Do Your Duty🔗

3.30 Dedicating the results of work to Me, with consciousness filled with Me Even the wise person acts according to the modes of his own nature, for all living beings go through their nature. What can restraint of the senses do?

3.34 Attachment and repulsion of the senses for sense objects should be put under control.

One should never come under their control as they certainly are the stumbling blocks on the path of self-realization.

3.35 It is better to do one's own duty, even if it is in a faulty manner, than to do someone else's duty perfectly.

Death in the course of performing one's own duty is better than doing another's duty, as this can be dangerous.

3.36 Arjuna said, 'O descendant of Vrshni, then, by what is man forced to commit sinful acts, even without desiring, as if engaged by force?'

3.37 The Lord said, 'It is lust and anger born of the attribute of passion, all- devouring and sinful, which is one's greatest enemies in this world.'

Here, it is important to understand what duty means. If I have to do my duty, I need to know how to identify my duty.

The idea of duty is different for different people, different countries, different cultures, and different religions. Hence the term 'duty' is impossible to clearly define. We have always been trained by society, by conscience, to consider certain acts as duty; some as good and others as bad.

We are brought up with certain ideas of duty. For example, it is our duty to help elderly people. It is our duty to follow principles of truth, non-violence, non-stealing and such tenets. We are brought up with these concepts of morality, but how many of us have experienced the beauty of implementing them?

Then there are certain principles that get handed down depending on the religion we follow. For example, a starving person who finds a piece of meat has no problem eating it if he is a non-vegetarian. On the other hand, a vegetarian would feel it is his duty not to touch meat even if it means losing his life. In some religions, you can marry only once but in some other religions, you can marry multiple times. These are all socially defined duties.

One thing we should remember is never to judge the customs of other people by our standards. There is no common standard for the universe. There is no universal scale by which you can measure people and their actions.

What Krishna talks about here is not socially defined duty or conscience. He is talking about consciousness.

Vivekananda talks about a sage, a yogi in India. He was a peculiar man; he would not teach anyone. If you asked him a question, he would not answer. However, if you asked him a question and waited for some days, in the course of conversation, he would bring up the subject and throw wonderful light on it.

He once told Vivekananda the secret of work. ‘Let the end and the means be joined into one.’

When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond that. Do it as worship, as the highest worship, and devote your whole energy to it for that time. Give it your full attention. The right performance of duty at any point in life, without attachment to the results, leads us to the highest realization.

The worker who is attached to the results is the one who grumbles about the nature of the duty. To the unattached worker, all duties are equally good. He welcomes what he has to do, irrespective of the external nature of the job. He approaches every act with the same enthusiasm and liveliness and becomes completely involved in the task at hand.

In the great epic Mahabharata, there are actually three versions of the Gita: Bhagavad Gita and Anugita, both delivered by Sri Krishna; the third and equally important one is called Vyadha Gita, the song of a butcher.

A butcher delivered this Vyadha Gita; a man who is considered a sinner or a candāla (low caste person) delivered this great scripture.

There lived a great yogi, a person with special powers but who was not yet enlightened. He was a highly egoistic person. He was meditating under a tree in a forest. A bird sitting on the tree relieved itself and the droppings fell on him. He was disturbed and angry and he opened his eyes and looked at the bird. The bird was killed by the power of his gaze. The yogi was feeling very proud of what he had done.

He then went on his daily round of begging for alms. He came to a house and begged for food. The lady of the house called out from inside the house and asked him to wait as she was serving her husband. The yogi was upset. He thought to himself, 'Foolish woman! She is serving her husband, an ordinary man, and she is making a great yogi like me wait!'

Suddenly he heard the lady's voice again as if in answer, 'I am not like the bird in the forest to be killed so easily. Your powers may be used against birds but not against me, so relax!'

The yogi was shocked! The lady actually knew not only what he was thinking, but even about what had happened in the forest! The yogi apologized to the lady when she came out to give him food.

He asked her, 'Mother, how did you know what I was thinking? And how did you know about what happened in the forest? Please teach me how I can also achieve this.'

She replied, 'You have attained shakti (power) but not buddhi (intelligence). Go to the butcher who is down the road and he will teach you.' Now, the yogi was even more surprised. He thought, 'How can an ordinary butcher teach me anything about buddhi?'

But what the lady had done was too much for him. So he quietly took the lady's counsel and went down the road to the butcher's shop.

