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Chapter 14
THE GUNAS: DEVELOPING THEM AND GOING BEYOND THEM
78. Cure For Rajas: Living Within The Bounds Of Swadharma
15. Another effect of the rajas is the loss of stability and patience. Rajas wants immediate results. A slight obstruction therefore makes man give up the activity. He starts new projects endlessly, leaving earlier projects incomplete. A man full of rajas is always vacillating between different activities. The result is that nothing concrete is achieved. ‘राजसं चलमधु्वम्’. A rajasic activity is invariably marked with fickleness, wavering and lack of firmness. A man with rajas is like a child who sows a seed and impatiently digs after a few minutes to find out whether it has sprouted. He is impatient to have everything quickly and lacks restraint. He does not know how to plant his feet firmly on the ground. Having done some work at a place and earned some recognition, he wants to go to other places seeking recognition there. Rather than doing concrete work steadily at one place, he prefers hopping from place to place in the pursuit of name and fame. His mind is fixed on that only. This lands him in a terrible condition. 16. Under the influence of rajas, man intrudes into all sorts of activities. He forgets his swadharma. In fact, performance of swadharma implies giving up all other activities. Karmayoga as enjoined by the Gita is the cure for rajas. Everything in rajas is unsteady and fickle. If the water falling on the mountaintop runs down in different directions, all of it disappears eventually; but if it flows down in a single stream, it becomes a river, gathers strength and benefits all. Similarly, if a man concentrates all his energy and applies it to a single task in an orderly manner instead of frittering it away in a variety of activities, it will prove fruitful. That is why pursuit of swadharma is important. One should, therefore, always reflect upon one’s swadharma and devote all energies to it. The mind should never be drawn to anything else. This is the test for swadharma. Karmayoga does not mean excessive or stupendous work. Karmayoga is not about how much you work. Karmayoga of the Gita is something quite different. The distinctive feature of karmayoga is the performance of swadharma, which is in tune with our nature and which comes to us naturally and inescapably, without any attention to the fruit, and progressive purification of the mind thereby. Otherwise, activities are continually going on in the world. Karmayoga means doing everything with a particular frame of mind. Sowing seeds in the field is not the same thing as throwing them here and there. There is a world of difference between these two actions. We know what we gain by sowing seeds and what we lose by throwing them. Karma that the Gita prescribes is like sowing the seeds. There is tremendous potency in performing one’s swadharma which is one’s duty. Here no effort is too great. There is, therefore, no scope for running around helter skelter. |
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