Omm Namo Bhagavate

The unwise always act with attachment, but the wise man should always act without attachment to ensure the maintenance of world order.

Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Verse 144

Karma, or action, has a purpose.  What is that purpose?  For an ignorant person the purpose is desire fulfillment.  If there is no chance of gain an ignorant person will not work.

If we ask this ignorant person, what is gain–is it an experiential concept or a concept of understanding, every ignorant man will say it is experiential. He may not know anything else, but he knows very well how it is going to benefit him or not.  Direct experience is a gain.  Gain and lose are relative experiential terms, not intellectual terms.

Action originates from experiential validation.  Without experience nobody will perform action.  The reason many people are not interested in action is because they are ignorant, and they do not find any chance of enriching, expanding, sustaining or perpetuating their experience.

This verse says that the unwise always act with attachment.  This attachment is to self-gain, result, reward and benefit.  Even a child is not willing to listen if you do not pamper and tempt him: “I will give you a chocolate, just run there and bring that thing.”  And child will run.

This means the embodied being may be completely deluded about the reality, but is always wise about one thing: the possibility of experience.  That’s the purpose for which the supreme Self (paramatma) became the individual self (jivatma) and entered into a human form in this material world.  That’s the main root from where this whole karma started.  The Brahman, the unmanifest, took up the form for the purpose of experiencing himself, the prakriti.  The manifest is the jivatma, the unmanifest is the paramatma, and experience is the key.  When experience is finished or transcended, the jivatma becomes paramatma.

If experience is finished, there is nothing more to experience, and the cycle is complete.  That is called liberation.  It is liberation from this cycle of unmanifest to manifest, to unmanifest, back to manifest.  This cycle continues as long as the experience remains incomplete; once the experience is complete there is no more coming and going.

Karma is nothing but desire that is stored up and accumulated, which has to be finished.  The mystery is that in the process of satisfying one desire we create another desire.  That is why this maze is never finished.

Liberation means to finish this desire for experience, which requires first switching off the process of manufacturing desire.  So experience must be finished, then only liberation is possible.  It can be finished three ways.  One is by experiencing it.  Second is by burning it through the fire of knowledge.  If this fire is constantly burning within, the moment the desires arise in consciousness they come into contact with this fire and are burnt.  Third is if it can simply be washed away through grace; that is bhakti.

The easiest and best way is to finish it through experience.  This is the reason the very first advice that Lord Krishna gave to Arjuna is to endure these experiences calmly:

Verse 61: Arjuna, the feeling of heat and cold, pleasure and pain, are caused by the contact of senses with the objects of pleasure.  These feelings are temporary and recurring in nature; therefore, endure them calmly.

Verse 62: O best among men, the wise men who do not get perturbed with this feeling of pain and pleasure are indeed fit to attain immortality.

Enduring calmly is possible only if you are prepared to go through the experience.  If you are avoiding experience, what is there for you to endure?  Therefore, allow prakriti to take you beyond experience through experience.  Don’t run towards pleasure, or away from pain.  If pain is coming, endure it.  That is Gita’s advice.

“O best among men” means the hero, the leader, and here Gita is talking of awakened beings, those who are yogis.  One who is the king among the yogis is the most awakened and most determined.  Such a person will not run away from the possibility of pain, defamation, torture, or hardship.  He will endure it calmly.

The unwise are ignorant about the process of karma: how it is created, how it is burnt, how it is washed away and how it is transcended.  You cannot renounce karma.  You can only suppress it.  That is why renunciation is a myth.  How can you renounce anything?

Verse 146: Actions are performed by the modes of prakriti, but the ignorant person whose mind is deluded attaches doership to every action and thinks, “I am the doer.”

All the actions are done by prakriti.  Due to ignorance the egoistic man feels, “I do it.”  One who says, “I am not going to do it,” is equally ignorant.

The concept of knowledge in Gita is not intellectual understanding, but experiential validation of the understanding.  If it has been experientially validated by you then that is wisdom.  So knowledge of Gita is called wisdom, and one who has this wisdom is called a wise man.  He is different from a learned man.  A learned man is a scholar; a wise man is a seer.  A learned man knows the scriptural meaning, the surface meaning, but a wise man knows the experiential meaning, the deep inner meaning, because it has been validated by his experience of life.

In Verse 144 when the Lord uses the word “unwise” this includes every category of learned men, from one who has just began to study scripture to one who is giving discourses on scripture.  These are different levels of ignorance.  Only when wisdom comes does action begin, and it is purified, profound action that dispels ignorance.  That is what Gita means.

Gita is a yogashastra, a scripture on yoga, and it has to be interpreted from the angle of yoga.  Yoga is not theory, nor a philosophy.  It is practice and a process.  My translation is a practical one that can show the path to one who really wants to enter into it.

