Gita 05.08 – Don’t take credit for actions done by bodily mechanisms

Bhagavad Gita 5.8 Krishna is now describing the inner consciousness of the person who acts in knowledge and how that consciousness keeps the person protected from bondage not even slightly I am doing things like this it does the person who is connected harmonised well situated thinks one who is the knower of truth is seeing, is hearing that is touching is smelling is eating is moving about is sleeping, dreaming is breathing this 8th and 9th verses are one unit of thought and we will discuss the remaining list that Krishna is giving when we talk about the 9th verse but here let's focus on this verse now the whole discussion of the Bhagavad Gita is based on how Arjuna can avoid karmic bondage and Krishna's central message is that one who acts with knowledge with detachment, that person will not get bound now here he says that that I am not doing anything the knower of the truth thinks like this so what exactly is being implied by this now clearly Arjuna will be fighting the war after hearing the Bhagavad Gita and when he is fighting he is doing something so how can someone say that actually I am not doing something now to understand this we need to understand the concept of doership at two levels the body is basically like a machine and the machine functions as per its own patterns now we cannot make a refrigerator heat things and we cannot make heater cool things, the machine will work according to its own patterns now if you want to heat some food item and then we put it in a or if you want to heat some cold food and we put it in a oven or some other heating device then we may say I am heating it now who is actually heating it, it is not I it is the heater that is heating it so now could the heater have heated it if I had not turned on the button, no so that means the heater's heating has two aspects to it, there is the aspect of the physical element to heating we could say which is done by the heater along with that there is our action which is also necessary so now when the heating happens if the person who is heating, if I start thinking oh I heated the food item, now if in the future the heater stops working then I will not be able to heat it at all so who did the heating, now I did it in the sense that I intended to do it and then the the heater did it by its mechanism did the activity of heating so similarly now let's apply this point to the body so now I for example I am speaking right now and I want to speak so I may become very proud thinking oh I am a very deep eloquent speaker blah blah blah I can become proud like that but but if tomorrow my voice box gets deceased or I get a sore throat then I am the same person and I may want to speak the same thing, yesterday I had spoken it eloquently today I am not able to speak it at all so when certain things are done at the level of the body we have to understand that the that the expertise or the expertise in doing those things whenever there is some expertise is due to the body's mechanism and if I start taking, if we start taking credit for what is done by the body then we become deluded, we become bound because how do we become bound because then we have the desire to keep doing it again and again and that desire to keep doing it again and again becomes the cause of our bondage that desire becomes the cause of our illusion in material existence because we want to do that and then we have to get another body to do that and in that body also we stay in the illusion that oh I am doing it when actually it is the body that is doing it so just as a person who drives a car knows that okay I can drive the car and I may train myself to also become expert in driving the car but that does not mean that I am the car and that does not mean that I will stay forever in the car and I will misidentify with the car the car is a vehicle for taking us to a particular destination and when the destination comes if the person becomes to attach the car oh I am the expert driver and this car helps me to go here and there everywhere so this holds on to the car and the person will not be able to get to the destination or will not get out of the car and reach home or whatever is the destination so like that the body is a vehicle for us and when we take credits for its instrumental actions then that attempt to seek credit causes illusion causes increases our misidentification intensifies our attachment and thereby makes it difficult for us to break free it makes it difficult for us to stay in spiritual consciousness stay in the pursuit of enlightenment the body is a vehicle and it works according to its mechanism so when the seeker understands that I am not doing anything that means not that literally I have to become lazy or passive or inactive but rather I have the seeker understands that I should not take credit for the body's mechanisms and knowing that the body is acting ensures that I don't become irresponsible and reject action but the same time I don't become delusional and take credit for action that way we can be aware of our spiritual identity stay aware even while engaging in activity and especially the activity is done with a proper spiritual purpose then doing that activity also purifies us just as I want to use my car to go to my home so if I direct the car properly then I can reach my home so like that if we use the human body which we can which is like a vehicle as Krishna will tell in 18.61 yantra rudhanimaya situated on a vehicle made of there is a product of the illusory energy so here Krishna states that by remembering the illusory nature of our by remembering that our connection with the body is just for a particular purpose it is not a core connection that the soul and the body are permanently reverted together they are irreversible they are not permanently blended together so that way when a person acts then that person does not become bound and for specific analysis of specific action mentioned in this in the next verse we will do in the next talk.