Action in the Bhagavad-Gita

Miscellaneous General
1

Not sure how many people here will take an interest in this, I figure someone like Clayton make enjoy this.

This is from the Bhagavad-Gita (Swami Prabhavananda translation) Chapter III: Karma Yoga, the following excerpt is Sri Krishna:

Freedom from activity is never achieved by abstaining from action. Nobody can become perfect by merely ceasing to act. In fact, nobody can ever rest from his activity* even for a moment. All are helplessly forced to act, by the gunas.

*Here “activity” includes mental action, conscious and sub-conscious.

There are three gunas, sattva, rajas, and tamas, or the sattva-guna, rajo-guna, and tamo-guna.The three gunas are in perpetual conflict with one another and can be summed up as preservation, creation, and destruction, but can be in a state of equilibrium with one another if one control’s ones senses. Now, I don’t want to dive deep into the Sankyha school of Hindu philosophy so I’ll stop here for now on explaining the gunas.

One must act, they cannot stop acting in any way, shape, or form, even non-action is action. Out of context with the Sankyha school, because sattva is what’s sought to be obtained, which is controlling of the senses and spiritual liberation, there’s three forces of creation, preservation, and destruction. Man is forced or compelled to act by the process of creation, preservation, and destruction. This could be considered man’s drive for his existence. To create, and then to preserve, and then to destroy, but in the context of the gunas this destructive quality is negative (the three gunas are qualities), and one once again is to obtain sattva, so a destructive quality, even in the process of human action, is still an inherent human trait.

Even through a lens of praxeolgy man has three traits of action, and it’s not just the trait of creation, but preservation of creation that’s what’s sought, while the destructive trait is to be abstained.

2

I could be wrong, but I don’t think “destruction” in this sense is intended to mean only “harmful action to others”. In other words, it may not be a concept that is entirely undesirable.

3

The characteristics of tamo-guna are inertia, passivity, sluggishness, heaviness and negativity. It resists activity or movement. It renders the mind incapable of knowing things clearly by making it sluggish. It causes confusion, mental depression, bewilderment and ignorance. It induces drowsiness and sleep.

[…]

Sattva-guna gives spiritual liberation. Rajo-guna causes bondage through attachment to action. Tamo-guna causes confused thinking or senseless violence.

  • The Essentials of Hinduism by Swami Bhaskarananda
4

So part, but not all, of the destructive force is related to force used against others. Other parts relate to the nature of the mind, in a way, the elements that interfere with one’s ability to act rationally? And all are considered negative, undesirable. Does this suggest that there are degrees of ability to act ethically, that some by their very nature are less able to do so?

5

Hey Bert, I was thinking in terms of Hindu philosophy, the Upanishads might yield more material in a less theistic format, that’s relevant to the ideas on this forum. I’m thinking particularly of the concept of Brahman as Atman; the divine nature of the individual.