ब्रह्मण्याधाय कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा करोति यः ।लिप्यते न स पापेन पद्मपत्रमिवाम्भसा ॥
brahmaṇyādhāya karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā karoti yaḥlipyate na sa pāpena padmapatramivāmbhasā
He who, having abandoned attachment, acts reposing (or founding) his works on the Brahman, is not stained by sin even as water clings not to the lotus-leaf.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
His translation
KRISHNA Renunciation of works or Yoga in works, both of these make for the soul’s highest welfare, but of these two Yoga in works is distinguished above renunciation of works. Know him for the perpetual Sunnyasin, who neither hates nor desires aught, for the mind that rises above the dualities, O strong of arm, is…Read the whole passage · 966 wordsClose the passage
KRISHNA Renunciation of works or Yoga in works, both of these make for the soul’s highest welfare, but of these two Yoga in works is distinguished above renunciation of works. Know him for the perpetual Sunnyasin, who neither hates nor desires aught, for the mind that rises above the dualities, O strong of arm, is easily and happily released from bondage. It is children who talk of Sankhya & Yoga as distinct & different, not the learned; he who cleaveth wholly to even one of these findeth the fruit of both. To the high heaven whereto the Sankhyas win, the men of Yoga go also, and he who seeth Sankhya and Yoga as one, seeth indeed. But without Yoga, O great of arm, renunciation is very difficult to arrive at and the sage that hath Yoga travelleth very swiftly to God. When a man hath Yoga, the self of him is purified from obscuration, he is master [of] the Self and victor over the senses; he whose Self has become one with the self of all created things, though he do works, can receive no defilement. The Yogin sees the reality of things and thinks “Truly I do nothing at all”; yea when he sees or hears or touches, when he smells and when he tastes, in his going and in his sleeping and in his breathing, whether he talk, whether he put out or take in, whether he close his eyes or open them, still he holds to it, “Lo, ‘tis but the senses that move in the fields of the senses.” When a man doeth, reposing all his works on the Eternal and abandoning attachment, sin cannot stay on his soul even as water on the leaf of a lotus. With their body, mind and understanding self and with the pure and unaffected senses the Yogins relinquishing attachment do works for the cleansing of the Self. The soul that has Yoga abandons the fruit of its works and gains instead a confident and utter peace, but the soul that has not Yoga clings to the fruit of its works and by the working of desire it falls into bondage. When a man is master of his self and has renounced all works in his heart, then the embodied spirit sitteth at ease in his nine-gated city, neither doing nor causing to be done. The Lord createth not works nor the authorship of works for His people neither yoketh He them to the fruits of their works; ‘tis the nature in a man that is busy & taketh its course. The Lord taketh to himself the sin of none neither accepteth He the righteousness of any; but Wisdom is clouded over with Nescience and ‘tis by this that these living beings fall into delusion. But on all of those who by Knowledge have destroyed the nescience of the Self, Wisdom riseth like the sun and lighteth up that Highest Self of All. Then they perceive Him alone and are Self of Him and to Him consecrated in faith and all for Him, and the revolving wheel clutches them not in any more, because wisdom hath washed them pure of all stain. The Brahmin endowed with learning and modest culture, the cow & the elephant and the very dog and the Pariah, all these the wise regard with equal eyes. Even in this human life they have conquered this creation whose minds have taken root in that divine equality, for the Eternal also is without a defect and He looketh on all his creatures with equal eyes; therefore in the Eternal they have their root. He is not overjoyed when he getteth what is pleasant, he groweth not troubled when he tasteth bitterness, whose reason is firm & steadfast and he subjecteth not himself to delusion but knoweth the Eternal and in him abideth. His soul clings not to the touches of outward things but what happiness he finds, he finds in the Self, therefore his Self is made one in Yoga with Eternal Brahman & the happiness he tastes, does not cease or diminish. For the enjoyments that are born of touch and contact are very wombs of misery, they begin and they end; the wise man taketh no delight in these. For he who even on this earth and before his release from this mortal body hath strength to stand up in the speed and rush of wrath and lust, he hath Yoga, he is the happy man. That man is the Yogin whose bliss is within and his delight & ease are inward and an inner light illumines him & not this outer sun; he goeth to cessation in Eternal Brahman, for he becometh Brahman. Cessation in Brahman falleth to those who are Rishis from whom all stain & darkness have faded away, who have cut doubt away from their hearts and are masters of Self, whose whole delight & work is to do good to all created things. Round the strivers after perfection, round the governed souls, who are delivered from the grip of wrath and desire, lo the Paradise of cessation in Brahman liveth all about them, who have got the knowledge of the Self within. He who shuts out the touches of outward things from his soul and concentrates sight between his eyebrows, making equal the outbreath and the inbreath as they move within the nostrils, master of his sense and mind and reason who utterly desireth salvation and desire and wrath and fear have departed from him for ever, verily he is already a released and delivered soul. He knows me for the One that feasteth on man’s sacrifices and austerities, a mighty God who is the friend of every created thing, and knowing he travels to the Peace.
