Question: Why does Sri
Krishna ask us in the Gita to work without attachment? It seems no one can act
without attachment.
Answer:
Because attachment leads to bondage—I mean psychological bondage. We work for
some purpose—to gain wealth, happiness, etc. When we obtain our desired goal,
we start liking the work we did, and also start loving the object or goal which
was obtained. This is called attachment. It is like a fly which comes to suck
honey but gets stuck to it.
Question: How can one always work without attachment?
Answer:
There are various means suggested, even in the Gita. The first method is not to
seek the fruits of action. Second, surrender all works and their fruits to God.
Thirdly, a person who does not believe in God, should repeatedly tell
himself/herself: ‘I must be unattached, I must be unattached.’
Question: If there is no
attachment, there won’t be any joy in work and life will become
a burden and all actions drudgery.
Answer:
True. Without love, attachment and concentration, none can get joy or
happiness. Hence, we must have both attachment and detachment. The Holy Mother
Sri Sarada Devi had both. She was intensely attached to Radhu, so much so that
she could not live without her even for a day. Radhu would sleep with her on
the same bed. The Holy Mother’s attachment to Radhu was just like that of an
ordinary worldly mother, even much more intensified. But, during her last days,
she commanded that Radhu should be kept away from her because she did not even
like to see her. She had, she said, detached her mind from Radhu.
Question: This is indeed remarkable. But, how could she do it?
Answer: The
Holy Mother has herself answered this question. She says that the mind of a
person who contemplates on spiritual truths like God, the nature of the
universe, the Ultimate Truths, etc., becomes so pure that it sticks to any
object on which it is set, with such an intensity that it looks like
attachment. But in reality it is not attachment.
Question: You mean to suggest
that one must think of God to develop non-attachment?
Answer:
Yes. The practice of meditation on God involves both, an effort for
concentration, and secondly, also an effort at with- drawing the mind from
objects and ideas other than God.
Question: Can any action be
based on past karma?
Answer: You
probably mean that the action which we perform is prompted by past karma. Yes.
We are prompted by our past karmas to act in a particular manner. But, we also
have free will. We can alter the action, at least to some extent, by our will.
We are not puppets in the hands of our past karmas. If this were the case, no
spiritual practice would have been possible. There would not have been any
possibility to overcome any weakness.
Question: Most actions, at some point of time, make us
conscious of fruits. If so, how can work be done without the thought of fruits of action?
Answer: Our
mind has got into the bad habit of thinking too much about the fruits of
action. We fix a target, a goal, plan for it and then act. There is no harm in
this type of planning. But too much obsession with the fruits, results, of
actions leads to attachment and suffering. Here is what Swami Vivekananda has
to say about it:
‘We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we
expect. We get misery in return for our love; not from the fact that we love,
but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there
is no want. Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the
laws of success and failure.
‘The great secret of true success, of true happiness, then,
is this: the man, who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish man, is the
most successful. It seems to be a paradox. Do we not know that every man who is
unselfish in life gets cheated, gets hurt? Apparently, yes. Christ was
unselfish and yet he was crucified. True, but we know that this unselfishness
is the reason, the cause of a great victory—the crowning of millions upon
millions of lives with the blessings of true success.
‘Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to
give; it will come back to you—but do not think of that now, it will come back
multiplied a thousand fold—but the attention must not be on that. Yet have the
power to give: give and there it ends. Learn that the whole of life is giving,
that nature will force you to give. So, give willingly. Sooner or later you
will have to give up. You come into life to accumulate. With clenched hands you
want to take. But nature puts a hand on your throat and makes your hand open…. 1
‘Be therefore, not a beggar; be unattached. This is the most terrible
task of life! You do not calculate the dangers on the path. Even by
intellectually recognizing the difficulties, we really do not know them until
we feel them…. Nature wants us to react, to return blow for blow, cheating for
cheating, lie for lie, to hit back with all our might. Then it requires a super
divine power not to hit back, to keep control to be unattached.’2
References
1. CW of SV, 2:4-5. 2. CW of SV, 2:5.
