Verses 2.47–2.48🔗

The entire teaching of Bhagavad Gītā can be summarized in the above two verses. The sheer brilliance of the wisdom of the Universal Master is reflected in these verses. Whenever I get a chance I refer to these verses to explain how one should lead one’s life. Kṛṣṇa says many, many things in these few words. He says, ‘You have the right and responsibility to work. You have no responsibility or right to the results of that work. Do not focus on the result and make it either a pattern of greed to chase or fear to stay away from. Do what you have to do with a centered mind, a complete inner space without worrying about whether you will succeed or fail.’ karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana I mā karmaphala hetur bhur mā te saṅgo’stv akarmaṇi II 2.47 Nothing more can be said or ever needs to be said about why and how one should perform.

Many people wrongly communicate and misunderstand these verses. There are people who stay away from work that they fear may end in adverse negative results. As long as the results can be positive either to themselves or others, they will carry out and complete what they are assigned sincerely. But when they think that something bad may happen, that they may fail, they will stop doing whatever they are doing. One of the biggest problems human beings have is this—you love to be successful, but you deeply believe that you are a failure. This is one of the biggest paradoxes. This shows the lack of integrity in your thinking. Understand, some of your actions may be a failure, some of your decisions or dimensions may be a failure, but YOU are never failure, because you are still breathing!

There are others who feel that doing nothing and disengaging from all action or akarma is the best solution, since all actions result in reactions andtheyaccumulatekarma.Ofcourse,almostallofusgoonblindlydoing whatever we are told to do when we see money or material rewards in front of us. Do My Work with Integrity and Authenticity Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Stop! Who do you think you are? You are here to do My work. You have no right to take the results that are Mine.’ His position is similar to that of a landowner who has sharecroppers working on the land. The sharecroppers have no right to anything but their sustenance wages. They need not worry about whether the land will yield well or not.

All that they need to do is honor the work they have committed to and fulfill their own responsibilities to their peak capability in caring for the land. They just need to be in integrity and authenticity to their work. That’s all! The landlord is the owner and ultimate beneficiary. Listen. Awareness of what Kṛṣṇa says here is the solution to all our day-to-day problems. Do what you have to do as your right and responsibility, without worrying about the results. Do not act with hopes of a certain reward. Do not stop doing what you need to do because you are afraid of what may lie ahead. Constantly bring integrity to your thinking, authenticity to your feeling, responsibility to your actions, enriching to your lifestyle!

You will see, you will realize an extraordinary space in your life, what Kṛṣṇa calls as being balanced in success and failure and being complete in yoga, siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṁ yoga ucyate (2.48). With integrity, you will literally clean your inner space of the constant unwanted beliefs that you carry, like the strong belief that you will be a failure. This continuous belief holds you from taking responsibility for your actions, makes you worry about the results, and leads you towards failure! When you start thinking with integrity, you will diagnose those self-fulfilling negative prophecies that you constantly give to yourself. When even a small thing happens, you immediately declare failure.

We go on doing this. The first thing to do is to declare your integrity, not your failure. When you start thinking with integrity, you will diagnose your own self-fulfilling negative prophecies. If you have a strong idea or self-doubt what you are doing is going to be a failure, the moment you think that it is a failure, it is a commitment and word you are giving to you. Do you understand? So if you give that word, you naturally have to fulfill it. Do you want to fulfill that word? No. Then tell yourself that I am not going to fulfill it. It means that whenever you have a thought, ‘I am a failure,’ you should know—this is a commitment I am making to me, and I have to honor it.

You may say that it comes on its own. Then complete it! Consciously disown and complete with it. Listen! Not fulfilling your everyday commitments will only make the weeds hide behind your unconscious patterns. Swami Vivekananda is very clear, yoga can happen in you, only along with responsible actions. Karma yoga does not happen without responsible actions. Sometimes, you execute actions the whole day, but there is no feeling of responsibility for it! When you have not lost the inspiration to take responsibility, nothing is lost. I tell you, if you take responsibility, even death cannot come near you. Death waits for you to complete your responsibility. So for anybody who wants to live long, just practice authentic responsibility for your actions.

