Bhagavadgita -Radhakrishnan 55

The Bhagavadgita -S. Radhakrishnan

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 12. The Way of Action: Karma-marga He accepts things as they come and leaves them without regret, when necessary.If there is hostility to the method of works, it is not hostility to work as such but to the theory of salvation by works. If ignorance, avidya, is the root evil, wisdom or jnana is the sovereign remedy. Realization of wisdom is not what is accomplished in time. Wisdom is ever pure and perfect and is not the fruit of an act. An eternal attainment devoid of change cannot be the result of a temporary act. But karma prepares for wisdom. In his commentary on Sanatsujatiya, Samkara says : "Liberation is accomplished by wisdom, but wisdom does not spring without the purification of the heart. Therefore, for the purification of the heart one should per-form all acts of speech, mind and body, prescribed in the srutis and the srutis, dedicating them to the Supreme Lord " Work done in such a spirit becomes a yaj or sacrifice. Sacrifice is a making sacred to the Divine. It is not deprivation or self-immolation but a spontaneous self-giving, a surrender to a greater consciousness of which we are a limitation. By such a surrender, the mind becomes purified of its impurities and shares the power and knowledge of the Divine. Action performed in the spirit of a yanay or sacrifice ceases to be a source of bondage. The Bhagavadgita gives us a religion by which the rule of karma, the natural order of deed and consequence, can be transcended. There is no element of caprice or arbitrary interference of a transcendent purpose within the natural order. The teacher of the Gitã recognizes a realm of reality where karma does not operate and if we establish our relations with it, we are free in our deepest being. The chain of karma can be broken here and now, within the flux of the empirical world. We become masters of karma by developing detachment and faith in God. For the wise sage who lives in the Absolute, it is con-tended that nothing remains to be done, tasyakãryañ na vidyate. The seer of truth has no longer the ambition to do or to achieve. When all desires are destroyed, it is not possible to act. Uttaragita states the objection thus : "For the yogi who has become accomplished as the result of having drunk the nectar of wisdom, no further duty remains ; if any remains, he is not a real knower of truth."