यज्ञदानतप:कर्म न त्याज्यं कार्यमेव तत्।
यज्ञो दानं तपश्चैव पावनानि मनीषिणाम्।।5।।
yajña-dāna-tapaḥ-karma na tyājyaṁ kāryam eva tat
yajño dānaṁ tapaśh chaiva pāvanāni manīṣhiṇām
The work of Yagna, gift, and austerity should not be relinquished, but it should indeed be performed; (for) Yagna, gift, and austerity are purifying to the wise.
~ Chapter 18, Verse 5
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एतान्यपि तु कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा फलानि च।
कर्तव्यानीति मे पार्थ निश्चितं मतमुत्तमम्।।6।।
etāny api tu karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā phalāni cha
kartavyānīti me pārtha niśhchitaṁ matam uttamam
But even these works, O Partha should be performed, leaving attachment and the fruits, such is My best and certain conviction.
~ Chapter 18, Verse 6
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नियतस्य तु सन्न्यास: कर्मणो नोपपद्यते।
मोहात्तस्य परित्यागस्तामस: परिकीर्तित:।।7।।
niyatasya tu sannyāsaḥ karmaṇo nopapadyate
mohāt tasya parityāgas tāmasaḥ parikīrtitaḥ
But the renunciation of obligatory action is not proper. Abandonment of the same from delusion is declared to be Tamasika.
~ Chapter 18, Verse 7
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दु:खमित्येव यत्कर्म कायक्लेशभयात्यजेत्।
स कृत्वा राजसं त्यागं नैव त्यागफलं लभेत्।।8।।
duḥkham ity eva yat karma kāya-kleśha-bhayāt tyajet
sa kṛitvā rājasaṁ tyāgaṁ naiva tyāga-phalaṁ labhet
He who from fear of bodily trouble relinquishes action, because it is painful, thus performing a Rajasika relinquishment, he obtains not the fruit thereof.
~ Chapter 18, Verse 8
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कार्यमित्येव यत्कर्म नियतं क्रियतेऽर्जुन।
सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा फलं चैव स त्याग: सात्त्विको मत:।।9।।
kāryam ity eva yat karma niyataṁ kriyate ‘rjuna
saṅgaṁ tyaktvā phalaṁ chaiva sa tyāgaḥ sāttviko mataḥ
When obligatory work is performed, O Arjuna, only because it ought to be done, leaving attachment and fruit, such relinquishment is regarded as Sattvika.
~ Chapter 18, Verse 9
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Questioner (Q): Sir, it’s being said, “Renunciation of obligatory action is not proper.”
What is meant by ‘obligatory action’? Is Shri Krishna talking about my social responsibilities or something else?
Acharya Prashant (AP): No. First of all, the English word ’obligatory’ is not quite proper. Shri Krishna says, “Niyat Karma. Niyatam Karma Kuru.” A more befitting word would be ’destined action’, not ’obligatory action’. It is not ‘Nirdharit Karma’ (pre-ordained or pre-determined action), it is ‘Niyat Karma’. It’s not quite an obligation. It is the only real option. It is your destiny.
You are being advised to do that which your destiny has anyway pre-ordained. What is it that has been pre-ordained for you by your destiny? Social responsibilities? Familial responsibilities? Following the code of your sect, cult or religion? Following the dictates of your desires and fancies? Is that your destiny? Nobody in his right senses would agree to this.
Destiny is the end. Destiny is the final point for the sake of which we all exist and keep moving. What is it that we finally want? Where is it that we ultimately want to reach? That is destiny, obviously. Destination, the end, the summit, the culmination, the total fulfillment, absolute completion—all these points towards destiny.
So, what is it that we are moving towards? Look at any human being, any conscious being. What is it that they ultimately want?
We keep wanting, right? What is the ultimate want? Here is a hint. If the want is really final and ultimate, then it would leave you with no residual or next want. So, we want to reach the end of wanting. We want completion, fulfillment in such a final way that we are left with nothing to want anymore. That’s the destination. That’s what all spiritual process is aimed at. A peace, contentment so absolute that you are left with no trace of incompleteness, bitterness, hope, future, desire. That’s destiny. That’s a destiny because if we don’t reach it, we will keep moving. How can you stop if you are still discontented? How can you stop if you are still unfulfilled? You will have to continue your movement just as it has continued since time eternal.
