Are We Really Selfless?
Questioner: Acharya Ji, I have a personal question. Whenever I work, my mind keeps running to the result. I get anxious. Will I succeed or fail? What will people say? I have heard that one should work selflessly without expectation. But when my family members call me selfish, it hurts me deeply. Am I truly selfless or just fooling myself while being selfish in disguise?
Acharya Prashant: Please see why we act and how we act. We act from the ego, as per the dictates of the ego. The ego tells us: act in this particular way, and you would be gratified. Go in that direction, and you'll get something. Strike a relationship here, and you'll be fulfilled. Get a new job there, enter that market, and fetch that coveted good, and you will have contentment. All our action is action from the self, for the sake of the self. You could call it selfish action, or action arising out of self-interest. And that's the norm. Why would anybody be an exception to that norm? It seems okay, doesn't it?
I feel like buying this, I'll buy. I feel like reading, I'll read. I feel like sleeping, I'll sleep. If I enter that business, I'll make a profit. So I do. I like that house, I'll stay there. These are the mannerisms that appeal to me. I adopt them. That's the man or the woman I find attractive. So I approach them. That's the usual center. And one doesn't see what's wrong with that. And as long as one doesn't see what's wrong with that, selfless action is obviously impossible.
Selfless action is not possible without seeing the hollowness of the self. Selfless action is possible only when one sees the self as beingless.
What is selfless action?
Selfless action is to see that all action arising from the usual ego-self is stupid. Because the assumption of the ego-self is that action will fetch it peace or completeness. And that assumption itself is a borrowed one. And that assumption, that hope, has been belied repeatedly in the past. And yet, the self wants to entertain that hope. If the hollowness of the self is not seen in the first place, selfless action is just not possible.
Selfless action is not a practice. It's not a technique. Selfless action is a result of having seen the void that is the self. Otherwise, you will keep telling yourself, I want to be selfless, Nishkam. I want to operate from a center of universality or something. There are a lot of neospiritual terms. My life is for others. Now all this is good social media material but doesn't mean much. Not because you are lying or you are being hypocritical, but because what you are saying is impossible by rule, by law.
You may say you love someone wholeheartedly. You'll still be selfish towards that person, not because you are a cheat or a deceiver or an exploiter, but because it is not possible to be selfless without knowing the self. The self is the default. That's what we are born with, and we die with. You cannot just put away the self, because it is nice and more moral to act selflessly, and selfishness is chi! chi! All that is good copy, good quote, good slogan, but will never fructify, and you'll be torn trying to practice it.
You'll say, I want to act selflessly, but you'll find it's impossible. Sometimes you'll rejoice that you have managed to be selfless, and then later on, when you are more collected and see more finely, you will discover that what you called selflessness was just masked selfishness because the self is the doer, the actor, the operator, the center.
Which self are we talking of? The truth? No. The ego.
We are programmed to operate from there. You cannot wish it away. And then there are lies and deceptions, heartbreaks and breakups, and all of that. All my life I was devoted to you, and I acted so selflessly. And yet you don't care for me. And it becomes very difficult to explain to others. No, you cannot act selflessly. Not because you are you, but because you are Homo sapiens. Our species, just like the other biological species, is not designed to act selflessly. Just that we are different because we carry the potential to rise a little above the self. Other species don't even have that potential. They act as per their biological framework.
But the self is such a beautiful thing. It deceives itself, and very successfully so, very finely so. Aren't we all convinced that a lot of our actions are selfless?
Listener: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: And we'll find it rather humiliating, disgusting, and annoying if someone tells us, even in this, you are just selfish, and in this, your selfishness is even more vicious because it is masking as selflessness. We'll react. We might even slap the speaker. You understand? A safe distance has to be maintained.
You donate to the temple, and you say, you know, this is just a selfless donation. Come on. People drop gods, and that's why it is convenient to have so many of them. You can do god hopping. This one didn't fulfill my desires. Forty-two coconuts, fifty-six shrines, and yet he is just smug and egoistic, you keep sitting atop your skies. I'm not visiting you anymore. There is a new god or goddess in town. Some new Baba Ji is making this one fashionable, getting it?
Our kids. Oh, we are so selfless towards our kids. Come on. The very structure of the sentence, notice it: I am selfless towards my kids. Is it possible to be more blind? And then we expect compliance and returns and obedience, basically ROI. No, none of that.
