Verses 3.1–3.4🔗

In the previous chapter on Sāṅkhya Yogaḥ, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that knowledge of the Self is the supreme path to Enlightenment. He explains the nature of the indestructible Self. Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna to shed all root patterns of fear, abandon his desires and go beyond success and failure; to practice authenticity in action, to be unattached and steady in completion of the Self, the state of Brahman. Arjuna is still in the space of inauthenticity. He is confused as to what he should do. At one level, he understands what Kṛṣṇa says to him. However, the explanation about the spirit living on while the body dies, and the idea that all those he is about to fight and destroy have already been destroyed in the cosmic sense, does not appeal to him.

Arjuna is a warrior. To him, what is seen in front of him is what exists. He sees all his elders and relatives arrayed against him in battle and he has to make a choice to kill or be killed. This is the physical reality that he faces. Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 181 Kṛṣṇa tells him not to take this reality seriously. He says all the living people in front of him are already dead, and therefore he is committing no sin by killing them again. In fact, if he does not fight them, he is being out of integrity; by running away from the battle as an inauthentic coward.

He also tells Arjuna that he has the right to do his duty but no right to its results. ‘Let not the fruit of action be your motive and let not your attachment be to inaction either,’ Kṛṣṇa warns him. Violence Asks for Single Instruction Arjuna is totally confused. He tells Kṛṣṇa, ‘I do not understand what you are saying. First, you tell me to fight. Then you tell me to shed anger. You say I must kill my enemies, who are my elders and relatives, but then you say I should not worry about the end result.’ Arjuna says, ‘All I need to know is whether I should act or not.

You say knowledge is superior to action and yet you say I must act. What should I do?’ he asks. Arjuna is clearly in violence. Asking, expecting or thinking only one act can be important IS violence. Only violence asks for instruction without inspiration. A violent person cannot be inspired. He can only be instructed. Arjuna is asking for a single instruction from Kṛṣṇa, he says, ‘Tell me clearly what is best for me?’ Arjuna’s pattern of asking for only a single best instruction is the pattern of violence. By asking for a clear instruction, he can hold Kṛṣṇa responsible for his own inauthenticity and escape the responsibility for his actions.

I want you to understand that asking for a single instruction itself is from the violence. And if the single instruction is given, that is encouraging your violence., only inspiration should be given. Before you take up any philosophy the first quality you should check for in that philosophy is this—how does it introduce yourself to you? If any religion gives you a manual, that religion is born from violence and will continue to flourish in violence. In the Bhagavad Gītā, you will rarely see Kṛṣṇa giving Arjuna instructions. All seven hundred verses are literally nectars of inspiration uttered out of Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa’s love and compassion. They are all inspiring, empowering and enriching.

Nowhere will you see instructions! You see, in the beginning of Gītā when Arjuna says, ‘Leave me, I am going and becoming Sannyāsi.’ Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa says, ‘No!’ He asks him to fight. Later, when Arjuna is asking, ‘Why should I act? How can I fight?’ Bhagavān tells him about Sannyāsa, how to become a Sannyāsi. Arjuna is supposed to fight, but he is being taught the knowledge of completion with Sāṅkhya Yoga! He is being taught to meditate with one full chapter for dhyāna yoga and he is being taught the different great aspects of Sannyāsa yoga! Karma-Sannyāsa Yoga! Jñānakarma-Sannyāsa Yoga! This is the beauty of Hinduism! No single instruction can work because the root pattern of asking for a single instruction is violence.

Why? Because we feel either we should be alive or the other person should be alive. The mentality of fighting and violence always excludes. The root of the problem should be solved. Anything that talks about one and only one solution is born out of survival instinct, never out of inspiration. What Arjuna leaves unsaid is, ‘What use is knowledge if it cannot be used in action?’ Arjuna is a kṣatriya, a warrior, not a brāhmin, a scholar or a philosopher. Philosophers can keep arguing for both sides of an issue, without bothering about any logic. They are only interested in advertising their so-called knowledge. But warriors are men of action.

They have no timetowasteinidletalk.So Arjuna says, ‘Cut out all this superficiality; tell me the truth as it is. Tell me what I should do.’ True to his conditioning, Arjuna is uncomfortable when he is not in action; when he has no clearly defined purpose and motivated instructions before him. Fulfillment in Purpose, an Illusion! Your whole life is purposeless, but again and again, you are conditioned to run towards something—whether it is in material life or spiritual life. Some goal is always put in front of you. The so-called goals in material life or spiritual life continuously make you feel you are not good enough. Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 183 Just understand, whatever you think of as your purpose in life, whether it is money or relationships or name and fame, even if you have fulfillment in that dimension, you will not rest, you will not be complete!