Lord Krishna says, “The unwise always work due to attachment.”  For such people, the nature of their action is constantly busy.  If you ask them whether they are saturated with their karma, they will say no, and tell you their long list of responsibilities.  But if you ask a wise man, he will say, “My work is always complete.  I am simply responding to prakriti’s signal, doing nothing, simply responding.”  This will be the realization.

This ignorance I am referring to is not lack of scriptural knowledge, but lack of experiential depth.  The ignorant are constantly busy, always chasing pleasure or gain, fame or power, physical or mental or vital.  As they are constantly working, a wise man should also keep constantly working, but the big difference is that the first group works for self-pleasure and self-gain, while the second group works only for manifestation.  There is no other motive for the wise men.  And they are constantly busy.  The prime minister of a country is constantly busy, and an enlightened seer sitting in the solitude of a cave is also constantly busy.

When I was in the cave, sitting like a statue, I was constantly busy.  Whenever I was coming back to body consciousness, my thought was going towards the whole humanity.  I saw that the tsunami of ignorance had completely submerged the earth consciousness.  I felt that the monkeys who were staying with me in the cave were really liberated, but the human beings who were bringing me fruits or milk were completely deluded.  So a feeling of deep compassion was flowing and the thought that came was, how can the human soul be protected from this wave of ignorance that is surging ahead?

That was my thought every moment while I was in body consciousness.  Now also that is the only thought that is the source of my action drive.  Although there is no need and no compulsion, that is the motivational base of all my action.

That is Gita’s command in Verse 144: the wise man should also constantly act, never remaining in inaction even for a moment.  Why?  Lord Krishna says, for setting an example before others, and for sustaining and maintaining the world order.  If that motivation is not coming and you feel you have nothing to do, I will say, in the light of Gita’s revelation, you have not reached the highest state of realization.

Remaining in a human form, if even for a moment any withdrawal symptoms are coming to you, then you have not reached the highest state.  Krishna never felt frustrated in his life, even for a moment.  That is why he is the most perfect human being that ever came to Earth: no frustration, and never for a moment Krishna was having this thought, “I have nothing to do.”  That is why he is the highest ideal for every yogi.

In this verse, wise man means an enlightened being, the person who has fully understood the process and has validated it by his life’s experience.  Such a person should not withdraw from or run away from action.  He should constantly perform it for the sake of setting an example, and for maintaining world order.  That is Gita’s message for the masses, and Gita’s command for the enlightened seers.  This drive that one must work constantly should be retained until the last breath remains in the body.  Till that moment man should continuously work, because this is the field of karma, and this karma must be performed for manifestation of dharma.  If karma is not performed for manifestation of dharma then this field of action will become kurukshetra, the battlefield, and instead of becoming a valley of light and an ocean of love, life will become a battlefield of injury and death and disaster.

Every karma is a signal for expansion or a rope to trap you.  If karma is not coming to you don’t run after it.  This is natural law, prakriti’s secret.  Anything that is needed for survival is already given.  Understanding this secret, if you proceed on the track of life, keeping your awareness always in an expanded state, as this experience comes it will not overpower you.  That is the message I get from this verse of Gita.

If you are performing action for the sake of setting an example and sustenance of world order, then you are a wise man.  If you are performing action for any other purpose then you are not wise.  Maybe you are learned man, a noble man, a charitable person, a literate person, an intellectual, a philosopher, a swamiji, a guru, or god on earth, but Gita puts all of these in the category of unwise people.  This is the inner meaning of this verse.

It can be interpreted both as advice and as a command.  It is advice for those who are studying Gita as a scripture on dharma, but it is a command from the Lord for those who are studying Gita as a scripture on yoga.  This verse was a command for me: perform action continuously even though you have no compulsion.  This is the reason I am working twenty-four hours per day, and no one is able to know why am I doing what I am doing.

When you enjoy the solitude of your own silence a light will emanate from you—that is the light of your own self.  When this light is reflected on you that is called the state of bliss, ananda.  This is why enlightened beings are always in a state of ananda, and retaining that state when they enter into society to perform action they experience something higher than ananda: dynamic delight.

Action is performed by a wise man in a state of delight.  Whether fame or defamation comes, his state of delight is maintained, despite profit or loss, gain or pain.   Nothing affects his state of delight.  That is the secret of this creation.  This is why Krishna was always in a state of delight.  Krishna is not a man.  He was god in a human form, the first god to walk over this earth in a human body.  He has revealed this secret path to man so that every man can become god and walk on this earth.  That’s the purpose of Gita’s revelation.  And that is the purpose why I am again re-revealing it as per the need of the hour.

[From a March 2011 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India]