By Eknath Easwaran

The Gita does not present a system of philosophy. It offers something to every seeker after God, of whatever temperament, by whatever path. The reason for this universal appeal is that it is basically practical: it is a handbook for Self-realization and a guide to action.

Some scholars will find practicality a tall claim, because the Gita is full of lofty and even abstruse philosophy. Yet even its philosophy is not there to satisfy intellectual curiosity; it is meant to explain to spiritual aspirants why they are asked to undergo certain disciplines. Like any handbook, the Gita makes most sense when it is practiced.

As the traditional chapter titles put it, the Gita is brahmavidyayam yogashastra, a textbook on the supreme science of yoga. But yoga is a word with many meanings – as many, perhaps, as there are paths to Self-realization. What kind of yoga does the Gita teach?

The common answer is that it presents three yogas or even four – the four main paths of Hindu mysticism. In jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge, aspirants use their will and discrimination to disidentify themselves from the body, mind, and senses until they know they are nothing but the Self. The followers of bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion, achieve the same goal by identifying themselves completely with the Lord in love; by and large, this is the path taken by most of the mystics of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In karma yoga, the yoga of selfless action, the aspirants dissolve their identification with body and mind by identifying with the whole of life, forgetting the finite self in the service of others. And the followers of raja yoga, the yoga of meditation, discipline the mind and senses until the mind-process is suspended in a healing stillness and they merge in the Self.

Indians like to classify, and the eighteen chapters of the Gita are said to break into three six-chapter parts. The first third, according to this, deals with karma yoga, the second with jnana yoga, and the last with bhakti yoga: that is, the Gita begins with the way of selfless action, passes into the way of Self-knowledge, and ends with the way of love. This scheme is not tight, and non-Hindu readers may find it difficult to discover in the text. But the themes are there, and Krishna clearly shifts his emphasis as he goes on using this one word yoga. Here he focuses on transcendental knowledge, there on selfless action, here on meditation, there on love.

Thus the Gita offers something for every kind of spiritual aspirant, and for two thousand years each of the major schools of Indian philosophy has quoted the Gita in defense of its particular claims. This fluidity sometimes exasperates scholars, who feel the Gita contradicts itself. It also puzzled Arjuna, the faithful representative of you and me. “Krishna,” he says at the beginning of chapter 3, “you’ve been telling me that knowledge [jnana] is better than action [karma]; so why do you urge me into such terrible action? Your words are inconsistent; they confuse me. Tell me one path to the highest good” (3:1–2). No doubt he speaks for every reader at this point, and for those who go on wanting one path only, the confusion simply grows worse.

For those who try to practice the Gita, however, there is a thread of inner consistency running through Krishna’s advice. Like a person walking around the same object, the Gita takes more than one point of view. Whenever Krishna describes one of the traditional paths to God he looks at it from the inside, extolling its virtues over the others. For the time being, that is the path; when he talks about yoga, he means that one particular yoga. Thus “this ancient word” yoga, says Gandhi’s intimate friend and secretary, Mahadev Desai,

is pressed by the Gita into service to mean the entire gamut of human endeavor to storm the gates of heaven. . . . [It means] the yoking of all the powers of the body and the mind and soul to God; it means the discipline of the intellect, the mind, the emotions, the will, which such a yoking presupposes; it means a poise of the soul which enables one to look at life in all its aspects and evenly.

The Gita brings together all the specialized senses of the word yoga to emphasize their common meaning: the sum of what one must do to realize the Self.

The thread through Krishna’s teaching, the essence of the Gita, can be given in one word: renunciation. This is the common factor in the four yogas. It is a bleak word in English, conjuring up the austerity and self-deprivation enjoined on the monastic orders – the “poverty, chastity, and obedience” so perfectly embodied by Francis of Assisi. When the Gita promises “freedom through renunciation,” the impression most of us get is that we are being asked to give up everything we want out of life; in this drab state, having lost whatever we value, we will be free from sorrow. Who wants that kind of freedom?

But this is not at all what the Gita means. It does not even enjoin material renunciation, although it certainly encourages simplicity. As always, its emphasis is on the mind. It teaches that we can become free by giving up not material things, but selfish attachments to material things – and, more important, to people. It asks us to renounce not the enjoyment of life, but the clinging to selfish enjoyment whatever it may cost others. It pleads, in a word, for the renunciation of selfishness in thought, word, and action – a theme that is common to all mystics, West and East alike.

