07 Aug 2022
[Shri Balaji came from Bangalore exclusively to have Satsanga with Shri Datta Swami and other Devotees. Shri Balaji asked this question.]
Swami Replied: Karma Phala Tyaga means sacrifice of the fruit earned by your hard work. If you go to a shop to purchase an item, the shop keeper will not say that he will sell any item in the shop if you can pay only the fruit of your hard work. For the shop keeper, it is immaterial whether the money paid by you is the fruit of your hard work or the ancestral money got by you. God in the Gita is asking for the fruit of your hard work and not your ancestral money because you have more attachment to your hard earned money than to your ancestral money. He wants to compete with your strongest worldly bond, which is your bond with your hard earned money. This clearly shows that God is certainly not a business man. Had God been a business man, He would have asked to do sacrifice of money (Dhana Tyaga) and He would not have bothered whether your sacrificed money is your hard earned money or your ancestral money. Here itself, you can find the intention of God. God is only testing whether you love Him more than your strongest worldly bond, which is your hard earned money. This is a test by God put for the devotee. God is neither in need of money like a beggar nor a businessman selling His Grace for money! In fact, all the money you have (self earned as well as ancestral) is attained by you by the Grace of God only. He doesn’t make this point clear to you because if He makes this point clear to you, you will donate Him some money as a mark of your gratefulness to Him for His help done. Such a donation cannot stand as a mark of your true love for Him. I will explain this with an example. A grandfather bought a packet of biscuits for his grandson and gave it to his daughter-in-law secretly. She gave some biscuits to her son and the grandson is thinking that her mother purchased the biscuits. Now the grandfather approached the grandson asking for a piece of biscuit. If the grandson gives a piece or even a full biscuit to his grandfather, that shows his true love to his grandfather. This true love is really tested based on the background ignorance that his grandfather bought the entire packet of biscuits. Similarly, you think that you have attained all this wealth by your efforts, qualities and good luck. Based on this background of ignorance, the drama takes place and God comes as a beggar to you to test your true love on God.
Learning the spiritual knowledge through intelligence (Jnana Yoga) and developing emotional devotion through your mind (Bhakti Yoga) constitute theoretical phase only. Of course, we are not lessening the importance of theory because theory is the source of practice. But practice (even though born from theory alone) is the practical proof for theoretical love. The practice (Karma Yoga) is either service or sacrifice of fruit of work or both. The practice alone is the acid test for the theoretical love to know whether such theoretical love is true or false. This is a well-known experience in worldly life as well.
There is a misunderstanding that the concept of Karma Phala Tyaga means that God has gone into the hands of rich people. The human being is the best example for misunderstanding and misinterpretation. It draws conclusions in a hasty way without having patience for complete and sharp logical analysis. Based on this sacrifice of fruit of work, we can see four examples of devotees, who got the total Grace of God and for your information, all these four devotees are extremely poor. The reason is that the magnitude of your donated amount is not considered by God (a businessman considers only the quantity of amount paid by you), but the proportion of the amount paid in the total amount possessed is considered. A beggar donating 1 coin to God has done hundred percent sacrifice because nothing more is left with him after this sacrifice. A rich man donating a thousand coins has done only 1/1000 fraction of sacrifice only because he had 10 lakhs coins in his house to start with. Jesus appreciated the beggar as the best donor and this is the first example. The second example is when Shankara went for begging food, a very poor lady finding nothing in the house gave a small fruit only, which alone is present in the house. Shankara told a spontaneous prayer on Goddess Maha Lakshmi and a rain of golden fruits fell in her house. The third example is that of the very poor Saktuprastha having a four membered family suffering without food in a drought for several days. They somehow got a little food and the family was about to eat 4 parts of the food. God came in disguise as a guest and asked for the entire food gradually. All the family members donated their parts of food to the begging guest and God blessed them with wealth here and with salvation after death. The fourth example is of Sudaama, so poor that he has nothing to sacrifice to God Krishna. The principle of this Karma Phala Tyaga is that one should donate to God from whatever he has. If he has nothing, he need not donate anything because he cannot donate anything. Hence, a saint is exempted from Karma Phala Tyaga and is confined to only service or Karma Samnyaasa. A householder is expected to do both sacrifice and service within his limits. A saint, who begs his food from others is confined to service only and not expected to do any sacrifice. Sudaama was a householder, still, he was like the case of a saint only due to lack of anything in possession. Still, he wanted to behave like a householder and brought some parched rice from neighbors on loan and presented it to Krishna. This was a record break in sacrifice and hence Krishna wanted to give all His wealth to Sudaama (had His wife Rukmini not objected). All these examples show that God is not a businessman or beggar and the devotee donating to God must give with shyness and fear (Hriyā Deyam, Bhiyā Deyam – Veda). Veda also says that you should donate (doing sharp analysis of discrimination among receivers as per Veda’s saying– Saṃvidā Deyam) to the deserving receiver to get good fruit and if the receiver is bad and undeserving, such donation brings punishments in Hell. Hence, donation is a double edged knife giving both good and bad results!