So, if that is destiny, what is ‘destined action’, ‘Niyat Karma’? Destiny is the end of all Karma. Then, what is ‘Niyat Karma’? What is ‘destined action’? Go into it. You have to act in a way that brings you to your destiny, and destiny is the end of both the actor and action. But destined action is the action that brings you to your destiny, and it can bring you to your destiny only when such action is guided by destiny alone.
You see, whosoever guides or dictates your action would make you act in a way that suits the guide, in a way that fulfills the aspirations and matches the character of the guide, right? If you are to reach your destiny, then can miscellaneous forces of Prakriti (material nature) be the right guide for your movement? If miscellaneous forces are guiding you, they will direct you towards miscellaneous destinations. Isn’t that obvious?
If you are to reach your destiny, then only your destiny can guide you. And if your destiny is Truth, then only Truth can guide you towards Truth; only Truth can illuminate your path towards the Truth. Therefore, your destined action is to get rid of your falsenesses. Act in a way, inspired by the Truth, that you hack down the shackles of your falseness. If your destiny is Freedom, then you have to act in a way that negates your bondages. That’s what Niyat Karma is.
Niyat Karma has been widely and grossly misinterpreted and misrepresented. People have said Niyat Karma is ‘obligatory action’, which means you have to do things that the society expects of you or stuff that your culture expects of you, or you have to engage in particular types of behavior or conduct. And that they have named as the ‘obligatory action’.
It is not, obviously. Your obligation is towards no one except Krishna. Is that not the essence of the Gita? Even if you are to engage in obligatory action, who is it that you are obliged to? Are you obliged to the priest, and the pastor, and to all the runners of the society? Is it to them that you are obliged? What is it that you really owe to them? Nothing. Then how can you be obliged to them? All that you owe to yourself is your Freedom. And you heavily owe that to yourself, don’t you? You are indebted to yourself. That’s your obligation if we are to talk the language of obligation at all. That is your only obligation.
Your only obligation, in other words, is to reach your destination. That’s your only responsibility. You are not indebted to anybody else in any serious way. Yes, there are superficial obligations and debts that you must keep settling. That’s fine. But all that cannot be taken too seriously. Even if those debts are settled fully, still you would be as deeply mired in misery as you currently are.
Let’s say, you owe a couple of lakhs (hundred-thousands) to someone. Let’s say, there are certain functions to be performed in the family, and you feel responsible for them. Let’s say, you have to provide for somebody’s education. Let’s say, you feel that it is very important for you to get somebody married off. And let’s say that you are able to take care of all these obligations. Now, where does that put you? In a very sweet and sacred spot? Are you joyful and contended now?
The one you wanted to marry off has been married off. The loans that you needed to settle have been settled. The house that you wanted to build has been built. All the obligations that you could think and dream of have indeed now been taken care of—where does that leave you? Free? Liberated?
So, fine. It’s a part of the drama of life that you keep settling some dues. There are no free lunches. If you just have enjoyed a full meal somewhere, it is obligatory upon you to settle the bill. It’s alright. Keep doing all those things. But, those things can’t be taken very seriously, because they aren’t seriously going to take you to your destination. To go to your destination, your internal compass has to be aligned in a very different way. It has to be aligned to a very different field.
Even while performing your so-called daily routine, you have to constantly keep thinking, “How are my actions directed towards my Liberation?” See, you cannot stop certain actions. You will get up, you will take bath, you will brush your teeth, you’ll have food, you’ll need some clothes, you’ll talk to people, you’ll need sleep, right? All those things are there. The question is, “Those things are indispensable, but have I aligned those actions with the greater direction of my Liberation?”
Being a human being, you will walk—but which direction are your legs taking you? Being a human being, you will talk—but who is it that you are talking to? Being a human being, you will eat—but how really have you earned your bread? In whose company are you breaking your bread? Those are the questions that you seriously need to answer. Those are the questions that will decide whether you are doing your Niyat Karma.
Niyat Karma, I repeat, is not about sticking to a particular code of pre-decided conduct. Niyat Karma is a very lively and dynamic thing. Every moment you have to be alert and conscious. Every moment you have to keep asking yourself, “This action that I am doing, this decision that I’m taking, is it leading me towards Liberation, or have I given in to my ego? Where is this coming from, and hence, what is it taking me towards?”
