यदि ह्यहं न वर्तेयं जातु कर्मण्यतन्द्रितः ।मम वर्त्मानुवर्तन्ते मनुष्याः पार्थ सर्वशः ॥
yadi hyahaṁ na varteyaṁ jātu karmaṇyatandritaḥmama vartmānuvartante manuṣyāḥ pārtha sarvaśaḥ
For if I did not abide sleeplessly in the paths of action, men follow in every way my path, these peoples would sink to destruction if I did not work and I should be the creator of confusion and slay these creatures.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
His translation
KRISHNA Two are the ways of devotion in this world, already have I declared it to thee, O sinless hero; the devotion of the men of Sankhya is by singleness in knowledge, by singleness in works is the devotion of the men of Yoga. Not by refraining from works shall a man taste actionlessness and not by mere renouncing…Read the whole passage · 1,072 wordsClose the passage
KRISHNA Two are the ways of devotion in this world, already have I declared it to thee, O sinless hero; the devotion of the men of Sankhya is by singleness in knowledge, by singleness in works is the devotion of the men of Yoga. Not by refraining from works shall a man taste actionlessness and not by mere renouncing of the world shall he reach perfection. For verily no man even for a moment remains without doing, since each is made to do whether he will or not by the moods of his essential nature. He who coerceth the organs of action and sitteth remembering in his heart the things in which the senses work, is a man deceived in Spirit, him they call a hypocrite, but he whosoever governeth the senses with his mind, O Urjoona, and entereth on Yoga in works using the organs of action without attachment, is distinguished above all beings. Do thou the works that the law demands of thee, for action is mightier than inaction; yea without works the very maintenance of thy body cannot be. ‘Tis by doing works in other spirit than as a sacrifice that this world of creatures falleth into bondage to its works; but do thou practise works as a Sacrifice, O son of Coonty, with a mind free from the yoke of attachment. For with Sacrifice as their companion the Father, of old, created all these peoples and said unto them, “By Sacrifice shall ye beget offspring; lo the chosen joys of your desire, they shall be to you the milk of her udders. Cherish you the gods with sacrifice and the gods shall cherish you in turn; thus by cherishing each other shall ye attain to your highest welfare. Cherished with sacrifice the gods shall bestow on you the joys you most desire and he is no better than a thief who enjoyeth what they give and giveth not to them again.” The good who eat the remnants of the Sacrifice are delivered from all their transgressions, but those accursed eat and drink sin who cook their food but for their own selfish bellies. From food all creatures are born and from rain is the birth of food; but rain ariseth from the sacrifice and Sacrifice hath its root in works; works know to be born of the Eternal, for by the imperishable word of the Eternal they were brought into being. Therefore is the Eternal everywhere and in all things; yea He hath His home for ever in the heart of the Sacrifice. This is the Wheel that God hath set going and who goeth not with it, whose days are a wickedness, whose delight & ease are in the senses, O son of Pritha, liveth his life in vain. But for the man whose whole pleasure is in the Self and who satisfies his longing with the Self, yea who is content utterly with the Self, for him there is no needful action. For indeed he hath no end at all to gain by doing neither any by not doing, he hath no dependence for end or aim on any or even this whole world of creatures. Therefore without attachment do ever the work before thee, since by doing works without attachment man reacheth the Highest. ‘Twas by works alone that the men of old reached to utter perfection even Junac and the rest. Moreover even if thou lookest to the right government of the world, thou shouldest be doing. What they see their Greatest do, even that the rest of the folk will practise, and the standard that the Best setteth up, the world will surely follow. Behold, O Partha, there is nought at all in the three worlds that I must do, there is nothing I have not or that I yet need to win, and still I move in the path of works. For verily were I not to move sleeplessly in the path of works, lo men follow utterly the way wherein I tread, O son of Pritha, then would all these worlds sink and perish, were I not to do works and I should become the creator of bastard confusion and the slayer of all these creatures. That which the ignorant do