Essays on the Gita
That equality, impersonality, peace, joy, freedom do not depend on so outward a thing as doing or not doing works. The Gita insists repeatedly on the difference between the inward and the outward renunciation, tyāga and sannyāsa. The latter, it says, is valueless without the former, hardly possible even to attain…Read the whole passage · 506 wordsClose the passage
That equality, impersonality, peace, joy, freedom do not depend on so outward a thing as doing or not doing works. The Gita insists repeatedly on the difference between the inward and the outward renunciation, tyāga and sannyāsa. The latter, it says, is valueless without the former, hardly possible even to attain without it, and unnecessary when there is the inward freedom. In fact tyāga itself is the real and sufficient Sannyasa. “He should be known as the eternal Sannyasin who neither5·3 hates nor desires; free from the dualities he is happily and easily released from all bondage.” The painful process of outward5·6 Sannyasa, duḥkham āptum, is an unnecessary process. It is perfectly true that all actions, as well as the fruit of action, have to be given up, to be renounced, but inwardly, not outwardly, not into the inertia of Nature, but to the Lord in sacrifice, into the calm and joy of the Impersonal from whom all action proceeds without disturbing his peace. The true Sannyasa of action is the reposing of all works on the Brahman. “He who, having5·10 abandoned attachment, acts reposing (or founding) his works on the Brahman, brahmaṇyādhāya karmāṇi, is not stained by sin even as water clings not to the lotus-leaf.” Therefore the Yogins first “do works with the body, mind, understanding, or even merely with the organs of action, abandoning attachment,5·11–13 for self-purification, saṅgaṁ tyaktvātmaśuddhaye. By abandoning attachment to the fruits of works the soul in union with Brahman attains to peace of rapt foundation in Brahman, but the soul not in union is attached to the fruit and bound by the action of desire.” The foundation, the purity, the peace once attained, the embodied soul perfectly controlling its nature, having renounced all its actions by the mind, inwardly, not outwardly, “sits in its nine-gated city neither doing nor causing to be done.” For this soul is the one impersonal Soul in all, the all-pervading Lord, prabhu, vibhu, who, as the impersonal, neither creates the works of the world, nor the mind’s idea of being the doer, na kartṛtvaṁ na karmāṇi, nor the coupling of works to their fruits, the chain of cause and effect. All that is worked out5·14–17 by the Nature in the man, svabhāva, his principle of self-becoming, as the word literally means. The all-pervading Impersonal accepts neither the sin nor the virtue of any: these are things created by the ignorance in the creature, by his egoism of the doer, by his ignorance of his highest self, by his involution in the operations of Nature, and when the self-knowledge within him is released from this dark envelope, that knowledge lights up like a sun the real self within him; he knows himself then to be the soul supreme above the instruments of Nature. Pure, infinite, inviolable, immutable, he is no longer affected; no longer does he imagine himself to be modified by her workings. By complete identification with the Impersonal he can, too, release himself from the necessity of returning by birth into her movement.
And yet this liberation does not at all prevent him from acting. Only, he knows that it is not he who is active, but the modes, the qualities of Nature, her triple guṇas. “The man who knows the principles of things thinks, his mind in Yoga (with the inactive Impersonal), ‘I am doing nothing’; when he sees, hears, touches, smells, eats, moves, sleeps, breathes, speaks, takes, ejects,5·8–9 opens his eyes or closes them, he holds that it is only the senses acting upon the objects of the senses.” He himself, safe in the immutable, unmodified soul, is beyond the grip of the three gunas, triguṇātīta; he is neither sattwic, rajasic nor tamasic; he sees with a clear untroubled spirit the alternations of the natural modes and qualities in his action, their rhythmic play of light and happiness, activity and force, rest and inertia. This superiority of the calm soul observing its action but not involved in it, this traiguṇātītya, is also a high sign of the divine worker. By itself the idea might lead to a doctrine of the mechanical determinism of Nature and the perfect aloofness and irresponsibility of the soul; but the Gita effectively avoids this fault of an insufficient thought by its illumining supertheistic idea of the Purushottama. It makes it clear that it is not in the end Nature which mechanically determines its own action; it is the will of the Supreme which inspires her; he who has already slain the Dhritarashtrians, he of whom Arjuna is only the human instrument, a universal Soul, a transcendent Godhead is the master of her labour. The reposing of works in the Impersonal is a means of getting rid of the personal egoism of the doer, but the end is to give up all our actions to that great Lord of all,9·11 sarva-loka-maheśvara. “With a consciousness identified with the Self, renouncing all thy actions into Me, mayi sarvāṇi karmāṇi sannyasyādhyātmacetasā3·30, freed from personal hopes and desires, from the thought of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, delivered from the fever of the soul, fight,” work, do my will in the world. The Divine motives, inspires, determines the entire action; the human soul impersonal in the Brahman is the pure and silent channel of his power; that power in the Nature executes the divine movement. Such only are the works of the liberated soul, muktasya karma4·23, for in nothing does he act from a personal inception; such are the actions of the accomplished Karmayogin. They rise from a free spirit and disappear without modifying it, like waves that rise and disappear on the surface of conscious, immutable depths.4·23 Gata-saṅgasya muktasya jñānāvasthita-cetasaḥ, yajñāyācarataḥ karma samagraṁ pravilīyate.
