Video Information:
Myth Demolition tour, 20.02.2020, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India
Context:
~ What is meaning of Sakam Karm and Nishkam karm?
~ What is meaning of Vikarm?
~ What is best way to perform Karma?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Myth Demolition tour, 20.02.2020, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India
Context:
~ What is meaning of Sakam Karm and Nishkam karm?
~ What is meaning of Vikarm?
~ What is best way to perform Karma?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 My humble Pranam. What is the exact meaning of Gahana Karmogati? There are a lot of sayings
00:14 about that. You will have to quote the entire shloka, then you will understand. Actually,
00:22 these three words, Gahana Karmogati, have been quoted so variously and so frequently, even
00:32 by government of India, that they have lost all perspective. Therefore, you will have
00:40 to go back to chapter three and four and look at the entire verse. And then you will know
00:47 that the way these three words are used frequently is not the way the shloka intends them to
00:58 mean. And in same chapter, Lord Krishna has said about Karma, Akarma and Vikarma. In fact,
01:08 Gahana Karmogati is related to this. This only. Karma, Akarma and Vikarma. Karma is when you
01:22 make a choice in acting. Akarma is when there is no choice available. No choice might be
01:34 available for two reasons. One, the action might be totally involuntary, Prakritic. Or
01:43 because you are so inattentive that stuff is happening without your consent or notice.
01:53 That is Akarma. So, there is no doership involved there. There is no real choice involved there.
02:02 Complete conditioning is at play. That is Akarma. So, the fundamental distinction is
02:10 first of all between Karma and Akarma. Karma is when there is an agency making a choice.
02:17 Akarma is when there is no agency at all making a choice. Right now you are nodding your head.
02:23 Most probably it is Akarma. Because you are not making a conscious choice to nod your
02:29 head. Similarly, the beating of the heart. That is pure Akarma. That is pure Akarma.
02:36 But the nodding of the head need not be Akarma, is yet Akarma because it is happening just
02:46 on its own in a most conditioned way. Getting it? So, that is the distinction between Akarma
02:53 and Karma. Now you come to Karma. Karma has been broadly divided into three categories.
03:09 Sakam Karma, Nishkam Karma and then there is a very special category called Vikarm.
03:20 Nishkam Karma is when you work directly for the sake of liberation. I am working directly
03:36 to attain liberation. I do not like my bondages and I am in a hurry. I love freedom so much
03:42 that I cannot wait for it. So, I am not working to keep my chains intact. I am not postponing
03:57 my liberation for another day. That is Nishkam Karma. I am not working to feed my Kamana,
04:05 my personal desires. I am working with only one objective, freedom from Kamana. That is
04:14 Nishkam Karma. Then there is Sakam Karma. Even in Sakam Karma, there is a latent desire
04:23 towards liberation but because it is latent, therefore it is indirect. Most people will
04:30 say yes, I want liberation but through something else. So, I want liberation through a house.
04:39 I want liberation through money. I want liberation through knowledge or through man or a woman
04:44 or through something. That is Sakam Karma. I am chasing liberation via my desire. I am
04:53 using my desire to come to liberation. But what is common between Nishkam Karma and Sakam
05:00 Karma is that you at least know that you are in bondage and want liberation. Nishkam Karma
05:06 is the honest and straightforward route. Sakam Karma is the ordinary, dishonest and convoluted
05:14 route. Then there is Vikarm. In Vikarm, you say I am already liberated and I don't need
05:22 any liberation. In Vikarm, the one who is in bondage is so deeply dishonest that he
05:31 starts proclaiming his liberation. And he says I am already liberated. Who needs liberation?
05:38 I am happy. And I will work to get more happiness. So, this entire cult of happiness which is
05:50 all pervasive, especially in the West, is the cult of Vikarm. The cult of deep dishonesty,
06:00 deep inner dishonesty. You decorate your bondages and start calling them your ornaments. Now
06:14 there is no possibility of liberation. Because now bondage itself has been named as liberation.