with attachment to the work, O Bharata, the wise man should do without attachment, wishing only to keep the world in its traces. Let him not be the cause of division and confusion of mind in the ignorant who are attached to their works, but let him, knowing all, set them to all the works of this world by doing works in Yoga. Lo works are done but by the modes of Nature in her inevitable working, but the Spirit of man is deceived by the sense of separate existence and he sayeth in himself “I, even I am the doer.” But he who knoweth to the core how the workings of the modes are parcelled out, believeth that the modes work in and upon the modes, and suffereth not attachment to seize him. Most men are deceived by the modes of Nature, cling to the workings of these modes; these dull brains, these imperfect knowers, let not the perfect knower cause to swerve and stumble. Repose all thy works upon Me and with thy heart spiritually inclined be desireless, be selfless; then arise, fight, O Urjoona, let the fever of thy soul pass from thee. For men who with faith & without carping follow ever this my Word are released, they also, from bondage to their works, but they who carp at and follow not this my word, know of them that all their knowledge is a delusion; their intellect is nought; they are lost men, Urjoona. Lo even the wise man who knoweth can but act according to his own essential nature; for to their nature all creatures come at last and what shall coercing it avail? Only in the field of each & every sense love and hate are there & ever they lie in ambush; let not the Spirit of man fall into their clutches for they are his adversaries in his great journey. Better is it the rule of thy own life ill done than an alien rule well accomplished, yea death in the path of one’s own nature is better; it is a fearful and perilous thing to follow the law of another’s being.
Essays on the Gita
That this is the sense of the passage is made clear in what3·20–25 follows, by the affirmation of lokasaṅgraha as the object of works, of Prakriti as the sole doer of works and the divine Purusha as their equal upholder, to whom works have to be3·30 given up even in their doing,—this inner giving up of works and yet physical doing of them is the culmination of sacrifice,—and by the affirmation that the result of such active sacrifice with an equal and desireless mind is liberation from the bondage of4·22–23 works. “He who is satisfied with whatever gain comes to him and equal in failure and success, is not bound even when he acts. When a man liberated, free from attachment, acts for sacrifice, all his action is dissolved,” leaves, that is to say, no result of bondage or after-impression on his free, pure, perfect and equal soul. To these passages we shall have to return. They are followed by a perfectly explicit and detailed interpretation of the meaning of yajña in the language of the Gita which leaves no doubt at all about the symbolic use of the words and the psychological character of the sacrifice enjoined by this teaching. In the ancient Vedic system there was always a double sense physical and psychological, outward and symbolic, the exterior form of the sacrifice and the inner meaning of all its circumstances. But the secret symbolism of the ancient Vedic mystics, exact, curious, poetic, psychological, had been long forgotten by this time and it is now replaced by another, large, general and philosophical in the spirit of Vedanta and a later Yoga. The fire of sacrifice, agni, is no material flame, but brahmāgni, the fire of the Brahman, or it is the Brahman-ward energy, inner Agni, priest of the4·24–31 sacrifice, into which the offering is poured; the fire is self-control or it is a purified sense-action or it is the vital energy in that discipline of the control of the vital being through the control of the breath which is common to Rajayoga and Hathayoga, or it is the fire of self-knowledge, the flame of the supreme sacrifice. The food eaten as the leavings of the sacrifice is, it is explained, the nectar of immortality, amṛta, left over from the offering; and here we have still something of the old Vedic symbolism in which the Soma-wine was the physical symbol of the amṛta, the immortalising delight of the divine ecstasy won by the sacrifice, offered to the gods and drunk by men. The offering itself is whatever working of his energy, physical or psychological, is consecrated by him in action of body or action of mind to the gods or God, to the Self or to the universal powers, to one’s own higher Self or to the Self in mankind and in all existences.
