BHAGAVAD-GITA 3:8

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BHAGAVAD-GITA 3:8

 

niyatam kuru karma tvam

karma jyayo hy akarmanah

sarira-yatrapi ca te

na prasiddhyed akarmanah

 

WORD FOR WORD

 

niyatam--prescribed; kuru--do; karma--duties; tvam--you; karma--work;

jyayah--better; hi--certainly; akarmanah--than no work;

sarira--bodily; yatra--maintenance; api--even; ca--also; te--your;

na--never; prasiddhyet--is effected; akarmanah--without work.

 

TRANSLATION

 

Perform your prescribed duty, for doing so is better than not working.

One cannot even maintain one's physical body without work.

 

PURPORT

 

There are many pseudo meditators who misrepresent themselves as

belonging to high parentage, and great professional men who falsely

pose that they have sacrificed everything for the sake of advancement

in spiritual life. Lord Krsna did not want Arjuna to become a

pretender. Rather, the Lord desired that Arjuna perform his prescribed

duties as set forth for ksatriyas. Arjuna was a householder and a

military general, and therefore it was better for him to remain as

such and perform his religious duties as prescribed for the

householder ksatriya. Such activities gradually cleanse the heart of a

mundane man and free him from material contamination. So-called

renunciation for the purpose of maintenance is never approved by the

Lord, nor by any religious scripture. After all, one has to maintain

one's body and soul together by some work. Work should not be given up

capriciously, without purification of materialistic propensities.

Anyone who is in the material world is certainly possessed of the

impure propensity for lording it over material nature, or, in other

words, for sense gratification. Such polluted propensities have to be

cleared. Without doing so, through prescribed duties, one should never

attempt to become a so-called transcendentalist, renouncing work and

living at the cost of others.

 

Copyright 1983 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International. Used with

permission.