can salvation consist in reducing our active selves by trance to the lifeless immobility of the clod and the pebble. The silence of Samadhi does not abrogate the difficulty, for as soon as the breath comes again into the body, we are once more in action and have toppled down from the heights of this salvation by spiritual slumber. But the true salvation, the release by an inner renunciation of the ego and union with the Purushottama remains steady in whatever state, persists in this world or out of it or in whatever world or out of all world, is self-existent, sarvathā vartamāno’pi, and does not depend upon inaction or action. What then are the actions to be done? The thoroughgoing ascetic answer, not noted by the Gita—it was perhaps not altogether current at the time—might be that solely begging, eating and meditation are to be permitted among voluntary activities and otherwise only the necessary actions of the body. But the more liberal and comprehensive solution was evidently to continue the three most sattwic activities, sacrifice, giving and askesis. And these18·5 certainly are to be done, says the Gita, for they purify the wise. But more generally, and understanding these three things in their18·9 widest sense, it is the rightly regulated action, niyataṁ karma, that has to be done, action regulated by the Shastra, the science and art of right knowledge, right works, right living, or regulated18·47 by the essential nature, svabhāva-niyataṁ karma, or, finally and best of all, regulated by the will of the Divine within and above us. The last is the true and only action of the liberated man, muktasya karma. To renounce these works is not a right movement—the Gita lays that down plainly and trenchantly in the end, niyatasya tu sannyāsaḥ karmaṇo nopapadyate. To renounce18·7 them from an ignorant confidence in the sufficiency of that withdrawal for the true liberation is a tamasic renunciation. The gunas follow us, we see, into the renunciation of works as well as into works. A renunciation with attachment to inaction,2·47 saṅgo akarmaṇi, would be equally a tamasic withdrawal. And to give them up because they bring sorrow or are a trouble to the18·8 flesh and a weariness to the mind or in the feeling that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, is a rajasic renunciation and does not bring the high spiritual fruit; that too is not the true Tyaga. It is a result of intellectual pessimism or vital weariness, it has its roots in ego. No freedom can come from a renunciation governed by this self-regarding principle.
“The first step on this free, this equal, this divine way of action is to put from you attachment to fruit and recompense and to labour only for the sake of the work itself that has to be done. For you must deeply feel that the fruits belong not to you but to the Master of the world. Consecrate your labour and leave its returns to the Spirit who manifests and fulfils himself in the universal movement. The outcome of your action is determined by his will alone and whatever it be, good or evil fortune, success or failure, it is turned by him to the accomplishment of his world purpose. An entirely desireless and disinterested working of the personal will and the whole instrumental nature is the first rule of Karmayoga. Demand no fruit, accept whatever result is given to you; accept it with equality and a calm gladness: successful or foiled, prosperous or afflicted, continue unafraid, untroubled and unwavering on the steep path of the divine action.
The Synthesis of Yoga
In the field of action desire takes many forms, but the most powerful of all is the vital self’s craving or seeking after the fruit of our works. The fruit we covet may be a reward of internal pleasure; it may be the accomplishment of some preferred idea or some cherished will or the satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, or else the pride of success of our highest hopes and ambitions. Or it may be an external reward, a recompense entirely material,—wealth, position, honour, victory, good fortune or any other fulfilment of vital or physical desire. But all alike are lures by which egoism holds us. Always these satisfactions delude us with the sense of mastery and the idea of freedom, while really we are harnessed and guided or ridden and whipped by some gross or subtle, some noble or ignoble, figure of the blind Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without any desire for the fruit, niṣkāma karma.
The work itself is at first determined by the best light we can command in our ignorance. It is that which we conceive as the thing that should be done. And whether it be shaped by our sense of duty, by our feeling for our fellow-creatures, by our idea of what is for the good of others or the good of the world or by the direction of one whom we accept as a human Master, wiser than ourselves and for us the representative of that Lord of all works in whom we believe but whom we do not yet know, the principle is the same. The essential of the sacrifice of works must be there and the essential is the surrender of all desire for the fruit of our works, the renunciation of all attachment to the result for which yet we labour. For so long as we work with attachment to the result, the sacrifice is offered not to the Divine, but to our ego. We may think otherwise, but we are deceiving ourselves; we are making our idea of the Divine, our sense of duty, our feeling for our fellow-creatures, our idea of what is good for the world or others, even our obedience to the Master a mask for our egoistic satisfactions and preferences and a specious shield against the demand made on us to root all desire out of our nature.