Some clever people wanted to avoid the practical sacrifice of the fruit of hard work by misinterpreting the word ‘Karma phala tyaaga’. They have told that this compound word (samāsa) is with ‘madhyama pada lopa’, which means that a missing word exists in this compound word, which is to be brought from outside (adhyāhāra). Such missing word is ‘āsakti’ or interest. They introduced this word in the compound word and finally the resultant compound word is ‘Karma phala āsakti tyāga’. The resultant compound word means that you have to sacrifice only the interest on the fruit of your hard work and you need not sacrifice the actual fruit of work. But, this is a wrong interpretation since the compound word ‘Karma phala tyāga’ is broken into separate words, in second chapter (karmajaṃ buddhi yuktā hi, phalaṃ tyaktvā manīṣiṇaḥ) itself, which mean: ‘phalam = the fruit’, ‘karmajam = that is earned by hard work’, ‘tyaktvā = is sacrificed’. Here, the added word ‘āsakti’ or interest is totally absent. This fully refutes the mischievous interpretation.
Human beings, at least some of them, are very clever to avoid donation or sacrifice of fruit of work to God through intellectual interpretations. Some say that the omnipotent God does not need anything from us and hence there is no need of sacrifice of anything to God. I ask just one fundamental question from the incident (grandfather begging the grandson for a bit of biscuit) described above, does the grandfather is in need of the bit of the biscuit? In fact, he purchased the entire packet of the biscuits for his grandson! Therefore, the above saying of the clever people is only to escape sacrifice due to their extreme greediness only. This concept of Karma Yoga involving the sacrifice becomes very inconvenient for greedy devotees because even the food offered to God is eaten by the Human Incarnation because God in human form is Human Incarnation. Hence, these devotees refused the very concept of Human Incarnation so that God can be represented by photos and statues so that the food can be offered by moving the hand and can be eaten by the devotees themselves. The photos and statues required some service like washing and decorating with flowers etc. Greedy devotees, who are lazy in even doing such a service have developed the concept of formless God! Actually, God is beyond form and formless aspects because the original Unimaginable God called Parabrahman is like that, when in unmediated state. The same Parabrahman gets Himself mediated in selected energetic beings and human beings to become energetic and human incarnations respectively. The Energetic incarnation is relevant to energetic beings in the upper worlds whereas the Human Incarnation is relevant to human beings on this earth. It will consume a long time of life in doing penance to see the irrelevant energetic incarnations and hence God comes to earth as Human Incarnation to mix freely with human beings to preach true spiritual knowledge. But, human beings are repelled against the Human Incarnation due to the repulsion between common human media, provoked by ego-based jealousy towards a co-human form. This repulsion towards Human Incarnation may also be due to the above explained reasons of economics in doing sacrifice.