So trying to practice Nishkam karma, Selfless action, without knowing what self is, is self-deception, not selflessness. In fact, it is far better, more honest, and cleaner if someone says, this is what I'm giving to you because that is what I want in return. Saral kaam The desire is there, and the desire is openly expressed for what it is, a desire. Yes, I'm giving you something because I want something else in return. This is fine. At least better than desire wielded in expectations masked. Are you getting it?
So those who think of karmayog, when Shri Krishna talks of karmayog in the Bhagavad Gita, it simply means nishkam karmayog. Karmayog does not mean doing anything with total immersion and intensity. No, that is not karmayog. Karmayog is getting into it because it is right, and because it is right, I don't care for the results. That's karmayog.
First thing: karmayog is always nishkam. Second thing: nishkamta is not possible.
Desirelessness is not possible without encountering the falseness of the ego self.
We deceive ourselves doubly. First of all, we think of karmayog as being totally immersed in whatever one is doing. Right? I'm a butcher, and I'm a karmayogi because I'm a very dedicated butcher. There have been instances of thugs, robbers, and politicians calling themselves karmayogis. I'm a karmayogi. This is what I do, and I do it with total disdain for anything else. This is what I do, and I do it openly, brazenly, intensely. So I'm a karmayogi.
No, that's not karmayog. First thing: karmyog means nishkam Karmayog, not any action. Action decoupled from concern for the result is nishkam karma. And here again, we can deceive ourselves because it is possible, very possible, to convince oneself that one doesn't care for the result. You know, I'm bringing my kids up, and after that, I'll leave them free. Once they are sixteen or eighteen or twenty-five, I'll leave them to fly free, and I don't want to care or impose myself on them. They'll have all the freedom, and that emboldens me to call myself a nishkam karmayogi, because I'm putting a lot into my kids without expecting results.
No sir, it's just lack of self-knowledge that causes you to declare all this. You do not know how deep expectations are embedded within. You have convinced yourself that you are doing something selflessly. That's all. But the reality is very different.
The reality is that there is a definite desire for return. In fact, there is a definite desire to be called great also. And so you keep declaring to all and sundry that I do things selflessly. I'm such a great person. You see, the desire is not simple. It is actually complex and twofold. On one hand, you are cultivating desires like anybody else. On the other hand, you are so shrewd that you are declaring that there are no desires. And since there are no desires, can you please award me as the selfless father of the century?
No, I'm not asking for the award, but, you know, just for the sake of the world in general. I'm not asking for myself. You never eat even for yourself. I eat for the sake of bacteria in my gut. I'm feeding them. It's a donation, getting it?
Karmayog is nishkam karmayog and you cannot be desireless or selfless if you do not know the self, because the self is your default center. And that is the reason I'm saying chapter 2 should have been sufficient, because chapter 2 is Sankhya Yog. Sankhya yog, those seventy-two master verses have taken you into yourself, and nothing more is needed. Selfless action will follow. You won't even know you are selfless.
In Lao Tzu style. If you know you are selfless, then you are not just selfish but actually shrewd. The real selfless one would have no idea that he or she is selfless, because selflessness is not an image. Selflessness is not an idea. How can the really selfless one declare himself as selfless to call yourself? If I say I'm wearing blue, it is because I already know of something called blue, and then, matching the two, I'll say, this is blue. Selflessness is something totally new, nothing to be matched with. And there is nobody to do the matching.
If I do something, there is always a reason, a desire. The selfless one really would have no reason and nobody within eager to check whether or not he is selfless. There has to be somebody. There has to be a self to declare itself as selfless, right? If you're calling yourself selfless, who is it making the declaration? The self. The self is saying, I am?
Listener: Selfless.
Acharya Prashant: Nice, getting it?
You enter nishkam karmayog. I'll say, you perform selfless action, and then from there you will have to see that it is impossible to act selflessly without seeing. What a complex thing. What a deceptive thing this self is. Let's start from there. It's an outside-in approach now. You look at actions, and you have taken a vow: I will be selfless. Fine. Then observe your actions. You want to act selflessly. Observe your actions and find yourself failing again and again. Observe your actions and see that you're not selfless. And when you fail, then you will realize what a thing this self is.
You start from there, outside-in, from the action to the actor. What's the best way, however? Get to the actor straight away. The actor seen is actor purified. And once the actor is purified, what follows is action of the purest kind and the boldest kind, without any planning, without any effort, and without any expectation.
