Chapter V (Verse 10,18, 19)
Karma Sanyasa Yoga – The Yoga of Renunciation of Action
(Verse 10)
ब्रह्मण्याधाय कर्माणि सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा करोति यः ।
लिप्यते न स पापेन पद्मपत्रमिवाम्भसा ॥ ५-१०॥
He who does actions, offering them to BRAHMAN, abandoning attachment, is not tainted by sin, just as a lotus leaf remains unaffected by the water on it.
What has been said in the previous stanza may be true for those rare few who have realised the Truth and are revelling in God-consciousness. But the strange life-of-detachment by which we can renounce completely the sense of agency, is not available for all of us. We are but aspirants and seekers of this Perfection. The way in which we can train ourselves to renounce the sense of agency will be the problem of all true students of the Geeta who want to LIVE the Geeta rather than talk about its ideas. In this stanza we have a prescription by which every one of us can come to live the life of intelligent detachment in life.
RESIGNING TO BRAHMAN — Total detachment is impossible for the human mind and that is exactly what spiritual seekers often fail to understand. As long as there is a mind it has to attach itself to something. Therefore, detachment from the false can be successful only when we attach ourselves to the Real. This psychological fact is scientifically enunciated in this stanza, wherein Lord Krishna advises the seeker to surrender all his attachments to Brahman and continue striving on. To remember constantly an ideal, is to become more and more attuned to the perfections of the ideal. In order that we may surrender all our sense of agency in our actions to Brahman, we have to remember this concept of Truth as often as we now remember our limited ego. When the frequency of our thoughts upon the Lord becomes as high as the frequency with which we now remember the ego idea, we shall come to realise the Brahman-ideal as intimately as we now know our own ego.
In short, to-day we are “EGO-REALISED SOULS”; the Geeta’s call to man is to become “SOUL-REALISED EGOS.”
Once our Real Nature is realised, the actions of the body, mind and intellect can no more leave any impression upon the Self. Merits and demerits belong to the ego and never to the Atman. The imperfections of my reflections in a mirror cannot be my imperfections, but can only be because of the distortions in the reflecting surface. The reflection may look shortened or lengthened according to the type of the mirror into which I am looking. Similarly, the ego comes to suffer the perfect and the imperfect reactions of its own actions.
Having thus realised the Self, to remain in the matter envelopments and their world of objects, is to remain ever perfectly detached “as the lotus leaf in the water.” Though the lotus leaf exists ONLY in water, draws its nourishment from the very water and dies away in the same water, yet, during its life as a leaf, it does not allow itself to be moistened by water. Similarly, a saint in the world, as a matter-entity, draws the nourishment for his individual existence from the world of objects but ever remains perfectly detached from his own merits and demerits, from his own concepts of beauty and ugliness, from his own likes and dislikes in the outside world.
Of the two methods by which ordinary Karma can be transformed into Karma-Yoga, we have here the technique of renouncing one’s sense of agency in one’s actions exhaustively described. This is no strange theory; nor is it a unique doctrine. At every moment, all around the world, we see this enacted in a thousand ways. A doctor’s attachment to his wife makes him incapacitated to perform an operation on her, although the same doctor, on the same day, may perform the same operation upon another patient, towards whom he has no self-deluding attachment.
If man were to act as a representative of the Infinite and the Eternal, he would discover in himself mightier possibilities and greater effectiveness, which are all wasted and squandered to-day by his mis-conception of the finite-ego as himself.
(Verse 18)
विद्याविनयसम्पन्ने ब्राह्मणे गवि हस्तिनि ।
शुनि चैव श्वपाके च पण्डिताः समदर्शिनः ॥ ५-१८॥
Sages look with an equal eye upon a BRAHMANA endowed with learning and humility, on a cow, on an elephant, and even on a dog and an outcaste
The wise cannot but see and recognise the same presence of Divinity everywhere. The ocean has no difference in feeling for different waves. Gold cannot recognise itself as different in different pieces of ornaments. From the standpoint of mud, all mud pots are the same. Similarly, an egoless man, having recognised himself to be God, can find in no way, any distinction in the outer world of names and forms. The distinctions generally recognised, are all the distinctions of the containers. Man to man, there may be differences in form, shape and colour of the body, or the nature of the mind or the subtlety of the intellect.
