Chapter 3, Verse 8
niyataṁ kuru karma tvaṁ
karma jyāyo hy akarmaṇaḥ
śarīra-yātrā’pi ca te
na prasiddhyed akarmaṇaḥ
You must perform your obligatory duties, for action is superior to non-action (meditation). For not even the maintenance of the body is possible by inaction.
“You must perform your obligatory duties; for action is superior to non-action.” If you become lazy you are useless! Here Krishna says to Arjuna, “Wake up!” In the other verses, He says, “Don’t be a hypocrite in whatever you do! Do your duty! There is no point in not doing your duty.” When you do your duty, when you do what the Divine wants you to do, when you learn to accept what God has given you to do, then you even perfect the “non-action (meditation).
If you have not perfected your actions outside, how will you perfect the inside? There will be great difficulties. The mind will always tend to run outside anyway, true? Do your sadhana! Do your meditation! Do your practices! Do your japa! First make the mind focus on the Divine. Then when you sit in your sadhana, when you sit in your meditation, you will dive deeply into that ocean. The mind will not be running left, and right. It will not go, “Ah, World Cup!” or “What is my favourite athlete doing?” No! You
will be present in your meditation. You’ll enjoy the moment. Let go of the past! Let go of the future! Because only now is important. You must perform your obligatory duty now. And how you do your duty? “You must perform your obligatory duties” with an attitude of surrender, with an attitude of sacrifice.
“For not even the maintenance of the body is possible by inaction”. The human being is the only creation of God which has the capacity of performing ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and one is bound by this. Other beings don’t have the quality of discrimination. That’s why the animals just do what they have to do. They can’t really do anything new in their lives. An animal will not say, “We always walk with four legs everywhere, but today I will take the car!” Humans can put the animals in the car and make them travel this way. But animals don’t have this desire, they don’t have this choice. So, animals are free from creating karma. They simply go through the natural processes of creation. However, human beings have the quality of discrimination: they always have the choice – where to focus their attention.
Due to this choice, one can create pain, one can bind oneself to pain. Due to this choice, one can cause binding, attachment, to this life.
Bhagavad Gita
