Be Unattached – In Gita Verse 5.10 One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus leaf is untouched by water.
What Krishna says If you are unattached, then moment to moment you move without any fixation.
Every moment life will bring new happinesses, new miseries. There will be dark nights and there will be sunny days, but you are open, you don’t have a fixed mind. When you don’t have a fixed mind, even a miserable situation cannot give you misery because you don’t have anything to compare with it. You were not expecting something against it so you cannot be frustrated.
You get frustrated because of your demands. You think that when you come home, your wife will be just standing outside to welcome you. And if she is not standing there outside to welcome you, you cannot accept it. This gives you frustration and misery.
You demand, and through demand you create misery. And demand is possible only if you are attached. You cannot demand, with people who are strangers to you. Only with attachment does demand come in; that is why all attachments become hellish.
Patanjali says be non-attached. That means be flowing; accepting whatever life brings. Don’t demand and don’t force. Life is not going to follow you; you cannot force life to be according to you. It is better to flow with the river rather than pushing it. Just flow with it, and much happiness becomes possible. There is already much happiness all around you, but you cannot see it because of your wrong fixations.
But in the beginning this non-attachment will only be a seed; in the end non-attachment becomes desirelessness. In the beginning non-attachment means non-fixation, in the end non-attachment will mean desirelessness, no desire. In the beginning no demand, in the end no desire.
But if you want to reach this end of no-desire, start from no-demand. Try Patanjali’s formula even for twenty-four hours, just for twenty-four hours, flowing with life, not demanding anything. Whatsoever life gives, feeling grateful, thankful. Just moving for twenty-four hours in a prayerful state of mind, not asking, not demanding, not expecting, and you will have a new opening. Those twenty-four hours will become a new window. And you will feel how ecstatic you can become.
But you will have to be alert in the beginning. It cannot be expected that non-attachment, for the seeker, can be a spontaneous act.
With growing desirelessness, sometimes the person becomes outwardly inactive. Is it lethargy and dullness? Why does it happen?
Many things are possible, and it will depend. Certainly many desires will drop and many actions also. Those actions which were just caused by desires will drop. If I was running for a particular desire, how can I run if the desire has dropped? My running will stop. At least the same running on the same route will stop. So when a person becomes desireless, at least for an interim period, for an interval – and how long it will be will depend on the individual – he will become inactive. The desires will have dropped – and all the actions that he had been doing were concerned with desires, so how can he continue? They will drop.
But by dropping desires and actions, energy will be accumulated – and now energy will begin to move. When it moves, how it moves will vary from individual to individual, but now it will move. There will be a gap, an interim period, an interval. This is a pregnancy period. The seed is born, but now it will gestate for at least nine months. And it may seem strange, but it happens. This nine months period is meaningful. Near about this, eight months or ten months, will be the interim period, and you will just become inactive. This inactivity will also vary. Someone may become so inactive that people may think that he has just gone into a coma. Everything stops.
Zen monks also transfer, but before transferring they prepare the ground. A person can be made ready to receive the energy, then this reaction will not be there. He may feel lethargic for some days, for some months, but no one will feel outside that inside everything has become inactive.
So it depends. Inactivity is bound to be there – more or less, but it will be there, a period will be there. And only then can you be reborn, because the whole mechanism has to change completely. The mind drops, old roots drop, the old habits drop, the old association of consciousness and desires, consciousness and mind, drops – everything old drops and everything has to be new.
Krishna’s guidance is so simple. Be unattached and you will be desireless. You will be born again. Only thing required is our own wisdom to understand. It cannot be borrowed. He in this verse says that if you follow the knowledge then your act will be sinful, but when you follow your wisdom, you surrender to existence and you become a lotus leaf. You live in this world but the world cannot touch you. You are nourished by the world as lotus is nourished by mud, but like lotus you will not be touched by the world.
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