Geeta Darshan #6

Now, the sutra.

The fruit of sattvic action is said to be happiness, knowledge, and dispassion; the fruit of rajasic action is sorrow, distress, pain; and the fruit of tamasic action is ignorance. From sattva arises knowledge; from rajas certainly arises greed; from tamas arise negligence and delusion, and ignorance as well.

Those established in sattva go to higher realms; those in rajas abide in the middle, the human realm; those sunk in tamasic activities like sleep, negligence, laziness, go downward into lower births.

The fruit of sattvic action is happiness, knowledge, and dispassion.

Understand each word exactly. Sattvic action means, first, an action not born out of your inner compulsion to do.

You talk to people—often you talk because if you don’t, you feel inner restlessness. You are not relating; you are dumping garbage from your head. You have no concern whether the other benefits; the other is only a pretext. Your whirlwind needs release. That is why people get bored with each other’s talk. You came to unload your garbage; the other does not give you a chance, and pours his. The bore never leaves a pause for you to take over—he just goes on and on.

This kind of talking is not relationship. Such action is not sattvic; it is rajasic. You have a madness to act—you cannot remain without doing, so you do out of compulsion. Some people are “in service.”

A friend came: “I have been serving for twenty years—Harijans, tribals; opened schools, hospitals—but there is no peace.” I told him: “At least this much is good—that your work keeps you occupied. Without it you would have gathered so much unrest that you would have gone mad. And don’t imagine you serve because of the Harijans. You would have to serve someone anyway. The Harijan is just a peg on which you hang your compulsion. If the world became good, the servers would still find opportunities—they must, because they have to do something.”

If your action arises from the disease of doing, it is not sattvic. Sattvic action arises from compassion; it keeps the other in view; there is no inner madness in it. And if there is nothing to do, you will not be restless; you will sit content, joyful. Take away the work of those who “serve” and they are in trouble. “What shall we do now?” Only one who is joyful in himself can sit empty. One who is not joyful in himself must keep himself engaged—to escape from himself.

Sattvic action means action that springs from your lightness, your peace, your unburdened being. You have no compulsion to act, but in a situation where an action would benefit someone, bring someone good, you act. That is sattvic.

Sattvic action brings happiness. Happiness means: only that action gives you happiness which issues from your own joy. Understand this: you do not get happiness from what you do; you get what you put into the doing. Happiness is not in things; we pour it in. If it is not in us, we cannot pour it.

I am speaking to you—if it comes out of my joy, speaking becomes joyful, because it is suffused with my joy. If it comes for some other reason, it cannot give me joy.

If someone serves and is unhappy, his action is not sattvic. If whatever you do makes you unhappy, it is not sattvic; it is rajasic.

Rajasic action brings sorrow because it arises from inner sorrow. I have not seen a happy politician. They are engaged in great actions—the newspapers are full of them. The works of a sattvic person do not make news—they are so silent, they create no noise. Occasionally a sattvic person appears in the news only if a rajasic person gets linked with him: if a governor goes to meet Vinoba, or Nehru visits him, the report comes—because of the rajasic name. Compulsion is such. The sattvic person works quietly outside the world of news. The political person does great works; ninety percent of the grand show of this world is run by political, rajasic people. Yet they are not at all happy. Even after doing so much, not the shadow of happiness is gained.

Many politicians come to me—especially when out of office. They say, “No happiness, no peace—show us a way.” If after so much action there is no happiness, what is the fruit of action? If someone says, “I run miles but the goal does not come nearer,” we will say, “Then why run? If running doesn’t lead to the goal, why waste your energy? Sit down. And if running makes the goal go farther, perhaps you are running in the opposite direction!” A sitting person at least does not get farther away—he has that one gain. The running politician is like this: great actions; negligible results.

Alexander dies unhappy after vast action. Napoleon dies unhappy. Hitler commits suicide. Lenin dies extremely unhappy; in his will he writes that power should not remain with Stalin—he is unhappy because while he was ill Stalin usurped power. Stalin is even more rajasic. Revolutionaries often do not enjoy power; their energy is spent in seizing it. By the time they get it, they are weak; someone else, with intact energy, takes over. In every revolution, those who create it are thrown out; those who did not, become masters. The father earns; the son spends.

Lenin died unhappy and wrote his will—but who would listen? The strength was in Stalin’s hands; the will was suppressed.

