Do your duty in the world, but keep your mind attached to Me!

In Bhagavad Gita, the primary message is "Do your duty in the world, but keep your mind attached to Me!". Thus, what we have to do is to have 'Tana kara men mana yara men'.

The mind should be constantly thinking about God while performing worldly duties.

The next question is this. How do we go about working without attachment to this work? Well, you may be surprised to know that all of us are already in the habit of working in this way. In fact, 90% of our works are performed without the attachment of the mind. The series of detached actions starts right from the time we get up in the morning. You get up at six o'clock in the morning everyday. You don't really want to leave your nice and cozy bed, but you do it anyways, because your intellect reasons that if you don't do so, you will certainly be late for work.

Therefore, you get out of bed reluctantly and start the morning rituals like brushing your teeth, taking a shower and so on. But note that all these actions are being performed without the attachment of the mind to them. Furthermore, when you go to your job, you still work with a detached mind. How many office workers are really attached to those files that keep them occupied all day long? Most workers would agree that the most enjoyable part of any job is the
coffee and lunch breaks.

Let's take another example. A nurse working in the maternity ward of a hospital helps bring thousands of babies into the world, yet she does not get attached to anyone of them. If the child is born healthy, she congratulates the parents and if there is a problem, she offers them her sympathy. But in both cases, she remains neutral and goes about her business as usual. This is because although she is using her mind in her work, yet she is keeping it detached from the work.

Just as we keep the mind detached from most work we perform, in the same way we keep it detached from most individuals of the world. The attachment of our mind is reserved only for a handful of people such as our parents, children, husband, wife, brothers, sisters and so on. With the rest of the world, we only behave politely. Now if we sever the ties of attachment with even these few people, there will be no difficulty for us in attaining God.

Here some people may raise an objection and argue that it's impossible for us to perform our duty in the world, in other words, to do anything for anyone unless we love others. But the fact is that we can only perform our duty properly with a mind that is neutral towards the world. It is only when we are free of both love as well hatred that we can carry out our duties towards others. A judge, for example, can only carry out his duties effectively when he is impartial to both the parties. If he loves or hates either one of the parties, he cannot be impartial in giving out his judgment. A surgeon will refuse to operate on his own wife, whereas he may perform even the most delicate operation on others with the greatest of ease and confidence. The reason is that he is attached to his wife, but not to other people whom he treats as patients and nothing more.

So we see that since our mind is affected by both love as well as hatred, it fails to give out impartial judgment, and consequently we fail to carry out our duty properly. This being the case, doesn't it make sense to keep our mind detached from the world and attached only to God? Our mind should be like a compass on the ship which always points towards the north, regardless of the direction in which the ship is sailing. Likewise, our mind should be directed only towards God at all times, regardless of the duties we may be performing in the world. We must always keep in mind that this world has been created in order to satisfy our physical needs and not for us to become slaves to it.

Now we are back to where we started, we must have our mind attached to Lord Krishna at all times and for this, we will have to practice devotion.

Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj
Excerpted from His discourse on "Ananya Ki Reeti" (Exclusive Devotion)