At this stage of the Yoga and even throughout the Yoga this form of desire, this figure of the ego is the enemy against whom we have to be always on our guard with an unsleeping vigilance. We need not be discouraged when we find him lurking within us and assuming all sorts of disguises, but we should be vigilant to detect him in all his masks and inexorable in expelling his influence. The illumining Word of this movement is the decisive line of the Gita, “To action thou hast a right but never under any circumstances to its fruit.” The fruit belongs solely to the Lord of all works; our only business with it is to prepare success by a true and careful action and to offer it, if it comes, to the divine Master. Afterwards even as we have renounced attachment to the fruit, we must renounce attachment to the work also; at any moment we must be prepared to change one work, one course or one field of action for another or abandon all works if that is the clear command of the Master. Otherwise we do the act not for his sake but for our satisfaction and pleasure in the work, from the kinetic nature’s need of action or for the fulfilment of our propensities; but these are all stations and refuges of the ego. However necessary for our ordinary motion of life, they have to be abandoned in the growth of the spiritual consciousness and replaced by divine counterparts: an Ananda, an impersonal and God-directed delight will cast out or supplant the unillumined vital satisfaction and pleasure, a joyful driving of the Divine Energy the kinetic need; the fulfilment of the propensities will no longer be an object or a necessity, there will be instead the fulfilment of the Divine Will through the natural dynamic truth in action of a free soul and a luminous nature. In the end, as the attachment to the fruit of the work and to the work itself has been excised from the heart, so also the last clinging attachment to the idea and sense of ourselves as the doer has to be relinquished; the Divine Shakti must be known and felt above and within us as the true and sole worker.
How he shall do this, in what particular way, can be decided by no general rule. It must develop or define itself from within; the decision lies between God and our self, the Supreme Self and the individual self that is the instrument of the work; even before liberation, it is from the inner self, as soon as we become…Read the whole passage · 568 wordsClose the passage
How he shall do this, in what particular way, can be decided by no general rule. It must develop or define itself from within; the decision lies between God and our self, the Supreme Self and the individual self that is the instrument of the work; even before liberation, it is from the inner self, as soon as we become conscious of it, that there rises the sanction, the spiritually determined choice. It is altogether from within that must come the knowledge of the work that has to be done. There is no particular work, no law or form or outwardly fixed or invariable way of works which can be said to be that of the liberated being. The phrase used in the Gita to express this work that has to be done has indeed been interpreted in the sense that we must do our duty without regard to the fruit. But this is a conception born of European culture which is ethical rather than spiritual and external rather than inwardly profound in its concepts. No such general thing as duty exists; we have only duties, often in conflict with each other, and these are determined by our environment, our social relations, our external status in life. They are of great value in training the immature moral nature and setting up a standard which discourages the action of selfish desire. It has already been said that so long as the seeker has no inner light, he must govern himself by the best light he has, and duty, a principle, a cause are among the standards he may temporarily erect and observe. But for all that, duties are external things, not stuff of the soul and cannot be the ultimate standard of action in this path. It is the duty of the soldier to fight when called upon, even to fire upon his own kith and kin; but such a standard or any akin to it cannot be imposed on the liberated man. On the other hand, to love or have compassion, to obey the highest truth of our being, to follow the command of the Divine are not duties; these things are a law of the nature as it rises towards the Divine, an outflowing of action from a soul-state, a high reality of the spirit. The action of the liberated doer of works must be even such an outflowing from the soul; it must come to him or out of him as a natural result of his spiritual union with the Divine and not be formed by an edifying construction of the mental thought and will, the practical reason or the social sense. In the ordinary life a personal, social or traditional constructed rule, standard or ideal is the guide; once the spiritual journey has begun, this must be replaced by an inner and outer rule or way of living necessary for our self-discipline, liberation and perfection, a way of living proper to the path we follow or enjoined by the spiritual guide and master, the Guru, or else dictated by a Guide within us. But in the last state of the soul’s infinity and freedom all outward standards are replaced or laid aside and there is left only a spontaneous and integral obedience to the Divine with whom we are in union and an action spontaneously fulfilling the integral spiritual truth of our being and nature.
