Talks on the Gita -Vinoba 222

Chapter 18 CONCLUSION: RENUNCIATION OF THE FRUIT OF ACTIONS LEADS TO THE GRACE OF THE LORD 104. An Insight Into Swadharma 13. In short, rajasik and tamasik actions are to be renounced without exception and sattvik actions that come to us in the natural course should be done, even if they have some flaws in them. Let them be defective. If you try to avoid their defects, other defects will overtake you. If your nose is crooked, let it be so. If you attempt to cut it to make it beautiful, it will look more frightful. You should be what you are; trying to do something unnatural would invite trouble. Sattvik actions may be defective, but as they come to us in the natural course, they should be done; only their fruit should be renounced. 14. There is one more thing to say. You must not take up the karma that has not come to you in the natural course, even if you feel that you could do it quite excellently. Do only what has come to you in the natural course. Do not go out of the way to take on new tasks which are not naturally yours. Avoid the work which needs a lot of deliberate efforts to build it up, even though it appears attractive. Do not be tempted by it; for, renunciation of fruit is possible only in the case of the karma that comes to you in the natural course. If a man begins to run after each and every karma, imagining that ‘this is good and that also is good’, renunciation of fruit is inconceivable. This will result in nothing but making a mess of one’s life. It is with the desire of having its fruit that one will do the karma that one is not duty-bound to do, and still the fruit will elude him. Life will then always be unsteady and unsettled. The mind will get attached to that karma. Even if sattvik karma is found tempting, one should keep away from that temptation. If you try to pursue a variety of sattvik karma, rajas and tamas will creep into them. You must therefore restrict yourself to the sattvik karma which comes to you as your natural swadharma. 15. Swadharma is comprised of swadeshi dharma, swajateeya dharma (duties arising out of one’s being a part of a particular community) and swakaleen dharma (duties appropriate for the time). These three together constitute swadharma. While deciding about one’s swadharma, one is required to take into account what is appropriate to one’s nature and tendencies and what are the duties that have fallen to him. You have something in you which makes you what you are. That is why you are different from others. Everybody has something that is distinctively his own. A goat can develop itself as a goat; if it aspires to be a cow, it is impossible. It can never give up its ‘goatness’. To give up the ‘goatness’ it will have to give up its body; it will have to die to take a new body and acquire a new dharma. In the present birth, that ‘goatness’ alone is sacred for it. You must be knowing the story of the bull and the frog. There is a limit beyond which a frog cannot inflate its body. It will die if it tries to become as big as a bull. It is not right to imitate others. That is why it is said that taking up another’s dharma is disastrous.