Leaving aside the matter of desireless action, there is in the action itself a
joy which you cannot find in the fruit. Total absorption in one’s own work is an
everlasting spring of joy. Were you to offer any amount of money to an artist
for refraining from painting, would he agree? Certainly not. If you tell a farmer
not go to the field, not to graze the cattle or draw water from the well, and
offer him as much grains as he wants, he would certainly not agree to it if he
were a true farmer. A farmer goes to the field in the early morning. There the
Sun-god welcomes him. Birds sing for him. Cattle gather around him. He
caresses them with affection, casts a loving glance at the plants. There is a
sattvik, sublime joy in all this.
This joy, in fact, is the true and main reward of
his work. Compared to it, the material fruit of action is secondary.
When the Gita takes a man’s attention away from the fruit of his actions, it
increases hundredfold his concentration in his work through this ingenuity.
When the doer’s mind is free from the desire for the fruit, his absorption in his
work attains the character of samadhi.
Hence his joy is also hundred times
more than that of others. Looked at from this angle, it is clear that the
desireless action is itself a great reward. Jnanadeva has rightly asked, “The
tree bears fruits, but what fruit could the fruit bear?” When the body is used
for the desireless pursuit of swadharma, such pursuit itself is the beautiful fruit
that the body bears. Why then look for any other fruit? Why should a farmer
who has sown wheat, sell it and eat a bread of millets? Why should one not eat
what he grows? But the ways of the world are strange.
The Gita asks us to
refrain from such behaviour. It asks us to relish work, to rejoice in it, to be
fully absorbed in it and draw life-blood from it. To act itself is everything. A
child plays for the joy of playing. He does get the benefit of exercise thereby,
but he does not think of this benefit. His joy is in playing only.
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