Feb’ 2016
Action in self-awareness fuels the light of wisdom – B’Gita Ch. 4
You cannot live without action, and behind each action there is some fear or desire.
Trace the world to its source and you will find that you, the world and time are one. Find your timeless being and your behaviour will be quite different.
The battle for wisdom requires eternal vigilance and the help of the self – B’Gita Ch. 6
Whilst alive, your body attracts attention and fascinates so completely that rarely does one perceive or act according to one’s real nature. Your belief that you are the body is because you have never questioned that belief which, obviously, is born and dies. It’s like seeing the surface of the ocean and completely forgetting the immensity beneath. The world is but the surface of the mind and in being you are infinite.
What we call thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet it reflects reality. When it is motionless through and through it dissolves and only reality remains. This reality is so concrete, so actual, so much more tangible than mind and matter. Compared to the overwhelming actuality the world appears dreamlike and misty.
Of the drivers for action, desire fear and love – the only one true motive is love – B’Gita Ch. 3
There is nothing basically wrong with desire, nor will you act against it. Just live your life mindfully, intelligently, follow desire to its source keeping your deepest interests in mind on what you really want; not perfection, you are already perfect. Energy for right action comes from love, the core of natural will. Clarity alone is not enough, you must love to act.
Whether you plan or don’t, life goes on. But in life itself a little whorl arises in the mind, which indulges in fantasies and imagines itself dominating and controlling life. Life itself is desireless. But the false heart, the world of mind and matter, wants to continue and take charge. Therefore it is always engaged in ensuring one’s continuity, whatever that may be. Life itself is unafraid and free. As long as you have the idea of influencing events, liberation is barred from you: The very notion of doership, of being at cause, is bondage.
Knowledge, knower and object of knowledge are the threefold incentives to act. Act, actor and instruments are the threefold constituents – B’Gita Ch. 18
By being present to the action, action becomes right action – B’Gita Ch. 3
Life’s action is now, not prepared for. Action delayed is action abandoned. There may be other chances for other actions, but the present moment is lost – irretrievably lost. All preparation is for the future – you cannot prepare for the present. Acting in the now is not much helped by your preparations. Clarity is now; action is now. Thinking of being ready impedes action. And action is the touchstone of reality.
As for courage, without love and charity, courage is destructive. People at war are often wonderfully courageous, but what of it? What you seek is to express in action what you are. For this you have a body and a mind. Take them in hand and make them serve you, not you to serve them.
Wisdom and right action is one – B’Gita Ch 5
The most improbable happens when human will and love, in alignment, pull together. Such is the magic of man’s mind and heart when pulling together. First words, then silence; we must be ripe for silence. Unattached work leads to silence, for when you work free of attachment/expectation; you don’t need to ask for help.
Indifferent to results, you are willing to work with the most inadequate means. With love and care results will take care of itself. You do not care to be much gifted and well equipped. Nor do you ask for recognition and assistance; act with love and all will arise in good time. You just do what needs to be done leaving success and failure to the unknown, for everything is caused by innumerable factors of which your personal endeavour is but one.
The self is a friend if he has conquered his lower nature, an enemy if he hasn’t – B’Gita Ch 6
In the work you perform, what is the need to ask for help? Work on, and the universe will work with you. After all, the very idea of doing the right thing comes to you from the unknown. Leave it to the unknown as far as the results go, just go through the necessary movements as they come to you. You are merely one of the links in the long chain of causation.
Fundamentally, all happens in the mind only. When you work for something whole-heartedly and steadily it happens, for it is the function of the mind to make things happen.
In reality nothing is lacking and nothing is needed, all work is on the surface only. In the depths there is perfect peace. All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited yourself. When you do not think your-self to be this or that, all conflict ceases.
Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for what is caused by desire of the false heart can be undone only in freedom from such desire.
Those committed to here, now, one, sacrificing all on the altar of oneness, one self, are at peace and in command of and at oneness with nature – B’Gita Ch. 9
You have enclosed yourself in time and space, squeezed yourself into the span of a lifetime and the volume of a body and thus created the innumerable conflicts of life and death, pleasure and pain, hope and fear. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions. Turn to the true hart, be hear-now, and the heart of truth will be revealed.
To be released from the bondage of duality, of the doer and the done, contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it.
It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condition.
By nature’s gift, you’ll find your place as sage soldier, merchant or labourer – B’Gita Ch. 4
Act only by your nature’s gift and not the shape of others – B’Gita Ch. 3
Once you realize that all comes from within, that the world in which you live has not been projected onto you but by you, your fear comes to an end. Without this realization you identify your-self with the externals, like the body, mind, society, nation and humanity, even God or the Absolute. But these are all escapes from fear.
It is only when you fully accept your true part in the world in which you live and watch the process of its creation, preservation and destruction that you may be free from your imaginary bondage.
The wise, though shrouded in senses, does nothing, causes nothing; knows all action and consequence is the work of nature. – B’Gita Ch. 5
Whether success or failure it is the learning that is the achievement – B’Gita Ch. 4
Accept your life as it shapes, stay where you are and look after your abode, family and community with love and care. Nobody else needs you. Your dreams of glory will land you in more trouble. Moving home and assets to a quieter location, away from the world that has bothered you so much will not help you in your spiritual quest. The least you can expect is an endless succession of visitors who will make your home into a free and open guest house.
Pleasures that first seem like poison are born of purity, first as nectar and end as poison are born of passion, that drug the senses out of folly flow from ignorance. – B’Gita Ch. 18
If you seek reality, you need a well-ordered and quiet life, peace of mind and immense earnestness. At every moment whatever comes to you unasked comes from the Unknown and will surely help you, if you make the fullest use of it. It is only what you strive for out of your own imagination and desire that gives you trouble.
The wise do not let desire or fear affect whether they act or not. For he who renounces expectation, there is no fruit of action. Bound to the fruit of action is capacity for evil. – B’Gita Ch 18
With your identity arising in consciousness, the ideas of what you are arises in your mind as well as what you should be and do. This is at the very root of desire and fear which brings forth action and the process of becoming this or that begins. Becoming has, apparently, no beginning and no end, for it restarts every moment.
With the cessation of desire for the particular and expectation, becoming ceases and the being this or that merges into pure being. This is not describable, only experienceable.
The world appears to you so overwhelmingly real because you think of it all the time; you are not your thoughts, just see and it will dissolve into thin mist. You need not forget; when the particulars of desire and fear end, bondage also ends. It is the emotional involvement, the pattern of likes and dislikes which we call character and temperament which create the bondage. Without such fear and desire, love of life, of righteousness and of beauty is motive enough for action. Desire gives itself up for pure, natural, universal will.
Do not be afraid of freedom from personal desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting, that truly, by losing all you gain all.
Some sages say renunciation (action that springs from desire), should be foregone. However acts of benevolence, relinquishing (surrender of the fruits of action) should not be given up for they purify the aspiring soul. – B’Gita Ch. 18
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