Essential Core – In Gita Verse 18.26 One who performs his duty without association with the modes of material nature, without false ego, with great determination and enthusiasm, and without wavering in success or failure is said to be a worker in the mode of goodness.
Krishna is saying that if any action is done with determination and enthusiasm it will not have any attachment in it.
Look into your own life and recollect incidences where you have participated with others responsibility. At that time all your acts did not have any intention to get back anything. No expectation from others or you were not focused on what you will get from your this act means in other words you did not focus on fruits. Why was our focus not on the fruits? Because we were participating with others. We were not separate from others. We and others were one. Whatever the hurdle came we were together to find out the possibility.
Now we have acted unconsciously. How can we act consciously?
If the same way we participate with the universe, with universal responsibility, then our focus will shift from fruits to the present moment’s action.
Remember this – Life is just the periphery: The center is existence. We have called that existence GOD. We have called that existence MOKSHA. We have called that existence NIRVANA.
This is something very delicate to be understood. Really, we have never said that God exists. We have said, rather, GOD IS EXISTENCE. Those who say God exists don’t know what they are saying.
Man exists; God cannot exist in the same way. Trees exist, the earth exists, the sun exists, but not God. A tree may go out of existence, man may not exist, the sun may not exist, but God cannot be conceived as not existing. God is existence; God is IS-NESS. So really, to say God is, is to repeat oneself.
God MEANS is; God means IS-NESS.
That is-ness is beyond life.
Life is just a wave on the ocean of is-ness. So we are separate as waves, but not as the ocean. We are separate on our peripheries, but not at the center. At the center we are one. So many waves on the ocean, but IN the ocean they are one.
If you understand this, that at the center we are one, then you will be enthusiastic for all your actions. You will be total in all your actions. You will not be burdened with any dos and don’ts. You will find certain freedom in yourself. As you are part of existence.
But no wave will be able to conceive it, because it seems so absurd. How can a wave conceive that all the waves around are one with it? – Because when another wave is just rising up, one is just dying and falling down. If waves are one, then they must fall simultaneously, they must rise simultaneously. That’s why we are the same. If we are all the same, then how is one rich and how is one poor? Then how is one young and how is one old? And how is one born and how is one dying?
We must be separate, obviously. Then how is one intelligent and one is not? And one is beautiful and one is not? – We must be different, we must be separate. But we are not. There are small waves and there are big waves; there are waves which go higher, there are waves which cannot go higher. But still they are the same – in the ocean they are the same.
If you are aware only of your wavelike life, then you cannot go inside; then this becomes a disease.
And if you are aware that you are a wave, then you must be afraid – you are bound to be afraid of death, of dying, because every wave has to die. You can see that every wave is dying – coming up and down – so you are afraid. This fear comes because you have not known the oceanic existence which is yours; you have known only the wave existence which means life, which means PRANA.
So, the bondage, the complexity, the division of diseases, is lust for life. What does it mean?
It means if one is to go deeply into existence, one has to be ready to die. This readiness to die is the basic quality of a religious mind. This is what constitutes the very essential core of being religious: this readiness to die.
Krishna says readiness for death, it means no lust for life, so that whatsoever comes, one is always in a welcoming attitude, in a receptivity. Whatsoever happens, one is ready – even death. Lust for life is a disease. This readiness, simple readiness to die, unties the lust for life.
One who is ready to die the first thing he will find is that he is enthusiastic in all his actions. One who is enthusiastic about his action is in a mode of goodness.
Tags: Essential Core