It is in this sense that the Gita is speaking when it says that all the totality of work finds its completion, culmination, end in4·37 knowledge, sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ jñāne parisamāpyate. “As a fire kindled turns to ashes its fuel, so the fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes.” By this it is not at all meant that when knowledge is complete, there is cessation from works. What is meant is made clear by the Gita when it says that he who has destroyed all doubt by knowledge and has by Yoga given up all works and is in possession of the Self is not bound by his works,4·41 yoga-sannyasta-karmāṇam ātmavantaṁ na karmāṇi nibadhnanti, and that he whose self has become the self of all existences, acts and yet is not affected by his works, is not caught in them, receives5·7 from them no soul-ensnaring reaction, kurvann api na lipyate. Therefore, it says, the Yoga of works is better than the physical renunciation of works, because, while Sannyasa is difficult for embodied beings who must do works so long as they are in the body, Yoga of works is entirely sufficient and it rapidly and easily brings the soul to Brahman. That Yoga of works is, we have seen, the offering of all action to the Lord, which induces as its culmination an inner and not an outer, a spiritual, not a5·10 physical giving up of works into the Brahman, into the being of3·30 the Lord, brahmaṇi ādhāya karmāṇi, mayi sannyasya. When7·6 works are thus “reposed on the Brahman,” the personality of18·57 the instrumental doer ceases; though he acts, he does nothing; for he has given up not only the fruits of his works, but the works themselves and the doing of them to the Lord. The Divine then takes the burden of works from him; the Supreme becomes the doer and the act and the result.
Other writings
Still Arjuna is not satisfied. Srikrishna goes still deeper. He says that the whole of our life is determined by maya which is of three kinds—sattwa, rajas, and tamas. Their nature is this. Sattwa leads to knowledge, rajas leads to action, and tamas leads to inaction and ignorance. These are the qualities of nature which govern the world. The swabhava which leads you to work is determined by the three gunas. Action is determined by swabhava. All action leads to bondage and is full of defects. What you call virtue or virtues, they have defects in themselves. The virtue of Brahmins is a great virtue. You shall not kill. This is what ahinsa means. If the virtue of ahinsa comes to the Kshatriya, if you say I will not kill, there is no one to protect the country. The happiness of the people will be broken down. Injustice and lawlessness will reign. The virtue becomes a source of misery, and you become instrumental in bringing misery and conflict to the people. Your duty to your family seems to conflict with your duty to society, that of society to the nation, and that of the nation to mankind. How shall we follow the path which leads to salvation? It is difficult to say what is right and what is wrong. How to decide it then? There is one way: do action in yoga, and then you rise above ignorance, and sin cannot touch you, and you rise above all that hampers you and binds you.
