IV: 19

Chapter 4, Verse 19

"With no desire for success,
No anxiety about failure,
And indifferent to results,
They burn up their actions
In the fire of steady wisdom."

Sri Krishna Prem:

"It is not action that binds, for the surging tides of the manifested cosmos are as truly the manifestation of the supreme Self as is the calm bliss of that same stainless, witnessing Oneness. What binds us is an unskillful attitude towards action, the 'knots of the heart,' springing from ignorance. We fancy that we are so many separate entities, isolated from each other and 'free' to perform actions for selfish ends. Therefore Krishna returns again and again to the theme of nonattachment to the fruits of action, for there is no freedom for the selfish actor any more than for a bird in the meshes of a net."

Pema Chodron:

"You could say that the whole Buddhist teaching is a contemplation, a study, a meditating upon, an attempt to get a real, living experience of knowing the cause of suffering and the cause of happiness, to really understand what the ignorance is, not just conceptually, but to truly feel it. It has a lot to do with opening the heart.

Traditionally what is said is that the root of suffering is ignorance and that the root of happiness is the dissolving of ignorance. What are we ignorant of? We are ignorant of the true nature of reality, because we are so entrenched in a static way of thinking and perceiving, so entrenched in seeing ourselves and others as subjects/objects, objects that are pitted against each other, bringing isolation in its wake and the sense of the solidity of things, this static, rigid quality. The true nature of reality and our true nature within is that of limitlessness, in process, fluid rather than solid. We are all part of a flow of energy, a process, and part of the whole."

Sri Aurobindo:

"The wise are not afraid of action. They are large and universal doers of works, not as others do them, in subjection to largely unconscious mechanisms of the mind, but poised in the silent calm of the soul, tranquilly in Yoga with the divine. They are only channels through the instrumentality of their natures. By the flaming intensity and purity of this steady wisdom, all their works are burned up as in fire; and their minds remain without any disfiguring mark: calm, silent, unperturbed, white and clean and pure.

Where there is no personal egoism of the doer, desire becomes impossible. It is starved out and dead for want of a support. Outwardly the wise seem to undertake works of all kinds like other people, for the might of the divine will is at work in the active nature; but their works are free from desire. They have abandoned attachment to the fruits of their action, and where one does not work for the fruit, but solely as an instrument of the Master of works, desire can find no place, not even the desire to serve successfully, for the fruit is the Lord's, and the glory belongs to his Shakti missioned in one's nature and not to the limited human personality. It is the Shakti, the executrix, the conscious Goddess governed by the divine Inhabitant who does the work."

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:

"A thought starts from the deepest level of consciousness and develops into a desire when it reaches the conscious level of the mind. The thoughts of those for whom the level of transcendental consciousness has become identical with the conscious mind become transformed into action without having a chance to reach the level of the desire-mind. This explains how every undertaking becomes free from desire for those with steady wisdom.

What is responsible for the initiation of action in such wise ones? The answer is the almighty, higher power which is the cause of the vast and incessant activity of creation, preservation, and destruction throughout the cosmos. The needs of Nature become the force behind the activities of those whose wisdom has become steady."