Arjuna is trying to judge with his intellect, which believes in classification. The intellect must divide and categorize. This does not mean that we should not value the intellect, but we should realize its limitations; it can see only the parts, not the whole. This tendency of the intellect often leads to problems on the spiritual path. Many people used to ask Sri Ramakrishna, “Is God personal or impersonal?” and he would say, very wisely, that He is both personal and impersonal. Shankara probably would say, on one occasion, “God is both”; on another occasion, “He is neither.”
Arjuna is thinking, “I wouldn’t have believed it, Krishna, if someone had told me you were not very consistent, but I see a contradiction, and in the Lord of Love this is not permissible.” He says, Buddhim mohayasi ‘va me: “My head reels. Before I listened to those last eighteen verses, I had some idea of who I was. Now I don’t know who you are or who I am.” Nishcitya: “Think carefully. Don’t try to talk in a higher state of consciousness.” Then, Ekam vada: “Show me only one line of action. Be rigid.” Arjuna wants one single line of action, no eight steps on the path, no total way of life. Otherwise, as you and I do, he complains that he will become more and more bewildered.
This confusion, which many of us face as we start the spiritual life, will be gradually overcome as through the practice of meditation we begin to develop a higher mode of knowing, called prajna in Sanskrit, which leaps beyond the duality of subject and object. In meditation, as we grow from day to day, many of the problems we now face will be transcended. As long as we are meditating sincerely, there may be no need even to try to understand the cause of our difficulties, to analyze them, dwell on them, or discuss them. There is no need because we are going to leave the slum where they live. After a few years of meditation, many of the physical and emotional problems in which we are caught will be left behind, although at present they are so oppressive they will not let us sleep at night. As we gradually detach ourselves from the ego, those terrific conflicts of the past will seem like Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
SRI KRISHNA
3. At the beginning of time I declared two paths for the pure heart, the intuitive path of spiritual wisdom and the active path of selfless service.
Long ago, when life was simple, when the environment was pure, when there was little competition, the Lord revealed to man two paths to Self-realization. For people whose self-will and separateness were very small, who could discriminate between the real and the unreal, who had an awareness of the unity of all life, he revealed the path of spiritual wisdom, or jnana. In those times, when people identified themselves very little with the body and ego, jnana yoga, or the way of spiritual wisdom, was feasible. Jnana is not an intellectual but an intuitive mode of knowing, which transcends the duality of subject and object. Arjuna, however, is a very active person, and for his type Sri Krishna recommends karma yoga, the path of selfless action. In our own age, when competition is rife, when we are so conditioned by the mass media, jnana yoga is extremely difficult except for a rare spiritual genius like Sri Ramana Maharshi. Karma yoga, too, is difficult, but when we live in the midst of so much suffering, all of us must learn to act as selflessly as possible for the amelioration of the problems which face mankind.
This verse, like almost all verses in the Gita, can be applied to our daily life in the modern world if interpreted in relation to the spiritual life. Many mystics will say that for people who are extroverted, more meditation is necessary, and for people who are introverted, more work. This is an adjustment which we shall find useful even in our daily sadhana. There are days when we just do not want to work. Meditation is the greatest thing on earth! After two and a half hours, we don’t want to get up: “Let us meditate for two more hours!” On days like this you really feel that meditation is the thing, that it is what you have to do all the time. But that is the day to get outside and start digging. When you feel highly contemplative, get a shovel and start digging. The urge to meditate is a good one, but it must be under your control. When you begin to work hard, attention is slowly turned outward, as it must be for every human being who wants to be healthy, happy, selfless, and spiritual. With vigorous exercise – particularly for the young, under no pressure, with no desire for profit or prestige – tensions are released. The senses turn outward, and you just want to keep on digging. The contemplative mood is gone, and now “shoveling, more shoveling, and still more shoveling” has become your slogan.
Just as some people are contemplative, there are others who are action-oriented all of the time. If they finish all of their work during the day and have a few free hours at night, they complain, “We keep awake at night. We will come to your place and do some typing.” This is not free work when we cannot keep quiet, when we cannot lie down and go to sleep peacefully at night. Such work, Sri Krishna says, should be discouraged. For people who are working all the time, who work compulsively, who cannot drop their work when necessary, more meditation is called for.
When lethargy is coming, that is the time to get after work. When tamas is descending upon us, that is the time to be rajasic, and when rajas is driving us, that is the time not to go back into tamas, but to go forward into sattva. This requires a certain amount of self-knowledge and comparative freedom from the sway of likes and dislikes.
4. He who shirks action does not attain freedom, nor does he gain perfection by abstaining from work.
5. Indeed, there is no one who rests for even an instant; every creature is driven to action by his own nature.
Here Sri Krishna makes a significant statement about the necessity for hard work on the spiritual path. Though we give a good deal of time every day to the practice of meditation and to the repetition of the mantram, we still cannot abstain from work and expect to attain the spiritual state. We have all come into the world to make a contribution, to pay off old debts which have accumulated during millions of years of evolution. No one among ordinary people like you and me can abstain from hard work on the spiritual path. There will come a time for all of us when work will fall away, but if I can make a prediction, this is not likely to take place during the present century; so, during this century, let us make a virtue of necessity and be cheerful about our work. This is the message of the Gita, that without work none of us is likely to go forward on the spiritual path.
