Gita 18.57 – Don’t renounce work – offer work to Krishna

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you I am speaking here in the bhagavad-gita 18.57 and he states chetasa with your consciousness sarva-karmani in all activities mayi sanyasya madparaham mayi sanyasya mayi sanyasya renounced madparaham making me the supreme goal buddhi-yoga upashitya taking shelter through buddhi-yoga chetasa sarva-karmani chetasa sarva-karmani so krishna is telling arjuna that you don’t have to renounce work to attain transcendence you can keep your consciousness in transcendence while doing your work sarva-karmani so arjuna was thinking that the duty of war was very ghastly and especially war, not just war arjuna had fought many wars and he knew as a kshatriya it was his duty to fight a war but a war against his relatives was something which was very dangerous because not just dangerous that he might die but dangerous in terms of what karmic consequences might come because of that so not knowing how to deal with those karmic consequences arjuna felt that it may be better to avoid fighting the war because he felt that there will be two ghastly karmic consequences of killing one’s own relatives krishna is telling arjuna yes, you have to be concerned about karmic consequences but you don’t have to renounce the world for that my sannyas with your consciousness you can renounce the activities to me, in the sense that you offer the fruits of the activities to me and in that way you can stay detached from the karmic consequences in this way taking shelter of buddhi yoga become conscious of me so why is krishna speaking this to arjuna here krishna wants arjuna to recognize that he has in the previous verses talked about ascent to perfection through the path of renunciation and now krishna wants arjuna to know that that is not the only way to the ascent there is an alternative way instead of going through karma yoga through gyan yoga culminating in bhakti yoga arjuna can ascend to that height of bhakti by the practice of bhakti, directly that’s why the emphasis over here is sarvakarmani that whatever work you do arjuna, you can still be elevated because you can find yourself you can keep yourself situated in transcendence by the practice of bhakti whatever no matter what you are doing the lord pervades everything and the lord can be made into the goal of everything when we do an activity with a devotional intention as guided by scripture by guru sadhu shastra then we can actually attain transcendence through any activity so in this way, always be conscious of me now what does this mean when krishna tells arjuna always be conscious of me should we be conscious of our work whichever work we are doing or should we be conscious of krishna if we have a fragmented conception of krishna then we see him as only a person who exists in the spiritual world or who exists in the temple but when we have an integrated conception of krishna we understand that actually nothing is disconnected from him so when krishna is urging us to think of him that is not a call for absent mindedness that is a call for deep mindedness deep mindedness means that we take our mind deep below the surface of reality so its not that we do an activity and at the same time we think of a picture of krishna we visualize krishna in our heart its not practical quite often but the point is when we think of krishna is that at first we understand at an intellectual level that krishna is connected with everything he is god who is not divorced from his creation he is not just transcendental he is also immanent being present in this world and he is eminently accessible to us even through this world so whatever we do in this world we can do that in a mood of loving service to him and by seeking to do our activities in a mood of service we can all move closer to krishna and eventually attain him so the essential mood that we need to have is that is krishna is the goal of my work and it is krishna who is the person who is also present even when i am doing some activity say i am working on a computer doing my job so even when i am working on my computer krishna is present in my heart the computer is made of krishna’s energy my life is devoted to krishna and the goal of my life is ultimately krishna and whatever i am doing externally be it connected with krishna or not if we make our heart internally connected with krishna then whatever we do can automatically be connected with him so that’s why the process of bhakti also requires diligent execution of directly devotional activities while it is true that we don’t have to renounce the world at the same time it is also true that if we stay only connected with the world then that means if we are 24 hours doing activities that are connected with the world and we are not doing anything which is directly connected with krishna if we are not doing directly devotional activities then our inner connection with krishna will not survive for very long and thus we will not be able to sustain ourselves in our bhakti but if we do have a steady program of devotional activities then then we can manage to connect our externals with our internals with our internal goal of krishna through our committed consciousness and thus we can attain life’s perfection without needing to renounce the world per se but by connecting the world and our endeavors in the world with krishna