Contents
Shri Sankara's Gita Bhashya
(Sri Sankaracharya's Commentary on the Gita)
CHAPTER -4
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Content with what comes to him by chance, having the feeling ot satiety by what comes to him unsolicited; having transcended the pairs of opposites such as cold and heat; free from envy, having no feeling of opposition; even-minded in success and failure, remain ing the same whether chance favours or fails him He who is an ascetic of such a nature, feeling no joy or dejec tion and being the same whether he obtains or not the objects such as food required for maintaining the body, seeing inaction in action and vice versa, steady in the perception of the true nature of the Self, always reckoning when going through such acts as begging or doing anything else through the body etc. for the bare maintenance of the body, I am doing nothing[1] the gunas act on the gunas[2]' and thus realising the non-agency of the Self,-he really performs no act, not even the act of begging etc. However, since he appears to act according to the general way of the world, doership is imputed to him by the people of the world and (in that sense) he is (imagined a») the agent of the act of begging and the like. But in his own experience, founded on the authorita tive teaching of Scripture, he is surely no agent. He, such a person to whom others impute agency, though acting, performing such actions as begging, needed for the bare sustenance of the body, is not bound; because action and its cause, which are productive of bondage, have been consumed by the fire of Knowledge. This is only a reiteration of what has been stated already.[3] |
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