Bhagavad Gita, chapter 3, verse 1

The difficulty which Arjuna feels in understanding any possible synthesis of these oppositions is an indication of the hard line that was driven in between these two systems in the normal ideas of the time. The Teacher sets out by reconciling works and the Yoga of the intelligence: the latter, he says, is far2.49 superior to mere works; it is by the Yoga of the Buddhi, by knowledge raising man out of the ordinary human mind and its desires into the purity and equality of the Brahmic condition free from all desire that works can be made acceptable. Yet are works a means of salvation, but works thus purified by knowledge. Filled with the notions of the then prevailing culture, misled by the emphasis which the Teacher lays upon the ideas proper to Vedantic Sankhya, conquest of the senses, withdrawal from mind into the Self, ascent into the Brahmic condition, extinction of our lower personality in the Nirvana of impersonality, — for the ideas proper to Yoga are as yet subordinated and largely held back, — Arjuna3.1-2 is perplexed and asks, “If thou holdest the intelligence to be greater than works, why then dost thou appoint me to a terrible work? Thou seemest to bewilder my intelligence with a confused and mingled speech; tell me then decisively that one thing by which I may attain to my soul’s weal.”

The yoga of the intelligent will and its culmination in the Brahmic status, which occupies all the close of the second chapter, contains the seed of much of the teaching of the Gita, — its doctrine of desireless works, of equality, of the rejection of outward renunciation, of devotion to the Divine; but as yet all this is slight and obscure. What is most strongly emphasised as yet is the withdrawal of the will from the ordinary motive of human activities, desire, from man’s normal temperament of the sense-seeking thought and will with its passions and ignorance, and from its customary habit of troubled many-branching ideas and wishes to the desireless calm unity and passionless serenity of the Brahmic poise. So much Arjuna has understood. He is not unfamiliar with all this; it is the substance of the current teaching which points man to the path of knowledge and to the renunciation of life and works as his way of perfection. The intelligence withdrawing from sense and desire and human action and turning to the Highest, to the One, to the actionless Purusha, to the immobile, to the featureless Brahman, that surely is the eternal seed of knowledge. There is no room here for works, since works belong to the Ignorance; action is the very opposite of knowledge; its seed is desire and its fruit is bondage. That is the orthodox philosophical doctrine, and Krishna seems quite2.49 to admit it when he says that works are far inferior to the Yoga of the intelligence. And yet works are insisted upon as part of the Yoga; so that there seems to be in this teaching a radical inconsistency. Not only so; for some kind of work no doubt may persist for a while, the minimum, the most inoffensive; but here is a work wholly inconsistent with knowledge, with serenity and with the motionless peace of the self-delighted soul, — a work3.1 terrible, even monstrous, a bloody strife, a ruthless battle, a giant massacre. Yet it is this that is enjoined, this that it is sought to justify by the teaching of inner peace and desireless equality and status in the Brahman!3.2 Here then is an unreconciled contradiction. Arjuna complains that he has been given a contradictory and confusing doctrine, not the clear, strenuously single road by which the human intelligence can move straight and trenchantly to the supreme good. It is in answer to this objection that the Gita begins at once to develop more clearly its positive and imperative doctrine of Works.

But at present the Gita does not proceed to that larger point. Since the mind is the instrumental cause, since inaction is impossible, what is rational, necessary, the right way is a controlled action of the subjective and objective organism. The mind must bring the senses under its control as an instrument of3.7 the intelligent will and then the organs of action must be used for their proper office, for action, but for action done as Yoga. But what is the essence of this self-control, what is meant by action done as Yoga, Karmayoga? It is non-attachment, it is to do works without clinging with the mind to the objects of sense and the fruit of the works. Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection. Do action3.8 thus self-controlled, says Krishna, niyataṁ kuru karma tvam: I have said that knowledge, the intelligence, is greater than works,3.1 jyāyasī karmaṇo buddhiḥ, but I did not mean that inaction is greater than action; the contrary is the truth, karma jyāyo akarmaṇaḥ3.8. For knowledge does not mean renunciation of works, it means equality and non-attachment to desire and the objects of sense; and it means the poise of the intelligent will in the Soul free and high-uplifted above the lower instrumentation of Prakriti and controlling the works of the mind and the senses and body in the power of self-knowledge and the pure objectless self-delight of spiritual realisation, niyataṁ karma.^* Buddhiyoga3.7 is fulfilled by karmayoga; the Yoga of the self-liberating intelligent will finds its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works. Thus the Gita founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, niṣkāma karma, and unites the subjective practice of the Sankhyas—rejecting their merely physical rule—with the practice of Yoga.

