The Gita according to Gandhi 133

The Gita according to Gandhi -Mahadev Desai

DELUSION DESTROYED (Discourse 18) From that point of view, says the Law, even abandonment of action may be tainted and questionable if it is selfish, since like all other things abandonment too is of three kinds sattuika, rajasa and tamasa. Therefore, even austerity, sacrifice and charity, if they are to be the purifying agents that they are known to be, have to be pursued without desire for fruit and without attachment (as we have already seen in the seventeenth discourse). Then there are obligatory acts that one has to perform as a member of the social organism, and they may not be abandoned. To abandon them out of a deluded sense of one's being above those humdrum tasks, is blind tamasa abandonment indeed. To abandon them because they are troublesome or arduous is sheer selfishness rajasa abandonment. The ideal abandonment is the abandonment of fruit and of the attachment in respect of all action that comes to one's lot. That indeed is pure tyaga and pure sannyasa, call it what one will. As for sannyasa — renunciation of all action it is a physical impossibility so long as one bears the body: it is only the fruit and attachment that can be the objects of abandonment, and those must be abandoned by all aspiring to be free from the cycle of birth and death. Those who do not abandon the desire for fruit cannot escape the reward good, bad, or mixed in the shape of rebirth in the different species (XVIII. 1-12).