When he reached the butcher's shop, he saw that the butcher was busy cutting up the meat of the animals that he had just slaughtered. He could not imagine how he could learn anything from the butcher. But he wanted to have intelligence, so he approached the butcher and asked, 'I was told by a lady living nearby to ask you about intelligence. Can you explain to me how to attain intelligence?'

The butcher explained how he himself had achieved intelligence, the ultimate experience.

All he did to achieve it was, do his job with complete awareness and total involvement. He did his job with complete intensity and used the money that he earned to take care of his aged parents, which he did with equal devotion and involvement.

Just the very doing of his duty had liberated him. The nature of his work, the act of slaughtering animals, was not important. The attitude with which he did it, the sincerity, was what mattered.

You may be doing the greatest acts of social service and in the eyes of society you may be a great man. But if the attitude, the energy behind the act is not positive, the action is just hypocritical and insincere.

Each of us is unique in our capabilities and interests. Accordingly, our duties are also different. If you try to imitate others, thinking that their duty appears more attractive, you will be making the mistake of following somebody else's path, which is not natural to you.

A small story:

A newly married wife tells her husband, ‘The woman next door has a coat exactly like mine.’

The husband replied, ‘So you want me to buy you a new coat like our neighbor’s.’

The wife replied, ‘Yes. It would be a lot cheaper than moving to a new house.’

You see, comparison literally rules our lives. We waste our time and energy analyzing the other’s growth. When we use our energies for our growth without comparing with others, we do our duty according to our nature and not compare with somebody else’s or expect certain results from our actions.

These verses on karma yoga by Krishna have been misused by some to defend the caste or varṇa system in the Hindu tradition. They say that what Krishna means is that one should not swerve from one’s varṇa dharma, the duty of one’s caste. They do not understand the origin of the caste system.

In the vedic culture, a child was taken to a gurukul (the ancient system of living with and learning at the feet of the master) at a very early age, before the age of seven. The master then took care of the child until the child reached adulthood. He taught the child based on its abilities. If the child had the aptitude to become a scholar he was trained in scriptures, and became a brahmin. If the child was aggressive and courageous, he was trained in martial arts, and became a kṣatriya, meaning warrior, and so on.

Varṇa or caste classification was based on one's natural abilities and not on birth. It was a state, not a status. Over time, this practice degenerated into a classification based on heredity, with no attention paid to natural aptitude.

It is in the vedic educational context that one needs to understand Krishna's injunction in these verses.

Arjuna then asks Krishna why even a centered person is led to commit sinful acts, as if forced by unknown powers. Arjuna's question is the eternal dilemma of expression or suppression.

For example, if you see a beautiful woman and you feel attracted to her, you feel this is not correct according to what society has taught you and you try to suppress your feelings. Can this work? If you try to suppress something, it will surface again with more intensity.

We are always conditioned by society, which teaches us that anyone with passion is a lower human. Anyone with lust is a lower person. Understand, there is no lower or higher person. Only a transformation of energy needs to happen.

The people who pretend to be moralists are either afraid to express their lust or they feel guilty about expressing it. So they go about preaching to others that being lustful means you are a lower person.

The moment you think you are a lower human, you start fighting with that feeling. Then it becomes very difficult to get out of that and for the transformation to happen. Anything that you resist persists. What you need to do is bring in awareness and allow the transformation to happen.

What needs to be done is to have understanding and awareness. Then the base energy of lust can be transformed into the higher energy of love. It is an alchemy process. Alchemy is the process of changing any base metal to a higher metal. Similarly, changing our base emotion, lust, to the highest emotion we are capable of, love, is an alchemy.

In alchemy, first the impurity is removed from the base metal. Then something is added to it, and finally, the base metal undergoes the process of transformation into the higher metal.

First, the impurity should be removed from lust. We all have lust, which is an animal emotion. One more thing: At least animals have pure lust. When they are in a relationship, they forget about the world and are purely in the relationship. But for us, even our lust is not pure. It is contaminated by all kinds of imagination and fantasies that we have picked up from the media.

We live with a solid cerebral layer of fantasies collected from all that we have seen on the television, the internet, in books and so on. Even when you are in a relationship, you are relating from this layer. You are not relating with your actual partner. Your actual partner becomes a poor substitute for the images in your mind.

Your lust is contaminated by feelings of guilt and desire. Either our conditioning from our past makes us feel guilty and so we withdraw, or the intense desire to continue makes us indulge excessively, only to make us feel guilty again. It is a vicious cycle of pulling and pushing, as a result of which the lust is simply contaminated.

