Bg 3.27
prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā kartāham iti manyate
Bg 3.28
tattva-vit tu mahā-bāho guṇa-karma-vibhāgayoḥ
guṇā guṇeṣu vartanta iti matvā na sajjate
Bg 3.29
prakṛter guṇa-sammūḍhāḥ sajjante guṇa-karmasu
tān akṛtsna-vido mandān kṛtsna-vin na vicālayet
Bg 3.30
mayi sarvāṇi karmāṇi sannyasyādhyātma-cetasā
nirāśīr nirmamo bhūtvā yudhyasva vigata-jvaraḥ
Translation:
27. All actions are performed, in all cases, merely by the Qualities-in-Nature (GUNAS ) . He whose mind is deluded by egoism, thinks "I am the doer. "
28. But he --- who knows the Truth, O mighty-armed, about the divisions of the qualities and (their) functions, and he who knows that GUNAS -as-senses move amidst GUNAS -as-objects, is not attached.
29. Those deluded by the qualities of nature, (GUNAS) , are attached to the functions of the qualities. The Man-of-Perfect-Knowledge should not unsettle the 'foolish, ' who are of imperfect knowledge.
30. Renouncing all actions in Me, with the mind centered on the Self, free from hope and egoism (ownership) , free from (mental) fever, (you) do fight!
Commentary Excerpts:
For everyone of us the difficulty is that we know not how to get ourselves detached from our activities, and still act on in the field. The Lord gives here a method of discrimination by which we can easily develop the required amount of detachment.
The tendencies of the mind (vasanas) express in the outer-world as actions. Where there are noble-thoughts, there, noble-actions manifest. When the thoughts are agitated, the actions also are uncertain, faltering, and confused. And where the thoughts are dull and animalistic, the actions generated from them are also correspondingly base, vicious, and cruel. Thus, the mind's projections in the outer-world are in fact a kind of crystallization of the mental Vasana among the objects of the world and these constitute the "actions."
Where there is a mind, there actions also must be performed. These actions are therefore GENERATED by the mind, STRENGTHENED in the mind and ultimately PERFORMED with the mind. But the individual, due to his wrong identification with his own mind, gets the false notion that he himself is the "actor" --- the "doer." This action-arrogating-ego naturally starts feeling an anxiety for its success and a burning attachment for the result of its actions.
In a dream, we create a world of our own and we identify ourselves with the world so made, and this IDENTIFIER is called the 'dreamer.' We all know that the sorrows of the dream all belong to the 'dreamer' and to no one else. The 'dreamer' is liberated from his pains when he ends his identification with the dream kingdom. Similarly, the actions in the world outside, which are nothing other than the vasanas existing in one's own mind, cannot of themselves give one any attachment, but the attachment is felt by one who gets identified with one's own mental conditions. The moment one understands this simple fact, all one's attachments end, and therefore, one lives in perfect peace.
This identification with the mental condition creates the false sense of ego which arrogates to itself the idea: "I am the doer." The "doer" demands the FRUITS OF HIS ACTION. To get over this attachment is to end this misconception.
BUT AS REGARDS THE 'WISE' MAN:
As a contrast to the point-of-view of the 'ignorant' man explained in the last stanza, Krishna explains here the attitude of the 'wise' man when he ploughs the field of activity. In him, attachment has no place, because of his constant, discriminating understanding that in all activities, it is his mind that projects out to form the action. When once the 'wise' man has realized that actions belong to the world of the mind, he is no more anxious for the fruits thereof. Success and failure thereafter belong to the mind and not to him. Likes and dislikes thereafter are of the mind and not his. Loves and hatreds are not his but of the mind. Thus, in complete inner freedom the God-man functions, as a true sportsman in his play-field, where the very enjoyment is in the sport and not in the score.
Here, Arjuna is addressed as the 'mighty-armed,' and this is very significant in the mouth of Krishna at this moment. The very term reminds us of Arjuna's wondrous heroism as the greatest archer of his time. The implication is that a true hero is not one who can face an army and kill a few, but one who can save himself. A true warrior is only he who can tirelessly fight in the inner world, and gain a victory over his own mind and attachments. One who can act in the world's battle-field of actions, ever ruling over and never surrendering to the arrows of attachments that fly towards one from all directions, is the real Immortal Hero, who can thereafter sit unarmed on the chariots of mortal heroes, and without raising any weapon, can guide the destinies of many an army in every Kurukshetra! That Master Hero is called Tattwavit --- one who "knows" the Reality --- the Self.
The dull-witted one, unconsciously victimised by his own mental impressions, acts in the world outside shackled by a thousand burning attachments. A sage or a saint should not come into the arena of life to decry such a man's activities all of a sudden. Krishna's suggestion is that, while feeding the fire of life, he should carefully guide its flow into the right channel wherein the flood of life can reach to water the gardens of cultural development in the individual as well as in the community.
"HOW THEN SHOULD ACTIONS BE PERFORMED BY THE 'IGNORANT' MAN WHO SEEKS LIBERATION FROM HIS OWN SENSE OF FINITUDE, WHEN HE IS QUALIFIED ONLY FOR ACTION?"
RENOUNCE ALL ACTIONS IN ME --- We have already noticed that by the first-person pronoun Krishna means the Supreme Self, the Divine, the Eternal. Renouncing all activities unto Him, with a mind soaked with devoted remembrances of the Self (Adhyatma Chetasa), the Lord advises Arjuna to act on. Renunciation of action does not mean an insipid life of inactivity. Actions performed through attachment and desires are renounced the moment we take away from action the ego-centric and the selfish stink.
Actions performed without desires are not actions at all, inasmuch as they are incapable of producing any painful reactions. Here, the renunciation of action only means the giving up of the wrong motives behind the actions.
The purification of the motives is possible only when the mind is made to sing constantly the Divine Songs praising the glories of the Self. In the song of Truth the heart begins to throb with the highest Divine impulses. Actions performed in the outer world by such an individual are no more the ordinary actions but they become expressions of the Supreme Will through that individual. When the limited ego is replaced by the constant feeling of the Lord --- as "I am the Supreme" --- such an individual becomes the most efficient instrument for the expression of the Divine Will.
Not only is it sufficient that we renounce thus all wrong actions, but we have also to make a few adjustments in our inner instruments in order to bring out an unobstructed flow of the Creator's Will through us. These are indicated here by the two terms "without hope" and "without ego."
A superficial study of the stanza is sure to confuse the student and drive him to the dangerous conclusion that Hinduism preaches, not a dynamic conscious life, but an insentient existence through life in a spirit of cultivated hopeless-ness! But a closer study of the import of these two terms will make us understand clearly that, in this stanza, Krishna is hinting at a great psychological truth of life!
WITHOUT HOPE --- Hope is "the expectation of a happening that is yet to manifest and mature in a FUTURE PERIOD OF TIME." Whatever be the hope, it belongs not to the present; it refers to a period of time not yet born.
WITHOUT EGO --- Our ego-centric concept of ourselves is nothing but "a bundle of happenings and achievements of ours which took place, or were gained, in the past moments." Ego is therefore "the shadow of the past," and it has an existent reality only with reference to THE DEAD MOMENTS OF THE PAST.
If hope is thus the child of the unborn future, ego is the lingering memory of a dead past. To revel in ego and hope is an attempt on our part to live, either with the dead moments of the past, or with the unborn moments of the future. All the while, the tragedy is that we miss the 'present,' the active dynamic 'present,' which is the only noble chance that is given to us to create, to advance, to achieve, and to enjoy. Krishna advises Arjuna, therefore, to act renouncing both hope and ego; and this is indeed a primary instruction on how to pour the best that is in us into the 'present,' blockading all unintelligent and thoughtless dissipation of our inner-personality-energies, in the 'past' and the 'future.'
The instruction is so exhaustive in vision, and complete in its minutest details, that the stanza under review should be a surprise even to the best of our modern psychologists. Even though the technique so far advised can, and does, avoid all wastage of energy among the funeral pyres of the dead moments and in the wombs of unborn Time, yet, there is a chance for the man of action wasting his potentialities in the very 'present.' This generally comes through our inborn nature to get ourselves unnecessarily over-anxious during our present activities. This FEVERISH ANXIETY is indicated here by the term "fever" (Jwara). Krishna advises that Arjuna should renounce all actions unto the Lord and, getting rid of both hope and selfishness, must fight, free from all mental fever. How complete this technique is will be evident now to all students of the Geeta.
The term "fight" is to be understood here "as our individual fight with circumstances, in the silent battle of life." Thus, the advice is not for Arjuna alone, but to all men who would like to live life fully and intelligently!
The advice contained in this stanza reads as though quite unorthodox for those who have read the Vedas, with a limited meaning for its term "Karma-Yoga."