Mahatma Gandhi encapsulates the Gita’s message in one phrase: nishkama karma, selfless action, work free from any selfish motives. In this special sense, whatever path the Gita is presenting at a given time, it remains essentially a manual of karma yoga, for it is addressed to the person who wants to realize God without giving up an active life in the world. In the Gita the four traditional yogas are not watertight compartments, and in practice, all of them blend and support each other on the path to Self-realization.

Nishkama karma means literally work that is without kama, that is, without selfish desire. This word kama – indeed the whole idea of desire in Hindu and Buddhist psychology – is frequently misunderstood. These religions, it is sometimes held, teach an ideal of desireless action, a nirvana equated with the extinction of all desires. This drab view is far from the truth. Desire is the fuel of life; without desire nothing can be achieved, let alone so stupendous a feat as Self-realization. Kama is not desire; it is selfish desire. The Buddha calls it tanha,“ thirs.”: the fierce, compulsive craving for personal satisfaction that demands to be slaked at any cost, whether to oneself or to others. Thus the concept also includes what Western mystics call self-will – the naked ego insisting on getting what it wants for its own gratification. The Gita teaches simply that this selfish craving is what makes a person feel separate from the rest of life. When it is extinguished – the literal meaning of nirvana – the mask of the transient, petty empirical ego falls, revealing our real Self.

Work hard in the world without any selfish attachment, the Gita counsels, and you will purify your consciousness of self-will. In this way any man or woman can gradually attain freedom from the bondage of selfish conditioning.

This is a mental discipline, not just a physical one, and I want to repeat that to understand the Gita, it is important to look beneath the surface of its injunctions and see the mental state involved. Nishkama karma is not “good works” or philanthropic activity; work can benefit others and still carry a substantial measure of ego involvement. Such work is good, but it is not yoga. It may benefit others, but it will not necessarily benefit the doer. Everything depends on the state of mind. Action without selfish motive purifies the mind: the doer is less likely to be ego-driven later. The same action done with a selfish motive entangles a person further, precisely by strengthening that motive so it is more likely to prompt selfish action again.

In the Gita this is said in many ways, and from differences in language it may seem that Krishna is giving different pieces of advice. In practice, however, it becomes evident that these are only various ways of saying the same thing.

To begin with, Krishna often tells Arjuna to “renounce the fruits of action” (karma-phala):

You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind. (2:47–48)

“Fruits,” of course, means the outcome. What Krishna means is to give up attachment to the results of what you do: that is, to give your best to every undertaking without insisting that the results work out the way you want, or even whether what you do is pleasant or unpleasant. “You have the right to action, but not to the fruits of actio.”: each of us has the obligation to act rightly, but no power to dictate what is to come of what we do. Mahatma Gandhi explains with the authority of his personal experience:

By detachment I mean that you must not worry whether the desired result follows from your action or not, so long as your motive is pure, your means correct. Really, it means that things will come right in the end if you take care of the means and leave the rest to Him.

“But renunciation of fruit,” Gandhi warns,

in no way means indifference to the result. In regard to every action one must know the result that is expected to follow, the means thereto, and the capacity for it. He who, being thus equipped, is without desire for the result and is yet wholly engrossed in the due fulfillment of the task before him, is said to have renounced the fruits of his action.

This attitude frees us completely. Whatever comes – success or failure, praise or blame, victory or defeat – we can give our best with a clear, unruffled mind. Nothing can shake our courage or break our will; no setback can depress us or make us feel “burned out.” Clearly, as the Gita says, “Yoga is skill in action” (2:50).

Only the person who is utterly detached and utterly dedicated, Gandhi says, is free to enjoy life. Asked to sum up his life “in twenty-five words or less,” he replied, “I can do it in three!” and quoted the Isha Upanishad: “Renounce and enjoy.” Those who are compulsively attached to the results of action cannot really enjoy what they do; they get downcast when things do not work out and cling more desperately when they do. So the Gita classifies the karma of attachment as pleasant at first, but “bitter as poison in the end” (18:38), because of the painful bondage of conditioning.

Again, Krishna repeatedly tells Arjuna to surrender everything to him in love. But this is not different advice, merely different words. Krishna is asking Arjuna to act entirely for His sake, not for any personal gain. The whole point of the path of love is to transform motivation from “I, I, I” to “thou, thou, thou” – that is, to surrender selfish attachments by dissolving them in the desire to give.