Always, if you notice, the moment you fulfill your fantasy, you are engulfed by guilt. That is why sex makes you feel guilty. Your family and society instill the first sense of guilt in you when you are a child. Then you master the art of creating guilt for yourself!

Understand, anyone who wants to have control over you, first instills guilt in you. They make you feel you are inferior in some fashion. Then, automatically, you follow what they are saying.

Man knows to control only through guilt. I tell you, rules are good for children. It is good to start with rules. But it is important that you grow and be led by your own intelligence.

When you indulge in desires and become prone to guilt, you are caught in a vicious cycle. That is why you don't go deep into your desires, fulfill them and come out liberated, but keep coming back with more and more craving. If you go deep into it, you will flower out of it!

In earlier times, people were able to drop their lust by the age of 40. They never had such complicated images in their minds. They related directly with their husband or wife. They were able to move deeper into lust and come out of it. Lust simply dropped from them; they did not have to drop it.

In Indian marriages, there is a beautiful verse which priests make the couples recite. The meaning of the verse is, 'In the eleventh year of marriage, let the wife become the mother, and the husband the son.' This may sound strange and you may wonder how the wife can become a mother to the husband. What it means is, let the relationship reach the ultimate fulfillment.

The ultimate fulfillment for a woman is when she expresses the motherliness in her, the creative energy in her. The ultimate fulfillment for the man is when he comes back to the innocence of the child. So, by the eleventh year, let the relationship mature to such an extent that both the husband and wife attain the ultimate fulfillment.

First, the impurity in lust needs to be removed, like how the impurity in the base metal needs to be removed in alchemy. Then the element of friendship needs to be added; a deep friendship, a relationship at the being level and not just at the physical or mental level.

When you feel deeply connected to a person, there will be no need for physical proximity to that person. You will feel happy and satisfied with just the feeling of connection with him or her. This connection will not suffer with separation or anything else.

For the final transformation of lust into love, the relationship needs to go through the process of patience and perseverance. You need to be patient for the other person to accept the transformation you are going through. You need to give the other time to understand that this is indeed a real change and not just a superficial, temporary change. Then he or she will automatically be transformed as well. The energy of your transformation is sure to touch the other person.

Here Krishna refers to lust and anger, both born out of passion. Anger is also an emotion that is born out of lust. When the other person rejects your lust, it turns into anger against that person. Anger is again a tremendous energy that we misuse because we do not understand and respect it.

Greed, anger and lust are all rajasic qualities that arise from passion and aggression. They arise from the blocked mūlādhāra cakra, the root center. These are instinctive emotions that we inherit from our animal ancestors. The mūlādhāra cakra is common to animals and humans; it is the highest of the animal energy centers and the lowest of human energy centers.

Indulging in these base emotions keeps a human being in bondage to his sensual and instinctive nature. This is the reason Krishna classifies these as the root causes of sin. A human being is endowed with consciousness that rises above these instincts. The meaning of a human life is not mere survival; it is the realization of one's superconscious nature.

Anything that stands in the way of Self-realization is a sin.

Q: Swamiji, you ask us not to suppress our natural passions. But is it right to indulge these passions?

This question has specific relevance when you are trying to choose between what you think is the right path and what you feel is the wrong path.

There are many who are conditioned to believe that striving for anything material such as wealth or name and fame is not spiritual. They have this false notion that to be spiritual, one must give up everything material. So when you choose to move away from the material path in search of what you think is spirituality, it is inevitable that whatever you are trying to renounce will come up in front of you with renewed vigor. Then the question arises: 'Do I suppress or indulge?'

On this path, when you try to choose between one and the other, you will time and again come across apparent dualities: good and bad, false and true, attachment and aversion, suppression and indulgence. In fact, raging inside your being is this constant conflict of opposites. Whenever a duality asserts itself, remember this rule of thumb: Existence is non-dual. Opposites do not exist. To cling to either suppression or indulgence is a sign of ignorance.

After all, suppression is nothing but a reaction to indulgence. What is essential is the awareness of one's own tendencies. Recognize anger, recognize jealousy, be aware of lust and greed. Neither give in to these emotions nor try to suppress them.

Simply attempt to know them for what they are. Keep your distance, and view your emotions as if they were strangers. You will be surprised to find that without your support, they cannot exist. They simply drop away! This may not make much sense to you when it is just someone else's experience - but through constant practice you will experience the truth for yourself.

It is only this awareness that can awaken self-knowledge, and free you of these concepts of indulgence or suppression and of other dualities!