Do not worry about the outcome of your work—mā karmaphala hetur bhur (2.47)! Listen. When you take responsibility with authenticity, consciousness starts growing more intensely in the body! Shrinking does not happen. Consciousness growing in your body is enlightenment! Many of you in corporate life are focused on results. You will do something only if we think that it will be effective. You get caught in the result even before you start. So how do you define what is effective? Ninety percent of the time effectiveness is interpreted as something that benefits our self-interest. Even if it benefits the organization, we do it because our performance will be recognized and we will be rewarded.

We learn this lesson early in life. Our elders teach us this rule from infancy. ‘Do this and we shall reward you; do that and we will punish you.’ We are all brought up with the deep root pattern of what is good for us and what is bad for us, what will be successful or what will be a failure. Both success and failure, siddhya-asiddhyoḥ are based on anticipated rewards or punishments. Sometimes,youtakeupfailureasaself-sympathycreatingmechanism. Or you think that you have to work for success, but failure is natural. No! Success is natural; you have to work for failure. Bring integrity; you will understand that success is the natural flow of your life just like Nature.

Integrity Teaches Responsibility In Action Society operates on this principle of greed and fear to prevent us from doing actions that it does not want us to do. Religions do the same. Society threatens you with legal punishment here and now; religion threatens you with punishment in the hereafter, in hell. What is hell or heaven? Do they exist? No, they do not. When you clean your inner space with the power of integrity, you will realize that all the contradictions, conflicts and confusions you carry are responsible for your whole life, for all reactions you attract from others and society. You are responsible for all your actions, the reactions you attract from others and the happenings of life.

Integrity will automatically teach you responsibility. You will understand that for everything happening in and around you, you are responsible. You are not in integrity with yourself, when you say one thing and do another. You do not walk your talk. But, when you do walk your talk and your talk is in integrity and authenticity, then your words will become reality. You will have vāk siddhi—the power to manifest your word as reality! But if the talk itself is lacking integrity, then your walk and your actions will also be out-of-integrity and you lose self-confidence. Ultimately it is all about the truth of integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching from your space of completion.

Integrity is the first lesson of spiritual life. Integrity is not just a simple vow, a simple word. Integrity is all about ironing out your thinking, aligning your thinking. If you bring integrity to your inner space, you will realize that even accidents are attracted by you. You are attracting everything in yourlife,whetheritiswealthorpoverty,rightorwrong.Youareresponsible for your life. You need to know a beautiful story about the child devotee, Prahlād’s life. When Prahlād’s angry father asked Prahlād—‘Is your Narāyaṇa, your God, in this pillar? Is He inside that pillar? Is He in this stone?’ Prahlād was about to raise his small finger and show his father that his God was really there in the pillar.

When Prahlād was about to point-out the pillar, Narāyaṇa started running from his heavenly abode in Vaikuṅṭa! His consort Lakṣmī asked, ‘What happened? Why are you running so fast? What is there to be in such a hurry about?’ Narāyaṇa said, ‘No, you don’t know! Wherever my devotee Prahlād points his finger, I have to enter into that pillar! Wherever he points, I have to occupy that place and emerge from it!’ Listen! When a child is established in integrity, just for his hand movement or the direction he shows, God lands! Listen! The whole world moves as you want when you are established in Integrity. When you are in completion, with integrity, without internal conflict or contradictions, whatever you project on the cosmos is a project for the cosmos!

Simply cosmos does it. When you are integrated, the outer world obeys you just like that. That is the power of integrity! Please listen: nothing is political or accidental on the planet Earth. Everything runs on the natural law of life, dharma of these four principles. Be Complete In Yoga, Drop All Attachments What Kṛṣṇa says here is the law of Nature. Nature just is. Nature just acts as per these four cosmic principles. Nature does not think about end results, successes or failures, rewards or punishments. People ask me, ‘Swamiji, why is nature so cruel? Why are there natural disasters? Why do young children die?’ The answer is what Kṛṣṇa gives here.

