ISAVASYOPANISHAD - 5

29/05/2018

ISAVASYOPANISHAD 5.

Action is generally an effort towards the achievement of an end. Man does not simply exist. He ever tries to become something else. He is never satisfied with simply existing. He wishes to change, to become.

The impulse for action is ingrained in the very constitution of the individual. Action has become an indispensable part of the individual self. Action cannot be cast off, because it is not separate from the form of the make-up of the individual. The whole life of man is action.

It is the nature of his action that determines the nature of his life. Action is the expression of the will to live through an instrument of action, namely, the mind and the body. Jijivisha or wish to live has as its effects the desire to possess and develop relations with external phenomena, which are created by the same desire in the fashion of its own constitution so that it may find what it wishes to find.

That undesirable objects and conditions also are found in the world is due to a confusion in the desirer of what he actually wishes to have. The desiring subject is not clear about its own wants. This confusion ends in the commission of several unwise deeds which are due to lack of insight involved in the taking of the desired course of action.

This confusion happens because all actions are, generally, one-sided in their motive. Generally an action is done only with the constricted vision which alone is allowed by that particular course of action without the correct knowledge of all its consequences.

When a physician prescribes a medicine for the cure of a disease it is not enough if he just knows that a particular medicine has got the capacity to counteract that disease. He should also know what reactions the drug may bring about in the patient in spite of its allaying that one disease.

The individual, when it wants to fulfil a desire, simply knows what action is able to fulfil that desire, without knowing that that same action may disturb several other aspects of life and bring to him as a reaction great grief later on, though it may temporarily enchant the desirer to believe that the desire is fulfilled.

This is why the world is both pleasurable and miserable; it is the effect of desires as well as their unforeseen consequences. An individual is born in a particular condition or environment because the individual either wished to live in such a condition or it is the consequence or reaction of certain actions which it performed either voluntarily or being compelled by the impressions of previous actions.

The miseries of the world are the forms of the reactions of foolish and deluded actions performed previously by the inhabitants thereof. The world is the name given to the manner in which the individuals experience in their own selves the reactions of their own desires and actions.

The universe is the shadow cast by the desires of the individuals, and it is what the desires are and what the desires sweep away from pure existence as they move towards fulfilment.

To be continued ...