Religion Is A Quest – In Gita Verse 9.9 O Dhanañjaya, all this work cannot bind Me. I am ever detached from all these material activities, seated as though neutral.
Krishna says that all this work cannot bind me as I exist without any cause. Still as a process I do all the material activity.
Existence itself is uncaused. At the beginning, there is no cause. So in the end, there can be no purpose. Only when here is a cause can there be a purpose.
Similarly, you cannot ask what love is for. There is no purpose in love. If I love you, I cannot ask why. If I am loving you for some reason then it is not love. Love is purposeless.
In love, we come closest to God. That is why Jesus said, “God is love.” It is not that God is loving, no. That is not the meaning, God is love! In love, we come closest to the creative process, closest to God. Love is the peak from which we come to know what religion is.
Love is religious so a person who cannot love cannot pray. A person who cannot love cannot be religious. Only a loving mind can be religious because only a loving mind can think in terms of no purpose, no cause. Love is enough. It does not ask anything beyond itself. It is a fulfillment in itself; it is the end in itself. A single moment of love is eternity itself.
When we ask why, where, how, we are not asking religious questions. If you ask how, the question becomes scientific. The question, how is the basis of science: how are things happening? And if you ask why, the question becomes philosophical.
Religion has no question. For religion, there is no questioning. There is a quest, but no questioning.
There is a quest to know what is. Neither why nor how, but what is.
But religion does not ask. Religion is a quest, not a questioning. It is a quest after what is – not after the beginning, not after the end. It is a quest for neither the cause nor the purpose, but for that which is – this very moment, here and now. The ‘what’ is the quest.
A scientific mind can go on searching without ever changing itself. A philosopher can go on inventing answers without changing an inch. But a religious man cannot even begin without changing. The moment he begins to ask what is, there is a change, a transformation – because he himself is part and parcel of what is.
You are neither part and parcel of the how nor of the why. You were not asked anything in the beginning nor have you been asked to plan for the end. You are somewhere in the middle – in the is. You are only concerned with what is here and now, this very moment.
So religion is concerned with the present – neither with the past nor with the future. And the present is the only existence, the present is the only time. The past is memory; the future is imagination.
The present is the only reality, the only existence.
Religion is concerned with the existential, the purposeless, the meaningless, the uncaused. Things are – and you can become one with them and can achieve a moment of bliss, a moment of pure existence, a moment of total consciousness. In India we have called this satchitananda – the moment of total existence, the moment of total consciousness, the moment of total bliss.
Once you have a glimpse of it, there will be no question, no problem. You will be at ease with reality. Then you will be in a state of let-go with reality. You will flow with it, you will live with it. You will breathe it, you will be one with it. You will be it.
Krishna says that if you have a glimpse of it immediately you will know as a process I do all my material activities, so all this work cannot bind Me. I am ever detached from all these material activities, seated as though neutral.
Tags: Religion Is A Quest
