Action

In the book The Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna gives lots of advice and tries to direct Arjuna in the right direction on the topic of action, desire and knowledge. Where the story stands, there are two sides set up for a war and Arjuna is not seeing the whole logic of war. Lord Krishna tries to persuade Arjuna to go to war and gives him a lecture on action. Lord Krishna goes on to talk about how any type of desires can get in the way of action. What he is trying to get across is the fact that, one should not perform action with self in mind or perform an action, just to perform an action. On page 44, the third teaching, he insists on performing action as a sacrifice. He says, “Action imprisons the world unless it is done as sacrifice.” But the big question is what those sacrifices are. The way I interpreted it was that those sacrifices are consequences. At this point in the story right now, the consequences are the ugly side of war. The consequences are the side of war that Arjuna does not want to see or hear about. Lord Krishna also continues to talk about discipline in action. I believe he is trying to say that once you action, you must have discipline to really accomplish happiness and possibly even nirvana. He goes on to say, “…Men of discipline perform action with body, mind, understanding, and senses for the purification of the self. “ I believe what Lord Krishna was trying to say in these three teachings was that you must be willing to sacrifice and accept consequences of actions while also having discipline of action to really be your true self.