Bhagavagd Gita - Session 16- Track 1609
yasya sarve samārambhāḥ kāma-saṅkalpa-varjitāḥ |
jñānāgni-dagdha-karmāṇaṁ tam āhuḥ paṇḍitaṁ budhāḥ ||19|| (IV)
This perception that action as inaction, and inaction has action behind it, you cannot have it except through knowledge. Merely by doing action you will not understand this; there has to be the dimension of Knowledge. Therefore, if you really want to be one who is one with the divine worker, then you must have the perception, and the Knowledge: this is how the Karmayoga of the Gita is a synthesis of Karma and Jnana. Mere Karma, mere performance of actions, does not make you Karmayogi in the sense of the Bhagavad Gita.
Take for example: there is a view that Karmayoga consists of doing the duty: duty for duty’s sake and not to care for the consequences. This is a very simple formula, which is presented to us very often that Bhagavad Gita teaches you that you should do your duty. Doing mere duty is not Karmayoga in the sense of the Bhagavad Gita, because when you do duty, you are engaged in action. But to see inaction behind it, that is not in performance of duty. Therefore, anybody who says that Bhagavad Gita teaches you ‘do your duty’, is a very misleading presentation of the Bhagavad Gita. As a first formulation, as a superficial statement, you can allow it, but fundamentally Bhagavad Gita’s Karmayoga is not mere ‘duty for duty’s sake’.
Until you arrive at a realisation that behind action, there is inaction, when you rise to that level of Brahmic consciousness, where there is complete immobility…and how do you know the immobility? Not by mere doing of action, there has to be the dimension of Knowledge. It is by Knowledge consciousness that you become immobile.
There is a very special thing about Knowledge: if you ask the question: what is Knowledge? “Knowledge is fundamentally a perception of Silence, of Immobility by becoming immobile”. You cannot know Immobility unless you become yourself immobile. To attain to Immobility with immobility: that is Jnana, but that is not Karmayoga as yet.
To know Immobility by immobile consciousness, and to know that mobility rises from it, that is Karmayoga. That is why now Sri Krishna speaks of jñānāgni-dagdha-karmāṇaṁ.
This is the reason why the 4th chapter is entitled “Jnana Yoga”. It is actually…the half of the chapter is only about Karma; but now comes the Jnana, and reconciles the two things. Without Karma, Jnanayoga is incomplete, without Jnana Yoga, Karma Yoga is incomplete: it is by the combination of the two that basically you attain to the highest level of Karmayoga and Jnanayoga.
He says:
yasya sarve samārambhāḥ kāma-saṅkalpa-varjitāḥ |
jñānāgni-dagdha-karmāṇaṁ tam āhuḥ paṇḍitaṁ budhāḥ ||19|| (IV)
Who are the real realisers, who are the real Karmayogins?
yasya sarve samārambhāḥ varjitāḥ, whose whole initiative is exhausted; kāma-saṅkalpa-varjitāḥ, they have no karmāṇaṁ at all; all saṅkalpa is gone, whose action is dagdha , is burnt away by jñānāgni, by the fire of Knowledge.
These two sentences, these two verses, 18&19, may be regarded as the key-sentences, key-verses, of the Bhagavad Gita.
Now, is only the elucidation of this, which we can go through rapidly:
tyaktvā karma-phalāsaṅgaṁ nitya-tṛpto nirāśrayaḥ |
karmaṇy abhipravṛtto ’pi naiva kiñcit karoti saḥ ||20|| (IV)
A divine worker, like the Divine Himself, he is karmaṇy abhipravṛtto, he is entirely engaged in action, naiva kiñcit karoti saḥ, and yet he does no action. Constantly engaged in action, and yet he does no action. Why? Because nitya-tṛpto, he is completely contented, there is no saṅkalpa, there is no desire that, “Now I will do this or I should do that”, all is finished, he is completely immobile; tyaktvā karma-phalāsaṅgaṁ, he has given up all the attachment to the fruits of action, and yet he does all actions; and even while doing actions he knows he does no actions.