Other writings
What is yoga? Not a certain process. When we think of yoga, we think of a man who shuts himself up in a cave and subjects himself to certain practices. He frees himself from all bondage. But Srikrishna uses yoga in a different sense. He says: Do action in yoga. The first element is samata. Samata means you shall look with equal eyes upon happiness and misfortune, praise and blame, honour and dishonour, and success and failure. You shall regard none of these, but with a calm and unshaken mind you should proceed with the work which you are given to do, unshaken by the praise or censure of the world. The man who has this samata has no friends and no enemies. He looks upon all with equal feelings, because he has knowledge, because he has looked into himself, then out into the world. He finds himself everywhere and all in himself. He finds himself in all because God is in all. Whether he looks at the high or low, he sees no difference and sees that in every creature there is Narayana. He sees that he is only an ansha of one who is in every particle of matter. If there be any differences, they are only temporary and outward. He is only that through which Vasudeva carries on his lila. He is not anxious to know what will happen tomorrow, because the action is not guided by laws. The man who has communion with God has no reason to be guided by laws, because he knows God is alone and all. He is not troubled by the fruits of his action. “You have the right to action, to work, but not to the fruit. Work and leave the result to me. Those men whom you shrink from slaying are already slain. These men would all perish. Therefore the fruit is already obtained beforehand by me. Your anxiety for the result is ignorance.” The destiny of the world is fixed. When a man has to do anything he must know that the fruits are with God. Man is to do what God wills.
But it is ahaṅkāra that by making the relation and effect of things on ourselves or on things connected with us the standard of life, makes the dvandvas a chain for our bondage. Ahaṅkāra in its action on our life and sadhana will be seen to be of three kinds, rajasic, tamasic and sattwic. Rajas binds by desire and the craving in the nature for occupation and activity, it is always reaching after action and the fruit of action; it is in order that we may be free from the rajasic ahaṅkāra that we have the command, “Do not do works from the desire of fruit,” mā karma-phala-hetur bhūḥ, and the command to give up our actions to God. Tamas binds by weakness and the craving in the nature for ease and inaction; it is always sinking into idleness, depression, confusion of mind, fear, disappointment, despondency and despair; it is in order that we may get rid of the tamasic ahaṅkāra that we are given the command, “Let there be no attachment to inaction,” and the instruction to pursue the yoga always, whether we seem to advance or seem to be standing still or seem even to be going back, always with a calm faith and patient and cheerful perseverance, anirviṇṇacetasā. Sattwa binds by knowledge and pleasure; it is always attaching itself to some imperfect realisation, to the idea of one’s own virtue, the correctness of one’s own opinions and principles or at its highest, as in the case of Arjuna, opposing some personal idea of altruism, justice or virtue against the surrender of our will that God demands of us. It is for the escape from the sattwic ahaṅkāra that we have to pass beyond the attachment to the duality of virtue and sin, ubhe sukṛtaduṣkṛte.
The fruit of my actions belongs not to me, but to God and the world; my action belongs to God and myself. There I have a right. Or rather it belongs to God in myself; the right is His, but I enjoy it. The Will that works in me is the indivisible All which only seems to separate itself from itself in my body and personality, nāmarūpa, as the whole sea throws itself upon a particular coast in a particular surge of waves. The All and the I are at play of hide and seek with each other in a corner of an infinite universe.