1. Again, I cannot accept the current interpretation of niyataṁ karma as if it meant fixed and formal works and were equivalent to the Vedic nityakarma, the regular works of sacrifice, ceremonial and the daily rule of Vedic living. Surely, niyata simply takes up the niyamya of the last verse. Krishna makes a statement, "he who controlling the senses by the mind engages with the organs of action in Yoga of action, he excels," manasā niyamya ārabhate karmayogam, and he immediately goes on to draw from the statement an injunction, to sum it up and convert it into a rule. "Do thou do controlled action," niyataṁ kuru karma tvam: niyatam takes up the niyamya, kuru karma takes up the ārabhate karmayogam. Not formal works fixed by an external rule, but desireless works controlled by the liberated buddhi, is the Gita's teaching.

The problem raised by the Gita and the solution it gives demand this character of the vision of the World-Spirit. It is the problem of a great struggle, ruin and massacre which has been brought about by the all-guiding Will and in which the eternal Avatar himself has descended as the charioteer of the protagonist in the battle. The seer of the vision is himself the protagonist, the representative of the battling soul of man who has to strike down tyrant and oppressive powers that stand in the path of his evolution and to establish and enjoy the kingdom of a higher right and nobler law of being. Perplexed by the terrible aspect of the catastrophe in which kindred smite at kindred, whole nations are to perish and society itself seems doomed to sink down in a pit of confusion and anarchy, he has shrunk back, refused the task of destiny and demanded of his divine Friend and Guide why he is appointed to so dreadful a work, kiṁ karmaṇi ghore māṁ niyojayasi. He has been shown then how3.1 individually to rise above the apparent character of whatever work he may do, to see that Nature the executive force is the doer of the work, his natural being the instrument, God the master of Nature and of works to whom he must offer them without desire or egoistic choice as a sacrifice. He has been shown too that the Divine who is above all these things and untouched by them, yet manifests himself in man and Nature and their action and that all is a movement in the cycles of this divine manifestation. But now when he is put face to face with the embodiment of this truth, he sees in it magnified by the image of the divine greatness this aspect of terror and destruction and is appalled and can hardly bear it. For why should it be thus that the All-spirit manifests himself in Nature? What is the significance of this creating and devouring flame that is mortal existence, this world-wide struggle, these constant disastrous revolutions, this labour and anguish and travail and perishing of creatures? He puts the ancient question and breathes the eternal prayer, "Declare to me who art thou that comest to us in this form of11.31 fierceness. I would know who art thou who wast from the beginning, for I know not the will of thy workings. Turn thy heart to grace."

We have in the Gita a striking illustration of God's workings in man which raises in a concrete instance and drives home to the mind the whole difficulty with an incomparable mastery and vividness. The armies of the Pandava and the Kaurava stand facing each other on the sacred plain of Kurukshetra; the whole military strength of India & all its political future have been thrown down upon that vast battlefield as upon a dice board. On one side we see the eleven mighty armies of Duryodhana, greatly superior in numbers, led by the three most renowned warriors & tacticians of the day; on the other the lesser host of Yudhisthira commanded indeed by notable fighters but fixing all its hope of eventual victory on the strong arm and invincible fortunes of Arjuna with Krishna, the incarnate Lord of the world, as his charioteer. But Arjuna, their supreme hope, is on the point of failing them; he is overcome by the magnitude of the approaching slaughter, afflicted by the fratricidal nature of the conflict he has cast down his bow; he has refused to fight. In the great colloquy that follows & forms the substance of the Gita, the incarnate Master of things, among a host of profound & subtle reasonings, uses also this striking exhortation which has become a commonplace of Indian thought, Mayaivaite nihatáh púrvam eva, Nimittamátram bhava, Savyasáchin. "By Me are these already slain & dead, do thou become only immediate means & determining cause, O Savyasachin." The Universal Will has seen and arranged from the beginning of this great world-act, this vastly planned cycle of natural happenings, the bodily destruction of Duryodhana and his mighty captains; the bow Gandiva in the hand of Arjuna is only the predestined nimitta. By the stream of successive events it has brought about an arrangement of forces in which the nimitta can become operative. There is the preexisting condition; there is the arranged result; there is the determining factor. But supposing this human instrument Arjuna, rejecting the command of the Lord of all things, preferring some hope of spiritual weal, preferring his own moral self-satisfaction, obstinately refuses to be the engine of God's will in him, in a work so thankless, bloody & terrible. What if he listens only to the natural cry of the human heart, Kim karmani ghore mám niyojayasi Keshava, "Why dost Thou appoint me, O Lord, to a dreadful work?" We say from our human standpoint, that even then the Will of God can & will inevitably be fulfilled by Bhima, by the combined exaltation of the Panchala heroes, by the sudden greatness, even,—for "He makes the dumb man eloquent & the lame to overpass the hills",—of some inferior fighter; and, in the thought & language of the great infinite Potentiality that stands behind the material actuality of things, this would be the truth,—but not in the actuality itself. For in the God-foreseen actuality of things not only the event, but the nimitta is fixed beforehand. The Cosmic Being is no blind & chance bungler who misses His expected tool & has gropingly to improvise another. Arjuna, too, is the vessel of the universal Will and can only act as It chooses. "The Lord is seated in the heart of all existences, O Arjuna, and He whirls round all existences mounted upon a machine by Maya." Even if Arjuna's mind resists, even if his heart revolts, even if his members fail him, eventually there is a Force greater than the individual & mental will which will, if so destined, prevail upon his mind, his heart, his members. What is that Force? "Prakriti", answers the Gita, "Prakritis twám niyokshyati." The phrase is nowadays ordinarily interpreted to mean that Arjuna's warrior nature will whip him back to the fight. But the thought of the Gita is more profound & far-reaching. By Prakriti is meant the executive World Force, agent of the will of the Ishwara seated in the heart of all existences, that compels the tree to grow, man to think, the king to rule, the poet to create, the warrior to fight. The character of Arjuna is only one means towards her action, & even that acts not by itself, but in conjunction with the character of Duryodhana, of Karna, of Bhishma, of a million others even to the meanest soldier in either army. Yet left to itself the warrior nature of Arjuna might drive him back indeed to the fight but too late to determine its issue; even, it might be, his personal nature, were that God's will, would abdicate its functions, seized & overcome by universal nature, by pity, by vairagya, by fear of sin, and the fateful battle lose its fated nimitta. What is it that, not in free universal potentiality, but in the fixed fact must inevitably determine his return to his normal action? It is the executive Force of the universal Will which not only fixes personal nature, swabhava or swa-prakriti, but fixes too its working in each individual case, not only prepares the circumstance & the means but determines the action & the event. We seem to have here an overriding Fate, an ineluctable Ananke, even a self-acting mechanism of Nature; but it is not a mechanical inevitability, the result of the sum of our & others' past actions, not even a natural inevitability, the result of either a habitual or an ingrained working of our individual nature moved complexly by internal impulses, outward events & the actions of others; but a willed inevitability, seen beforehand in Its universal pre-knowledge by that sole Existence which is expressing itself here in mind & body, in event & circumstance, and executed by It as its own Will-Force & universal Nature which works out automatically through arranged process & perfectly managed interaction of individual forces that which was foreseen by It & fixed from the beginning of things, vyadadhách chháswatíbhyah samábhyah.^*

