Desire, Action, Results and Inaction

After a long long time, I decided to put this out here. There is a reason other than logging it here that I wrote this piece. Just wanted to have a log here too.

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We live in a society that values success, extra-ordinary results and great accomplishments. I am not against any of those. But are we happy. Because all that we try to attain by being successful or over-achieve is to be happy. And I believe our Bhagavad Gita teaches us to be happy with just one sloka. I can even be audacious enough to say that it summarizes Gita in that one sloka. The one core value that Gita teaches us and is the need of the hour today is this 47^th Verse in Chapter 2:

कर्मणये वाधिकारस्ते मां फलेषु कदाचन ।

मां कर्मफलहेतुर्भू: मांते संङगोस्त्वकर्मणि ॥

Karman-ye vadhikaras-te ma phalesu kadachana
ma karma-phala-hetur bhur ma-te sango ’stv akarmani

You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.
Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities,
and never be attached to not doing your duty.

The whole of Gita according to me can be capsuled around this single verse. If we could teach our kids to give their best performance without thinking what your score is going to be, wouldn’t that make the children be happy and perform with ease. We as a society are very result oriented. And if we can understand the thought process of karma the way Krishna explains in Gita, the fruits of the karma that was performed yesterday is what we enjoy today and the fruits of the karma of today is what we will enjoy tomorrow. The past holds the key for the present and the present has the key to the future. At any given point of time, we can only be in the present. That is the only space given to us. If you are going to stay focused in the past and dwell on it, or if you are going to be more interested in the future and in the fruits of your present actions that you are performing, you will never give your best. The more you are attached to the past and future, you cease to live in the present.

Not only does Krishna tells us that we do not have a right to the fruits of our actions, He also says just because you do not have rights over the fruits of your action doesn’t mean that you can take the course of inaction either. This particular verse teaches us detachment. Do not get attached to your results, to all the material things that life can both give you and take away without even a moment’s notice.

If we can look at just this verse and the thought behind it deeply, we can understand the ways in which depression and anxiety works. In today’s world, many have at one time or other been depressed and there are so many different medications in the market for depression and anxiety. Depression majority of the times is initiated from some past activity, which the mind keeps recalling and anxiety is stemmed out of fear of the unknown, in many cases the future. If only we learn to stay in the present life becomes very easy. Not always is it easy to stay in present and not wander. If Arjuna, the greatest warrior of all times, the one who had won the same opponents just sometime back single-handedly can put his bow and arrows down and stall and linger in self-sympathy and prefers inaction instead of action and wants to not attach himself to duty anyone can.

But how do we get over this and go in the path of action and perform our duty? That is what the Gita speaks in detail. The crux is to stay in the present. Do your action, without any expectation. If we look at the teachings of the Buddha, we know that desire is the root cause of misery. And desire stems out of expectation. And expectation is nothing but wanting the fruits of your action. We all know expectations not always gives us the desired results. There are many times when expectations end up in disappointments. And such disappointments at times can lead us to misery. If we could just live in the present and do whatever our duty is at that moment and not dwell in inaction, that would lead us to supreme pleasure in life.

When we renounce the fruits of our action, or when we renounce the expectations, we are not attached to our actions anymore. We are not bound by those actions anymore. Take the example of Arjuna again, he was so worried about killing his extended family, thinking that he was doing it for his personal benefits. Arjuna was so unclear about the actions that he was bound to perform. The anxiety of over-thinking about the action that Arjuna had not committed yet, the future that he visualized, or rather wanting to take responsibility for the actions that he was going to commit kind of paralyzed him. In today’s world, we see so many suffer due to this anxiety. And Gita already has given us the answer, as to how to handle it. Stay detached from the action that you commit.

When Krishna talks about the importance of action and how action with no expectation is superior to action with expectations he also speaks about how to perform actions in a detached manner. Verse 10 of Chapter 5 says, “One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus leaf is untouched by water”. That is how you should be attached to your actions. The way in which the lotus leaf in spite of holding water in it, is still untouched by the water. Every droplet of water leaves it when the water is poured out of it. That the way to be detached and still perform your action.  If only we could renounce the fruits of our actions we could all have bliss in our daily life. No more depression and no more anxiety. Give in yourself completely to the present. No excursions into past memories or no more jay walking into the unknown future. Just live in your present moment and enjoy the action that you are currently performing. Do not have any attachment towards the action that is being performed nor have any attachment to any kind of inaction either.

This single thought that I take from the Gita, if I could follow on a daily basis, my day is blessed. And the humble human that I am, I try to still stick on to some result from some action. Why can I not just be?