Spiritual Discourses: Offer Actions to Īśvara
By Swami Viditatmananda Saraswati*
Na Me Bhaktaḥ Praṇaśyati – 09
Offer Actions to Īśvara
Do actions with the intention to please īśvara. The simple definition of bhakti is lovingly thinking about īśvara. A bhakta always sees the grace of īśvara in everything. With this view, even our day-to-day activities can become opportunities for lovingly thinking about him. Think about his grace, his favour, your place in the scheme of things, and your offering. That is how life slowly becomes filled with thoughts of īśvara. Actions become an opportunity for dwelling upon īśvara or thinking about īśvara. That is bhakti, offering. Svakarmaṇā tamabhyarcya, worshipping īśvara with one’s own karma, one’s duties, is the first and very important step among many steps.
A karma-yogī is a bhakta, a devotee. That means that only a devotee can be a karma-yogī. Is he a karma-yogī because he does a lot of actions? No, it is not the doing of action that makes one a karma-yogī. Doing action is doing karma. Karma-yoga is the spirit or attitude behind karma. What is the attitude? It is the attitude of offering with the intention of pleasing īśvara.
When offering someone a gift, you don’t offer something useless to the recipient. The offering must be something that would please the person. You must observe and make an effort to understand what the person would like, and then you do what is pleasing and avoid doing what is not pleasing. Both are important. Similarly, doing action with the intention of pleasing īśvara requires that you have an understanding of īśvara. It is imperative that you perform actions in keeping with dharma. Dharma, doing what is proper and avoiding what is improper, is the attitude or spirit that will please īśvara.
Surrender your rāga and dveṣa to īśvara
Whatever you do, offer it to īśvara. As Lord Krishna said, “yatkaroṣi tatkuruṣva madarpaṇam, whatever action you perform, perform it in such a manner that it becomes an offering to me.” Lord Krishna has made it very simple. What is important is the spirit of the offering; the material becomes just a vehicle for offering the spirit of devotion. It is not the flower or the fruit that is important; the spirit of offering is important.
Formerly, worship of the Lord was confined to the pūjā room or confined to the yajña-śāla, a sacrificial hall where fire rituals are performed. In ancient times, the only way to worship the devatās was by performing sacrificial fire rituals and making offerings to them. Now, Lord Krishna has made it very simple by saying, “Whatever you have and whatever you do, offer it to me.” Let every action become an occasion of offering to īśvara.
We can offer something that belongs to us. But really speaking, nothing belongs to us because, as I’ve said, everything is given to us. To say that this is “mine” means it belongs to me. The one thing that is mine, that belongs to me, is ignorance. Ignorance causes and takes the form of ahaṅkāra, a sense of individuality, “I,” ego. The ego gives rise to attachments and aversions. This is the avidyā-kāma-karma-cakra, the cycle of ignorance, desire, and action. The original avidyā, ignorance, hides the truth of the self and causes ego identification as an individual. That I-sense leads to kāma, desire—rāga and dveṣa, attachment and aversion—to satisfy the ego. To fulfil those desires, I do karma, action.
Our own desires, our rāga-dveṣas, our attachments and aversions, are obstacles in our lives that as though prevent us from enjoying the grace or favour of īśvara. What comes in the way and obstructs our own freedom and happiness is the internal pressure and demands created by rāga and dveṣa. They create pressure within and interfere with enjoying freedom.
Take a simple example. Sometimes I see a situation where I could help someone, like an old person who has dropped something. But because I am a Swami, I might feel that I cannot do that; I cannot bend down and help because there is a notion of dignity associated with my role. Another person could just help because that person would not have a complex about being a Swami. When I have a complex that “I am so and so,” I feel that it’s not my job; it is beneath my dignity. That would be an obstacle to my freedom to do what is required to be done in a given situation.
Freedom is our nature. It is ourselves. What comes in the way of enjoying natural freedom is ego. When Lord Krishna says offer me a fruit or a flower, what he means is, offer yourself to me; offer your ego to me. Since the ego is in the form of rāga and dveṣa, Lord Krishna says “Offer your attachments and aversions to me”. Therefore, take every opportunity to offer rāga and dveṣa to īśvara through any action.
Choose actions in harmony with the universal order
But how do I offer rāga-dveṣas to īśvara? For that, there are simple rules. In every situation, you have a choice between doing what is right and what you like. What you like is determined by your likes and dislikes, rāga-dveṣas. Sometimes, what you like is also what is right. Very often, however, what is right to do is not what you like to do. Then what do you do? You do what is right and do not get controlled by the pressure of your rāga dveṣas, likes and dislikes.
My like is an internal pressure created by my own attachment to doing this and aversion to doing that. Therefore, I must have the commitment to do what is right, what a given situation calls for. I must respond appropriately to the situation even if that is not my preferred response.
But how do you know what is the appropriate response? How do you know how to relate to the other person, how to treat them? One simple rule is to ask yourself what kind of response you would expect from the other person if you were in that position. More often than not, we know what is right in a given situation. In case you do not know what to do, ask somebody who can advise you.
What is right in a given situation can also be explained as what is dharma, what is righteous, in keeping with the universal order. For that, we must recognize that there is a universal order. The universal order is the manifestation of īśvara. When we say that īśvara is both the maker and the material, it means that īśvara is not only the creator but that he is himself manifest as the universe.
When you observe the universe, you find that everything functions according to an order, according to laws. There is harmony. All of the elements of the universe function as appointed. The sun always rises at the appointed time and sets at an appointed time; therefore these times can be printed on calendars. Because nature functions in an orderly manner, there is predictability; there are laws of science. That order and predictability enable us to function in our lives. Otherwise, we could not function.
Suppose water were to boil at 100 degrees centigrade one day, at 50 degrees the next day, and at 150 degrees on the following day. How would you cook? You use a microwave oven for a set time to cook something. If something gets cooked in 2.5 minutes today and tomorrow the same thing cooks in 1.5 minutes, then the food would be over-cooked if you set the time for 2.5 minutes. If everything behaved unpredictably like that, we could not function. We take these things for granted, but they are important.
We require order and predictability to function in the world. There is predictability when there are laws and things follow an order. Science is based on predictability. Indeed, we have not understood the order in its totality; we are always investigating and learning more and improving accuracy. But there is acceptance of the fact that there is an order.
… to continue
*Swami Viditatmananda Saraswati has been teaching Vedānta Prasthānatrayī and Prakaraṇagranthas for the last 40 years in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Throughout the year, he conducts daily Vedānta discourses, accompanied by retreats, and Jñāna Yajñas on Vedānta in different cities in India and foreign countries.