But as far as Life is concerned, It is the same everywhere, at all times.Therefore, it is said in this stanza, that the Self-realised cast an equal eye on a Brahmana endowed with scholarship coupled with humility, on a cow, on an elephant, on a dog or on a pariah. Everywhere he realizes the presence of the same Truth, whatever be the container.Equal vision is the hall-mark of Realisation. The perfected cannot make distinctions based upon likes and dislikes. In and through all forms and situations, he sees the expressions of the same dynamic Truth which he experiences as his own Self.
Shankara, in his commentary on this stanza, quotes Goutama-Smriti which says that it is not only sinful if we do not respect those whom we must respect, but it is equally sinful if we respect those whom we should not respect. Thus, from the standpoint of this Smriti‘s declaration, to respect the dog as much as the Brahmana or to respect a Brahmana only as much as we generally respect a dog, would both be sin indeed. In order to show that it is not so, the following stanza is given.
THESE ARE NOT SINFUL, FOR:
(Verse 19)
इहैव तैर्जितः सर्गो येषां साम्ये स्थितं मनः ।
निर्दोषं हि समं ब्रह्म तस्माद् ब्रह्मणि ते स्थिताः ॥ ५-१९॥
Even here (in this world) , birth (everything) is overcome by those whose minds rest in equality; BRAHMAN is spotless indeed and equal; therefore they are established in BRAHMAN.
In this stanza, almost a whole Scripture is indicated. In the context of the development of the theme, Lord Krishna had to show, first of all, that the Perfection, described in the previous few stanzas, is not a Godly idealism to be experienced after death, in a specialised world beyond the clouds, called the Heavens. Pauranic Hinduism and all Semitic religions promise a Heaven as the glorious goal of existence and spiritual effort. However, to an intelligent man; this promise is nothing more than a charming hallucination, and not a positive gain. Such a vague goal cannot be sufficiently encouraging to coax out of an intelligent man all his enthusiasm and sincerity.
Contrary to this vague hope, here in Vedanta, the naked truth is declared when Krishna repeats what the Rishis had earlier asserted a thousand times. It is expressly mentioned that the relative existence as a limited egocentre can be ended, and the imperfect individual can realize himself to be the Infinite Godhead. This goal can be reached not only at a post-mortem stage, but in this very same life, here in this very body, among these very same worldly objects, and one can live in the Consciousness of God, evolving oneself from the immaturities of the deluded ego-sense.
Who is capable of gaining this ascendency in himself? What is the secret method by which this consummate self redemption can be effectively fulfilled? The assertion that man can reach this goal in this very life is made in the first line by a detailed description of how it can be executed and practically lived. It is said that the one, “WHOSE MIND RESTS IN EVENNESS,” gains the Divine tranquillity of a God-man.
Patanjali Yoga-Sutra also explains the same fact in different words. Where the thought-flow, which creates unequal and spasmodic mental fluctuations, is arrested, there the mind ends. Where the mind ends, it being the equipment through which Life expresses as a limited ego, this sense of separative existence also ends. When the ego has ended, the egocentric thraldom of samsara also ends. The ego, thus undressed of its samsaric sorrows, rediscovers itself to be nothing other than the Self Itself. Unless one comes to this mental equipoise, one is not capable of experiencing the Samattwam of the Sama-darshin described in the above stanza.
“Such an individual who has conquered his mind and has,come to live in perfect equanimity, in all conditions of life, in all its relationships, “Krishna vehemently asserts, “HE INDEED RESTS IN Brahman.” This may look rather illogical at the first reading, and therefore, as an explanation in a parenthetical clause, Krishna gives his reasons for such a daring assertion; he says, “SINCE Brahman IS EVEN AND EVER-PERFECT.”
Brahman is homogeneous and All-pervading. Everything happens IN IT, and yet, nothing happens TO IT. Thus, the Truth remains changeless and ever the same, just as the river-bed ever remains motionless, although the units of water flowing in it are ever-changing. It is a quality of the substratum to remain changeless; all manifestations and super-impositions, by their very nature, must change. An individual, in his identifications with his body, etc., becomes a changing factor, a victim of every passing disturbance; but the substratum, the Self, ever remains the same.
An individual who has discovered for himself a sufficient amount of tranquillity in which nothing dares disturb him anymore, is certainly one who has plumbed the depths and touched the bottom. A reed on the waves will be tossed up and down by the waves, but a light-house built upon firm rocks always remains upright and changeless, allowing even the stormy waves to exhaust their anger at its feet. Krishna’s argument is thus logically sound when he declares that a mortal among us, who can maintain his equanimity under all conditions as explained in the foregoing stanzas, is indeed one who has contacted the Divine and the Eternal in Himself, “HE INDEED RESTS IN Brahman.”