Stalin too lived and died unhappy. His misery was such that in later years he kept a double—a man exactly like him. Hitler did the same. Stalin wouldn’t go out himself, having tormented so many people that he was unsafe. His double would go for salutes, speeches—so if a bullet came, the other man would die and Stalin be safe. It is said that for two or three months after his death, Russia did not announce it; the double continued the role. What a strange attainment—that even to your own welcome you cannot go; you must send another! Stalin became a ghost hidden behind. He trusted no one—how could he? He himself had betrayed Lenin, and those who helped him he had all killed—because whoever could help him was powerful and thus dangerous. In those forty years of his power he quickly severed the heads of all who had been his ladders. Such a person can have no friends; friends come too close—dangerous. He dies in utter misery. His daughter later wrote memoirs: “I have never seen a man as unhappy as my father.” And so it will be.

Sattvic actions spring from inner joy and every action returns your joy to you a thousandfold. This world is an echo. Sing a song and the song returns from all sides. Hurl an abuse and it will come back a thousand times. Sow thorns and you will reap thorns; sow flowers and you will reap flowers.

Sattvic action brings happiness—one. It brings knowledge—two. Why should sattvic action bring knowledge? We think knowledge should come from scripture or guru. But Krishna says sattvic action brings knowledge. What knowledge? Whenever you do a sattvic act you become quiet. Do a good deed and that night you will sleep deeply. Do a bad deed and you will not sleep; it will prick like a thorn. Do something kind and a lightness spreads; a small dawn arises within. Find a banknote on the street; even the thought to pick it up brings restlessness. Pocket it and it will feel like a mountain. You may do other things, but inside there is an unease.

In American courts they use the lie detector. It catches lies because as soon as you lie, the heart gets a jolt. The machine records it. They ask simple questions first—time, color of the wall—no reason to lie; the graph records the heartbeat. Then they ask, “Did you steal?” Inside the answer is “Yes,” because he did; outwardly he says, “No.” The graph shows the jolt—the man wanted to say something else but said something different. Lying is difficult—however prepared you are. Inside, what you know to be true remains known; what you know to be false, however you say it, jolts the heart. Two voices arise. One who lives like this, doing wrong, lives in constant unease. A liar has great trouble: one lie demands a thousand more. One bad act demands a thousand to protect it. A chain begins with no end; the cumulative result is suffering.

Krishna says the fruit of sattvic action is happiness and knowledge. When you are light, peaceful, at ease, a deep rest arises; there are no two voices within—one feeling only; everything straight, clear, true. In that straightness, innocence, your eyes can recognize yourself. That is knowledge. Self-recognition needs no smoke, no inner conflict, no quarrel; it needs silence—possible only in sattva. Otherwise silence is difficult. You must be occupied with security; fear grips you; you are pursued by those you have deceived; those you harmed await revenge. Enemies surround you. A sattvic person, on the contrary, sows friendship and love around him. He has no cause for fear or concern for safety. There is no inner quarrel. From this ease arises inner health—and that health opens your eyes within. The smoke clears—like morning mist dispersing to reveal the sun—and you succeed in self-realization. Hence knowledge.

More subtle still: dispassion. Happiness, knowledge, and dispassion are the fruits of sattvic action. The more sattvic a person, the more attachment drops; dispassion arises. Why? Attachment means: my happiness depends on another—wife, husband, son, father, friend, wealth, house—something “other.” What my happiness depends on I want to hold tight lest it slip away. That is attachment. But a sattvic person knows from daily experience that happiness is within his own hand. Whenever he acts in a sattvic way, happiness showers. He knows the whole arrangement of happiness is in his hands. Naturally, dependence drops; dispassion grows. When the wife is near, he is happy; when she is away, he is happy. There is no difference in his happiness. When she is near, he enjoys her presence; when she is away, he enjoys her absence. Both are enjoyable. Usually, a person suffers both—the wife’s presence and her absence.

Try it—send your wife away for a few days. You will suffer that she is far, though you know well that when she was near it was hell. After a few days, you forget the hell and create a heaven in imagination; she returns and the “heaven” is quickly on the road to hell again. Husbands and wives discover they can neither live together nor apart. There is no way out of that duality.

Those who have money suffer because of money; those who don’t suffer because of the lack. One is afflicted by poverty; another by wealth. I have seen both kinds. The poor think wealth brings happiness; the rich say, “There is everything, but nothing except anxiety comes from it!”

Perhaps you have never noticed that happiness has never come to anyone from outside—neither from poverty nor wealth, neither from having a wife nor from not having one. Happiness is an inner treasure. When you find it within, it is there in every situation. Then there is no condition in which happiness is absent. In every situation you find it. If children are making noise in the house, you enjoy their laughter; when they are gone and the house is empty, you enjoy the silence. The house’s silence is blissful; when the children return, you enjoy their play. Life is dancing all around; you enjoy it. But happiness is within; at times you project it on silence, at times on the children’s laughter.