Nature goes about its job without any thought about what the end result will be. What happens will happen. It is bound to happen. Nature follows its dharma, its path of righteousness. The problem is that we do not understand the laws of nature; we measure natural actions by our yardstick of logic. You will then ask me, ‘How do we know what to do? How do we know what is svadharma, our path of righteousness? Do we decide we are a kṣatriya, therefore we should fight and kill and not worry about who dies, or, we decide we are a vaiśya, a businessman, in which case our svadharma is to make money without worrying about how we make money?’

No, Kṛṣṇa is not talking about acting in selfishness; the Universal Master is talking about acting from the space of completion. He says, ‘Be centered and complete in yoga, and drop all attachment to results; do what you have to do.’ yoga-sthaḥ kuru karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tvaktvā dhanañjaya I siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṁ yoga ucyate II 2.48 What beautiful wisdom! Yoga is union, union of man and Divine. Yoga is completion with the Divine. Yoga is your realization of your own Self, your realization that you are divine. It is the state of completion, the state of truth, the state of the present, when all that you do will be in righteous consciousness, dharma.

When you perform with this completion, and with no expectations, you will do what is right and just. Suffering Happens When We Link Thoughts Our thoughts are unconnected, illogical and unpredictable. It is only when we link thoughts together that problems start and suffering happens.Werememberafewoutofhundredsofeventsandtrytocreatealink between these few. Ninety percent of what we cognize and experience is neverrecordedbyourconsciousmemory;itjustslipsintoourunconscious. Within the ten percent of what we retain, what stays in our memory is always that which falls outside the pattern. If it is part of a normal pattern we will almost always ignore and forget the event. So, do not link thoughts and create a shaft of thoughts. Unclutch from your thoughts by bringing integrity and weed out all your negative self-fulfilling patterns, and automatically the mind will drop.

This is the way to stay in the present. Some of you misunderstand the word ‘Unclutched’ as ‘not to do anything.’ You think that to drop the mind is to be passive, inactive, doing nothing. No, not at all! You can be doing nothing and yet occupy your mind fully. That is what they mean by saying that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. When you have nothing to do, what you end up doing is creating fantasies. Listen! Constantly listening to your own inner space is the beginning of integrity. If your inner space says that there is nothing more to listen, if only silence is there, then that is the end of integrity.

You have achieved integrity. As long as you are hearing something from your inner space, it is lack of integrity. Go on listening. Even while you are in action, karma— sitting, driving, talking or walking, listen to you. Inaction, akarma is not what is advised. Understand: When you experience integrity and your mind drops, when thoughts cease, and your energy level is high, you cannot be inactive. You will act spontaneously out of sheer necessity. Physical and mental idleness are never produced by a no-thought mind or inner space. One must not link idleness with calmness. One with a no-thought mind, one who is complete in yoga, dwells in peace, calmness and harmony—the space of restful awareness, but is always aware and alert to act spontaneously in the way that would best suit each situation in every moment.

With a no-thought mind comes great awareness and energy; idleness or lethargy is far from it. An incomplete, confused, restless and overworked mind is constantly occupied with chatter and fantasies that can result in apathy and idleness. Integrity is the basic requirement for Unclutching. When you are in a state of an unclutched inner space, you are in completion and you are in the present moment, where regrets of your past and expectations of the future are absent from your mind. Whatever you do in such a state of completion would be the right thing to do. You are not influenced either by fear or greed regarding the outcome. You do what you have to do, naturally.

That is why Kṛṣṇa says that you must act with responsibility in the present moment of completion. He says, ‘Do not get attached to the results of your action, nor get attached to inaction, thinking that it could be an easy way out of this problem.’ Be Steady With Authenticity In Action