Relinquish doership

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Swami Tejomayananda [1]

In Gita, Sri Krishna explains to Arjuna two perspectives on his problem: the highest truth and that of relative experience. Lord Krishna repeatedly tells Arjuna to only be concerned with that which is the imperishable and true.
That alone by which all this is pervaded is imperishable, because no one can destroy that immutable reality (II:17).
The imperishable reality is the essence that supports the entire world. And this reality is pure existence; in fact it is our own existence. The Vedas proclaim Tat Tvam Asi “That thou Art!”
Therefore, do not grieve over anything perishable. Why cry over the inevitable? A wise parent said to a child who was crying over a burst balloon, “When we bought it for you we knew that it would burst”. Similarly things like milk, medicines, and even machines have a limited life and become useless after that time. It is the same for this physical body, but the self is eternal.
“O Bharata, the self is eternal, indestructible, but these bodies which inhabit the embodied self are perishable. Therefore, prepare to fight, O Arjuna” (II:18).
The Sanskrit word deha (body) comes from the root dih meaning “that which is elastic, which is subject to expansion and contraction”. Therefore, keep in mind that this body which may expand if you eat too much, or shrink if you fast, or even change size as you grow older does not belong to the self, which is beyond the modifications of the relative world.
Arjuna, the young prince, now begins to reason with Lord Krishna and he wants to know why he should become an agent of destruction if everything eventually perishes anyway. Surely he will incur sin by killing! Lord Krishna can see that Arjuna has not fully understood the teaching, and that his argument is based on ignorance. Arjuna still considers himself to be the doer; the one acting in this world! He still believes he will be killing his fellow soldiers. It means that he has not understood the nature of the self. Lord Krishna continues his teaching by saying: “There are those who consider this atman, the self, as the killer, or the doer of action; others think that it is killed. Neither knows the truth. For the self neither kills nor is killed” (II:19).
Arjuna felt he would be the cause of destruction, that he would incur sin. Thus, he was grieving over it. Lord Krishna says that this sense of “doership” that we all have is the product of ignorance. Doership superimposed on the real results in our identification with the body equipment. It is something like wanting to be the driver of a car. How does one become a driver? Only if we drive! So in order to gain the status of a driver, there has to be the action of driving. We have to have a vehicle. Suppose that a car is over there and we are here, we still cannot drive. First we have to sit in the vehicle and identify with it. We have to establish an association or relationship with the car. But that is not all. We may sit in the car as though posing for a photograph and never drive. To be a driver, we have to relate to the car and then act to move it in the direction that we want it to go.
Through this objective example we see that in order to have doership we must have the body (the sense organs and organs of action), the mind and intellect. Then we must identify with these and think: “I am this body”, or “I am this mind and intellect”. It is then that we will have the sense of doership.

— Swami Tejomayananda, head of Chinmaya Mission Worldwide, is an orator, poet, singer, composer and storyteller. To find out more about Chinmaya Mission and Swamiji, visit www.chinmayamission.com [2].
© Central Chinmaya Mission Trust.