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā kartāham iti manyate
Bg 3.28
tattva-vit tu mahā-bāho guṇa-karma-vibhāgayoḥ
guṇā guṇeṣu vartanta iti matvā na sajjate
Bg 3.29
prakṛter guṇa-sammūḍhāḥ sajjante guṇa-karmasu
tān akṛtsna-vido mandān kṛtsna-vin na vicālayet
Bg 3.30
mayi sarvāṇi karmāṇi sannyasyādhyātma-cetasā
nirāśīr nirmamo bhūtvā yudhyasva vigata-jvaraḥ
Translation:
27. All actions are performed, in all cases, merely by the Qualities-in-Nature (GUNAS ) . He whose mind is deluded by egoism, thinks "I am the doer. "
28. But he --- who knows the Truth, O mighty-armed, about the divisions of the qualities and (their) functions, and he who knows that GUNAS -as-senses move amidst GUNAS -as-objects, is not attached.
29. Those deluded by the qualities of nature, (GUNAS) , are attached to the functions of the qualities. The Man-of-Perfect-Knowledge should not unsettle the 'foolish, ' who are of imperfect knowledge.
30. Renouncing all actions in Me, with the mind centered on the Self, free from hope and egoism (ownership) , free from (mental) fever, (you) do fight!
Commentary Excerpts:
For everyone of us the difficulty is that we know not how to get ourselves detached from our activities, and still act on in the field. The Lord gives here a method of discrimination by which we can easily develop the required amount of detachment.
The tendencies of the mind (vasanas) express in the outer-world as actions. Where there are noble-thoughts, there, noble-actions manifest. When the thoughts are agitated, the actions also are uncertain, faltering, and confused. And where the thoughts are dull and animalistic, the actions generated from them are also correspondingly base, vicious, and cruel. Thus, the mind's projections in the outer-world are in fact a kind of crystallization of the mental Vasana among the objects of the world and these constitute the "actions."
Where there is a mind, there actions also must be performed. These actions are therefore GENERATED by the mind, STRENGTHENED in the mind and ultimately PERFORMED with the mind. But the individual, due to his wrong identification with his own mind, gets the false notion that he himself is the "actor" --- the "doer." This action-arrogating-ego naturally starts feeling an anxiety for its success and a burning attachment for the result of its actions.
In a dream, we create a world of our own and we identify ourselves with the world so made, and this IDENTIFIER is called the 'dreamer.' We all know that the sorrows of the dream all belong to the 'dreamer' and to no one else. The 'dreamer' is liberated from his pains when he ends his identification with the dream kingdom. Similarly, the actions in the world outside, which are nothing other than the vasanas existing in one's own mind, cannot of themselves give one any attachment, but the attachment is felt by one who gets identified with one's own mental conditions. The moment one understands this simple fact, all one's attachments end, and therefore, one lives in perfect peace.
This identification with the mental condition creates the false sense of ego which arrogates to itself the idea: "I am the doer." The "doer" demands the FRUITS OF HIS ACTION. To get over this attachment is to end this misconception.
BUT AS REGARDS THE 'WISE' MAN:
As a contrast to the point-of-view of the 'ignorant' man explained in the last stanza, Krishna explains here the attitude of the 'wise' man when he ploughs the field of activity. In him, attachment has no place, because of his constant, discriminating understanding that in all activities, it is his mind that projects out to form the action. When once the 'wise' man has realized that actions belong to the world of the mind, he is no more anxious for the fruits thereof. Success and failure thereafter belong to the mind and not to him. Likes and dislikes thereafter are of the mind and not his. Loves and hatreds are not his but of the mind. Thus, in complete inner freedom the God-man functions, as a true sportsman in his play-field, where the very enjoyment is in the sport and not in the score.
Here, Arjuna is addressed as the 'mighty-armed,' and this is very significant in the mouth of Krishna at this moment. The very term reminds us of Arjuna's wondrous heroism as the greatest archer of his time. The implication is that a true hero is not one who can face an army and kill a few, but one who can save himself. A true warrior is only he who can tirelessly fight in the inner world, and gain a victory over his own mind and attachments. One who can act in the world's battle-field of actions, ever ruling over and never surrendering to the arrows of attachments that fly towards one from all directions, is the real Immortal Hero, who can thereafter sit unarmed on the chariots of mortal heroes, and without raising any weapon, can guide the destinies of many an army in every Kurukshetra! That Master Hero is called Tattwavit --- one who "knows" the Reality --- the Self.
