Action and Karma – In Gita Verse 8.3 The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: The indestructible, transcendental living entity is called Brahman, and his eternal nature is called adhyātma, the self. Action pertaining to the development of the material bodies of the living entities is called karma, or fruitive activities.
Krishna is not giving any approval but he says that from any action you can turn towards yourself. He is saying the facts regarding Brahman, Actions, Karma. He is using everything to guide us, so that we do not run away from ourselves. He simply says that you are the gate. Unless we turn towards ourselves we cannot find God. As God is found only through our own Godliness, subjectivity. It’s like a seed, unless the seed grows a tree cannot manifest. Unless we know ourselves we cannot know God. Like a seed tree is hidden in seed, God is hidden within ourselves.
Once we grow in consciousness Brahman, eternal nature, God will manifest through our Action and Karma. Action and Karma are the reflection of our consciousness.
If we look in our life, we will find that in the same circumstances our actions and other people’s actions are different. What is the difference? Difference is only; of consciousness. The person who has grown in consciousness will act but he will not act to fulfill his desire he will act his role in the universe. All his actions will be from his watchfulness towards himself.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 4.8, blog I wrote Turning inwards simply means that you have been running after this desire and that, and you have been running and running and you have been coming again and again to frustration.
This frustration only we can watch no one else can watch. Also the only person who can help you to come out of your frustration is you.
A mind full of desires can only understand desire. Hence the desire for God. It is absurd, you cannot desire God. God comes to you when desire leaves. The cessation of desire is the coming of God to you. Again, I am using the word ‘coming’, which is not true. Because God is already there – you only recognize when the desire has ceased. Nothing ever comes, nothing ever goes, all is as it is. That’s what Buddha means when he says: yatha bhuta – things are as they are. Nothing has gone wrong, nothing needs to be put right. Things are as they are, and they always remain as they are. The trees are green and the roses are red and the clouds float in the sky. Everything is where it has always been, the way it has always been. That is the meaning of the word ‘nature’ – yatha bhuta.
But man has a capacity to dream, to desire. That capacity to dream is the problem. Then you start moving into the future, then you start planning for the future. You remain here, but your mind can move into the future. It is like a dream. You fall asleep in your bed but you can dream of Calcutta or Chicago or Washington or Moscow. You are here the whole night – in the morning you will not wake up in Moscow or Chicago, you will wake up in bed. And then you will laugh, ‘I have been roaming too much.’ While you are dreaming of Moscow you have not reached there, you remain here.
You always remain here. Here and now is the only reality, there is no other. But desire can create a dream. And in desire you go on moving outwards.
Now, what does it mean to turn inwards? Tao’s question is significant, it is very relevant. What does it mean to turn inwards? It means seeing the futility of desire, seeing the futility of dreaming, seeing the illusoriness of dreaming. In that very seeing, desire disappears. In that clarity, desire cannot exist. And when you are with no desire, you are in. Not that you have to turn in. Not that first you have to stop desiring, then you have to turn in. The cessation of desire is the turning, the transformation – what Jesus calls ‘metanoia’, the conversion. Suddenly another gestalt opens. It was there, but you were not aware of it because you were too obsessed with the desire. The desire for money, the desire for power, the desire for prestige, does not allow your meditation to bloom. Because the whole energy goes down the drain in desires.
Krishna says going in; it is non-objective. It is neither scientific, nor philosophical; it covers a totally different area. It means not to know the object but to experience the subject.
Tags: Action and Karma
