Actions: Good and Bad

There are two ways to make an action, attached and detached. If an action is attached, it is based on a physical thought that is outside of a person's caste. An example of this would be for a potter to act in the manner of a soldier and go fight in a war for some person notion of revenge or glory. Krishna looks down on this type of action. However, Krishna also looks down on not acting at all."A man cannot escape the force of action by abstaining from actions" (page 43). The type of action that he supports is detached action. A detached action is an act based on a person's job and or caste and doing it because it is the person's job, such as a soldier fighting when his country needed to be protected. The believe in Krishna's era was that a person was not the puppet master of his life, instead he was the puppet. A person was to follow the responsibilities set aside for his caste and should not try to move out of that caste in life. Only through reincarnation could one move up the caste system. The desire to move out of one's caste through want is seen as "evil" by Krishna and that the desire is what creates conflicts. This point summarizes the deepest levels of violence in the world today and in Krishna's time. A person or a group of people want or do not want something and see it as wrong. Then they desire to obtain or destroy it. This desire causes them to fight and thus start wars and battle's between people. Without desire there is no conflict.