An effective safeguard against erratic impulses, against uncontrolled wisps of consciousness floating in our mind, is to concentrate completely on the job we have to do. One of my simple observations has been that many of us have difficulties in dealing with work we do not like because we cannot concentrate. When we have a job to do which we dislike, most of us find our attention wandering. We become like children. Children will be looking at this glass for a moment, then at this bell; after that there is nothing to look at and they start crying. This is what often happens to us. When we get a job that we do not like, we say that we are artists, that this job is drudgery, that we require work challenging our creative talents. This is often just a very euphemistic way of saying that the job is one we don’t like doing. I have seen that if we could only attend a little more to work we dislike, it would become interesting. It is not in the nature of the job to be interesting or not; it is in the nature of the attention we give to it. Anything, when we can give it our full attention, becomes interesting. And anything, when we do not give it full attention, becomes uninteresting.
We should give our full attention to whatever we are doing. This is not easy. When we try to concentrate upon a given job, even for a short time, we will often find our attention flickering. And then the question comes: “Am I concentrating, or am I not concentrating?” If we are observing ourselves like this all the time, we have introduced another distraction to divide our consciousness. The capacity to give full attention grows with effort, and if we keep giving more and more effort in everything we do, we shall benefit even in our meditation. It is not only by meditating that we deepen our meditation; it is by working hard, giving our concentrated attent
ion, and taking into account the needs of the body for recreation and rest. In this way we make raja yoga, the path of meditation, and karma yoga, the path of selfless action, go together. This is Sri Krishna’s advice to all of us: by throwing ourselves into energetic, selfless action, we shall be deepening our meditation as well as serving the Lord.
There is a widespread notion that the spiritual life is a passive one. But Gandhiji exploded this long-held superstition by showing that when we lead the spiritual life and remove all selfishness from ourselves, we are able to contribute to life in the fullest measure. Gandhi transformed almost every phase of life in India during his lifetime, and if I can make a prediction, the twentieth century may come to be known not as the nuclear age, but as the Gandhian age, because it is only by renouncing violence and working for others without any selfish motive that we can continue to survive as the human race.
Naishkarmya, or ‘the state of worklessness,’ is the state attained by great mystics like Sri Ramana Maharshi, who was physically with us in India until 1950. For anyone coming into his presence, he could swiftly resolve their dilemmas. In orthodox Hindu circles he is considered an avatara, a divine incarnation. He was never involved in the world. He never committed any of the mistakes that even some of the greatest mystics have committed. Like Sri Ramakrishna, he was always pure, having attained illumination around the age of seventeen. When European writers would ask him whether it wasn’t possible for him to lead a productive life, he just used to sit and chuckle because his life influenced not only South India, but the entire world. By just one person attaining this stature, finding himself in union with God, human evolution takes a step forward. And you and I, even without our knowledge, have benefited from the presence on earth of these great spiritual figures.
Naishkarmya is a glorious ideal whereby we help humanity by just sitting, and I can understand all of us being drawn by this ideal: we do not have to lift a finger; we just sit and everybody is helped. But now Lord Krishna points out that this state of worklessness, where action falls away and we become a living center of the divine spirit, is not reached by the path of inaction. It is not by abstaining from action, by refraining from work, by dropping out of society, by quitting school, by throwing up our hands in despair, that the state of naishkarmya is achieved.
When I say I have the softest corner in my heart for Arjuna, it is because he is so much like you and me. Now I imagine him asking just the question we would have asked. Arjuna begins, “Supposing, just for the sake of argument, hypothetically . . .”
Sri Krishna says, “Yes, you are talking about yourself. Go on.”
“If I were to put on saffron robes, grow my hair very long, wear a rosary around my neck, and go from village to village singing hymns, eating where there is a meal, sleeping where there is a temple, wouldn’t that also be a path to naishkarmya?”
Now Sri Krishna answers him, Na ca samnyasanad eva siddhim samadhigacchati: “Not through mere renunciation is perfection to be attained.” Even if you retire to the Himalayas, find the most isolated, ice-ridden cave there, get in, put out a sign saying “There is nobody here,” and live there for twelve years – even then you will not attain this state.
The Lord is emphasizing here that you and I have a debt to pay to the world. This concept of karma is personified in Sanskrit as Chitragupta, the “hidden auditor” in every cell of the human system. The moment I think a selfish thought, every cell in my biological system has received a minus, and the moment I think a selfless thought about my parents, partner, children, friends, and even enemies, as to how I can contribute to their welfare, every cell of my being has received a plus sign. Chitragupta doesn’t work an eight-hour day, but all the twenty-four hours, because even in our sleep he has to keep on, mostly giving minuses. His supply of minus signs is a big pile. Only once in a way does he have to give a plus.
