Live A Paradox – In Gita Verse 6.1 The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: One who is unattached to the fruits of his work and who works as he is obligated is in the renounced order of life, and he is the true mystic, not he who lights no fire and performs no duty.
Krishna says that the person whose focus is not on the fruits of his work but as a watcher if he acts, he will be unattached.
Look into the actor’s life – Actors are born like poets, because acting is poetry, it is art; you have to have an inborn spirit. Not everybody can be an actor, because one has to get so much involved in the act, so deeply involved, that one forgets that one is separate. One has to lose one’s identity in the acting, one has to become one’s part; one has to forget everything about oneself. This is no ordinary feat..
Acting is certainly the most spiritual of professions for the simple reason that the actor has to be in a paradox: he has to become identified with the act he is performing, and yet remain a watcher.
If he is acting as Hamlet he has to become absolutely involved in being a Hamlet, he has to forget himself totally in his act, and yet at the deepest core of his being he has to remain a spectator, a watcher. If he really becomes absolutely identified with Hamlet, then there is bound to be trouble.
The real actor has to live a paradox: he has to act as if he is what he is acting, and yet deep down he knows that “I am not this.” That’s why acting is the most spiritual of professions…the whole of life is nothing but a drama enacted.
When an actor is acting and playing his role he has longing but as a watcher his longing has been purified. Longing Is Pure Only If Unattached.
Longing in its purity is divine, longing when it longs for nothing is divine. The moment an object of longing arises, it becomes mundane. Longing is a pure fire that purifies, longing is a smokeless fire, a smokeless flame. But the moment it becomes attached to any object whatsoever: worldly, otherworldly; money, meditation, God, nirvana, it doesn’t matter – any object, and the longing is no longer pure. It is contaminated by the object. Then the object becomes more important than the longing itself. Then the longing is only a means, it is no longer an end in itself.
And the whole effort of Krishna is to help Arjuna to drop all objects of longing. Longing will not disappear – in fact, the more objects are dropped, the more intense, the more total the longing will become, because the energy involved in the objects will be released. And there comes a moment when one is simply thirsty – not thirsty for something, but just simply thirsty. Hungry – not hungry for something, just a pure fire of longing. And that very pure fire consumes you, reduces you to ashes. And out of that, something new is born.
The really spiritual person transforms his whole life into acting. Then this whole earth is just a stage, and all the people are nothing but actors, and we are enacting a play.
Then if you are a beggar you play your act as beautifully as you can, and if you are the king you play your act as beautifully as you can. But deep down the beggar knows, “I am not it,” and the king too knows, “I am not it.”
If the beggar and the king both know that “What I am doing and acting is just acting; it is not me, not my reality,” then both are arriving at the very center of their being, what I call witnessing. Then they are performing certain acts and witnessing too.
Acting is certainly the most spiritual profession, and all spiritual persons are nothing but actors. The whole earth is their stage, and the whole of life is nothing but drama enacted.
Krishna’s whole effort is to see that Arjuna drops all his longing of the objective world, once his longing is pure he will be unattached to the fruits of the war. He will simply play his role as an actor.
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