Duty Without Delusion🔗

18.7 Prescribed duties should never be renounced. If one gives up his prescribed duties through the illusion of renunciation, this is said to be in the state of ignorance.

18.8 Anyone who gives up prescribed duties as troublesome, or out of fear, is said to be in the state of aggression, and does not benefit from renunciation.

18.9 But he who performs what is prescribed, as a matter of duty, without expectation or attachment to the results, his renunciation is of the nature of satva, goodness, O Arjuna.

18.10 Those who neither hate disagreeable work nor are attached to pleasant work are in a state of intelligence, goodness and renunciation, free of all doubts.

18.11 Human beings cannot give up all activities. Therefore the one who has renounced the fruits of such activity is one who has truly renounced.

18.12 To one who has not renounced, the three kinds of fruits of action — desirable, undesirable and mixed — accrue after death, but not to one who has renounced.

Krishna says that nitya karma or obligatory duties must be followed with discipline and consistency. Not doing these takes us into the state of tamas, inaction born out of ignorance and laziness.

Nitya karmas vary from person to person. The duties of a householder are different from those of a monk or a student. Each has clear guidelines in terms of what they should and should not do.

Many times the idea of dropping our responsibilities and taking up a different role is more attractive than growing in awareness so that we can perform our own duties well and without attachment. Be very clear, without the right attitude and awareness, no role that we take up will work out for us.

Instead of taking up responsibility and expanding, watching television or daydreaming seems much more pleasant and easy. We would rather do that than meditate or perform pūjā or whatever is our prescribed duty.

In our ashram routine, everyone must attend Guru pūjā at six am. This includes permanent residents and brahmacāris as well as those who stay there for courses or healing. You should see the reluctance with which some outsiders attend the pūjā. Of course quite a few are still asleep at six am. and we do not have a police force to find them and wake them up!

Giving up what needs to be done because it is uncomfortable is not renunciation! That is convenient inaction born out of rajas. After attending a course many ask how many meditation techniques they can do each day. I tell them, 'Do at least one properly.' A week later, after the ferver has cooled down, if I ask, they sheepishly say, 'I do not have time to practice even one meditation, Swamiji.'

All of us find time for everything except meditation. We find time to give appointments to everyone else except ourselves! Who is the loser?

Krishna says doing what needs to be done because that is what is recommended, without attachment to the action and without desire is the ideal condition of satva.

Krishna has said this many times in the Gita. He repeats it again so that the message sinks in. Do what must be done. Do what your duty is, based on your societal or religious beliefs and codes. However, do it without attachment and expectation of results.

The consciousness of 'I' and 'mine', in terms of the performance of the activity should be absent.

Often in traditional homes people chant prayers or mantras as a mere chore. They try to concentrate, yet they are disturbed by every activity happening in the house. If they were truly absorbed in what they were doing, they would not notice the disturbance. These people are so attached to 'their' doing it and 'their' doing it well, that everything disturbs them. On the other hand, watch a child recite a mantra. He plays with it and has fun!

Annamalai Swamigal in Tiruvannamalai initiated me into a meditation technique when I was not even ten. For two years all I did was play with that technique. That is all. In two years the technique had its effect!

Krishna says that a person in the satvic mode of calmness and awareness is undisturbed by external conditions. He is not bothered whether someone appreciates or condemns what he does. He is clear what he should do and he carries on.

A small story:

Sadashiva Sastry was the landlord of a village. He was known as a pious person who was always ready to help others. Whenever there was a temple festival, he undertook all the expenses. If anybody fell ill and needed hospitalization, he met the cost of transport and medicines. He was well known in the village and so were his acts of kindness. However, he was always in a serious mood, never cheerful or laughing.

One day his daughter asked, ‘Appa, why are you always so serious and morose? Are you not well?’

He replied, ‘I am fine. There is nothing wrong.’ But she insisted in her queries and he finally said, ‘See, I am doing so many kind acts for the village people, yet nobody has ever bothered to thank me.’

He was still remembering all that he had done and carrying the burden of his good deeds!

Renunciation is in the true spirit and is done out of goodness only when a person renounces the expectation of result.

It is natural that a human being cannot remain still without doing some work. Man must be doing something, anything, all the time. If not physically, at least mentally he does something. Even in sleep, he dreams. If we close our eyes, we watch our inner television. If we plug our ears and close our eyes and stay in an insulated room, we are still filled with inner chatter.

Only an enlightened person truly keeps his body and mind still. So the normal man is never without activity. This being the case, the only way man can be comfortable and at peace with himself is by not having any expectation of the result of his thoughts or words or actions. This can be achieved by every one of us. Krishna says that one who is not concerned about the fruits of his action has truly renounced.

Attachment to action and to the results of action creates more desires. Even when an action has been completed and the expected result achieved, as long as one is attached to that action and its result, another desire crops up. Even when one desire is fulfilled, another unfulfilled desire rises. This is a constant, consistent sequence.

This is what I call karma. Karma is nothing but unfulfilled desires. As long as we have attachment to the action as ‘doer’, which in turns creates an expectation of reward or punishment, we are caught in the cycle of karma and saṁsāra. Our concern about whether an action or the result is good, bad or a mix of both, follows us as our mental attitude or vāsanā after death.

Please understand that no one is ‘up there’ keeping an account of our deeds and misdeeds. Our own spirit does that job. So we can never escape! No amount of propitiation or contribution to ‘noble’ causes will erase the knowledge from our inner Self of what we have done. When we die, the body perishes but the spirit moves on to another body. That spirit carries its earlier mental attitude, its vāsanā. There is no exception to this rule. Saṁskāras are the carried-over desires and they cause the cycle of saṁsāra, birth, death and rebirth.

However, we have no unfulfilled desires, karma, saṁskāra or vāsanā left when we renounce attachment to ‘doership’ and become a mere witness to both the action and the result. This means we act without expectation and attachment to the result of our action. Such a person breaks out of this cycle of saṁsāra.

Q: You said that we are divine in our consciousness. Why did we degrade ourselves from God to humans?

If you ask me why did we do that, you must ask yourself, ‘Why did I do that?’ We are responsible. It is not someone outside of us.

This idea that ‘we have degraded ourselves, we must go back’ is a technique to make us understand our actual nature. It is not that we have come down. We have simply forgotten that we are divine energy. We have forgotten our true nature. That is why we feel that we have fallen.

If you really came down, how could you go back again? If you can come down once from that state, you can come down again after some years. Then it is not permanent. If you go up, can’t you come down after five hundred years? You may. So that is not a great thing. We have never fallen. We are in the same state. We are continuously connected to the Divine.

The only thing is that we have forgotten that we are divine. Why?

Vivekananda beautifully explains, 'That question cannot be answered from this plane. The question is from the logical plane, but in the ultimate spiritual sense there is no logic.'

A few questions cannot be explained or understood, unless we experience. This question falls in that category.

These questions, 'How have we forgotten our true nature? How have we degraded ourselves? How have we forgotten that we are God?' can never be answered. When you experience enlightenment, you understand how you have forgotten or how you remembered. Now, from this plane, this question can never be answered. In the dream state, when you are dreaming, you feel as if you have become somebody else. Only when you come out of the dream do you know!