The emphasis with which the Seer enounces the necessity of life and action, kurvanneva, nányatheto’sti, is demanded from him by the truth of things as a necessary counterpoise to the emphasis with which he has declared the necessity of renunciation and the abandonment of desire in the immediately precedent phrases.…Read the whole passage · 561 wordsClose the passage
The emphasis with which the Seer enounces the necessity of life and action, kurvanneva, nányatheto’sti, is demanded from him by the truth of things as a necessary counterpoise to the emphasis with which he has declared the necessity of renunciation and the abandonment of desire in the immediately precedent phrases. For the first natural result of renunciation and the abandonment of desire is a tendency to pure peace and stillness, a disinclination to action as the source of all grief & disturbance and an attachment to inaction as the condition of peace, the sango akarmani of the Gita. Desire, in the ordinary machinery of our nature, is the motive-spring to action; by the touch on this spring the whole machine is set and kept working. Nor does God slacken or destroy that human spring till the machine has written out for Him in dual letters of pleasure & pain, joy & grief, sin & virtue, success and failure, upward evolution and backward sliding, the harmony of His inferior rhythms and His lila as the Ego in the kingdoms of Ignorance. But if the spring is destroyed or if the divine finger no longer falls upon it, then the machine no longer works. Egoistic action, the only activity to which mortal mind is habituated or which it understands, is impossible without desire or at least without its essential feature, liking and disliking, emotional, sensational and intellectual preference and rejection. Hence, the first result of unsparing inner renunciation, is not only peace & calm, but inaction. If, departing from that calm of inaction, we seek again to act, the force of habit in past Nature associates with that rhythm of action its old triple gamut, ego, desire and suffering. It is the old keys that again are struck, the old painful music that again quivers through our being. This force of habit in past Nature mistaken for ineluctable law of eternal Nature, this obstinately persistent experience mistaken for ultimate and imperative experience is the root and basis of the quietistic gospel which declares action incompatible with peace & joy in Brahman, the false music of an original Illusion, the morbid throb of a great cosmic disease or, in its law, the ordering link of an incoherent series of sensations and to an unreal soul in its whirl of births a rigorous double chain. It is these phantasms that the Seer of the Isha Upanishad has to conjure,—phantasms of an overhasty metaphysical generalisation, imperfect conclusions of the soul escaping from its fever & mistaking the inactive repose of convalescence for its ultimate state of health. Not inaction & inert repose, but a healthful activity is our final state & release. We escape from this fever and struggle in which we live not by the drastic remedy of extinction but by emergence into right form of action and our true life in God. The Seer justifies God in the world to man by declaring His whole purpose in it, His complete action behind & beyond material appearances and our true infinite & cosmic being. The whole error arises from mistaking the root of our suffering and bondage; the doctors of metaphysics have deluded themselves and us with a false diagnosis. This error the Seer sets right in one of [his] brief, mighty and ample phrases, Na karma lipyate nare, Action cleaveth not to a man.
We might accept this conclusion but for the distinct injunction of the Seer, bhunjítháh, thou shouldst enjoy. Divine Ananda in God at play & God at rest, not loss of interest and a quietistic indifference is the human fulfilment contemplated by the Upanishads. The first error of the human mind is to suppose that…Read the whole passage · 665 wordsClose the passage
We might accept this conclusion but for the distinct injunction of the Seer, bhunjítháh, thou shouldst enjoy. Divine Ananda in God at play & God at rest, not loss of interest and a quietistic indifference is the human fulfilment contemplated by the Upanishads. The first error of the human mind is to suppose that because our emotions, our desires, our personal will have an apparent effect upon event & fruit of action, they are themselves the real determinants of those events & the sufficient winners of that fruit; they are neither of these things; they are only one spring of the machinery, only one subordinate working of the universal Will. It is what the universal Will beyond all mentality decides & works out, not what the personally acting will in the material brain & heart hungers after, that determines event. Karmanyevádhikáras te, says the Gita, má phaleshu kadáchana, Thou hast a right to action, but no claim at all on the fruits of action; for the fruits belong to God, they belong to the world-working, they belong to the universal will, they belong to the great purposes of the cosmos & not to any clamorous individual hunger. The second error of the human mind when it perceives itself to be the instrument only of a supreme universal Force or Will, its action to be only a whorl in the stream of universal energy and result to be a predestined event of