An unhappy man says when children make noise, “My peace is destroyed—be quiet!” When there is no one at home, he says, “I am utterly alone—so sad!”

It depends on your style of living. Sattva is a way of living in which happiness is within.

Therefore Krishna says something original: dispassion is its fruit. A happy man is always dispassionate. You have heard the reverse: “If you want happiness, cultivate dispassion.” That is wrong. Krishna does not say, “Practice dispassion and sattva will come.” He says, “Become sattvic and dispassion will be its fruit.” Yet countless people teach: renounce and you will be happy. I know renunciates who were unhappy at home and are unhappy in the monastery; first they suffered because of wife and children, now they suffer because of fellow renunciates. The sorrow has not changed.

In truth, sorrow does not leave in that way. Become sattvic and dispassion will come as its fruit. When an unhappy man renounces, his renunciation is a disease. When a happy man renounces, his letting go has a certain elegance. It is like a dry leaf falling from the tree. Neither the tree is wounded nor the leaf knows; no one notices. Pluck a green leaf and both are hurt; even the tree shudders. Today we can measure a tree’s sensitivity. Set the instrument and pluck a leaf; the meter shows the tree is hurt. Trees remember. If you pluck daily—gardeners do—it has been shown in Russian experiments (Kabir hinted at it poetically long ago: “Seeing the gardener come, the buds cry out”)—as the gardener approaches, the tree trembles; not only the tree being cut, but those nearby too are affected by its pain. But when a dry leaf falls, the tree knows nothing.

When a happy man lets go, things drop like dry leaves. That is why when Buddha leaves his kingdom it is one thing; if you leave your hut it is another. Your wound will haunt you. You will talk of what you left: “I left palaces, millions.” Though no one’s wife is beautiful—only the other’s seems so! Mulla Nasruddin married; the first day his wife said, “Put a curtain on the bathroom; the neighbors can see.” Nasruddin said, “Don’t worry. Let them see once—then they’ll put curtains on their own windows. Don’t burden me with this expense!” Every husband thinks like this; what is distant lures; what is near becomes worthless; what is in the hand is a burden; what is not is attractive. If you go to the forest you will talk about a Nur Jahan you left behind, a Taj Mahal-like palace—even if you left a hut. Your talk shows it has not dropped.

Krishna says the fruit of sattvic action is dispassion. This is a revolutionary and scientific statement. Do good, and attachment will slowly thin; dispassion will arise.

The fruit of rajasic action is sorrow; of tamasic action, ignorance. Rajasic action bears sorrow because it springs from sorrow. You engage in action because you are so troubled within that, by engaging, you try to forget yourself. That is why holidays are difficult. People run about to pass them, drive miles, go to a hotel to eat and rush back. In America and Europe, there are bumper-to-bumper cars; hundreds of thousands arrive at the same beach—precisely the crowd you fled accompanies you. There is no space. You came seeking peace—so did everyone else. People now say, “If you want peace in America, stay home on holidays. The neighbors all leave seeking peace; then maybe you will get some. But don’t go anywhere—wherever you go, others will have reached before you.”

We forget sorrow by diversion—cards, shop, “service,” and if nothing else, read the Gita, chant “Ram Ram,” move the beads—something to do. Doing has one advantage: the inner sorrow is not visible; the mind is diverted. But how long can you turn the beads? As soon as you stop, sorrow returns. The sorrowful engage in rajasic action—and action returns you to where it arose from. The beginning is always the end; the seed is the tree, and the tree bears the same seed. If your action arises from sorrow, sorrow is the seed; action is the tree; it will bear a thousand sorrows.

