Geeta Darshan #12

The similarity I spoke of between Zen and Sankhya is not about Brahman; it is about the primacy of knowing. Zen says there is nothing to do—and whoever tries to do will only wander off. Zen goes so far as to say: the very search is your wandering. Don’t search; stop, and know. Because you are precisely that which you are seeking. Zen says: whoever makes an effort will get into trouble, because that which is to be realized is not attained by effort; it is known only in effortlessness, in non-doing.

Zen says: by labor you can obtain what is not yours; you can procure what you have not already been given. Wealth won’t come without work, because wealth is not your nature. If a man wants to go to another’s house, he must walk the path—because the other’s house is not his own. But if a man is sitting in his own house and asks, “How do I get to my home—by which road?” Zen says: don’t go at all; otherwise you’ll wander away from home.

A small story Zen masters tell comes to mind. A man gets drunk. At midnight he somehow staggers home. His limbs wobble, his eyes can’t see clearly. Outside it’s dark; inside, intoxication—darkness within, darkness without. Groping, he manages to reach his own door, and then collapses, exhausted from wandering so long. He begins to shout, “Someone please take me to my home. My mother must be waiting!”

Neighbors gather and say, “Have you gone mad? You are standing on the steps of your own house—this is your home!” But he is in such a turmoil that he keeps shouting, “Take me home! Show me the way—my old mother must be waiting.” Who will he hear? To hear, one must be quiet. He is shouting; the neighbors are saying, “This is your home,” but how can “This is your home” enter within when inside he is crying, “Where is my home?”

Hearing the noise, his old mother also wakes up—the very one he is seeking. She opens the door, puts her hand on his head and says, “Son, what has happened to you?” He clutches her feet and pleads, “My old mother must be waiting—tell me the way to my home!”

Some pranksters from the neighborhood bring a bullock cart and say, “Sit, we’ll take you home.” The man is delighted: “A good man at last! These people won’t lift a finger to get me home—no cart, no horse, no one takes my hand. You are kind.” He touches the prankster’s feet. They laugh, seat him in the cart, circle the house a dozen times, and set him down at the same door. He says, “Thank you! Great kindness—you brought me home.”

Now, Krishna has already tried the first way with Arjuna: “This is your home.” If he won’t accept it, then let’s yoke the bullocks—“Walk the path of karma-yoga. Take your rounds. Walk your circles and perhaps you’ll feel you’ve arrived. Without walking, even to arrive at yourself seems impossible.”

Zen says: That which we are seeking is exactly where we are—there isn’t even an inch of distance. Where will you go? How will you search? What effort will you make? In truth, by effort we can acquire the other, not the Self. The Self is available before all effort.

So the similarity I pointed out between Zen and Sankhya is that both consider action futile. Both say action has no ultimate meaning, because what is to be known is already attained—already achieved—prior to all actions.

The difficulty that confuses us is this: To get something not yet ours—that is one kind of thing. But to simply know what already is ours—that is a completely different matter. If the soul is already within, where is there to search? And if I already am Brahman, what is there to do? What can doing do?

No—one must descend into non-doing, into actionlessness. Doing must be set aside, so that one can pause a little and see that which stands behind all doing, which is the ground of all doing and yet outside of doing.

Another Zen story comes to mind. About five hundred years ago there was an extraordinary master in Zen, Bankei. The Emperor of Japan went to see him. He had heard much acclaim and went to the monastery spread across the distant mountains, where some five hundred monks were in practice. The Emperor said, “Show me your place—each part. I have come with time; tell me what you do where. I want to know everything.”

The monastery spread far and wide—quarters for living, eating, sleeping, bathing, study—something in each place. In the middle, at the heart of the grounds, stood a large temple adorned with golden spires.

Bankei said, “I’ll show you the places where the monks do what they do.” He took the Emperor to the refectory: “Here they eat.” To the baths: “Here they bathe.” Place after place, until the Emperor grew tired and said, “Enough of these small places. Take me to that golden-spired temple in the middle—what do you do there? I’m eager to see that.”

