The inaction in action and the action in inaction

You will not be disturbed by the effects of your actions when you receive those results, whatever they are, with contentment.  Whatever the result, when you look upon the fruits of your actions from a vantage point above the turmoil of selfishness, jealousy and envy and you learn to accept both gain and loss with a calm mind, you will be free.  A wise person who understands this truth will perform all of his or her actions for the benefit of others and thus has no claim to the results anyway.  This is known as “the inaction in action.”  And when this same wise person sits unmoving in meditation, turning the mind inward toward the soul, this is known as “the action in inaction.”  That person is on the way toward union with God, which is the ultimate goal of all our actions and makes us truly free.

Because we all have to act in this world, the real task becomes learning how to distinguish between right actions, wrong actions and when inaction is the right thing to do.  All the results of our actions are nearly impossible to predict.  Therefore, the only way to avoid any negative consequences of your action is to avoid letting yourself become attached to the fruits of that action.  The way to do that is to be constantly identified with your inner soul-self that has the same attributes that God has.  The sages of ancient times realized that this was the way to perform all your actions in this world because it frees you from the pain and suffering that accompanies them.  Like those sages, you should act that way, too.

No matter what you want to achieve, understanding the laws that God put in place and acting accordingly will help you reach your goals.  Owing to individual natural tendencies, different people will live out their lives in different ways.  Some will aspire to very little, only being motivated by the desire for physical pleasure.  Others will want material success and worldly power.  Still others will have a philosophical or religious inclination and will seek God for the reward they get in this life and the next.   Then there are the rare few who seek God for the purpose of realizing their own true soul nature.  Regardless of the goal, success is only achieved in this world by applying the proper actions to reach that goal.  Wishing and praying for it without acting will get you nothing.

However you seek God, He responds in kind

Those who believe in reincarnation are taught that they can escape the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth by becoming united with God directly.  This union with God can be accomplished by practicing self-discipline to learn control of the senses, by being free of attachment to fulfilling desires, by disengaging from fear and anger, and by taking refuge in the inner peace which results from doing so.  But, not everyone is born into a family or a culture that teaches reincarnation and the ability to unite directly with God.  Because of the differences in religious and individual beliefs within those religions, people use many paths to find God.  In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna reassures everyone that however people sincerely call on God, He responds to them in the way they worship Him.

Ch4 - Yoga of Discriminating Wisdom

            By sitting next to the wisdom of the holy Bhagavad Gita and listening to the discourse between Lord Krishna and Arjuna, which is the scripture of yoga and the science of God realization, thus begins the fourth chapter called Jnana Yoga, union with God through the wisdom to discriminate between reality and the illusion caused by the created world. (OOPS – I let some Hindu religion slip in, but it’s just for some context about what is to follow.)
            The knowledge of how to identify with your true inner self rather than ego-driven desire is said to have come directly from God.  But whatever the source, its wisdom has literally been passed down directly from teacher to student for thousands of years.  The truth in this wisdom is eternal, even when the elements of nature make it appear to be just a delusion.  The result is that this wisdom has been of supreme benefit to humankind.
           Luckily for humankind, when righteousness seems to be in decline and vice predominates, someone always comes along to remind us that there is virtue in this world and there is a reason to be good and do good.

Eliminate your problems with wisdom-guided intuition

Our indulgence in sensual pleasures allows the senses to become dominant over the body.  Therefore your mind, with its ability to exert control over your sensual indulgences, is stronger than your senses.  But the mind itself is restless and seeks out ever-new experiences.  So, your ability to wisely choose what is in your own best interest can potentially be stronger than your mind.  The image of God within you, which is your true self, is the source of the wisdom to discriminate between what your intellectual thinking tells you and what wisdom says is really right for you.  Knowing that your true soul-self is the source of your discriminating wisdom and by constantly identifying with it instead of your ego, you can utterly annihilate the source of your problems in this world.

Just like a fire can be obscured by the smoke it makes or a mirror’s reflection can be covered by dust, so your inner wisdom and true soul-self are covered by your desires.  Our restless minds and insatiable senses are at the heart of those desires.  That desire is what clouds our judgment and leads us to do thing we know are not in our own best interest.

The Gita's answer to Paul's question in Romans 7:15

At some point every spiritual seeker wonders what makes us do things we know are not good for us, even when we sincerely want to do otherwise.  What compels us to sin as if by the force of nature even when we realize that doing the right thing would yield a far better result? It is our restless nature that leads to our desires and that unrelenting unappeasable craving for something new, different, more or better as well as our anger which is the product of our unfulfilled desires.  That is the enemy.  So, the first step is to recognize desire as the sinful one, not you.  Control the thoughts of your restless mind and your attachment to having your senses satisfied and you will destroy those desires and realize your true inner soul-self as being the real “you.”

A famous passage from the Gita

It is not beneficial to try to force yourself to suppress your natural tendencies.  It is far better to follow your innate calling, however imperfectly than it is to try to live the way someone else thinks you should.  Even if following someone else’s way of life would lead to more accomplishments, in the end, at the moment of death, it will be better to die having lived your own life rather than someone else’s.

Non-attachment doesn't mean you don't enjoy life

Even someone who realizes the wisdom of remaining unattached will follow his or her own natural tendencies, just like anyone else.  It is natural to be attracted to pleasure and avoid pain.  Being non-attached does not mean that you don’t enjoy the pleasure that comes your way or that you don’t act to reduce the unpleasant aspects of your life. Just don’t let yourself become dominated by their influence.  If you remain unattached you will be free from disappointment when pleasure inevitably fades and just as free from any negative impact that the equally inevitable presence of discomfort brings.  Those who don’t live by these teachings are left to suffer their own fate. They don’t understand the true nature of the reality that surrounds them.