tatkiṁ karmaṇi ghore māṁ niyojayasi keśava

গীতায় শ্রীকৃষ্ণ পুনঃ পুনঃ অর্জ্জুনকে সন্ন্যাস আচরণ করিতে নিষেধ করিয়াছেন কেন? তিনি সন্ন্যাসধর্ম্মের গুণ স্বীকার করিয়াছেন, কিন্তু বৈরাগ্য ও কৃপাপরবশ পার্থ বার বার জিজ্ঞাসা করাতেও শ্রীকৃষ্ণ কর্ম্মপথের আদেশ প্রত্যাহার করেন নাই। অর্জ্জুন জিজ্ঞাসা করিলেন, যদি কর্ম্ম হইতে কামনারহিত যোগযুক্ত বুদ্ধিই শ্রেষ্ঠ হয়, তবে তুমি কেন গুরুজনহত্যারূপ অতি ভীষণ কর্ম্মে আমাকে নিযুক্ত করিতেছ? অনেকে অর্জ্জুনের প্রশ্ন পুনরুত্থাপন করিয়াছেন, এক-একজন শ্রীকৃষ্ণকে নিকৃষ্ট ধর্ম্মোপদেষ্টা ও কুপথপ্রবর্ত্তক বলিতেও কুণ্ঠিত হন নাই। উত্তরে শ্রীকৃষ্ণ বুঝাইয়াছেন যে, সন্ন্যাস হইতে ত্যাগ শ্রেষ্ঠ, স্বেচ্ছাচার হইতে ভগবানকে স্মরণ করিয়া নিষ্কামভাবে স্বধর্ম্মসেবাই শ্রেষ্ঠ। ত্যাগের অর্থ কামনাত্যাগ, স্বার্থত্যাগ, সেই ত্যাগ শিক্ষার জন্য পর্ব্বতে বা নির্জ্জন স্থানে আশ্রয় লইতে হয় না, কর্ম্মক্ষেত্রেই কর্ম্ম দ্বারা সেই শিক্ষা হয়, কর্ম্মই যোগপথে আরোহণের উপায়। এই বিচিত্র লীলাময় জগৎ জীবের আনন্দ উৎপাদনের জন্য সৃষ্ট। ইহা ভগবানের উদ্দেশ্য নহে যে, এই আনন্দময় ক্রীড়া সাঙ্গ হউক। তিনি জীবকে তাঁহার সখা ও খেলার সাথী করিয়া জগতের আনন্দের স্রোত চালাইতে চান। আমরা যে অজ্ঞান অন্ধকারে আছি, ক্রীড়ার সুবিধার জন্য তিনি দূরে রহিয়াছেন বলিয়াই সে অন্ধকার ঘিরিয়া থাকে। তাঁহার নির্দ্দিষ্ট এমন অনেক উপায় আছে যে, সেগুলি অবলম্বন করিলে অন্ধকার হইতে নিষ্কৃতি লাভ করিয়া তাঁহার সান্নিধ্যপ্রাপ্তি হয়। যাঁহারা তাঁহার ক্রীড়ায় বিরক্ত বা বিশ্রামপ্রার্থী হন, তিনি তাঁহাদের অভিলাষ পূর্ণ করেন। কিন্তু যাঁহারা তাঁহারই জন্য সেই উপায় অবলম্বন করেন, ভগবান তাঁহাদিগকেই ইহলোকে বা পরলোকে খেলার উপযুক্ত সাথী করেন। অর্জ্জুন শ্রীকৃষ্ণের প্রিয়তম সখা ও ক্রীড়ার সহচর বলিয়া গীতার গূঢ়তম শিক্ষা লাভ করিলেন। সেই গূঢ়তম শিক্ষা কি, তাহা পূর্ব্ব প্রবন্ধে বুঝাইবার চেষ্টা করা হইয়াছে। ভগবান অর্জ্জুনকে বলিলেন,

