| Life with its
multitude of trials, its joys and sorrows, its triumphs and defeats, in fact all that
makes of this world a valley of tears and laughter, is but a link in an almost endless
chain of births and deaths. This is samsaara. Here are duties which can be fulfilled with
courage and faithful ness or hirked and avoided in cowardly fahion. It is by doing these duties honestly that a man can qualify himself
for a higher destiny. In fact, the ordinary rule of life of old was for a man faithfully
to pass through the various stages of human life, as a student, as a householder, as a
hermit in the forest before he could become a sanyaasi. The Upanishad and the Gita are
quite emphatic about the imperativeness of doing duty.
As a soul progresses either in the same life or in
subsequent lives,it perceives that duty is rooted in maaya and that the only way of
escaping the enveloping power of cause and effect, is to do one’s duty for its own
sake and without looking for results. Sri Krishna says in the Gita: "Just as the
ignorant man acts with hope of reward, the wise man acts for the good of the world without
any personal motive whatever." When this state is reached, "when free from all
desires, which had root in his heart-the mortal even here becomes immortal and reaches
Brahman. -Kathopanishad VI-14 |
