THEORY OF ACTION AND KARMA YOGA
(Hindu Dharma and Management: Article 4)
Dr Satish Modh
Activity and inactivity:
Life can be described as consisting of moments of activity and inactivity. The phenomenal happenings, the movement of the planets, the rhythmic dance of seasons, the music of creation, the law of colours are all happening in a harmony. In nature everything acts constantly and sincerely. The entire universe survives and sustains itself by activity.
All of us act in our own given fields of activities with all enthusiasm and deep interest, all day through every day of the year and all through the years of our entire life-time. An average member of society wears himself out in the strain of constant activity. Irrespective of his health, careless of the severity of seasons, through joy and sorrow, man constantly strives to earn and to hoard, to gain and to enjoy.
We can say that the world is meant for action and is created by action; there is no life, no future for man without action. Man makes or unmakes his destiny, mars it, or escapes the world only through action. Even if he wants to rise above the world of action, he can do so only through action.
An action is a creative urge that is behind every active intellect, which ultimately fulfil itself in the creation of things and beings, all else is mere sweat and toil, dust and blood, heaving and sobbing, smiling and singing, hoarding and wasting. Action is to be the means.
There are two forces that control and guide, define and determine our actions. First is the impulses brought forth by the pressures of the mental temperaments within; and second is the pressure of environments that create desires in ourselves.
These actions, then, lead us to two different paths. These are:
1. Path of Activity & Desire: To procure an increase of happiness and to cause a continuation of mundane existence.
2. Path of desirelessness: Ensure supreme bliss and cause a cessation of mundane existence without any desire for a reward and through acquisition of true knowledge.
For world order and security both the ways are essential. They exist side by side. These two ways are the centrifugal and centripetal forces that make the human world run its course. Problem in today's world stems from a pursuit of the first path only. To solve them one has to transcend this path from time to time.
Man has the ‘freedom of action’ to contribute to the harmony, or to bring about discard in the smooth running of this world. So long as the majority of a generation manage to live by the Law-of-Harmony they grow from strength to strength, opening up fields of happiness for themselves. Such periods bring the golden era to their social and cultural life.
Constructive and destructive Actions:
Moments of activity could comprise of destructive and constructive actions. Destructive actions are the actions, which are to be avoided, and constructive actions are the actions, which are to be done.
These constructive actions are done in the form of duties. These duties could be daily duties, or duties on some special occasions. There are also desire-prompted duties, which are nothing, but purposeful and self determined work for winning some results or award.
Activities, however noble they may be in their motive, leave restlessness in our heart because of ‘reactions’ of actions. By constantly maintaining in the mind the awareness of the principles that provide over all human endeavours, we can maintain a healthier and more portent life of virtue and strength.
Types of actions:
In our day to day world, we have to perform all obligatory actions in our home, in our organisation, and in the society as a rational being. Thus, not to perform diligently all our duties in the home, and in the world outside would be inaction. Even a healthy bodily existence is not possible if we live in complete inertia and inactivity. If an individual remains inactive physically, he will get dissipated in his thoughts and vice-versa.
Actions are of primarily three kinds:
1. Obligatory actions are those that have to be performed by every one. Their performance supports man, society and universe and does not bring any special kind of merit for man. But their non- performance produces demerit.
2. Prohibited actions are those that produce demerit, but their non-performance does not produce any merit. The non-performance of prohibited actions is also obligatory.
3. The third type consists of actions, the performance of which is optional.
Optional deeds may be called the ‘hypothetical imperative’, their chief concern being with the individual well being. They are explicitly designed to secure personal benefits here or out there. The principle underlying optional deeds is that desire as such is not bad and need not therefore be suppressed, but that it needs to be properly controlled. It is equivalent to saying that one should subdue one’s senses and restrain one’s mind before one could enjoy the world. All voluntary activities imply desire, and what moral discipline means is its right direction.
Ethical Action:
Ethical Action is any social, organizational, national or personal activity into which the individual is ready to pour him forth entirely in a spirit of service and dedication. Ethical action can be conceived as instrumental to the attainment of some good or the avoidance of some evil. The idea of ethical action in general is innate in man and not acquired.
Ethical action deals with obligatory deeds and avoidance of prohibited deeds. These are ‘the Categorical Imperatives’.
In other words, the ethical action applies not only to outward activities but also to the inner disposition of the mind. Since oneself knows one's thoughts only, ethical action signifies emphasis on the importance of good will in conduct. The good will must be more than a mere wish; it needs to be followed by appropriate action.
