Drop Greed and Fear, Live Power and Joy
When you come down to this planet, you bring enough energy to live all your desires or to achieve whatever you want to achieve in this life; to create your reality as you want. You have already brought enough fuel. You don't need fuel from fear or greed.
Work only for your desires. Don't waste your life working for others' desires. Decide clearly, 'For the next ten days, I will work only out of my power, my joy and bliss. I will do everything out of my completion.' I can assure you, it will transform your life.
When you start practicing this, for the first few days you will feel a little unsettled because a new inner space is created. Say 'No' to any desire or any fear that comes up. Initially, you will feel some emptiness, a vacuum, but don't worry. In a few days you will beautifully settle with the new space. Don't worry when you fail a few times. Starting this way is much better than staying in fear of failure. So start! At least you will know the technique. I tell you with integrity, it will transform your whole life. It will give you such great strength and courage that invariably you will be liberated.
Remove the tremendous stress and load from your inner space. Decide, 'For ten days, I will do all my actions out of deep bliss, out of a settled mood of powerfulness and joy.'
In Saṃskṛit, 'Śiva' means causeless auspiciousness, reasonless energy. It is possible to live with that reasonless, unmotivated energy. Only two things are needed for that. The first thing is trust that you have that energy. The next thing is starting to live it. Only these two things are needed to reach the Divine Consciousness. When we start working with the causeless auspicious energy, we become Śiva. Otherwise, we are Śava (dead body).
When we use the word 'renounce' the way we understand it, we exclude something. Exclusion can never be the solution. When we say 'I should give up or avoid something', we exclude some creation of Existence. When we try to renounce the world, we are renouncing the creation of Existence. We are trying to prove that we are more intelligent than Existence.
Just sit down for five minutes and be aware of how you perceive situations. With completion and awareness, look at everything you think and do, and you can understand what I mean. When we come to an understanding of our own self and are able to live as a witness to everything that goes on around us, unaffected by situations and people around us, we become a realized soul, living enlightenment. If we do things fuelled by fear and greed, we become hypocrites.
In the Mahābhārat war, Kṛṣṇa drives Arjuna's chariot. The horses represent the senses held beautifully in control by the divine charioteer. He drives the being represented by the warrior, in the body represented by the chariot towards victory, towards bliss.
When the individual consciousness surrenders control to the Divine, the Divine controls the body-mind-spirit and steers one towards one's true nature, bliss.
We have forgotten what it is to respond with intelligence. No situation can be exactly the same as before. How can it be? Can a river flow in exactly the same way at two different points? The very water would have changed from the time it flows from one point to the other. Life is like a river. It is continuously changing.
Existence is energy. It can never repeat itself. Every moment is unique.
It is just like when we are in a dream, we don't realize it is a dream. We think everything that is happening is reality. The moment we wake up from the dream we realize in a flash that it was just a dream. The way we are living life now is exactly the same. We are living life in the dream of the future and the past. And we think that the dream is reality.
The reality is actually in the present, which is the space of completion. When we realize this, we simply wake up to the true reality from the dream of illusion. Then, we understand that the senses, body and mind are not us. We are something much beyond these. With this awareness we become complete and blissful.
For the children to understand they do not need fear or greed to live their life. To understand that we should live from completion and awareness, unaffected by situations and people around us.
brahmaṇy ādhāya karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā karoti yaḥ lipyate na sa pāpena padma-patram ivāmbhasā
He, who acts without attachment, giving up and surrendering to the eternal consciousness, He is never affected by sin, in the same way that the lotus leaf is not affected by water.
The lotus flower grows in a dirty pond yet the flower is so beautifully above the water. Similarly, when you are neck-deep in the activities of the world and yet unaffected by what goes on, you have reached the goal of renunciation.
kāyena manasā buddhyā kevalair indriyairapi yoginaḥ karma kurvanti saṅgaṁ tyaktvātmaśuddhaye
The yogis, giving up attachment, act with the body, mind, intelligence, even with the senses for the purpose self-purification.
Realized souls are so centered in themselves that the outer world incidents happening do not affect their core in any way.
yuktaḥ karmaphalaṁ tyaktvā śāntimāpnoti naiṣṭhikīm ayuktaḥ kāma-kāreṇa phale sakto nibadhyate
One who is engaged in devotion, gives up attachment to outcome of one's actions and is centered, is at peace. One who is not engaged in devotion, attached to the outcome of one's action becomes entangled.
