'Work Without Desire' — The Most Misunderstood Teaching of the Gita
The Gita doesn't say, ‘Do not clamour for results and just keep doing whatever you are doing.’ The starting point is not work or action. The starting point is the choice of work. When work has been chosen rightly out of self-awareness, then you will have no desire to worry about what you will get from the work. There is so much love in it that there is no need left to desire anything from the future. One says, "It is sufficient that I'm able to act rightly. It would be ingratitude to ask for more." That is niṣkāma karma.
This summary is AI-generated. Please read the full article for complete understanding.
Acharya Prashant: Glad to be here with all of you and let's have a deep, real, intense conversation, with a lot of tools and shows on anything that you consider important to yourself. It doesn't matter if the thing looks small or big, but if it's important to you, it deserves to be taken up today. The session is all yours. Let's begin with your questions, please.
Questioner: Good evening Acharya Prashant Ji. A very warm welcome to IIIT Bangalore. We are privileged to have you here. So, I am Shrutanuka. I'm from the outreach and media department of IIIT Bangalore. So, a very common question and a common doubt among students is that you talk a lot about the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedanta, which focuses on doing work without any attachment to the rewards.
But nowadays students' lives are very much attached to the rewards, the grades, the placements, the opportunities. So, in this world where we are constantly chasing these things, how can a student keep going towards knowledge without the expectation of getting rewards at each stage? How to keep them motivated? That's my question. Thank you.
