Karma: Why Everything You Know About It Is Wrong

by Acharya Prashant

The question says, ‘Why are we regularly in the lapse of defeat?’ Now you know. The question says, ‘Even if I become determined, the feeling or the commitment does not last.’ It is because the determination is for the wrong cause. You are determined to win but you are not determined to abandon the war. You are determined to reach the wrong place at the right time. Would that help?

You are going to attend a party, and you are on the wrong road. You are proceeding in the opposite direction, and you are hurrying. Because you think you have only twenty minutes and twenty miles to cover, you rush, and in twenty minutes you indeed do cover twenty miles—but where have you reached? The wrong place. Your determination did not really help you. In fact, your determination only hurried your downfall. Willpower, commitment, determination, they are of so little use because they are extremely superficial.

There are autocrats and dictators, and they have armies of committed soldiers. Commitment in itself is not at all of any value. Value belongs to the place the commitment is coming from, and, therefore, the place the commitment is going to.

If the choice is coming rightly, then what you are doing actually becomes a love affair; then you just cannot drop it easily. You become helpless in the matter.

Detachment and love go together. In fact, you cannot have love without detachment. If you find that you have love accompanied by attachment, then your love is very polluted.

what is the quality of your action when you are not detached? Commonly you think that when you are not detached, then you can work with motive, with energy. To an extent, you are probably right. Attachment does bring out a certain quantum of energy. Attachment compels you to act and provides you with motive—but only to certain action.

Great action cannot happen in attachment. One is attached always to the little, and only little action is required to acquire the little, so how will attachment lead to great action?

Attachment is surely an agent of movement and action. But, at the same time, attachment guarantees that your action will be confined, limited, and mediocre. You will act, but you will act in...

When an Ashtavakra touches you, when detachment purifies you, it is not as if you stop moving; you merely stop moving in the way you used to move. A new quality of movement descends upon you, and I assure you, this quality has more energy, greater power, more sustainability.

It does not get defeated easily. It does not get exhausted. It fights but without effort. It is not frustrated because it does not have high hopes.

It keeps continuously working because it is not expecting results from the work, and because this quality of movement is not dependent on external si...

It is of course important that one acts when action is needed, but it is probably even more important that one does not act when action is not needed.

There is nothing so sacred that it cannot be questioned. That which is really sacred is anyway not available to be questioned.

Q: How to know whether we are operating from the real centre or from the ego, from the mind? AP: Ask, ‘What is happening?’ Attention reveals so much. It is the greatest method. Don’t just casually take things

for granted. Don’t just say that ten people to my left and right are doing the same thing, so it must be done. Be an outlier. Be a bit of an eccentric. Question the obvious. Question the normal. Question all the accepted mores, modes.

Q: You will not be valued in life. Nobody will involve you in anything. AP: Let them not involve you, then! Q: If you would organize this session, would you involve me even if I am slow? AP: I will find a very, very suitable use for you. The scooter has a tyre, the jumbo jet, too, has one. It is not the fault of the scooter’s tyre that it is designed in a particular way. But foolish is the one who tries to use the scooter tyre in the jumbo jet. They all have their uses. Look at the grass under your feet. Why do you feel that it is useless? What is this entire concept of usefulness? To whom do you want to be useful?

Q: To the world around me. AP: Seriously? With all the harshness that you have towards yourself, how will you do good to the world? Q: I am less agile than most. AP: It is all right. If less is more, then it is a matter of comparison. It is all right.

Q: You just mentioned something about being foolishly slow. What do you mean by ‘foolishly slow’? AP: Being foolishly slow is when something is possible within your natural capacity, to be done at a certain rate, but because of sheer clumsiness and laziness and inertia, you decide to not do it. You very well know that you can do the meals by 8 p.m., but you doze off and wake up at 9:30, and the meals are served at 11 p.m. No one is advocating that. But why would you want to rush up the whole thing? There is bliss to be had in the process of creativity. Why do you want to short-circuit the process?