In the middle of all your daily miscellaneous actions, keep asking yourself, “What is the sum total of all of this? What’s the net result? Am I getting lost in the maze of the thousand little things that happen to me daily, or have I remained the insight to see what the resultant, the net resultant of my entire day is?” And there are a thousand little things that happen to everybody every day. Don’t they? The important thing is to keep the resultant in mind. “What’s the sum total of all of this?”
Giving undue importance to something micro, something trivial is quite tempting. And equally tempting is to give little importance to that which deserves tremendous attention. The little things we do every day, I repeat, are unavoidable. What is, however, possible, is to align them to the one great thing that we live for. The man living badly sleeps wakes up, walks, eats, talks, works, sleeps. And the man living rightly sleeps wakes up, walks, eats, works, sleeps. They all do the same things ostensibly.
Seen from a distance, apparently, both are just living and acting. But go closer and pay attention, and you will find that there’s a great difference between talking and talking, eating and eating, earning and earning, walking and walking. Gautama Buddha was walking the jungles. So were a thousand robbers. Right? And an uninitiated eye would not spot the difference.
So, one fellow just walked past me. He was Gautama Buddha. Then, there is another fellow who walked past me. He’s a robber. They are the same because both are just walking. But there is a great difference between walking and walking. When Gautama Buddha is walking, his walk is aligned with his destiny; his walk is being controlled now by something beyond the ego. And when the robber is walking, his steps, his walk is being commanded by something very trivial.
That’s the difference. That alignment is extremely important. And ‘alignment’ is a modern and moderate word. In classical spirituality, this alignment of your daily life with your ultimate purpose is called ‘surrender’. You do whatever you do, but you surrender it to an ultimate purpose.
So, you do speak. You do shout. You do standstill. And you do run hard. You do all those things. But all those things are now being done at the command of something far bigger than your limited interests, your limited ego. That is called Niyat Karma. Never be confused again.
Niyat Karma is not what the elders have decided for you. Niyat Karma is not what the traditions have decided for you.
Niyat Karma is that which takes you to your dissolution, which is your destiny, which is your desire ultimate. Born a human being, you will have to act. Act rightly. Act for the right purpose. Live for the right end. That alone is the right life.
समोऽहं सर्वभूतेषु न मे द्वेष्योऽस्ति न प्रिय:।
ये भजन्ति तु मां भक्त्या मयि ते तेषु चाप्यहम्।।29।।
samo ’haṁ sarva-bhūteṣhu na me dveṣhyo ’sti na priyaḥ
ye bhajanti tu māṁ bhaktyā mayi te teṣhu chāpyaham
The same am I to all beings: to Me, There is none hateful or dear. But…
Sunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian Column
Questioner: A lot of students that I talk to — it’s the fear of the society, it’s the fear of the unknown, it’s fear of the expectations that they are carrying, that pushes them to become an engineer and then they figure out that probably this is not something that they wanted to be. And that is the reality of a lot of individuals and not just engineers. Probably, here is something that is stopping me from taking a plunge of starting something of myself, right? Fear is something that is stopping somebody who is in a relationship for ten years to take that step to get married. Where does this fear come from? Acharya Prashant: Lack of love, which comes from lack of self-knowledge. You see, when I tie my sense of existence, my very identity, to something that is unreliable, I will have to be afraid. It’s like putting my heart on this table. Now, how can I live in security? The heart is out there on the table, anybody can take it away, anything can happen to it. Or the heart might grow legs and walk away on its own. My very existence has been subjected to something that is not in my control. Something that is definitely going to deceive me at some point, that is fear. My sense of self-worth comes from my monies, my bank account, I will be afraid. That bank account can be closed anytime, anything can happen. My sense of self-worth comes from my physical appearance. I very well know, time will take it away, I will be afraid. Right? Who am I? I am the one who is praised or worshipped by the society. Oh! I will be so afraid, so afraid! You talked of people working for their images, they would be living a cursed life. Because, their heart is out there in the hands of strangers. Their entire identity is tied to their image and the image is in the eyes of other people. So, the image can be distorted or can disappear any moment. Just imagine, how afraid they would be all the time. That’s with the ego. Because, the ego, as I said, is a fundamental sense of incompleteness. Therefore, to complete itself, it just associates itself to anything possible. And the things that you are associating yourself with, they are not reliable. They