Bondage And Freedom – In Gita Verse 4.12 Men in this world desire success in fruitive activities, and therefore they worship the demigods. Quickly, of course, men get results from fruitive work in this world.
Krishna is telling us how we are after everything in the world. We are after desire so we want to achieve something, we want to live in duality and not in unity. As a result, to achieve the goal we are missing the present moment.
Look in your life – we are so much in a hurry to achieve the goal that we are ready to do anything. Any kind of rituals, anyone to follow. Fake Guru, fake God. but this has got nothing to do with religion. Remember that whenever we are after the goal, this is not the religion.
The person who is in this moment and responding to this moment is religion. Everyone needs to act but what’s the difference between the person who is after the goal and the person who is responding to the present moment is only one thing: the person who is after the goal is in bondage and the person who is responding to the present moment is from freedom.
What is bondage? – Bondage is something which you have to do as an obsession, as a compulsion. You never wanted to do it and you have to do it. You have to go against yourself, whatever it is, it is a bondage. If you are just floating and it is what you always wanted to do with your total heart, your total being, it is freedom. Now let me state it as a paradox: if you are free as an obsession, in your freedom is bondage. If you are a slave with total acceptance, in your bondage is freedom. It depends. It is the attitude, not the situation. So only you can know about it, what it is.
Unless we learn to give, we will not be able to come out of the attitude of bondage, running after the achievements and not responding to the present moment. Bondage means kind of stuckness, not flowing, giver means flowing.
Let me explain to you who can be a Giver by this Zen story.
Giver should be Thankful: It happened with Dozo, a Zen monk. A rich man came to Dozo with ten thousand gold coins. That was a very big amount. He was going to give it to the temple where Dozo was the priest. Dozo accepted it as if it was nothing. The rich man became agitated. He said, “Do you know these are ten thousand gold coins?”
Dozo said, “You have said it so many times, I have heard it so many times. You have said it already too many times – do you think I am deaf?”
The man was just asking for thanks, only thanks, nothing more. Then he said, “Ten thousand golden coins is a big amount, even to me. I am a very rich man, but that amount is very big.”
Dozo said, “What do you want? What are you really asking? Are you asking for some gratitude? Are you asking that I should be thankful to you?”
The man said, “At least that much can be expected.”
So Dozo said, “Take your gold coins back. If you want to really give them to this temple, you will have to be thankful to me that I accepted.”
When Dozo says that you should have to be thankful to me – means in the present moment you are responding to others for what they have done for you. Not that you are expecting anything from others even if it is thanks. Your expectation shows that you have attachments and a goal for your giving but when you are thankful to others it shows that what you did was from freedom to give and share your belonging with others. You are sharing with others because you are overflowing with the universal energy of love, and to express that you have given something in material.
Krishna tells Arjuna that all your bondage reflects in your words. And not respond to this moment. If you want to respond to this moment then your question would be not from bondage but what are other alternatives, when you will be Fighting Without Enmity, is to be considered. This is freedom. Same circumstances either you can act from bondage or from freedom.
Tags: Bondage And Freedom