The third stage comes out of the second, by full realisation of God, or of itself by the grace of God. Not only will the Purusha stand apart and be triguṇātīta, beyond the three guṇas, but the Prakriti, though using the guṇas, will be free from their bondage. Sattwa, as we know it, will disappear into pure prakāśa and jyotiḥ, and the nature will live in a pure, free and infinite self-existing illumination. Tamas, as we know it, will disappear into pure śama or śānti, and the nature will take its firm stand on an infinite and ineffable rest and peace. Rajas, as we know it, will disappear into pure tapas, and the nature will flow in a free and infinite ocean of divine force. On that foundation of calm and in that heaven of light, action will occur as the spontaneous objective expression of God’s knowledge, which is one with God’s will. This is the condition of infinity, ānantya, in which this struggle of bound and limited sattwa, rajas and tamas is replaced by a mighty harmony of free prakāśa, tapas and śama. And even before you reach that condition, on the way to it, you will find that some mighty force not your own, not situated in your body though possessing and occupying it, is thinking for you, feeling for you, acting for you, your very body as well as your mind and heart being moved by that force and not by yourself. You will enjoy that thought, feeling, action, but will neither possess nor be possessed by it,—karmāṇi pravilīyante, your actions will disappear without leaving in you mark or trace, as a wave disappears from the surface of the sea, as water falls from the lotus leaf. Your mind, heart, body will not be yours, but God’s; you yourself will be only a centre of being, knowledge and bliss through which God works in that Adhar. This is the condition in which one is utterly taccittaḥ, given up in all his conscious being to God, in which there is utter fulfilment of the description,
Writings in Bengali
স্বদেশীগানের অনেক বই, আর য়ুরোপীয় দর্শন, ইতিহাস ও সাহিত্যবিষয়ক অল্পস্বল্প পুস্তক। সকালে কেহ কেহ সাধনা করিতে বসিত, কেহ কেহ বই পড়িত, কেহ কেহ আস্তে গল্প করিত। সকালের এই শান্তিময় নীরবতায় মাঝে মাঝে হাসির লহরীও উঠিত। “কাচেরী” না থাকিলে কেহ কেহ ঘুমাইত, কেহ কেহ খেলা করিত — যে দিন যে খেলা জোটে, আসক্তি কাহারও নাই। কোন দিন মণ্ডলে বসিয়া কোন শান্ত খেলা — কোন দিন বা দৌড়াদৌড়ি লাফালাফি। দিনকতক ফুটবল চলিল, ফুটবলটা অবশ্য অপূর্ব্ব উপকরণে গঠিত। দিনকতক কানামাছিই চলিল, এক একদিন ভিন্ন ভিন্ন দল গঠন করিয়া একদিকে জুজুৎসু শিক্ষা অন্যদিকে উচ্চ লম্ফ ও দীর্ঘ লম্ফ আর একদিকে drafts বা দশপঁচিশ। দুই চারিজন গম্ভীর প্রৌঢ় লোক ভিন্ন সকলেই প্রায় বালকদের অনুরোধে এই সকল খেলায় যোগ দিতেন। দেখিলাম ইহাদের মধ্যে বয়স্ক লোকেরও বালস্বভাব। সন্ধ্যাবেলায় গানের মজলিস জমিত। উল্লাস, শচীন্দ্র, হেমদাস, যাহারা গানে সিদ্ধ, তাহাদের চারিদিকে আমরা সকলে বসিয়া গান শুনিতাম। স্বদেশী বা ধর্ম্মের গান ব্যতীত অন্য কোনরূপ গান হইত না। এক একদিন কেবল আমোদ করিবার ইচ্ছায় উল্লাসকর হাসির গান, অভিনয়, Ventriloquism অনুকরণ বা গেঁজেলের গল্প করিয়া সন্ধ্যা কাটাইত। উল্লাসকরের ন্যায় অদ্ভুত ক্ষমতাশালী ও অপূর্ব্ব চরিত্র লোক আমি আর কখনও দেখি নাই। শুনিয়াছিলাম বটে এমন লোক মাঝে মাঝে জন্মায় যাহার অন্তরাত্মায় মায়ার প্রভাব এত শিথিল যে সামান্য দেহের ধর্ম্ম ব্যতীত তাহার অন্য কোন বন্ধন নাই। “লিপ্যতে ন স পাপেন পদ্মপত্রমিবাম্ভসা”। এই উক্তির যাথার্থ্য ও প্রকৃত মর্ম্ম এবার উল্লাসকরের আচরণে প্রত্যক্ষ উপলব্ধি করিলাম। সামান্য মানুষের ন্যায় কর্ম্ম করেন, হাসেন, গল্প করেন, খেলেন, ভুল করেন, ন্যায় করেন, অন্যায় করেন, অথচ ভিতরে সেই নির্ম্মল দেবভাব। গায় হাজার কাদা পড়িলেও তাহা গায় লাগিয়া থাকে না। আমাদের রাগ সুখ দুঃখ ভয় স্বার্থ হিংসা দ্বেষ তাঁহার জন্যে সৃষ্ট হয় নাই। তাঁহার আছে প্রেম, আনন্দ, হাস্য, পরোপকার, পরসেবা, ফুলের স্বভাবসিদ্ধ স্বচ্ছতা ও প্রফুল্লতা। উল্লাসকর এই প্রকৃতিবিশিষ্ট লোক। তাঁহার মধ্যে আমি কখনও লেশমাত্র ক্রোধ, দুঃখ, দৈন্য, বিকার, বিষণ্ণতা দেখি নাই। কিছুতেই আসক্তি নাই। তাঁহার নিকট যে যাহা চাহিত তাহা তাহাকে বিলাইয়া দিতেন, নিজের যেন কিছুই নহে। কোনও ভাবেও তিনি বদ্ধ নন। এইমাত্র সকলের মনোরঞ্জনার্থ হাসি তামাসা করিতেছিলেন, পরমুহূর্ত্তে দেখিলাম হঠাৎ ধ্যানমগ্ন হইয়া সব ভুলিয়া গিয়াছেন।