But curiously, whenever the Emperor mentioned that central temple, Bankei suddenly became deaf—he would not hear. The Emperor thought perhaps he had slipped; he asked again, louder: “You hear everything else clearly. I didn’t come to see the baths and dining hall. What do you do in that temple?” Bankei fell silent, as if he didn’t hear, and continued: “Here we do this, there we do that.”

Finally they returned to the gate without visiting the central temple. Mounting his horse, the Emperor said, “Either I’m mad or you are. You didn’t show me the very place I came to see. And whenever I asked, you turned deaf. You hear everything else—only this makes you deaf!”

Bankei said, “If you insist, I must answer. You asked me to take you where monks do something—so I took you there. In that temple, the monks do nothing. There, monks simply are. That is our meditation hall. There is no doing there; there is being. When we are tired of doing and want to relish the joy of simply being, we go within there. I was in a bind: you said, ‘Take me where they do something.’ Had I taken you there, you would have asked, ‘What do they do here?’—what could I have answered? I had no hope you could understand ‘non-doing.’ If I said, ‘They meditate,’ that too would be wrong, because meditation is not a doing; it is not an act. If I said, ‘They pray,’ again it would be wrong; prayer is not an act—it is a state. So I was forced to become deaf. Better you consider me mad or deaf than have me speak wrongly.”

Zen says: Meditation means non-doing. Only in this non-doing is that which is known, known. In this, Zen and Sankhya are similar. Zen does not talk about Brahman—because Zen says: before meditation, before knowing, talk of Brahman is futile; and after knowing, after meditation, talk of Brahman is still futile. If we have not known it, why talk? If we have known it, what need to talk? Hence Zen is silent—moun—about Brahman.

But this does not mean Zen does not know Brahman. That depends on individuals. Sankhya talks—in the hope that though Brahman cannot be known by talk, talk might strike the hidden thirst in someone; it might direct someone’s inner longing; it might become the last straw that makes the camel kneel. One was almost ready to sit—a straw, and he sits.

So Sankhya speaks. But how is That found? By doing? No; by knowing. In the distinction between doing and knowing, Zen and Sankhya are utterly one. And wherever supreme knowers have been in the world, some Sankhya will be in their words. One cannot escape Sankhya; it will be there. It may be that in some teachings only pure Sankhya appears—then that person will be of use to very few.

Like Buddha. Buddha’s teaching is pure Sankhya. That is why his roots were pulled up from India: only knowing, only knowing—nothing to do! In a world where doers congregate, people want to be told something to do, something to gain. Buddha says, there is nothing to gain, nothing to do. Zen is a branch of Buddhism, Buddha’s purest vision. But outside India—China, Burma, Thailand, Tibet—Buddha took root. The compromise he would not make in India—to sanction doing—he had to make elsewhere.

In Tibet it turned into doing—ritual. In China it approved practices: do this, do that. In Thailand and Sri Lanka it became doing—karma-yoga. As long as it stayed pure Sankhya, its roots struggled to spread.

Only a few can grasp pure Sankhya. Therefore, Sankhya has given the subtlest vision, yet you will scarcely find anyone in India who truly embraces Sankhya. You will find followers of a thousand kinds, but not Sankhya. There is not a single temple dedicated to Sankhya; no statue of its originator devotedly worshiped.

Whoever speaks the absolute truth must accept that their word will rarely reach the masses. Those who speak the whole truth must agree that their words will hover in the skies; bringing them to the ground is difficult. On this earth only impure truths take root; any truth that would plant its feet here must compromise with the ground.

Krishna first speaks uncompromising Sankhya: “I shall tell you the wisdom of Sankhya.” Seeing it cannot take root in Arjuna, he says, “Now I will speak of karma-yoga, the second way.”

You also asked whether Western philosophers appreciate Sankhya only because it is non-theistic.

In fact, whoever is Brahman-centered cannot be theistic. If he gives a place to God at all, it will be within Maya, not beyond it. Either he will say, “There is no God; Brahman, the Unmanifest, is sufficient,” or, as a concession, he will say, “There is God—it is also a form of the Unmanifest—but within the circle of illusion.” He is compromising with you.

The original aphorisms of Sankhya are utterly pure; there is no place for God in them. Understand the difference between Ishvara (God) and Brahman.

