A Man-of-Wisdom has been fully comprehended in the first line of this stanza. The qualifications are beautifully enumerated serially and they themselves explain the “Path-to-Perfection.” Economy of words is the very essence of the style in all Scriptural books. Even so, they are particularly careful to use the most suggestive terms for their purpose and take an artistic joy in ordering the very sequence of the words used; here is a brilliant example of it.
DEVOID OF ATTACHMENT (Gatasangah) — The divinity attained by the Rishis is not a new status strangely acquired by them from some unknown and secret quarters. It is only a rediscovery of the Perfection that is already in each one. We are self-exiled from ourselves due to our attachments with the finite world-of-objects. Thus a “wise” man is he, from whom all his attachments with the finite things of the world have dropped away.
LIBERATED (Muktah) — The majority of seekers have only a vague idea of what this “liberation” means. The bondages are created upon our personality and life by none other than ourselves. These bondages, infinite in their number, are produced by the subtle chords of our own attachments with things. The deluded ego feels fulfilled only through the world-of-objects. Thus, as a body, it gets attached to the world of its sense-objects; as a mind it lives enslaved to the world of emotions; and as an intellect, it gets bound with its own ideas.
WITH MIND CENTRED IN KNOWLEDGE (Jnana-avasthita-chetasah) — The above phenomenon of perfect detachment, which produces a sense of complete liberation, can be accomplished only when the mind of the seeker gets centred in right discriminative knowledge and develops for itself a capacity to distinguish between the permanent and the impermanent, the fleeting and the lasting.
A Perfect Sage, who has thus cut himself free from all attachments, with his mind well-balanced under the light of his own “Wisdom,” becomes completely liberated from the chains of all moral debilities, ethical imperfections, and sensuous appetites. Such a Sage too performs work for the rest of his life in his perfected manifestations. Krishna says that all such activities undertaken and performed by him are ever done in a spirit of ‘dedicated activity’ (Yajna). When a Sage thus functions in a spirit of Yajna, that action itself does not and cannot produce any reaction, or forging of thicker bondages with newly-formed vasanas.
The term ‘Yajna,’ borrowed from our scriptures, is employed here by Krishna to yield a more elaborate sense implying a wider and a more universal application. In the Geeta, the Vedic Yajna has become “a self-dedicated activity performed in a spirit of service to the many.” All actions, performed without ego, and not motivated by one’s ego-centric desires, fall under the category of Yajna.
All through the NEXT SIX STANZAS we get an enumeration of something like twelve different Yajnas which can be practised by everybody, on all occasions, in every field, under all conditions.
When a sage of the description given in the stanza, performs actions in a spirit of Yajna, they dissolve away without leaving any impression upon his mind, just as the rainbow that disappears when the thin shower falling against the sunlight ends.
IF THIS BE SO, THE QUESTION ARISES — ” FOR WHAT REASON THEN DO ALL ACTIONS WHICH HE PERFORMS ENTIRELY DISSOLVE, WITHOUT PRODUCING THEIR NATURAL RESULTS?” LISTEN WHY IT IS SO:
