3: Selfless Service
ARJUNA
1 O Krishna, you have said that knowledge is greater than action; why then do you ask me to wage this terrible war?
2 Your advice seems inconsistent. Give me one path to follow to the supreme good.
KRISHNA
3 At the beginning of time I declared two paths for the pure heart:jnana yoga, the contemplative path of spiritual wisdom, and karma yoga, the active path of selfless service.
4 One who shirks action does not attain freedom; no one can gainperfection by abstaining from work. 5 Indeed, there is no one who rests for even an instant; all creatures are driven to action by their own nature.
6 Those who abstain from action while allowing the mind to dwell on sensual pleasure cannot be called sincere spiritual aspirants.
7 But they excel who control their senses through the mind, using them for selfless service.
8 Fulfill all your duties; action is better than inaction. Even to maintain your body, Arjuna, you are obliged to act.
9 Selfish action imprisons the world. Act selflessly, without any thought of personal profit.
10 At the beginning, mankind and the obligation of selfless servicewere created together. “Through selfless service, you will always be fruitful and find the fulfillment of your desires”: this is the promise of the Creator.
11 Honor and cherish the devas as they honor and cherish you;through this honor and love you will attain the supreme good.
12 All human desires are fulfilled by the devas, who are pleased by selfless service. But anyone who enjoys the things given by the devas without offering selfless acts in return is a thief.
13 The spiritually minded, who eat in the spirit of service, are freed from all their sins; but the selfish, who prepare food for their own satisfaction, eat sin.
14 Living creatures are nourished by food, and food is nourished by rain; rain itself is the water of life, which comes from selfless worship and service.
15 Every selfless act, Arjuna, is born from Brahman, the eternal, infinite Godhead. Brahman is present in every act of service.
16 All life turns on this law, O Arjuna. Those who violate it, indulging the senses for their own pleasure and ignoring the needs of others, have wasted their life.
17 But those who realize the Self are always satisfied. Having found the source of joy and fulfillment, they no longer seek happiness from the external world.
18 They have nothing to gain or lose by any action; neither people nor things can affect their security.
19 Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life.
20 Do your work with the welfare of others always in mind. It was by such work that Janaka attained perfection; others too have followed this path.
21 What the outstanding person does, others will try to do. The standards such people create will be followed by the whole world.
22 There is nothing in the three worlds for me to gain, Arjuna, nor is there anything I do not have; I continue to act, but I am not driven by any need of my own.
23 If I ever refrained from continuous work, everyone would immediately follow my example.
24 If I stopped working I would be the cause of cosmic chaos, and finally of the destruction of this world and these people.
25 The ignorant work for their own profit, Arjuna; the wise work for the welfare of the world, without thought for themselves.
26 By abstaining from work you will confuse the ignorant, who are engrossed in their actions. Perform all work carefully, guided by compassion.
27 All actions are performed by the gunas of prakriti. Deluded by identification with the ego, a person thinks, “I am the doer.”
28 But the illumined man or woman understands the domain of the gunas and is not attached. Such people know that the gunas interact with each other; they do not claim to be the doer.
29 Those who are deluded by the operation of the gunas become attached to the results of their action. Those who understand these truths should not unsettle the ignorant.
30 Performing all actions for my sake, completely absorbed in the Self, and without expectations, fight! – but stay free from the fever of the ego.
31 Those who live in accordance with these divine laws without complaining, firmly established in faith, are released from karma.
32 Those who violate these laws, criticizing and complaining, are utterly deluded, and are the cause of their own suffering.
33 Even the wise act within the limitations of their own nature.
Every creature is subject to prakriti; what is the use of repression?
34 The senses have been conditioned by attraction to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant. Do not be ruled by them; they are obstacles in your path.
35 It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma, but competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and insecurity.
ARJUNA
36 What is the force that binds us to selfish deeds, O Krishna? What power moves us, even against our will, as if forcing us?
KRISHNA
37 It is selfish desire and anger, arising from the guna of rajas; these are the appetites and evils which threaten a person in this life.
38 Just as a fire is covered by smoke and a mirror is obscured bydust, just as the embryo rests deep within the womb, knowledge is hidden by selfish desire –
39 hidden, Arjuna, by this unquenchable fire for self-satisfaction, the inveterate enemy of the wise.
40 Selfish desire is found in the senses, mind, and intellect, misleading them and burying the understanding in delusion.
41 Fight with all your strength, Arjuna! Controlling your senses, conquer your enemy, the destroyer of knowledge and realization.
42 The senses are higher than the body, the mind higher than the senses; above the mind is the intellect, and above the intellect is the Atman. 43 Thus, knowing that which is supreme, let the Atman rule the ego. Use your mighty arms to slay the fierce enemy that is selfish desire.
Chapter Four, Wisdom in Action
Krishna is eager to grant Arjuna knowledge of the highest spiritual truths, or even a rare mystical vision; but Arjuna has been asking for Krishna to simply get him out of his present difficulties. Of course these difficulties are not minor – he is caught in a family tragedy that has developed into a vicious conflict. If he cannot extricate himself, he knows that he will have to take part in a catastrophic battle that no one wants.
So when Krishna begins to tell Arjuna about the “secret teachings” he will be privileged to hear because he is Krishna’s favorite devotee and friend, it hardly registers in Arjuna’s consciousness. His reply is confused. “How could you have taught any secret wisdom to the sages of old?” he asks.
At this point Krishna reminds Arjuna again of the process of rebirth. They have both been reborn many times, but naturally Arjuna does not remember his past lives because he has no access to this kind of knowledge. Krishna remembers his former births, but he is no ordinary being. He reveals that he has chosen to take on human birth many times for the welfare of the world. Whenever dharma, the law of life’s unity, declines, he wraps himself in his maya and takes on a finite form. Thus he returns age after age.
Vishnu, the preserving or sustaining person of the Hindu Trinity, is not mentioned here, but Krishna is usually looked upon as an incarnation of this aspect of God. As the Lord, Krishna explains, he dwells in every being, but he is manifested with special power in his incarnations or avatars. Avatara literally means descent: Vishnu is believed to descend and incarnate himself on earth from age to age to reestablish divine law (dharma). Without such intervention the entire created universe would go into decline.
The natural course of creation is to go through cycles of regeneration and decay, but Vishnu – Krishna – has compassion for all the suffering of the world, and comes himself to protect the good and destroy evil. Thus Vishnu has a special relationship with all beings: he personifies the aspect of God who so loves the world that he comes into it to reestablish the purity and happiness of the Golden Age.
Krishna here reveals a little of his hidden, divine nature. He tells Arjuna that mystical union with him is possible through devotion, by which one can enter the state of divine love in which one sees God in every creature. Krishna also takes on the role of creator. It is he who has patterned the world along the lines of guna and karma.
This mystic aspect of Krishna’s being dominates the Gita. In the Mahabharata, Krishna is a princely ally who is wise and daring in his support of his friend Arjuna. But the author of the Gita is not concerned with this Krishna; he turns his attention to the mystery of Krishna’s divine nature as an aspect of Vishnu. In this sense Krishna is the inner Self in all beings. His name comes from the Sanskrit root krish, “to draw to oneself, to attract.” He is the “attractive one,” the “Lord of loving attraction.” By another etymology, the word Krishna means “the dark one.” The author of the Gita sees revealed in him the ultimate Godhead, the supreme being. But this reality is often veiled, and then Krishna is seen as an ordinary human being – or, rather, as an exceptionally gifted man, but not as God.
Many of Krishna’s words make most sense when we
