One of the pinnacles of eastern wisdom scriptures is "The Bhagavad Gita". Placed in the central chapters of the epic Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita gives the unitive view of almost the entire spectrum of eastern wisdom.
One of the key ideas in its second chapter is "Karma Yoga"- which can be loosely translated as "The right way to act". It gives a fabulous secret for anyone who wish to avoid stress, failures, and burnout in the course of our work. you can be still as a mountain amidst the trials and tribulations of life.
Here is the verse ,translated from Sanskrit, from the website https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org
Krishna Instructs Arjuna: "You have a right to perform your actions, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction." - Bhagavad Gita , Chapter 2, Verse 47.
The meaning isn't obvious, reading the translation right? I act, I get success or failure , I enjoy my fruits of action or the painful failure , is it not? I am completely responsible for making it happen don't I?
well you are not alone. This verse has been mistranslated a lot. Most of the commentaries seem to be ripe with the misconceptions that stem from the modern cultural belief system. essentially to understand what Krishna is saying, we need to step away from our limited view and have a fresh look at the verse.
Lets try that in this post. After I explain the true import, please do let me know in comments, whether it makes sense or not. It will be super helpful for me to either follow this approach in my future posts or correct my mistakes.
Now to the verse. In the first line, Krishna says, "You have a right to perform your actions". This is pretty clear, right? each one of us have the right to do our job, be it sports, education, profession etc. we should strive to perform the work with excellence. Agreed? without this you cannot get the rewards. To achieve anything, the prerequisite is for you to do and do it well.
In the second line though, Krishna says, "but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities". Well this is new. We have been taught to stand up for our rights correct? modern society teach us to expect the fruits of our labor and stand up and fight if that is denied. But here Krishna says you are not entitled to results. Does Gita promote the oppressive attitude where the fruits of labor is not shared with the actual worker? well.. not really. But this is a frequent misconception.
What Krishna mentions here is not neither about expectation or results or about enjoyment of the fruits of my action. All he highlights is the truth that Just the fact that the action is performed well, is not enough to guarantee the expected outcome.
For an action to yield the expected outcome there are two factors involved:
The first aspect is the effective performance of the action. Without this there is no way the outcome will be successful. But the second aspect, which is external, not under one's control is also making or breaking the outcome. This is what Krishna says as "but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities". Even if we perform actions perfection, if the external factors are not conducive, the outcome might not be successful.
So, we can hold our expectations while acting, but be sure to remember, that there is a chance of failure because of the external factors.
An Example
To cement our understanding, lets see an example.
Lets say you are participate in Olympic Archery. You need to train well to be able to hit the bullseye. Lets say you trained super hard and can hit the target eyes closed. Can anyone guarantee a win? Absolutely not.
Because, you can only make sure that you aim properly and release the arrow effectively. Beyond that, hitting the bullseye depends on a lot of external factors like wind speed, direction, humidity etc. So, you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities.
Krishna also is mindful to add "nor be attached to inaction". That is another important aspect. Just because action cannot guarantee success, do not avoid action altogether. if you abstain from acting, then failure is guaranteed.
If we take this attitude in life, then we can avoid stress and burnouts.
That's it for now folks, Keep Rocking.
Comments