niraasheer yatachittaatmaa tyaktasarvaparigrahah
shaareeram kevalam karma kurvannaapnoti kilbisham // 4.21 //
Free from desire, with the body and the mind controlled, and surrendering all possessions he incurs no sin through mere bodily activity.
A knower of Brahman is always absorbed in his communion with the Absolute and no outside activity is possible for him. However, actions for the bare maintenance of the body are done by him without any real identification with the body. The question whether such a person commits any sin accruing from failure to perform one’s prescribed duties is answered now.
When an individual
1. completely renounces desire
2. brings his body and mind under perfect control and
3. relinquishes all possessions, his ego ends.
When the ego has ended his actions do not leave any impressions on his mind and intellect and hence they are not capable of bringing about any consequences.
Such a saint's activities do not bind him since he is not the performer of actions but the actions merely flow through him. He is not a doer of actions but only an instrument for the Lord's will to express itself. The human soul becomes the pure channel of Divine power.
yadricchaalaabhasantushto dwandwaateeto vimatsarah
samah siddhaavasiddhau cha kritwaapi na nibadhyate // 4.22 //
Content with what comes to him without any effort on his part, free from the pairs of opposites and envy, even minded in success and failure, though acting he is not bound.
An individual who has gone beyond ego cannot perform any desire-prompted and result-motivated activity. So he will be happy with whatever gain spontaneously accrues to him out of his actions. This is called ‘without any effort’.
The state of egolessness indicates perfect victory over mind and intellect and so the pairs of opposites - heat and cold, success and failure, good and bad, joy and sorrow, gain and loss etc., cannot affect him because they are only the interpretation of the world of objects by the mind. Such an individual who has conquered his egocentric misconceptions about himself, though acting is not bound by the consequences of the actions performed (Karma-Phalam) because he realizes that the gunas act upon the gunas and is ever steady in the true knowledge of the Self. From the standpoint of the world such a man may appear to be working or engaged in action, but from his own point of view he is not the agent of any action. The egoistic motive of action has been consumed, in his case, in the fire of knowledge.
The Cosmos is a manifestation of the Supreme and what binds is not the act but the selfish attitude to action, born of ignorance which makes us imagine that we are many separate individuals with our likes and dislikes.
In the following verses Sri Krishna proceeds to point out how the actor, the act and the action are all different manifestations of the one Supreme and action offered as a sacrifice to the Supreme does not bind.
SACRIFICE AND ITS SYMBOLIC VALUE
gatasangasya muktasya jnaanaavasthitachetasah
yajnaayaacharatah karma samagram pravileeyate // 4.23 //
For the one who is devoid of attachment, who is liberated, whose mind is established in knowledge, who acts for the sake of sacrifice alone, the whole action dissolves away.
The qualities of a man of wisdom are enumerated in this verse which explains the path to perfection. They are:
Devoid of attachment - Divinity attained by man is not something that is newly acquired by him but it is only a rediscovery of perfection already existing in him which is veiled from him because of his attachment to the finite world of objects. The wise man is he for whom attachment with the world of objects has ceased.
Liberated - Bondages created around the personality of a man are his own creation due to his attachments with things. His ego feels fulfilled only through the material world of objects and it develops a sense of clinging to these objects. Thus his body gets itself attached to the world of sense-objects, his mind gets itself enslaved in the world of emotions and his intellect gets entangled in its own ideas and he feels bound and fettered. It is only when one goes beyond these attachments and hand-cuffs he becomes liberated.
Mind established in knowledge - Perfect detachment and complete liberation can be accomplished only when the seeker's mind gets focused on the discriminative knowledge of knowing the difference between the permanent and impermanent. Mind's attachment to the worldly objects is because of its delusion. If, however, the mind were to concentrate on the discriminative knowledge with the support of the intellect all the false attachments will drop off.
Acting for the sake of sacrifice (Yagna) - `Yagna' does not mean only the rituals performed in an attitude of Dedication to God for achieving freedom from the cycle of mortal existence ; it means all actions performed without ego and without the motivation of egocentric desires in a spirit of service.
When a man of perfect wisdom with the qualities as stated above performs actions in a spirit of sacrifice (Yagna), such actions dissolve away of themselves i.e. they do not leave any impressions upon his mind and cannot produce any reaction of newly formed vasanas.
Yagna ritual, the holiest act known to man, is used in the following verses as a symbol standing for the outlook of an illumined man on all his work. It is interpreted in a larger spiritual way.
brahmaarpanam brahmahavirbrahmaagnau brahmanaa hutam
brahmaiva tena gantavyam brahmakarmasamaadhinaa // 4.24 //
Brahman is the act of offering ; Brahman is the clarified butter etc. constituting the offerings ; by Brahman it is offered into the fire of Brahman ; Brahman is that which is to be reached by him who always sees Brahman in all his works.
This is a famous verse which is generally recited before taking daily food. This verse is a capsule of the entire Vedanta.
Brahman is the Infinite Reality which is changeless substratum behind the changing phenomenal world in contrast with that aspect of Brahman which functions in and through a body termed as the Atman.
When the waves of the ocean dash against each other nothing new happens because all waves are nothing but the ocean and by their act of dashing against each other the ocean rises over the ocean itself and become one with the ocean. Similarly when a Yagna is performed by a sage for whom there is no plurality of the world, Brahman the Truth is the performer offering Brahman, the material to the sacred fire, which is nothing but Brahman, invoking Brahman only.
In the previous verse it was stated that performing actions for the sake of sacrifice, Yagna, alone melts away all his actions. It is explained here that after attaining the true knowledge the seeker's whole life becomes one act of Yagna, in which the process of offering, the objects offered , the fire, the doer of the sacrifice, the work itself and the goal are all Brahman.
After attaining the Knowledge of Brahman, a man sees Brahman in everything. He sees Brahman in every part of the action: the instrument, the doer, the result and the action itself. These have no existence apart from Brahman just as the mirage has no existence apart from the desert. What appears to be water to the ignorant is nothing but the desert. Likewise, what appears to the unenlightened as the instrument of action, the doer, and so on, is realized by one who is endowed with the knowledge of Brahman as Brahman Itself. To him everything is Brahman.
Thus the action performed by the knower of Brahman to set an example to the world is in reality no action, since all the accessories of action are consumed, as it were, in the fire of Brahman. The knowledge of Brahman removes all duality. Therefore action performed by a knower of Brahman melts away with its result and cannot bind its performer.
The significance of reciting this verse before taking food is that eating food is an unavoidable necessity for existence. When one is hungry he enjoys any type of food that comes to him. Even at this moment of enjoyment he should not forget the truth that it is Brahman eating Brahman, and that during meals he is offering to Brahman the food that is Brahman invoking nothing but the grace of Brahman.