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Prakriti automatically connects every event to others, but its workings are impenetrable to us.
Both the causes and the results of an activity are unavailable.
Yet the individual’s conscious activities are regulated by prakriti no less than its unconscious ones, and so, if an agent is to be isolated, it must be prakriti.
From the Bhagavad Gita’s point of view, the story told by an acting individual about its actions, even the story told to itself alone, is irrelevant to those actions themselves:
Gandhi, on the other hand, read the text daily and saw the Mahabharata war as an allegorical representation of the internal struggle between the human soul and worldly temptations. For
The Spirit in thee is a river. Its sacred bathing place is contemplation; its waters are truth; its banks are holiness; its waves are love. Go to that river for purification: thy soul cannot be made pure by mere water.
‘And when a man sees that the God in himself is the same God in all that is, he hurts not himself by hurting others: then he goes indeed to the highest Path’
‘To be’, ‘to know’, and ‘to find joy’ correspond to the SAT, CIT, ANANDA, ‘Being, Consciousness, and Joy’ of the Upanishads.
In the Bhagavad Gita we find that all work can be both beautiful and holy.
all men attain perfection when they find joy in their work, and they find joy in their work when their work is worship of God, because God is joy.
And contrary to the law of matter where to give more means to have less, in the law of love the more one gives the more one has.
The wise grieve not for those who live; and they grieve not for those who die – for life and death shall pass away.
From the world of the senses, Arjuna, comes heat and comes cold, and pleasure and pain. They come and they go: they are transient. Arise above them, strong soul.
The man whom these cannot move, whose soul is one, beyond pleasure and pain, is worthy of life in Eternity.
Prepare for war with peace in thy soul. Be in peace in pleasure and pain, in gain and in loss, in victory or in the loss of a battle. In this peace there is no sin.
Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for a reward; but never cease to do thy work.
Do thy work in the peace of Yoga and, free from selfish desires, be not moved in success or in failure.
Work done for a reward is much lower than work done in the Yoga of wisdom. Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason.
In this wisdom a man goes beyond what is well done and what is not well done. Go thou therefore to wisdom: Yoga is wisdom in work.
When thy mind, that may be wavering in the contradictions of many scriptures, shall rest unshaken in divine contemplation, then the goal of Yoga is thine.
When a man surrenders all desires that come to the heart and by the grace of God finds the joy of God, then his soul has indeed found peace.
He whose mind is untroubled by sorrows, and for pleasures he has no longings, beyond passion, and fear and anger, he is the sage of unwavering mind.
Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or is ill, his is a serene wisdom.
When a man dwells on the pleasures of sense, attraction for them arises in him. From attraction arises desire, the lust of possession, and this leads to passion, to anger.
But the soul that moves in the world of the senses and yet keeps the senses in harmony, free from attraction and aversion, finds rest in quietness.
this world there are two roads of perfection, as I told thee before, O prince without sin: Jñana Yoga, the path of wisdom of the Sankhyas, and Karma Yoga, the path of action of the Yogis.
Action is greater than inaction: perform therefore thy task in life. Even the life of the body could not be if there were no action.
In liberty from the bonds of attachment, do thou therefore the work to be done: for the man whose work is pure attains indeed the Supreme.
All actions take place in time by the interweaving of the forces of Nature; but the man lost in selfish delusion think that he himself is the actor.
But the man who knows the relation between the forces of Nature and actions, sees how some forces of Nature work upon other forces of Nature, and becomes not their slave.
Offer to me all thy works and rest thy mind on the Supreme. Be free from vain hopes and selfish thoughts, and with inner peace fight thou thy fight.
Hate and lust for things of nature have their roots in man’s lower nature. Let him not fall under their power: they are the two enemies in his path.
And do thy duty, even if it be humble, rather than another’s, even if it be great. To die in one’s duty is life: to live in another’s is death.
All is clouded by desire: as fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust, as an unborn babe by its covering.
They say that the power of the senses is great. But greater than the senses is the mind. Greater than the mind is Buddhi, reason; and greater than reason is He – the Spirit in man and in all.
Be a warrior and kill desire, the powerful enemy of the soul.
He is glad with whatever God gives him, and he has risen beyond the two contraries here below; he is without jealousy, and in success or in failure he is one: his works bind him not.
Kill therefore with the sword of wisdom the doubt born of ignorance that lies in thy heart.
This man of harmony surrenders the reward of his work and thus attains final peace: the man of disharmony, urged by desire, is attached to his reward and remains in bondage.
For the pleasures that come from the world bear in them sorrows to come. They come and they go, they are transient: not in them do the wise find joy.
Because the peace of God is with them whose mind and soul are in harmony, who are free from desire and wrath, who know their own soul.
He who works not for an earthly reward, but does the work to be done, he is a Sanyasi, he is a Yogi: not he who lights not the sacred fire or offers not the holy sacrifice.
Yoga is a harmony. Not for him who eats too much, or for him who eats too little; not for him who sleeps too little, or for him who sleeps too much.
And when he sees me in all and he sees all in me, then I never leave him and he never leaves me.
But, Krishna, the mind is inconstant: in its restlessness I cannot find rest. 34 The mind is restless, Krishna, impetuous, self-willed, hard to train: to master the mind seems as difficult as to master the mighty winds.
The mind is indeed restless, Arjuna: it is indeed hard to train. But by constant practice and by freedom from passions the mind in truth can be trained.
But if thou art unable to rest thy mind on me, then seek to reach me by the practice of Yoga concentration.
If thou art not able to practise concentration, consecrate all thy work to me. By merely doing actions in my service thou shalt attain perfection.
surrender to me the fruit of all thy work – with the selfless devotion of a humble heart.
For concentration is better than mere practice, and meditation is better than concentration; but higher than meditation is surrender in love of the fruit of one’s actions, for on surrender follows peace.