God means the Creator, the maker. Brahman means the pure energy of life. Even before God, Brahman is. Gods appear and vanish; gods come and go; gods are our conceptions.

Understand it like this: I walk on a dark night. Far off, two or four miles away, something appears—looks like a policeman standing there. I walk a mile closer—it is not a policeman, but the stump of a tree. Closer still, I discover it is the memorial of freedom. What is, is what it is—and who knows what I shall find a mile further on! What is, remains what it is; I am drawing nearer.

Those who set out on the journey to Brahman find Brahman at the end. On the approach, what they find along the way they call God. God is the conception of Brahman seen from afar. We cannot think Brahman; when we think, we fabricate God. We cannot think the attributeless; when we think, we give attributes. We cannot think the formless; when we think, we give form.

Seen through the human mind, Brahman becomes Ishvara. This God is a human construction. As one proceeds, one drops thought, becomes thought-free; one day God, too, is gone. What remains—formless, attributeless—is Brahman.

So in its purest doctrine, Sankhya does not agree to intermediate stations. Later, however, a second stream of Sankhya emerged. There was the atheistic Sankhya; but because it was vanishing into thin air, a theistic Sankhya was fashioned. Some people compromised and added God to Sankhya: “It will not do, because people cannot grasp Brahman; we must build middle stations. And if they cannot hold even that, better to have them walk a few steps and grasp God—later we can help them let God go. One who won’t start at all—get him to take a few steps. After those steps we can say, ‘What you saw was mistaken—leave it and move on.’ It may be necessary to erect many temples of God before the temple of Brahman—the Unmanifest, the Formless—can be revealed.”

In the West, the influence of Sankhya is not because it is non-theistic. In the West too, wherever a truly intelligent, contemplative spirit has arisen, he knows the matter is only of knowing—nothing to do. Ask Eckhart, or Plotinus, or Boehme; the knower in the West will also say: it is only a matter of knowing; any slight movement to do—and you have missed. Because doing entails movement; and that which is unmoving—if you move even a little, it is lost.

One must become as unmoving as a lamp-flame in a sealed room where no wind enters. In non-action, consciousness becomes motionless; in non-action, unmoving. And the moment consciousness is unmoving, it becomes one with the vast.

So yes, Sankhya has influence in the West. And I hold that as human intelligence evolves, Sankhya will become more and more influential. In India, Sankhya has less influence; yoga dominates, which is quite the opposite: “Something must be done.” Yoga proceeds from humanity’s lower intelligence; Sankhya from the highest.

Naturally, whoever begins from the highest rarely arrives at the end; and often whoever begins from the last steps, if he wishes, can reach the highest.

Sankhya is pure knowing; yoga is pure action. If we wished to divide the world’s entire thought into two, the words Sankhya and Yoga would suffice. Those who trust in doing belong to Yoga; those who trust in non-doing—only in knowing—belong to Sankhya. In truth, besides Sankhya and Yoga, there is nothing in the world; everything else stands somewhere within these two categories. Wherever a philosophy of life has arisen—any corner of the world—it can be divided into these two.

We should stop dividing philosophy as Eastern and Western, or Jain, Hindu, Muslim. Divide only into Yoga and Sankhya: on Yoga, those faiths that say “by doing, it will happen”; on Sankhya, those that say “only by non-doing does it happen.”

Nehabhikramanāśo ’sti pratyavāyo na vidyate.
Sv-alpam apy asya dharmasya trāyate mahato bhayāt. 40.

In desireless karma-yoga, action does not begin in vain, nor is there any adverse consequence; even a little of this dharma saves one from great fear.

Krishna says: No step in desireless action goes waste. Understand this well. Even a small effort in desireless action does not go to waste. But learn its reverse too: even the greatest effort in desire-driven action goes to waste.

Recently I stayed in a house. The host was worried, sleepless. I asked, “What’s the matter?” He said, “A disaster—five lakhs lost.” Naturally, that feels like calamity. I asked his wife, “What happened?” She said, “Don’t be drawn into his talk. There’s no loss of five lakhs; there’s a profit of five lakhs!”

I was puzzled. She said, “He was expecting a profit of ten lakhs; only five came; so for him it’s a loss of five. Sleep gone, medicines started, blood pressure up. There is no way to make him see that he gained five.”