The works of sacrifice are thus vindicated as a means of liberation and absolute spiritual perfection, saṁsiddhi. So Janaka3·20–22 and other great Karmayogins of the mighty ancient Yoga attained to perfection, by equal and desireless works done as a sacrifice, without the least egoistic aim or attachment — karmaṇaiva hi saṁsiddhim āsthitā janakādayaḥ. So too and with the same desirelessness, after liberation and perfection, works can and have to be continued by us in a large divine spirit, with the calm high nature of a spiritual royalty. “Thou shouldst do works regarding also the holding together of the peoples, lokasaṅgraham evāpi sampaśyan kartum arhasi. Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice; the standard he creates, the people follows. O son of Pritha, I have no work that I need to do in all the three worlds, I have nothing that I have not gained and have yet to gain, and I abide verily in the paths of action,” varta eva ca karmaṇi, — eva implying, I abide in it and do not leave it as the Sannyasin thinks himself bound to abandon works.3·23–24 “For if I did not abide sleeplessly in the paths of action, men follow in every way my path, these peoples would sink to destruction if I did not work and I should be the creator of confusion and slay these creatures. As those who know not3·25–26 act with attachment to the action, he who knows should act without attachment, having for his motive to hold together the peoples. He should not create a division of their understanding in the ignorant who are attached to their works; he should set them to all actions, doing them himself with knowledge and in Yoga.” There are few more important passages in the Gita than these seven striking couplets.
In order to indicate more perfectly his meaning, the divine Teacher, the Avatar gives his own example, his own standard3·22 to Arjuna. “I abide in the path of action,” he seems to say, “the path that all men follow; thou too must abide in action. In the way I act, in that way thou too must act. I am above the necessity of works, for I have nothing to gain by them; I am the Divine who possess all things and all beings in the world and I am myself beyond the world as well as in it and I do not depend upon anything or anyone in all the three worlds for any object; yet I act. This too must be thy manner and spirit of working. I, the Divine, am the rule and the standard; it is I who make the path in which men tread; I am the way and the goal. But I do all this largely, universally, visibly in part, but far more invisibly; and men do not really know the way of my workings. Thou, when thou knowest and seest, when thou hast become the divinised man, must be the individual power of God, the human yet divine example, even as I am in my avatars. Most men dwell in the ignorance, the God-seer dwells in the knowledge; but let him not confuse the minds of men by a3·26 dangerous example, rejecting in his superiority the works of the world; let him not cut short the thread of action before it is spun out, let him not perplex and falsify the stages and gradations of the ways I have hewn. The whole range of human action has been decreed by me with a view to the progress of man from the lower to the higher nature, from the apparent undivine to the conscious Divine. The whole range of human works must be that in which the God-knower shall move. All individual, all social action, all the works of the intellect, the heart and the body are still his, not any longer for his own separate sake, but for the sake of God in the world, of God in all beings and that all those beings may move forward, as he has moved, by the path of works towards the discovery of the Divine in themselves. Outwardly his actions may not seem to differ essentially from theirs; battle and rule as well as teaching and thought, all the various commerce of man with man may fall in his range; but the spirit in which he does them must be very different, and it is that spirit which by its influence shall be the great attraction drawing men upwards to his own level, the great lever lifting the mass of men higher in their ascent.”
The quietist, the ascetic, on the other hand cannot see any possibility of perfection into which life and action enter. Are they not the very seat of bondage and imperfection? Is not all action imperfect in its nature, like a fire that must produce smoke, is not the principle of action itself rajasic, the father of desire, a cause that must have its effect of obscuration of knowledge, its round of longing and success and failure, its oscillations of joy and grief, its duality of virtue and sin? God may be in the world, but he is not of the world; he is a God of renunciation and not the Master or cause of our works; the master of our works is desire and the cause of works is ignorance. If the world, the Kshara is in a sense a manifestation or a līlā of the Divine, it is an imperfect play with the ignorance of Nature, an obscuration rather than a manifestation. That is surely evident from our very first glance at the nature of the world and does not the fullest experience of the world teach us always the same truth? is it not a wheel of the ignorance binding the soul to continual birth by the impulse of desire and action until at last that is exhausted or cast away? Not only desire, but action also must be flung away; seated in the silent self the soul will then pass away into the motionless, actionless, imperturbable, absolute Brahman. To this objection of the impersonalising quietist the Gita is at more pains to answer than to that of the man of the world, the kinetic individual. For this quietism having hold of a higher and more powerful truth which is yet not the whole or the highest truth, its promulgation as the universal, complete, highest ideal of human life is likely to be more confusing and disastrous to the advance of the human race towards its goal than the error of an exclusive kinetism. A strong one-sided truth, when set forth as the whole truth, creates a strong light but also a strong confusion; for the very strength of its element of truth increases the strength of its element of error. The error of the kinetic ideal can only prolong the ignorance and retard the human advance by setting it in search of perfection where perfection cannot be found; but the error of the quietistic ideal contains in itself the very principle of world-destruction. Were I to act upon it, says3·23–24 Krishna, I should destroy the peoples and be the author of confusion; and though the error of an individual human being, even though a nearly divine man, cannot destroy the whole race, it may produce a widespread confusion which may be in its nature destructive of the principle of human life and disturbing to the settled line of its advance.
