You Are Whole – In Gita Verse 3.31 Those persons who execute their duties according to My injunctions and who follow this teaching faithfully, without envy, become free from the bondage of fruitive actions.
This verse of Krishna we will understand from our routine life.
We are living in the family. Family has certain discipline to follow. Without discipline you cannot fulfill everyone’s requirements and allow everyone to grow. Now when every member of the family will follow that discipline. Means they will say yes and no for the discipline and then only they will act.
Family is a small and tiny universe. The whole universe through various resources provides us with life and it has to see that everything is aligned with each other, so everyone can live and grow, till animal evolution, and from human beings grow in consciousness. The way in which the family head carries responsibility for the family, the universe is carrying the responsibility of everything. When the universe decides and creates certain circumstances it is for the whole and not as fragmented. It looks for everyone’s interest. If our act in those circumstances is an act of our assignment of that moment, our act is not of bondage.
Look from a different angle. If a terrorist comes, then to defend yourself and your community, society, nation and world if you kill him, is it wrong? Or you help some helpless lady who has been raped and if you kill the rapist are you a criminal? No. it becomes your responsibility to act and protect. So in that there is no sin or virtue. There is no bondage in that act. It is from your responsibility towards yourself, community, society, nation and world you acted.
Krishna is saying to Arjuna the same thing, you are part of the whole, what the whole decides for this moment your mind cannot understand it. You become self-aware and connect yourself with your subjectivity, so that you are connected with the whole, me, and then you will find there is no bondage, but freedom. Bondage exists only in the resistance to growth. Take the example of seed, if it resists to undergo transformation as tree it is bondage but if it allows transformation as tree there is no bondage it’s freedom, it’s growth. Seed manifesting as tree and tree again merging in seed is whole. Is holy.
For Lao Tzu. There is no other holiness. It is not a cultivation of religious ritual and it is not even a cultivation of morality. It has nothing to do with character. Holiness means a life that is whole; a life that has not denied anything, a life that knows no denial, a life that has not said no to anything, a life that accepts, accepts the opposites, a life that doesn’t choose. A life that is choiceless is holy. Holy comes from the same root as whole. If you are whole you are holy, and if you are whole it means you are at the same time life and death also. You don’t hide the fact of death and you don’t try to hide your inner hollowness, emptiness. You don’t try to fill it with rubbish. You enjoy the purity of emptiness also. Nothing is as pure as emptiness, nothing can be – because whenever there is something, impurity enters. Only emptiness can be absolutely pure.
But we are so afraid of emptiness. It is so difficult to be alone because one starts feeling one’s emptiness. Then you seek friends, then you seek lovers, and the whole effort from the very beginning is doomed – because a man who is afraid of his emptiness cannot really love. He is afraid. Deep down there is fear. How can he love? When he moves and pretends that he is in love with somebody he is just trying to escape from himself, his own emptiness. He is trying to forget that somewhere inside there is emptiness and nothingness. He is trying to fill that emptiness with somebody’s presence – and the other is also doing the same.
Don’t be afraid of this emptiness, connect yourself with this emptiness, through your breath, and you are connected with your subjectivity. You become whole.
Krishna tells Arjuna to become self-conscious, connect with your subjectivity, act through your body as a whole process like seed to tree and again tree to seed. Don’t resist. You will be whole, holy. In that there will not be any bondage, but your body will be a vehicle for this moment’s response by the universe. Whole will act through you.
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