BHAGVAD GITA

EIGHTEEN: THE SPIRIT OF RENUNCIATION


“Arjuna asked: O mighty One! I desire to know how relinquishment is distinguished from
renunciation.


Lord Shri Krishna replied: The sages say that renunciation means forgoing an action which
springs from desire; and relinquishing means the surrender of its fruit.


Some philosophers say that all action is evil and should be abandoned. Others that acts of
sacrifice, benevolence and austerity should not be given up.


O best of Indians! Listen to my judgment as regards this problem. It has a threefold aspect.


Acts of sacrifice, benevolence and austerity should not be given up but should be
performed, for they purify the aspiring soul.


But they should be done with detachment and without thought of recompense. This is my
final judgment.


It is not right to give up actions which are obligatory; and if they are misunderstood, it is
the result of sheer ignorance.


To avoid an action through fear of physical suffering, because it is likely to be painful, is to
act from passion, and the benefit of renunciation will not follow.


He who performs an obligatory action, because he believes it to be a duty which ought to
be done, without any personal desire to do the act or to receive any return – such
renunciation is Pure.


The wise man who has attained purity, whose doubts are solved, who is filled with the
spirit of self-abnegation, does not shrink from action because it brings pain, nor does he
desire it because it brings pleasure.


But since those still in the body cannot entirely avoid action, in their case abandonment of
the fruit of action is considered as complete renunciation.


For those who cannot renounce all desire, the fruit of action hereafter is threefold – good,
evil, and partly good and partly evil. But for him who has renounced, there is none.


I will tell thee now, O Mighty Man, the five causes which, according to the final decision
of philosophy, must concur before an action can be accomplished.


They are a body, a personality, physical organs, their manifold activity and destiny.


Whatever action a man performs, whether by muscular effort or by speech or by thought,
and whether it be right or wrong, these five are the essential causes.


But the fool who supposes, because of his immature judgment, that it is his own Self alone
that acts, he perverts the truth and does not see rightly.


He who has no pride, and whose intellect is unalloyed by attachment, even though he kill
these people, yet he does not kill them, and his act does not bind him.