But it is to assist that ascent or evolution the descent is made or accepted; that the Gita makes very clear. It is, we might say, to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being, so that man may see what that is and take courage to grow into it. It is also to leave the influence of that manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its upward endeavour. It is to give a spiritual mould of divine manhood into which the seeking4·7–8 soul of the human being can cast itself. It is to give a dharma, a religion,—not a mere creed, but a method of inner and outer living,—a way, a rule and law of self-moulding by which he can grow towards divinity. It is too, since this growth, this ascent is no mere isolated and individual phenomenon, but like all in the divine world-activities a collective business, a work3·20–25 and the work for the race, to assist the human march, to hold it together in its great crises, to break the forces of the downward gravitation when they grow too insistent, to uphold or restore the great dharma of the Godward law in man’s nature, to prepare even, however far off, the kingdom of God, the victory of the seekers of light and perfection, sādhūnām, and the overthrow of those who fight for the continuance of the evil and the darkness. All these are recognised objects of the descent of the Avatar, and it is usually by his work that the mass of men seek to distinguish him and for that that they are ready to worship him. It is only the spiritual who see that this external Avatarhood is a sign, in the symbol of a human life, of the eternal inner Godhead making himself manifest in the field of their own human mentality and corporeality so that they can grow into unity with that and be possessed by it. The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings.
It is here that the Gita intervenes with a restatement of the truth of the Spirit, of the Self, of God and of the world and Nature. It extends and remoulds the truth evolved by a later thought from the ancient Upanishads and ventures with assured steps on an endeavour to apply its solving power to the problem of life and action. The solution offered by the Gita does not disentangle all the problem as it offers itself to modern mankind; as stated here to a more ancient mentality, it does not meet the insistent pressure of the present mind of man for a collective advance, does not respond to its cry for a collective life that will at last embody a greater rational and ethical and if possible even a dynamic spiritual ideal. Its call is to the individual who has become capable of a complete spiritual existence; but for the rest of the race it prescribes only a gradual advance, to be wisely effected by following out faithfully with more and more of3·20–25 intelligence and moral purpose and with a final turn to spirituality the law of their nature. Its message touches the other smaller solutions but, even when it accepts them partly, it is to point them beyond themselves to a higher and more integral secret into which as yet only the few individuals have shown themselves fit to enter.
The Synthesis of Yoga
At the same time the Yogin who knows the Supreme is not subject to any need or compulsion in these activities; for to him they are neither a duty nor a necessary occupation for the mind nor a high amusement, nor imposed even by the loftiest human purpose. He is not attached, bound and limited by any nor has he any personal motive of fame, greatness or personal satisfaction in these works; he can leave or pursue them as the Divine in him wills, but he need not otherwise abandon them in his pursuit of the higher integral knowledge. He will do these things just as the supreme Power acts and creates, for a certain spiritual joy in creation and expression or to help in the holding together and right ordering or leading of this world of God’s workings. The Gita teaches that the man of knowledge shall by his way of life give to those who have not yet the spiritual consciousness, the love and habit of all works and not only of actions recognised as pious, religious or ascetic in their character; he should not draw men away from the world-action by his example. For the world must proceed in its great upward aspiring; men and nations must not be led to fall away from even an ignorant activity into a worse ignorance of inaction or to sink down into that miserable disintegration and tendency of dissolution which comes upon communities and peoples when there predominates the tamasic principle, the principle whether of obscure confusion and error or of weariness and inertia. “For I too,” says the Lord in the Gita, “have no need to do works, since there is nothing I have not or must yet gain for myself; yet I do works in the world: for if I did not do works, all laws would fall into confusion, the worlds would sink towards chaos and I would be the destroyer of these peoples.” The spiritual life does not need, for its purity, to destroy interest in all things except the Inexpressible or to cut at the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and Life. It may well be one of the effects of an integral spiritual knowledge and activity to lift them out of their limitations, substitute for our mind’s ignorant, limited, tepid or trepidant pleasure in them a free, intense and uplifting urge of delight and supply a new source of creative spiritual power and illumination by which they can be carried more swiftly and profoundly towards their absolute light in knowledge and their yet undreamed possibilities and most dynamic energy of content and form and practice. The one thing needful must be pursued first and always; but all things else come with it as its outcome and have not so much to be added to us as recovered and reshaped in its self-light and as portions of its self-expressive force.
