10. brahmany adhaya karmani
sangam tyaktva karoii yah
lipyae na sa kayena
padmapattram iva 'mbhasã
(10) He who works, having given up attachment, resigning his actions to God, is not touched by sin, even as a lotus leaf (is untouched) by water.
The Gitã requires us, not to renounce works but to do them, offering them to the Supreme in which alone is immortality. When we renounce our attachment to the finite ego and its likes and dislikes and place our actions in the Eternal, we acquire the true renunciation which is consistent with free activity in the world. Such a renouncer acts not for his fleeting finite self but for the Self which is in us all.[1]
brahmany adhaya karmani. R. makes Brahman equivalent to prakrti.
11. kiyena manasã buddhya
kevalair indriyair api
yoginah karma kurvanti
sangam zyaktvã 'tmauddhcye
(11.) The yogis (men of action) perform works merely with the body, mind, understanding or merely with the senses, abandoning attachment, for the purification of their souls.
12. ayuktah karmaphalath tyaktvã
sangam apnoti naisthikim
ayuktai kãmakãreaa
pale Santo nibadhyale
(12) The soul earnest (or devoted) attains to peace well-founded, by abandoning attachment to the fruits of works, but he whose soul is not in union with the Divine is impelled by desire, and is attached to the fruit (of action) and is (therefore) bound.
yuktah, or disciplined in action.
santim. When the peace of God descends on us, Divine know-ledge floods our being with a light which illumines and trans-forms, making clear all that was before dark and obscure.
The Enlightened Self
13. sarvakarmam manasã
sañnyasyã 'step sukham
vasi navadvãre pure deli
nail 'vac curves na kãrayan
(13) The embodied (soul), who has controlled his nature having renounced all actions by the mind (inwardly) dwells at ease in the city of nine gates, neither working nor causing work to be done.
Cp. Kath.a Up., V, I.The nine gates are the two eyes, the two ears, the two nostrils, and the mouth and the two organs of excretion and generation. See Svetasvatara Up., III, i8.
