The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 8.2 Swami Krishnananda.

 

----------------------------------------------

Monday, November 16 2020. 01:44. PM.

Chapter 8: The Yoga of Action-2.

----------------------------------------------

Every cell of the body is active, and our mind is never inactive. To think is to act, and to be really inactive would be to cease to think. Even in the so-called mental inactivity of deep sleep, the mind is subtly active in a different manner. The psychology of sleep reveals that the mind is not really inactive even in sleep. There is no occasion conceivable when we can be totally inactive. Right from the minutest atom up to the highest conceivable galaxy, one cannot see anything sitting idle or being inactive. This is one of the aspects of the reply of Krishna to Arjuna’s decision not to act. There is no such thing as ‘no action’; your action is inseparable from your being. Every finite entity is active on account of the very finitude of itself. Action is the necessary consequence of the finitude of entities.

-----------------------------

One would wonder why should everything be active. Why is it that the whole universe is evolving and moving towards something? What is the matter? The matter is simple. The finite struggles to overcome its limitations, because the essential nature of the finite is not finitude. We are not finite entities, really speaking, and the consciousness of finitude is attempted to be overcome by the so-called activity involved in what we know as evolution. No action can be isolated from finitude. The vibration set up by every finite individual or entity is the action thereof.

---------------------------

We are made up of various layers of personality, and every layer is vibrating with a tendency to overcome the limitations of finitude, with an urge to move onward, forward, for the realisation of a wider finitude, a more comprehensive one, with the final intention of a total abolition of all finitude by an establishment in the Infinite. Until we are established in infinitude, we shall be active and, therefore, there is nothing in all the universe that can be regarded as really inactive. Inaction is a misnomer, and the absence of initiative in action in a physical form cannot be regarded as inaction. To be thinking actively and to be inactive physically is condemned vehemently in the very beginning of the Third Chapter. It is not only a hypocritical attitude on the part of the individual, but a false approach to realities in general. That would be the opinion of the Teacher of the Bhagavadgita in regard to people who are physically inactive but mentally active. Mental action is real action. Our bondage or our freedom is in the way in which our mind works, and not in the manner of the movement of the physical body, merely. So, the substance of this essential point about action is that everyone is active, and everyone has to be active, on account of the very structure of the universe.

-------------------------------

But, then, if we are compelled by the law of the universe and have to be acting in some manner or other, we appear to be helpless tools in the machinery of the cosmos. Are we such? Or have we some freedom? What is Yoga? If bondage in the form of this compulsive activity cannot be escaped under any circumstance, what for is any endeavour? To this, the answer is the principle of Karma Yoga. While karma, or action, binds and can bind, Karma Yoga, which is transmuted action, cannot bind and will not bind. The binding type of action is a whirling of the individual centre within its own cocoon towards the apparently conceived fulfilment of a personal objective or ulterior motive. But there is another kind of action which shall not bind, and that is designated in the Bhagavadgita as ‘yajna karma’, action performed as a sacrifice.

---------------------------

To be continued ...

============================================================