Someone told me this, I believe a management consultant said it, ‘If you place a ladder somewhere and climb as fast as you can, you will quickly reach the top of the ladder. But unless the ladder is placed where you want, where you reach will be of no consequence!’ Climbing as fast as you can is efficiency. We all think we are very efficient. Placing the ladder where you want is effectiveness. Not all of us know where to place the ladder. So, the consultant says to focus on where to place the ladder. But I say even he is mistaken. It does not matter where you place the ladder as long as you enjoy the climb!

As long as your ‘why’ is with the right context, with completion as your root cognition, ‘what’ and ‘where’ does not matter. More than your actions, it is the space from which the actions are done, and the context and reason from which the actions are done that matter! The trouble is that we spend the entire climb obsessed with where we will reach and what we will do there. If we spend that time enjoying and being enriched by the journey, any destination we reach will be the right destination. The destination is not important; the journey is. The goal is not important; the process, the path is. We are always greedy for more.

We continuously pursue material goals. As a result, we never relax within ourselves. That is why even when we become old we are unable to relax. Have you seen a single man above seventy relaxing? People can never sit with themselves! If they have company, they will start talking about their golden past. If they don’t have company, they will watch television or read the same old newspaper, from the first line to the last with a big magnifying glass! They just can’t sit with themselves. A man who can’t sit with himself misses one of the major dimensions of his being. Continuously running, thinking there is some purpose to life, his whole being will be in a state of tension, conditioned to running out of compulsion, never out of completion.

Root thought pattern is nothing but this first social conditioning, this strong cognition which imbalances you from your purposeless space and gives birth to the mind, the idea that there is some purpose to life. Life has no purpose. Even if you achieve whatever you want, you can’t take it with you. You can’t carry even a single dollar when you leave. Nothing will come with you. There is no exchange offer. If you give fifty rupees in India, you will get one dollar in USA. But no matter how much money you give in this world, you cannot get a single rupee in heaven or anywhere else. No cheque will be useful.

None of your money can be carried over to the next world. The only currency that works everywhere in existence is completion. As of now, this material world appears four-dimensional and multi-colored as you enjoy it with all your senses. The moment you leave the body, the same world will appear black and white, one dimensional. When you are dreaming, your dream looks and feels very real. When you are awake, this worldaroundyoulookslikerealityandthedreamlooksdull.Butthereisno scale to determine the reality and the dream. People tell me, ‘But everyday when we enter a dream, we are not entering the same dream, Swamiji. Yet, everyday when we return to reality we are entering the same reality.

So with this scale we can tell the reality apart from the dream.’ Listen, in one night’s dream you can live even 20 years of life, am I right? Don’t you sometimes have such dreams where in one night’s dream you live 20 years of life? Then why can’t your dream be reality, because of its consistency? This whole life time span, which you think is reality, may be part of the dream! There is no scale to prove reality and the dream. When you leave the body, all you see now as multi-colour will become black and white. Nothing can be carried with you at the time of leaving the body.

You can’t cash your cheques! You can’t talk to your relatives. If you speak, they Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 185 will run away! Your car will not be useful to you anymore. When you are not able to take anything with you, what is the purpose of life then? The moment you accept the beauty of purposelessness, you will realize the meaning of living. Life Has No Purpose, Only Meaning Life has no purpose, but it has meaning. Purpose means goal orientation. You always think about the goal; you keep running and one day you just drop dead! The more goal-oriented you are, the more you will miss life and the more you will be incomplete.

Purpose is different from meaning. When I say ‘meaning’, living itself becomes meaningful. Come to this present moment of completion and the path itself is life; the path itself is meaningful. There is no such thing as, ‘in the end you will be happy.’ You always postpone joy and so you always postpone living. Life is lived in a very superficial way because you think life has a purpose. For the man who works just for his salary, only payday will be a beautiful day. He will be happy only on that day. He sells 29 days every month for that one day of happiness. I don’t say, ‘Don’t take your salary.’

But let it not be the only goal in your life. Let it not play a major role in your consciousness. That is what Kṛṣṇa means by these words: karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana (2.47)—you can do only your duty, you have no right to its fruit. If you think of the fruit, you will lose the joy of doing, living, enriching! The meaning of living is experienced only when you understand the beauty of purposelessness. This is a beautiful verse! It is the essence of the Gītā! Your Inner Space is the Space of Completion Two things you need to understand from this: One, He says, let your inner space not be contaminated by the purpose of life.

