Nothing goes waste -3 : Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

03/12/2018
3. Nothing Is Undesirable :

The Gita also uses two words — Avikaramanasha and Pratiyavaya.

1. 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.

2. 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 Yogam, 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, 2.40).

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 karmam?

THE END