The dull-witted one, unconsciously victimised by his own mental impressions, acts in the world outside shackled by a thousand burning attachments. A sage or a saint should not come into the arena of life to decry such a man's activities all of a sudden. Krishna's suggestion is that, while feeding the fire of life, he should carefully guide its flow into the right channel wherein the flood of life can reach to water the gardens of cultural development in the individual as well as in the community.
"HOW THEN SHOULD ACTIONS BE PERFORMED BY THE 'IGNORANT' MAN WHO SEEKS LIBERATION FROM HIS OWN SENSE OF FINITUDE, WHEN HE IS QUALIFIED ONLY FOR ACTION?"
RENOUNCE ALL ACTIONS IN ME --- We have already noticed that by the first-person pronoun Krishna means the Supreme Self, the Divine, the Eternal. Renouncing all activities unto Him, with a mind soaked with devoted remembrances of the Self (Adhyatma Chetasa), the Lord advises Arjuna to act on. Renunciation of action does not mean an insipid life of inactivity. Actions performed through attachment and desires are renounced the moment we take away from action the ego-centric and the selfish stink.
Actions performed without desires are not actions at all, inasmuch as they are incapable of producing any painful reactions. Here, the renunciation of action only means the giving up of the wrong motives behind the actions.
The purification of the motives is possible only when the mind is made to sing constantly the Divine Songs praising the glories of the Self. In the song of Truth the heart begins to throb with the highest Divine impulses. Actions performed in the outer world by such an individual are no more the ordinary actions but they become expressions of the Supreme Will through that individual. When the limited ego is replaced by the constant feeling of the Lord --- as "I am the Supreme" --- such an individual becomes the most efficient instrument for the expression of the Divine Will.
Not only is it sufficient that we renounce thus all wrong actions, but we have also to make a few adjustments in our inner instruments in order to bring out an unobstructed flow of the Creator's Will through us. These are indicated here by the two terms "without hope" and "without ego."
A superficial study of the stanza is sure to confuse the student and drive him to the dangerous conclusion that Hinduism preaches, not a dynamic conscious life, but an insentient existence through life in a spirit of cultivated hopeless-ness! But a closer study of the import of these two terms will make us understand clearly that, in this stanza, Krishna is hinting at a great psychological truth of life!
WITHOUT HOPE --- Hope is "the expectation of a happening that is yet to manifest and mature in a FUTURE PERIOD OF TIME." Whatever be the hope, it belongs not to the present; it refers to a period of time not yet born.
WITHOUT EGO --- Our ego-centric concept of ourselves is nothing but "a bundle of happenings and achievements of ours which took place, or were gained, in the past moments." Ego is therefore "the shadow of the past," and it has an existent reality only with reference to THE DEAD MOMENTS OF THE PAST.
If hope is thus the child of the unborn future, ego is the lingering memory of a dead past. To revel in ego and hope is an attempt on our part to live, either with the dead moments of the past, or with the unborn moments of the future. All the while, the tragedy is that we miss the 'present,' the active dynamic 'present,' which is the only noble chance that is given to us to create, to advance, to achieve, and to enjoy. Krishna advises Arjuna, therefore, to act renouncing both hope and ego; and this is indeed a primary instruction on how to pour the best that is in us into the 'present,' blockading all unintelligent and thoughtless dissipation of our inner-personality-energies, in the 'past' and the 'future.'
The instruction is so exhaustive in vision, and complete in its minutest details, that the stanza under review should be a surprise even to the best of our modern psychologists. Even though the technique so far advised can, and does, avoid all wastage of energy among the funeral pyres of the dead moments and in the wombs of unborn Time, yet, there is a chance for the man of action wasting his potentialities in the very 'present.' This generally comes through our inborn nature to get ourselves unnecessarily over-anxious during our present activities. This FEVERISH ANXIETY is indicated here by the term "fever" (Jwara). Krishna advises that Arjuna should renounce all actions unto the Lord and, getting rid of both hope and selfishness, must fight, free from all mental fever. How complete this technique is will be evident now to all students of the Geeta.
The term "fight" is to be understood here "as our individual fight with circumstances, in the silent battle of life." Thus, the advice is not for Arjuna alone, but to all men who would like to live life fully and intelligently!
The advice contained in this stanza reads as though quite unorthodox for those who have read the Vedas, with a limited meaning for its term "Karma-Yoga."
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
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