Sacrifice of money was mentioned in the Veda (Na Karmaṇā, Na Prajayā, Dhanena Tyagena eke Amṛtattva Mānaśuḥ). This means that not by doing rituals, not by having issues one can attain God because only by sacrifice of money, God can be attained. In this hymn, again greedy devotees played havoc by saying that the word Na (No) shall be brought from outside (Adhyāhāra) before the word Dhanena so that it can mean that even by money, God can’t be attained. This is absurd because either Na shall be before all the three items as in (Na Karmaṇā Prajayā Dhanena) or Na shall be before every item as in (Na Karmaṇā Na Prajayā Na Dhanena) to deny all the three items. If Na is existing before two items alone, those two items only are denied and not the third item before which Na is absent. Moreover, if you deny all the three items, the word Sacrifice (Tyāga) becomes meaningless since the sacrifice of what item is standing as a question. Even if we agree your denial of three items, the word sacrifice is already fixed in a specific meaning (Yoga Rūḍha), which is sacrifice of fruit of work. In such a case, we can say that the word Dhana here means ancestral money and the word Tyāga means sacrifice of fruit of hard work. The word Tyāga is defined as the sacrifice of fruit of work in Gita (Yastu Karmaphala Tyāgī, Sa tyāgītyabhidhīyate). In this way also, this Vedic statement can be explained with the help of the Gita.
Gopikas sacrificed butter, which is the wealth earned by them through their hard work. The males at the time were engaged in agriculture especially in producing crops from lands. The females were mainly engaged in the dairy work of cows to generate milk, curd and butter to sell in the Mathura city. On the way, while going to Mathura city, Gopikas searched for Krishna to feed Him with the butter without the knowledge of their families. This becomes the sacrifice of fruit of work and they were given Goloka, which is above even the abode of God. In the Gita, the entire Karma Yoga is indicated by the word Karma Phala Tyaaga even though both Karma Samnyaasa (service) and Karma Phala Tyaaga (sacrifice) constitute the Karma Yoga (Tyāgāt śāntiranantaram). We shall not mistake that service (done by saints) is neglected and only sacrifice (done by householders) is considered. It is not so. The reason is, when sacrifice is mentioned, naturally, service also gets mentioned. Sacrifice is done by householders only and the case of the householder covers both sacrifice and service. Instead of sacrifice, if service alone were mentioned, it would apply to only saints, who cannot do sacrifice. So, sacrifice invariably brings service while service can’t bring sacrifice in that way.
Karma Yoga is certainly a proof of true love and it can’t be replaced by any theoretical item. The balanced justice then is, theoretical boon for theoretical devotion and practical boon for practical devotion as announced by God in the Gita (Ye yathā Māṃ prapadyante…). God announced this policy seeing our nasty intelligence in devotion. Many devotees want practical boons from God in exchange for their theoretical devotion. This is the prostitution devotion (Veśyā Bhakti) since a prostitute collects money from customers by talking wise, sweet words, and singing love songs. This is the worst type of devotion that is generally spread everywhere. Theoretical knowledge and Theoretical devotion come under this type. The next type of devotion is business devotion (Vaiśya Bhakti) with some ethics and this is practical boons for practical devotion. It is like purchasing an item from a shop by paying money in return. This is better than the above first type because there is at least some ethics in this. But, this is also not true love because the true love is on the practical boon alone and not on God, who is seen as only an instrument to achieve the boons. This is also called as instrumental devotion because God is an instrument to get the desired practical boon. The third type of devotion is issue devotion (Apatya Bhakti) in which practical Karma Yoga (service and sacrifice) is done to issues without expecting any fruit in return. Even if the fruit like service from issues in old age is expected by parents, and even if such service is not rendered by the issues, and even though the parents scold the issues for such attitude of issues, finally, they are not changing the will written in the name of the issues. Hence, this issue devotion represents true love and full Karma Yoga as far as Pravrutti or worldly life is concerned. This is the climax of the measuring scale of true love. The devotion to God can be measured on this scale. In fact, God Datta kept His name as Datta, which means adopted son expecting issue-devotion like devotion from devotees. But the clever human devotees made God Datta as Divine Father reversing the same policy towards Him! God Datta wants devotees to do practical devotion to Him without aspiring for any fruit in return from Him treating Him as an adopted son. The devotees want the reverse of this, which is that God Datta shall give them practical boons without expecting any practical devotion from them in return because God Datta is treated as adopted Father by them!
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