Tamasic action bears ignorance. It means: you did not want to act, but you had to—under someone else’s compulsion. Sattvic action: no craziness for doing; another’s need moved you. Rajasic: a madness to act; whether anyone needed it or not, you acted. Sant Eknath of Maharashtra set out on pilgrimage; a thief asked to go along. Eknath said, “You are trouble; I know you.” The thief swore, “I won’t steal—at least during the pilgrimage.” A thief’s oath can be believed—thieves don’t usually give them; when one does, it may be true. Eknath took him along. From the next night, trouble began: one person’s shirt would be found under another’s mat; someone’s money in another’s pocket. The thief wasn’t stealing—he had sworn not to—but he was swapping everyone’s belongings at night. After a few days Eknath kept watch and caught him. “What are you doing?” The thief said, “I vowed not to steal—but if I don’t do anything I’m in great trouble. And when I return after three months I will need my practice. I am harming no one.” The rajasic person’s action springs from his inner obsession. The tamasic person acts under others’ pressure; unless you put a gun to his back he won’t move. This dragged-out action brings deep ignorance—just as sattvic action brings knowledge because you lighten yourself through compassion, so this forced action breeds hatred and violence toward others: “The whole world is after me!” An idle man feels that his father, wife, mother, everyone is after him to do something; he sees the whole world as his enemy. His inner smoke thickens. Compassion cuts the fog; hatred thickens it. Hence Krishna says: tamasic action leads to ignorance; he sinks deeper; self-seeing becomes harder, self-recognition almost impossible.

From sattva arises knowledge; from rajas, greed; from tamas, negligence, delusion, ignorance. Sattva brings knowledge because inner darkness breaks and light comes; we recognize ourselves. Rajas brings greed. The more one is engaged in action, the more one has to arouse greed, because without greed it is hard to remain engaged. You play cards—playing alone gives little thrill; put some money on it and excitement comes—greed helps. We can act only when some greed stands before us. A rajasic person manufactures greed daily so he can act. Greed increases rajas; as rajas increases, he must manufacture more greed—new milestones, targets. Hence advertisers must invent new ads; new cars; new house designs; new lures. The entire machinery of advertising exists to give you greed. The more rajasic a country, the more advertising. America spends billions on it. Why? Because people need to be kept acting. Earlier the slogan was “a car and a garage for every man”; now that is a mark of poverty. Two cars! Without two, you are poor. Yet one car serves; still, they chase two. A house in the city? Not enough—no house in the mountains? You are poor. Daily, new greed must be created; otherwise a rajasic populace goes mad.

From tamas arises sloth and stupor—promada and moha. One who remains in laziness slowly sinks into torpor, sleep, heedlessness—unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is ignorance.

Those established in sattva go to higher realms; those in rajas to the middle, the human; those in tamas, sunk in sleep, negligence, laziness, go downward—to lower births. These are three states of mind. In my view, there is no heaven above the earth and no hell below it. No hidden netherworld, no heaven in the sky. Heaven and hell are the highest and lowest states of man. Whenever you are in deep joy, you are in heaven; whenever you are in deepest suffering, you are in hell. Usually you are in neither—you are in between. That is the human condition: wavering between the two—hell in the morning, heaven in the evening. The thermometer of your consciousness keeps oscillating; you travel between heaven and hell.

One who becomes steady in sattva stops this travel; he settles in inner joy. His thermometer touches the high mark and remains there; it does not drop. One who becomes fixed in tamas drops to the low point and does not rise. One full of rajas remains in the middle; he has a sense of happiness and a fear of sorrow—neither joy nor sorrow fully; stuck between, like Trishanku—sometimes leaping a little into joy, sometimes into sorrow.

These are three states. We call the highest “heaven,” the state of joy; the lowest “hell,” “downward movement,” the state of low consciousness; and the middle “human.” The word “manushya” (human) is from “manas” (mind). The common condition of the mind is the middle. The mind is always in-between: thinking, “Tomorrow I will be happy”—happiness is far, not yet; fearing, “Tomorrow sorrow may come.” It arranges that sorrow does not come tomorrow and that happiness does. Tomorrow it does the same; and the day after. All life it does the same—remaining in the middle, dissatisfied, frustrated, reaching nowhere—standing where it began.

To explain these states, scriptures spoke as if they were places; that created confusion. People began to think they are locations. The metaphors were only for explanation; these are states of mind, not geography. Even small children now know there is no heaven or hell in space. Geography has been charted. So scriptures had to keep changing the address of God: first on the Himalayas; when man reached there, to Kailash; when that too became accessible, to the sky; now spacecraft roam the sky—God is not safe there either. Hence Vedanta said, “God is formless; you cannot find him anywhere.” If you go anywhere we have to say, “He is not here.” Place is the wrong approach. God too is a state: godliness. As there are these three states of mind, there is a fourth beyond them—gunatita. When one rises beyond all three—neither sorrow, nor joy, nor the middle; neither tamas, nor rajas, nor sattva—that state is called godliness.

That is why we call Krishna “Bhagwan,” or Buddha “Bhagwan.” The word “Bhagwan” (God) means only this. It does not mean they created the world. It means: the one who has gone beyond the three gunas has attained godliness.

Enough for today.