Swami Dhayanandaji's Gita Home-study Discussion Notes on Karma Yoga - Part III

[Guest guest]

Swami Dhayanandaji's Gita Home-study Discussion Notes on Karma Yoga - Part III

 

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE JIVA

 

Wherever the jiva, is the power wielded by that jiva is limited. Even Indra's

wings are clipped. He does not have total overlordship because there are other

domains where he is not even given entry. He may say, "I am Indra!" and still

be told to leave: "You might be Indra in your own loka, but here you do not

even have the status of a mosquito. Get out!" Thus, we find that no one's

wingspan enables him or her to go everywhere. Such freedom, such limitlessness

in terms of knowledge and power, is not there for anyone. Knowledge and power

are both limited. For want of knowledge, we cannot avoid what we could have

avoided with more knowledge and for want of power we cannot avoid what we want

to avoid. Knowledge is not limitless. If it were, there would be no problem.

Exactly what I want to happen would happen. I would know that this action will

produce this and that action will produce that.

 

Limitless knowledge means limitless power also. If you have limitless power,

you do not need to do anything other than think a thought. The thought you

have will shape itself perfectly. God did not commit a mistake when he thought

that an avocado would be the fruit that has a big pit; it was meant to be that

way. It would not be an avocado ii it did not have a big pit. An apple, on the

other hand, should not have a big pit; only then is it an apple. This is how

the creation is.

 

When there is omniscience, the thoughts are clean and complete. Nothing needs

to be done. Thus, God did not need six days to create the world. It is not

that oti the first day God did this and on the second, third, fourth, fifth,

and sixth days he did a few more things. Or that, having created everything

else, he found there was no light and had to put a sun up there. How could he

have done all those other things with no light? How could there be a first day

without a sun? A day is due to the sun alone. Nor is it that God was doing a

job that required him to do certain things on the first day so that he could

paint on the next. On the third day he did not look at all at what he had done

before and decide that it was unsatisfactory and rearrange the whole thing.

God is not an architect! If the Lord is omniscient and omnipotent all that is

required is a sankalpa, a thought.

 

Even we, as mere mortals, do better in our dreams! We think of a world and it

is there in front of us. If we think of a mountain, the mountain is up! If we

think of a lion on the mountain, the lion is there. If we think of an African

jungle, it is all there. We need not do anything nor go anywhere. It is all

there; we created it. And if we want everyone to come and see our creation,

they come in droves, in every imaginable means of transport, because we have

the capacity to create them all in an instant. This capacity in the Lord, of

course, is what is meant by omnipotence and is why He is called a

satya-sankalpa, one whose thought (sankalpa) is truth (satya). When the

thought is there, the whole thing is there. This is omnipotence.

 

THE RESULTS OF KARMA CAN NEVER BE PREDICTED

 

But in you, power and knowledge being limited, certain situations cannot be

avoided. For want of power you cannot avoid certain illnesses or accidents,

like failing from a tree. You know that you are f ailing and you may even know

that you are accelerating downward at a speed of 32 feet per second per

second. All of this you know very well, but so what? Down you comel It matters

not whether you are a great physicist or an ignoramus. One knows all of the

reasons why he or she is failing-the gravitational force, 32 feet per second

per second, and so on, while someone else has no understanding of gravitation

at all. All that is known is that he or she is coming down! For want of power,

neither of them can avoid falling.

 

Limitation with respect to power and knowledge, then, is the status of an

individual. If this is so, Krsna's statement that one's choice is only over

action (karmani eva adhikaarah te) is very important. You may say that there

really is no choice because so much is determined by your past, and so on, but

that is an endless debate. The point is that you do have a choice. To

understand that much is enough. You can perform a given action, you need not

do it, or you can do it differently. That capacity you have; therefore, you do

have choice. This is the reason why you do not do some things and why you can

force yourself to do other things, even though you do not feel like doing

them. Or you can do them differently.

 

As a human being, then you have this choice (adhikaarah), but over the results

of action, you have no choice whatsoever. Once you perform the karma, the

result is taken care of. What choice do you have? If you had a choice over the

result, then you need not have done the karma at all. If you had any power

over the result, you would always be successful. But, because you are not

omniscient, you do not know that a certain karma will produce a certain

result. No one knows the ways of karma. To know how karma is going to produce

its result and what result it is going to produce is very difficult to figure

out because your own past karmas may be inhibiting the present karmas'

results. Thus, all we know is good and bad luck.

 

Sometimes we find ourselves in the right place at the right time and, at other

times, we are in the right place but not at the right time. In order to get

the desired result, I have to be at the right place at the right time, but I

do not know which is the right time and place. I can only keep trying. This

means that there seems to be an element, called luck, involved. But here, we

do not call it luck; instead, we refer to it as previous karma. If the

cause-effect relationship is understood, there is no question of luck. It is

simply replaced by past karma. Being at the right place at the right time is

karma and being at the wrong place is also karma. Therefore, we really do not

know; we can only go by our choice, our free will.