Other writings
“Looking also to the maintenance of order in the world thou shouldest act; for whatever the best practises, that other men practise; for the standard set by him is followed by the whole world. In all the Universe there is for Me no necessary action, for I have nothing I do not possess or wish to possess, and lo I abide always doing. For if I abide not at all doing action vigilantly, men would altogether follow in my path, O son of Pritha; these worlds would sink if I did not actions, and I should be the author of confusion (literally illegitimacy, the worst & primal confusion, for it disorders the family which is the fundamental unit of society) and the destroyer of the peoples. What the ignorant do, O Bharata, with their minds enslaved to the work, that the wise man should do with a free mind to maintain the order of the world; the wise man should not upset the mind of the ignorant who are slaves of their deeds, but should apply himself to all works doing customary things with a mind in Yoga.”
Writings in Bengali
প্রচারে ব্রাহ্মণ ভ্রান্তলক্ষ্য করি লোকে। শান্তি শান্তি বলে কেহ, শান্তি ভূমণ্ডলে, একই আশ্রয় কর্ম্ম ঘোষায় অপরে। কিন্তু যে প্রশংসে শান্তি শুনিবে না তারে, মিথ্যা উক্তি, বলহীন করে প্রজাগণে। কোথা শান্তি এই ভবে? ঈশ্বরেই শান্তি। যতদিন ভবক্ষেত্রে বিচর, মানব, কর্ম্ম কর সদা, খাট অতন্দ্রিত মনে নিষ্কাম উদ্যোগে। সূর্য্য গগনে উদিয়া কর্ম্ম করি অতন্দ্রিত ভুবন আলোকে, — কর্ম্মবলে অহোরাত্রী বিধান করিয়া চরাচর বন্ধু দিনকর মহাতেজী। অতন্দ্রিত উদে চন্দ্র শীতল কিরণে, অতন্দ্রিত ভাতে তারা অন্ধ নভস্তলে। অতন্দ্রিত ছুটে বায়ু স্বেচ্ছায় ভ্রমিয়া ঘোষমাণ মাতরিশ্বা অসীম আকাশে। কর্ম্মবলে ভাতে স্বর্গে অসংখ্য দেবতা কর্ম্মবলে সপ্ত ঋষি ভাতে অন্তরীক্ষে। কর্ম্মবলে বহে পূতা তুষিতে মানবে স্বাদু সুশীতল নীরে তরঙ্গিনী নদী। ঘুরিয়া পৃথিবী দেবী অনাশ্রয় শূন্যে কর্ম্মবলে নহে ক্লিষ্ট এ মহৎ ভারে। কর্ম্মবলে সর্ব্বসুখ ত্যজিয়া বাসব সমতা তিতিক্ষা ধর্ম্ম আচরিয়া তেজে সুরেশ্বর আখণ্ডল দম্ভোলী নিক্ষেপী দিগ্মণ্ডল নাদাইয়া গগন আলোকে, বর্ষায় মেদিনীবক্ষে শস্যার্থে হিতৈষী। কর্ম্মবলে ক্ষত্রধর্ম্ম ক্ষত্রিয় আচরে। নিষ্কর্ম্মা বসিয়া গৃহে যে মানব ভাবে শান্ত রব কোণে পড়ি, ক্ষমিবে অরাতি,
