Desire, Divinity, and Detachment
For the first supplemental blog on The Bhagavad Gita, I want to address a few questions that have come up and are great topics for discussion.
Jack Hawley – The Bhagavad Gita, a Walkthrough for WesternersThe ideal, Arjuna, is to be intensely active and at the same time have no selfish motives, no thoughts of personal gain or loss. Duty uncontaminated by desire leads to inner peacefulness and increased effectiveness. This is the secret art of living a life of real achievement! (2.47)
To work without desire may seem impossible, but the way to do it is to substitute thoughts of Divinty for thoughts of desire. Do your work in this world with your heart fixed on the Divine instead of on outcomes. Do not worry about results. Be even tempered in success and failure. This mental evenness is what is meant by yoga (union with God). Indeed, equanimity is yoga! (2.48)
The above quote summarizes major themes in The Gita, but has a lot of words that tend to stump so many of us in reading. How do we act without desire? How do we replace an action or thought of desire with that of the Divine if we are not yet connected to the Divine? How do we detach ourselves from the fruits of our labor when WE are the ones who labored?
DESIRE to ACT
We will start with the idea of “desire” being the impetus for all action. How do we continue to act without any desire for certain outcome? In the first place, Krishna is clear that we are always “in action” in a life lived in a body.
“Indeed Arjuna, inaction , for even a moment, is impossible. Eating, sleeping, breathing, the heartbeat, even subconscious mental activities – all are actions. Everyone is helplessly driven to action by their own nature and by nature itself.”
Chapter 3 : paragraphs 4-5
“Selfish desire,” a desire that leads us to a particular outcome that is just for our individual gratification, is what Krishna is urging Arjuna away from. Arjuna’s desire is to NOT go to war to save his own experience of despair and discomfort, but if he choses that, the kingdom goes to ruin and even his own reputation as a great warrior is diminished. Arjuna must act and it is Krishna’s job to lead him toward the Divine action his dharma entails. We all must choose actions that lead us toward yoga and not away from it, toward union with the Divine and not away from it. But how do we know which is which?
DIVINE THOUGHT and ACTION
How do we have a Divine thought or a Divine action if we are not yet in union with the Divine? Being able to choose an action that leads toward the Divine assumes we have some knowledge of what the Divine is.
The thing to remember is that at our core we are already connected to the Divine, we just have covered it up with all the cravings and aversions of our own individual egos (Avidya). We have forgotten who we truly are and have attached ourselves to impermanence and distractions. I am sure we have all experienced moments where we react unnecessarily or engage in behaviors that we know will have negative mental or physical outcomes, yet we do them anyway out of habit. And, as Abhijata Iyengar often reminds us, “habit is a disease.” Every action deserves a moment of pause before acting to truly ask that internal voice (Divine of whatever you believe in) “do I really need to do this?” or “is this necessary?” Sometimes we will succeed at a more “Divine” choice, and sometimes we may fail, but that is what karma is made of….not just negative experiences, but positive ones as well. This is why the 8 limbs of yoga begin with the Yamas (moral precepts) and Niyamas (personal observances). They are practical starting points that guide us toward awareness and knowledge of our deeper Truth.
“vitarkabadhane pratipaksabhavanam”
“Principles that run contrary to yama and niyama are to be countered with the knowledge of discrimination”
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali II.33
The experience of equanimity after any action is key to knowing what runs contrary to or in alignment with the Yamas and Niyamas, our inner Truth, or our Divinity. Does an action, regardless of being perceived as “bad” or “good” on the surface, contribute to achieving greater inner balance or clarity, benefit not just ME, but the world I live in?
DETACHMENT
Expectation of and attachment to a particular outcome of action is the killer of equanimity. Wanting something that is out of our control, is unpredictable, transient, and literally in the future creates mental disturbance, brings worry or disappointment, and leads to further cravings or aversions (Raga and Dvesa, two major obstacles to yoga). If all we can do is ACT, then the fruits of our actions are not in our control, but discernment and awareness of those actions are.
We have to understand that the same action in any one time or space made by any individual in life will NEVER reveal the exact same result. Every action depends on the individual, the context, the culture, the environment, the situation, their karma, etc…The eight limbs of yoga help us to build discernment in action and reaction and become aware of our own habits and tendencies, to ultimately transform all action toward alignment with our dharma (duty in life) and inner Truth. Detachment is not a stoic disregard for experience, but an equanimity with any experience in and of itself, no matter what occurs (also known as santosha, or deep contentment in all things).
Arjuna’s journey shows this so clearly. Krishna (the Divinity), knows that Arjuna must fight this war to fulfill his dharma. Arjuna must trust his Divine voice (Krishna) to make the right choice that will lead him and the rest of the kingdom to victory. On the outside this seems like a violent and horrible choice, but the Divine knows it will ultimately lead to more balance in his kingdom and his Universe.