তৎ কিং কর্ম্মণি ঘোরে মাং নিয়োজয়সি কেশব।

I may say however that I do not regard business as something evil or tainted, any more than it was so regarded in ancient spiritual India. If I did, I would not be able to receive money from X or from those of our disciples who in Bombay trade with East Africa; nor could we then encourage them to go on with their work but would have to tell them to throw it up and attend to their spiritual progress alone. How are we to reconcile X's seeking after spiritual light and his mill? Ought I not to tell him to leave his mill to itself and to the devil and go into some Ashram to meditate? Even if I myself had had the command to do business as I had the command to do politics I would have done it without the least spiritual or moral compunction. All depends on the spirit in which a thing is done, the principle on which it is built and use to which it is turned. I have done politics and the most violent kind of revolutionary politics, ghoraṁ karma, and I have supported war and sent men to it, even though politics is not always or often a very clean occupation nor can war be called a spiritual line of action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human work, sarvakarmāṇi. Do you contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was mistaken or wrong in principle? Krishna goes farther and declares that a man by doing in the right way and in the right spirit the work dictated to him by his fundamental nature, temperament and capacity and according to his and its dharma can move towards the Divine. He validates the function and dharma of the Vaishya as well as of the Brahmin and Kshatriya. It is in his view quite possible for a man to do business and make money and earn profits and yet be a spiritual man, practise Yoga, have an inner life. The Gita is constantly justifying works as a means of spiritual salvation and enjoining a Yoga of works as well as of Bhakti and Knowledge. Krishna, however, superimposes a higher law also that work must be done without desire, without attachment to any fruit or reward, without any egoistic attitude or motive, as an offering or sacrifice to the Divine. This is the traditional Indian attitude towards these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life.

P.S. This is an answer to what is implied in your letter and, I suppose, in those of your correspondents, not to anything in K's letter. His observations are all right, but circumstances alter cases. Ours is a sadhana which involves not only devotion or union with the Divine or a perception of him in all things and beings, but also action as workers and instruments and a work to be done in the world, a spiritual force to be brought on the world, under difficult conditions; then one has to see one's way and do what is commanded and support what has to be supported, even if it means war and strife carried on whether through chariots and bows and arrows or tanks and cars and American bombs and aeroplanes, in either case a ghoraṁ karma: the means and times and persons differ, but it does not seem to me that Nolini is wrong in seeing in it the same problem as in Kurukshetra. As for war, violence, the use of force to maintain freedom for the world, for the highest values of human civilisation, for the salvation of humanity from a terrible fate, etc., the old command rings out once again after many ages for those who must fight or support this battle for the right, mayaivaite nihatāḥ pūrvam eva nimittamātraṁ bhava savyasācin.

I may say however that I do not regard business as something evil or tainted, any more than it was so regarded in ancient spiritual India. If I did, I would not be able to receive money from A or from those of our disciples who in Bombay trade with East Africa; nor could we then encourage them to go on with their work but would have to tell them to throw it up and attend to their spiritual progress alone. How are we to reconcile A's seeking after spiritual light and his mill? Ought I not to tell him to leave his mill to itself and to the devil and go into some Ashram to meditate? Even if I myself had had the command to do business as I had the command to do politics I would have done it without the least spiritual or moral compunction. All depends on the spirit in which a thing is done, the principle on which it is built and use to which it is turned. I have done politics and the most violent kind of revolutionary politics, ghoraṁ karma, and I have supported war and sent men to it, even though politics is not always or often a very clean occupation nor can war be called a spiritual line of action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human work, sarvakarmāṇi. Do you contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was mistaken or wrong in principle? Krishna goes farther and declares that a man by doing in the right way and in the right spirit the work dictated to him by his fundamental nature, temperament and capacity and according to his and its dharma can move towards the Divine. He validates the function and dharma of the Vaishya as well as of the Brahmin and Kshatriya. It is in his view quite possible for a man to do business and make money and earn profits and yet be a spiritual man, practise Yoga, have an inner life. The Gita is constantly justifying works as a means of spiritual salvation and enjoining a Yoga of works as well as of Bhakti and Knowledge. Krishna, however, superimposes a higher law also that work must be done without desire, without attachment to any fruit or reward, without any egoistic attitude or motive, as an offering or sacrifice to the Divine. This is the traditional Indian attitude towards these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life.