Ethical action, over the years, has been modified to be treated not as an instrumental value but as an intrinsic value or as an end in itself. The purpose of ethical action is
1. Avoidance of some unwelcome result or desire for an end.
2. The betterment of character i.e. eradication of evil tendencies and performance of duties.
3. Unethical actions chain a man to a realm of confusion and sorrows and stunt his growth.
Morality, Religion and Civil-law:
There are three types of ethical actions for individuals in our society and they have been grouped as morality, religion and civil law. Morality can be defined as ethical action intended to secure for the agent some future good. Religion is a collectivity of ethical actions related to norms of society. Civil Law is norms of ethical action to regulate the conduct of the individual in the society.
When we leave home and step outside, moral clarity often blurs. Without a backdrop of shared attitudes, and without law and judicial procedures that define standards of ethical conduct, we fall back on our own value judgements or start following others.
The stability of the society is dependent on to the idea of ethical action implanted in man. This is the mainstay of any society, through which both the individual and the society are maintained in safety. Ethical action does not merely keep man in harmony with his environment; it also enables him thereby to attend his own ends in life both here and out there.
Ethical Activism:
For ethical activism, action is ultimate, is the sovereignty force of the universe. It is not pure and simple activism, for the individual as the agent of action is also ultimately real, although governed by the laws of ethical action. In pure activism, the agent of action is only a mode of action, action only is ultimately real – the agent, the patient and the instruments of action are only modes of modalities of action constituting its pattern. Ethical potency or the force or power of merit and demerit controls the universe and produces for the agent of action what he desires and what his action deserves.
Although action is important and determines what the agent can attain, the responsibility for action, its merit or demerit, its rewards or punishments, must accrue to the agent, not to action itself. The agent of action must then be as important and real as action itself.
Man will have to have self - discipline, if he is to take a serious view of conduct. He has to resist temptation with firmness, if he is to lead a truly moral life. Self - satisfaction or feeling at peace with oneself (pleasure of conscience) represents self - approval. It implies the acceptance of conscience as an authority in matters pertaining to morality.
The purpose of this is to make ethical action independent of individual idiosyncrasies and rest it as a community standard - a view that is based on the belief that a group of enlightened people are less liable to wrong action than an individual.
Norm of conduct:
Several works on ethical action are not content with pointing out what is ethical action; they also try to formulate the norm of conduct, as if it were an eternally existing pattern of righteousness. The concept of right as the means to the good is introduced here. It recognizes an ideal and rules are formulated according to this ideal.
There are two characteristic features of this ideal:
1. Special emphasis laid on the ascetic principle in the moral training as a whole.
2. Codes are not mere theoretical guides but are practical for example, non-injury where agent should reduce the injury to minimum.
Concept of Dharma:
Indian philosophy has been sorting out issues of fairness, empathy, and self-sacrifice for more than 5000 years. The concept of Dharma guiding Artha is prevalent since Vedic ages. Further, in Mimamsa the Indian philosophical thought goes to the extent of saying that Dharma is nothing but ethical action and the world survives because of ethical action.
There are three specific concept of Dharma available in ancient Indian philosophy. These are:
1. Mimamsa: Dharma is ethical action. But action being transient, it can not by itself account for the result. Before the act is completed, the act produces an appropriate effect, which abides in the individual until its reward becomes apparent.
2. Nyaya - Vaisheshika: Dharma is the "appropriate effect" and not the action. Thus, it becomes a quality characterizing the individual-self.
3. Theistic doctrines: Dharma is neither an action nor a quality; it is the consequences of our meritorious deeds, that is so called, and explain the conferment of the reward.
Dharma i.e. Ethical Action is meant not merely for further enjoyment, but also for obtaining the highest form of happiness or bliss. Ethical action is a pathway to liberation or salvation, which is emancipation from bondage to the laws of the world.
Mimamsa and Ethical Action:
The Mimansa is the basis and source of the whole of Indian ethics, not only of the interpretative rules, but also of the basic principles and the idea of morality and positive law. The Mimansa is a summation of the philosophy of half the Veda and from it the ethical and legal ideas of India are derived. It is in Mimansa that question such as following are asked:
-whether the good or the right is primary
-whether action or its result as potency is more important
-what the nature is of ethical merit
According to Mimamsa, the ethical action is the supreme governing force of the universe. The basic concepts regarding ethical action as laid out in Mimamsa are:
* The agent of ethical action must be real.