I asked him. He said, “What five? It was going to be ten—fifteen even. Five is a definite loss.”

This is the desire-driven mind—always unsuccessful. Even profit becomes loss for it, because expectation has no end. Whatever comes seems small; every success pales in the face of a bigger imagined success. No matter what one attains, there is no contentment. Desire-driven action is doomed to failure—not because of the outcome, but because it is desire-driven.

Krishna says: Even a small act of desireless action succeeds—inevitably. There is no way to fail. When action is free of expectation, whatever comes is much—because there was no expectation to belittle it.

We all know the story: Akbar drew a line in court and asked his courtiers to make it shorter without touching it. All failed; Birbal drew a longer line beside it. He did not touch, cut, or erase the first line; yet it became smaller.

Where the line of expectation is long, all lines of success appear short. Expectation is endless—far longer than Birbal’s—it has no ends; it is infinite at both sides. Those who know Brahman call it infinite; those who do not know Brahman still know one infinite thing—expectation. In the presence of that infinite line, any success looks small.

Krishna says: Erase the line of expectation. This is the meaning of desireless action—action without expectation, without craving for results. It is a masterstroke: if you erase the line of expectation, even the smallest action brings fulfillment. However small, it is great—because there is no lower line to measure it against. Therefore the desireless actor never falls into despair; only the desire-driven does. Frustration is the shadow of desire-driven action; desireless action casts no shadow.

Note a striking fact: the poor are less prone to despair than the rich. It should not be so; it seems to break the rule. Poor societies are less tormented; rich societies are more troubled. Why?

The poor cannot muster the courage for infinite expectation. They know their limits; what might be, what cannot. Beyond their capacity—so they do not draw an infinite line of expectation; thus they do not reach frustration or despair. The rich, with means and conveniences, dare to extend expectation to infinity—and with it comes despair.

Paul Goodman wrote about America in a book, Growing Up Absurd. He says: The conveniences humanity longed for have all been realized in America. The dreams humanity dreamed for millennia have been surpassed. Yet the American today is more miserable than a tribesman in the forests of Bastar. What has happened? How did this absurdity arise? What men have yearned for has borne fruit—so what went wrong?

What happened is this: with power in hand, expectations became infinite. Therefore whatever one has seems too small. The tribal of Bastar cannot sustain vast expectations; what is in hand appears large enough.

That is why the poor seldom revolt; they cannot expect enough to revolt. Revolt begins when the poor begin to see expectations close at hand; then unrest starts. The uneducated do not revolt—they cannot frame large expectations. The educated foment upheaval; with education, expectation expands. It is difficult to quiet the educated. I am not saying we should not educate—only that, as yet, we have found no way to quieten expectation.

A great thinker even titled a book Compulsory Mis-Education. If, in the end, man becomes only miserable and restless—what use is learning A, B, C, D? If prosperity brings only sorrow, then poverty might seem better.

But the secret is simple: it is not about prosperity. If expectation is not excessive, even the prosperous can be peaceful. If expectation is vast, even the poor will be restless. If expectation is zero, the educated can be at peace; if expectation is enormous, the uneducated will be disturbed. The issue is not education or wealth; it is expectation.

So Krishna says: I will teach you desireless action—because one who acts without desire never meets failure. That is the first point. The second: in desireless action there is no obstruction, no adverse reaction. Why? What alchemy in desireless action prevents hindrance?

Obstruction, too, appears because of expectation. Without expectation, how will you perceive obstruction? The Ganges flows toward the ocean. If beforehand she draws a map—“I must go by this route”—there will be a thousand obstacles: someone will have built a house without consulting Ganga; somewhere a mountain stands without consulting her; a steep climb awaits—unconsulted. Following a fixed map, obstacles multiply, and fighting them, Ganga might not reach the sea at all.

But Ganga sets out without a map, without planning. With no predetermined expectation of route, whatever way appears becomes the way. There is no question of obstruction. If a mountain stands in the path, she flows around it. Who was obliged to carve a path through the mountain, that it should be an obstacle?

Those who fix the future beforehand erect obstacles with their own hands—because the future is not yours alone; who knows what mountain has scheduled itself ahead?

