Dedicated Action

An important part of the practical teachings of non-duality is about the best way of action.

Usually, we do our actions with a strong wish that they should lead to the result we want.

The problem is that this attachment to the results of action binds us to the process of cause and effect. And often, our concern the outcome of action prevents us from simply doing the work as well as possible, and enjoying the work for its own sake.

The alternative way of acting, described and recommended at length in the Bhagavad Gita, is precisely to do our actions as well as we can, without worrying about how it will work out for ourselves personally.

Or, we can see our actions as offerings. Offerings to what or whom? We may offer our actions, and their results, to Truth, or the Supreme Being, or God, or to the general good, according to our outlook.

In this way, our actions cease to bind us to the process of cause and effect, and become affirmations that in our deeper nature we are at one with the All, with the Supreme.

This way of acting is based on the non-dual view of Reality.

Without higher guidance, we generally feel that we are the body and mind, and are not aware of our Self, as the pure conscious principle. Equally, we experience the phenomenal world and all the separate entities within it, but we are not aware of the unitive Reality that underlies and transcends all phenomena.

The non-dual teaching is that, our deeper Self is the universal Self of all, which is at one with the supreme Reality. The aim of meditation and the related practices is to ‘know’ or ‘realize’ this as our own Being.

If we have understood this in principle, and seek to realize it in practice, it becomes natural to see our actions as being done by our bodies and minds, as offerings to Truth or to the Good, while our deeper Self is ever untouched by the process of cause and effect.

Read more on this theme:

Action as an Offering
Dedicated action in the Bhagavad Gita Chapter Two
Bhagavad Gita Chapter Three: from Action and Reaction to Infinity