World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

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firming spirituality. Enjoyment is the goal of spiritual life and this enjoyment must be realized here in life, where people work, labour, struggle. It must be known in and through works, by the renunciation of desire, of false perception and false will, the will of Prakriti. Thus we find the importance of works in this stanza something which will become later the cornerstone of the Gita's Karma Yoga.
The second stanza states:
"Doing verily works in the world one should wish to live a hundred years." This is clearly the furtherance of a view to which life in the social world (samsara) is not seen as an imprisonment, but rather a field of enjoyment. A similar sentiment is carried on in the Gita, where Krishna says to Arjuna, "Arise, O Arjuna, be victorious in the battle of dharma, and enjoy a vast kingdom." This is the Indian ideal of enjoyment in the world by "right action, karma of dharma, not understood as social ethics or morality, but dharma as spiritual identification with the Enjoyer, the only Enjoyer there is.
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It is useful to query what is meant by the term karman, works, here. The essence of work is to be seen all around us. The whole world is full of work. Work is the very essence of the sense of struggle, labour, pain, with which this world is fraught, because there is only one Worker in this world, the same One who enjoys all work. This is the Lord who is at the heart of things, who has sent forth his will force, tapas, isha, to become work in the world. Behind this Will-to-work in the world is the evolutionary self-revelation of the Lord in all his creatures. Everything here labors to release the Godhead, to make it manifest in time and space. That is the work. This is the reason why such emphasis is paid in the very second stanza to work. The first stanza ends on the topic of enjoyment, but the second begins surprisingly with work. This is because to the Lord whose will has gone forth and is at work in all things, there is no difference between enjoyment and work.
The first line of the second stanza establishes this relation doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years. There are other elements, too, to this statement: the fullness of an integral realization needs time for realization. There is a resolute will necessary to persist and endure through the unknown journey from ignorance to the consciousness of identity with the Lord. As part of this resolution, there must arise a firm will in the being not to allow the compulsion of death to overcome one before the attainment of integral identity with the dweller within.
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The second line of this stanza continues the engagement with work: "Thus it is indeed and not otherwise than this, action cleaves not to a man."
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