Role Of The Wise

3.26 Let not the wise disturb the minds of the ignorant who are attached to the results of work.

They should encourage them to act without attachment.

3.27 People, confused by ego, think they are the doers of all kinds of work while it is being done by the energy of nature.

3.28 One who knows the Truth, O

mighty-armed one, knows the differences between the attributes of nature and work.

Knowing well about the attributes and sense gratification, he never becomes attached.

3.29 Fooled by the attributes of nature, those people with less wisdom or who are lazy become engaged in actions driven by these attributes.

But, the wise should not unsettle them.

An ignorant man says to himself, 'I shall do this action and thereby enjoy its result.' A wise man should not unsettle this belief. Instead, he himself should set an example by performing his duties diligently but without attachment. If the wise man condemns the actions performed with attachment, the ignorant person may simply decide to neglect his duties.

It is like this. Can you explain to a child that his toys are not precious? No! The child will never be able to understand that. It has to grow and automatically its attachment to toys will drop when maturity happens. Similarly, the ignorant person can first do the action with attachment. But upon seeing the wise person being unaffected by his actions and being always blissful, naturally, the ignorant one will get curious and want to know the secret behind happiness. The example of the wise man will automatically pull him towards work with detachment.

Take the example of relating with God. Most of us pray to God to get something. All our prayers to God are asking for this, asking for that, asking God to fulfill some desires or to protect us from something. It is okay to start a relationship with God like this. It is perfectly all right. When you get what you asked for, your trust grows and then you start feeling gratitude to Him. This is important.

In the beginning, it is very difficult to express gratitude and feel grateful to God. Gratitude comes naturally when you feel grateful for all that has been given to you. So if you ask a person who has not eaten food for three days to meditate, will he be able to? No! His needs are different. You will be foolish, not wise, if you try telling this person to meditate. What he needs now is some means to get food and then he can be told about meditation.

Many people ask me, 'God is everywhere. Then, why do we have to pray? Why do we have to go to temples? Why do we have to do rituals?' To reach the state of understanding that 'God is everywhere', if you start by just saying this and not doing anything, then you will only be fooling yourself.

Loving the world is easy; loving your wife is difficult! It is easy to say you love the whole world because you don't have to do anything to prove it. But to love your wife, you have to do something tangible to prove it. So if you just want to sit and tell yourself that you have reached the ultimate truth, you are actually trying to escape from the effort needed to reach it, from the steps needed to realize it.

When a person is doing work and expecting certain results, the wise person should not go and disturb him even though he knows that work should not be done with attachment. At least the person is working and not sitting idle! He is in rajas (aggressive activity), which is better than tamas (laziness). Of course, he needs to be guided from rajas to satva, a state of calmness born out of detached action, action without expectations. That is the job of a Master.

We are all governed by our basic nature, attributes, or guna, as they are termed in Sanskrit. These attributes are defined by the kind of life we have led, in this and past lives. The mental set-up or the essence of the mind, called vasana, carries over from birth to birth and determines what we are and what we do in this birth. We create this mindset by what we did in our past births. So in a sense, we do determine what happens to us in our future births. This mindset determines our nature, our attributes.

The desires born out of vasana carry their own energy for fulfillment. If you are conscious of your vasana, also called the prarabda karma, you will be able to fulfill them. Once fulfilled, these vasana and the karma get dissolved. One who reaches this state of awareness of fulfilled desires also realizes that he is not the doer.

The potter's wheel goes on turning around even after the potter has ceased to turn it and when the pot is finished. In the same way, the electric fan goes on revolving for some minutes after we switch off the electricity. The vasana or desires with which you took this body and mind will make it go through whatever activities it was made for. But the wise person goes through all these activities without the notion that he is the doer of them.

Actually, all your desires to lead life in a particular way are the ones that lead you to that mental setup. You are the one who chooses to live life in a particular way and once you decide this, your body supports this decision of your mind and acts accordingly. You create a mental-setup to aid you in living life the way you desire. This mental setup that you create to live life in a particular way is your vasana, or the seed of karma.

You are the one who chooses, but any choice comes with effects and side effects. Sometimes when you see the side effects, you feel that you don't want this way of life. It is too costly; it is creating more unwanted effects than what you were expecting. Then you say what you are getting is due to fate or destiny. Actually, you are the one who chose it in the first place.

A small story:

Once a man went to a restaurant and ordered some different items: hamburgers, steaks, pasta, drinks, ice cream, and so on. He had a hearty meal and relaxed. The waiter brought the bill.

The man took a look at the long bill and exclaimed, 'I wanted only the food. I did not order this bill!'

When you eat, you don't think about the bill but the bill comes as a result of all that you ate in the restaurant. You don't have to order the bill separately. Similarly, in life, all that you undergo are the effects of your own actions. You are not aware of what those effects can be and therefore you do the actions unconsciously.

To understand, 'I am not the doer,' this concept of 'I' and 'mine' needs to be understood. Shiva says that the concept of 'I' itself comes from the concept of 'mine'. We always think it is the other way around. We think, when the sense of 'I' happens, the sense of 'mine' happens. But, if you look deeply, our idea of what we think of as 'ours' is what defines what we think of ourselves. Just imagine, if your possessions, your status, your wealth, your relations all are taken away, what will you think of as you? How will you define yourself? Your idea of 'I' is also relative, is it not?

There is one of the new theories in quantum physics called 'string theory' where the universe is made up fundamentally of strings of extremely small scale, which vibrate at particular frequencies. So an object is not a particle but it is a vibrating object; energy vibrating in different modes. The different modes appear as different particles.

Many people feel that they are just touching a soft pillow when they hug THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. Sometimes they feel nothing and they are shocked. Basically, we are just energy. In this plane, in these dimensions of space-time, you see me the way you are seeing me in this form. You see me in this six feet form as THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, but in truth, this THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM does not exist. It is the formless energy of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. There is no 'me'.

When you get attached to anything, when you internalize external incidents, you start creating suffering for yourself. When you understand that it is the mind and the senses doing what is in their nature, you become detached from your mind-body and do things with the clear understanding that what is happening is due to the mind, body and senses doing their job.

When you don't understand this, you get caught in what you are doing, you get emotionally attached to incidents and people, and you start living without awareness because your energy is being wasted in getting stressed out and getting emotionally upset over things.