A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 14- Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday 23, Feb 2024 05:50.

Chapter 5: The Karma Yoga Principle of the Bhagavadgita-3.

Post-14.

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There is no such thing as private action in this world. All activity, whether done secretly or otherwise, covertly or overtly, visibly or invisibly, is public. Everything that you think, feel and do is recorded in the documents of the skies. The very space-time canvas will spontaneously record whatever you are feeling, thinking and doing. Do not say that you are doing something privately in a corner of the room and nobody knows. There is no such thing as something which nobody knows. Every movement, every activity, every procedure, event, location and historical process is a cosmical movement. Therefore, in the context of the conflict that has arisen between you and the atmosphere outside called the Mahabharata battle – which is also your battle between you and the world outside and the society of people – what is your opinion, finally?

You have a dharma, a duty. 

Svadharmam api ca 'veksya na vikampitum arhasi (Gita 2.31). 

Do not shrink from doing, because doing as an act of obligation in this context of the world is something so incumbent that no one can desist from it.

As I mentioned by way of an analogy, every part of the body is correlated to other parts of the body, every action of every limb is the action of every other limb, everyone's action is also everyone else's action, and whatever anybody does is also something everybody else does. No independent, individual action is permissible, as is the case with the physical organism. Nobody does anything in this world, even as no limb in the body acts independently. The whole organism acts, and you feel as if some particular limb is working. When I speak, it looks as if the tongue is speaking, but it is not so. My entire setup in all the five koshas is working even when I speak, even when I see.

So what is the role that one plays in this world of such a location and such an involvement in the cosmological scheme? Knowing that at least, you should not desist from doing, and do not be a coward, do not be despondent, do not be melancholy, do not say “I will not”. The question of “I will” and “I will not” does not arise in this world. No one has the right to say “I will”, and no one has the right to say “I will not”. You cannot say “I shall do”, nor can you say “I shall not do”. There is something imposed upon you by the very fact of your connection with things. And what is the connection? That is what you have studied last time – the whole Sankhya doctrine.

Every person is placed in some particular context in this world. The relativity of the finite existence of an individual is conditioned by the relativity of other similar finite things. A wave in the ocean may look like a single upsurge of water, but there is a tremendous movement at the root of this body of water which so adjustably causes the simultaneous rise of several other waves also that you may say that even the movement, size and force of a single wave is not merely something taking place locally in that particular place; it is connected to the activity of the other waves also because all the waves are surged forth, brought up to the surface by an intention of the body of water at the root.

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Continued

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