The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita - 7.5 Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, October 25,  2020. 09:43. AM. 

Chapter 7: The Nature of Right Understanding-5.

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Yoga is the balance of attitude which consciousness maintains on account of the presence of the samkhya buddhi, or knowledge behind the performance of duty—“samatvam yoga uchyate.” And this equanimity, or poised attitude of consciousness in the performance of a duty or action, accelerates the process of the action, and one becomes dexterous due to the element of impersonality that is present there. The more are you unselfish, the more are you capable of executing a deed in the proper manner. Dexterousness or adroitness in action is Yoga: ‘yogah karmasu kausalam’. An expertness in action is Yoga, an expertness that follows from the equanimity that is behind the performance of an action. Thus, Yoga has been defined in a novel manner in the Second Chapter of the Bhagavadgita, not necessarily in the way in which we people take it, usually. Yoga is impersonality of approach, and not merely the isolated hermit life of an individual performing breathing exercises or sitting in postures of the body, etc. Such is not the Yoga which the Bhagavadgita emphasises, though the importance of this aspect of Yoga also will be touched upon in one of the chapters that is going to be explained later. The Yoga of the Bhagavadgita is very comprehensive. It regards life itself as Yoga. The way in which we have to live in this world is Yoga. And this way or manner of living may involve various requisites or preparations. They may all be necessary conditions in the fulfilment of the vast achievement called duty in life.

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We have also noted that rights follow duties automatically. To ask for rights would be redundant in the context of things, because the privileges of the individual are necessary results that follow from the correct performance of duties, and we are anxious about our rights on account of the incorrectness of the performance of duty—a selfishness that creeps into its so-called performance, wherein placed the individual ceases to be performing duty really. The value of the performance in the form of duty lies in the extent of the unselfishness that is behind it, the impersonality of the ground on which it is rooted. The larger the self that performs the action, the greater is the unselfishness behind the action. What we call the selfishness of an individual is the attitude of the limitation of the self involved in the visualisation of things. There are grades of selfishness and grades of unselfishness, too. In comparison with the higher stage, the lower one may appear as selfish.

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Hence, in the advance of consciousness through the process of its evolution we will find that there is an ascending degree of the concept of unselfishness. And the particular degree of unselfishness which determines an action will also determine the nature of the result that follows from that action, so that when an utter unselfishness or a total abolition of personality is behind the performance of an action, that action is no action at all. There we see inaction in action, when the action is motivated by an annihilation of the consciousness of individuality. That is called Cosmic Action, if at all we can call it an action. Thus, action and being commingle at a particular stage, so that existence itself becomes action. But this is a very remote possibility, the final end of things, the absoluteness which the self reaches when it is supposed to have attained liberation, by which we mean the freedom of consciousness from finitude of every kind, in which condition placed, the self of an individual becomes the Self of all beings. “Yena sarvam idam tatam”: that Self of ours pervades the selves of all beings. And, therefore, the performer of action, if it is to be regarded as the self, should be considered as the Self of all beings, so that everyone is doing that action, and not ‘you’ or ‘I’ as apparently privileged individuals, encased in a body-mind-complex.

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To be continued ...

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