There were two people in the Master's divine homestead
One was a slave who was bonded and spent life distressed
The other was a servant, whose life's purpose was to serve
Both of them lived and worked together for life to preserve
Slavery was a miserable concept and little joy accrued
He didnt know the purpose of his life and felt insecured
Guilt drove his life and he felt depressed at failure
When any of his chores werent done and was in arrear
Service was a wonderful concept and great bliss obtained
He was always on purpose and knew that he wasnt constrained
Grace drove his life and he felt elated at every little chance
When he got an opportunity to serve and thus life to enhance
Life was spent in a tussle between the servant and the slave
While the Master provided equal work to both of his knaves
The slave's cries were always piteous and sought to distract
But servant's fortitude prevailed and life resumed without infract
5 comments:
I have read with great interest your latest composition entitled “Two Knaves”. The concept that you have defined in your verse is precisely what the Bhagawat Gita describes as Anasakthi Yoga or as it is otherwise known - Nishkama Karma. Both these Sanskrit words have, more or less, the same meaning, namely that one should perform the duties and responsibilities allotted to one, during one’s lifetime, by one’s prarabhda karma, without being attached to the results thereof. This stipulation is made, because the results of actions are not determined by the doer, but by destiny, and this is what the Gita means when it says through the immortal words of Krishna “Karmanyeva adhikarasthe, ma phaleshu katachana”.
However I feel that there in no verse in the entire Gita that has been more badly misunderstood, than the verse quoted above. What is meant in the verse is not that one should perform one’s duties, without EXPECTING the result. Such a performance will be a total impossibility, because no action, whether simple or complex, can be performed without expecting a result of some sort or the other. To illustrate, if you are walking on the road, when you put one foot in front of the other, you expect to go forward and not sideways or rearward. This applies with equal force to any other more complex action that you can think of.
What the shloka means, according to my understanding, is that though one cannot avoid performing every action with a specific result in mind, one should realize that the actual result that obtains as a consequence of that action, being controlled and coordinated by a just and benevolent God, (or if you prefer, by the accumulated force of one’s destiny over myriad births), may or may not coincide with what one expected, and one should therefore make no attempt to COMPARE one’s expectation with the actual result obtained. It is the disparity between the expected and actually obtained results that define the extent of one’s joy or sorrow that ensues as a consequence thereof. In other words one should teach oneself to accept with humility and gratitude all the results of one’s actions, whether expected or otherwise, with what the scriptures describe as “PRASADA BUDHI”. We are not strangers to the practice of prasada budhi, as may be seen from our readiness to accept with reverence any prasadam that is given to us in a temple, without questioning for a moment its suitability from the hygienic point of view, and without worrying about the state of cleanliness of the pujari, who hands out the prasadam. We are able to attribute divinity to the prasadam, because we believe that , irrespective of all other considerations, it has been sanctified by the touch of the Lord on whose behalf it is being distributed by the pujari. The shloka quoted above says, according to me, that if one is able to attribute the same divinity to all the results of our actions, whether favourable or otherwise, as coming from the feet of the Lord, without making any attempt to compare it with the result that we had anticipated, at the time of performing the action, we would have succeeded in scaling the heights of a true karmayogi.
In your verse I can identify the Master, who provided equal work to both his assistants (though you have for some reason preferred to call them knaves), as the Lord Himself, and the slave, as the person who goes through life without understanding the meaning of karma yoga and the servant as the personification of a true karmayogi.
There are times when we perform actions without expecting any results at all. Nature does that all the time: when the sun shines it does so without expecting anything in return for its services. Likewise I am asked to write poetry but I have no expectation that anyone will read it at all. True service doesnt expect anything back at all. It is totally unconditional. Difficult to achieve in practice but nonetheless a possibility.
I have seen your rejoinder to my comments on your verse, entitled “ Two knaves”. I am in entire agreement with your statement that true service is something that is performed without expecting any recompense. Your observation that the sun is shining impartially on all and sundry, without expecting anything in return, is also absolutely right and no one, in his right senses, can have any difference of opinion on this point.