One who does not fix the future, who acts now and makes no firm idea of tomorrow’s fruit—how can obstacles arise for him? For him, whatever path opens is the path; and for whatever comes, there is gratitude. Obstruction cannot find him.

Hence Krishna says: Arjuna, on the path of desireless action there is no adverse reaction, no obstruction, not even a slight hindrance. It is a subtle, artistic point—not obvious at first. Do obstacles vanish for the desireless actor?

Obstacles remain where they are—but the desireless actor has stopped granting them recognition. Recognition came through expectations being thwarted. Now nothing is contrary. In desireless action, everything is favorable. This does not mean everything really is favorable. Rather, whatever is, is favorable—because he has no scale by which to register the unfavorable. There is no obstacle, no failure. All obstacles, all failures, are constructions of the desire-driven mind.

Even a little practice of nishkam karma—action without desire—saves one from great fears. What are these great fears? They are exactly these: Won’t failure come? Won’t despondency seize me? Won’t sorrow fall to my lot? Won’t some obstacle arise? Won’t disappointment come? These are the great fears. Krishna is saying, in the last part of the verse, that even a little practice, an iota, a mere grain of desireless action, frees a person from fears as huge as mountains.

In fact, unless you understand the opposite state, it won’t be clear. The tiniest expectation manufactures fears as big as mountains. The slightest desire constructs griefs of mountainous proportions. A little insistence on one’s wish—this must be so—throws the whole life into disorder. Whoever says, It must be like this, is bound to suffer. It never happens that way. Whoever says, Only if it happens like this will I be happy, has arranged his own hell. He is the architect of his own hell; he has made all the arrangements himself.

Look at the mountains of suffering we bear—have you noticed how tiny the expectations are on which they stand? Such tiny expectations! You’ve never looked. Our sorrows rest on very small expectations.

A man is passing on the road. You had always greeted him; today you don’t—these two hands do not rise today. His sleep is ruined, he is upset, feverish! Now he begins to think: What has happened? Has there been some disgrace, has my honor slipped away, has my prestige been dragged into the dust? The person who always greeted me didn’t greet me! What will happen? What won’t happen? How to settle the score now, what all must be done—he is caught in a thousand loops. These two hands of yours not lifting may fill the entire edifice of his life with gloom.

The husband comes home and says, Bring water. The wife does not bring it for two moments—calamity! The husband steps out; his eyes lift for a moment toward some woman passing on the road—the wife’s life is finished! She is as good as dead; life has no meaning, living is utterly pointless!

If we look at the mountains of our misery, we will find very petty expectations standing behind them. It is right to begin understanding from here. For we know not even a fraction of nishkam karma, but we know plenty of desire-driven karma. So begin here. The state of desireless action is the opposite of this. How petty expectations keep on creating vast suffering!

This great Mahabharata that happened—do you know from how petty an incident it began? So vast a war, and it began from so small, so trivial a thing! From a very petty incident, from a joke. All the wars of the world begin from a joke.

Duryodhana arrives. The Pandavas have built a palace, and they are making fun of the blind man’s son. They have set mirrors in it, arranged in such a way that where there is no door, a door appears; where there is water, water does not appear. He bumps his head against a wall and falls into the water. Draupadi laughs. That laughter is the root of the entire Mahabharata war. The price of that laughter is later exacted by stripping Draupadi naked. Then the chain of revenge goes on. A very petty incident—just a joke—but it proved very costly. The joke kept growing; then there was no turning back, and it churned the whole land.

A woman’s laughter! Cousins teasing one another in a family! Who would have thought that laughter could cost so much? But they did not know that Duryodhana, too, had expectations. The blow landed on expectations—on expectations. He had never imagined he would be laughed at—after being invited. He had not thought he would be mocked and made fun of in this way. He must have come expecting honor; he received mockery. The disturbance began.

Then that disturbance had terrible consequences—consequences from which, I think, India has not even today fully freed itself. What happened in the Mahabharata—its repercussions still echo in the very breath of India.

In this world it is the very small causes that set everything in motion.

We know desireful action; we know nothing of desireless. Understand nishkam action in just this way, but in the reverse direction. A small touch of desirelessness, and the great fears of life recede.