* Action itself must be real.
* it must be the controlling and guiding force of the universe, and
* The universe as the field of action has also to be real.
One may criticize the Mimansa philosophy, its metaphysics, its epistemology and even its interpretation of Dharma, but should not reject its idea of Dharma (duty, right action, merit), its social ethics, its ethical injunctions about sacrifices and those derived from them and presented in the doctrine of ethical codes.
Karma Yoga:
The Karma doctrine signifies not merely that the events of our life are determined by their antecedent causes, but also that there is absolute justice in the rewards and punishments that fall to our lot in life. The value of this doctrine as a hypothesis for rationally explaining the observed inequalities of life is clear.
The implication of this idea of rewards and punishments is that the Karma Doctrine is grounded in a moral view of the universe. The law of Karma is not a blind mechanical law, but it is eventually ethical.
The frame of mind, which belief in the Karma Doctrine produces, reconciles the believer in it to his lot in life and explains the results of their action to themselves. This ethical basis of the belief commits man to the obligations of a truly moral life. Man is not only a rational being who has the power to know and appreciate moral values, but also a moral agent who is capable of ordering his own ways of living.
Doctrine of Karma aims at satisfying man’s logical as well as moral consciousness. The doctrine extends the principle of causation to the sphere of human conduct. A person following karma doctrine understands:
- that his concern is with action alone;
- that he has no concern with results;
- that he should not entertain the motive of gaining a fixed result for a given action; and
- that these ideas do not mean that he should sit back courting inaction.
Karma implies necessity and freedom in the matter of ethical advance. Every deed that we do produces its direct result - the pain and pleasure following from it – it also establishes in us a disposition or tendency to repeat the same deed in the future. The necessity involved in the Karma Doctrine is only in so far as the former of these results, viz., the pain or the pleasure is concerned. As regards the tendencies, they are entirely under our control; and our moral progress depends upon the success with which we regulate them, as they tend to express themselves in action.
Karmayoga and Ethical Action:
Karmayoga is the way of ethical action. It says that the only way of life is the way of ethical action, that through it alone can man obtain happiness in his life. Action performed with detachment without interest in the fruit of action does not bind man to the world. The path of ethical action leads to prosperity, success, expansions and sound policy. We are punished ‘by’ the unethical action, not ‘for’ doing it. ‘Active resistance to unethical action’ is the central idea in the Karma doctrines. Indian culture accepts the doctrines of action, desire and worldly achievement.
The theory of transmigration is a necessary corollary to the doctrine of Karma. Karmayoga has its basis in a surviving and transmigrating self. The doctrine embodies the truth – the relating of the world of fact with the world of value – by insisting that no act consciously done will ever go without its payment to the agent. The fact of moral consciousness, as students of western philosophy know, is according to Kant, the guarantee of personal immortality. In a similar way, the inexorable law of Karma is our assurance of the truth of transmigration.
Concept of God, Men and Demon:
Each one of us has our own ‘individual being', which makes what we are. If we are to live as truly dynamic men in the world, we can only do so by being faithful to our true nature, following the path of ethical action.
Indian thought system has much to say on the psychophysical being of the individual and the evolution of the concept of substances, time etc. out of this process. Indian philosophy says that every object in the world has two types of properties – Essential and Non-essential. The object, a substance, can remain itself intact, when its non-essential qualities are absent, but it can not remain without its essential properties. For example, the colour of the flame, its length and width are non-essential properties of fire, but the essential property of it is heat.
The color of the skin, varieties of emotions and thoughts, the condition and the capacities of the body, mind and intellect are the non-essential factors in the human personality as against the ‘true nature’. Indian texts recognize three types of inmates in the world.
Deva i.e. God-like
Manava i.e. Men-like
Rakshasa i.e. Demon-like
For ethical action people who are demon-like should develop compassion to others, for those who are men-like, they should learn to be generous and those who are God-like they should have self-control.
For demon-like and men-like people concern for others should be the chief principle of action. The god-like person is unlike others and it presupposes the presence of characteristic of compassion, generosity and concern for others in him.
With this understanding, we can appreciate that ‘ethical action’ is not mere ethical and moral rules of conduct but encompasses all duties in life. It covers not only all duties towards family, friends, community, nation and the world, all our affection, reverence, charity and sense of goodwill; but it guides us to live truly as the individual self and express our true nature through our action.
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