When I say inner space, I mean your mind and how you feel about yourself, about things and life inside you. When you close your eyes, what comes into your mind is your inner space. If your inner space is filled with the purposes of life, be very clear you are running behind something which will never give you completion. He says, ‘Let your inner space not be disturbed or filled with purposes or incompletions.’ By nature, your inner space is the space of completion, it is filled with energy; your inner space, what you refer to as ātman, spirit or soul, is filled with blissful energy. The more you empty yourself of goals or incompletions, the more the space for completion and bliss.

For example, this room is filled with space. The more furniture you put in it, the more space will leave this room. This room is not empty; no place is empty. It is filled with space. This room is filled with the energy of ether. The more furniture you bring in, the more ether will be pushed out; the lesser will be the ether energy. In the outer space, if you furnish your home, it will look very nice. But if you furnish your inner space, it will look very ugly. Completion straightaway gives you whatever you want and takes away whatever is not. The whole problem of humanity is what you want outside is not with you and what you don’t need inside in your inner space is with you.

You need to empty your inside, which is filled with unnecessary furniture. You need to have all the necessary things outside. Creating the inner space of completion with integrity and authenticity will immediately do that job. Completion will clear out all unnecessary things from your inner space. It will get you all that you need in the outer world. Don’t furnish your inner space. Let your inner space be empty. Of course then, it will never be empty. It will be filled with completion, pūrṇatva. It will be filled with bliss! The more complete inner space you create, the more blissful your life will be. That is what Kṛṣṇa means by saying, ‘Don’t be attached to results.’

If you continuously think about the result, you will never be able to perform your action with completion. You will always be goal-oriented and you will never enjoy and enrich the path of completion. Not enjoying and enriching the path is the worst hell you can be trapped in. Again and again Kṛṣṇa says, ‘paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśāya ca Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 187 duṣkṛtām dharma saṁsthāpanārthāya saṁbhavāmi yuge-yuge (4.8).’ It means: I come down again and again to save the integrated and authentic, the complete and innocent people, and to destroy the evil-minded incomplete people. People ask me, ‘You say dharma (responsibility to enrich) is the only thingtobepracticedwithintegrityandauthenticity,butinourliveswesee people who are not living according to dharma, yet they are living more happily; they have more property, more wealth.

Why is that?’ Understand, they may have more property, they may have more things in the outer space, but never think they are happy in their inner space; never think they are blissful. When does someone not follow dharma? When he follows his ambition! Ambition causes you to go out of integrity and authenticity. Don’t think we go to hell because we commit sins. We commit sins because we are in hell. The very ambition is hell; there is no need for a separate hell. Don’t think we will reach a separate place called ‘hell’ at the end of our life. If you are complete and blissful, you will never disturb others.

If you are unhappy, naturally you will vomit that violence on others. The very ambition is punishment enough. Just because of their ambition, they miss authenticity in action, their whole life’s possibility. You can easily miss life’s possibility by having a purpose to Life. Unless your thinking itself becomes integrated to your positivity, unless your working itself becomes authentic to the peak of your possibility, unless your life itself becomes the responsibility to enrich yourself and others, unless that itself becomes completion and bliss, you cannot experience what Kṛṣṇa says in this verse: karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana (2.47). Purpose can be fulfilled, but through purpose, your life can never be fulfilled.

When you carry purposes in your life, you are not living; purposes are living through you, that’s all. In your childhood somebody gives you some purpose like, ‘You should become a lawyer or a doctor.’ You are given a purpose and that purpose is fulfilled through your life, but you will never feel fulfilled or complete. Never make the mistake of thinking that you will be fulfilled when your purpose is fulfilled. Your fulfillment is completely different from the fulfillmentofyourpurpose.Ifyouwanttoexperiencefulfillment,thespace of completion, you have to work in a totally different dimension of your life. If you want completion of your being, listen to what Kṛṣṇa says here. Kṛṣṇa’s Technique for Success in Inner-Outer Worlds Kṛṣṇa is the first and the last Master who declared the truth as it is.

