Action is the antithesis of knowledge
From Divine
Life Society Publication “Essays on the
Upanishads - Isavasyopanishad” by Swami Krishnananda
The law
of action -
Wishing to live and ceasing from action do not go hand in hand. If man wishes to live, he has to act. If he
does not act, he cannot live. Freedom from action does not simply mean freedom
from bodily movement, but freedom from objective thinking, feeling and willing.
(Isavasyopanishad)
The knowledge of the
human being is knowledge of some object or objects, other than the knower. The
knowing faculty knows an object only as it wants to know it and as it is
capable of knowing it, and not as the object is really in itself. It is a
perishable process of struggle for perfection.
Human
knowledge is an action alone, because it is produced by the motion of the mind
and the senses. The knowledge propounded in the Advaita Vedanta is objectless
knowledge, and it is never produced but realised. It is not the knowledge of
something but the knowledge of the knower himself. It is atma-sakshatkara
that Shankara means by knowledge when he says that action is the antithesis of
knowledge.
Action, an effort
towards the achievement of an end, has become an indispensable part of the
individual self. It is the nature of his action that determines the nature of
his life. Jijivisha or wish to live has as its effects the desire to
possess and develop relations with external phenomena.
Generally an action
is done only with the constricted vision 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 he wants to fulfill a desire, simply knows what action is
able to fulfill that desire, without knowing that the 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 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.
Action, ordinarily,
therefore, is a movement of the self towards the not-self and extra-ordinarily
a movement of the not-self towards the Self. But generally the latter process
is not included in the category of what we understand by action. The latter is
the natural absorption of the Spirit into itself, a genuine unfoldment, or
rather the pristine illumination of itself to itself. It is therefore the
process of the cessation of action, though all processes are actions in the
strict sense.
By action we mean the
expression of a desire, and movement towards Truth is not the effect of a
desire, because it is a desire to destroy desire, an effort to stop effort.
Such a desire is not a desire, and such an action is not an action. It is the
flaming march of the soul towards its extension into infinity. When Shankara
contends that action and knowledge are like darkness and light respectively, he
refers to the action of the ego directed to the acquisition of objects and states
circumscribed by space, time and causation. Such an action is evidently alien
to the characteristics of the knowledge of Truth.
Man is a slave of the
body because he loves it and because of this love he has to act. Man is never
satisfied with simply existing and ever tries to become something else. Therefore,
the wise aspirant should perform action knowing that it is not possible to
cease from action as long as he is bound by human consciousness. And this
should be done with the knowledge of the limitations of action, with the
knowledge that action not properly guided by right discrimination may lead to
self- imprisonment and sorrow.
This second mantra
of the Isavasya Upanishad which refers to life in the mind and the body, lays
down the law of action, that one should wish to live by performing action,
because wishing to live and ceasing from action do not go hand in hand. If man
wishes to live, he has to act. If he does not act, he cannot live. Freedom from
action does not simply mean freedom from bodily movement, but freedom from
objective thinking, feeling and willing.
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