06:26 You are deeply in an inner stress and yet you call yourself as blissful. The result
06:37 of this can only be mental disease. What else is this pandemic mental disease? Vikarm. So,
06:55 Krishna says Nishkam Karma Yogi comes directly to me. Sakam Karma Yogi through my blessing
07:04 attains the one he is worshipping. So, if you want this or that or that, then you will
07:15 attain that. Even if to be just disappointed, but you will attain that. And having attained
07:22 that you will realize that that thing is not what I really wanted, so you will go to the
07:27 next thing and next thing. And there is some probability that after a series of disappointments,
07:34 you will realize that you need to look somewhere else. So, some chance of liberation is there
07:41 even for the Sakam Karmi. But for the one who is now mired in Vikarm, there is no chance.
07:56 His fate is suffering and forced punishment. Where is this Vikarm? Is it from the Bhagavad
08:16 Gita? If I wanted to read more. But it's not explained in Bhagavad Gita. Shri Krishna just
08:25 leaves us in suspense saying that you must know the difference between Karma, Akarma
08:33 and Vikarma. By himself he doesn't quite explain. So, you have to go through the entire length
08:42 of the Bhagavad Gita to deduce what he means. He remained a trickster all his life. He was
09:04 quite a naughty fellow. Is there a version of the Bhagavad Gita you recommend reading
09:12 or a translation that's better than others? In general, the translations provided by the
09:23 Ramakrishna Mission are quite authentic. If I get a huge achievement in a society or in
09:36 a materialistic life and at the same moment I want to be egoless or be in a mode that
09:49 I am not doer. But every time it does not happen. It will be like two or three days
09:56 to believe that I am not doer. If I achieve some award on the stage or anything of a reward.
10:04 So at exactly that moment I want to be in that mode that I am not doer. So what will
10:11 be the exercise or what should we have to prepare our mind for that? Then you have to
10:17 know what is it that you are being felicitated for. If someone starts feeling inflated on
10:31 being publicly felicitated, it merely means that he does not quite know what all that
10:41 ceremony is really about. The one who has really earned his laurels knows fully well
10:56 what goes into an event. If you look at even a small happening, you know very well how
11:09 much of chance is involved in it. Even the thoughts in what you call as your own mind
11:18 are not really your own. We are not the doers of even our thoughts. How then we can really
11:29 be the doers of this and that? So if somebody starts internally taking credit for some happening,
11:42 it merely means he does not know the happening. Let the public remain in illusion if they
11:52 are honoring you on a stage or something. Let them remain happily deluded. Let them
11:59 think that you have done something magnificent. But within yourself you should know that all
12:06 this is just prakriti. Prakriti plays games. Ego takes credit. Stuff happens and I pounces
12:28 on it and says I did it. The thing is it happened. It's a great exercise in humility to see
12:42 that that which we call as most intimate to our being, even that is incidental. Birth,
12:52 death, love affairs, marriage, kids, your very DNA, thoughts, passions, emotions, your
13:10 gender. Did you really intend to be born a male? And having born a male, after a while
13:21 you start taking credit for your muscular body or your special height. It's just ignorance
13:30 about the prakritic processes of the universe. What is prakritic? Does it just mean random?
13:43 Physical nature, all this that you see all around yourself. Stuff, material existence
13:52 that is conditioned to go on and on in its own way. Material existence that does not
14:00 really include or need consciousness. An electron circling around the nucleus, that's prakriti.
14:13 Planets orbiting around the sun, that's prakriti. A seed falling into the soil and a plant sprouting
14:29 off from it, that's prakriti. None of that really requires a choosing consciousness.
14:39 It just happens. You may want it, you may not want it. You may exist, you may not exist.
14:45 That just happens. Food getting digested in your intestines, that's prakriti. You don't
14:53 do it, it happens. No element of conscious choice is involved in this.