Q: I become hasty when I do something. AP: It is because you are trying to catch up with others. Don’t try to do that. Be your best self. Ask yourself, ‘Am I being lazy?’ And if you are being lazy, then do shrug off your laziness and hurry up. But if you are not being lazy, there is no need to get nervous; then you can continue at your inherent pace. There is just this one thing you need to guard against. Q: Laziness. AP: Laziness, and if you are not being lazy, then there is no need to curse yourself or feel nervous or ashamed. Ask just this one question:’Have I been dishonest? Have I been lazy? Am I dozing off?’ And if you’re not dozing off, then don’t be harsh on yourself.

Those who start seeing that happiness is not quite the heaven one takes it to be find something beyond happiness. That something has been called joy. Joy is to not remain dependent on sadness for happiness. Joy is to not have intermittent pleasure. Joy is to be where there is freedom from both happiness and sorrow.

You must remember that the goal of life is not happiness but freedom—freedom from both happiness and sadness.

The right action is its own reward. There is no need to split the action from the result of the action. We tend to do that. We say, ‘Oh yes, this thing is right, and it must be done. But . . .’ If the thing is right and it must be done, from where has this split arrived? What is this ‘but’?

Our confidence is always based on certain things. If those things are taken away, the confidence falls. When you can be confident, just be confident for no reason at all; when you have neither knowledge nor possessions nor anything material to assure you and yet you are so confident, then you have arrived.

Do what is right and forget all about the result. The right action cannot have a wrong result. If it appears wrong to you, it is because it is clashing with your beliefs and expectations. It is actually right. The right tree cannot bear the wrong fruit.

Questioner (Q): You have said, ‘The right action is its own reward, the wrong action is its own punishment.’ Based on this quote, we should always favour the right action and be averse to the wrong action, but usually we do just the opposite. Kindly throw some light on this.

The right action is action that brings peace and relaxation to you.

Please understand that none of us operate from a clean slate, from point zero. We have a history, and the history has become us. That is what is called conditioning. Your history takes your name. You are no more a free being. You are somebody who is determined by his history. And if you are determined by your history, then it requires discipline and determination to take the right action.

When you make a truly right decision, what comes to you is the truly right reward, but that right reward is incompatible with your pre-existing life structure, so you suffer.

What was rule number one? Do not go down tamely. If there is an inner conflict and you know which side should win, fight hard to ensure that the right side prevails. That was rule number one.

Rule number two: Even when you are defeated, keep fighting. Now, of course, frontal warfare is not possible. The direct and obvious battle has been lost, so let there be guerrilla warfare now.

The doing is not for some objective outside of itself; the doing itself is the objective. This is niśkāma-karma (desireless action).

What do you work for? You work for some kind of satisfaction, call it deep contentment. You work for the sake of that. Therefore, work is never very satisfying because work to you is not the last thing; the work is just a middleman for the sake of a result. Therefore, work is just a necessary evil for you.

Had it been possible, you would’ve removed the work, the process, the time interval from between, and you would’ve said, ‘Is it possible to come directly to the result?’

Work is life, anyway. Even when you think you are not working, you are actually working. So, no point fooling oneself with the effort to minimize work. Even when you think you are in a state of leisure, you are actually working. Therefore, why not work in a way that transcends work? That is niśkāma-karma.

And now we will come to the more horrifying part of it: Whenever work is a means to an end, the end is never really achieved. We are beaten both ways! First of all, we expended a lot of time trying to reach an end, and even if we somehow manage to reach that end, what do we discover? ‘Eh? Is this where I wanted to reach?’ And then you proceed towards another destination, and that is what is called the . . .?

those who work towards an end find that they are defeated both in the work as well as in the end. Double defeat. And those who work without an end, those who work because the work itself is service and devotion, they win doubly: First of all, work is celebration; secondly, work is the end. So, you are celebrating your way to success. You are dancing towards victory. You are dancing not towards victory; you are dancing in victory. You are continuously victorious, and you are continuously celebrating.

Those who work without an end, those who work because the work itself is service and devotion, they win doubly: First of all, work is celebration; secondly, work is the end.