Gita Rahasya -Tilak 50

Karma Yoga Sastra -Tilak

CHAPTER II THE DESIRE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ACTION (KARMA-JIJNASA) It is true that some concessions have been made in the Sastras to meet calamities like a famine which are technically known as ' apaddharma '. For instance, the writers of the Smrtis say that in such calamities ( apatkala ) a Brahmin incurs no sin, if he takes food in any place; and in the Chandogyo- panisad, there is even a story of Usasticakrayana having done so. But there is a world of differ- ence between those circumstances and the circumstance men- tioned above. In the case of famine, there is a conflict between religious principles on the one hand and hunger, thirst, and other bodily needs on the other, and the bodily organs drag you in one direction and religious principles in the opposite_direc- tion. But in many of the circumstances mentioned above, the conflict is not between bodily impulses and religious principles but there is an inter-conflict between two principles laid down in the Sastras themselves and it becomes necessary to consider minutely whether to follow this religious preoept or that; and though it may be possible for person? of ordinary intelligence to arrive at a decision on a few such occasions by considering what pure-minded persons have done in the past in similar cir- cumstances, yet on other occasions, even sages are puzzled; because, the more one thinks about a particular matter, more and more of doubts and counter-arguments come into existence, and it becomes very difficult to arrive at a definite conclusion; and if a proper decision is not arrived at, there is a risk of one's committing an unlawful thing or even a crime. Consi- dering the matter from this point of view, it will be seen that the discrimination between the lawful and the unlawful or between the doable and the not-doable becomes an independent science by itself, which is even more difficult than the sciences of logic or grammar. In old Sanskrit treatises, the word 'niti-sastra ' ( Ethics ) used to be applied principally to regal jurisprudence (raja-niti) and the doable and the not- doable used to be technically called ' dharmasastra '. But as the word ' niti ' includes both duty are good conduct, I have in this book referred to the discussion of the questions of righteousness and unrighteousness or of what ought to be done and what ought not be done, by the name ' niti-sastra '. In order to show that this science, which expounds Ethics, or shows what is doable and what is not-doable, or what is righteous and what unrighteous, is indeed a very difficult science, the sentence " suksma gatir hi dharmasya ",