You'll do it because you cannot now avoid doing it. You will do it not as an option but as being; not as one of the choices but as the only option admissible. And then, there obviously will be total dedication, because you have no other road to go to, because you have no other option to choose. Everything else has been discarded, and this is the only thing that remains. There is no question of distraction or dissipation now. You'll have to be 100%. And you won't even know you are 100%. You just are simple, a smooth flow.
Unfortunately, we are so obsessed with action that ninety to ninety-five percent of our questions are in a particular format. This is my situation. Tell me what to do. This is my situation. What action should I take? Right? Isn't this the way we present our questions to others and to ourselves? Right?
What to do next? Where to go? What to choose? What to do? Seems to be the principal question facing us, and it is amusing because what to do is always in the context of a situation. This is the situation. Now what to do? Do we even understand the situation? The very description of the situation is flawed, or narrow, or shallow, and based on that description, we want to jump into some action. It's like entering the operation theater on a false diagnosis. You don't even know what the situation really is like, but you're too eager to act.
I have very few people ever asking me, can you help me understand this? We don't want to understand; we want to act. Why don't we want to understand? Because action is not really an enemy of the ego. Action is an extension of the ego. Understanding is the enemy of the ego. So the ego wants to avoid understanding like death. The ego is only too happy acting. Do this, go that side, start rolling, start jumping, run hard. That doesn't really displease the ego. What displeases the ego is the mirror. Look within. Look at yourself. And then we start shivering.
Therefore, we never say, “Please help me understand.” We always ask, “Can you prescribe an action? What to do?” It’s useless telling you what to do because, first of all, you do not know who you are and what the situation is in your context.
In fact, not understanding the situation itself is the problem. This situation that you are calling a problem is a problem exactly because it is not understood. But you still won’t understand. You would say, “No, no, the situation is how I have narrated it. I know the situation. The way I describe the situation is how the situation really is.” Having said that, now tell me the solution. Now tell me the solution in terms of action. What do I do now? What do I do now? What do I do now?
This is not a good question to ask: “What do I do now?” In fact, one of the things I am so frequently blamed for is, “He never gives solutions, never tells what to do.”
“I don't want you to illuminate me. I have come to you in just two minutes. You tell me what I should do, and I'll thank you for that.”
It's your life, and the doing will happen through your being. And if the being stands so corrupted, how can pure doing rise from there? You're rotten from the roots, and I want to address it there. But you're saying, “No, let the roots remain as they are. Don't address the roots. Just spray something on the leaves.” I can't do that. I don't have any prescribed action for your life. And if you want to remain the way you are, then you know your life much more intimately than I ever can. You do what you want to do. If you are to remain who you are, then you are the best judge. I'm nobody. Who am I?
How do I know what transpires in your office? How do I know what sits between you and your wife? How will I know that? Remaining who you are, you are the best judge. So you decide. My job is not to let you remain who you are. But you are saying you will remain who you are, and then I should tell the action. No, if you remain who you are, then you decide the action. Why should it be upon me?
You'll flow like a glacier does in the form of a river. The glacier you could call as the source, understanding, and if that is there, then the river will ensue. There is no stopping the river now because the glacier is there. The glacier is expressing itself as the river. So the glacier and the river are not two distinct things. Action is nothing but understanding in movement. The river is nothing but the glacier in movement. Therefore, these two are not separate.
Gyan and Karma. What's the path of knowledge or Adhyatmik path? That path says, know and let it flow. I know, and it flows from there. Which direction? I don't care. Consequences? I again don't care. All that I care for is consciousness. I will not allow myself to breathe in darkness even for a second. It kills. It is suffocating. To be alive is to know, and that is all. After that, I don't need to have willpower to act. Willpower is for the stupid. Willpower is for those who don't understand but still want to do something with resolution. Knowledge, gyan makes things like willpower sound very kiddish. You don't need willpower. You need understanding. Same for motivation. Motive is desire. You don't need motivation either. You need to understand.
And what is faith? Faith is that if I know, whatever follows will be auspicious, the action will be auspicious, and the result of the action too will be auspicious. I will not try to preempt, prepare in advance, or predict the result. No, I won't. That would be some kind of blasphemy. I know, and I let it flow. That's life. That's love. That's religion.
