Gita in daily life: Karma-yoga, more by the heart than by the head

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Namaste

 

As far as the second and third chapters go, some of the important

teachings on performance of action and discharge of duty may be

briefly listed as follows:

 

Do your duty without attachment. 3.9, 3.19

 

Do not be attached to the fruits thereof. 2.47

 

Do not be attached to the ego that claims doership. 3.27, 3.28, 3.30

 

Do your duty efficiently. 2.50, 3.8, 3.19

 

Non-attachment is not indifference. The doer of works without

attachment still does works as if he is attached. 3.25

 

PrakRti (One's own nature) is very powerful . 3.33

 

One's own dharma is to be done, not somebody else's, in spite of

any comparison. 3.35

 

All these have to be put together to get the first part of karma-

yoga. All these are strung together in the fourth chapter , by

Krishna's plea that everything should be done as a yajna, as a

dedication. (4.19, 20, 21, 22, 23)

 

PrakRti is powerful no doubt, that is why it is not to be coereced.

One's nature (svabhAva) is to be controlled, not coerced (just as a

mother cajoles her three-year-old child to eat properly, eat at the

right time, and eat only what she wants the child to eat). The

sanskrit word is `samyama' – it comes from `yama' self-control,

with `sam' which denotes perfection in the controlling or

restraining action.

 

So long as you stay only in the first four or five chapters of the

Gita, these recommendations of the Lord will appear to be tall

orders. Only when we go to the further chapters and we get into the

concept of a Trust in God and Surrender concept, all the above will

make perfect sense. Once we are prepared to take the help of the

Lord, everything falls into place. Because the powerful PrakRti

(Own Nature) has to be controlled only with the help and grace of

God. The sense of doership can be thrown off not by an intellectual

effort but by emotionally transferring the doership to the Lord

within or without. The intellectual effort comes here only in

accepting this maxim! The attachment to the fruits of actions will

go only by a transfer of the mundane attachment to an attachment to

the Lord so that whether the fruits are positive or negative, we are

not the enjoyer.

 

Thus, without hairsplitting on the nuances of karmayoga restricting

ourselves to an ethical or intellectual point of view, we should go

forward to bring in Devotion, Bhakti, and Surrender in order to

make sense of the entire Gita teaching.

 

PraNAms to all advaitins

profvk