‘Ethics in Vedanta’ is a series of blogs we will be publishing from the book, ‘The Choice is Yours‘ by Swami Chinmayananda. Our choices should be based on some ethics and values. Here we understand what are the ethics mentioned in Vedanta. After reading and understanding each value we will be better equipped to make the ‘Right Choice.’
The Upanishads glorify service as the highest pinnacle of right living. Dedicated and noble work alone can polish an individual to a state of true culture and right discipline. To those who know what service is, work is not slavery or drudgery but is the joy of life. Man is not born to revel in idleness. Nature will whip the idle on to the road of right or wrong activity, and thereby evolve him steadily to a state of joy characterized by dynamic outer activity yet inner calm and peace.
Vedanta has never permitted escapism, though many uninformed people contend that it does. The earliest Upanishads emphasized that one who cannot live the noble life of renunciation and self-restraint must unavoidably and honestly live a life of intense activity, striving to fulfil one’s desires through honest means; teaching oneself to live in cheerful enthusiasm all one’s life in the service of man and in the glorification of the Lord.
The one who intensively plunges into life – eager and anxious to meet daily its new challenges, and at every turn doing one’s best to meet the challenges with truth and purity as the standards – to such a one, actions do not cling. Living an entire lifetime in a spirit of paying homage to the Lord, detached from the anxiety for the fruit of actions and from the ego-sense, is lauded not only by the Bhagavad Gita but by the Upanishads also. Such actions are not bars to spiritual progress; in fact, they are necessary to prepare a student for the highest flights in meditation. To a seeker, dedicated work is a means for the inner purification of his vasanas.
You may like to read “How to prepare for meditation?“
Though the goal is Self-realization, which is experienced as perfect “inactivity” and realized through the path of renunciation – the stages of progress from “animal-man” to “God-man” are through an intermediary stage called “man-man”. The animal-man revels in inactivity (tamas), until he evolves to the state of man-man through an intensely active, desire-motivated (rajas) program of action (sakama karma). Then, through a subtle life of activity that is pursued without motive or desire (niskama karma), selfish work fulfils itself in selfless work, and selfless work accomplishes its goal of purifying the mind and intellect. Thereafter, the individual gains initiation into the path of meditation.
All activities, whether social, economic, political, or domestic, when pursued in an attitude of detachment, can never bind the actor by their results. Results can cling to the doer only when he acts with expectation of an attachment to definite results. The seeker should, therefore, function purely in a spirit of work for work’s sake.