Desire or Surrender? The Hidden Truth of Karma!
Questioner: The questioner is Anjali. She's asking Acharya Ji, the Gita talks about nishkam karm, you have also mentioned it briefly today. So while I currently see whatever actions I take in life comes from some desire, for example going to the gym to stay fit, working to be financially independent, studying because one loves the subject and wants to achieve greater heights and so forth. So how do we really understand this iIn spirituality, how does one discern what right desire is in daily context?
Acharya Prashant: You cannot begin by asking what the right desire is. You have to start with asking where your bondages are. So it starts with self-observation, Anjali. You look at yourself and you find yourself in all kinds of chains and traps and then you know what the right desire is.
Once you know where you are chained, you already have the right desire. The right desire is to break the chain. But I cannot talk of the right desire without knowing where you are in bondage, in domination, in greed, in fear. It begins with an observation, and admission of your own state, right? The right desire is a desire to be free, to be at ease, to be able to flow. To be without fear, that is the right desire. But when we say the right desire is about being fearless, first of all you have to figure out where your fears are. So so figure them out and then fight them with all that you have. That is the right desire.
See, in the right desire, it is not as if the person or the personal motive disappears. This is very important to understand. It does not disappear. It gets aligned. It does not disappear. It gets aligned. with something beyond you. The desire of the person gets aligned with a purpose beyond the person. Think of a vast battlefield, right? And you have a large number of soldiers fighting the enemy and I'm calling it let's say the dharmyuddha the right battle. Now you might be one of those soldiers. That soldier is probably engaged with just one or two of the enemy soldiers. How many enemy soldiers are you seeing and engaging? Maybe just one and two. And these one or two are right now your personal battle, your personal adversaries, are they not? It's a personal thing.
There is this fellow in front of me and I have to knock him down. But this personal objective is aligned with a battle beyond the person. Are you getting it? So while you are fighting a personal battle seemingly, yet that battle is not really personal. Because the war has a larger purpose. Otherwise you can look at any particular soldier and say well you ought to be desireless because dharmyuddha is also about being Nishkam. So why are you so charged up about beating your adversary? You should be desireless. Why do you have the desire to defeat your enemy? Sir there is a desire but this desire is aligned with a purpose beyond my little self. And this is called surrender. I have surrendered my desire to a larger objective which does not mean that I no more have any desire. I have a desire but it is an aligned desire like a part of a large machine. The part does have its individuality, no? but the movement of the part is submitted to the overall functioning of the machine. There's an alignment. Are you getting it?
And that's the way to live. Your will gets aligned with a larger will. Not that you do not want to keep yourself fit. Anjali said that well I go to the gym, I do this. Yes, you do go to the gym and that makes you fitter as a body, as a person. But what do you go to the gym for? Why do you want to be fitter? What do you need a fitter and stronger body for? If you need a fitter and a stronger body for the right purpose, then these two things have now become aligned. Yes, I'm going to the gym and that is benefiting my body but then my body is not for my sake. My body is aligned to something beyond myself. So even as it may appear that I am benefiting my own little body by going to the gym, the fact is that my fitness or strength are in service of a larger purpose. And that makes me be at a very nice position, you see.
I don't have to drop the body. In fact, I have all the incentive to keep the body, strong, fit, agile, but not for myself. Not for myself. So, you can have a Nishkaam Karmyogi in the gym and you can also have a random commoner in the gym and they both might appear to be working out with the same intensity. But never go by actions. Actions! Actions delude.
You have to look at what that action is for. You have to look at the state of the actor. One of them is building his body so that he looks sexier and attracts attention. And the other one is building the body so that the body can be used as a better weapon in the right battle. And they both are training side by side. Outwardly when you look at them you may actually not find much of a difference and you will say look at this one look at this one they are doing much the same thing. They're doing the same thing outwardly, outwardly. Inwardly they are very different one is building the body for her own sake the other is building the body to surrender the body to a larger battle.
This alignment, this alignment is surrender. Surrender does not mean that you go and dum the body somewhere and say I know I have surrendered my body. Why should I feed the body? Why should I clean the body? Why should I exercise? No, the body is there but now the body does not exist to serve my pretty purposes and my little desires. I kind of become a trustee of the body. There is this body and this body is a surrendered thing. This body is in the service of something far bigger than my ego. Are you getting it?
No action is right or wrong. Which means no action is recommended or prohibited. Prescribed or pro-scribed. Actions can be very deceptive, mind you. You have to look at the actor. Where is that action coming from? Human history is replete with instances where great people were ostracized and calmanized just because we looked at their deeds and we didn't have the eyes to look into the doer. And equally history is full of instances where very ordinary people nay evil people were felicitated, fitted and even worshipped. because they demonstrated the right kind of actions.
A man with a lot of money can be a selfless one if that money is for a purpose. And even a beggar can be evil if he is begging just for his own sake. Tomorrow I'll beg again and feed the stomach and that's all.
