If we live our life in this world in the spirit of the Gita, then this country would not just be prosperous, but a beacon-light of compassion too. If there is corruption today, it is because there is no integrity at the individual and hence the collective level. The Bhagavad Gita says that if you do your action without any desire for personal rewards, such a person is not affected by any sins.
The word sin is something that can take you immediately to what is right and wrong. The way shown by the Gita is the way of a sinless mind— to go beyond the duality of you and me. Duality is called the Adi Vyadhi or the first disease! That is the root cause for all diseases.
When you think you are separate from the rest of the world, the other depressing thoughts follow— oh I am sick and everyone else is healthy! Oh I am poor and that person is so rich! Oh he is so talented, why not me? Oh she is so lucky in life. I have none of it coming my way! Knowing that the rich and the poor are one, the brilliant and the not so shining student are one, the one who passes and the one who fails is one! This thought, you may wonder, takes the sting off our competition. But when competition fades, creativity blooms. When there is cooperation in the heart, without the stress caused by duality, then the best of actions flourish in that atmosphere.
When a person so functions in excellence, yet without any attachment to the material world and deeply rooted in wisdom that all are one, then the final merger into the supreme truth happens on its own, as a result.
In many ashrams around the world, these lines of the Gita are chanted before food: Brahmarpanam Brahma Havih Brahmagnau Brahmanahutam / Brahmaiva Tena Gantavyam Brahma Karma Samadhina The one that is being offered, the medium of offering, the fire into which it is offered, the material offered is nothing but the Brahman. The supreme Brahman is present in every possible object without and person within, without absence even in a microcosmic particle in space.
It is there in you, your actions, your thoughts. In any inconceivable zone of your life, it is there. It can never come or go, because it can never move. It can never move, because it should not be there if it has to move from one place to another! This unmoving thing is what we called God, Brahman, Truth, Supreme and many other names. It supports all changes and movements though. Movement is also part of this static presence at all times in the past, present and future. Whatever happens, it happens in this presence only.
The writer is a public speaker, musician and blogger.
Swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com