God, Nature, and Right Action

Having shown Arjuna the eternal nature of the soul, Krishna turned to the nature of the world and of action, to the great question that Arjuna's paralysis had raised: what should a soul do, and how, and in what spirit?

The whole physical universe, Krishna taught, with all its changing forms, is the lower energy of the Divine, called Prakriti, material nature; and behind it and within it stands the Supreme, Paramātma, whose will upholds all its changes. And the individual soul, the jīvātma, is an eternal fragment of the Supreme, which, bound in material nature, struggles with the mind and the senses, and passes from body to body carrying its accumulated tendencies as the wind carries fragrance from place to place.

And the soul is bound to this wheel of birth and death by one thing above all: by its clinging to the fruits of its actions, by its desire to be the doer and to seize the rewards of what it does.

And now Krishna gave the great practical teaching, the one that answers Arjuna's despair directly, the doctrine of nishkāma karma, action without desire for its fruits:

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।

मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥

karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadāchana

mā karmaphalahetur bhūr mā te saṅgo 'stv akarmaṇi

You have a right to your action, Krishna said, but never to its fruits. Do not act for the sake of the reward; but do not, on that account, fall into inaction either. Here is the resolution of Arjuna's whole crisis. He must not abandon his duty and flee the battle; that would be a failure of his dharma. But neither must he fight for the sake of the kingdom, the victory, the fruits; that grasping is the very thing that binds the soul.

He must fight because it is his duty, his dharma as a warrior and as the defender of the right, and he must fight with his whole strength, but with complete detachment from what the fighting will win him, offering the action itself as a consecrated thing and leaving its fruits to the Divine.

This is one of the deepest and most liberating teachings the world has been given, and it is worth dwelling on, for it applies not to Arjuna alone but to every one of us in every duty we face. We are torn, so often, between two errors: between grasping so hard at the fruits of our action that we are enslaved by hope and fear and are corrupted into doing wrong to gain our ends; and, on the other side, between despairing and abandoning our duty altogether because its fruits seem too painful or too uncertain.

And the Gītā's answer cuts between them: do your duty, fully, with all your strength, because it is your duty; but release your grip on its fruits, do not act for the reward, offer the action itself and let the outcome be what it will be. To act so is to be free: free from the anxiety of the grasping, free from the paralysis of the despairing, free to do the right thing wholly for its own sake.

The action continues, for the world's order must be upheld and our duties must be done; but the selfish desire behind it is surrendered, and in that surrender the soul is freed from the very bondage that action would otherwise create. The doer becomes a witness; the modes of nature do the work; and the self, offering all to the Divine, remains untouched and free.