If we are not doers, why are we held responsible for our actions?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Okay, if a misery happens, who is actually responsible? Yeah, suppose, you know, there’s a thief who has robbed a bank. And then the police come and arrest the person.
And the person is tried in court and put in jail. Now that person is going, the thieves going into jail has three causes. First is the thieves on the robbery.
The second is the police arresting the person. And the third is the judge sentencing the person. Now all three are causes.
So thief is like the soul. The police is like material nature. And Krishna is like the judge.
So all three are involved. The Jeeva, Ishwar and Prakriti are all involved in the causal chain by which certain reactions come to us. So now the police would not have arrested the person and the court would not have sentenced the person if that person had not robbed a bank.
So in that sense, the person’s robbery is the primary cause. It is the initiating cause without which nothing else could have happened. So like that, when it comes to taking responsibility for any wrongdoing that has, for any bad thing that happens to us, we have to know that it is my own bad karma which is bringing the consequence.
So this is a different context. And when Krishna talks about that only the deluded soul thinks of themselves as the doer, he is talking in an entirely different context. There he is talking not so much of assigning karmic responsibility.
He is talking more in terms of taking credit for one’s actions. He is talking about, oh Arjuna, if you think that you are going to win this war or you are fighting is going to, not fighting is going to avoid this war, that is not the right thing. The war is going to happen.
And you will simply be impelled by the modes to do what you like. So to do what is according to your sabhava. So in that sense, you are not free.
If you see at one level, to think of yourself as the doer is an illusion. But in the same Gita at the end, what does Krishna tell Arjuna in 18.63? Deliberate and decide what you want to do. Do.
And what does Arjuna also say, I will do your will. He is also talking about doer only. So that means there are two different things.
One is with respect to, so the main illusion is not to think that we are the doers. The main illusion is to think that I am the only doer. So when I am taking credit for things, if Arjuna thinks that, oh, I am winning this war, that is an illusion.
So from that point of view, tatraivam sati kartaram atmanam kevalam tuya. In 18.63 Krishna says, therefore, atmanam kevalam tuya. One who thinks that I am the sole doer, that person is an illusion.
So the two are different contexts with respect to thinking about, so the whole focus of the Bhagavad Gita is that we should do our duty, irrespective of whether we get the result or not. So Arjuna, whatever be the result, whether you lose, you win, your relatives die, Arjuna knows that you have to do your part. And if you think that you are causing all these things to happen, then that is an illusion.
So the Gita’s context is different. Gita is not primarily analyzing karmic reactions. It is analyzing karmic choices.
It is not analyzing what is happening to me and why it is happening to me. It is analyzing what I should be doing. So that’s why we cannot mix the two frames of analysis.