"You" shouldn't take credit for what you do, or blame yourself for what you can't do

If you dedicate all your efforts to benefiting those around you, without egotism and expectations, free from worry, your mind can rest peacefully and it will identify with the image of God within.  When the mind is deluded by the ego a person thinks “I am the one responsible for doing that!”  The truth is, your actions are completely a function of your God-given qualities combined with the influence of your upbringing, the society around you and the era in which you live.  You haven’t done anything other than what your talent allows and what you have been taught by others.  A person who realizes this can easily remain unattached to whatever the natural outcome of his or her actions are. But a person of realization should not try to convince someone who is still deluded by their attachment to their physical body of this fact.  It will only bewilder them.   Those who are still identified with satisfying their senses (which are subject to natural fluctuations) cling to the results of their activities for their happiness. They are doomed to suffer.

Wise people are a role model for the rest of us

Even when you reach the state of mind where you feel like you have nothing to gain or lose by your actions, you must continue to do what you have to do with integrity.  Whatever a great person does will be copied by others and used as a standard for their own behavior.  Always do what you have to do without attachment because if you were to cease to act others would follow your example. An enlightened person does everything with the same zeal that an unenlightened person does but he or she does so without attachment, thus serving as a role model for others.  A wise person will not disturb the mind of those who are still attached to the fruits of their actions, but by continuously performing their own actions skillfully, without attachment, the wise person influences and inspires all those nearby.

Don't depend on external circumstances for your happiness

Anyone who chooses to live life attached to the pleasure or pain of the mind and body lives in vain.  The person who truly identifies with the image of God within, who is fully satisfied with doing the right things for its own sake, that person will have nothing else to do to become satisfied.  He or she is not disappointed with the lack of personal gain nor does that person fail to act because of the fear of losing something.  That person is not dependent on anyone or anything for their satisfaction.

Becoming free from your karma

Actions that you perform with attachment to getting the results you want are bound to have further implications in your life.  Any selfless act done without attachment will free you from the effects it can have later on.  By sacrificing the desire to have the results of your actions benefit yourself, you will find that you get everything you want out of the experience itself.  Whoever takes the rewards for their actions without giving anything back is like a thief.  Anyone who acts only for selfish gain creates the same things sins do in their life.

Don't our desires motivate us to do everything?

When starting on the spiritual path, it is difficult to understand how one can live life without attachment to desires or how to lose identification with one’s individual ego. After all, our desires drive us to do everything and we do it to benefit ourselves personally, either to fulfill an inner need or to improve our physical circumstances.  It’s natural to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  Won’t giving these things up just make us stop wanting to do anything?

            You cannot avoid acting in this world.   If you really could become actionless you wouldn’t be able to maintain your body.  The truth is, no one is free from some kind of action for a single moment.  Even if you could control your physical body and cease to move, your mind would soon compel you into action.  You are deluding yourself if you think that the way to God realization is to separate yourself from involvement in the activities of the world.  No one reaches the ultimate goal of union with God by forsaking all actions.  You must learn to let go of your attachments and act, not for your own sake, but for the benefit of those around you.

The state known as "being established in God"

True inner peace can be experienced by anyone who is free from all craving and who gives up all identification with his or her personal ego and its notion of “me” and “mine.”  The realization of this state is known as “being established in God” because one is completely identified with the image of God within.  When a person becomes completely identified with that real inner self, there are no longer any questions about what is true and correct.  That person cannot be deluded because he or she intuitively knows the truth.  At the moment of physical death, that person attains the final permanent state of union with God.

When your mind is poised and withdraws itself from the fluctuations that come from attachment to your desires as well as the pleasure and pain of your physical body, you will obtain the wisdom to discriminate between reality and illusion.  When someone has that discriminating wisdom, things that seem important to most people will not matter as much and the things that don’t matter to the average person become valuable.

Peace of mind

If you learn to remain detached from the fluctuations that impact your mind and body you will attain an unshakable inner calmness.  When you become firmly established in that calmness, all grief and sorrow falls away.  The bliss of the soul can then emerge.  The mind that is blown here and there by every wind of change cannot experience that tranquility and will have no peace.  And without peace of mind, how can anyone be happy?

How desires lead to anger which causes faulty thinking

Attachment to having the things you want, getting your way or having pleasurable experiences will just breed a craving for them.  When your cravings are not satisfied you become angry and frustrated.  Anger confuses your thinking process.  When your thinking is confused, it alters the way you remember the events going on around you.  When you remember things incorrectly, it will change the way you reason because you will be basing your judgment on faulty information.  When your reasoning is faulty you are doomed to make the wrong decision.  All this comes from indulging yourself in sensual pleasures instead of learning to control your mind.  Meditation will help with this.

The secret to overcoming attachment

If you allow yourself to become excited by the things that happen to you, you will lose your better judgment, even if you are really striving for enlightenment.  If you dwell on thoughts of doing things that are pleasurable to your mind and body, you will just amplify your attachment to whether you get them or not.  If you abstain from things that over-stimulate your mind and body, they will be physically absent but the longing for them will still remain.  But the spiritual seeker who learns to control his or her senses through meditation will be free from even the longing for them.