Sri Vasista

1. O Rāma, what is seen as doership in the yogic practices and other actions in the case of jnanis, is not true in the case of ignorant people, who lack the knowledge of Truth.

2. What is called doership is a resolution or determination within one’s mind.  That becomes the material cause and is called ‘vāsana’.  This settles the doership.

3. Resulting fruits of action depend on the action and reflect the ‘vāsana’.  A person enjoys experiences the fruits (of action) according to the nature of his vāsana.  Enjoying the fruits can be called doership.  This is the thesis.

4. Whether one performs works or not, he experiences hell or heaven according to his vāsana.

5. And so whether an ignorant person (accepts) doership or not, he becomes a doer.  In the case of a jnani this doership does not happen since vāsanas are absent in him.

6. Because of the weakened vāsanas, even when a jnani performs works, the fruits of it do not get attached to him.  His actions are mere detached responses to the needs of a work.  He thinks that all fruits are that (of) Self alone.  Even though he does not care for the fruits of works, he performs the works with total concentration.

7. What is done by mind is what is done.  If it is not done by mind, it is not done.  Mind alone performs works, not body.

8. This world is a projection of ‘citta’, the basic sense mind-stuff.  This is known.  When all objective (phenomena) subside Truth alone remains.

9. What it rains, all mirages disappear.  Similarly when the self is realized, mind attains absolute quiet.  The fourth state is attained (when all mind subsides in activity).  It is like a dew drop which melts away when hit by heat.

10. Know that the mind of a jnani is neither happy nor unhappy, joyful nor grieving; it is neither stable or unstable; it is existent nor nonexistent.  It is central to all these.

11. The mind of a jnani does not respond vāsana-driven actions.  It stands like an elephant in the mud of a lake.  On the contrary, the mind of a person without the knowledge of Truth wanders in pleasure fields, unmindful of the nature of self.

12. One can cite an example for this.  If one entertains the idea (due to a drop memory) of falling into a chasm, he shall feel the grief as if thrown into a chasm even while sleeping on his bed (in dreams).  One whose mind is totally oblivious of this idea, will not feel grieved even if he has fallen into a chasm.  Even then he feels the happiness of lying on his bed.  And so one who feels the fall becomes a doer of the work of falling due to his mental experience while the other does not feel the doership of falling since he does not experience the fall.  Thus this doership or nondoership is a matter of mental experience.

13. And so whether you are performing works or not let your mind be detached.  There is nothing (in manifestation) that is different from the essential nature of Self.  If (for some reason) you feel engrossed and attached even that aspect of the world is only a reflection of that Pure Intelligence.

14. Thus that person who knows what is to be known, that wise man never feels sorrow and happiness.  This is definite when he comes to this conclusion, he understands that there is nothing like support or supported that is different from Self.  He then understands that he is beyond all manifest objects and is subtler than the thousandth part of a hair.  Having concluded thus he realizes that he is all that is in creation and feels :’I am all pervading.  I am all existence’.  Coming to this conclusion, both grief and happiness do not touch him.  He participates in the world-play without any fever and in a mood of play.

15. Since a jnani is mentally detached even when he is the doer, he emerges as a non-doer.  Even in calamities he is joyful and those beams of joys brighten the universe.  He does not experience/enjoy the fruits of his movements of hand and feet during the performance of works.

16. Thus mind is at the root of all actions, of all states and phases (of human existence) and all movements in the world.  If this mind is given up, all works and actions are given up.  All griefs die.  Even when works are done, jnanis are not seized by them.  Since they are not ecstatic about them, no adverse condition of enjoyment arises.

17. O Rāma, a child builds a city in his mind and decorates it with all his mental ability with the full understanding that all is in his mind only.  He experiences it as a play.  There is no permanence about it.  He does not feel either grief or joy when it is cleared out from his mind.  Even though he feels unhappy, he understands that it is a mere play.  From the Supreme point of view all this is detachment from works.

18. What is the cause of grief in this world from the point of view acceptable and unacceptable conditions and states?  Agreeability cannot be the cause, because there is nothing more agreeable than the imperishable Self.  All else are perishable.  And so self is a non-doer, non-enjoyer.  If there is any doership that can only be an overlay on itself by itself.

19. The feeling that some works are essential is caused by an obsession with wholistic perception, not as a natural need.  Doership and enjoyership arise in the process of understanding about (manifest) beings and elements from the point of view of senses and the consequent desire for them and rejection of them.  This situation does not arise from the perception of Self.

20. There is nothing like liberation.  All this is for those who are engrossed in this world.

21. For a jnani, only the essential nature of Self is engrossing.  That Self nature alone manifests duality and nonduality, existence and nonexistence, light and harmony and its opposites.  All its energies are together and one.  It merely displays as many.

22. There is neither bondage nor liberation.  There is nothing that binds.  Grief that arises due to lack of knowledge is annihilated by knowledge and enlightenment.

23. Liberation and bondage are wastefully conceived in this mutable world.  Abandon everything.  Be egoless and abide in the Self.  O Rāma with intelligence and courage move about in this world.