When we were on the Blue Mountain, I was invited to address the local club of Indian businessmen which met in a hotel called the Ritz. When my wife and I arrived, we found the members dressed in fine British suits and carrying attaché cases. Telephones were ringing all over the place, and everyone was running about. It was a tense business atmosphere. At the dinner we said we were vegetarians, and the majority of them, being successful business people, must have thought that vegetarian food wasn’t strong enough to bring in high dividends, because they were asking us, “You mean even after wandering all over the West, you still stick to okra and eggplant?” So I told them I not only continued to be a vegetarian, but all my friends in the West had become complete vegetarians. At the end of my talk there was a question and answer period, and the secretary of the club, who was an Indian Christian, got up and said, “I presume that the law of karma is only applicable to people born into the Hindu or Buddhist traditions. May I take it we Christians are all exempted from this law?” I would be happy if he could have been exempted, but Jesus states the law of karma in precise terms, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” If we have caused suffering to other people, we are going to reap suffering. If we have added to the happiness of others, we will receive happiness more and more. And Jesus adds: “With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
It is a terrifying thought for all of us that we have the choice of joy or sorrow, happiness or misery in our hands; and nobody is justified in saying, “My parents made me like this; my partner, children, and society made me like this,” because we all reap what we sow. In whatever troubled circumstances we live, in whatever country, we all have one choice: shall we go after our own profit and pleasure, or shall we forget these and add to the happiness and welfare of those around us?
6. Whoever abstains from action while allowing the mind to dwell on sensual pleasure cannot be called a sincere spiritual aspirant.
Last Sunday we spent an Indian day in Berkeley. We went to a classical music concert given by Ali Akbar Khan, India’s greatest sarod player. Two days before the concert, I found my mind saying, “It certainly will be nice to listen to good Indian classical music.” Even while I was walking on the beach my mind was trying to jump out of control, and I had to get blunt with it and tell it to keep quiet. This is controlling the mind, not letting it jump out of my grasp into the past or the future. Even when good things are likely to come, I do not anticipate them, and every time my mind jumps out to try and meet them, I bring it back by repeating the mantram in order to keep it in the present. Then, when the event takes place, my mind will be all there, completely concentrated.
Even though we refrain from eating a large pizza, even though we keep our eyes from spinning like ocular tops when we go to the beach, if we are not struggling to keep the mind from dwelling on these sense objects, then we are what Sri Krishna calls mithyacara, ‘hypocrites.’ Particularly in the early days, the aspirant is expected to struggle as much as possible against the blandishment of the senses. It is not possible to be completely successful, but as long as we try our best to concentrate during meditation and to restrain the senses during the day, we are doing well. Of course, if we are yawning in meditation, we are not trying very hard; it is only by making a maximum effort that we develop the capacity to make greater effort.
Later on, when our meditation has been very good and we have really been concentrating, the Lord not infrequently tries to test us by placing us in a difficult situation. We get up from meditation confident that the mind has been stilled; we open the door and walk right into a booby trap. Such difficult situations enable us to verify the strength and validity of our meditation. As we can see from the life of every great mystic, it is when our capacities to govern our thoughts, to control our mind, and to unify our consciousness develop to an enormous degree that the tests, the problems we face, become more exacting. After all, a freshman is not asked to take the qualifying examination for the doctoral degree. When I was head of the department of English at my university in India, we had two examiners: the external examiner tried to see how much the student did not know, and the inte
rnal examiner, usually played by me, found out how much he did know. In meditation there will be all kinds of examinations by the external examiner, who is Kama, but the internal examiner, the Lord of Love, is always there within us to help us show who we really are.
7. But they excel who control their senses through their mind and use them for selfless service.
This is a perfect description of Mahatma Gandhi. When Gandhi was in London, he made the discovery that taste lies in the mind. Whenever he discovered that something was good for the body, he would smack his lips over it and enjoy it as none of us can enjoy even the most delectable ice cream. In India we have a tree, called the neem tree, with the bitterest-tasting leaves imaginable. These leaves are said to have antiseptic value, and Gandhi, in a stroke of culinary genius, decided to make them into chutney. For him any discovery was translated immediately into action. He stripped the neem tree of a bagful of leaves and got his wife, Kasturbai, to grind them into a chutney; and it is said there was an unexpected exodus from the ashram when Gandhi started serving this bitter dish. It was in the bitterness of life we call grief that he used to find joy; he was at his best when taking on suffering to save other people. The same insight is given us in this verse. When we are involved in an unfortunate episode with our parents, partner, children, or friends, it is very bitter to pocket the resentment and try to behave affectionately. But doing this will benefit us like Gandhi’s neem chutney. At first it will be quite bitter, but if we swallow it, it will act as a disinfectant to remove the virus of selfishness, anger, and fear from our hearts. By acting selflessly, no matter how painful it is, there will come a time when we can enjoy not only what is pleasant but what is unpleasant as well.
8. You are obliged to act, Arjuna, even to maintain your body. Fulfill all your duties; action is better than inaction.
Work is a necessity. Just imagine what would happen to people if they did not have the stimulus and release of daily work! That is why my Granny used to say, “When God gave you a mouth, he gave you two hands with which to feed the mouth.” Instead of using our hands to manipulate others, or to attack our enemies, we should use them to sustain ourselves and others.
The End of Sorrow Page 15
