Bhagavagd Gita - Session 20- Track 2002

We shall come back again. We shall read first all the verses of this chapter as the description of the divine worker, and come back again to a few of them, to emphasise a few important items:

saṁnyāsas tu mahābāho duḥkham āptum ayogataḥ |
yogayukto munir brahma nacireṇādhigacchati ||6|| (V)

“O Mighty-Armed Arjuna! Renunciation, is difficult to attain without Yoga ; the sage who is steadied in Yoga, can attain Brahman without delay.”

yogayukto viśuddhātmā vijitātmā jitendriyaḥ |
sarvabhūtātmabhūtātmā kurvann api na lipyate ||7|| (V)

“He who is perfect in Yoga, and is pure in heart, having control over the Self and who has conquered the senses, who realises the oneness of himself with the inner Self of all beings, he is not tainted by actions even though he continues performing them.” He is free from the sense of action, egoism, and that is now much more realistic against the next one.

naiva kiñcit karomīti yukto manyeta tattvavit |
paśyañ śṛṇvan spṛśañ jighrann aśnan gacchan svapañ śvasan ||8|| (V)

pralapan visṛjan gṛhṇann unmiṣan nimiṣann api |
indriyāṇīndriyārtheṣu vartanta iti dhārayan ||9|| (V)

These two verses are actually one sentence:

“The man who is united with the Supreme and knows the truth thinks, ‘I do nothing at all’,”…he is free from egoism of action,...“while seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting (eating), walking, sleeping and breathing.”

“In speaking, emitting, grasping, opening and closing the eyes, he holds that only the senses are engaged with their objects, and that he is aloof from them.”

brahmaṇy ādhāya karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā karoti yaḥ |
lipyate na sa pāpena padmapatram ivāmbhasā ||10|| (V)

“One, who performs actions without attachment, surrendering them to the Brahman, is not touched by sin, even as a lotus leaf remains untouched by water.”

This description of padmapatram ivāmbhasā is a very famous analogy in Indian thought, where you are told that you can be in the water and yet you will not be become wet. You remain dry even when immersed in the water, and the Karmayogi is exactly like that, that he may seem to be doing exactly all kinds of actions, which the worldly man does. So, outwardly you cannot see but the one thing is that he remains completely dry; he does not get affected, unattached.

kāyena manasā buddhyā kevalair indriyair api |
yoginaḥ karma kurvanti saṅgaṁ tyaktvātmaśuddhaye ||11|| (V)

“The yogins abandoning attachment…” that was first, abandoning the sense of action, egoism; now there is emphasis upon giving up desire.

“The yogins abandoning attachment perform actions merely with body, mind, intellect and senses, for the purification of their souls.”

yuktaḥ karmaphalaṁ tyaktvā śāntim āpnoti naiṣṭhikīm |
ayuktaḥ kāmakāreṇa phale sakto nibadhyate ||12|| (V)

Here the emphasis is upon śāntim āpnoti, “he attains to the peace”.

“One who is earnest to Yoga attains Eternal Peace by renouncing the fruits of action, but one who is not in union with the Divine is impelled by desires, and is attached to the fruits of action, and is therefore bound.”

sarvakarmāṇi manasā saṁnyasyāste sukhaṁ vaśī |
navadvāre pure dehī naiva kurvan na kārayan ||13|| (V)

Here the description is of delight; there it was peace, here it is delight.

“The embodied soul, who has controlled his nature, neither working nor causing work to be done, he attains to great happiness, even though he dwells at ease in the city of nine gates.”

na kartṛtvaṁ na karmāṇi lokasya sṛjati prabhuḥ |
na karmaphalasaṁyogaṁ svabhāvas tu pravartate ||14|| (V)

“Just as the supreme Lord, even though He creates the world and runs the world and yet He has nothing to do with the world, they exists in the Lord but He does not exist in them, therefore He does not do any action”, na kartṛtvaṁ na karmāṇi lokasya sṛjati, He does not feel that He is the doer; and He, even though He is supposed to be the creator of the world, He does not feel He is the creator of the world; na karmaphalasaṁyogaṁ svabhāvas tu pravartate, He does not even join action with its fruits.

Very often it is said that God has only one function: there are schools of Indian philosophy, which say that God has only one function, ‘He joins Karma with its fruits’. Karma is done by individuals, and fruits are given by God: that is one school of philosophy. And that is the only function of God. Some people believe that God has other functions: He creates the world, He Himself is the world, and He also connects actions with the fruits of action, and He Himself is the doer of action. These notions of God are also mentioned in the Indian thought: all of them are accepted in the Bhagavad Gita. According to the Bhagavad Gita, the Divine is the creator of the world, the Divine is the doer of all things the Divine Himself is the stuff of the world: all that is here is the Divine; the Divine is also therefore the doer of action, and also the fruit giver who combines the action and the fruits.

In spite of that, here Sri Krishna says that even though all this is true, He really has another poise of His Consciousness in which none of these attributes apply to Him. Even while doing actions, He does no action. Even while joining action to the fruits He is not that. Even while creating the world, He is not that. Even while doing everything, He is not that. Such is the condition of the Lord Himself. Therefore, the divine worker also has the same qualities: he creates, he does, he is the master and yet he is free from all that. That is the sign of the divine worker’s freedom.