But in my earlier comments, I was referring neither to the “acts” performed by insentient nature, nor to the expectation, by any sentient being, for any reward for selfless service to humanity.
If you analyse ANY action and I repeat ANY action, and strip it down to its bare bones, you will find that each one of these actions, is indeed performed with a specific expectation of a particular result. In the instant case of your writing poetry, while it is true that you have no expectation that anyone would ever read or appreciate your composition, is it not equally true that as you typed out your poetic output, you expected that the lines you had in mind will appear, in print, on the monitor of your computer?
Similarly, talking about truly selfless service, I cannot offhand think of any more appropriate example of such service other that the efforts of Matha Amirthanandamayi, to construct and hand over pucca houses, totally free of cost, to those who had lost all their earthly possessions, in the devastating tsunami of December 26th, a few years ago. The Mathaji certainly would not have expected any praise or commendation for her selfless service, from any one, much less from the actual beneficiaries of her generosity. But that is only one expectation, that she did not have. But coming right down to the basics, don’t you think that at the time of formalizing the proposal for the construction of the houses, she would have had other expectations, such as for example, that the plan should find fulfillment in quick time, or that the necessary funds for the work, should be forthcoming without any hiccup and so on and so forth?
You will therefore agree that no action, however trivial or complicated, it may be, can ever, be performed, with a mind that is in a comatose state, in which ALL expectations stand totally annihilated.
You must remember that any physical action, is invariably first conceived in the mind, before it finds its fulfillment in the realm of corporeal activity, and such an initial mental conception, is a total impossibility, in the absence of an expectation of a result, in some form or the other. It is this expectation that we should refrain from comparing to the actual result that is obtained as
a consequence to that action, because the Lord says that He is the giver of the result and we have the freedom of choice, only, to perform the action itself, albeit with the expectation of a result of our choice, for the materialization of which the Lord gives no guarantee.
Nature is not insentient. Secondly, cause and effect is different from having expectations. When I type on the keyboard, that is a cause and the effect is that something appears on the monitor. But I am certainly not typing each key with an expectation. Sometimes it helps not to approach a problem intellectually, and instead use the heart.
I had stated that nature is insentient, only with specific reference to that line in your commentary, wherein you had mentioned that the sun is shining without expecting any return for its services. That statement of mine should not be understood to have blanket applicability to all aspects of nature’s functioning. As far as the sun is concerned, it is certainly not conscious of conferring any benefit to humanity by shining, and hence the question of its expecting any return for its “services” just does not arise at all.
You have stated , in your rejoinder that cause and effect, are different from having expectations. I am not sure if this averment can be accepted in its entirety, for the following reasons=
While expectation is a part of one’s mental activity, both cause and effect pertain, in the normal course, to things that happen in the physical plane. In that sense, and only in that sense, your statement that expectation is different from cause and effect seems, to me, to be acceptable. Please note that when I make this statement, I am leaving out of the ambit of its coverage, psychic phenomena such as psychokinesis, or demonstrations of the power of mind over matter etc. that are demonstrated by seers and other enlightened ones, from time to time.
However the cause and effect that you have mentioned, both of which are physical functions, are synonymous with the action and the “achieved result”, that I have referred to in my earlier comments on your verse. My understanding of the Gita is that one should not compare this “achieved result”, (which, in any case, is in God’s providence to sanction, based on one’s prarabhtha karma), with the initial mental process of expectation, prior to its translation into physical action (CAUSE), that ensued as a result thereof.
You have rightly stated that your typing on the keyboard of your computer is the ACTION, but your next statement that SOMETHING appears on your monitor as a result, probably needs reconsideration. That “SOMETHING” that you have referred to is the result which needs the sanction of the Lord for manifestation. Though you may not consciously be aware of it, the fact remains that when you started typing, you certainly EXPECTED to see the lines that you had composed in your mind to appear on the monitor as a result of your typing. If instead, your monitor had displayed something in a different language, it would certainly have been a matter of surprise for all concerned. Cause and effect are not always predictable with any degree of infallibility and that is where the lines of the Gita assume relevance
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