You ask whether desirelessness stops our progress.
What does progress mean? If by progress you mean lots of money, a big house, property, land—then perhaps, yes, there may be a bit of a slowdown. But if by progress you mean peace, bliss, love, light in life, wisdom—then it doesn’t hinder; it gives great momentum. So it depends entirely on what you mean by progress.

If by progress you mean what can be accumulated outside, then there may be a slight obstacle. But even if you were to get everything outside—the whole world, all its wealth—and not a single ray of peace arises within, then I tell you, if someone offered you one small ray of peace in exchange for all that kingdom and wealth, you would drop it. You could drop it. A small ripple of peace is not equal to the entire empire of this world.

But we usually take only one meaning of progress. Yet this does not mean I am saying that one who moves into nishkama karma—action without desire for fruits—will inevitably become poor and destitute. I am not saying that. When the mind is at peace there is no necessity to be poor. A quiet mind is more skillful in whatever it does. Even if it earns money, it will earn more skillfully. Yes, one change will occur: for a quiet mind, earning money cannot mean stealing. It will mean creating wealth, not looting it.

When the mind is silent, a person becomes skillful in whatever he does. He will have more friends, greater competence, more strength, more understanding. So I am not saying such a person will inevitably be poor. Inner richness will certainly be there—and inner richness also becomes the foundation for outer richness, but that will remain secondary. It will come while inner richness is preserved—not at the cost of it; you won’t have to pay with your inner wealth. Outer prosperity will also arrive. Yes, it will be obstructed only where outer prosperity says, “Lose your inner peace and joy, then I can come.” The man of desireless action will say, “Then don’t come—your blessing would be to stay away. Go.”

Everything depends on what you mean by progress. If mere running is progress—running anywhere without ever arriving—then the point is different. But if progress means arriving somewhere, then it is entirely different. Suppose a man is mad and we tell him, “We’ll treat your mind.” He asks, “You won’t hinder my progress, will you? For no one can run as fast as I do now.” We will say, “Yes, there will be a hindrance. Right now no one can run as fast as you, but despite such speed you never arrive anywhere; even those who walk slowly arrive.” If you keep just this much in mind, the point becomes clear.

व्यवसायात्मिका बुद्धिरेकेह कुरुनन्दन।
बहुशाखा ह्यनन्ताश्च बुद्धयोऽव्यवसायिनाम्।। 41।।

O joy of the Kurus, in this yoga the seeker’s decisive understanding—“the Divine is my supreme goal”—remains one, the same within and without; but the intellects of the irresolute, attached to objects and pleasures, are many-branched and endless.

A human mind can be one, or it can be many. Consciousness can be whole, or fragmented. Intellect can be divided into mutually opposing parts, or it can be undivided. Generally, the desire-ridden mind is not a single mind; it is many minds—poly-psychic. And not only many: one mind stands opposed to another.

I was in Delhi some days ago. A friend, a noted educationist—founder vice-chancellor of a university and now in an even higher post—came to ask me, “We are educating people, yet dishonesty, lies, deceit, fraud keep increasing! How do we stop our children from these?” I said, “Leave other people’s children aside. Everyone is ready to stop other people’s children from deceit. I want to talk about your children. When someone else’s son becomes a sannyasin, the whole neighborhood comes to congratulate him. If it were their own son, they would know!”

I asked, “You have sons, don’t you?” He said yes, but he looked uneasy as soon as I said we should speak directly about his children. I asked, “Do you want to free your own children from deceit, flattery, lying, dishonesty—the thousand diseases plaguing the country today?” He said yes, but timidly. I said, “You’re saying yes so weakly that I must ask again. Gather some courage and say it.” He said, “No, no—I do want it.” I said, “But you are not mustering strength. You spoke forcefully before—‘everything is being ruined; how do we teach honesty to the nation’s children!’—but not now.” He said, “You touched my weak spot. You caught my nerve.” I said, “Only by catching the nerve can anything be said. In this country everyone talks without catching the nerve, so it amounts to nothing. I want to catch the nerve.”

