Nothing goes waste-1 : Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

16/09/2018

A seeker once asked me whether there is something like useless karma If you establish that there is useless karma, the world itself will become useless because karma or activity is an essential part of the world The Bhagavad Gita (3:16), describes the whole world as a cosmic wheel of activity governed by the laws of nature, and whosoever is not able to adhere to it, only leads a meaningless life It adds (1848) that even if there is a measure of evil in the karma you are to perform, don’t abandon it.

All undertakings in the universe are associated with a measure of evil Krishna says that there is no option to act or not act because all activities are designed and maintained by Nature that has three spiritual constituents - satva, rajo and tamo gunas Satva guna represents light, happiness and wisdom, rajo guna represents all forms of activity and the causes for them such as attraction, repulsion, and jealousy Tamo guna represents ignorance, lethargy and sleep These three propel all activity All three gunas are at work in all your actions - only the proportion keeps changing.

In spiritual masters, there will be larger proportion of satva guna, closely followed in smaller proportion of rajo guna And tamas will follow In agriculturists, rajo guna will be foremost, followed by tamo guna and then satva guna Since we cannot escape the pressure of these three gunas, then where is the question of any activity being useless and dropping it? In the Gita (4:17), there is a widely misinterpreted verse in which Krishna classifies action He tells Arjuna about karmanah, akarmanah and vikarmanah - an ordained act, inaction and forbidden action; however, here too Krishna does not explain the term, vikarmanah.

There cannot be anything like that if all activities are designed and perpetuated by NaturePlay of oppositesWe normally work according to two forces - preference and prejudice, attraction and repulsion; love and hate, acceptance and rejection - and these are called dwandwas or play of opposites The world is a collection of opposites; this includes physical things and mental ideas and concepts, intellectual assessments, man and woman, day and night, sin and virtue, today and tomorrow - all these are dwandwas.

Krishna says the entire world being dwandwa-ridden, one should avoid the path of dwandwa and follow nirdwandwa, or transcend both good and bad, virtue and vice According to the Bhagavad Gita (2:56), a man who is able to lead his intelligence on the lines of nirdwandwata, and transcend duality, will find virtue to be redundant and vices to be irrelevant He will be able to neutralise, harmonise and oppose the effects of all karma He will do so just as we learn swimming You can learn to swim in deep waters only.

The drowning power of water is not removed, but by holding your head above and flapping your hands and feet, you remain afloat - neutralising and harmonising the so-called drowning power of water This is how you can flow through the dwandwa-ridden world There is no annihilation of opposites, only a transcending of opposites; one should not be affected by them; we should remain afloat There is great misunderstanding about what the Gita says on the results of karma In the objective world, an action and its result are inseparable, just like a girl who becomes pregnant is bound to deliver a child after the completion of a healthy pregnancy.

The foetus that is fully grown in the womb will want to come out, and the womb too will want to eject it; both will happen simultaneously However, the Gita does not dwell on the objective sense of any action It is concerned with the subjective result which is thus explained: all the actions you perform can have either of the three results - one that is desired, the undesirable or a mix of both All these refer to the subjective mind and are meant to be avoided When you do something well, it produces desired results and there is nothing exceptional about it.

No result is actually adverse either Nothing is undesirable The Gita also uses two words - avikaramanasha and pratiyavaya Avikaramanasha means loss of effort; for example, in agriculture, a sudden drought or attack of pests destroys the standing crop and all the effort which has gone into tilling and sowing goes waste Pratiyavaya means adversity of results For instance, a doctor delivers an injection to a patient who turns out to be allergic to it The treatment thus does him more harm than good These results can be seen in the objective world.

However, in Karma Yoga, Krishna says we are not bothered about avikaramanasha and pratiyavaya because we always look into the subjective impact of the objective results and this neutralises everything (Gita, 240) Take, for example, the unsuccessful launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle The subjective impact of this objective result is an opportunity to study the reasons for the failure and for further research to plug loopholes to create an even better launch vehicle in future In this way, even failure has been turned into an opportunity for growth, so how can we call it useless karma? .

***