universal Will partly executable by us, but not independently governable or alterable by our effort, is to argue falsely, confusing the Purusha with the Prakriti, that because our action is subject to universal Nature, therefore the soul also is subject to law of Nature & its only refuge is in quietistic renunciation, in indifference or in the withdrawal from phenomenal living. The real refuge is altogether different; it is the blissful withdrawal from personal hunger & desire, it is the detached but joyous contemplation of individual will as a working of divine or universal Will, it is the withdrawal from egoistic being & the perception of the individual as only a convenient term of the universal Ishwara, of the Jiva as only a form in consciousness of the Ishwara, it is the equal enjoyment of the fruits favourable or adverse not only of individual will, but of the universal will, not only our own joys, but the joys of all creatures, not only the gains which come to our minds & bodies, but those which come to the minds and bodies of all existences; it is to make the joy & fulfilment of God in the world our joy & fulfilment, it is to see one Lord seated in all creatures. This is the delight-filled equality of mind, anandamaya samata, that is in the world our ultimate prize & supreme state in mortal nature, fulfilling itself in a divine freedom equally from desire for the fruit of the action and from attachment to the action itself; the fruit is to be what the Lord has willed, the action is God’s action in us for His great cosmic purpose. God Himself, the Gita tells us, has essentially this immortal freedom from desire, & yet He acts entirely; He has this divine non-attachment to the work itself & yet He works & enjoys in the universe & the individual, na me karmaphale sprihá, asaktam teshu karmasu, varta eva cha karmani; for in Purusha He contemplates, blissful & free, Himself in Prakriti executing inevitably His own eternal will in the universe known to Him before the ages began in that timeless, time-regarding conscious self of which we all are the habitations. So is the divine attitude towards existence constituted, the attitude of the Ishwara; a perfect & blissful calm & quietism of the divine soul harmonised & become one with a colossal activity of the divine Power driving before it the ordered whirl of a myriad forces occupying limitless Space & Time towards an eternally predestined end.
To put the individual Self in intimate relation with the Eternal is the aim of Hindu life, its religion, its polity, its ethics. Morality is not for its own sake, nor for the pleasures of virtue, nor for any reward here or in another life, nor for the sake of society; these are false aims and false sanctions. Its true aim is a preparation and purification of the soul to fit it for the presence of God. The sense-obscured, limited and desire-driven individual self must raise itself out of the dark pit of sense-obsession into the clear air of the spirit, must disembarrass itself of servile bondage to bodily, emotional & intellectual selfishness and assume the freedom & royalty of universal love and beneficence, must expand itself from the narrow, petty, inefficient ego till it becomes commensurate with the infinite, all-powerful, omnipresent Self of All; then is its aim of existence attained, then is its pilgrimage ended. This may be done by realising the Eternal in oneself by knowledge, by realising oneself in Him by Love as God the Beloved, or by realising Him as the Lord of all in His universe and all its creatures by works. This realisation is the true crown of any ethical system. For whether we hold the aim of morality to be the placing of oneself in harmony with eternal laws, or the fulfilment of man’s nature, or the natural evolution of man in the direction of his highest faculties, Hinduism will not object but it insists that the Law with which man must put himself into relation is the Eternal in the universe, that in this permanent and stable Truth man’s nature fulfils itself out of the transient seemings of his daily existence and that to this goal his evolution moves. This consummation may be reached by ethical means through a certain manner of action and a certain spirit in action which is the essence of Karmamarga, the Way of Works, one of the three ways by which the spirit of man may see, embrace & become God. The first law of Karmamarga is to give up the natural desire for the fruits of our works and surrender all we do, think, feel and are into the keeping of the Eternal, and the second is to identify ourself with all creatures in the Universe both individually and collectively, realising our larger Self in others. These two laws of action together make what is called Karmayoga or the putting of ourselves into relation with that which is Eternal by means of and in our works. Before, then, we can understand what Karmayoga is, we must understand entirely and utterly what is this Eternal Being with whom we must put ourselves in relation and what are His relations with our self, with the phenomena of the Universe and with the creatures that people it. The Vedantic knowledge of Brahman, the Vedantic Cosmogony, the Vedantic explanation of the coexistence of Brahman with the Universe, the Eternal with the Transient, the Transcendent with the Phenomenal, the One with the Many, are what we have first to study.