He said, “Then no, I cannot say it with that much courage.” I asked, “Why not?” He said, “Because I know this much: at least my son should rise to as high a post as I have. And I also know that if he is entirely honest and moral, he cannot rise.” I said, “You have two minds. Decide clearly between the two. Either say, ‘Even if my son has to beg on the streets, I accept it—but no dishonesty.’ Or say, ‘Let him be dishonest; I don’t care—he should be in the Education Ministry. We will not rest till he reaches the ministry. We have nothing to do with honesty.’ Speak plainly. Otherwise you will create a double mind in your son too.”

The boy will understand that father wants him to become Education Minister—but he sees that the climb to that post is, rung by rung, a journey of dishonesty and theft. On the other hand, father says, “Be honest.” And the condition of the honest in this world is exactly as Reinhold Niebuhr titled his book: Moral Man and Immoral Society. One must be prepared to beg on the streets. Though, to be moral and beg on the streets brings more joy than becoming an emperor through immorality—but that is another matter.

If both these messages lodge in the boy’s head, he will have two minds. Then the most he can do is arrange something inside—a coalition government will have to be formed within! Among all these unruly, opposing factions he will have to craft a compromise, make a coalition cabinet. And then what? Show honesty outwardly, and do dishonesty inwardly. Because he must reach the minister’s post, and honesty is such a nice thing—it too must be displayed.

Our mind gets divided into many fragments, and opposing desires clutch us at once. When infinite desires seize the mind simultaneously, infinite pieces are created. And we go on pursuing all of them at once. One man says, “I want peace,” and at the same time says, “I want prestige.” It never occurs to him what he is saying!

A friend came to me. He said, “I have been to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Ramana Ashram, to Sivananda’s ashram—I combed all the ashrams; nowhere did I find peace. I have come straight from Pondicherry. Someone mentioned your name, so I came for peace—give me peace.”

I said, “Before you get disappointed with me too, turn around and go back immediately. I will not give you peace. And you speak as if Aurobindo’s ashram had some contract to deliver peace! ‘Been everywhere—didn’t get it’—as if it were your right. Out of the door!”

He said, “What sort of man are you! I came seeking peace.” I said, “Where did you go seeking unrest? Tell me which ashram you visited for unrest.” He said, “Nowhere.” I said, “If you are so skillful at producing unrest, you can produce peace as well. What need have you of me? If you retrace the same path by which you became restless, you will become peaceful. Where do I come in? When you were becoming restless you sought no advice from me; now for peace you come to seek my advice! Stop talking about peace. If you want to stay with me, talk about unrest—how you became restless. Speak to me about that. If your unrest becomes clear, gaining peace is not difficult at all.”

He stayed two days. Slowly he began to unfold his unrest—the same as ours. He had one son. He had earned much money as a contractor. The son married a girl he did not approve of. He stood at the door with a sword—“I’ll lay down a corpse; get out!” The boy left the house. Now trouble. Death is approaching. With what face to call the son back—he had been driven out at sword-point. Death nears, and the money amassed through a thousand thefts and dishonesties—there will be no heir; everything slips from his hands.

I asked, “Was the girl bad whom your son married?” He said, “No, the girl is perfectly good, but it was against my wish.” I said, “You married according to your wish; why should your son marry according to it? You are creating roads to unrest. When he married according to his wish and you threw him out, why be agitated now? The matter is finished. He has not come asking to be taken back.”

He said, “That is the unrest—if only he would come once, apologize, and come in.” “If he didn’t agree with you then, fine—the matter is over. Why be disturbed now?” “What will happen to the money?” I said, “What happens to money after everyone dies? And why worry? You will die; whatever happens to the money will happen.” He said, “No, my money should be in my son’s hands.” I said, “Then drop the thought that your son’s wife must be of your choosing. Your son is ready to leave wealth for his love; you also be ready to leave something.”

He was with me two days; we discussed everything. It became clear that a thousand contradictory desires were gripping the mind; thus the mind had become restless. All our minds are restless in this way.

Krishna says: the sense-attached mind—since the objects of desire are often opposite—simultaneously longs for opposites, becomes deranged and breaks into fragments. One who journeys toward nishkama karma—inevitably, as desire drops, the fragments woven out of desire drop. One who enters a life free of expectations—since expectation falls, the fragments made of expectation fall. Within him a one-pointedness, a single mind, begins to arise.