Krishna puts this most beautifully in the famous verses of Chapter 9 which begin, “Whatever you do, make it an offering to me” (9:27). Do it, that is, not for personal reward but out of love for the Lord, present in every creature. “Whatever you eat, whatever worship you perform, whatever you give, whatever you suffe.”: everything is to be done and given and endured and enjoyed for the sake of the Lord in all, not for ourselves. Manmana: this is the refrain of the Gita. Krishna tells Arjuna repeatedly, “Fill your mind with me, focus every thought on me, think of me alway.”; then “you will be united with me” (see 9:34). The same injunction was given to Moses and reiterated by Jesus and Mohammed. In practical terms, it means that awareness will be integrated down to the deepest recesses of the unconscious, which is precisely the significance of the word yoga.

Meister Eckhart says eloquently of this state:

Whoever has God in mind, simply and solely God, in all things, such a man carries God with him into all his works and into all places, and God alone does all his works. He seeks nothing but God; nothing seems good to him but God. He becomes one with God in every thought. Just as no multiplicity can dissipate God, so nothing can dissipate this man or make him multiple.

Thus we arrive at the idea of “actionless action.”: of persons so established in identification with the Self that in the midst of tireless service of those around them, they remain in inner peace, the still witness of action. They do not act, the Gita says; it is the Self that acts through them: “They alone see truly who see that all actions are performed by prakriti, while the Self remains unmoved” (13:29). Again, this is a universal testimony. Here is one of the most active of mystics, St. Catherine of Genoa:

When the soul is naughted and transformed, then of herself she neither works nor speaks nor wills, nor feels nor hears nor understands; neither has she of herself the feeling of outward or inward, where she may move. And in all things it is God who rules and guides her, without the mediation of any creature. And the state of this soul is then a feeling of such utter peace and tranquility that it seems to her that her heart, and her bodily being, and all both within and without, is immersed in an ocean of utmost peace. . . . And she is so full of peace that though she press her flesh, her nerves, her bones, no other thing comes forth from them than peace.

Again, when the Gita talks about “inaction in the midst of action” (4:18, etc.), we can call on Ruysbroeck to illumine the seeming paradox. The person who has realized God, he says, mirrors both His aspects: “tranquility according to His essence, activity according to His nature: absolute repose, absolute fecundity.” And he adds,

The interior person lives his life according to these two ways; that is to say, in rest and in work. And in each of them he is wholly and undividedly; for he dwells wholly in God in virtue of his restful fruition and wholly in himself in virtue of his active love. . . . This is the supreme summit of the inner life.

This is the only kind of inaction the Gita recommends. It is action of the most tireless kind; the only thing inactive is the ego. To live without the daily sacrifice (yajna) of selfless service – to work just for oneself, or worse, to do nothing at all – is simply to be a thief (3:12). It is not possible to do nothing, Krishna says; the very nature of the mind is incessant activity. The Gita’s goal is to harness this activity in selfless service, removing the poisonous agency of the ego: “As long as one has a body, one cannot renounce action altogether. True renunciation is giving up all desire for personal reward” (18:11). Meister Eckhart explains,

To be right, a person must do one of two things: either he must learn to have God in his work and hold fast to him there, or he must give up his work altogether. Since, however, man cannot live without activities that are both human and various, we must learn to keep God in everything we do, and whatever the job or place, keep on with him, letting nothing stand in our way.

It would be difficult to find a better summary of the Gita’s message anywhere – and this, incidentally, from someone considered to represent the path of knowledge.

Krishna wraps all this up in one famous verse: “Abandon all supports and look to me for protection. I shall purify you from the sins of the past; do not grieve” (18:66). Krishna is the Self; the words mean simply to cast aside external props and dependencies and rely on the Self alone, seeking strength nowhere but within.

Why does selfless action lead to Self-realization? It is not a matter of “good” action being divinely rewarded. Self-realization is not some kind of compensation for good deeds. We can understand the dynamics if we remember that the Gita’s emphasis is on the mind. Most human activity, good and bad, is tainted by ego-involvement. Such activity cannot purify consciousness, because it goes on generating new karma in the mind – in practical terms, we go on getting entangled in what we do. Selfless work purifies consciousness because when there is no trace of ego involvement, new karma is not produced; the mind is simply working out the karma it has already accumulated.

Shankara illustrates this with the simile of a potter’s wheel. The ego’s job is to go on incessantly spinning the wheel of the mind and making karma-pots: new ideas to act on, fresh desires to pursue. When this pointless activity stops, no more pots are made, but for a while the wheel of the mind goes on spinning out of the momentum of its past karma. This is an anguishing period in the life of every mystic: you have done everything you can; now you can only wait with a kind of impatient patience. Eventually, for no reason that one can understand, the wheel does come to a stop, dissolving the mind-process in samadhi.

Next Section: 4. A Higher Image