Writings in Bengali
পালনের দৃঢ় চেষ্টা, ইহাই গীতোক্ত সমতা ও নিষ্কাম কর্ম্ম। নচেৎ গীতার ধর্ম্ম কর্ম্মীর ধর্ম্ম, বীরের ধর্ম্ম, আর্য্যের ধর্ম্ম না হইয়া হয় তামসিক নিশ্চেষ্টতার পরিপোষক শিক্ষা, নহে ত অপরিণামদর্শী মূর্খের ধর্ম্ম হইত। কর্ম্মফলে আমাদের অধিকার নাই, কর্ম্মফল ভগবানের হাতে; কর্ম্মেই আমাদের অধিকার আছে। সাত্ত্বিক কর্ত্তা অনহংবাদী ও ফলাসক্তিহীন, কিন্তু দক্ষ ও উৎসাহী। তিনি জানেন যে তাঁহার শক্তি ভগবদ্দত্ত ও মহাশক্তিচালিত, অতএব তিনি অনহংবাদী; তিনি জানেন যে, ফল পূর্ব্ব হইতেই ভগবানের দ্বারা নির্দ্দিষ্ট অতএব তিনি ফলাসক্তিহীন; কিন্তু দক্ষতা, উপায়-নির্ব্বাচন-পটুতা, উৎসাহ, দৃঢ়তা, অদমনীয় উদ্যম শক্তির সর্ব্বোচ্চ অঙ্গ, তাহাও তিনি জানেন, অতএব তিনি দক্ষ ও উৎসাহী হয়েন। সূক্ষ্মবিচারে গীতা-নিহিত গভীর চিন্তা ও শিক্ষার প্রকৃত অর্থ হৃদয়ঙ্গম হয়। নচেৎ দুয়েকটা শ্লোকের স্বতন্ত্র ও বিকৃত অর্থ গ্রহণ করিলে ভ্রমাত্মক শিক্ষা দেওয়া হয় এবং ধর্ম্মে ও কর্ম্মে অধোগতি হয়।
Record of Yoga
Thirdly we have to get rid of desire and replace it by the Ananda of Sachchidananda. After that in order to live and act in the world we have to act as mere instruments so the Divine Force which we must realise as the sole Power which acts in the world and we must get rid of the idea that actions are ours or that the fruit of the action belongs to us personally. The only work we have to do in the world is to perfect ourselves, carry out whatever the Divine Power wills that we should do and so far as possible help others to perfect themselves and help the life of humanity to become Divine.
Letters
In Shankara’s Bhashya on the Gita it seems he takes any opportunity to thrust in the ideas of कर्मसन्यास and ज्ञाननिष्ठा For example, in the famous shloka कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते, the Bhashya speaks of ज्ञाननिष्ठा though it seems quite irrelevant.
Until you are capable of this complete dynamic identification, you have to regard yourself as a soul and body created for her service, one who does all for her sake. Even if the idea of the separate worker is strong in you and you feel that it is you who do the act, yet it must be done for her. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of self-regarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness and calm and strength and bliss. The joy of service and the joy of inner growth through works is the sufficient recompense of the selfless worker.
I have more to write of these things from the spiritual point of view, but I shall leave it till tomorrow or the day after as this letter must go at once. Put faith in God & act. You have seen that when He wills, He can bring about impossibilities. Do not look too much at the chances of success & failure in this matter. কর্মনোবাধিকারঙে
Evening talks
The action and the fruit of action both belong to God, — not to us. There should be no insistence on the fruit of good or unselfish action. When this is done then everything becomes easy.
You act not for success but for the Divine, though that does not mean that you must not work for success. Is this confusing? That was what Arjuna complained to Krishna – that Krishna spoke in double words. He told Arjuna not to be eager for results but at the same time he said, “Fight and conquer.”
At one time I experienced the hostile forces as the gods trying to test my strength. You have to act not for success but for the sake of the Divine, though it does not mean that you must not work for success. Arjuna complains to Sri Krishna in the Gita that he speaks in “double words” saying: “Do not be eager for the result” and at the same time “Fight and conquer.”
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. He seems to be confused: he has overstressed the ethical and tried to explain the spiritual idea from the ethical standpoint. The Gita’s idea of doing work without desire is too subtle for the modern mind and so he has made it “duty for duty’s sake”. The Europeans do not make any distinction between the true self and separative ego; for them it is one. Take the case of doing work without desire for the fruit. Now, if there is a separative self, then, from the rational point of view, why should not one expect the fruit of his action?
Nirodbaran: Ma phalesu!* Even in my cases I am not making any progress.