belong to the world and the world can take them away. They belong to time. They came with time and with time all those things will disappear. And you have tied your identity to those things. Now how can you rest in peace? That’s fear. If you do not have self-knowledge, you will always be afraid. My identity is linked to my husband’s identity. Now the husband has two legs. And the husband has a brain, a mind of his own. If your identity comes from your husband’s name, as happens in India at least, you would always be afraid as a wife. The husband can change his mind any day. You would always be, you know, having one eye on his secretary, and the other eye in his email and mobile phone. What’s he getting into? Who’s texting him? Why is he on the phone so late in the night? Because you are afraid if husband goes away, what happens to you? Your very existence depends on the husband. That’s fear. When you operate from the ego centre and make something very, very important for yourself and that something belongs to the world, it can go away anytime, and you are afraid. And in that fear, there can never be love, never be love. If you are afraid of losing something, you will be very violent towards it. Nobody lets his money go and have a walk down the road. What do you do? You lock up your money. That’s violence. When something starts becoming very meaningful to you, you lock it up. You don’t want it to have freedom. And that’s violence. So, love and fear just cannot go together. If you are dependent on something or somebody, you will be afraid. And that dependence cannot be called love. And that is a confusion, we often get into it. Just because you depend on somebody and somebody depends on you, you start feeling as if it is love, it is not. Questioner: Just like the way political parties think that people love them but it actually is fear. Acharya Prashant: Exactly! Love is a rare quality and rarer in politics. Questioner: So, if I am interested in a particular profession, do I not pursue it wholeheartedly? Do I pursue it wholeheartedly knowing very well that the results can either be zero or one? Acharya Prashant: One has to go into the very nature of interest. Aren’t we interested in cricket? Aren’t we interested in seeing songs in movies? Practically, everybody in India is interested in cricket, nobody in Brazil is. And nobody in India is interested in ice hockey. So, that’s how flimsy the whole thing about interest is. In India, if you don’t get a movie with songs, you say, “I am disinterested.” The movie would bomb. In Hollywood, if you have a movie with songs, that would raise eyebrows, what’s going on? Occasionally, you have an OD song but typically there is no song. So, that is the nature of interest. It is never something of the heart. Love and interest are not the same thing. Interest is something that is given to you by your body, by your environment, by random chance, your circumstances and all these. So that’s how your interests come to you. So, if you are interested in a vocation, first of all, you have to ask yourself, “Just two years back, I was interested in something else and two years before I was interested in that and when I was four years old, I was interested in becoming a fighter pilot. What happened to all those interests?” Today, I smile at those things and just shrug them off, “I don’t want to be a fighter pilot.” What you want to be today? Oh! I want to be an investment banker. What happened to the fighter pilot? You were so interested in that. And how do you know, tomorrow you will not be looking at this I-banker, just the way today you are looking at the fighter pilot. The self of a five-year old appears so naïve and immature when you are twenty-five. How do you know that at thirty-five, you will not look back at this twenty-five year old self and say, “What the hell! How was I taking this fellow so seriously?” So, interest is something that you must look at with healthy contempt. Interest, mind you, can even be induced in you. Interest can be aroused in you. That’s what the entire advertising industry is about. They can make you feel Interested in things that is intrinsically worthless to you. So, of what value is this thing called interest? But, then in today’s world, we place so much premium on this word 'interest.' Do what interests you, this, that. Whereas, it is wisdom to realize that interest is the last thing that you should ever go after. Then people come up and say, “No, should we do things that we are not interested in? No.
हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।
Overview
Fighting Duryodhana is Dharma. Fight Duryodhana in the way you can, that is swadharma. Dharma is the same for everybody, but swadharma varies according to your physical, social, temporal conditions. But remember that swadharma can never be in contradiction of Dharma; swadharma will always be something…
सङ्करो नरकायैव कुलघ्नानां कुलस्य च ।। पतन्ति पितरो ह्येषां लुप्तपिण्डोदकक्रिया: ।।1.42।।
saṅkaro narakāyaiva kula-ghnānāṁ kulasya cha patanti pitaro hy eṣhāṁ lupta-piṇḍodaka-kriyāḥ
When the castes mix, that spells hell for the family. It destroys the family, in the way that the ancestors all fall because they are deprived of the Pindokdakriya.…