And where there is one mind, there is everything—peace, happiness, bliss. Where there is one mind, there is everything—strength, music, beauty. Where there is one mind, whatever is worth having in life follows behind it. And where there are many minds, even what is at hand gets scattered and lost. But we are all like mercury—broken, split, scattered into bits. How can there be peace when we ourselves are so fragmented?

Joshua Liebman wrote his memoirs. The title he gave is beautiful, and what he mentions in the very first part is precious. He says: “When I was young, freshly out of university, I thought I should make a map of life—what I want to achieve. Naturally, if you have a map, life can be lived in an orderly way.” He made a list: money, a beautiful wife, fame, respectability, virtue—some twenty or twenty-two items. Everything a person could want, all desires that desire can desire, all the demands of the senses, all the visions that craving can spin. He kept reading the list again and again to see if anything more should be added—after all, it was to be a lifelong map.

He found nothing left to add. Everything was there. Yet something felt missing, as if a link were lost. Why did it feel so? Because at night, before sleeping, he thought, “Suppose I get everything on this list—will all be well?” And the mind felt empty. No assured, decisive answer arose within—no wave of certainty that “Yes, if all this is obtained, then all is attained.” No, that certainty did not come.

So he went to an old fakir in the village—“You are the oldest here; you have seen much life, not only of householders but of sannyasins as well. No one is more experienced than you. I’ve brought this list—tell me if something should be added.” The old man read it, laughed, picked up a pen and crossed out the entire list. Above it, in big letters, he wrote three words: Peace of Mind. He said, “Forget all this; attain this one thing, and all the rest can come. And if you attain all the rest, these three words will still never be yours. In the end, the decision will be only this: Did you attain peace of mind, or not?”

Liebman titled his autobiography Peace of Mind. He wrote: “That day it felt as though the old man had ruined my list. I had made it with such effort, and he cut it all up. It didn’t appeal to me. But at life’s end I know he did well to cross it out—why didn’t he tear it up altogether! Useless. Today, at the end of life, only those three words circle around me. If only I had understood then that peace of mind is everything, perhaps I might have attained it by now. But life passes in trying to complete that list—that is so for everyone.”

Krishna says: this running of the mind after objects creates only unrest. Unrest has a single meaning: a mind running in many directions—unrest. A mind that does not run—peace. Krishna says the inner state of nishkama karma creates a single mind and peace. And where there is one mind, there is decisive intelligence—the definitive intellect.

Understand this last point. Where there is one mind, there is no indecision. Where will indecision be? It requires at least two minds. Where there is one mind, there is decision.

Ordinarily what do we do? We say, “We need decisive intelligence,” and then we say, “By hook or crook, decide. Suppress the mind, sit on its chest, and decide.” But even as he decides forcefully, he knows inner contrary voices are saying, “What are you doing? This is not right.” A man swears, “I will practice celibacy, I resolve!” But against whom is he resolving? The one he resolves against is sitting within.

I met an old man who said, “I have taken a vow of celibacy three times in my life.” I asked, “Why not a fourth time?” He was honest. The old are seldom honest—life teaches such dishonesty—children are usually honest; it’s hard to find a dishonest child; it’s hard to find an honest old man. But he was honest. He said, “You are right. I did not take it a fourth time because three failures broke my courage.” I asked, “Against whom did you take the vow? Are vows ever fulfilled against oneself? When you took it, was your entire mind in agreement?” He said, “If the whole mind had agreed, what was there to vow! I took it with a majority mind.”

But the mind is not a parliament where you can pass a resolution by majority. And if it is a parliament, it is like the one in Delhi—nothing is certain. Whoever testified for you today may testify against you two days later. You may sleep at night and wake to find yourself in the minority; the majority has slipped away.

Krishna says something else. He does not tell you to “decide.” He says that one who moves on the path of nishkama karma finds a decisive intellect—because only one mind remains. He does not wander among objects, does not expect, understands the futility of craving, does not demand future fruits in feverishness, lives in the moment, in the present—such a person comes to a single mind. One mind becomes decisive; it does not have to be made so.

We will talk about the rest tomorrow morning.