Surrender to the flow of life with the true understanding that we are being taken care of.
sarvakarmāṇi manasā sannyasyāste sukhaṁ vaśī navadvāre pure dehī naiva kurvanna kārayan
One who is controlled, giving up all the activities of the mind, surely remains in happiness in the city of nine gates (body), neither doing anything nor causing anything to be done.
Be so completely involved in something that we become the very action itself.
Time and again Kṛṣṇa talks about detachment. This is the whole essence of the Gītā. This detachment is renunciation. Renunciation of attachment is true renunciation. You can give up all material possessions and move into a forest or an ashram, but if the mind still hankers for those possessions, renunciation has not happened.
One can still be very much in the material world, busy with wheeling and dealing, and yet be totally detached about the outcome.
The basic truth behind creating this space of centeredness and completion is really this: Existence is a loving Mother caring for us every moment, providing all that we need. When this understanding happens, we surrender to Existence. The wave drops into the ocean, blissfully aware that it is a part of the ocean. It no longer feels it is a separate entity trying to fight Existence, thinking that the ocean, the Whole, is its enemy
Again and again, Kṛṣṇa is repeating a single point in various ways: action without attachment. He emphasizes that life happens only when we live as a witness to everything that happens, when we do not identify and attach with external incidents. We just have to watch what is happening in and around us without letting what happens outside affect our inner space.
Of course, the way in which we live automatically creates an effect, a transformation in others as well. We attract incidents that fall in tune with our desires and thoughts. When we are blissful inside, whatever happens outside will also be blissful.
Even the same situation will be seen in a completely different way when we witness it with completion. Automatically, no emotion can sway us because now we are just witnessing, we no longer have any vested interest or incompletion in the situation. Our state is in no way affected by what others say or do. Then, we are Masters unto ourselves.
Kṛṣṇa gives us a technique to realize who we are. By giving up attachment to the sense objects, by dropping all false identifications with the body, senses and mind, we can live life with intelligence and this leads us to self-purification, self-completion.
Once a man went to Ramaṇa Mahaṛṣi, and said, 'Bhagavān, I want peace!' Ramaṇa replied, 'From your own statement, just remove the word 'I,' remove the word 'want' and what remains is peace!'
All our want for peace is all a want. When we start to want peace, we create desires in us. That desire drives us to do various things for getting peace and we once again start to worry about the results of those actions. These worries take us away from peace and then again we want peace. So this becomes a vicious circle. When we drop the idea of wanting peace, when we can just be and let Existence take care, peace automatically happens. So, absence of want is the criterion to be peaceful.
Suppose a child is playing with some small toy and you bring him a new big toy. If you take away the small toy from its hands, what will the child do? It will start yelling and crying. Even if you explain you have a much better, bigger toy, will it listen? No! Just give it the new toy and suddenly, it will forget the old one and start enjoying the new one. In the same way, Existence also tries to give us a big toy. Just imagine the kind of toy that Existence has given us—the whole of Itself! Enjoy it to the fullest. Celebrate it and express your gratitude!
Just live life in a simple way. Be complete every moment, enjoying the splendor of nature. Enjoy every thing that Existence has created. They will show us what it is to enjoy life without a reason
In these verses, Kṛṣṇa refers to the body, which has nine gates to the external world: the two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, mouth and the two organs of evacuation.
Here, Kṛṣṇa does not refer to not doing anything out of laziness and indulgence. Here, the mind has been stilled. It has stopped all activity but the body moves according to the will of the divine. We are in the midst of intense activity and yet are not doing anything.
Kṛṣṇa is talking of being so completely involved in something that we become the very action itself. It is not the action that gives us the joy but the conscious experience of the bliss within us through the action that actually gives us happiness and bliss.
When we realize through experience or understanding that the bliss in life is completely within us, we will get over our wrong cognition that external pleasures are what give us joy. We will relax into the loving arms of Existence and just flow with it beautifully. Let the Universe take care and you carry on with your work!
To help the children understand action without attachment. That the conscious experience of the bliss within us through the action is what actually gives us happiness and bliss.
- 1. What is true renunciation?
- 2. What does Existence provide for us?
- 3. Are we separate to Existence?
- 4. When we are blissful inside, what happens on our outside?
- 5. How can we achieve that no emotion can sway us ?
- 6. When we look at a situation with completion and without completion, will we see the same situation?
- 7. What technique does Kṛṣṇa give us to realize who we are?
- 8. What are the 'nine gates' of our body?
- 9. Who does Kṛṣṇa say should be lazy, the mind or the body?
- 10. How does Kṛṣṇa say we should do actions?
Part 3: Bhagavad Gita Chapter 5