[ Excerpt from The Science of Yoga, page 388 ]
“Do your work in this world with your heart fixed upon the Divine. Do not worry about results. Be even tempered in success and failure. This mental evenness is what is meant by yoga. Indeed, equanimity is yoga!”
The Bhagavad Gita (Ch.2, V.48)
<< Part 1 Srimad Bhagavad Gita
This equanimity refers to the ability to see the same 'One' in everyone and in everything.
"With a mind harmonized by yoga, the yogi sees himself in all beings and all beings in himself. He looks upon all with an equal eye and feels all to be his very own self."
~ Bhagavad Gita, (Ch. 6, V. 29)
So, as long as one has a firm establishment in this truth, whether they are active or passive is essentially irrelevant; it is simply a matter of personal inclination and one's own innate nature.
When the yogi does act however, he/she demonstrates skill, which is the particular type of yoga expounded in the Bhagavad Gita as 'skill in action'.
"To the one who is fixed in an equal-minded state, who looks upon the opposites as equals, who has risen above duality, and thus frees himself from both vice and virtue, is a Yogi. Therefore, devote thyself to yoga. Verily, work done to perfection is yoga. Yoga is skill in action."
~ Bhagavad Gita (Ch. 2, V. 50)
This skill means having both the wisdom and the ability to perform the right action, in the right way, at the right time.
In the Gita, Krishna speaks of selflessness and renunciation of the fruits of actions as the virtues of liberation:
"One can recognise a constant wise in he who neither hates, nor wishes. Liberated from the couple of opposites (good and evil), he is easily liberated from bondage."
He also explains that renunciation of the fruits of action is attained through yoga:
"The wise, harmonised through yoga, quickly finds his way towards the Eternal Absolute ... He who is harmonised through yoga, who’s Self (inferior ego) is purified… and who’s Self has become the Self of all Beings, that one is no more affected even if he acts."
What Lord Krishna is saying is that this person, the one who has gained the ultimate realization of Oneness through yoga, no longer interacts with others at the level of the selfish personality, but acts at the level of the 'Ultimate Essence'...
[Continued...]
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