There are two things to understand: Always, people who are active in the outer world know the techniques to achieve success in the outer world. People who are active in the inner world know the techniques to achieve success in the inner world. But Kṛṣṇa knows both! He is the only Master who is an enlightened man and a king as well. He knows how to achieve total success in the outer world and in the inner world. He shows you how to furnish your outer space with enriching, and how to keep your inner space empty with completion. That is life in totality. The entire Gītā is only about this one idea: how to furnish your outer space with the ultimate luxuries and how to keep your inner space in the ultimate bliss.

Kṛṣṇa is the only one who has produced a formula for inner space and outer space together. He teaches you how to keep your inner space in eternal bliss and keep your outer space in ultimate luxury at the same time. You can’t expect this from a Buddha because Buddha gave up the outer space. He lived with just three pieces of clothing and he lived the life of a monk. So he taught us how to remain simple and blissful. But Kṛṣṇa lived as a king. He wasn’t just like a king, he was a king. Only Kṛṣṇa can give a complete solution for practical spiritual living. Kṛṣṇa gives immediate solutions, permanent solutions, not long-term solutions.

Only Kṛṣṇa’s solution is useful for people who are living a regular lifestyle. Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 189 Here He says, ‘Not merely by abstaining from work can one achieve freedom from action. Nor can fulfillment come by giving up action.’ You can’t achieve freedom from action by moving away from work. na karmanāṅ anārambhān naiṣkarmyaṁ puruṣo ‘śnute I na ca sannyasanād eva siddhiṁ samadhigacchati II 3.4 Every step in your life, anything you try to protect by hiding only becomes more and more powerlessness and more and more suffering. You move out of your life more and more. Moving away from your spouse, business partner, family or any of the forces that exist in your life is not an intelligent decision.

We always think moving away from people or actions to protect our habits and patterns is freedom. That is the biggest bondage! People who move away from life, work and people to save their pattern are in the worst bondage! Abstaining from work or moving away from work cannot give you freedom from action. It puts you in the biggest bondage. To have freedom from action, your inner space needs to be purified. Your inner space should become empty to allow the natural space of completion in you. You need to remove the furniture of incompletions from your complete inner space. Renouncing furniture in the outer world is not going to help you.

Only removing furniture from the inner world is going to enrich you. Please understand, whether you are hiding something inside you from life or trying to hide something outside you from life, your own incompletions will destroy you. You don’t need a separate punishment. Life is too powerful to cheat it with your logic. It functions with a simple, natural law of Existence, a natural dharma. The power of the natural law of Existence is such that nobody needs to teach you. By your very birth, if you start growing, you will get it! The inauthentic idea that life has a purpose should be renounced. Life is a possibility, not purpose.

That is why Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Just by renouncing, just by outer renunciation, authenticity in action, karma yoga can never be achieved.’ What is authenticity? Building your own identity to the peak possibility and renouncing the identity built on purpose. What do you want to become? Every one of you, deep down, has a fantasy about becoming all-powerful, all-knowing, sarvajña. So now build that peak inner image, project the peak outer image, and take the responsibility to fulfill others’ image of you. I tell you, authenticity in action is the strategy plan for your life. The quality of cunningness may be useful for a short time—a few days, a few years, a few lives, but not for all lives!

If you learn and develop the quality of authenticity in action, it is the strategy planning for life after life. Authenticity will help you identify your real enemy. Your real enemy is not the powerlessness you experience in moving away or running after a purpose; it is ignorance of your purposelessness! One more thing, if you renounce the outer world, you will think about the outer world even more. A small story: An Enlightened Master and his disciple were walking near a river. They were supposed to cross the river to go to their monastery (ashram). On the way, a young lady was standing near a river. She wanted to cross the river but was afraid to do so.

She asked the Master, ‘Master, can you help me cross this river?’ He said, ‘Why not? Please come.’ He just lifted her, crossed the river, left her on the other bank, and continued walking towards the ashram. The disciple was observing the whole scene. He was not able to digest what he saw. He was angry. Maybe he was jealous! After reaching the ashram he was not able to control himself and asked his master, ‘Master, you are a Sannyāsi Karma Yogaḥ Beauty Of Purposelessness 191 (monk). How can you touch a woman, that too a young woman, and carry her through the river?’ The Master turned, smiled at him and said, ‘I left her long ago.

Why are you still carrying her?’ Please understand, renouncing your identity in the inner space, or emptying your inner space and creating the space of completion and creation is the real thing to be achieved. That is yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam, authenticity in action! That is what Kṛṣṇa says here. Once you have renounced in the inner space, it doesn’t matter what you do in the outer world. Nothing will touch you. To Act Is Human Nature